Monthly Archives: January 2013

‘Money on an Island’: catchy new tune hits tax avoiders

News

Some people take cash just to survive
Or just to keep a small business alive or
To get gifts for their loved ones
Ah, but this is different!
We’re not talking about fiddling a form nor
Taking sixty quid’s benefit fraud, no
We’re talking about stealing six billion
From sick children!

Those are among the lines from a new tune by the band The Apopalyptics, who have just released this tune on tax avoiders.

Watch

Are Labour finding a radical and progressive vision for international development?

Blog, Foreign affairs

Labour Shadow Secretary for International Development Ivan Lewis made an important and very welcome speech on international development on Tuesday, about what we should be aiming for once the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) expire in 2015.

It is worth a deeper look, as it sets out a far more strategic vision than his similarly good Party conference speech.

The core of his message was that:

The new framework needs to be values led, rooted in social justice including reducing inequality, sustainable growth and good governance practiced by all development actors. Our overarching aims should be clear and measurable.

By 2030 to have eliminated absolute poverty, begun to reduce inequality, protected scarce planetary resources and ended aid dependency. Ending aid dependency is the right objective for greater equality and the dignity, independence and self determination of nations and their citizens. It should be a core part of the mission of Centre left development policy.

He called his approach a new ‘social contract without borders’ to replace the existing MDGs and the speech is full of commitment to decent work, more jobs, better wages and what is essentially a welfare state approach (eg education, health and sewerage) to international development.

He was even good enough to mention the Robin Hood Tax as one of the innovative possible sources of funding.

He returned again and again to the issues of jobs and tackling inequality, and an international development policy centred on those two themes would I think be both popular domestically and effective abroad.

It would be a good summary of a decent social democratic policy for the UK as well, and he and his shadow ministerial colleagues stressed that much of what they were calling for internationally was similar to what Labour is in favour of domestically.

As well as his support for decent work and living wages, he had relatively sharp words for business, calling for ‘responsible capitalism’. And, unusually for politicians these days, he was quite specific about what that meant. Companies that don’t abide by the principles of decent work and sustainable growth shouldn’t get DFID contracts, and all government procurement should be on that same basis.

Criticisms? Well, there were some quiet intakes of breath from the audience about his suggestion that we should end absolute poverty and end aid dependency by 2030. I’m with him on that (at least as a starting point for debate): if we’re going to set targets and outline visions, they should be challenging. How much absolute poverty would we be happy to see around the world by 2030? How much aid dependency would we be happy with?

—
A longer version of this post is at the Touchstone blog.

Daily Express misleads on immigrants and English

News

The Daily Express today features more rubbish on its front page.

It says 4 million immigrants in the UK hardly speak English. But this is simply misleading.

We know this because the article is based on data from the Census that was released yesterday.

The key findings stated:

Of the eight per cent (4.2 million) of usual residents aged three years and over with a main language other than English, 79 per cent (3.3 million) could speak English very well or well.

In 2011, less than half a per cent (138,000) of all usual residents aged three years and over could not speak English.

Emphasis is mine. The actual figure is under 140,000. You could argue that speaking “hardly” is the same as having English as your second language, but that would be misleading.

It should come as no surprise that the Daily Express is printing absolute rubbish, but I highlight this to ask why people in the mainstream media (especially the BBC) still keep taking this joke of a newspaper seriously.

Are we ready for bums on the breakfast table?

Blog, Health, Media

by Giselle Green

On this morning’s Today Programme menu was a discussion about cancer survival rates in Britain being worse than in comparable high income countries with similar health care systems. Research published in the British Journal of Cancer shows that we put off getting symptoms investigated because we don’t want to trouble our doctors as we’re worried about wasting their time or because we’re embarrassed about sharing our symptoms.

Interestingly the fear of a cancer diagnosis wasn’t a factor differentiating us from our international counterparts.

So why are we worrying about “wasting” our doctor’s time or embarrassing ourselves, especially when survival rates are hugely enhanced by early diagnosis? As Mark Flanagan of Beating Bowel Cancer told us, bowel cancel has a 93% survival rate if caught early enough.

Further research is being embarked upon but Dr Lindsay Forbes, the lead researcher in the report by London’s Kings’ College and University College, speculated that this delay in getting a diagnosis is due to the “British stiff upper lip”, that classic mix of stoicism and avoidance of discussing something embarrassing. (Another theory that the public is worried about draining NHS resources seems a little far-fetched to me. “Oh, I’m not going to get this lump checked out as I don’t want to use up my GP’s budget allocation” isn’t a phrase that I can imagine tripping off most people’s tongues.)

