This week’s Time Magazine has an extensive front-page feature by Catherine Mayer on the turn to the far-right in Europe.

The article looks at how the neo-fascists should be dealt with:

For those who believe that this would be a catastrophe, the urgent question is how best to contain the surge. Deny far-right leaders the oxygen of publicity? Tricky — they have a democratic mandate. Confront them? That risks casting them as martyrs, victims who tell unpalatable truths. Expose the racism that often underlies professions of patriotism? Well, yes, but that assumes voters choose far-right parties in ignorance of their views, rather than because they strike a chord. Steal their nationalist thunder by taking tough lines on issues such as immigration? This smacks of capitulation to the very ideas critics seek to defeat.

The article looks at four parties — the BNP, France’s Front National (FN), Hungary’s Jobbik and Geert Wilders’ Partij voor de Vrijheid (Party for Freedom, PVV).

Geeert Wilders recently unveiled a fascistic ten point plan to save the west. In the UK Douglas Murray of the Centre for Social Cohesion has always been a big supporter.

The Time magazine article goes on to ask:

Just how powerful might the far right become? Such parties are now in a position to influence European legislation, though most advocate withdrawal from the European Union. Addressing a Jobbik rally last year, the BNP’s Griffin invoked the memory of Hungary’s 1956 revolution, suppressed by Stalinist troops. “Where is the power hunger and the corruption of the Soviet kleptocracy now? … It is in Brussels,” he said. “The European Union is a threat to all the free peoples of Europe.”

Read it in full here.

According to women’s and human rights groups, the UK Government is failing its international obligations to women.

There are still women in this country who are unable to access a place of safety when escaping a violent relationship. These women have no choice but to return to violent partners or become destitute.

This dire situation is one example of how the government has missed compulsory targets set by the international bill of rights for women, known as CEDAW (UN Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women).

Last July, the UK Government was assessed by the CEDAW Committee on their track record on gender equality, and was found wanting. As a result, the government is required to report to the Committee this month; twelve months on rather than the standard four year reporting cycle.

Hannana Siddiqui, joint coordinator of campaigning group and women’s refuge Southall Black Sisters, says: “There are women who are in this country legally, yet who are not able to access a safe place when escaping gender-based violence because of the conditions that apply to their immigration status that do not allow access to public funds. They continue to face a stark choice: destitution or more violence?”

Sheila Coates, director of South Essex Rape and Incest Crisis Centre, attended the UK Government’s examination by the CEDAW committee in July 2008.

She says: “This is the last day of July 2009, and we are yet to see evidence of a ‘one year on’ report. Every day of government inactivity means a worsening crisis in many women’s lives”.

In the one year on report, the government is required to include information on how it has ‘incorporated all provisions of the Convention’ into the Single Equality Bill, announced by Harriet Harman in June 2008. However, to date no measures have been taken by the government to incorporate the Convention into domestic law.

The CEDAW committee has also expressed concern over funding to the women’s voluntary sector in the UK and have requested that the government report on this.

Signatories:
1. Amnesty International UK
2. Ballybean Women’s Centre
3. Breast Cancer UK
4. British Institute of Human Rights
5. Engender
6. Equality Now
7. Fawcett Society
8. FORWARD
9. National Alliance of Women’s Organisations
10. Northern Ireland Women’s European Platform
11. Older Women’s Network of Europe
12. Oxfam
13. Rights of Women
14. South Essex Rape and Incest Crisis Centre
15. Southall Black Sisters
16. Sparkhill Asian Women’s Association
17. UNIFEM
18. Welsh Women’s Aid
19. Welsh Women’s National Commission
20. WOMANKIND Worldwide
21. Women Acting in Today’s Society
22. Women Asylum Seekers Together
23. Women in Prison
24. Women’s Networking Hub
25. Women’s Resource Centre

Tax in this country is regressive.

The best off have the best tax deal.

They also willingly use the system.

Inequality has risen in the UK. The tax system has encouraged that as it has shifted to indirect taxes.

UK indirect taxes are horribly regressive.

There are the conclusions Richard Murphy derives from a detailed analysis of tax injustice in the UK.

The leader of the Libdems Nick Clegg today also calls for a television debate between party leaders. He said it would “reinvigorate political debate”.

Writing in the Independent newspaper today he says:

It seems the Prime Minister is the only person left in the country who thinks there shouldn’t be a televised debate between party leaders at the next general election.

It would be an opportunity for transparency, to reinvigorate political debate, and to put party manifestos and leaders up against one another in a fair competition.

Gordon Brown says there’s no need for debates because we have Prime Minister’s Questions. But, despite nearly always descending into farce and name-calling, at PMQs, opposition leaders can only ask questions about government policy. In a proper debate, each leader would be able to question both the other parties’ policies as well as championing his own.

Our politics is marred by profound unfairness. Big donations mean far too much is decided by which party has the biggest coffers. A televised debate would go some way to correcting that.

A debate wouldn’t advantage a party; it would advantage the people. It would be the voters’ opportunity to see the leaders competing to be Prime Minister promoting their policies and answering difficult questions about how they’d change the country.

It would bring in a wider audience than leaders could reach otherwise, giving more people the opportunity to make up their own minds based on the facts.

If Gordon Brown believed in the Labour party and his own record, he would be champing at the bit to hold this debate. I’m eager because I want people to know about Liberal Democrat policies, and I want the opportunity to explain why Labour and the Conservatives would take us in the wrong direction. Labour’s time is up, and the Conservatives think it’s automatically their turn, but I think in these difficult times we need to do something altogether different.

It increasingly looks like Gordon Brown will agree to a television debate.

The issue has rapidly degenerated into tit-for-tat accusations between political parties.

The union flag has been left off the final design for the British national identity card unveiled today in order to respect the “identity rights” of Irish nationals living in Northern Ireland – reports the Guardian.

It has deliberately avoided the use of flags, including that of the European Union, which features on British driving licences, on the new ID card in an effort to reflect all the nations of the United Kingdom.

The Tories have pledged to scrap the scheme if they get into power.

Read more at the Guardian…