Monthly Archives: May 2013

#occupyGezi: Why Istanbul has turned into a warzone

News

Police staged an early morning raid on protesters who resist against the demolition of Gezi Park in the heart of Istanbul for a shopping mall to be built.

What started with around a 100 protesters has turned into a spectacle of tens of thousands over recent days.

People camped out in the park, sang songs, read books, danced.

But yesterday, the police used a Mass Incident Intervention Vehicle (TOMA) to disperse the demonstrators and turned the surrounding of the park a warzone.

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The protesters have released this statement

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If you’re looking for photos from #occupygezi, try these http://on.fb.me/18Ds3Zs.
For quotes try Leyla Besktas: on Facebook, or via Twitter.

UPDATES: There are videos too

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Pictures copyright © Tolga Sezgin / NarPhotos

Did this force Tory MP Patrick Mercer to resign?

News

The lobbying scandal has just claimed another victim.

Patrick Mercer MP resigns over lobbying scandal, reports the Telegraph.

The Telegraph and the BBC’s Panorama have been investigating the former shadow minister over a major lobbying scandal and is poised to publish a series of revelations about Mr Mercer tomorrow.

Lobby hacks on Twitter today have been saying that Mercer has been stung by reporters posing as lobbyists on behalf of the country of Fiji, to set up an All-party parliamentary group.

It turns out Patrick Mercer MP has been asking questions in the House of Commons regarding Fiji.

According to TheyWorkForYou:

1) On 16th May Patrick Mercer MP wrote to ask:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs

(1) what discussions his Department has had with the government of Fiji about that country’s human rights record;

(2) what discussions his Department has had with the government of Fiji about the status of Fiji within the Commonwealth;

(3) what discussions his Department has had with the government of Fiji about the effects on Fiji of its suspension from the Commonwealth;

(4) what his policy is on the readmission of Fiji to the Commonwealth; and if he will make a statement.

2) On 20th May Patrick Mercer MP wrote to ask:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what assessment he has made of the UK’s investment in public transport in Fiji; and if he will make a statement.

In adition, he also raised Early Day Motions.

An EDM on 26th March stated (ht @steveplrose):

That this House recognises that the government of Fiji is making all reasonable efforts to restore democracy; believes that in the light of ongoing hardship being endured by its businesses, there is no justification for Fiji’s continued suspension from the Commonwealth; and, therefore, urges the Government to arrange a ministerial visit in order to help prepare for and assist its readmission.

Oh dear…

The UK needs to worry about ‘depression deniers’ not ‘deficit deniers’

Blog, Economy

I’ve written before that I find the current political debate ahead of the spending review somewhat confusing. The Government, and many of their supporters in the media, now appear to think that the way to gain “economic credibility” is to commit to a fiscal plan that has failed to achieve growth, deal with the deficit or even retain the UK’s AAA rating.

The argument can be summarised as: “our plan has failed to achieve any of its goals and opposition parties will only be seen as credible if they agree to stick with it.”

I’ve argued before that the real debate ahead of the coming CSR should not be whether political parties sign up to it but instead what the UK’s fiscal framework should look like.

A more appropriate framework for the UK would focus on reducing debt/GDP over a much longer timetable.

The more I think about it though, the more I think an even bigger point is being missed in the current debate around the politics of the CSR.

On most forecasts the economy is still likely to be depressed in 2015/16 and indeed 2016/17.

The crucial number to examine here is the output gap – and in particular the OBR’s own assessment of it.

Simply put, the output gap is a measure of how much spare capacity there is in the economy. If the output gap is negative then the economy is operating below capacity and there is a strong case for expanding demand to make good the difference While if the output gap is positive then the economy is operating above trend and may be overheating with consequences for inflation.

Back at in June 2010 the OBR forecast that by 2015 the output gap would be -0.9% of GDP, i.e. the economy would be operating a below potential but not by a huge amount.

The current OBR forecast is for an output gap to be -3.4% in 2015 and still at -2.9% in 2016. In other words, come April 2016 (the time when any new government can actually make spending decisions in a meaningful manner) the economy is still expected to have an output gap of almost three per cent . The OBR’s own forecasts imply that there is room for a fiscal expansion of almost three per cent of GDP in 2016/17.

Recent work from NIESR, funded by the TUC, found that in ‘crisis times’ (when output is depressed – i.e. a -2.9% output gap implies ‘crisis times’) then a capital spending intensive stimulus of 2% of GDP will boost growth, lower unemployment and lead to a lower debt/GDP ratio in the medium term.

Much of the current politics around the CSR feels “very 2010”.

