Distorting St George’s day
To the dismay of the hysterical anti-PC brigade in Sandwell, the local council has cancelled funding for a St. George’s Day parade. Suddenly a cause celebre, the issue is discussed on Stormfront, and has become part of a campaign by nationalist nutjobs, the English Democrats.
This news has been picked up by our own Bob Piper and has received stinging rebuke from Tory Harry Phibbs of Conservative Home. One wonders if Councillor Phibbs knows what sort of company he is keeping on the issue. He should do, if he reads his own comment box.
It has always seemed something of an irony that the imagery adopted by parts of the far right in the UK has been of a mythical individual, a foreigner, who never visited England.
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Taking a wider approach to ‘liberties’
I hope to write a few articles discussing different aspects of the Convention on Modern Liberty, beginning with the bedfellows we seem to have chosen – some of which rather dislike one another.
It says something when both animal liberationists – many of whom are also involved with organisations such as the League Against Cruel Sports – and pro-hunting lobbyists can get on the same bandwagon. Why would we jump into bed with this group?
Similarly, why would we allow Conservatives to take stands at a Convention on Modern Liberties? David Cameron has already admitted, on numerous occasions, that he will not be seeking to overturn a lot of the government’s legislation – and indeed, it was the Thatcher government where the trend of legislating for every tabloid headline truly started. Equally, the drive for tougher sentencing and reduced judicial discretion has often come from the Conservative benches.
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Church of England: No BNP here
Church of England clergy will shortly be forbidden from joining the fascist BNP. Yesterday, the General Synod voted by an overwhelming majority of 322 to 13 for the CoE to become like the prison service or the police in proscribing membership.
It’s a good idea, since it prevents the BNP from using the name of the Church of England at any meetings or six-person rallies they might hold, but it rather misses the point.
Should Geert Wilders be allowed in?
The vaguely ridiculous figure of Geert Wilders will be no stranger to those on the internet who keep an eye on the politics of our continental cousins. Wilders, leader of the Dutch Freedom Party, has been informed by the government that he will be denied leave to enter the UK under the laws which permit EU member states to deny any citizen entry on the basis of danger to public security. Whatever that means.
His film “Fitna” caused a stir amidst right and left wing circles when it was released last year. I got a chance to watch it last year and frankly I can’t see what the fuss is about. It shows quotes from the Koran and from Islamic fundamentalists besides images of 9/11, the 7/7 bombings and various other attacks by terrorists. Now he has been invited to show it in the House of Lords by (who else?) a UKIP peer.
Whether Wilders should be permitted to come to the UK, whether he should be permitted to show his video and whether or not the thesis of his video is correct are three different matters. To answer these questions, we must begin by categorizing him; is he racist? A fascist? “Just” anti-Islamic? I find the last troubling since I am anti-Islamic, and anti-all organised religions myself, but in no way similar to Geert.
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So much for racism and the BNP at Lindsey
Fantastic news, which I’ve only picked up this morning via the comments section of Phil’s A Very Public Sociologist site. The BNP, whose website is spouting a lot of crap about how their councillors are being called in, in preference to the union of the wildcat strikers, were actually turned away from the picket lines. The video below gives more information.
Now that’s how to institute a no-platform policy: from below.
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News media: not just biased, but rubbish
I don’t know what confluence of planets has caused me to notice this at the present time, but the media are really, really bad at their jobs. I’m signed up to a number of RSS feeds, from the BBC and Sky onwards. I read the Guardian and the Times if not daily then every other day.
And yet there are an enormous amount of stories which are of huge importance but which are receiving minimal coverage, for some reason.
Isn’t it time socialists abandoned Labour?
With the declaration of the government that there will simply be no vote on the proposed third runway at Heathrow, the shaky position of the socialist Left in Labour is thrown into stark relief.
If socialist MPs, councillors and activists can’t influence the policy of Labour, one wonders why we should continue to be part of Labour at all? Our situation very much seems to resemble the song by Stealers Wheel, “Clichés to the left of us, Lib-Dems to the right…”
What are the pros and cons of being a socialist and supporting the Labour Party?
On an electoral basis, the claim that it is the best of a bad selection is on very uncertain ground. Frankly I’d prefer to elect Evan Harris, of the Lib-Dems, over pretty much any member of the Labour Cabinet. I’ll certainly be choosing Caroline Flint Lucas of the Greens over Peter Skinner in the upcoming European elections. Yet this decision not to vote Labour cannot be translated into a rule-of-thumb. It is only in certain areas where I would choose to advocate that.
