Independent Open Minds House

By John Rentoul

As some of you noticed, Open House is being wound down. The new site, Independent Minds, is over here. Change your bookmarks. Edit your RSS thingy (I use Bloglines). Get with the, er, thing.

It's all very exciting. There is something here about the "cult of the individual", which sounds contrary to the New Age of Old Labour, but it also means that you too can blog under the Independent Minds banner.

Forward. Definitely not back.

A new home for blogs

By Jimmy Leach

It’s an exciting day at The Independent with the launch of Independent Minds, our new comment and opinion platform for Independent journalists  – and users.

Regular readers will have noticed that our blogs by the likes of Andrew Buncombe, John Rentoul and more of the finest journalists around are now found on a shiny new blog, with new designs that are, hopefully, a little easier on the eye than the old ones (thanks to our new partners LiveJournal). 

There’s a new emphasis on the blogs on the cult of the individual, so while there are  a few hangovers from the navigational branding from the old blogs – the likes of Today in Politics was too good to be killed – you’ll find more single-authored blogs than communities. The idea is to centre more on the writer than on the topic.

Hence, Rhodri Marsden may blog about techy stuff mostly, but the way the blogs are now constructed means he may feel a little more able to talk about football, or Catherine Townsend may talk about property prices. You get the idea –no-one who writes on the blogs need feel restricted about the subject and the navigation across the Independent Minds site is based on tagging as on any pre-set thoughts about a writer’s subject.

But this is mere tinkering to the major new aspect of the Independent Minds – and that’s that you too can become bloggers on this site. Just register (with LiveJournal who are providing the back-end to all this) and you can add your voice to the others on this site and share your thoughts with the huge and growing audience the site has. You do have to register, I'm afraid - some may find it a pain, but its mean't to be a community, not a free-for-all. We won't be using your data to spam you with offers from the Independent, you can be sure of that.

Letting all and sundry blog under our flag and letting them speak about what they want might be something we regret on occasion– but we trust you. You’re Independent readers after all, you’ll want to debate, not start a fight, and, as the whole thing beds in, we’ll be bringing the user content closer and closer to the centre of the site.

Secretly, you see, we don’t think journalists always know more than the readers. We’re looking to you to prove it. And besides – if it gets unpalatable in there, we reserve the right to delete it, as ever.

This is just the start of the project – we’ll be looking for more and more ways to improve it, to link it better to the ‘main site’ and for ways to encourage users to make the best of it. Over the next weeks and months we’ll roll out improvements and changes, and we hope you’ll contribute to that process. Add your comments to this blog post, and others in the future, and make your suggestions as to how we and the guys at Live Journal can improve Independent Minds. It’s a forum for your voices, after all.

So get writing!

 

Pick of the Commentators

In The Independent today:

Shame on the doctors prejudiced against Down Syndrome - Dominic Lawson

At last - Brown is forced to be bold - Steve Richards

The most irresponsible budget I have ever heard - Michael Brown

Only one person is writing this - me - Terence Blacker

Slow cookers rock - and casseroles roll - Tom Sutcliffe

The best of the rest:

Spend urges not so joyous Santa Darling - Ann Treneman, The Times

Only total energy renewal can save us - George Monbiot, The Guardian

The party of social justice has awoken - Polly Toynbee, The Guardian

An election by late spring 2010 - Simon Heffer, The Daily Telegraph

Search for work-life balance goes offshore - Michael Skapinker, The Financial Times

Pick of the Commentators

In The Independent today:

Brown is not after economic recovery, he's after votes - Bruce Anderson

Navratilova leads the way for lesbians - Johann Hari

Finally time to join the Euro? - Andreas Whittam Smith

Where is the media outrage over Gaza? - Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

We must restore belief in interventionism - David Miliband

Female mud-wrestling, French style - John Lichfield

The best of the rest:

Cameron gambles on the fiscal boost failing - Jackie Ashley, The Guardian

Giles's vision still speaks louder than words - Libby Purves, The Times

Arnie to aid Obama's muscle power - Tom Leonard, The Daily Telegraph

How to reinvent the Republican party - Clive Crook, The Financial Times

Britain will pay for Brown's fiscal boost - Nigel Lawson, The Financial Times

Ken Clarke's spanner

By John Rentoul

Bit of a problem for George Osborne tomorrow. Kenneth Clarke, in his interview with The Times yesterday, supported Labour's mini-Budget even before the main policy was briefed to the Sunday newspapers.

