When will something be done about street harassment?
Alongside the focus on the most serious forms of violence, discrimination and exploitation, it is important to find room to talk about the minor, everyday acts of casual contempt that are still a reality for almost all women, including right here in the UK.
One of the most prevalent and least examined of these, which urgently needs more input not just from policy-makers, but from journalists and researchers and even bloggers, is sexual harassment on the streets.
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Is the Sun becoming more mature in covering suicides?
Reporting suicides is without doubt one of the most difficult subjects to cover as a journalist. Where the method is unusual, this is even more hazardous: studies have shown that copycat attempts have risen dramatically in the aftermath of their portrayal in the media (PDF).
In September last year the press was understandably interested in the apparent pact formed by Steve Lumb and Joanna Lee, who died together in a car on an industrial estate in Braintree.
The two had, according to police, met online and killed themselves using a relatively recently discovered method involving gas, placing warning messages on the vehicle alerting the emergency services to the potential danger of opening it without proper precautions.
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Why human rights for prisoners and even paedos matter
First they came for the prisoners.
A few weeks ago, MPs voted to ignore the European Court of Human Rights to keep a full ban on prisoners. Our Prime Minister put blatant populism above politics, declaring that “giving prisoners the vote makes me sick” (even if that means paying £143 million in compensation from the barren public purse).
Then they came for the paedophiles.
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The Observer bravely stands up for punishment without trial
There was a very odd piece in Sunday’s Observer, running under the headline MEPs putting child pornographers’ rights ahead of abuse victims, claim campaigners.
The piece, written by veteran home affairs correspondent Jamie Doward, says – as a reported fact in the piece, not as a quote from a pressure group:
The European parliament’s civil liberties, justice and home affairs committee (LIBE) will meet in Strasbourg tomorrow, when it is expected to approve a controversial measure that would compel EU member states to inform publishers of child pornography that their images are to be deleted from the internet or blocked. Child pornographers will also have to be informed of their right to appeal against any removal or blocking
The UK a safe-haven for terrorists? Try war criminals
contribution by Spencer Wright
In a dusty corner of the Coalition’s new Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill lie a series of amendments that really have failed to gain the mass audience they deserve. Hidden away under a rather dimly lit “Miscellaneous” sub-heading, is Section 151 – “Restriction on issue of arrest warrants in private prosecutions”.
The origins of that section lie in events a year ago, when an arrest warrant was issued by a senior judge in Westminster against former Israeli Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, for her part in the attack against Gaza in 2008/9.
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Top policeman has audacity to compare protesting with theft
contribution by Steven Sumpter
The Guardian yesterday reported that Prospect Magazine (£) had interviewed Sir Hugh Orde, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers.
I remind you that the ACPO is a private for-profit company that seems to have a say in the way that we are policed, without being subject to the Freedom of Information Act or any democratic oversight. The interview was very revealing about police perception of social media as a method of organising protests and about their attitude to protesters’ rights.
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Edward Woolard doesn’t deserve his sentence
18 years old is a strange age. Legally, you’re an adult. But in many ways you’re still a child. Looking back on my own late teenage years, I’m astonished at how immature I really was.
Which brings me to Edward Woolard. There’s no doubt Woolard was an idiot at the precise moment he threw that fire extinguisher off the top of Milbank.
Yet whether he is an idiot through-and-through is a different matter.
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Why are all Pakistani men are being smeared in the sex-grooming cases?
contribution by Iman Qureshi
The coverage of The Times’ investigation into the sexual exploitation of young girls—the majority of whom were revealed to be white—has snowballed into a debate on racial sensitivities, as it transpired that perpetrators were almost exclusively of Asian — more specifically, Pakistani — origin.
It is no surprise that this story was promptly picked up by the Telegraph, the Daily Mail and the Sun, enabling right-wingers and nationalists to smugly say that these statistics prove that Nick Griffin has been right all along.
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John Pilger shames himself by attacking feminists over Julian Assange
In many respects I’m rather loathed to call too much attention to John Pilger’s truly dreadful commentary on Sweden’s efforts to extradite Julian Assange from the UK.
Pilger is easily one of the greatest investigative journalists and documentary film-makers of the modern era. One cannot, therefore, be anything other than saddened by the all-too-obvious decline in his powers of observation and objectivity evident is his article this week for the New Statesman.
It amounts to little more than a stream of mendacious ad hominem attacks on anyone who dares to suggest that Assange should be required to answer the allegations laid against him in a court of law.
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Wikileaks’ Julian Assange isn’t is now accused of rape – updated
[Update 9th December 2010 - The charges are now clarified and written about here.]
It’s become a prevalent meme across the western media – who, completely coincidentally, hate Wikileaks – that Julian Assange is currently being sought by the Swedish police on rape charges.
He isn’t. He’s sought on made-up-weird-charges that aren’t a crime in the UK, or anywhere else sensible.
