Monthly Archives: May 2009

Dr George Tiller murdered by ‘pro life’ terrorists

Blog, Crime, Feminism

In case you hadn’t heard, Dr George Tiller, one of the USA’s few late-term abortion providers, was shot dead by ‘pro-life’ terrorists in Wichita today as he was going to his Sunday morning church service.

Via Feministe:

Dr. Tiller was one of the few late-term abortion providers in the country. He had previously been shot, his clinic burnt down, harassed by ideological anti-abortion attorney generals, and threatened with death countless times. Still, Dr. Tiller continued to provide abortions to women who desperately needed them, to save their own lives or health, or due to tragic fetal deformities. He put the health of women above his own life. And now he is dead.

This is the first time an abortion provider has been killed in over a decade, although in that time countless numbers of brave men and women have faced death threats, attacks and intimidation and continued to do their jobs. My thoughts are with the family, friends and co-workers of Dr Tiller, and with all of those held morally and physically hostage by the crass hypocrisy of the mindless terrorists responsible for his murder.

Cath Elliott has more.

The other kind of Tory housing…

Blog, Conservative Party, Equality, Local Government

A bit more about the realities of evil Tories on the ground, as we prepare to be governed by them:

Parked high outside Hendon Town Hall is one of those wretchedly dated revolving billboards that councils use to spam the masses with unsubstantiated PR bilge: at various turns of the loop, this one proclaims that the Tory Barnet council is ‘working for a healthy community,’ and ‘supporting the vulnerable to live independent and active lives,’ and screeds of other modernisation tripe.

All is not lost, though. There is this evening a nice, large protest group under the billboard – a protest group that is made up of exactly the vulnerable Barnet residents that the council purports to so fervidly support.

These protestors are very pissed off. They are Barnet sheltered housing residents, and they’re picketing this evening’s Barnet council annual meeting to protest at a council proposal to remove permanent on-site wardens (people who help in emergencies, organise GP visits and appointments, and check in with each resident at least once a day) from their sheltered housing blocks and replace the wardens with a ‘floating’ support service, whatever the hell that is. They’re mostly very elderly (in their 80s and even 90s) and at that unlovely point in life where people become too frail to stand. They’re huddled in wheelchairs, or clutching walking-frames, or leaning on carers and chairs.

They’re not too sure what a ‘floating’ support service is, either. The cynics among them have a few ideas – they imagine a system where residents telepathically trip some alarm when dropping dead from heart attack, thus alerting a random officer somewhere in the borough to stop by later on with a shovel.

I understand – kind of – the term ‘floating service’ to mean a support officer of some stripe will stop a various housing blocks across the borough, to meet briefly with anyone who needs – well, supporting.

Bill Campbell, Barnet council’s unnaturally oily senior press creature, refused point-blank to say what a floating service was when I told him that I didn’t quite grasp the idea – Campbell said he couldn’t say what a floating service was until the cabinet voted for or against the concept at its 8 June meeting. I said that someone must know what a floating service was, if only to be in a position to put the concept of it before the cabinet. Campbell said again that he couldn’t say what the concept would be. I thought probably somebody could. This went on for longer than was strictly fascinating. Suffice to say a floating service is not one the council wants to brag about. Let’s return on 8 June. Continue reading →

ERS launch ‘change’ campaign today

Blog, Our democracy, Think-tanks, Westminster

The Electoral Reform Society today launch a new campaign to reform our electoral system. The campaign, with its new branding, is launching in the Observer newspaper.

They also have a new site to accompany the campaign: www.voteforeachange.co.uk. ERS’s Michael Calderbank said: “The emphasis is decidedly not on the particular system (apart from general sense of more proportional), but on the need to have a referendum.”

Parliamentary reform: What would Tom Paine do?

Arts, Blog, Our democracy, Westminster

by Edward Vallance, author

To be a successful candidate, he must be destitute of the qualities that constitute a just legislator, and being thus disciplined to corruption by the mode of entering into Parliament, it is not to be expected that the representative should be better than the man.
– Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man Part the Second (1792)

The bicentenary of the death, on June 8 1809, of Thomas Paine, England’s most famous republican polemicist, falls at a time when our political leaders, and much of the media, tell us that Parliament is on the brink of a revolution. However, viewed in the context of historic radical movements, the ‘big change’ heralded by David Cameron really amounts to small potatoes.

The furore over MPs’ expenses has thrown up a number of proposals for political reform. From Gordon Brown’s call for an independent audit unit, to Alan Johnson’s proposal for a referendum on proportional representation, to Cameron’s and Clegg’s arguments for fixed-term parliaments, our politicians are suddenly all engaged in a game of ‘more radical than thou’.
Continue reading →

Second meeting: police still not listening

Blog, Civil liberties, Crime

by Andy May and Guy Aitchison

Two months have passed since the G20 and the brutal police operation against protesters in the City of London. On Thursday Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA) met for the second time since the operation to question Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson.

At the first meeting the Met showed no signs of having taken on board the serious and widespread criticism of their actions. At times they actively mis-represented what had taken place to spin themselves out of trouble. So it was with a fair deal of scepticism that myself and Anna Bragga of Defend Peaceful Protest went down to City Hall to put our case to the Met once again.
Continue reading →

Site upgrade

Blog

Hello all. The back-end to Libcon has been upgraded in a big way, so if you spot any new bugs please let me know. In brief, I’ve upgraded from WordPress to WordPress MU. There have been hiccups all the way through, so something else is bound to go wrong.

Boris Keep Your Promise campaign launches

Blog, Feminism, London Mayor

A new campaign has launched today, called Boris Keep Your Promise. They say:

There is only one remaining Rape Crisis centre for the whole of London.

That’s one small centre for 3.9 million women. The staff and volunteers who run the centre work with constant danger of closing over their heads and can never be sure that their core funding costs can be met from year to year. During the run-up to his election, Boris Johnson promised, with much PR fanfare, to pay for three new centres and fund the only remaining centre for at least 4 years. That he will fulfill that promise, or even part of it, is now seriously in doubt.

Of course Boris Johnson breaking campaign promises is nothing new but this one matters a lot. Spread the word please! Here’s their website, Facebook group and Twitter page (#boriskeepyourpromise). There is also a fundraising event on 4th June.

Cameron giving power to the people? Yeah right

Blog, Conservative Party, Our democracy, Westminster

Few revolutionary slogans are ever successfully transformed into singalong top twenty singles. But that’s the trick John Lennon pulled off with his 1971 hit ‘Power to the People’. Let’s face it, ‘Communism is Soviet Power Plus Electrification’ just doesn’t scan in quite the same way.

The title of Lennon’s ditty subsequently become the catchphrase of Wolfie Smith, leader of a small microsect in BBC comedy series that effectively satirised the far left, at a time when it did not send itself up quite as comprehensively as it manages today.

How and why the flame thence passed from Wolfie to David Cameron is beyond me. But when the leader of the Conservative Party starts promising to implement the principle demand of a seventies sitcom revolutionary, laughter is still the only tenable immediate reaction.

Continue reading →

The logic and lunacy of Kim Jong-il

Blog, Far East, Foreign affairs, Realpolitik

Article by ‘Left Outside‘

kjiAfter weeks of duck houses, moats, fork handles and so on some people are actually rather excited that something has happened.

Some blogs have concentrated on the fact that this is actually a big deal and not a debate on PR vs. STV; others have focused on the militarisation of the Korean Peninsula; others have seen fit to question the moral authority of Gordon Brown to criticise Kim Jong-il.

I have decided to focus on just why such an impoverished nation is so interested in the Bomb, what it means for regional security and what is to be done.
Continue reading →