Right-whingers shocked feminists aren’t pandering
Iain Dale duly highlights a column in the Mail on Sunday where Peter Hitchens is shocked, shocked I say, that feminists aren’t falling over themselves to support John McCain’s running mate Sarah Palin.
Actually, various feminists have already condemned sexist attacks on Palin. But that isn’t their concern – Dale and Hitchens want to know why women aren’t automatically supporting Palin, just on the basis of her sex, even though they’re apparently against identity politics. Shocking, that the same women they condemned for supporting Hillary Clinton are now being attacked because they’re not lining up to support a political newbie against abortion and for teaching creationism in schools. Fancy that.
Zohra at the F Word says: “What I mean is that I don’t think people should vote for someone just because she is a woman. I think the politics of the person matter, not just their identity, however symbolic.” Shocking how nasty these feminists can be, isn’t it?
Even more shocking example of a vast left-wing conspiracy, Alaskan papers point out when Palin flip-flopped over policy, and polls show American women aren’t falling for the shameless pandering either.
Israel/Palestine – let’s have a sane debate
In all the long years I have taken an interest in politics, I have never come across any debate remotely as characterised by wilful distortion, obfuscation, over-emotionalism, deliberate bad faith, polarisation, ill-tempered malicious mudslinging and widespread playing of the man rather than the ball than the Israel/Palestine issue.
Sometimes it seems that enough straw men have been erected in this connection to populate a medium-sized city of the damn things, complete with commuter suburbs.
Trade union activists find themselves circulating hyperlinks to articles on the website of a well-known Ku Klux Klan boss, while the leader of one far left group feels constrained to defend every action of Israel’s rapacious and corrupt ruling class, even to the point of offering carte blanche in advance of planned aggression.
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About that male ‘enlargement’ surgery…
There have recently been some fantastic investigative features in the print and electric press on the touchy subject of female surgical circumcision, also called cosmetic labiaplasty. But I’m going to take this space to tentatively suggest that there is also room in the feminist movement for a discussion of that curiously taboo subject: male genital mutilation.
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Do we need a Bill of Rights?
The Joint Committee on Human Rights seems to think so. On Sunday it said:
The government should adopt a Bill of Rights for the UK, a cross-party committee of MPs and peers has urged. The Joint Committee on Human Rights said the bill should go further than current human rights legislation. The bill should give greater protection to groups such as children, the elderly and those with learning difficulties, it said in a report.
…
The committee said the bill should include rights to housing, education and a healthy environment. Its report referred to a survey conducted in 2006 when more than three-quarters of the people polled agreed that “Britain needs a Bill of Rights to protect the liberty of the individual”. The report said the new Bill should include all the rights spelt out in the Human Rights Act and then enshrine others in law.
What we really need, I feel is a British Constitution, not just a Bill of Rights (and Responsibilities). The problem then is that a BoR will just kill off any hunger for a proper constitution. Either way, I think a better codification of our rights as citizens is good idea.
The full report is here. Thoughts?
(they sent the whole report to me for some unexplicable reason. If anyone wants it off my hands, just let me know)
We call for a windfall tax on energy companies
Rising energy and fuel prices are affecting everyone but it’s the poorest and those on fixed incomes who are paying the heaviest price. The warm summer weather will not mask the anxiety and anger at dramatically rising bills for the essentials of life – light and heat.
We believe that the moment is right for the government to levy a sensible one off windfall tax to guarantee social and environmental justice both now and in the future. This is why.
The average annual spend on domestic energy per household has now breached £1200. Since 2000 we have faced gas price rises of 100% and electricity price rises of 61% – with further increases including British Gas raising its gas bills by a record 35%. Simultaneously the main energy providers have seen their profits rise from £557 million in 2003 to now over £3 billion. This alongside the recent news of profits made by oil companies – BP is now making £37 million a day with a 23% increase in profits to £6.7 billion for the first 6 months of 2008.
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Imagine if Labour were in opposition
Unusually for a government minister, Tom Harris has a good idea. He says:
If we were in opposition right now, and the country were facing exactly the same challenges as it is now, and we were determined to form the next, new, government, what would be in our manifesto?
This is a good question for two reasons.
First, it’s a way for the party to avoid two common cognitive biases. One is ego-involvement; we all tend to defend decisions not because they are good ones, but simply because they are ours. The other is Bayesian conservatism; we stick to our prejudices too much in the face of contrary evidence.
Secondly, it allows the party to ditch some policies which were, at best, only temporary expedients. There are four I have in mind:
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Where have all the real dads gone to?
You bloody traitor, Kathleen Parker. You weak-willed, belly-showing traitor. Maybe you’ve the luxury of a man to help take care of your two sons, but, please, know for sure that that’s what it is – a luxury.
Women have been raising children alone for centuries untold, and, since feminist liberation, we have been enabled to provide for ourselves and our children on a more basic level. If that alienates men from their traditional roles of breadwinner and head of the table then too bad.
I was raised by a single mother who was also a part-time lawyer; it did me no harm whatsoever, and I fully intend to be one myself one day.