The assumption in much of the political (if not the economic) coverage of the CSR seems that by 2015 macroeconomics will not really matter. The economy will broadly have recovered and the task of the Treasury will the essentially distributional job of managing cuts in public spending and tax rises to close the deficit, rather than actively managing demand and boosting growth. This is looking like an increasing optimistic view.

The economy in 2015 and 2016 is likely to remain, by any reasonable standard, depressed. The case for a new fiscal framework, which gives governments the room to borrow to boost growth in the short term, will remain strong.

To put this all really simply, we shouldn’t be so concerned about the ‘deficit deniers’, it’s the ‘depression deniers’ we need to worry about.

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A longer version of this post is at Touchstone blog.

Andy Coulson, David Cameron and Immigration Frankenstein Monster

Blog, Immigration

Andy Coulson apparently has some advice for Cameron on how to deal with the rise of UKIP and public about immigration:

I’m not convinced that’s where the public are. Broadly speaking, they care less about where someone is from and more about the basic principles of fairness and in particular the impact of immigration on pubic services. And in those areas – especially around free housing and benefits – good policies are in place. The trick is to find ways of communicating them to the public more frequently.

Put aside for a moment that the Tories think they have good policies in place. What we’re seeing is the slow realisation on the Right that they’ve created an Immigration Frankenstein Monster – one that could consume them too.

James Kirkup in the Telegraph adds himself:

In other words, voters aren’t so much concerned about immigration as its consequences. That’s a point I’ve heard a few Tories — ministers included — make in private, but few, precious few, will say so publicly. I wonder if Mr Coulson’s candour will encourage others to speak up?

Others won’t speak out because the big elephant in the room is the right-wing press.

The Immigration Frankenstein Monster theory works like this:

While in opposition, the Conservatives constantly stoked up paranoia and anger about immigration by making absurd and baseless claims. The tabloid press wasn’t just a willing partner – they were pleased that senior Tories fed the conspiracy lunacy.

But with the anger stoked up, Tories are having a hard time keeping a lid on it while in power. They know it undermines growth and deprives UK of foreign student cash, but they need to please their base. Despite increasingly draconian speeches and measures, voters aren’t convinced and think the Tories can’t deliver on promises.

So some of them are moving back to Labour on the issue in disappointment.

But the voters most obsessed with immigration are moving to UKIP, which presents Cameron with a dilemma. If he ignores them then UKIP remains powerful and he gets lambasted in the right-wing press. If he reaches out to them he will lose more moderate voters but may not actually tempt many UKIP voters back (since immigration is genuinely difficult to control / predict).

Besides, there is no easy way for the Tories to ‘communicate’ they have immigration under control, as Coulson suggests.

1) They have already tried very hard with major speeches and policy announcements. You can only do this for so long before the public tunes out.

2) Tabloid coverage of immigration maintains the lunacy of the past and gives the impression that the Tories don’t have it under control. Therefore voters who are most angry about it aren’t even willing to come back.

Plus, the Tory leadership cannot credibly challenge a press mentality on immigration that they fostered in opposition.

The Frankenstein Monster of Immigration, which was once an electoral asset, is turning into a big liability. Ed Miliband has done an admirable job of avoiding the same trap so far and he should stick to it. But Cameron is in a mess of his own making – a mess that the right-wing press will only add to.

The ten most cringingly bad #guardiancoffee tweets

News

So the Guardian has a coffeeshop now!

This has predictably started some attempts at humour on Twitter.

Some were genuinely funny…

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But sadly it went downhill very quickly. The bitterness couldn’t be stopped

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In fact the jokes got painfully worse and worse…

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And the joke might even be on the jokers…

Internet you let yourself down today…

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Update: EDL chaos in trying to avoid Help for Heroes ban

News, Race relations

See updates at the end

News this week that Help for Heroes would reject donations by the English Defence League came as a big blow to the far-right group.

Its leader ‘Tommy Robinson’ was crestfallen. JustGiving.com also shut down his donations page after the media coverage.

A Help for Heroes spokesperson told reporters: ‘He’s the only one that’s come to our attention but tonight we’ll be doing a cross-count to make sure that anyone else that’s saying they’re EDL will not be allowed to fundraise for us.

But now Tommy Robinson is trying to get around the ban by having another EDL member do the fundraising in the EDL’s name.

It’s also likely that the money will go to the EDL’s own coffers rather than than of Help For Heroes, since the latter has rejected English Defence League money.

In a series of tweets, screenshots below, Tommy Robinson passes the baton on to ‘Sgt Glen Hughes’ – who is also an EDL supporter.