In a clear effort to desensitize the Today programme audience, Mark Flanagan of Beating Bowel Cancer seemed to relish talking about poo, bowels and bums. He even came up with the ultimate sound bite (don’t think too closely about that analogy): “We need to break the taboo; we need to talk more about bowels and bottoms, about blood and about poo. We need to get the message out that it’s ok to talk. “

Here, I thought, was the perfect clip for the BBC Radio 8 o’clock news to run. What a chance to break the taboo and get the message out to millions. But sadly not. A less arresting sound bite was chosen.

It seems poos and bums are fine for an interview, but not the news. We clearly still have some way to go in softening up that stiff British upper lip.

Sun lied about Gordon Brown 4 times in 4 months

News

Having to withdraw allegations – more prosaically publish a “correction” or “clarification” – is an occupational hazard for newspapers.

But to have to back down four times in four months suggests an attack campaign that has gone seriously wrong.

No prizes for guessing that the rag in question is the Sun, and its target has been Gordon Brown.

1) Led last September by the loathsome Toby Young – whose services the paper has wisely dispensed with in the meantime – talking of “Toffs who play at being comrades”. Tobes managed not to mention that Brown’s fees for his speaking engagements do not go into his own pocket, but help fund the charitable work done by him and wife Sarah.

2) Four days after the clarification, there was another issued over an article last July that managed not to mention that Brown’s staff expenses also did not go into his own pocket. This time, the Sun was additionally persuaded to tell its readers that the former PM had renounced the Prime Ministerial pension to which he is entitled.

3) this month brought yet another “clarification”, admitting that Brown did not claim accommodation expenses when visiting London on parliamentary business. This time, there was the addition of a brass neck component, as they blamed the Tories. So that’s an admission of using a partisan single source for news items, then.

4) And it wasn’t over, even then: last week brought the fourth “clarification”, over the Sun’s story alleging that Brown’s press conference at the UN was cancelled because only one reporter turned up.

It was actually canned as he was delayed attending another meeting which was paying tribute to Aung San Suu Kyi. That’s another story they didn’t bother checking out before publishing.

On top of all that, there is the pretence they are actually bothered about getting the right story before putting the boot in: “Our journalists strive for accuracy but on occasion we make mistakes”. That’s one fresh and steaming pile of bullshit for you.

The story behind the Telegraph’s “reluctant racists” article

Blog, Race relations

Yesterday, the appearance in the Telegraph of an article under the by-line of Jane Kelly, titled “I feel like a stranger where I live” brought a predictably Islamophobic tone to proceedings. Kelly tells how Acton Vale has changed “almost overnight” into “Acton Veil”.

But then you get to the end of the piece. And here, readers are informed that Ms Kelly “is consulting editor of the ‘Salisbury Review’”. Anyone not hearing alarm bells ringing long and loud may not have made the connection.

The Salisbury Review was founded in 1982 under the editorship of Roger Scruton, and promoted as a journal of “traditional Conservatism” of the small state variety. However, the Review also espoused the concept of voluntary repatriation for those it labelled immigrants.

But very few people read it, at least for the first two years. Then an article on race and education by headmaster Ray Honeyford was reproduced – not by accident – in the rabidly Conservative Yorkshire Post. The Honeyford Affair looked set to initially damage, but then made the career of, up and coming West Yorkshire politician Eric Pickles.

When Honeyford died last year, the Telegraph willingly reproduced his Review piece.

Put directly, the Telegraph’s staff know what the Salisbury Review is about. When they get its “consulting editor” to pen an article about what it’s like to live in an area of west London where there is a significant Muslim population, they are sure enough about the result that they disallow comments on it.

They cannot be surprised when Ms Kelly asserts “mass immigration is making reluctant racists of us all”. Nor can they be surprised at some of the characterisations used: her part of Acton “has been transformed into a giant transit camp and is home to no one”.

She whines that “most of the tills in my local shops are manned by young Muslim men who mutter into their mobiles as they are serving”. Yes, they’re bloody busy having to do several things at once. Welcome to the world of the overworked small businessman.

The Telegraph ought to be ashamed of publishing this drivel, yet it went ahead, knowing exactly what its source would write.

Why aren’t the usual suspects defending the ST for its ‘anti-semitic’ cartoon?

