Recent Articles

Help make Chris Grayling angry over benefits

by Sue Marsh     June 28, 2012 at 11:01 am

Here’s an opportunity for you to help make a Minister wish he hadn’t interfered.

Back in March we wrote about the Ministry of Justice’s (MoJ) employment and support allowance appeals video on Youtube.

The video was pulled after less than a week, on the orders of senior officials.
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Nadine Dorries’s rubbish on abortion counselling

by Sunny Hundal     June 28, 2012 at 10:41 am

Nadine Dorries MP tweeted this yesterday:

BMA have passed motion in support of independent abortion counselling. At last!

— Nadine Dorries MP (@NadineDorriesMP) June 27, 2012

It has taken five years of campaigning to get the BMA to agree. A much welcomed change of position which indicates they get the public mood.

— Nadine Dorries MP (@NadineDorriesMP) June 27, 2012

The second claim is patent rubbish.

The motion was submitted by Dr Mark Pickering from the Christian Medical Fellowship, who argued:

I am not talking about enforced counselling or an imposed cooling off period. Any counselling should be non-directive. This motion is about extending choice for women.

Dr Jan Wise spoke against the motion, saying it would increase the cost of each abortion by £40 to £100, and said Parliament had already rejected calls for abortion providers not to offer counselling too.

The motion was passed because of the way it was worded, as the Telegraph reported:

Dr Tony Calland, chairman of the BMA ethics committee said the wording of the motion was unfortunate in that it referred to counselling that was independent of the abortion provider, because in most cases the NHS provided the abortion and it was not being argued that the NHS should not also provide counselling.

For that reason, although the motion was passed, it will not become official BMA policy.

To reiterate, this will not become BMA policy. It doesn’t change a thing, despite Nadine Dorries claiming victory.

Mark Clarke’s fake followers: mystery deepens

by Sunny Hundal     June 28, 2012 at 9:26 am

On Tuesday we ran a little story about Mark Clarke – a prominent Tory candidate who was selected to run against Sadiq Khan at the 2010 election.

Mark Clarke had thousands of fake Twitter followers, bringing his total number to just under a staggering 50,000 followers.

Our protagonist might be a relative unknown character but the broader point matters: right-wingers are increasingly using tricks to boost their online campaigning.

A national newspaper has since been in touch since our story and I’ve given them two more names of British right-wingers whom I suspect of a similar boost in Twitter followers. More on that soon.

I am now confident most of Mark Clarke’s Twitter followers are fake. He hasn’t responded to any of my queries.

According to Twitter, Mark Clarke started his account on Saturday, 3rd March 2012.

So, in less than four months he accumulated 50,000 real followers? I doubt it.

This is how TwitterCounter tracks his followers. His number jumped straight to over 50,000 and has steadily declined since, as Twitter slowly purged fake accounts.

This is not the first time Mark Clarke has been in the midst of online controversy. Just before the 2010 election, someone bought domain names that related to his Tory rival and directed them to Clarke’s own website.

Why would people want to inflate their Twitter followers? Because it makes them look prominent and important, especially when ‘Top Twitter lists’ abound in newspapers. Plus, some people get free goodies in return for a plug on their Twitter account.

As politics is increasingly fought over the web and online perceptions become more prominent (take ‘Google bombing’), expect more such dirty tricks.

Why don’t we hear about forced marriages and gay men?

by Carl Packman     June 28, 2012 at 9:01 am

I recently reviewed a report for HuffPo that shows how London Police Services are underprepared for a rise in serious crime.

I didn’t have time to highlight some stats by the Metropolitan Police that show there were 298 Forced Marriage incidents / crimes reported in 2010 (including 333 actual and prospective victims – i.e. living in fear of forced marriage).

Of those, 35 victims were male, the rest were women (one unknown).

One of the inferences based on interview material, and the MPA’s own assessment, is that many of the men who are involved here are actually gay, and forced into marriage because of this.

The MPA didn’t check sexual orientation (save for one person) as part of the course, so it is hard to evaluate, but there has been some attention given to this type of marriage over the last few years – and it is deeply disturbing.