The smugness of the right
The smugness pours through Iain Dale’s article at the Guardian’s Comment is Free site, as Dale tries to assess how much of a competitor Derek Draper’s Labour List is likely to be to sites such as Conservative Home.
Liberal Conspiracy is too serious, according to Dale, so there is room open on the Left for a big blog, but the smugness threatens to choke off whatever point Dale was making when he says, “It would be good…to have some real competition for a change.”
In the words of my forefathers, what an arrogant little shoite Iain Dale is. What I’d like to know is this: by what standard can Conservative Home or the Spectator Coffee House be judged as more successful than any individual or collective Left effort? More visits? By that definition, the websites of the mainstream meedja have us all beaten – but the very reason we bloggers write in the first place is that we don’t want to read inane drivel. Quality matters – not just popular appeal.
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Youth crime and Tories; another broken record
Since the Tory conference 2007, there have been periods where every week or so, the Conservatives announce a new policy with which they hope to win over more votes. It seems to be the nature of politics these days; one doesn’t exist unless one is appearing in the media. When announcing such policies, the Tories in question often indulge in hyperbole, blaming Labour, citing the end of Labour, citing the awakening of popular consciousness against Labour and so on, ad nauseam.
The last few weeks have seen such behaviour with regard to crime – knife crime at first, then moving to general crime and now it is the turn of youth crime. “Back public against crime – Tory” is the ridiculously jingoistic title of the BBC piece showcasing Dominic Grieve’s interview with the Indy. The Shadow Attorny General has been saying that we should give adults the right to intervene with any young person they feel to be acting in an anti-social manner.
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Why regional minimum wages are a bad idea
Over any holiday, online reading material tends to accumulate. Christmas 2008 has been no exception even though no few blogs are on vacation. One that I really wanted to challenge was the post over at Mil’s place entitled, “The Petri Dish Philosophy of Politics“. Mil makes the argument that we should import regional minimum wages into the UK, allowing say Birmingham or Manchester to experiment with a higher minimum wage.
The problem is that, as often as not, what we grow in a Petri dish is harmful.
Regional minimum wages exist in the US, where there is a federal, a state-by-state and in a few cases a city-based minimum wage. The San Francisco Chronicle carries an article about how the SF minimum wage is about to climb to $9.79 per hour, against the wishes of local employers, but much to the appreciation of SF workers. Economists on the other hand think it helps keep the unskilled unemployed.
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Bloggers against libel: help Alex Hilton
There are interesting stories afoot: a former member of Labour, who joined RESPECT and then joined the Conservative Party, is currently suing Alex Hilton, former parliamentary candidate and manager / former owner of Labourhome.
Some of the details can be read on his site. The news was brought to my attention at Harry’s Place, and Dave Osler is apparently also being sued?
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The DUP and the IRA
As much as I despise Sinn Fein for their pretensions to the mantle of progressives in Northern Ireland, they are barely a patch on the hypocrisy of the DUP. When historians return to the period of devolved government at some point in the future, I hope many of them will notice the flagrant obstructionism of the DUP to (it must be conceded) an essentially pointless endeavour – a functioning devolved government.
At every possible turn, the DUP complained that the structures of devolved government could not go forward until one objective after another was met. Disarmament of the IRA, ‘complete’ disarmament of the IRA, disbandment of the IRA, disbandment of all IRA ’structures.’ Now, finally things have been whittled down to the disbandment of the IRA Army Council as a body, despite its lapse into disuse.
New Labour, fascism and silly squabbles
What would the blogosphere be without other blogs to gripe about? Harry’s Place continue this fine tradition with a screamer of a post about an image dreamed up by Derek Wall, leader of the Green Party, posted along with an article at the Socialist Unity blog. When I say a screamer of the post, I mean read the comments section; the post itself is fairly anodyne but Harry’s Place seems to be pulling Hayek-style “socialism equals fascism” wannabes by the dozen.
If you’re at a loss to understand what all the fuss could possibly be about and can’t be bothered visiting either site linked to above, look at the following picture:
What is the Tory health plan exactly?
How wonderful it is to see the Conservatives acknowledging that obesity might be a problem in our modern society.
Having recently checked my Body Mass Index, suitably adjusted for a non-smoker, I find that I am something like 0.4 of a point overweight, so I was particularly interested to see what Andrew Lansley might propose to help get our nation of lard-arses on the move again.
