Ming Campbell has questioned the apparent Tory flip flop on the 2003 Extradition Act - now much in the news because of the predicament of the Nat West Three.

He has written to the Conservative Leader, noting

"At the time [2003], the Conservative members of the [standing] committee abstained from voting against the regulations, while the two Liberal Democrats, David Heath and John Pugh, stood alone in opposing them.

"In light of this I would be grateful if you would confirm that the Conservative Party’s policy on this issue has changed since December 2003. Is it your view that the legislation should be suspended until at least such time as the United States formally adopts reciprocal extradition arrangements?"

The Conservative leader was busy hugging a hoodie and avoiding Mr Angry and has not had a chance to reply.

On a self-critical note, it is a shame that the Liberal Democrats have not organised an on-line petition on this issue.

Stephen Tall started the ball rolling with this post. In his judgement, "[Supermarkets] are a creation of society’s aspirations to have a choice of quality foodstuffs available at reasonable cost whenever we need them." and, as such, are a good thing. Richard Huzzey disagrees, on the basis that he believes that supermarkets are in a near-monopoly position which places them at odds with consumer interests.

Edis Bevan takes a different tack, arguing that the problem with supermarkets is their relationship with their suppliers, the farmers, quoting from a Women's Institute report which claims that supermarkets are "destroying farming" in Britain with aggressive bargaining techniques. Joe Otten agrees that supermarkets may be bad for farmers, but offers a number of important caveats.

Personally, I think that not all of these arguments can be true. It cannot be true that supermarkets are a monopoly and competition between them is driving prices down to their lowest-ever levels. Monopolies only exist when there is no competition, either because there is only a single company operating in the market or because there is a cartel. The supermarket sector has been repeatedly investigated over the last decade and no evidence of a cartel has been found. If anything, competition is now fiercer than ever.

As consumers, we benefit from this. A family can now afford to feed itself for less than ever before and as basic food prices come down, a wider variety of food becomes more affordable too. The level of choice and affordability of food in a modern supermarket is unparalleled and is something that I think should be celebrated rather than lamented. It is important to recognise that it is the competetive process that has brought this situation about.

But if supermarkets do not present a monopoly to consumers, what about suppliers? This is an argument that puzzles me somewhat; there are a whole range of food outlets across the country which source their produce from British farmers. Any use of the term 'monopoly' is a red herring in this argument. I could simply say "there is no monopoly so there is no problem", but the fact remains that farmers are protesting about something.

The gist of the complaints appear to be that prices are being driven down to very low levels and that these price levels are making life difficult for farmers. I must admit, my initial reaction is one of little sympathy; nobody has a God-given right to be able to sell their goods and services at a price they like. Anyone who has ever been made redundant will know this, and any business which has had to cut prices and costs to stay competetive will know that asking the government to force their customers to pay more is not a case worth pursuing. Yet, when coming from farmers, this argument is taken seriously. Why? I could hazard some guesses, but I'd like to hear from people who know more about this, particularly those who support the farmers' case.

A final point: as a liberal, I believe very much in a decentralised economy with vigorous competition between as many different competitors as possible. For this reason, I think it's important that small shops do survive and compete with the big chains. It's also why I think regulation may do more harm than good. One of the bugbears of anti-supermarket campaigners is the ability of supermarkets to throw vast resources at solving problems like gaining planning permission. They complain of local councils being 'overwhelmed' by the legal efforts of supermarkets to gain permission to build. Often they call for planning permission to be made more difficult to acquire, more complex to complete and more costly.

Yet this ignores the realities of competition; the advantage supermarkets have in the field of regulation is that they can afford to deal with costly, lengthy and complex legal processes in a way that small shops can't. The big chains can afford to maintain teams of lawyers on permanent standby to fight their case wherever necessary, something unaffordable to a local shop. Raising the bar will simply mean that only the biggest chains can afford to jump over it. As is often the case, Big Government goes hand-in-hand with Big Business, to the detriment of the independent small business. We should be extremely wary of proposing any kind of regulation which may harm small businesses more than large; indeed, if we want to help small businesses the answer may be to regulate less.

I regard myself as being quite in tune with the ideas of liberal economics - free markets and so on. I think most of the privatisations of formerly nationally-owned industries were good, and that we're all better off for that having taken place. But the UK water market leaves me scratching my head in confusion.

Today's revelation that Thames Water has missed its targets for fixing leaks - for the third successive year - whilst simultaneously increasing profits by 31%, is deeply worrying. I'm not offended by the idea of people making large amounts of money where their customers have rewarded them with their custom, but Thames Water is a monopoly.

As with many such companies, a portion of their profits will go to shareholders as a dividend. But, again, it must be said that this is a far from optimal situation; shareholders receive dividends as a reward for their willingness to accept risk, but what risk is there in a business that involves the monopoly sale of a vital resource? This isn't like shareholders investing in a risky startup technology business, an innovative drugs company or a restructuring manufacturer - this is investing in a monopoly where the only risk is that the regulator might begin regulating a little more harshly.

I'm going out on a limb and assuming that a competetive water market is impossible - the infrastructure can't support it and the costs of creating competing infrastructures would be too high. I'm willing to be corrected if anyone knows otherwise, but I suspect my assumptions will hold. In that case, the government needs to look much more seriously at how the regulatory system works. It's unacceptable that water companies are continuing to fail in meeting their targets and, if the regulator cannot deal with this then it may be time to change how the regulator works.

Google have now launched their Chinese service. In doing so they have agreed to some censorship. I am not sure that I entirely approve - but I understand why they did it. It is to be hoped that Google prove to be less good at censorship than they are at facilitating the free consumption of information. The problem for China - and now for Google, in a way - is that ideas are like money and water: the more you try to direct and constrain their flow, the more they seep beyond control. So it will be interesting to see how the incongruity of both providing information and providing censorship pans out, and which proves the more robust imperative in the long-run.