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Have the Tories misunderstood ‘equality’?
To those of us whose political views were formed in the 1970s and 80s, Michael Gove’s speech yesterday looked disconcerting.
He said:
Our social policy is…explicitly redistributive…we’re concerned about growing inequality…
When we talk of a broken society today one of the fractures we are concerned about is the growing breach between richer and poorer.
What world are we in, where a Tory can claim to care about equality? Is Gove sincere here – in which case he is flatly repudiating Thatcherism, or is this just another exercise in “decontaminating the brand” of Toryism?
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Understanding British law, with Melanie Phillips
You’ll all know by now that policies are complicated things. They use Big Words and Complicated Jargon. They come in large PDFs, and not only do you have to read the whole thing, but you’ll need access to other reading materials to make sure you understand context, history and competing points of view.
Phew, that’s enough to work anyone into a sweat – thank God no one actually writes about policy anymore!
Well, one brave woman still does. Ever the wonk, Melanie Phillips has forensically studied the details of the proposed changes in murder law and, for her policy-averse readers, managed to summarise it in just 34 words.
To quote The Knowing One, the proposals:
as far as I can see, will mean that if a woman kills her husband she will get away with it whereas if a man kills his wife he will be convicted of murder.
Dads have been left out in the cold
It’s all sorts of dads we should be thinking about – not just black ones!
I refer to both Barack Obama and David Cameron’s recently zooming in on the world of fatherless black children.
Now yes – there is a disproportionately high number of black families being brought up essentially by the mother – but it’s also an issue in white communities.
I’ve been a single mother myself since my children were 7 and 12. And two things that used to annoy the whatsit out of me when they were at school were firstly that each year parents got a class list (with contact details of all the class parents) and despite informing the school many, many times that we were separated – it was always (only) my address and number on the list – the school itself was acting as if to exclude separated fathers.
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Not a nanny state, not a neglectful state
So how should a serious political party of the 21st century faced with the acute and growing problems [of obesity] react?
The Foresight scientists highlighted the fact that for an increasing number of people, weight gain is inevitable and largely involuntary as a consequence of exposure to a modern lifestyle.
They used the term “passive obesity,” and pointed out that it particularly effects the socially and economically disadvantaged.
Not every child is lucky enough to live in an environment that promotes good health. Not every family has a leafy back garden for their kids to play in. Not every family can afford to buy fresh organic produce from the local farmer’s market, or to put food on the table that their children will refuse to eat.
Our strategy made clear that in approaching this problem, we reject both the “nanny state,” which polices shopping trolleys and institutes exercise regimes and the neglectful state, which wipes its hands of the problem, and wags the finger in the direction of the most vulnerable families in the vague hope that they will do as they are told.
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Why is New Labour stigmatising poor people?
James Purnell says the long-term unemployed “will be required to work full-time or undertake full-time work-related activity in return for their benefits.” (par 2.18 here).
This raises several questions. Isn’t this an abuse of language? I had thought that if you work, the money you get in return is wages.
And if you have to work 40 hours a week to get Job Seekers Allowance of £60.50, you’re paid £1.50 an hour. How is this consistent with the principle of a minimum wage?
But there’s a deeper question. Purnell could have sold a similar policy differently. He could have spoken thus:
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Where will the Greens go from here?
For years, the Green Party operated on a system of collective leadership. Up until 1991 it had 6 co-principal speakers. Since then it’s had two. That’s led to certain groups labelling the Greens as political amateurs – with good hearts, but no idea of what to do.
But last summer the party voted by a margin of 73% to elect a single leader. The Yes campaign argued that a leader was necessary for the party to ever achieve its full potential. The bulk of the party agreed – and so this September the Greens will have their first leadership elections.
The story so far
The first nomination came in last Monday. Caroline Lucas (pictured), at present an MEP and a principal speaker, launched a campaign focused on radical politics delivered with a professional punch. Her website summed up the message:
On climate change, scientists tell us that the next 10 years will be critical in terms of whether we have any chance of avoiding the worst of climate chaos. It is still the case that only the Green Party has both the radical policies, and the political commitment, that are so desperately needed to ensure that we do.
And on social justice, we face a country more unequal than it has been for decades. Only the Green Party has coherent alternatives to government policies that are privatising public services, increasing inequalities, and leading to greater violence and exclusion.
Lucas wants the party to provide discontented liberals and lefties with a credible home. Recent events and policies clearly show the party to be of that liberal-left; where else could a party that challenged David Davis as too authoritarian sit? The energy is clearly there, and Caroline Lucas says she’ll provide the professional quality to bring that vision to the voter.
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A nine-word summary of what’s wrong with our journalism
“Now Labour plans to bar white men from jobs” – just one of the recent screaming tabloid headlines about the Equality Bill.
What a fantastic nine-word summary of what is wrong with so much of our tabloid journalism: whipping up fear and division based on a fairy tale.
I’m not sure what is worse – believing that the person who wrote the headline was so ignorant of the story they thought it was true – or so cynical they were happy to write it knowing it wasn’t.
