The Conservatives say they would offer a £1m prize in a competition to develop a website that would allow large groups of people to help develop new policies.

Tory frontbencher Jeremy Hunt told the BBC the idea was to tap into the “huge amount of expertise” among the British people to avoid policy “howlers”.

The prize would be public money – from the Cabinet Office budget – but he said it could offer taxpayers good value.

Labour and the Lib Dems dismissed it as a “gimmick” and a publicity stunt.

The TaxPayers Alliance, bizarrely, are nowhere to be found condemning this waste of public money.

The Daily Mail reports:

A defiantly optimistic Gordon Brown will today try to woo back Labour’s lost Middle England voters with a New Year message promising ‘a decade of shared prosperity’.

The Prime Minister will admit that Britain needs change – but he will insist that he is the one to deliver it and will warn that a vote for the Tories will ‘wreck the recovery’.

Reshaping Labour’s class war attacks, Mr Brown will accuse David Cameron’s team of plotting to create a country where the ‘majority lose out while the privileged few protect themselves’.

But stung by criticism from senior ministers that the class-based attacks are alienating floating voters, Mr Brown will also promise that Labour will do more for ‘aspirational’ voters on middle incomes who have abandoned the party.

While there’s absolutely no evidence middle class voters have abandoned New Labour because it wasn’t “aspirational” enough, this narrative works for me.

The word “privileged” should be used over and over again until it is drummed into people’s minds.

Meanwhile, Charles Clarke and Barry Sheerman MP should probably STFU and accept that the time to get rid of Brown has passed. They should have done that last year at the party conference.

Here at Liberal Conspiracy we are shocked to hear of a Tory MP who actually believes in man-made global warming.

So all due credit to Conservative ex-cabinet minister John Gummer, who has said he will step down as an MP at the next election to focus on the campaign against climate change.

The BBC reports:

In a statement, Mr Gummer, 70, said he had been “forced to rethink my plans for the future” following the “very disappointing results” of the Copenhagen negotiations. After talking to colleagues internationally, he said he realised he could not commit “to the work that they believe has to be done” while continuing as an MP.
…
The former agriculture minister and environment secretary said he had had an opportunity to play a part in raising the alert about climate change – and had hoped to continue to do so as a backbencher.

But he added: “Those of us who have any chance to influence the course of events, even in a small way, have simply to make that our first priority, however difficult the choice.”

Perhaps he could start with his fellow Tory MPs and convince them.

The Daily Mail is really, really horrible.

But we already knew this.

But as casual misogyny and general nastiness goes, the following headline is something of a paradigm example: “Stripper jailed for lacing lover’s Angel Delight with poison” – screams the Dail Mail.

I don’t trawl the Mail website for entertainment. I know about this because the “stripper” in question is (deep breath) my girlfriend’s housemate’s ex-boyfriend’s sister.

A stripper, was she? Well even the Mail’s own article manages to note that:

The court heard that Mardon carried out the attacks because she was in an abusive relationship and was forced to work as a stripper to bring in extra cash.

From what I’m told, “abusive relationship” is something of an understatement. But for the Mail, it’s just a woman’s place in the home:

She had a day job as a clerical assistant and had been pressured by him to work at night as a stripper.

Mardon would then return to the two-bedroom house in Thornbury, Bristol, owned by Martyn’s father. She lived there with Martyn and his brother and their father.

She would then be required to cook for the men and do the housework.

And despite all that she is referred to merely as a “stripper”.

The charitable arm of the Taxpayers’ Alliance is being investigated by regulators after the Guardian revealed the Tory-linked campaign group may have used the charity to gain tax relief, normally reserved for good causes, on donations for political research.

The Charity Commission has stepped up its scrutiny of the campaign group’s funding by opening a regulatory compliance case into the Politics and Economics Research Trust.

Earlier this month it emerged that, in order to benefit from gift aid, the alliance asked private Midlands businessmen to channel funds through the trust for research into policies which may damage their commercial interests. Organisations may not be charitable if they have political purposes, according to commission guidelines.

“The scope of the investigation is to address the allegations relating to the charity’s relationship with the Taxpayers’ Alliance,” a spokesman for the commission said. The regulator opens such cases when “available information indicates misconduct or mismanagement has occurred” and where trustees’ actions “may have been improper”.

…more at The Guardian