Recent Articles

Understanding British law, with Melanie Phillips

You’ll all know by now that policies are complicated things. They use Big Words and Complicated Jargon. They come in large PDFs, and not only do you have to read the whole thing, but you’ll need access to other reading materials to make sure you understand context, history and competing points of view.

Phew, that’s enough to work anyone into a sweat – thank God no one actually writes about policy anymore!

Well, one brave woman still does. Ever the wonk, Melanie Phillips has forensically studied the details of the proposed changes in murder law and, for her policy-averse readers, managed to summarise it in just 34 words.

To quote The Knowing One, the proposals:

as far as I can see, will mean that if a woman kills her husband she will get away with it whereas if a man kills his wife he will be convicted of murder.

continue reading… »

All sorts of goodness

Welcome to today’s netcast. Doug is away this week, so I’m afraid some of us are working overtime. Today I drew the short-straw, so you’ll just have to like it or lump it. :o) There is loads of good stuff on the blogs today, here is just a taster..

Green Peace has set up a new blog, Nuclear Reaction, to call the nuclear-power industry on its massive subsidies, questionable practices, and rampant propaganda. Justin is writing a great deal of the content, so they’ll be no shortage of snarky asides. Recommended.

donpaskini – With Labour on the ropes, the Tories are becoming more emboldened, and the carefully painted mask is beginning to slip. A dark cloud is gathering…

Wonderflonium – A warning to Scottish-based feminists thinking of voting for the SNP.

The Yorksher Gob – Our Jennie gets to grips with why she’s against positive discrimination. Good stuff.

The Daily (Maybe) – Jim has news from the Green Party leadership contest. Yes, there will be a contest. continue reading… »

Is Labour really on its knees?

Amid the cacophony of speculation about the future of Gordon Brown’s premiership, the imminent electoral meltdown, and the future direction of the Labour party, I think one aspect is being marginalised, which is the future of the party at a local level, and in local government. It is clear that current crisis is playing out on a national level, with national and international problems catalysed by Westminster intruigue and a failure of national leadership that can speak to the concerns of the people.

Now, the fall-out from this is obviously felt at the local level, as Labour’s loss of councillors in the May elections demonstrates. But it is not clear that the existential worries currently afflicting Gordon Brown and his parliamentary colleagues are shared by their Labour friends on local councils. In Tower Hamlets, for example, the Labour group recently increased their majority after four defections from Respect, and a by-election win (after a popular Lib Dem councillor stood down for health reasons, no less).

Of course, if the local parties are not suffering from the same crisis of purpose, this is probably to do with the differences between the nature of local and national governance. Localities like Tower Hamlets have very specific problems, to which a Labour council can confidently respond within their current ideology, without having to worry about national unity, or whether the same policy would be effective in different boroughs.

So, as the columnists and bloggers search in vain for a viable alternative to Brown, and a new direction for the party, I wonder whether the most coherent and confident voices might come from local government, rather than the national scene, policy wonks, or the unions. They are ideally placed to comment on pressing issues such as community cohesion and knife-crime, and how other concerns such as the environment and immigration can be dealt with in practice.

These are purely my anecdotal thoughts – what are the thoughts and experiences of other Liberal Conspiracy readers and writers?

A smackdown for feminism in courts

Nice one, Mrs Harman. With her Equalities Officer hat on, the Leader of the House has championed one of the most innovative changes to UK murder law in the past century: it is now slightly less legal for men to kill their partners in anger.

More specifically, a new proposal from Minijust the Ministry of Justice is calling for an end to the hopelessly misogynist provocation defence. This is a defence dating back to the 17th century that can reduce a murder charge to manslaughter if a defendant can claim that he or, in rare cases, she, ‘saw red’ or was cajoled or insulted into lashing out at zir partner. It’s used in cases of infidelity where a partner might be induced to murder an adulterous spouse in a fit of jealousy. It’s used by husbands who claim to have been nagged to (someone else’s) death, to have been asked to take the bins out one too many times until they somehow found their fingers around their partners’ throats.
continue reading… »

Labour: Defining “shaky ground” since 2004

Doug is off, perhaps stalking monstrous vampire rats, or maybe curing AIDs, either way you’re stuck with me for today. As usual you can check out extra links on my blog.

