My MP just doesn’t get it
Sorry to butt in here, team, but thought I would take a moment to appraise you of an exchange we’ve had with our nobody Labour MP Joan Ruddock on the 42 days’ detention vote. Thought I might as well share this correspondence, so that you also could kill a few moments on a Friday savouring the kind of limp response former Labour voters get when they approach their local Brownite buttkissing MP on issues of real significance… continue reading… »
Fighting for our civil liberties, post Davis
The Green party has put forward a candidate in the by-election against David Davis. Left of David Davis? Check. A left / progressive candidate? Check. Wants to push for even more civil liberties? Check. So the Labour and lefty bloggers must be rising up in support? Erm… well, there’s Neil Harding… and a lot of tumbleweed rolling by.
[update: non-Greens support also from: peezedtee, Dave Cole, Stuart Jefferey, Socialist Unity, Unbeliever, Pamphlet Labour]
Yes, it really does look like many lefties really will cut off their noses to spite their face on this issue. Well, I’m not sitting here praying David Davis fails miserably because the outcome would a vindicated Gordon Brown willing to push it through with the Parliament Act if the Lords reject the 42 days bill as expected.
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On ‘Open Source Campaigning’
Yesterday at the Blog Nation Event, Dan Hardie gave an account of his experiences running his Iraqi Interpreters campaign. He mentioned my post on Open Source Campaigning, but said he thought that ‘open source’ wasn’t an appropriate label, because you need a heirarchy and a leader to run an effective campaign.
To clarify, I’m not sure that the ideas of ‘leadership’ and ‘open source’ are mutually exclusive. Open Source coding projects tend to have a core team of dedicated developers, but individual tasks to code are farmed out to volunteers. Likewise with Jay Rosen’s ‘open source journalism’ – an editor or lead journalist still writes up the piece, but dozens or hundreds of other journalists are able to perform the many discrete pieces of research required.
So it is with Open Source Campaigning. You still need someone like Dan to lead the campaign and make strategic decisions, but the leg-work can be decimated if the lobbying or writing to individual MPs is shared throughout the network.
Cross-posted at my own place, obviously.
The next step for fighting 42 days
It’s time to stop the bullshit, we’ve now been sitting around for about a week and a half doing little more than bicker about the integrity of a single person while standing around gawking.
The question now should be: what can we do, and can we do it, in a way that can unite those that support and loathe David Davis’ stance?
I’ll be heading on the journey over to London today for the Liberal Conspiracy gathering and hope that this subject can be explored in more depth by those that attend.
continue reading… »
Will New Statesman run a candidate against Davis?
Word reaches me that the New Statesman editors have been looking for a candidate to run against David Davis in the by-election.
You may already be aware that today New Labour announced they wouldn’t stand anyone against Davis. Part of the problem apparently was that the Labour PPC for the area himself was against the 42 days.
Yesterday I was told that New Statesman magazine has been actively looking for someone to stand to the left of David Davis on a platform of even more civil and social liberty.
Its not clear whether they’ve found someone yet. The current edition will go to print today or tomorrow and we’ll know when it hits the news stands.
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In the interests of balance: Why we shouldn’t support David Davis
What David Davis did today was not unprecedented, but it was something quite rare. However, I would urge caution on rushing headlong to leap into bed with him and give him our support.
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Isn’t it time to abandon New Labour?
It’s difficult to say anything new about Gordon Brown’s attempts to extend pre-detention charge to 42 days, though if you want to read two accounts made recently, Anthony Barnett at OurKingdom and Martin O’Neill at New Statesman are a great start.
There are those who see the-Muslim-terrorist-threat-that-may-wipe-out-western-civilisation as so big that locking up British (Muslim) citizens for 90 days without charging them is not far enough. I’m not going to bother repudiating them. I’m not even going to bother answering those apparently on the left who are strenuously defending this stupid piece of legislation that, for once, has the entire left-wing and right-wing press united in opposition. Oh, apart from The Sun and the Daily Express, just so you know.
So why is Gordon Brown still stubbornly going ahead with it?
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My Own Little Bunny Rabbit…
Welcome to Casting the net, Liberal Conspiracy’s daily web review. As always, please feel free to share your own recommendations in the comments.
Brad Hicks and Meral Ece have two contrasting reactions to Hillary’s concession of the Democrat candidacy. Brad is full of righteous anger, Meral was more inspired.
The BBC reports that some MPs have realised that ID Cards could threaten privacy. In other news, the sky is blue, and the pope shits in the woods.
Over at my blog, a reminder of what we are actually talking about with the 42 days detention plan. Especially depressing in the light of the ICM poll that we reported here yesterday.
Jonathan Calder has tactical suggestions for Lib Dems on how to deal with David Cameron – we should hug him, and stroke him, and cuddle him, and sing to him, and call him Dave; PeeZedTee, meanwhile, has advice for Gordon Brown.
Lynne Featherstone, the relentless reformer, wanted to lower the voting age to 16; the Tories had other ideas.