Killer line:
The consent of both women to sex with Assange has been confirmed by prosecutors.
If ‘kettling’ isn’t justified in other circumstances, why protests?
contribution by Peter Ede
Kettling has been justified by the police as legitimate measure primarily to keep “law and order” and more specifically to prevent potential injury and/or damage to property.
In order to test this, here is an outlandish analogy: consider a foggy night on a motorway. The majority of drivers, who have clean licences, are being careful. A few may have points on their licences. Some will drive at excessive speed. There is a very real risk in this situation of damage to valuable hundreds of thousand of pounds worth of cars, and indeed of serious personal injury.
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We need to reclaim the true ideals behind civil disobedience
Every new generation of campaigners from the peace movement of the 1980s onwards has been through workshops which teach you how to make an impact and how to handle the police.
Non violent direct action (NVDA) has to be part of a wider, mass protest to be really successful, but from Greenham Common to Swampy and Greenpeace, it has as much a place in Britain’s cultural life as Glastonbury or a Royal Wedding.
If done properly, it can not only generate the right kind of publicity, but direct it against the right institutions.
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Support and solidarity for the jailed victim of rape
contribution by Louise Whittle
I wrote a post before about a rape victim jailed for 8 months for retracting her original allegations. She appealed yesterday. She lost.
An application was heard by Judge John Rogers QC, in chambers, but permission to appeal was turned down. It is now expected to go before the Court of Appeal in London.
Following the failed appeal bid, the woman’s solicitor Phil Sherrard said: “He’s (Judge Rogers) considered the grounds to appeal and considered that his decision last week was the correct one.
…
“We will be in contact with the Court of Appeal to try and get the matter dealt with as expeditiously as possible.”
Three silly misconceptions about the Phil Woolas case
contribution by Cory Hazlehurst
On the whole, I’m heartened by Labour reactions to Phil Woolas’s expulsion from both Parliament and his Party. The reaction of the Parliamentary Labour Party has been an entirely different matter.
This anger from Labour MPs depresses me more than I can say, but it doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.
There are three other general types of reaction to the Woolas case that I think are worth addressing:
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John Hirst and making the case for prisoners’ votes
If the opponents of giving prisoners the right to vote could have chosen someone to front the campaign, John Hirst might not have been their first choice, but he’d have definitely been in with a shout.
Hirst is not an easy man to like. Convicted of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility after killing his landlady in what can only be described as an almost entirely detached manner, he served 25 years when he had been sentenced to only 15.
Less often mentioned is that he was abused as a child after being placed in the care of Barnardo’s, has Asperger’s syndrome and having been given a life sentence, will remain on licence until he dies.
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Roshonara Choudhry and Muslim alienation
You must have seen that drawing of Roshonara Choudhry by now, if only because every media outlet seems to be using it. If it comes even close to a reasonable likeness, she looks every bit the homely geek girl that her academic track record suggests her to be.
The poor Bangladeshi kid from East Ham had done two years at Kings College London, one of Britain’s best universities, and they say that she was on for a first.
Her ambition was to become a teacher, a career that was surely within her grasp. Until she dropped out, that is.
Tomorrow she will be sentenced for the attempted murder of Stephen Timms, in an effort to exact, in her own words, revenge for the people of Iraq.
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Double-standards on police convictions
What does the case of Sergeant Mark Andrews and Pamela Somerville tell us about the ingredients needed for successful prosecutions against police officers?
Firstly, it seems, that the officer has do to something seemingly so out of proportion to the situation he faces, such as dragging along and then hurling a completely defenceless woman to a concrete floor, that it forces a less senior colleague to make clear her concerns.
Second, that for the best possible chance of a conviction, it needs to be the police’s own cameras which record what happened, rather than a member of the public’s, or outside CCTV.
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Why a ban on ‘dangerous dogs’ doesn’t work
This week, DEFRA is considering proposals to change the dangerous dogs act.
And rightly so – the act’s ridiculous breed-specific ban must be abolished and the act changed to shift all responsibility for dog control to dog owners.
I’ve been talking to SPCAs and dog control experts around the world this year. They say politicians who insist that dog control legislation should include breed bans compromise public safety, because breed bans do not reduce attack numbers.
They’re lobbying government to put proven dog control programmes in place:
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UK needs to decriminalise drugs to reduce crime
contribution by Sirena Bergman
One of the UK’s leading doctors made the news on Tuesday when he said that drugs should be decriminalised as a way to improve the current situation of illegal drug use in the UK.
This may have seemed like a radical idea, with conservatives and Conservatives all around the country preaching the dangers of having liberals in government, but the proposal has nothing to do with Sir Ian Gilmore’s advocacy of civil liberties; it comes from a realisation that few battles are won by building more prisons.
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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… »
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» Rejoice! Cameron is planning to take over the No2AV campaign
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» When will something be done about street harassment?
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