CiF/Polly Toynbee – Labour have announced a set of new policies, it’s just a shame that only a handful of them are more exciting than shelled peas.
The bleeding heart show – But if you don’t like your fur labeled real, is there really any get out clause?
Neil Harding – Neil explains why he feels democracy isn’t being served in modern times.
Jo Christie-Smith – Where to find female political blogs? Under the stairs? The third floor of the empire state building? I just don’t know!
Max Dunbar – Basically, just because you’re religious doesn’t make you good. Case in point: Spanish inquisition.
CiF/Julie Bindel – Julie sees the benefits in changes to murder law, it seems very few don’t.
Chicken Yoghurt – Apparently Nuclear energy tickles.

Casting Back
Political Betting (2004) – Have Labour ever recovered?

Compass v Progress – who will win?

Neal Lawson’s recent article, offering suggestions on how New Labour could rebuild its election winning coalition, has attracted some predictable flak. Here’s Labour councillor Luke Akehurst:

What’s striking about the policy reactions to Glasgow East, such as the statement yesterday from Compass, is that many of them are just recitations of the writers’ pet hates, not attempts to address voters’ actual concerns. Voters are angry about the credit crunch, knife crime, unaffordable housing, fuel prices and fuel tax, and food prices. The Labour left are talking about hostility to ID cards, Trident, 42 day detention and public services reform and PFI, issues where the public support the Government or just don’t care.

And here’s Tim at TOK:

Some people will never learn. While the UK Labour Party is indisputably stuffed at the moment and most definitely needs to address its utter lack of direction and message, it is beyond my comprehension why so many progressives over here want to model a new electoral strategy based on the Labour Party of 1983, rather than the Labour Party of 1997.

You could characterise this as the ‘Compass versus Progress‘ debate.
continue reading… »

Ken hits back over Boris advisors

A row between Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson is continuing to play out in the letters page of the Guardian. continue reading… »

How tabloid journalism works (pt 934)

It’s the silly season, it’s a Sunday, and you haven’t got anything approaching a front page story. Do you: (a) put in the effort and attempt to find a new angle to the problems facing Gordon Brown? (b) continue to go on alarmingly about the moral decline in society because a rich man who enjoys being spanked has won a court case or (c) turn the most innocuous addition to a social-networking site which just happens to be a rival to the one owned by your own proprietor into a super splash?

There’s just no contest if you’re a Sun “journalist”, is there? I’m not on Facebook as I don’t have any friends, but even I know there’s a whole plethora of “poke” applications, such as giving one of your friends a virtual sexually transmitted disease, as well as literally dozens of similarly hilarious things. There isn’t however at the moment a moral panic about STDs, but there certainly is about knives.

continue reading… »

Andy Burnham’s concern is only for the rich

There was, in last Friday’s Independent, a most remarkable piece of writing on the subject of the Internet and the role of the state. Written by Andy Burnham, the Minister for Culture, Media and Sport, and weighing in at 800 words or so, it does something I might otherwise have considered impossible in such a brief statement. It encapsulates just about everything that is wrong about the government’s thinking, if ‘thinking’ is not too strong a term, about the Internet and the culture of cyberspace.

Burnham’s central thesis is simply this: that cyberspace is an anarchic, value-free, quasi-Hobbesian homagé to the frontier values of the American Old West. A place in need of a new breed of lawmen and state-sponsored private sector bounty hunters. Sam Peckinpah’s Tombstone.com:

…the internet is a lawless zone, where it is the vulnerable, the poor and the weak who are most at risk from the absence of any guiding rules. Democratic consent on guiding principals upholds the common good, and prevents one group in society pursuing their own interests at the expense of others.

This is a caricature, of course.
continue reading… »

RIP Lord Russell-Johnston of Minginish

The main news today is that Lib Dem Peer Lord Russell-Johnston of Minginish passed away last night. Here are a couple of blog reactions: Ros Scott; Stephen Glenn; Duncan Borrowman; Jonathan Fryer.

John Prescott has discovered that there’s this thing called the intertubes, and on it people do something called “blogging”.

Andrew Rilstone discusses the political implications of farting aliens, and Steve Bell, and Yes Minister. Absolutely reccommended.

Pink Dog (who is definitely not male) has uncovered more shocking stuff about Spoon Crime.

Amused Cynicism discusses the prospect of Scottish Independence.

And finally, something I was directed to by a friend: Life With Aspergers is written by an Aspie man and is very useful for understanding the mindset of people with Asperger’s Syndrome. The linked entry is from April, and is about how Aspies deal with love and other intense emotions, but the whole blog is very interesting.