I’m not going into the rights and wrongs of the case, nor whether he was guilty or not, partly because I haven’t been following the case and partly because I am not terribly interested in him.

What is interesting though is this: should he actually go to jail? The trials themselves have cost millions, and keeping someone in jail costs around £37,500 a year, though of course estimates vary and it depends what type of jail and so on.

Should he instead be subject to some kind of post-conviction control order? Wouldn’t it be better and cheaper to have him work, pay off at least some of the costs he has caused to the public purse, and have serious restrictions on his movements, actions and activities?

Say, for example, he was barred from all political or campaigning activity, and all public and media appearances. And not allowed even to vote. Say he’s made to work in the community – perhaps providing free legal advice (though given that he was so unsuccessful in defending himself this might not be the best idea).  Say he’s made to stay in one place all the time for three years, and be at home in the hours of darkness (though, hmmm, Glasgow has very little daylight in winter so he wouldn’t be able to work much – let’s change that to 8pm to 8am).

I think that would be a far more suitable punishment than having him sitting in jail, costing us yet more money.

And I think that same argument applies to many offenders. There is largely no point in non-violent offenders going to jail – they would be far better off having their rights severely restricted and having to make proper reparations in their community. This is part of the thrust of Ken Clarke’s justice reforms, which I think are potentially an excellent change.

Maintaining his tan takes commitment

Possibly the worst thing for Tommy Sheridan, though, would be no longer being allowed to use sunbeds.

I’ll try not to engage in that type of sport today. For a start, the ONS have released a preliminary estimate of Q4 GDP. This will have to be restated. Why they continue to release estimates based off incomplete information is beyond me. It sends a terrible signal to market participants and allows the media to run a frenzied story when there is little else to fill the airwaves or column inches. So let’s take a breath. Keynes said “when the facts change, I change my mind”; so let us wait for the facts and then figure out what they mean and where we should go from here.

There are those who are wondering if it was all worth it. No economic policy – Conservative, Liberal, Labour – is riskless or painless. Anyone suggesting otherwise is lying. Every economic policy advocated involves an element of risk. Cutting spending quicker may lead to a public sector recession that can impact overall GDP. Letting government borrowing swell without doing a thing can lead to a sovereign debt crisis like Ireland or Greece.

We live in an era of extraordinary uncertainty, what PIMCO the world’s largest bond fund called the “New Normal” of fat tail risks. Europe is experiencing this first hand. We do not know the future with certainty so we must be cautious and that is what the government is trying to do.

A responsible government must choose the option that gives the best prospects for growth while simultaneously reducing the risk of a catastrophic plunge in confidence.

However, we must not be gloomy. I am optimistic about the future. We are living in an increasingly networked and interconnected world. Global trade with the emerging markets creates an enormous opportunity for British entrepreneurs, businesses and investors to seek new markets; create new products; and get good returns on their capital. We now need to reduce barriers for business investment and to send a strong and consistent message to British businesses that we are on their side.

There are a lot of armchair commentators who will pontificate from up high. We do not know the exact GDP figure for Q4 2010. We do not exactly know what happened or why. We will eventually. What we do know is that we have to chart a course for sustainable growth and investment in a private-sector led recovery. Anything else will be playing Russian roulette with our lenders.

While most would love to be in his position, with a rising budget to do good, he does have a bit of a difficult time simply because of that budget’s increases at a time when others are being cut.

I’ve written before about why I believe that to be a good decision, so let’s not argue about that again. What is important is that he is taking the political implications of that rise very seriously.

He has announced a new body (oh dear. Another watchdog…) which will make sure that taxpayers are getting value for their aid money. Crucially, it will report to Parliament, not to the Secretary of State for DfID (which Andrew will hopefully remain for as long as possible).

But another idea seems to have fallen by the wayside, which I think is a great shame. It was proposed that on, for example, your tax return, your P60, or even your ballot paper, there would be a section where you could choose one of, say, ten projects to focus a proportion of the budget on. So you could choose between, for example, malaria nets, or water pumps, or micro-lending, or pro-democracy work, or women’s health, or HIV treatment, or… well, you get the picture.

I don’t know if this is still on the agenda – I suspect not, as it hasn’t been mentioned. But I think it would be a powerful way for the government to reassure taxpayers that it understands that choices can and must be made, that DfID is spending responsibly, and that taxpayers do have the right to decide how their money is spent.

