Rejoice! More Thoughts on the Death of Thatcher

It's looking quite possible that "Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead" will be the most downloaded track of the week by the time Thatcher's funeral takes place next Tuesday. Meanwhile, street parties have been taking place, along with chants of "Maggie Maggie Maggie: Dead Dead Dead!"

It's impossible to underestimate just how hated Thatcher had become in this country by the time her Conservative colleagues got together and kicked her out of her Prime Ministership, on the grounds that she'd become an electoral liability and was quite possibly losing the plot completely, along with most of her marbles.

Today the House of Commons was recalled so that the Conservative party could come back together to tell one another what a brilliant leader she had been. There were 8 hours or so of speeches, which is in quite a big contrast to the 3 speeches that were made in Parliament to mark the death of Winston Churchill those many years ago.

Jon Snow ‏@jonsnowC4
How come MPs/Lords recalled at our expense for Mrs T when they could hve returned 4 free next Monday, before funeral, a week after she died?

Tom Delargy ‏@derekrootboy
Labour MPs will feel ashamed of themselves for not having guts to stand up and be counted. Only Glenda Jackson did it. Well done. #Thatcher

Seumas Milne ‏@SeumasMilne
#Thatcherism wreaked 'most heinous social, economic & spiritual damage' on Britain: @GlendaJacksonMP spells it out http://bit.ly/153YKA9

Owen Jones ‏@OwenJones84
Good on Glenda Jackson for smashing the Thatcherism love fest, and telling the truth about the social devastation unleashed in the 1980s


Owen Jones wrote this superb article for The Independent:

Thatcherism was a national catastrophe that still poisons us

We are in the midst of the third great economic collapse since the Second World War: all three have taken place since Thatcherism launched its great crusade

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/owen-jones-thatcherism-was-a-national-catastrophe-that-still-poisons-us-8564858.html

This current crisis has roots in the Thatcherite free market experiment, which wiped out much of the country’s industrial base in favour of a deregulated financial sector.

Champions of Thatcherism hail the crippling of the trade unions, which were battered by anti-union laws, mass unemployment, and crushing defeats of strikes, not least after the rout of the iconic miners. This has not only left workers at the mercy of their bosses, but has made them poorer, too.

We could go on. Britain was one of the most equal Western European countries before the Thatcherite project began, and is now one of the most unequal.  Thatcherism is not just alive and well: it courses through the veins of British political life. The current government goes where Thatcherism did not dare in its privatisation of the NHS and sledgehammering of the welfare state.

The challenge ahead is the same as it was yesterday: to tear down the whole edifice of Thatcherism, heal Britain of the damage done, and build a country run in the interests of working people. It’s a fight we must all fight. The champagne is on ice until we win it.

Russell Brand wrote an equally impressive piece for the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/09/russell-brand-margaret-thatcher

She became leader of the Conservatives the year I was born and prime minister when I was four. She remained in power till I was 15. I am, it's safe to say, one of Thatcher's children. How then do I feel on the day of this matriarchal mourning?

I see her in her hairy helmet, condescending on Nationwide, eviscerating eunuch MPs and baffled BBC fuddy duddies with her General Zodd stare and coldly condemning the IRA. And the miners. And the single mums. The dockers. The poll-tax rioters. The Brixton rioters, the Argentinians, teachers; everyone actually.

Thinking about it now, when I was a child she was just a strict woman telling everyone off and selling everything off. I didn't know what to think of this fearsome woman.

Perhaps my early apathy and indifference are a result of what Thatcher deliberately engendered, the idea that "there is no such thing as society", that we are alone on our journey through life, solitary atoms of consciousness.

Perhaps, though, Thatcher "the monster" didn't die yesterday from a stroke, perhaps that Thatcher died as she sobbed self-pitying tears as she was driven, defeated, from Downing Street, ousted by her own party.

I hope I'm not being reductive but it seems Thatcher's time in power was solely spent diminishing the resources of those who had least for the advancement of those who had most. I know from my own indulgence in selfish behaviour that it's much easier to get what you want if you remove from consideration the effect your actions will have on others.

Is that what made her so formidable, her ability to ignore the suffering of others?

If you behave like there's no such thing as society, in the end there isn't. Her death must be sad for the handful of people she was nice to and the rich people who got richer under her stewardship. It isn't sad for anyone else.

All of us that grew up under Thatcher were taught that it is good to be selfish, that other people's pain is not your problem, that pain is in fact a weakness and suffering is deserved and shameful. Perhaps there is resentment because the clemency and respect that are being mawkishly displayed now by some and haughtily demanded of the rest of us at the impending, solemn ceremonial funeral, are values that her government and policies sought to annihilate.

I can't articulate with the skill of either of "the Marks" – Steel or Thomas – why Thatcher and Thatcherism were so bad for Britain but I do recall that even to a child her demeanour and every discernible action seemed to be to the detriment of our national spirit and identity. Her refusal to stand against apartheid, her civil war against the unions, her aggression towards our neighbours in Ireland and a taxation system that was devised in the dark ages, the bombing of a retreating ship – it's just not British.

Alex Nunns ‏@alexnunns
Under Thatcher, crime rose by 79%. http://www.redpepper.org.uk/dispelling-the-thatcher-myths/ …

Dispelling the Thatcher myths

Alex Nunns offers an antidote to the media fawning over Thatcher – and argues her biggest victory was getting her opponents to buy into her mythology

When a political leader dies it becomes compulsory to lie about their record. While much of Britain openly rejoiced at the death of Margaret Thatcher, the media snapped into reverential mode, giving over hours of airtime and several thousand miles of column inches to representatives of the ruling class to solemnly recite myths about her achievements.

