Jack Straw is a one of Westminster's great political survivors.  Part of this, I’m certain is down to the fact that he’s actually rather a polite and decent man.  

He's been in the Cabinet for over a decade, and held many big ministerial jobs.  A feather for each wind that blows, he was Blairite when it paid to be Blairite.  Now he works for Gordon Brown.

Yet he seems to have worked himself up in to an uncharactistic flap this evening over David Cameron's plans to reduce the number of MPs by 10 percent. 

In a speech to the Hansard society, Straw apparently says cutting the number of politicians would be "dangerous, destructive and anti-democratic". 

Tell that to the voters, Jack.

There are too many MPs sitting in a supine, spineless House of Commons.  We need fewer of them. Those that remain should do their job of holding government to account, not sucking up to it.  To ensure that they keep their promises, we need direct democracy, including open primaries and popular initiative. Then, at last, our MPs might be properly accountable to the folk they're supposed to serve.

Establishment figures like Jack Straw might not like it, but it’s time for change in Westminster.

Something really fantastic happened yesterday. Readers of this blog will know that Jo Swinson MP and myself have been leading a campaign to push back against the overwhelming onslaught of overly perfected images of the human form that come at us constantly from the beauty, media, fashion, diet industries. We have reached the point where we know that what once seemed relatively harmless - is damaging us. Depression, anxiety, lack of self esteem, eating disorders are on the rise - in women, young people especially - and are rising in men too.

Yesterday Jo and I held a summit for all those individuals and groups who are working away in their different spheres of influence to push back against the mega-buck industry onslaught that feeds off of making us feel bad about ourselves.

Last autumn, Liberal Democrat passed our policy paper for Women - which whilst it had many policies on equal pay, violence against women, etc - also had a section on body image - and it was this part of our policy paper that caught light in the media - and more importantly - resonated with real people out in the country who are in touch with this problem on a daily basis.

Essentially our paper proposes the labelling of advertisements that have been digitally enhanced or airbrushed (transparency and honesty in advertising);  would require models to have health certificates demonstrating that their BMI is healthy; encourages sport and exercise in schools and a widening from the traditional sports on offer to include young people who don't feel comfortable in those particular sports; would introduce media literacy and body confidence in the PSHE lessons in schools and in the fashion colleges require students to be taught to cut for sizes other than simply a six or eight size.

Our campaign has gained the backing of world-wide academics, doctors and clinical psychologists - who have provided the evidential base to make this case. We are also supported by the Royal College of Psychiatrists who are backing our call for labelling digitally altered advertisements; by BEAT, by the Girl Guides and many others.

Jo had an adjournment debate on body image and Baroness Thompson had a debate in the Lords on media literacy.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) received five complaints only last year about airbrushing (clearly they don't promote complaining to them) as when we found an advertisement that had been so altered - it was Twiggy advertisig Olay eye cream - where she had been very digitally enhanced and put it on our Campaign for Real Women website - 700 complaints came in to the ASA and the advertisement was withdrawn.

Obviously that is just a tiny example of how people can make things change - but the ASA doesn't seem to be that interested in labelling or taking on this challenge and will only work single ad by single ad.

Hence - our summit. What we have found is that there are a lot of individuals and groups working away at trying to push back against the harm that is being done. Yesterday we drew people involved in this campaign - in all their different ways - together for a summit.

Jo chaired the meeting and the speakers were myself, Caryn Franklin, TV presenter and founder of 'All Walks Beyond the Catwalk' - a campaign for diversity in the fashion industry www.allwalks.org; Susie Orbach, author of Fat is a Feminist Issue and Bodies; Big Ideas and convener of AnyBody campaign www.any-body.org; Dr Helga Dittmar, academic and author of Consumer Culture, Identity and Well-Being and The search for the 'good life' and 'body perfect and Laurie Penny - feminist blogger and freelance journalist.

Also there was Linda Papadopoulos - whose independent report for the Government on the sexualisation of children was published last week.

Each speaker drove home from their own field of expertise the very real issues that have driven all of us to arrive at this point - where we are basically all saying enough is enough - and fighting to push back against the conformity to the cult of the thin, the perfect and the consumer.

The contributions from the floor were equally forceful covering a plethora of issues aligned to the key issues addressed in this summit.

The ambition of the summit was to draw these strands together and to form a loose collective where we all continue in our own spheres to push forward the campaign for body confidence and to which we are all committed and pledged to meet at least twice a year to move forward the agenda and to report back on actions and successes.

The energy, determination and sheer force of the arguments were literally buzzing - and I have no doubt that this campaign will go from strength to strength. Small steps from each of us will be how to eat this elephant - and whilst the individual steps like getting misleading adverts to have to declare by labelling the extent to which they have been digitally enhanced are relatively small - at the other end of the scale lies many of the reasons for the ills in society from the obesity epidemic to violence against women.

Everyone there has signed the pledge to Campaign for Body Confidence. We will all keep in touch through this network now - and fight together and individually to further the cause.

Recently I was keen and happy to support Bill Cash’s proposed legislation to “reassert UK Parliamentary sovereignty.”

His five clause Bill states “The sovereignty of Parliament is hereby reaffirmed”. It goes on to protect sovereignty from treaties, other legislation and the European Communities Act, itself the fount of EU power in the UK. It would send a clear signal to UK courts that they need to follow UK law, even if this is in conflict with EU law.

I look forward to William Hague telling us if this is the way he will propose his own Parliamentary sovereignty legislation which has been promised, or if he has some other way of doing it. The Cash short simple Bill looks good to me.

Confusion reigns over the Government’s plans to fund a number of ‘Creative Bursaries’. The DCMS website announced the £600,000 initiative yesterday and said that this was enough funding to pay for ‘at least 40’ youngsters on a scheme which is intended to help create the next Billy Elliot. Ignoring the fact that Billy Elliot is a fictional character for a moment, it would appear that the DCMS didn’t manage to brief Number 10 on the scheme.

Gordon Brown didn’t waste any time in getting in on the action and had his photo taken with ‘the young Billy Elliots’ but the Prime Minister’s team didn’t quite seem to understand the detail of the plan. When asked at a Lobby Briefing how much the bursaries would be worth to internees, Brown’s spokesman said that ‘with 15,000 places, it would amount to £7,500.’ On this reckoning the scheme would be worth £112.5 million.

Not only does Number 10 clearly not have much of a clue how limited the budget of one of Whitehall’s smallest departments is, it would also seem to be the case that they don’t take this initiative quite as seriously as the DCMS.

Whereas Margaret Hodge was reported as saying that 40 person scheme had been her “obsession” and that she has been thinking about it since she came into post as arts and culture minister (a post she has held for almost two years in total), the Prime Minister’s spokesman said that ‘Anything that helps with the next generation of tutus helps.’

Certainly anything that helps Gordon Brown pirouette his way out of Number Ten has to be a good thing.