Hughes plans to fundraise with Tommy Robinson and solicit money… though it’s not clear where it will go to.

It’s not clear if Help For Heroes will accept money from the far-right group under a different name.

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via EDL News and this FB page of screenshots.

UPDATE: The Independent follows up our story, as the soldier and Tommy Robinson try and delete their tweets. Hah!

Plus…

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Ten reasons why the Tory plan to limit visits to the GP is barmy and will cost lives

Blog, Health

Monty Python famously had a Ministry of Silly Walks. Sometimes it starts to look like David Cameron is running a Ministry for Silly, Stupid and Downright Dangerous Ideas. The latest of these to be floated* by the Conservative Policy Forum is to limit the number of GP visits individuals are entitled to on an annual basis.

Another way of phrasing this would be “penalise people who are sick a lot”.

Here are ten sets of circumstances in which this could lead to, well, death, among other issues.

1. Currently the people who make the most appointments are the elderly. If older people feel that they’re a burden, especially with long term conditions like high blood pressure, they won’t seek help. Thousands of elderly people, including my grandma, already fail to spot and report conditions like pneumonia and minor strokes.

2. People with long-term medical conditions that affect their immune system. AIDS is an obvious one, people taking immuno-suppressant medication after organ transplant is another. These people need to be vigilant in reporting any minor illness to their GP.

3. Patients with multiple interacting conditions. For example Crone’s Disease sufferers may not be able to readily absorb medicines given for other conditions so may need repeated visits to adjust the dosage.

4. People with minor symptoms of potentially serious conditions. Charities addressing conditions like bowel cancer are forever telling people to go to their GP if they spot blood in their stool or seem to be losing weight for no reason. Knowing there’s a limit on visits is surely going to encourage people to wait longer before raising these apparently small issues.

5. Similarly new parents with sickly kids may visit doctors multiple times over fairly small issues, it’s natural for new parents to be over-cautious. Discouraged from making frequent visits serious conditions like meningitis could be missed.

6. Those who suffer from mental health problems are also put at risk. This is another group of people who use more GP visits than average at present. Mental health conditions can’t be treated in a one-off way, they’re long-term and need monitoring and a variety of approaches tried to tackle them. Refusing to treat such patients would inevitably lead to deaths from anorexia and suicide.

7. People feeling unwell who have already “used up” their allocated number of visits may resort to borrowing a friend’s ID to speak to a doctor. Faced with the wrong set of medical records doctors may prescribe medicines that are dangerous for the patient.

8. People with sudden emergency medical problems – car crash victims, heart attacks, epilepsy sufferers, are placed at greater risk because Accident and Emergency rooms are suddenly clogged up with people who’ve run out of GP appointments to use.

9. Young people visiting their GP to discuss sexual health issues in confidence. What will happen when they are unwell and their parents or carers suggest they see their GP? How will they explain they have fewer appointments left to use? This breeches their right to confidentiality and risks encouraging them to lie and avoid medical attention.

10. People who are unhappy with the care they’ve received from their GP. Everyone’s entitled to seek a second opinion. A simple example would be a woman who’s doctor refuses to refer her for a termination. If you happen to live in an area where high numbers of doctors are unwilling to help women seeking abortion, you could end up using up all your remaining appointments without getting the referral you need. Or a victim of rape or assault who wants to try different professionals until they find one they are comfortable talking to.

But I guess what Cameron and his team are trying to build is a health service that works perfectly well for everyone except the old, children, the sick, parents, the poor, young people, people with mental health problems, people with sexual health problems, and victims of car crashes, cancer, meningitis, stroke, heart attack, epilepsy, AIDS, Crone’s Disease, crisis pregnancy, rape and assault.

In short there are millions of people who might need to see their GP more often than an arbitrary number of times in a given year. Actually I’m one of them. Sometimes I feel I should get reward points I’m there so often. Over the last couple of years I’ve found about six lumps in my breasts. Each time the doctor asks me to make a couple of repeat appointments so she can check if the lump is temporary or changing, each time I get referred to the local hospital for an MRI and sometimes a biopsy. So far the diagnosis is that I have “dense breast tissue”. This may explain why the published political opinions of The Sun’s page three models never seem all that insightful, but it’s nothing to worry about.

What my doctor has never told me is “hey, if you find another lump – just ignore it”.

There’s a petition you can sign online on this issue. https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/page/s/dont-cap-GP-visits

Met police wrongly smashes 17 doors every week

News

Each week, roughly seventeen completely innocent households have their doors smashed in by the police.

