Recent Articles

David Laws and the transition to gay equality

Update: David Laws has now resigned. He is replaced by Danny Alexander.

Separately to the finding on the expenses issue, the David Laws revelations might well come to be seen as the close of an era of transition to equality for politicians who are gay.

Some have tonight expressed disappointment that, in the Britain of 2010, the most powerful gay man in the Cabinet did not feel he could be open about his sexuality. That is an understandable instinct, but it is surely legitimate to think that these are highly personal decisions.

Most of us would be reluctant to think we could pronounce, without having lived in their shoes, on somebody else’s choices about their own life.
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Israel subverts human rights for a key critic

The Shin Bet security service will thwart the activity of any group or individual seeking to harm the Jewish and democratic character of the State of Israel, even if such activity is sanctioned by the law.
- Letter sent by Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, on behalf of Shin Bet, 2007

On Thursday, prominent political activist Ameer Makhoul, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, was indicted with serious charges of espionage and ‘aiding an enemy’.

As General Director of NGO-network Ittijah, Makhoul’s arrest and detention is attracting international attention as concern mounts about the increasing crackdown on dissent in Israel.
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How Marmite brought down the BNP website

A few days before the general elections, the entire BNP website was taken offline and replaced with a message by its former webmaster Simon Bennett.

Bennett posted a message attacking BNP leader Nick Griffin and accused the party of “several attempts of theft today with regards to design work and content owned by myself”.

He also claimed that two close aides to Nick Griffin – Arthur Kemp and Jim Dowson – had threatened violence against him and his family.

So what happened? It seems Marmite brought them down.

A few weeks earlier the BNP used the spread in some of their political messages.

According to Bennett it would create a controversy and they would use that to recruit new members and fund-raise. After all, the BNP relies on presenting an image of itself as a party under siege by the establishment.

But the move back-fired massively. Not only did they have to remove images of Marmite, the resulting legal action by Unilever caused serious infighting.

Searchlight magazine has posted an inside expose of what happened. They write:

After Unilever responded by launching proceedings over copyright infringement, Griffin and Dowson realised they had underestimated the severity of the legal and financial consequences and came up with pathetic excuses, such as a claim that a “joker” had amended the film. When Unilever’s lawyers refused to believe them, Bennett says he was expected “to go to court and lie through my teeth in order to bail them out of a ridiculous hole they had dug themselves into”.

Griffin and Dowson had misjudged Bennett. Unlike they themselves and their more sycophantic supporters, Bennett “was not prepared to spend five years in prison for perjury just to protect the financial interests of fools” and told Unilever’s lawyers the truth.

Bennett had refused to do their bidding so Griffin and Dowson wanted him out. Bennett was prepared to go but wanted to be paid for his website design work. Claiming he had invested around £40,000 into the site, he said he was not prepared simply to hand it over to Griffin and Dowson so that they could use it to make more money.

Bennett’s attack on the BNP upper hierarchy also involved taking down the websites for Griffin’s MEP website, as well as sites for Andrew Brons, the other MEP, and their London AM Richard Barnbrook.

He is now running an online campaign to oust Nick Griffin as party leader.

Read the whole Searchlight expose.

The ‘siege mentality’ of English nationalism

Like clockwork, with each World Cup or Euro Championship comes the urban myth based on some grand anti-English design or some hollow conspiracy theory whipped up by tabloids for the populace to consume.

The fact is, an alarming number of Brits are happy to be treated like imbeciles the moment there’s a whiff of international football in the air.

The rumours appear to have been kickstarted by (make a wild guess) the Sun when they published an article under the header “Bid to ban England tops in World Cup pubs“.

Anyone with more than a brain cell would have detected that the headline had nothing to do with the facts.
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Cameron says 80% of Tory cuts must be spending. No they don’t

Speaking yesterday on the Today programme about the need to reduce the budget deficit, David Cameron claimed that most of the reduction had to come from spending cuts.

80% in fact, with only 20% of the reduction coming via tax increases.

If you look internationally at when countries have had to deal with horrendous budget deficits, like the one that we were left by Labour, the international evidence shows that the 80-20 split is about the right proportion
…
That is if you like the gold standard that has been set internationally.

But is that the ‘gold standard’ internationally?
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Is David Miliband’s attack on the City credible?

David Miliband is targeting ‘immoral’ city excesses.

There’s a few images come to mind when we think of what it means to be a Blairite; that it is a portion of New Labourism that promoted, and was happy to see, the super rich.

That it excused immaturity, ill-thought and unnecessary risk in the city so long as UK boom financed the public sector to an extent that we no longer have the privilege of maintaining.
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BP’s charm offensive slammed on Fox News

BP’s boss has been diligently giving interviews in the British media over the last few days – playing down the extent of the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

But this strategy is being slammed massively in the UK, even on Fox News. This was on last night:

ThinkProgress notes this part of the transcript:

I think one thing we do know is that we can’t trust BP with information at this point. They were the ones, absolutely, you’re correct, who said, “Oh, don’t worry, the oil will not reach the beaches.” Oh, come on!

Will these ‘big bang’ education reforms work?

Michael Gove unveiled education reforms this week in an article for the Sun.

His thoughts on policy changes have been broken down into points:

1. Schools will be able to set their own curriculum, pay good teachers more, have longer school days and control the cash currently spent on their behalf by local government.

2. I believe that headteachers are the best people to improve our education system and we should strengthen their hand. The schools that take up this offer will be asked to use their new freedoms and powers to help other schools in their area that are less successful.

3. Soon we will announce further plans to give teachers, charities and parents the ability to set up new schools with smaller class sizes across the country.

4. I also intend to change the law to give all teachers the powers they need to crack down on bad behaviour including new search powers so items such as mobile phones and pornography can be confiscated, protection for teachers falsely accused by pupils and an end to panels of bureaucrats sending expelled kids back to school against the wishes of headteachers.

5. And we’ll rewrite the curriculum to give teachers more say in what’s taught while making sure that all children learn the basics.

6. Crucially we’ll also introduce significant extra funding for poorer pupils so schools in the toughest parts of our country have all the resources they need to provide the best possible education.

Thoughts? What response should there be to these reforms?

Meddling in our lives, despite evidence it doesn’t work

The sacking of David Nutt by Alan Johnson last year cemented Labour’s reputation for policy based evidence making. The fitting of the facts to previously agreed upon policy objectives is an egregiously common practice for those in government.

The election to the Tory benches of Nadine “smear Tim Ireland” Dorries and the appointment of Philipa “cure the gays” Stroud to the back room of the Department for Work and Pensions left me nonplussed, to say the least. The lamentable loss of Evan Harris from parliament further dented any hope I had of a new rational approach to evidence and policy.

So I think it safe to say that I never had Chris Giles’ faith that the formation of a Conservative-Liberal coalition government would announce the resurrection of something long dead.
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Is this how Tories plan to scupper voting reform?

The right-wing Conservative MP Daniel Kawczynski yesterday wrote a long article defending the legitimacy and advantages of maintain the FPTP voting system

He also announced his intention to: “table an amendment to any referendum Bill to make it a requirement that 40 per cent of the electorate accept the new electoral system before any implementation.”

It’s not entirely a bad idea that the vote on electoral reform is seen to have proper legitimacy if it is to work.

But 40% turnout? That is an unusually high figure.

Voting turnout at local elections is usually below 40% and we still take them as granted. In some cases the turnout is even below 30%.

If this amendment succeeds, then the chances of the referendum going through would be significantly lessened.

Progressives who want electoral reform may want to start thinking about counter-strategy.