Once more it turns out that the Conservative Party is all about big talk but limp wristed action; so with pornography, now also with the health of the nation. The grand plan is to ask the food industry if they would be good chaps and reduce the size of the portions they dish out, presumably meaning in ready-meals, frozen meals and desserts. I imagine that the food industry will have no problem with that as they’ll keep the sticker price the same, padding their profit margins.
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Are unions at the point of no return?
When John McDonnell, hero of the working class, ran for the Labour leadership, one of the most convincing arguments in his arsenal was the demand to repeal the battery of repressive legislation aimed at the Trade Unions, which the Tories fielded and then Labour compounded.
Recently this has again come to the fore, with speculation that Labour is ‘in hoc to its paymasters’ following union bailouts of Labour’s massive debts.
Gordon Brown, while at the G8 summit in Japan has attempted to put paid to this sort of accusation:
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Outflanking David Davis…to the right
The BNP have a lot to answer for in regard to pulling down the gene ral tenor of virtually any electoral debate, but it is not to them that I refer herein.
No, it is to ‘independent candidate’ Jill Saward who is running against David Davis in Haltemprice and Howden on the basis that all our society seems to be interested in are the rights of the accused, not the rights of the victims.
This one could give the hang ‘em and flog ‘em brigade a run for their money when she declares that…
Was will das Weib? Was Will Europa?
Well might Brian Cowen echo the age-old question of Sigmund Freud, what do women want?
The Irish rejection of the Lisbon Treaty pulled a large number of women voters into the “No” camp. Indeed Cowen and his government, as they scratch their heads at the imponderable, impertinent ignorance of the Irish electorate in rejecting modernisation, freedom, democracy and mama’s apple pie, might well ask what Ireland wants.
The rhetoric leading up to the vote on the Treaty of Lisbon was apocalyptic. A vote against the treaty was a vote against progress; anything less than full-throated support for the treaty was calling doom upon the Irish economy. Even French Foreign Minister and ‘respected humanitarian’ Bernard Kouchner weighed into the debate by declaring that a “No” vote would hurt Europe but that it would hurt Ireland most of all.
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I don’t care what motorists think
I will be the first to admit, I don’t drive a car. I use trains more than any other form of transport except walking. Buses come a very distant third. Perhaps this makes me totally biased in respect of the concept of congestion charges but I am.
When the opposition to congestion charges reads like a poor man’s Daily Mail, I don’t see any reason to care what motorists think. If this is genuinely a cross-section of what motorists think then frankly they’re too stupid to be allowed an opinion never mind suffrage.
If readers are wondering why this subject and why now, it’s because Graham Stringer has declared that if we go through with congestion charges, we’ll torpedo our chances of election in Manchester by alienating voters in marginal seats. Evidently the notion of getting his parliamentary P45 doesn’t appeal to Stringer.
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The natural progress of procreation?
During the HFE Bill debate, several members of the House of Commons stood up to claim that fathers are being sidelined by the lack of legislation on whether lesbians should have to provide evidence of a male role model in order to qualify for IVF.
Several other members stood up to claim that the child has rights, and that these rights are best looked after by the existence of such a ‘father’ clause.
The terrible logical inconsistencies in such statements became very obvious in debate. If we’re insisting on a male role model, because it will result in a better brought up child, why is it immaterial what sort of role model we’re talking about? If the male role model is a drunk, a wife-beater or any number of other things, then that will hardly result in a better brought up child.
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Proud to be ‘indecent’
A guest-post over at Harry’s Place by ‘Ben’ advertises what it means to be a ‘Decent.’ Seemingly this is shorthand for someone who supports the war, is opposed to anyone further left than Jon Cruddas and genuinely thinks that the Parliamentary Labour Party should be staffed by people like Oona King.
With these blanket labels flying around, it is difficult to know the extent to which any given author is perpetrating a deliberate slander, or to which they’re simply caught up in their own misguided rhetoric.
I’m not sure which is the case when guest-poster Ben makes the following declaration about why he turned from Stopper to idiot:
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You can read articles through the front page, via Twitter or rss feeds.
» How bad is the feline obesity crisis?
» Why don’t MPs pay back tuition fees instead of increasing ours?
» Obama is right to slam BP – and why capitalists should too
» Why does Phillip Blond see civic cohesion as a security issue?
» So what if the Labour candidates went to Oxbridge?
» Last night’s Labour hustings: will it get interesting or turn to torture?
» It’s now down to Ken to win London for Labour
» The Labour people need
» Blog Nation: what would you like to see discussed?
» The Labour leadership’s token contender.. and it’s not Diane Abbott
» In defence of these fraternal nominations
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