Monthly Archives: November 2009

Policy Exchange: You win some, you lose some…

Blog, Conservative Party, Humour, Liberal Conspiracy, Think-tanks

Sunny’s busy elsewhere at the moment, so I guess I’d better take on the news that the North London Central Mosque’s libel action against Tory think-tank, Policy Exchange, has been struck out by Justice Eady, leaving the trustees of the mosque facing a £75,000 legal bill just to cover PX’s legal bills.

The case related to allegations made in a 2007 report by Denis McEoin, ‘The Hijacking of British Islam’, which was withdrawn earlier this year, at the same time as it issued this apology to one of the organisations named in the report as allegedly selling extremist literature.

The Hijacking of British Islam:
Al-Manaar Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre

In this report we state that Al-Manaar Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre is one of the Centres where extremist literature was found. Policy Exchange accepts the Centre’s assurances that none of the literature cited in the Report has ever been sold or distributed at the Centre with the knowledge or consent of the Centre’s trustees or staff, who condemn the extremist and intolerant views set out in such literature. We are happy to set the record straight.

The key phrase in this piece of news seems to be ‘struck out’, which gives no clues whatsoever as to the reason that the mosque’s libel action failed. As yet, there’s nothing on BAILI relating to this case, so whether it failed on a technicality, or because the mosque was unable to put forward a viable case, or even because Justice Eady decided that the mosque has no reputation to defend is anyone’s guess.

I must admit to being a little disappointed that this case failed to all the way to a full hearing, not because I really give a toss about either side winning or losing but because it might have shed just a little bit more light on the circumstances that resulted in McEoin incorporating fabricated evidence in his report. Continue reading →

Policy Exchange win libel case?

News

Andrew Gilligan at the Telegraph is reporting that the right-wing think tank Policy Exchange has won a significant victory in their libel case brought by the North London Central Mosque.

Gilligan writes that Policy Exchange says on its website:

“The Trustees of Policy Exchange are delighted to report that Mr Justice Eady yesterday struck out the claim brought against us by the North London Central Mosque.

“North London Central Mosque commenced an action against Policy Exchange and Dr Denis MacEoin for libel, following publication of our study “The Hijacking of British Islam” in October 2007.

“Six trustees who had advanced the claim on behalf of the North London Central Mosque were ordered to pay Policy Exchange’s costs of defending this action.

The High Court made a further Order that £75,000 of those costs be paid by North London Central Mosque within 28 days.””

It’s probably my technological incompetence, but at the time of writing, I can’t find this quote anywhere on the actual Policy Exchange website (Gilligan and others link to the main website, rather than any news story). Can anyone help source this?

UPDATE – found the statement, it is in the right hand column at the bottom.

Observer repeating right-wing spin on inheritance tax

Blog, Economy, Equality, Media

Andrew Rawnsley has an excellent article in today’s Observer on the changing politics of inheritance tax. In the era of deficits and looming austerity, the Conservative pledge looks less canny than when it was first announced in 2007, as if the one group that the Conservatives can find some tax relief for in these difficult times are the very rich.

The Observer’s Political Editor, Toby Helm, also reports that, in view of the changed circumstances, the government is considering freezing the threshold, rather than increasing it as planned.

This would seem to me to be the least the government could do as part of a program for spreading the burden of paying for valuable public services in what are indeed difficult times.

But consider how Helm chooses to describe the issue:
Continue reading →

Poll: what young people think about politics

News

YouGov and the Citizenship Foundation recently polled 3,994 people aged 14 to 25. There are many interesting findings:

Priorities

Their top five priorities are reducing unemployment, investing in the NHS, investing in education, being tough on criminals and tackling climate change.

They think the main priorities for the Labour Party are reducing unemployment and investing in education and the NHS.

They think the main priorities for the Conservative Party are reducing immigration, reducing spending on public services and being tough on criminals.

They think the main priorities for the Liberal Democrats are tackling climate change, promoting equal opportunities and investing in education.

They think the government should help poor people, young people and elderly people the most. 2% think the government should help rich people.

They think that the main groups that the Labour Party wants to help are the unemployed, single parents, immigrants and poor people.

They think that the main groups that the Conservative Party wants to help are “traditional” families and rich people.

52% don’t know which are the main groups that the Liberal Democrats want to help.

More young people think that community and campaigning groups and the trade unions should have influence on government policy than think the same of business, think tanks or the media.

Discrimination

The groups that they thought faced most unfair discrimination in Britain were young people; gay people; Muslims; immigrants and refugees and asylum-seekers.

The groups that they thought benefited from unfair advantages were people from private schools and those who are unemployed or on benefits.

Tory supporting young people were much more likely to claim that they were taught too much about the views and lifestyles of those from different cultural, ethnic and faith groups than Labour or Lib Dem supporters.

Information

71% learned about politics through the internet, more than TV, newspapers, radio or friends and family. 10% report that political blogs were their main sources of information.

