Elected police commissioners: an opportunity for the left?
Over the next couple of years, the government are planning to introduce directly-elected police commissioners. It is easy to see the problems that this might cause. It will politicise the police, and could open the door to authoritarian right-wing populists or even fascists being elected to run police forces. After all, fighting crime is traditionally perceived as an issue where people favour right-wing solutions, with right-wing newspapers promoting fear of crime and ever more authoritarian policies.
But I think there is an opportunity here, and that lefties should develop strategies to win these elections and show how our ideas are better at reducing crime. There are several reasons why this might be possible. continue reading… »
Why I changed my mind over the Burkha debate
contribution by James Bloodworth
After initially stating my dislike for all things burka and hijab related, which, as it happens, I stand by, I have decided in hindsight that I was somewhat guilty of jumping upon the “ban the burka” bandwagon. I simply assumed that all women who do wear such garments are by default forced into doing so.
That is not to say that there isn’t a great deal of merit in that position. : there are, undoubtedly, a number of women who are forced into the burka (with the threat of Koranically sanctioned violence should they refuse); and it is also at least as important to frame the debate in terms of encouraging more women leaving their homes, as it is to simply view the debate as about the freedom to wear what one wishes.
However, it has became apparent to me that those often shouting the loudest for a burka ban were never really those for whom women’s rights had figured as an overly important issue in the past.
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When your face doesn’t fit: Facebook censorship
contribution by Elly
Facebook has closed down two groups in recent months, run by progressive sexuality organisations. The Pansy Project, an art project challenging homophobia, had its FB group removed in May. Most recently Our Porn, Ourselves the feminist-informed sex-positive project for women, had its FB group closed last week.
Between them these two groups had amassed thousands of members, and used their presence on the ubiquitous social-networking site to promote events, link to websites and communicate with a range of individuals and activists. So their closure damaged their campaiging.
The reasons given for the censorship have been vague.
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The police and liberalism of fear
In his later political writings Bernard Williams advocated an approach to political thinking that he called – following Judith Shklar – “The Liberalism of Fear”.
At its root this approach prioritises an issue which is taken to be the fundamental problem of politics: that of controlling, limiting and ordering violence between individuals and groups so as to allow peaceful relations to exist, and human achievement to flourish.
For Williams the modern liberal western state is a particularly successful – though by no means unproblematic – solution to this basic problem. The modern state, via army, police and other controlled institutions successfully monopolises legitimate violence within a given territory (to borrow Max Weber’s famous definition).
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A jury should decide the cause of Ian Tomlinson’s death
This is, or rather was, Sarah Campbell – and had she not committed suicide at the age of 18, while incarcerated in Styal women’s prison, she would now be 26 years old.
Campbell was a heroin abuser with a history of depression and she took her own life by way of an overdose of what were believed to be prescription drugs after serving a mere three days of a two and half year sentence for manslaughter.
However, it is not the circumstances of her death but the events that led to her conviction that bear serious consideration here.
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The scandal of no prosecution over Ian Tomlinson’s death
contribution by Helen
Today, the CPS ruled that no charges would be brought against the police officer who assaulted Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protests last year.
Tomlinson died shortly afterwards, but the incident in which he was struck by a police baton and pushed to the ground by an officer, was captured on camera and released to the public.
After the G20 there followed a shameful campaign of misinformation and attempted secrecy by the police, who initially claimed that they were prevented from giving Tomlison medical treatment by a “hail of bottles” thrown by protestors.
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Where New Labour led, the Tories follow
It’s so long ago it gives me a little warm glow of nostalgia, but time was that New Labour tried to ban the largest demonstration in British history, all for the sake of some grass.
No, not the sort Ministers stuff into their crack pipes, the grass in Hyde Park of course.
The demonstration, which eventually attracted over a million people, making it the largest mobilisation in the history of the UK, was to be cancelled because the grass issue may also mean…
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For the right to wear the burqa (and the right not to)
Of course the state has no business telling people what to wear, and of course the French parliament’s 355-1 decision to ban the wearing of full face covering in public was motivated primarily by racism towards Muslims.
On those considerations alone, the move should be resolutely opposed in France, and certainly not be emulated elsewhere.
But for leftists simply to leave the matter at that – as most British radical commentators have – surely smacks of what comrades used to call an undialectical approach.