Because the truth is there is no provision like that in the Equality Bill. Nowhere. All the Bill proposes is that if two different people are equally qualified for a job (and that is a very big if!), it should be ok to choose between them on gender or race grounds.
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Struggle not submission – SBS win over Ealing
It was back in April this year that Ealing Council voted to withdraw funding from Southall Black Sisters, a women’s support group, on the spurious grounds that targeting services at black and minority ethnic groups ran contrary to the “equality” and “integration” agenda.
In a complete misinterpretation of the Race Relations Act, Ealing Council’s Conservative-run council furthermore proposed that in the interests of “community cohesion”, domestic violence services in the borough should henceforth be generic.
Specific services to vulnerable women were then in serious danger of being lost, and one of the women’s sector’s most powerful and influential campaigning organisations was under threat of closure. That all ended on Friday, when Ealing Council conceded defeat in the High Court.
If Tuesday is Soylent Green Day, is Sunday Hangover Day?
Spirit of 1976 has found a secret video exposing the Gay Agenda to Take Over the World.
Steph Ashley can’t understand why everyone quotes Iain Dale as if his views actually matter. I share her mystification on this.
Alix Mortimer compares Lib Dem and Tory campaign slogans and (surprisingly!) finds the Tory one somewhat wanting.
Dreaming of Simplicity wants to pee on Aaron’s bonfire in linking to this article on Digital Spy about the BBC’s commercial impacts.
Aberavon and Neath Lib Dems examine the Tax Credit train wreck.
And finally, Lady Mark Valladares has been up in my neck of the woods. He (and Ros) will be in Bradford today and I shall, if I can drag myself out of bed, be going to have a cream tea with them. The perils of Lib Demmery…
Waiters must get the tips we give them
Throughout my teenage years and early twenties I had many jobs as a waitress, in a number of different restaurants. Sometimes fun, with friendly customers, plenty of staff camaraderie and after-work drinks, other times gruelling with hot hours spent in a nasty uniform trying not to look embarrassed as I handed over another overcooked/overpriced/much delayed by a fight between the chefs, pizza.
Part of what drew me to these jobs was the tips – by smiling, being helpful and pandering to odd food requests I could significantly increase the amount I took home at the end of a ten hour shift thanks to the generosity of some of those I waited on. Lucky, since these jobs usually had pretty low hourly rates.
But I was furious when I realised the last restaurant I worked in not only paid a low hourly rate but actually took money from my tips as a top up to the minimum wage.
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Was there conflict of interest over gay marriage case?
The extreme decision of an employment tribunal in the case of Ladele vs Islington (pdf), that of the registrar who claimed to have discriminated against on religious ground for refusing to officiate in civil partnership ceremonies, has naturally drawn a considerable amount of attention.
Thus far, the general consensus amongt legal bloggers is that the tribunal’s ruling is, at best, extreme, if not bordering on perverse and in the days since the ruling it transpires that Ms Ladele, whose views on marriage were described in the judgement as follows…
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Drop the word ‘chav’
Ziauddin Sardar, an Equality Commissioner, made a common sense plea in yesterday’s Guardian for a “sensibility for civility” in the way we treat others. It was an attempt to acknowledge how “derogatory words make way for degrading treatment” while seeking to sidestep the flame wars, and backlash, generated by an excessive policing for ‘political correctness’.
Our experience with PC language argues this is not something we can, or should, police. But that does not mean being indifferent and taking no action to promote civility through language that is neither jargon nor the ungainly, unspeakable invention of impersonal committees. What we need is common sense and a commitment to a sensibility that values the dignity of all.
This is well argued and sensible, though it is probably true that, in Britain at least, ‘political correctness’ has largely been a caricature (a “straw person”, as it were), rarely used other than to complain about ‘political correctness gone mad’.
But attempts to promote this approach may still face that kind of backlash.
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A liberal-left case for a subscription funded BBC
Sunder Katwala recent article on the BBC raises two issues: editorial bias and funding. Many of us have encountered what we regard as examples of BBC lack of impartiality.
Anthony Barnett on Our Kingdom lambasted the BBC’s coverage of the David Davis campaign. I have spent nearly six years trying to persuade the BBC to acknowledge, let alone make amends for, the worst breach of impartiality in its history (a documentary on the Mau Mau rebellion purporting to be objective but actually presenting a lone scholar’s highly tendentious – and subsequently widely discredited – opinions).
In truth, these concerns regularly arise, and for the most part the BBC is aware of its obligations, especially under the new governance structure, which was responsible for a recent report by John Bridcut on the whole question of alleged liberal bias in the BBC. For me, funding is a much more important long term issue.
There are those who would die in a ditch to defend on principle the present licence fee – what former BBC DG Greg Dyke regularly calls an unfair poll tax. I would have much less of a problem with the licence fee if it were equitably levied: on those who can afford to pay tax, in proportion to their taxable income. A BBC charge of 0.75% of taxable income, collected with each individual’s tax payments, would leave the BBC with roughly its present income, but excuse those too poor to pay tax.
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» 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 civil 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
» Is this the end for the socialist left?
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