As with the idea of listing out, every year, what proportion and amount of your taxes is going on what areas – in effect, a receipt for government services –  the very fact of publishing information would give people much greater control.

I know there will be lots of people who say ‘Don’t spend in aid at all’ and simply scribble across the choices. But part of helping people to understand why aid is important is to show them what it does.

Further on, the department must also show what it has achieved, and then – hopefully sooner rather than later – it must also say, we have finished what we started. We will move on to something else because that nation, that community can now, having had our help, stand on its own two feet.

Choice, control, transparency, results, and finally success – that is how to spend taxpayers’ money.

Minister for the Cabinet Office Francis Maude declares the era of “Major IT Projects” over.

Few will disagree with his observation that the Government has provided “easy margins” for the incumbent IT giants, in fact most will go further and in plain language say that Public Sector IT costs far too much and fails far too often.

Simply getting an accurate figure on the spend is apparently not possible, the best-informed estimates vary from £14bn to over £21bn per year, whatever the figure it is too much – it is more than we spend on income support, more than we spend on the Department of Transport, more than we spend the Army… Worse still, the cost of just the mechanics of the procurement process is, frankly, appalling… We spend more on the IT procurement process than we spend on the Foreign Office – only Defence costs more to procure.

To top it all, almost all of this spend goes to a mere handful of enormous IT players. Basic economics will tell you that excessive profits get made in markets with no competition.

The solution to this problem is well understood. Francis Maude goes on to give us the formula – smaller projects, Open Source software, and the market opened up to SMEs.

Right about now you may be wondering what qualification I have for writing about this…

I’m the CEO of a successful British SME which happens to be the home-grown front runner in UK Open Source. In the Private Sector we take on, and win against, those same IT giants and work with high-street household names, City financial institutions, and some of the largest private companies in the Country. We win International business against Open Source companies around Europe and the rest of the world. We’ve even advised other European National Governments.

In the UK Public Sector it has been quite a different story. If the truth behind the Minister’s words is shocking on paper, you should see it over half a decade in the market.

I’m not saying we don’t do work in the Public Sector because we do, and you might be surprised by quite how much Open Source there is Local Authorities, for example, already. What I’m saying is that we, and companies like us, only get a look in down the chain of subcontractors to the incumbents, and the Public Sector pays, please excuse me, ‘through the nose’ for that privilege.

The current Public Sector procurement lists are a very difficult private club to break into. A bureaucratic, sometimes Kafkaesque world that even SMEs who would easily qualify technically take one look at and decide “way too much trouble”. They take their talents to the private sector, who have a different risk vs reward evaluation, and, sadly, the taxpayer ends up paying for the layers of red tape most spectacularly.

Can innovative British SMEs that household name private companies and City financial institutions happily do business with really be too risky for Public Sector organisations?

Is working with us at arm’s length while paying a significant margin to a handful of SIs on procurement lists worth the enormous procurement costs?

There are plenty of good ideas already on how to change all this, from a simplified SME procurement list with fewer hoops to jump through, to recommendations from groups like the Post-Bureaucratic Age.

The political rhetoric has been with us for months now, and perhaps the political will is truly there. There is little doubt that the incumbent players have little to gain and very much to lose from significant cuts in spending, and of course where does the civil service stand in all of this?

In an age of austerity, that £21bn a year looks too much to ignore, and with the SME and Open Source approach saving anywhere between 10% to 90% (yes, that’s not a missprint) in the Private Sector we would strongly urge our Minister for the Cabinet Office to match actions to his recent words.

This year, they are again running their campaign to improve how financial institutions, utility providers and so on serve their clients. Last year, there were a number of successes, most of them focused on providing better, clearer information.

All three party leaders have committed to looking at the final suggestions from the site. In so many ways, this is an excellent idea.

First, it means that real experiences inform policy.

Second, it means that – thanks to the volume of responses, and the campaigning skills of Martin Lewis – lots of new people talk to politicians about what they need.

And thirdly, it proves the theory of the Big Society. Many individuals, coming together, shaping policy and making life better for all of us.

I am off to think about what my 50 word suggestion will be.

Firstly that it was Labour who got us here.

