Monthly Archives: November 2008

I’m a socialist: get me out of here

November 29, 2008BlogLaurie Penny

Last night, an extraordinary thing happened. I watched open-mouthed as the United States of America elected its first non-white president. The country erupted with longing for democratic change, the world partied, and a million teenage fangirls squealed at the sexual tension between Rob Lowe and Brandley Whitford.

Oh, stoppit. Yes, I’m talking about The West Wing. Last night, I finally finished the series, and I’m bereft like a late-night sugar junkie, suddenly coming to with sticky crumbs of the last of the biscuits smeared on my chin and down my pyjamas, subsumed by a creeping sense of shame; you know it’s not real food, you feel a bit sick, but you want some more.

Throughout this turpitudinous year, my housemates and I have purged our sorrows and self-doubt with liberal applications of all seven series of The West Wing, shock tea, narcotics and a metric buggerload of digestives. And now it’s all over, three weeks after we stayed up to spoiler ourselves by watching the climax of season seven played out in real life on November the 4th, the biggest, best reality TV show politics ever paid for. That series is over, now, too, but never mind – we still have reams of fanvids, mashups and screaming teen slashfiction (Joebama, guys!) to see us through to Epilogue: Inauguration Day in January.

Is it me, or have we all been watching a bit too much TV? Continue reading →

Damian Green: Tory crocodile tears

November 29, 2008Blog, Civil liberties, Conservative Party, Our democracy, WestminsterSunny Hundal

Snippets of commentary from blogs on the Damian Green arrest.

Jim Bliss:

But the last people that should be replacing them are a bunch of dangerous fools who are willing to cry “Stalin” when one of their own gets questioned for a few hours and then released, but who stay silent at — and indeed support — the systematic harrassment of others. I don’t recall the Tory outcry when police kicked down a door in Forest Gate and shot an unarmed suspect. I don’t recall the tories accusing the police of ‘Stalinesque’ tactics that day. In fact, just to demonstrate how divorced these fools are from reality, how utterly self-serving in their outlook, a Tory spokesman has described Green’s arrest as “unprecedented in its heavy-handedness”.

Unprecedented? Really? What complete tossers those tories truly are.

Continue reading →

How Green is My Jail Cell

November 28, 2008BlogUnity

The arrest of Shadow Immigration Minister, Damian Green, on suspicion of the common law offences of “conspiring to commit misconduct in a public office” and “aiding and abetting, counselling or procuring misconduct in a public office” has sparked off an utterly predictable level of sound and fury in Tory ranks and, seemingly, a significant degree of bemusement amongst government ministers who, at least publicly, are professing to have known nothing of the Met’s decision to make an arrest in advance.

The official Tory line has very quickly coalesced around the idea that Green has been arrested, unfairly and unnecessarily, for actions that amount to nothing more than ‘doing his job’ as a Member of Parliament. David Cameron has called the arrest ‘heavyhanded’ and suggested that Green was arrested for simply releasing information that “the government didn’t want to be made public”.
Continue reading →

Spectator sports and practical solidarity

November 28, 2008BlogConor Foley

I have posted a letter from an Afghan woman on this site and also asked for other bloggers to post links to it. I think that it is important for people to hear and understand what Afghans think about their own country – and Orzala’s views are representative of what I have heard hundreds of times from ordinary Afghans.

I also happen to agree with her. For the last seven years I have been reading articles by western politicians and pundits about Afghanistan’s ‘liberation’ and all of the benefits that this has brought for women and for human rights.
Continue reading →

Good news for Brown in new poll

November 28, 2008Blog, Economy, Labour party, WestminsterSunny Hundal

Though The Times is spinning it negatively, there are some stats in its new Populus poll that bode well for Labour’s economic plans:

- Voters generally back the decision to introduce a 45 per cent top rate of income tax for those earning more than £150,000 a year…. Two thirds say ‘it is fair and right for the richest people in Britain to pay more of the cost of measures to avoid the recession’.
Continue reading →

Liberal principles and partisan allegiances

November 28, 2008BlogSunder Katwala

While my first instinct, last night, was to be wary of the general rush to judgement before any facts were available,
the arrest of Damian Green appears a very strange affair indeed (on the information which is currently available). If politicians are to be arrested for the receipt of leaked documents, then the Commons benches could be rather empty.

So let me propose a credibility test for such issues: do we take a similar view about the principles involved, regardless of whether a member of their own party or another party is involved?

Continue reading →

Sunny on Question Time Extra

November 27, 2008BlogJennie Rigg

I take it we’re all watching? Well, I’m flicking between it and This Week… My main reactions are very superficial:

1, Sunny has a voice for blogging.
2, He also has a dent in the back of his head, which the lights in that studio are enhancing enormously.

He’s quite good at thinking on his feet, though, isn’t he? Certainly better than Maria the Tory lady…

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