It remains the case that both the niqab and a fortiori the burqa are deeply objectionable from any rational, feminist or libertarian point of view. They represent the oppression of women through the symbolic medium of black textiles.
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Facebook and Raoul Moat – censorship not needed
David Cameron took a swipe at Facebook users yesterday when he spoke of his disgust that people had been expressing admiration for the wife beating, misogynist murderer Raoul Moat.
I’m all for attempting to understand Moat’s motives but some have bordered on sympathy.
Empathising with a perpetrator of domestic violence without any but the most cursory nod towards the victims of that violence is to place the importance of Moat’s feelings above those of his victims.
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This is the last sane man in France
With the news that the French Assembly has overwhelmingly passed a law against the wearing of the veil I’ve been in a blistering, fuming rage.
The law, which was introduced by a “delegation for the rights of women” criminalised women who choose to wear the “wrong” clothes.
If the senate passes the law it will be illegal to wear a full face-veil and you can be fined and forced to go to citizenship classes. It’s also a crime (rightly) to force someone to wear a veil, including your children.
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OrangeFest 2010 and the right to demonstrate
Repackaging a deliberately intimidatory display of religiously-based ethnic supremacism as an all-inclusive carnival offering fun and frivolity for the whole family was always going to be a tall order.
But that’s just what Northern Ireland has been trying to do for the last three years, with the Loyalist marching season now officially known as OrangeFest, a moniker redolent of a discontinued east European brand of soft drink or perhaps the harvest celebrations in Seville.
Here’s the soft sell to the tourists, courtesy of the Belfast Visitor & Convention Bureau:
OrangeFest has become increasingly family friendly, and now includes acts for children to enjoy such as face-painting, juggling, stilt-walking and bouncy castles. And for fans of all things pyrotechnic, the spectacle of the annual Eleventh night bonfires all across Northern Ireland will certainly be a memorable one.
Well, I guess the category ‘all things pyrotechnic’ must logically include petrol bombs, and anybody in town specially for the party last night will be additionally grateful for having gotten their money’s worth.
Why not legalise gay marriage, Ed?
At several points in his interview with Sunny, published yesterday, Ed Miliband comes across either as lacking the courage of his leftwing convictions, or as lacking those convictions altogether.
And then there is this:
Would you allow gays to be legally married, rather than just be registered as a civil partnership?
He hesitates. “I will listen to what people have to say on going further than that if there is a demand. No one has yet put that to me in the leadership election.” He said his feeling was that not enough people were asking for the policy.
Labour has turned into a headless attack-dog
Were it just an isolated incident, I suppose we could just dismiss Jack Straw’s attack on prison reform as that of a grumpy ex-minister grasping for success stories from his time in government.
We could even forgive him one last grumble as he adjusts to opposition and find his ‘prison works’ mantra consigned to the dustbin of social policy.
But then when you look around at how other ex-ministers have attacked coalition policies you’ll see a rather unsightly pattern emerge.
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There are no arguments to pull down Democracy Village
I’m getting tired of the stupid arguments pretend-Libertarians and authoritarian lefties use to justify evicting Democracy Village protesters in Parliament Square.
A little anecdote first. A few weeks ago I went by Parliament Square at night. This time I stopped and parked my motorbike, came back into the Village and uprooted this sign on the side in support of 9/11 Truthers. I nearly managed to carry the banner off the field and chuck it in the bin but I ran into the Villagers.
And so a long debate ensued about whether it was right to have the sign there, whether they were achieving anything and what exactly they were protesting against. In the end I gave them back their silly 9/11 banner.
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Rising prosperity cuts crime, not putting more people in prison
There is a particularly insidious strain within the Labour party, heavily influenced by small-c conservatism, that parrots right-wing-nuttery views on social issues. They are usually against immigration (Frank Field), would love to give police lots of powers (Charles Clarke, Blunkett), and happy to call for the ‘lock em up’ approach to prisons (Alan Johnson, Jack Straw).
It has gotten to a stage where, last night on BBC Question Time, Iain Duncan Smith sounded vastly more coherent and intelligent on prison reform than Alan Johnson. Even though, I think, it’s a strategic ploy.
The New Labour and Tory-right approach is summed up in two ways: (1) banging up people in prison works (crime fell under Labour); (2) it’s cheaper than having them roam about in society. But both are wrong approaches.