The main issues which increased their interest in politics were the recession; then the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; followed by the MPs’ expenses scandal, Britain’s relationship with Europe and climate change.

Participation and democracy

27% think that having a Young Mayor would be beneficial for the local area, 67% think it would not be beneficial.

44% think that the Youth Parliament and youth councils make a positive contribution.

The main reasons why they think that young people take part in youth parliaments, local youth councils and similar forums is because it looks good on the CV, because they are interested in a political career and because they are interested in political issues. 10% think it is because they want to help others.

The main reasons why they think that young people take part in organisations that campaign on single issues such as climate change, homelessness, poverty or a war that they see as wrong is to make a difference to their community or to help others.

67% have never voted on a TV show.

31% support lowering the voting age to 16, 54% oppose it (though 14-17 year olds are much more likely to support it than those who are older).

33% take part in voluntary, charitable or community work – Labour supporters are the most likely to, followed by Lib Dems, then Tories and then supporters of other parties or those who aren’t interested in politics.

Against the ban on minarets

Blog, Civil liberties, Equality, Race relations, Religion

contribution by Left Outside

Swiss voters have supported a referendum proposal to ban the building of minarets. More than 57% of voters and 22 out of 26 cantons – or provinces – voted in favour of the ban.

In Switzerland a referendum on any new piece of legislation can be held if the sponsor collects 100,000 signatures from the citizenship in the 18 months following its introduction. The opposition Swiss People’s Party have earned the ire of the Government by introducing the Bill to ban Minarets this way. There democratic credentials of this referendum seem clear, after all this was no close run thing, more than 57% of voters and 22 out of 26 cantons voted “yes.”

Yet despite all this, banning one particular sort of building seems spectacularly undemocratic. When it is accompanied by a rise in Islamophobic violence, it seems down right authoritarian.

Guthrum over at Old Holborn is managing to do a great disservice to Libertarians everywhere by holding up this as an example of democracy in process.

Bizarrely he concludes with “The people told the Government, not the other way round” when in fact what has happened is the “the people told some other people to stop doing “that”.” Moreover, they told them to do it by co-opting the massive repressive potential of the state.
Continue reading →

Needing real Labour: Skelmersdale

Blog, Economy, Labour party, Local Government, Our democracy

Reposted – the site that this post links to was down on Friday.

Over the last little while, yours truly has been spending time talking to people who need public services, but feel (and often are) excluded from the lofty political circles that will decide the future of those services.

From today, we’ll publish excerpts from these interviews and links to the full articles on a new site.

First up is the West Lancashire town of Skelmersdale – an old ‘new town’ badly in need of regeneration. Poverty is an issue for some Skem locals. Fury at their powerlessness is another. Everyone I spoke to was a Labour voter. I spoke to some Labour councillors. Tory councillors have refused to talk to date.

(Regeneration plans for Skelmersdale have been threatened by Everton and Tesco plans for a stadium and retail park in nearby Kirkby (Skelmersdale is only ten minutes’ drive from Kirkby). West Lancashire borough council wanted to regenerate Skelmersdale by building Skelmersdale a retail centre of its own, but was unlikely to do so if a bigger retail centre was built in Kirkby. (Last week, the government rejected the Everton and Tesco plans)).

Below is an excerpt from the first of four interview sessions with Skelmersdale locals – everyday people who feel they’ve been abandoned by the political process:

Hazel Scully

Hazel Scully

Long time Skelmersdale council housing tenant Hazel Scully is pleased that West Lancashire borough council is planning a facelift for run-down Skelmersdale town centre – there’ll be a new high street, shops, cinema, library, sports centre, swimming pool, housing, and a lovely landscaped park to replace the spooky weedfest along the River Tawd that presently serves as Skelmersdale’s main municipal space.

It is just a pity, says Scully bitterly, that she won’t have much chance to enjoy the improvements.

She and everybody else who lives on the town-centre Firbeck and Findon estates will be removed from view as part of the upgrade. The council wants to demolish the estates, shift the occupants elsewhere in the borough, and build homes for private sale in place of Firbeck and Findon.

‘We don’t fit in,’ says Scully glumly as she fiddles with the lace pane that she has draped over the large table in her small kitchen. ‘We don’t fit in with their vision of a new, updated Skem.’

Others suspect an infernal Conservative agenda. ‘Is there gerrymandering going on?’ West Lancashire Labour councillor Jane Roberts says on Save Firbeck – ‘and you do start to wonder [about gerrymandering]‘ she says on the phone.

Read the rest.

Chilcot and the ‘smoking gun’

Blog, Foreign affairs, Labour party, Middle East, Realpolitik

Although Oliver Kamm and Scott Ritter could not be further apart on their views about the invasion of Iraq, both use the phrase ‘smoking gun’ in their relation to the Chilcot Inquiry whose existence or non-existence they believe must be the test by which its results will be judged. Kamm makes the case against having an inquiry at all while Ritter warns that unless the UN weapons inspectors are called to give evidence it will end in another whitewash.