Secondly that there has been (particularly in the last five years) the most extraordinary increase in public spending – there IS fat there to be cut, though of course no-one is saying it’s going to be fun, and those who say that it won’t hurt are wrong.

Thirdly that there is a point to it – it’s not just about the economics, nor about the politics. It’s about reshaping how government and citizens interact as well, and holding out hope for a better future.

Finally that the Coalition must absolutely hold its nerve. If it is serious about the need for credible, purposeful action in order that the financial markets trust us sufficiently to continue to uphold our credit rating (etc – so that, in the end, mortgage and other rates remain low so that people can feel secure in planning their future), then it must follow that chopping and changing, looking unsure about the actions to be taken, and being intimidated by those who are shouting loudest is equally dangerous.

There will be – of course – areas where there is scope for further discussion with those on the ground. But the package of cuts announced this afternoon will be a holistic one. Just as the Emergency Budget on 22 June was designed as a whole, so this CSR will need to be taken as a package rather than as individual measures.

The overriding aims must be:

1)      to reduce government spending so we can afford it

2)      to encourage private sector growth so we can afford good public sector services

3)      to change the balance between private and public so that we can encourage the flourishing of the Big Society.

This is a tall order. And to do it will require nerves of steel. But it will, it must, be worth it at the end.

I think it’s also fair to say that most people would rather keep whatever money and services they can.

And finally, I think it’s fair to say that with the government spending £4 for every £3 it takes in, and with an interest bill of £120 million per day, something has to give.

It is human nature to believe that other people waste money and you yourself are entirely worthy of anything and everything that is spent on you. I’m not getting at any individuals here – but I certainly am getting at many of the groups that have been making special cases for their taxpayer funding.

When the child benefit cut was announced in Birmingham, something I thought was very interesting but was not pushed hard enough by government ministers was the finding that 83 per cent of people supported the proposal. The average income is just under £23,000 a year – they will keep their child benefit. Average household income is just over £30,000 a year – they will keep their child benefit. Coincidentally, about 15 per cent of individuals in the UK are higher rate taxpayers and therefore will lose their child benefit. Imagine that…

What this demonstrates is that:

1) (Most) people are not stupid; they know we have to stop spending money we don’t have

2) The Coalition is not stupid; they know that they cannot appear to be cutting services and benefits to the poorest if they do not also spread the burden more heavily to the better-off. Equally they know that building complicated new means-testing computer systems is a non-starter

3) There is probably an argument to be had about whether universal benefits are really worth maintaining today

There is also a more substantive point, however. This is only planned to save £1 billion or so a year from 2013. There are another £82 billion to go. How many of us really know what’s coming? In June this year, 48 per cent of people said they were already affected by cuts in government spending. But there hadn’t been any.

My final thought for today: this is why there is a five year coalition agreement. This is why the cuts should being front-loaded. This is why government MPs are talking up the pain. A word of warning though – nearing the end of this parliamentary term must not mean profligacy based on what we must assume to be a stronger, growing economy and less spending: of course there must be some beneficial effect from the pain, beyond growth, but it cannot just be pet projects. At that point, it will be time for George Osborne to think seriously about rebalancing our tax system properly.

(Actually I just thought of a final point to my list. Labour IS stupid – how on earth the so-called party of the working-class got itself into the position of defending taxing poor people so rich people get benefits is beyond me. Fortunately I do not have to contort myself in trying to defend it.)

The National Union of Students has already set a date for a protest mach to Downing Street on November 10^th – but it won’t just be students at the rally. Politicians, academics, ‘lay’ people will all be joining tens of thousands of young people/future voters in expressing their outrage at whatever it is that Lord Browne will be advising.

Aside from the mild point that the review has yet to be released to the wider public, hay is already starting to be made from this debate on both sides of the house. Ed Milliband is rumoured to be biding his time to hear the coalition response on the potential raise in tuition fees. The reason for his silence? This is one of the most fractious areas of the Coalition Agreement, with the Liberal Democrat’s having signed pledges both before and following the election vehemently refusing to implement a hike in fees. For Labour it could simply be the case of waiting for the Coalition to tear itself apart.

I am confident that the dexterity the Conservatives have thus far displayed in navigating through the mire of negative press over the child benefit cuts can be easily deployed for this similarly disruptive issue. Though this, as ever, relies on clear communication which in turn is dependent on a firm political line from the Government.