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Philip Hollobone and the (il)logic of the burka debate
I’m yet to be convinced that the burka is anything other than a symbol of deep rooted oppression, and even if worn by a free woman in a free country, is still an expression of a patriarchal notion that frankly ought to have stayed in the dark ages where it belongs.
However, a Tory MP has represented to me the reason why appeals to banning it is cowardice and reactionary in many cases.
As the BBC described it:
Philip Hollobone has put forward parliamentary legislation to regulate the use of “certain facial coverings” in public. … “We are never going to get along with having a fully integrated society if a substantial minority insist on concealing their identity from everyone else.”
The problem with trying to define ‘Englishness’
So the Campaign for English Parliament have made a bit of news by stopping sales of t-shirts supporting ‘Anyone But England’. I think it’s ludicrous and political correctness gone mad.
Not only that, the CEP are following a dangerous and highly illiberal path.
Back in 2005 when I was passionately arguing against the Sikh play Behzti being shut down, because some Sikh extremists were angry, I was invited to a radio discussion.
Sitting next to me were some Sikh ‘human rights group’ who said, with a straight face, that they wanted to see the playwright Gurpreet Bhatti (herself a Sikh) put on trial for ‘inciting racial ahtred against Sikhs’. I laughed at them.
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Why the Zakir Naik ban is wrong
Zakir Naik has today joined gangsta rapper Snoop Dogg, television presenter Martha Stewart, gay-hating hot gospel merchant Fred Waldron Phelps Jr, minor league shock jock Michael Savage, Russian skinhead Pavel Skachevsky and Jewish ultranationalist Mike Guzovsky on the list of people banned from entering the UK.
That just about covers the full spectrum of odious opinion, crap music and bland taste in home furnishings.
Yet it is not immediately clear that all of the above have any intention of coming here anyway. At least some seem to have been chosen at random by civil servants charged with drawing up a list of ne’er-do-wells that covers all bases.
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Why is everyone who drinks booze treated the same?
contribution by Planeshift
The recent discussion on the minimum price for alcohol has proven to be hilarious for a further demonstration of the sociological ignorance of Tim Worstall et al, whose approach to the issue is at best naive and at worst dangerous and actually illiberal.
This to social and health policy issues is generally to examine matters from the perspective of examining what the externalities of certain market transactions are, and then ensure the externalities are priced and paid for via a pigou tax.
In fact whenever an externality arises, the preferred solution is a tax.
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Dave Osler Wins Libel Case
The journalist Dave Osler, contributor to Liberal Conspiracy and many other places, today won a libel case that had been brought by Tory (former Respect) activist Joannah Kaschke.
Jack of Kent has a little bit of analysis of Dave’s case and was first to tweet the positive outcome.
I am sure he and/or Padraig Reidy of Index on Censorship will report with a full analysis of Justice Eady’s ruling soon, but the analysis from Dave’s lawyer Robert Dougans of Bryan Cave (also Simon Singh’s lawyer) is that it sets a very good precedent for bloggers, and how much responsibility we take for wayward comments posted unmoderated on our websites.
I took some photos of Dave Osler and wellwishers outside the court (including another Liberal Conspirator, Paul Evans).
True, the last photo does show Dave sipping champagne (which might undermine his reputation as a staunch defender of the working class) but otherwise it is worth noting that both Dave and his partner looked relieved rather than happy.
This case has taken three years to defend, and for much of that time he has had to defend himself. Months have been spent preparing a defence against someone who appears to be a vexatious litigant, time that could have been spend freelancing.
Substantial costs are unlikely to be recovered, meaning Dave is severely out of pocket.
One of the Libel Reform Campaign’s recommendations is the establishment of a fast-track libel tribunal to deal with cases like this.
Although Dave Osler has won his case, its another example of why the English libel laws are not fit for purpose.
Update:
Dave speaks to blogger Richard Wilson after his win
You can read articles through the front page, via Twitter or RSS feed.
» Cambridge student demo: policeman punched student in the face
» An ode to David Cameron
» Why the student protests are unlikely to backfire despite the coverage
» She is free now, but the justice system still fails raped women
» Why Nick Clegg offers a recycled vision of society
» We need to reclaim the true ideals behind civil disobedience
» Why Ireland should default on its debts and start afresh
» How Labour could regain the initiative again on immigration
» Irish bankers: a modest proposal
» Is Nick Clegg ditching his own principles on inequality?
» Guess what? Ireland drank neo-liberal magic potion and it failed
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