As a result the Met police pays out nearly £400,000 a year just to compensate victims whose doors have been falsely smashed.

London Assembly Member Jenny Jones, deputy chair of the Police and Crime Committee, said:

Inevitably, mistakes will happen occasionally, I am astonished that around 1,000 false entries happen every year.”

Each mistake not only costs the Met, and therefore the public, money in compensation, but there is also the disruption and distress for the innocent person who has the police crashing into their home. It’s ridiculous that, each week, roughly seventeen completely innocent people have their doors smashed in by the police.

The information came to light via a Freedom of Information request sent by the website LondonlovesBusiness.

Gill Barratt, defending the Met Police, said: “The vast majority of these entries result in a positive outcome, however, occasionally officers get it wrong, and in these incidents it is right that compensation is paid. It is notable that the number of incidents of wrongful forced entry is falling year-on-year.”

The website was sent a breakdown of compensation figures the Met paid out last year.

For 2010/2011, the number of claims: 324, and compensation paid out: £331,094,19
For 2011/2012, the number of claims: 269, and compensation paid out: £245,243,07
For 2012/2013, the number of claims: 358, and compensation paid out: £366,280.90

(ht LondonLovesBusiness)

Note, the numbers released by the Met refer to number of claims, not the number of houses wrongly broken and entered. The total number of doors wrongly smashed every year in London is near 1000.

UK Muslims to march in memory of Lee Rigby

News

British Muslim groups are organising marches and rally in memory of the soldier Lee Rigby, who died last week in Woolwich.

A silent march will be held tomorrow afternoon from 5pm in Ilford, starting at Ilford Junction.

A Facebook page for the event is here.

A coalition of Muslim and anti-racist groups are organising a separate event for Friday afternoon, to be held in Woolwich.

The second march will be held in advance of a BNP demonstration also in Woolwich on Saturday. Details of this event should be finalised and released today.

Both events are seeking police permission.

The poster for the event on Thursday

A liberal left welfare reform plan

a) Section, Labour party, The Left

Labour MP Simon Danzcuk wrote an article recently attacking the ‘Metropolitan liberal wing’ of the Left for their support of the status quo on welfare and their opposition to any kind of welfare reform. Striking a similar tone, Isabel Hardman in the Telegraph noted ‘the Left’s lack of resolve’ on welfare reform, citing the way that Labour ‘scuttled away’ from reforming the assessment of entitlement to disability benefits.

In both cases, the assumption is that opposing one particular daft idea necessarily implies support for the status quo. Those of us on the Metropolitan liberal left have all sorts of ideas for reforming the welfare state. These include:

1. Introduce universal, affordable childcare.

2. Make work pay by increasing the minimum wage above inflation, expanding the number of employers who pay a living wage, and introducing a Community Allowance, where people can take on ‘mini jobs’ of up to 16 hours per week with community organisations while continuing to receive their benefits.

3. Allow councils to borrow to build hundreds of thousands of new homes, and take on vested interests in the private rented sector.

4. Cancel Atos’ contract and enable disabled people to co-design a reformed Work Capability Assessment which treats people with dignity and reduces the error rate from 17% to under 1%.

5. Introduce a Right to Paid Work, offering socially useful jobs of at least 25 hours per week paid at the minimum wage to all people unemployed for two years or more.

6. Replace the Work Programme with grant funding for charities to support unemployed people to develop their skills and find work.

7. Develop a national strategy to ensure that by 2020 no one has to rely on a foodbank to feed themselves or their family.

8. Introduce new government targets to reduce poverty for pensioners and working age adults as well as children. Set a target that poverty for all three groups should be lower in 2020 than it was in 2010.

9. Link increases in benefits to increases in earnings.

10. Delay implementation of universal credit, cancel localisation of Council Tax Benefit, and instead focus on improving and simplifying the current system by reducing the error rate, expanding Social Fund crisis grants and loans, and improving the quality of service offered by Jobcentres to claimants.

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The last time that the liberal left had significant influence on welfare policy was between 1997 and roughly 2004, a time which saw record falls in poverty amongst children and pensioners, and increases in employment rates amongst groups such as lone parents and disabled people. The centre right reform agenda, led under successive governments by David Freud over the past few years, has been far less impressive, marked by bold claims about reform combined with remarkable incompetence in delivery.

It might give right wing politicians a thrill to promise yet another biggest shake up since Beveridge or crack down on scroungers, but I think we’ve had quite enough of them overclaiming, underdelivering and then trying to fix the evidence to cover it up. Instead, the liberal left’s approach is focused on achievable solutions to the real problems facing people on low incomes.