The Government should, he says, consider cutting VAT to 15 per cent in the Pre-Budget Report on Monday - an idea that is certainly not Tory party policy. “If it's possible to afford a fiscal stimulus I would go for VAT because the only case for a fiscal stimulus is to stimulate spending and consumer demand, so the tax on spending is the one to go for. But it should be temporary.”

As Alice Thomson and Rachel Sylvester point out,

Mr Osborne is opposed to a tax cut funded out of borrowing, but Mr Clarke says that such a fiscal stimulus should not be ruled out. “There's no point in being ultra-orthodox. A lot of people are going to be hurt by a dreadful recession. If you think a fiscal stimulus is going to do any good then you could strive to see if you can afford it.”

After Osborne and David Cameron have made strenuous attempts to get Conservative former chancellors on board before the pre-Budget report (Nigel Lawson, John Major and Norman Lamont have all been out and about, laying into the Government), they must be specially grateful for this intervention.

Only adds to Osborne's difficulty, about which I write for The Independent on Sunday today.

The Labour Party! It's still alive!

By John Rentoul

Encouraging sign of life in Victoria Street. The Labour Party, once a fearsome campaigning organisation, has put out an attack on David Cameron that is simple, effective, web-literate and funny.

Now, that's not something you see every day.

Thanks, Tom Watson.

Early Christmas

By John Rentoul

Not only is there a Christmas tree in Euston station; not only has Matthew d'Ancona already written his review of the political year; not only has Barack Obama won the election; but now this ...

Coldplay are to break up next year.

At The New Yorker, Sasha Frere-Jones celebrates. (Via Clive Davis.)

Jeremy Hunt for Tory leader

By John Rentoul

I know this is two weeks old, but it is good. And it's Friday.

Jeremy Hunt is one of the 2005 Conservative intake, already in the shadow cabinet (as culture spokesman), and I am told that David Cameron thinks highly of him.

After reading this excerpt from a speech he delivered to Islington Tories before a firework display in Highbury, so do I:

God summoned President Bush, Prime Minister Putin and Lord Mandelson to heaven. He told them mankind had been so bad He was going to destroy the world. Putin returned to the Duma and said he had two pieces of bad news.

First, contrary to what the Communists had taught, God existed. Secondly, the world would end tomorrow.

Bush told Congress he had one bit of good news, one bad. God did exist  -  but he was going to destroy the world tomorrow.

Mandelson returned to Gordon Brown and, spinner that he is, said he had two pieces of good news. Firstly, that he, Peter Mandelson, really was one of the three most important people on the planet. And secondly, that David Miliband would never lead the Labour Party.

President Charles

Richard Dawkins has commented on the column I wrote yesterday about Charles Windsor's desire to beocme our President without an election. Check it out - I agree with every word.

Green fascism

By John Rentoul

One thing I got wrong in trying to answer The Big Question in The Independent this morning, was to say that "one of the most surprising" names on the leaked BNP membership list was that of someone who stood as a Green Party candidate in the 2001 and 2005 elections.

What I meant was "one of the names that was not surprising at all", because there has been a philosophical overlap between the "deep" green movement and fascism from the early years of both.

Yesterday, the Green Party admitted that two of its former activists had been exposed as members of the BNP: Keith Bessant, its parliamentary candidate at Cheltenham in 2001 and 2005, and a Rev Stanton. 

The game of Hillary's footsteps

By John Rentoul

Hard to decode what Hillary Clinton was doing, seeing President-Elect Barack Obama in Chicago last week. So here is Dick Morris's take:

Move One: Obama Makes An Offer

Move Two: Clinton Leaks the “Offer”

Move Three: Obama Puts Out Mikva To Throw Cold Water on Appointment

Move Four: Bill Offers to Come Clean, Partially

Move Five: Hillary Has Her Aides Talk Up the Appointment

Move Six: Obama Gets Kennedy to Give Hillary an Out

Seems to make sense, except for one crucial thing. Surely Obama would not have had Clinton come to Chicago, which was bound to become public knowledge, if he weren't prepared to offer her Secretary of State? So what is all the toing and froing about?

OFSTED's other business

By Richard Garner
Education Editor

With Ofsted's remit being extended to inspecting all children's services, its usual annual state-of-the-nation assessment of our schools got lost yesterday because of more pressing concerns about child abuse in the wake of the tragic death of Baby P.

A pity, really, because chief schools inspector Christine Gilbert had a remarkably forthright message for ministers - that too many children and young people were being offered services that were "patently inadequate" - particularly if the lived in disadvantaged communities.