Back in 2010 the Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) said there had been a surge in cases where men and boys are being forced into marriage because their families suspect they are gay or bisexual.

In that year the number of calls from men to the unit increased by 65%, from 134 in 2008 to 220 in 2009, and many of the cases involved families from south Asia, particularly Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.

Comparable figures need to be shown today, to see whether this is an increasing problem, and to see who is targeted.

If the figures are worrying then this only adds to the report’s findings that there needs to be improved communication lines between the police authorities and victims.

Government agency approves Christian fundamentalist exams as ‘comparable’ to A-Level

by Guest     June 27, 2012 at 2:52 pm

contribution by Jonny Scaramanga

A Christian fundamentalist qualification which teaches that the theory of evolution has “no scientific basis” has been declared comparable to A-levels by UK Naric.

NARIC is the UK’s National Agency responsible for providing information and opinion on vocational, academic and professional qualifications from across the world.

The International Certificate of Christian Education (ICCE) uses a curriculum that was previously criticised for claiming the Loch Ness Monster “appears to be a plesiosaur,” and that the mythical beast is evidence against evolution.
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Activist disrupts Nick Clegg event at Rio+20

by Guest     June 27, 2012 at 10:15 am

contribution by Kirsty Wright

The UK government, together with its friends in the financial industry and the World Bank, hosted a joint event last week on ‘natural capital’.

It was, I imagine, expected to be one of Nick Clegg’s key moments at the summit. But as Clegg began his speech, WDM campaigner Sarah Reader stood up to initiate her own Great Nature Sale.

Why the opposition? The UK’s ‘natural capital’ agenda is being sold as an attempt to make sure we protect nature, by putting a price tag on it. Whilst the idea of ‘valuing’ nature sounds positive, this approach makes the grave mistake of confusing value with price.

History shows us that these kinds of approaches do not work.

Take, for example, the case in Uganda where 22,000 people were evicted from their land at gunpoint in 2011 to allow UK firm New Forests Company to plant trees for carbon credits.

More at World Development Movement

Is the future of news dependent on rich oligarchs?

by John B     June 27, 2012 at 9:30 am

In the wake of a punch to the face from phone-hacking, and a kick to the balls from shrinking print revenues, News Corporation is contemplating splitting its TV assets from its print ones.

The plan would be to remove the newspaper drag from the share price, and hopefully bypass some of the regulatory fallout from News International’s behaviour. An obvious problem here is that Bad News would be, well, bad news.

Analysts at Nomura have worked out that future profit declines will only be in the region of 5% a year – and that the global newspaper division (including digital) revenues will show slight overall growth. To me, that sounds optimistic.
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Watch: Tory MP Chloe Smith humiliated on TV

by Newswire     June 27, 2012 at 8:00 am

After their fuel duty u-turn, yesterday turned into a disaster for the Treasury.

But with George Osborne hiding in his bunker, it was left to Chloe Smith MP to try and defend another PR disaster.

First it was Channel 4 News.

Then the disaster extended to Newsnight.

Ouch.

Top UK signatories slam Paraguay “coup”

by Newswire     June 26, 2012 at 5:37 pm

A group of writers, MPs and activists today publish a letter slamming the “political coup” in Paraguay.

The letter is exclusively published here.

We join the governments of Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador & the Dominican Republic in condemning the removal of the elected President Lugo in Paraguay, in a process that has been described widely as a “political coup.”

President Lugo has labelled his removal as a blow against Paraguay’s democracy & although accepting he is currently now out of office has termed it an “express coup d’etat.”

President Lugo was given just 24 hours to prepare a defence against an impeachment instituted by a temporary right-wing majority in parliament, using procedures the Lugo government has previously declared illegal & unconstitutional.

There have also been reports of human rights abuses from the new regime. For example, activists in the CUT-A (Paraguayan union federation) are reporting that the military have fired live rounds at unarmed protesters & campesino leaders have reported activists killed. Currently tens of thousands of Paraguayans are protesting outside the Parliament for the return of Lugo. They have established a Front for the Defence of Democracy.