An ICM survey for The Sunday Telegraph found that 61% of voters supported a graduate tax, compared with 29% who would rather see higher tuition fees. This is in contrast to David Willetts, universities minister, who is clearly opposed to a pure tax and Vince Cable who argues that something more ‘progressive’ than it must be proposed. It’s easy to see why the public want students to pay – so they don’t have to! But with past data showing that students won’t run for the hills following a fees hike, is there any political reason not to?

Yes. There are over 481,854 students in Britain. Most of whom can vote. Therein lies the danger for the Coalition. Not only are the Lib Dems already being lambasted for a colossal U-turn, but if the Conservatives miscommunicate their motives behind whatever Browne’s review contains then the rancour of students, and thus middle-class voters, will haunt the Conservatives for many general elections to come.

University funding is turning out to be the one of the key debates that will determine the shape of the next general election. The student and youth movements are powerful and should not be underestimated, if only because one day they will be the middle-class tax-paying voters. Grudges are hard things to shake.

Liberals like us have to accept that the liberal social and economic values that we believe in have contributed to the broken society in which we undoubtedly live. David Cameron is clearly grappling with those consequences and seeking the answer to them, and he deserves credit for that. But the picture that his speech drew of the society that he wishes to create, looked a little too much like the 1950s, like the society that existed before the two liberal whirlwinds of the 60s and the 80s changed Britain forever.

There were times when, although certainly more sophisticated, he was not too far away from describing  John Major’s cycling spinsters and cricket on the village green. I began to wonder, is the Big Society a 21^st Century response to the turmoil of the late 20^th Century or is it simply a pang of nostalgia for a bygone age? Nostalgia for a society that Harry would recognise.

The changes which he described to the way in which the state should operate were changes that I approved of, but they remained methodological and not ideological. He admitted himself that by the end of this Parliament the government would be the same size as in 2006; power might have been devolved to local authorities and people might be more involved in decision making, but the state will not have shrunk.

He convinced me that over the next 5 years, this government will do many things that will chime with liberal Conservative ideologies, things I will be proud of and enthusiastic about. He listed many achievements in these first 5 months, which are ideologically sound and genuinely significant. But he made me wonder whether these things are happening only because of the financial crisis. Debt and necessity have become the mothers of invention, but without them, would the government really be so radical?

Those 7 or 8 years of intense political activity (my now ex-wife, but then wife, also stood for Parliament in 2001 and 2005) were carried on not just while we were in opposition at Westminster, but when hope of victory at a General Election seemed impossible. People spoke of the end of the Party, of a permanent realignment to the left in British politics. Many believed that Conservatives could never win again.

Yet, four years on from my retirement, we have a Conservative Prime Minister, a Conservative Chancellor, a Conservative government. Yes, we share that government with the Liberal Democrats, and it is a coalition, but anyone who doubts that this is a radical government on the centre right is a fool. It has been miserable being on the right since Black Wednesday in 1992, an entire generation ago. Now, finally, it is a good time to be a Conservative; finally we have government that doesn’t believe that the State has the answers, finally we have a fiscally responsible Treasury.

Conservatives should gather in Birmingham, jubilant, buoyant, strong. They should be determined to carry through their plans for government, united in a belief that they have a chance to recast the agreement between state and individual, and that they have the ability to fix the financial mess bequeathed by Labour. But from my position, now very much on the outside of Conservative politics, I have a sense that as Conference begins Conservatives are disgruntled, grumbling, miserable. They have a list of complaints; why didn’t we win an outright majority? Why aren’t we supporting the armed forces more strongly? Why is Vince Cable in a position of power? Why is Labour ahead in the polls?

To those people I ask, have you forgotten so soon, is your memory so short, and are your expectations so unrealistic? We won; not as clearly as we might have liked, but we won. Our government is on the right, not as much on the right as we might like, but on the right. Our policies are sound, not as sound as we might dream, but sound nevertheless. Today George Osbourne announces an end to universal child benefit; Thatcher didn’t dare, Lamont didn’t do it.

The moody blues should get real and realise how good things are. Last time I attended Party conference it mattered little what was said on stage or at fringe meetings. Policy pamphlets were pointless. In 2010 what goes on at Conference matters, Conservatives have power. So unite, be strong, rejoice – we’re winning.