And finally, Neil Gaiman and Philip Pullman are both getting involved with a campaign to say no to age banding on children’s books.
Poll backs 42 days
A Sunday Telegraph poll last night showed the public firmly behind plans for 42-day detention. Gordon Brown will refuse to offer any new concessions to Labour MPs.
42 days would breach law
The government’s concessions on 42-day pre-charge detention for terrorism suspects have left the legislation in breach of human rights law, the joint select committee on human rights will say today.
Brown to yield on 42 days
The government is preparing to offer Labour MPs a major concession to avoid losing a vote on terror detentions, the BBC has learned. It is to suggest halving the period during which police can enact these extra powers from 60 to 30 days.
MPs won’t give way on 42 days
Gordon Brown faces yet more pressure as rebel Labour MPs warned they will not give ground in their battle to prevent an extension of anti-terror laws. Next month’s Commons debates on the Counter Terrorism Bill will be a severe test of the Prime Minister’s embattled leadership, says the Independent.
42 days is dead
I have a strong feeling that the government’s plans to extend pre-charge detention to 42 days, which we’ve been running a campaign against, is dead in the water.
There are two reasons for my optimism.
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Lesbian mothers and ‘traditional’ families
Medical technology is an awesome thing. It can save lives, cure terrible diseases, rebuild bodies. It can prolong and improve the lives of the chronically ill and disabled beyond the wildest dreams of sufferers even fifty years ago. It can reattach limbs, restore sight, cure depression, return the manic to health and sanity.
But can it be used to give women control over whether and when they have children? Only if male doctors and MPs say so.
Whoever your parents are, they’re going to fuck you up to some extent. I make no apologies for assuming that gay women and single women are just as likely to make good parents as anyone else, if not more so, as children conceived via the arduous process of IVF are slightly more likely to be wanted and treasured infants. For the purposes of this post we shall assume that one’s sexual orientation has no bearing on one’s likelihood of raising an unfucked-up child, nor on one’s right to attempt to do so. With that one out the way, let’s tuck in to a tasty breakfast of radical feminism with a gin chaser.
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How MPs voted on abortion, and other points
A few things to note
- Two of the Emily’s List MPs, Celia Barlow and Kitty Ussher voted to reduce the limit to 22 weeks.
- George Osborne, Conservative MP and shadow chancellor, voted to keep the 24 week limit. Well done to him.
- A special thanks should be written to the MPs Evan Harris, Chris McCafferty, John Bercow and Dawn Primarolo for their unwavering support for 24 weeks.
- I have an article today on CIF on Christian fundamentalists and abortion.
- Tom Freeman reckons that a Tory majority of 38 week in the next election would make it possible for them to reduce the limit next time.
continue reading… »
It was Dorries wot lost it!
It came down to the crunch, and after everything, not even the 200 supporters Nadine Dorries said she had bothered to turn up to vote for a reduction in the abortion limit to 20 weeks. All the hype about the vote being close turned out to be bluster, with the amendment being rejected by a majority of 142, 190 votes for to 332 against. All the attempts by Dorries to turn to complete emotion, raising the issue of the baby boy she witnessed struggling to breathe once again during the debate, after saying that she hadn’t wanted to use it, have failed.
This was after she said that Labour MPs were supposedly on a three-line-whip to “attend” so that they knew which way they were to be expected to vote. Desperation doesn’t even begin to cover it.
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Crunch time for women’s rights today
Yesterday in Parliament, MPs voted for allowing scientists to create human-animal hybrid embryos to find cures for diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
Today there will be two free votes today:
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Emily Thornberry and 24 weeks
They’re voting on the 24-week time limit for abortion today: here’s Labour MP Emily Thornberry on the Labour party and the pro-choice lobby’s chances:
Leading Labour pro-choice MP Emily Thornberry is youngish (47), new to the national scene (first elected to parliament in 2005), able to talk a blue streak (she was a criminal lawyer), charismatic, and – at first interview, anyway – refreshingly disinterested in caution.
Truly disinterested, even: she says and does – apparently – anything. She freely describes some Labour colleagues as Neanderthals.
What is Nadine Dorries MP’s real agenda? (pt 4)
1) Consistency is not really her strong point, Bookdrunk said yesterday when Unity blogged the amendments Tory MPs are proposing to the HFE Bill. There’s Mr Edward Leigh supporting amendments to reduc the limit to 12, 14 or 16 weeks and there’s Nadine Dorries supporting reducing the limit to 20 weeks and 16 weeks! Is she not conviced by her own arguments?
But you see, that isn’t her ultimate agenda and neither is it of these other mysogynist MPs.
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HF&E Abortion-related Amendments
Not 100% sure what delights Sunny has in store for everyone today…
(’Sunny delights’, GEDDIT!!! – Sorry, bit of a Glenda moment there, only to be expected when you’re monitoring Dorries)
…but in the mean time, the list of amendments to be debated on 20th May is mounting up, necessitating an update.
As far as the upper time limit for abortion goes, the current list (with sponsors) looks like this:
continue reading… »
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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