Blog, Media, Race relations

A few weeks ago, when Libdem MP Lynne Featherstone called for Julie Burchill to be sacked from the Observer after her transphobic article, Nick Cohen and a few others were apoplectic.

How dare she call for Burchill to be sacked and try to influence a newspaper? they thundered.

In an earlier piece for the Observer, Nick Cohen wrote an article titled ‘Nothing, however vile, justifies censorship‘, saying:

Innocence of Muslims is one of the hardest cases for liberals I’ve come across. But even this tawdry piece of work raises problems for the proponents of censorship. The first is a problem with language. Mount a critique of Islamist religious fanaticism, and it is only a matter of time before you find that defenders of religious reaction have hijacked liberal language. You are an “orientalist”, they say, an “Islamophobe”, “neo-colonialist” or “neocon”.

I agree. I hate censorship too. But what annoys me more are double standards.

This week 20 Tory MPs wrote to the Sunday Times calling for an apology for its cartoon on Benjamin Netanyahu.

Calling for an apology is not the same as calling for someone to be sacked, but it is on the same spectrum – with lawmakers trying to influence the editorial judgement and content of the press. The impact of this letter and Lynne Featherstone’s call would be the same: self-censorship and a chilling effect on robust debate.

Yet, you don’t see the usual suspects complain about how free speech is being stifled here. Why not?

PS, I don’t believe the cartoon itself, while published at the wrong time, was anti-semitic. Martin Rowson has written an excellent defence, but this article in the Haaretz titled ‘Four reasons why U.K. cartoon of Netanyahu isn’t anti-Semitic in any way‘ – is a must-read (1. It is not directed at Jews; 2. It does not use Holocaust imagery; 3. There was no discrimination; 4. This is not what a blood libel looks like).

Update: Index on Censorship finally write something on the issue, condemning attempts to shut down the debate too.

All the years Israel said an Iranian nuke was imminent…

News

The US media is once again reporting Israeli speculation on Iranian attempts to build a nuclear weapon.

Now, I do think the current Iranian government would like to have nuclear weapons capability.

But here’s a timeline of Israeli warnings on Iranian nukes (via Opinio Juris)

1984: West German intelligence sources claim that Iran’s production of a bomb “is entering its final stages.” US Senator Alan Cranston claims Iran is seven years away from making a weapon.

1992: Israeli parliamentarian Benjamin Netanyahu tells his colleagues that Iran is 3 to 5 years from being able to produce a nuclear weapon.

1995: The New York Times reports that US and Israeli officials fear “Iran is much closer to producing nuclear weapons than previously thought” – less than five years away. Netanyahu claims the time frame is three to five years.

1996: Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres claims Iran will have nuclear weapons in four years.

1998: Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld claims Iran could build an ICBM capable of reaching the US within five years.

1999: An Israeli military official claims that Iran will have a nuclear weapon within five years.

2001: The Israeli Minister of Defence claims that Iran will be ready to launch a nuclear weapon in less than four years.

2002: The CIA warns that the danger of nuclear weapons from Iran is higher than during the Cold War, because its missile capability has grown more quickly than expected since 2000 – putting it on par with North Korea.

2003: A high-ranking Israeli military officer tells the Knesset that Iran will have the bomb by 2005 — 17 months away.

2006: A State Department official claims that Iran may be capable of building a nuclear weapon in 16 days.

2008: An Israeli general tells the Cabinet that Iran is “half-way” to enriching enough uranium to build a nuclear weapon and will have a working weapon no later than the end of 2010.

2009: Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak estimates that Iran is 6-18 months away from building an operative nuclear weapon.

2010: Israeli decision-makers believe that Iran is at most 1-3 years away from being able to assemble a nuclear weapon.

2011: IAEA report indicates that Iran could build a nuclear weapon within months.

2013: Israeli intelligence officials claim that Iran could have the bomb by 2015 or 2016.

There shouldn’t be any doubt that it is entirely foolish to rely on Israeli intelligence on the matter.

The real reason Tories want to pull out of the EU

News

David Cameron wants to ‘repatriate powers’ and most Tory MPs want to pull out of the EU for one key reason: to get rid of the Working Time Directive.

What is that? The TUC have published this helpful graphic to explain.

This legislation contains a lot of very basic protections at work that people in the UK now take totally for granted.

Share the image with your friends and colleagues.

(via http://stopemploymentwrongs.org)