Tomsk79

When sorting through the latest batch of pizza menus and special offers for conservatories shoved through our letterbox each day, there's no greater joy than to find a copy of "South Manchester Life" nestled in the pile like a delicious glossy truffle. Regular readers of South Manchester Life will know that it tends to concentrate on the activities of our local Liberal Democrat MP, and last week's was no exception. There he is, cover star (twice), pictured above with the South Manchester Life team and guest editor Morrissey. Any resemblance between the South Manchester Life team and local Liberal Democrat activists is, of course, entirely coincidental. I'll spare you the details of what John Leech MP is doing for us in Parliament, but suffice to say South Manchester Life is very positive about them.

The first in an occasional series of "weird things that get sent to you when you live in a marginal seat". Imagine my trepidation at receiving a letter with this marked on the envelope: That can only mean one thing: local NHS services are to be wiped from the face of the Earth, right? But no, the true nature of the information is far more surprising: Phew! Ed Miliband is personally going to save my insert local hospital name here! Through no less than a completely non-arbitrary set of random targets. Count me relieved. I don't mean to sound smug but to be personally sent a personal letter from the leader of the opposition addressed personally to me has to make me one seriously important voter.

Amid the impressive and heart-warming displays of solidarity, there has sadly also been a lot of rubbish written about Charlie Hebdo and its cartoons on the English-speaking web over the past week (I've seen the beautiful term 'anglosplaining' used for this phenomenon). Rather than add to the pile, here are some links to pieces doing the rounds that I've found genuinely informative. Two of them are by actual French people. On the French satirical tradition: http://artgoldhammer.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/tragedy-at-charlie-hebdo.html On where power really lies: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/08/charlie-hebdo-martin-rowson On American know-nothingery: http://67-tardis-street.tumblr.com/post/107589955860/dear-us-followers On not taking satirical cartoons at face value: http://www.quora.com/What-was-the-context-of-Charlie-Hebdos-cartoon-depicting-Boko-Haram-sex-slaves-as-welfare-queens On targetting racism in France: http://www.dailykos.co

In response to Gordon Brown's proposals for "home rule" for Scotland in the event of a No vote, there have been many murmurings about what is to be done about England and the West Lothian Question . In line with the current government fashion, the most popular change suggested is to resurrect regional devolution, only this time to city regions in the form of combined authorities . Although giving more powers to cities would be welcome, it is not clear what this has to do with the matter at hand, namely who gets to write legislation for England. More importantly right now, it is a gross insult to Scotland to assert that English regions are constitutionally equivalent to the whole of their country. If the union is to mean anything, it should mean equal treatment for the constituent countries, and the only logical conclusion is an English parliament. As I've argued before , if such a parliament was designed correctly it would have the added benefit of reducing the

At one point during the seemingly endless interrupting competition between Alistair Darling and Alex Salmond I took a look at what I had written previously on the subject of Scottish independence. What I recalled as fairly recent posts turned out to be two and a half years old. I can only imagine how interminable the independence debate has been for the poor residents of Scotland. Nevertheless I was surprised how relevant the point about currency options for the discarded "devo max" option remains today. In essence, what the SNP are trying to propose as independence is devo max: they want to keep the Pound, the Queen, the BBC, and other trappings of the UK while having maximum powers in every other respect. If anything the idea of a Poundzone is even more stupid for an independent Scottish state, as it would require a political union of a kind which negates its own independence. Salmond must know this and therefore I suspect he would want negotiations for such a union