Kamm, quoting John Rentoul, says that opponents of the war have become convinced that ‘there is a big secret that is being concealed from us, a smoking gun that “explains it all”. This is a symptom of the anti-war psychology, which so strongly disagrees with the decision made by Tony Blair, the Cabinet and the House of Commons that it seeks constantly for a hidden reason for it.’

Ritter, by contrast, says: ‘As of December 1998, both the US and Britain knew there was no “smoking gun” in Iraq that could prove that Saddam’s government was retaining or reconstituting a WMD capability. Nothing transpired between that time and when the decision was made in 2002 to invade Iraq that fundamentally altered that basic picture.’
Continue reading →

Does taxing the rich work?

Blog, Economy, Equality

Tim and Richard are debating that old question, would higher taxes on the rich, as demanded by Compass, actually raise tax revenue, or would the rich emigrate, work less or fiddle their taxes with the result that less income would be raised?

Economic theory is absolutely no help here, as there are two competing effects. The income effect predicts that higher taxes might lead people to work harder, in order to maintain their post-tax incomes. The substitution effect says that if work becomes less remunerative, they’d do less of it and spend more time with the guitar or golf clubs.

It is an entirely empirical question as to which one dominates – in other words, as to where the Laffer curve is.

Here, though, is the problem – the empirics are also uncertain. Take, for example a recent paper (pdf) from IFS economists. It says:

If the richest 1% see a 1% fall in the proportion of each additional pound of earnings that is left after tax, then the income they report will rise by less than half that – only 0.46%. Although a tentative estimate, this suggests that the government would maximise the revenue it collects by imposing an overall marginal rate on the highest earners of 56.6%, very close to the 53.0% currently charged.

Victory to Tim, you might think.

No. For one thing, as they say, the estimate is tentative. Allowing for this gives us another interpretation. This is that the revenue-maximizing top tax rate is 95% likely to be in the range 45-75%. This encompasses Tim’s and Richard’s views.

And it could be that Richard is nearer the truth. Continue reading →

YouGov: voters not convinced by Tories

News

The latest opinion poll from YouGov found the Tories with a 10% lead over Labour. But it found little enthusiasm for Tory policies:

61 per cent of marginal voters say the Tory plan to raise the inheritance tax threshold to £1million shows they “mainly want to help the rich, not ordinary people”.

26 per cent think education would improve under a Conservative government.

22 per cent think the NHS would improve under a Conservative government.

19 per cent think that the Tories would cut crime.

*

So 3 in 5 think the Tories want to help the rich, not ordinary people; 3 in 4 don’t think they will improve education; nearly 4 in 5 think the NHS won’t improve and more than 4 in 5 think that the Tories won’t cut crime.

The divine mission of UKIP’s new leader

Blog, Conservative Party, Race relations, Religion

Congratulations to Lord Pearson, newly elected leader of the UK Independence Party. He has already hit the headlines this morning by revealing that the party offered to disband, or stand down for this General Election at least, if David Cameron had pledged a retrospective referendum on Lisbon, which is quite an interesting day one secret plot revelation for a leader just elected by his members.

Though little known on the left, Pearson is admired and liked by several Tory Eurosceptics, as Iain Dale and Tim Montgomerie testify.

The most interesting profile of Pearson that I have seen was an admiring profile God’s Eurosceptic, published in the Sunday Telegraph back in 1997 when he was first promoting a private members’ Bill to get Britain out of Europe.

Lord Pearson certainly does “do God” – and claims a personal connection with the Almighty which is more direct than any political leader, certainly since Gladstone, after a religious experience in which he believes a messenger from God appeared to him while he was being operated on to have varicose veins removed in 1977.

Pearson says that the experience has led him to dedicate his life to the fight against evil – represented by the European Union, bureaucracy, socialism and Islamism.

Pearson believes that Ukip should highlight Islamic fundamentalism as just as important a threat to the British way of life as the European Union. (Did the forthcoming UKIP result on Friday influence David Cameron’s unexpected decision to raise Islamism and Hizb-ut-Tahir’s alleged involvement in schools at PMQs on Wednesday?)

Pearson has already sought to give a high profile to the issue, bringing Geert Wilders to Parliament. But Pearson has seemed somewhat confused in insisting he makes a distinction between Muslims and Islamists, which was certainly not easy to discern in his recent comments about comparative birthrates which are very much of the ‘Enoch was right’ school, evoking very directly Powell’s fear of an alien element having ‘the whip hand’ in Britain.

Lord Pearson’s own outspoken views about Islam were recorded in Washington DC last month. Asked how much time Britain had before losing control of its cultural identity he said: “What is going to decide the answer to that is the birthrate. The fact that Muslims are breeding ten times faster than us. I do not know at what point they reach such a number that we are no longer able to resist the rest of their demands . . . but if we do not do something now within the next year or two we have in effect lost.”

He later insisted that his remark was directed at Islamists. “One is talking about the violent end of the spectrum,” he said.

Friends and foes might agree that we may be hearing a lot more from Lord Pearson.