Recent Articles

How the media keeps fuelling stereotypes of black males

On Monday this week, Richard Godwin’s article in the Evening Standard painted the hugely diverse, British black community with a brush of unemployment, a poor command of English and the jobcentre.

Godwin’s method of covering the story of black unemployment – by approaching random black people outside a jobcentre, meant his coverage largely ignored the wider black community in Britain.

His first quote: “There’s no jobs, nothing else to say, bruv”.
continue reading… »

Nat. Community Service could now cost £50m

Earlier this year a report by the Education Select Committee said that a total of £37 million had been set aside by the government to fund a National Community Service programme, due to launch in 2012.

However, a Freedom of Information request by myself for Liberal Conspiracy has found that the estimated costs for this scheme has jumped by 35% to £50 million.

The same FOI response says the government is planning to use a “commercial process” to outsource the running of the NCS scheme. This potentially points to private, profit-driven companies running the National Community Service.

The involvement of private companies in running the NCS also hinders transparency on the project itself.

Information on funding for the NCS beyond 2012 was withheld from the FOI response.

Section 43 (2) protects information which would, or would be likely to, prejudice the commercial interests of any person (including the public authority holding it).

Even Parliamentary Committees are having a tough time trying to find out more about the NCS.

An Education Select Committee report also said earlier the government’s response was “vague about public funding” for the NCS scheme.

Cost of providing the National Community Service places in 2012 now could be as high as £50m, admits the government in the FOI request.

FOI REQUEST RESPONSE

WikiLeaks: Australia tried to hide Afghanistan troops increase

A diplomatic cable sent on 5th April 2007, published by Wikileaks this week, has revealed that the Australian government tried to cover-up its troop increase in Afghanistan in 2007.

The troop increase was to occur 2 weeks after the cable was sent.

The classified cable states that:

The GOA [Government of Australia] does not plan to announce the new deployment until Aptil 2010, and Foster ask that we [US government] not publicly mention the decision.

Stephanie Foster was the First International Secretary for International Policy in the Australian government.

The cable was sent to Washington DC by the US embassy in Canberra.

But Prime Minister John Howard’s plans were thwarted at the time when news of the military deployments were leaked to the public anyway. He had to admit to them soon after.

Despite the public announcement by John Howard, the cable highlights how the Australian government considered concealing international deployments from its own citizens.

WikiLeaks reveals US attempt to buy deadly biological weapons

A recent wave of new wikileaks have revealed that the USA attempted to import and replicate 184 of the deadliest viruses on Earth.

The German Foreign Ministry’s Head of Export control, Markus Klinger, sent a diplomatic cable to Washington DC to legitimise the export of 184 of “absolutely among the most dangerous pathogens in the world”.

Sent in 2009, this cable reveals the US development of biological weapons of mass-destruction.

The German Minister admits:

The delivery would place the recipient in the position of being able to create replicating recombinant infectious species of these viruses.

The German government intended to export these lethal viruses for the USA to replicate.

This recent leak is part of a bigger story.

In 2002, The Guardian reported that respected scientists warned that the USA was developing a new generation of biological weapons “that undermine and possibly violate international treaties on biological and chemical warfare.”

In July 2001, the US government undermined the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention by blocking an attempt to give the convention more powers to inspect.

In other words, while the United States invadedg Iraq under the pretext of Saddam Hussein’s WMD program, it energetically pursued its own program of biological WMD.

The cable also illustrates the US government’s careless approach towards importing deadly foreign material.

The German Foreign Ministry twice requested an official US government stamp on the end-user certificate for the virus export – a stamp which the US forgot to apply to the certificate.

A new report by MPs shows why PFI should be scrapped

The PFI was a Conservative initiative. Introduced in 1992 under John Major’s government, it is a form of project finance which aims ‘to increase the scope for private financing of capital projects.” This translates into the privatisation of publicly owned assets. Labour criticised the plan from the outset as a form of privatisation (and rightly so).

The House of Commons Select Committee published its report on the PFI this week which criticises the PFI as being ‘extremely inefficient’. We can thank the report for subtracting the ‘efficiency’ argument from the Tory arsenal of pro-privatisation polemic.
continue reading… »

Six months for stealing water? It’s not remotely a fair punishment

23 year old Nicholas Robinson was sentenced on Aug 11 to 6 months in prison for stealing a £3.50 crate of water.

There is a solid argument to be made that the punishment didn’t fit the crime. Robinson had no criminal record, was in education, showed remorse and pleaded guilty. It also costs £25,000 to keep a criminal in prison for half a year. It isn’t worth paying that much to keep someone such as Robinson behind bars
continue reading… »

The #UKriots should not be used to clamp down on political protest

The government is treading a dangerous path of legislation. David Cameron said on Tuesday that the use of baton rounds by the police has been authorised. Contingency plans have also been made for the use of water cannons.

He also steps into dangerous territory by suggesting that social media must be regulated in order to prevent future such incidents.

Such plans also open up huge potential problems for the future of legitimate protests and freedom of speech.
continue reading… »

Would police abuse this face-recognition tech if it came here?

Imagine looking at a police officer for 5 seconds and then hearing him say your name.

Police officers in the USA now have technology which can register a person in seconds. BI2, a Massachusetts based company, has just released MORIS (Mobile Offender Recognition and Information System), enabling a police officer to take an iris scan in seconds and, when attached to an iPhone, take a biometric facial scan with it.

MORIS can then run the image US criminal records. Each MORIS unit costs about $3,000.
continue reading… »