The progressive wave of recent years in Latin America has many powerful enemies, both from former ruling elites internally & right-wing forces internationally. International support is vital so that democratic & social advances continue.

Yours,

FULL LIST OF SIGNATORIES:
Eric Hobsbawm, Historian
Richard Gott
Hugh O’Shaughnessy, author: The Priest of Paraguay
Peter Lambert, Senior Lecturer in Spanish & Latin American Studies, University of Bath
Ken Livingstone
Colin Burgon, Venezuela Solidarity Campaign & Labour Friends of Venezuela
Grahame Morris MP
Valerie Vaz MP
Jeremy Corbyn MP
John McDonnell MP
Mike Wood MP
Baroness Anne Gibson, All Party Parliamentary Group on Latin America
Neil Findlay MSP
Frances O’Grady, TUC Deputy General Secretary
Tony Burke, Assistant General Secretary, Unite the Union
The GMB / Bert Schouwenburg, GMB International Officer
Billy Hayes, CWU General Secretary
Matt Wrack, FBU General Secretary
Manuel Cortes, TSSA General Secretary
Steve Murphy, UCATT General Secretary
Gerry Morrissey, BECTU General Secretary
Jonathan Ledger, NAPO General Secretary
Doug Nicholls, General Federation of Trade Unions General Secretary
Terry Hoad, Immediate Past President, University & College Union
Jody McIntyre, journalist
Kanje Sesay, National Union of Students Black Students’ Officer
Aaron Kiely, National Union of Students NEC & Black Students’ Officer (elect)
Lindsey German, Stop the War Coalition Convenor
Maggie Bowden, General Secretary, Liberation
Ernesto Laclau
Dr Francisco Dominguez, Centre for Brazilian & Latin American Studies, Middlesex University
Doreen Massey, Professor of Geography
Peter Hallward, Professor of Modern European Philosophy, Kingston University
Dr Steve Ludlam, University of Sheffield
Professor Mike Cole
Marcos Costa Lima, Profº. of the Political Science Department of UFPE
Jenny Pearce, University of Bradford
Dr Michael Derham, Northumbria University
Dr Lee Salter, University of the West of Engl&
Dr Diana Raby, Senior Fellow, Latin American Studies, University of Liverpool & Professor Emeritus, History, University of Toronto
Jonathan Rosenhead, London School of Economics
Iain Bruce, journalist
Grace Livingstone, Author, America’s Backyard
Mike Gatehouse
Rod Stoneman, Executive Producer, The Revolution will Not Be Televised
Pablo Navarrete, journalist & documentary filmmaker
Cat Smith, Chair, Next Generation Labour (pc)
Lucy Anderson, Labour Party National Policy Forum
Cllr. Samuel Tarry, Barking & Dagenham Council Chief Whip
Steve Hart, Unite the Union Political Director
Cllr Vince Maple, Labour Group Leader, Medway Council
John Haylett, Morning Star Political Editor
Jim Kennedy, Labour Party NEC (pc)
Denise Christie, FBU Women’s Committee
Ruby Cox, Chair of the Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign & as Chair of Unison’s Greater London Region International Committee
Jackson Cullinane, Political Officer, Unite Scotl&
David Winters, Croydon NUT & VSC TU delegation to Venezuelan 2012 member
Paul Foley, Head of Health, UNISON North West (pc)
Richard Ascough
Carl Maden, CWU NEC
Cllr Tom Beattie, Unite the Union
Kevin Flack, Chair Sevenoaks Constituency Labour Party
Phil McGarry, RMT Scotland & Scottish VSC
Matt Willgress, VSC Co-ordinator

Why is the police going after racist abusers of footballers?

by Paul Cotterill     June 26, 2012 at 4:16 pm

England played football on Sunday and lost, because two players missed penalties. These two players happened to be black and they received some abuse on twitter which linked the colour of their skin to their missing the penalties.

Police are now investigating the tweeter, a “Steve from London”, and his tweets.

So will this charming gentleman end up in prison, Liam Stacey-style, for an offience under the Misuse of Communications act 2003? I sincerely hope not.
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