This wouldn’t matter so much if, like Thatcher, these myths were dead, and weren’t still shaping our politics. But they are. So here are some of them, debunked.

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown did more to institutionalise Thatcherism than the woman herself. Before New Labour, in the early 1990s, in the midst of a recession, it was a truism that Thatcherism had been an economic failure. The fact that many of the myths discussed here have been revived is in large part due to New Labour. When even Thatcher’s opponents accept Thatcherism’s success, why should the media challenge the record?

Blair responded to her death by admitting (although understating) what everyone already knew, that ‘some of the changes she made in Britain were, in certain respects at least, retained by the 1997 Labour government’. It is often said that Blair’s only legacy will be Iraq, but he will also feature in the epilogue of every biography of Margaret Thatcher.

Thatcher tore at the social fabric of Britain, destroyed swathes of its economy and inflicted vindictive harm on large sections of its population. But she built nothing. Her main success was in the minds of her opponents.

Layer 535 . . . May Day, May Day . . . and News Corp

It's May 1st, and once again we celebrate International Workers' Day - except in the UK we do no such thing. How could such a celebration possibly happen - in a country that's still ruled by a monarchy and a parliament of toffs and spivs? No, we do things differently here, and we prefer to have a quiet May Bank Holiday on the Monday that follows May Day, when we enjoy a little Morris dancing and a some skipping round maypoles. On May Day itself our workers just keep on working.

International Workers' Day (also known as May Day) is a celebration of the international labour movement and left-wing movements. It commonly sees organized street demonstrations and marches by working people and their labour unions throughout most of the world. May 1 is a national holiday in more than 80 countries. It is also celebrated unofficially in many other countries.  -  Wikipedia*

Just to rub in the message of how we prioritise our affairs in Britain, this is the week when the Sunday Times publishes its annual Rich List - a magazine crammed full of information about the richest individuals in Britain and Ireland. It's clear that the poor are getting poorer in our society, and of course the rich are getting richer.

"The combined wealth of the 1,000 richest men and women in Britain has reached Olympian heights in the past year, setting a Rich List record of more that £414 billion. The figure represents a 4.7% rise on the 2011 total . . . 

The wealth of those with between £750m and £330m (ranked 101 to 250) is up 7.8% this year, with those worth £328m to £151m (ranked 251 - 500) seeing even greater gains of 9%".

So all these millionaires and billionaires are sharing the pain of the recession? Hmmm. And what do all these people actually do with all that wealth? Put it to some good use? No, they use it to make even more money of course. These people ARE the 'money markets'. If all else fails they will lend us a bit of their money, but they'll expect to get back a hell of a lot more than they loaned.

The thing with our UK taxation policy is that everybody supports the idea of a graduated income tax policy from zero to 45% (or so) top rate. And this is fine as long as everybody starts out on a level playing field. The problem is - we don't have a level playing field. Therefore there has to be a separate wealth tax to take into account the fact that it's far easier to make money when you already have money - that's if you believe in a fair society. And even George Posh Boy Osborne now realises that many of our richest citizens use clever accountants and tax lawyers to avoid paying even their basic income tax, let alone anything on top of it.

As George Galloway said in his Guardian interview yesterday, speaking about what he would do if he woke up and found he was Prime Minister, "We would bring all our soldiers home from foreign wars – thus saving billions of pounds. We would scrap the renewal of Trident submarines. And we would pursue what Vince Cable said was the £100bn-a-year-plus tax avoidance and tax evasion industry. Thus, we'd have no deficit. If you do the maths, if we did those three things we not only would have no deficit, we'd be quids in. We'd be £80bn up."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/apr/29/george-galloway-interview-bradford-west

So that's Vince Cable, who's as middle of the road as you can get in politics, saying that Britain has a  £100bn-a-year-plus tax avoidance and tax evasion industry.

Imagine what the country could be like if we achieved an increase in the national budget ( and also greater equality) through a wealth tax? How come no-one's talking about a wealth tax on this side of the budget?

.....................................

Thinking about our Parliament, it was interesting watching the entire hour of Cameron answering questions in the Commons yesterday. I've often wished I had the wit and the intelligence to become a politician - the speed of thought, the breadth of knowledge, the smooth command of language, the ability to communicate with confidence, eloquence and nuance. And yes there are many such people in Parliament. On the other hand, there are many - particularly on the Conservative side - who appear to be witless, ignorant, bigoted ranters who simply stand up when called upon by the Speaker and shout out their planted questions and their stupid tirades. So now I'm thinking - I can do that! I can stand up and rant with the worst of them! Gizza job!

....................................

Congrats to Ed Miliband for doing an excellent job yesterday - word-perfect in his delivery, speaking with passion and conviction, and saying all that needed to be said about the Prime Minister's determination to avoid investigating Hunt's improper behaviour as a Minister, lest it also reveal his own improper behaviour as Prime Minister.

.....................................

Other articles worth reading in the Guardian today:

Most Israeli citizens don't want a war with Iran

Binyamin Netanyahu and western hawks who seek an early strike are ignoring Israel's security experts and people

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/29/israel-citizens-dont-want-war-iran

..............................................

David Cameron must make the Conservative party look like the nationby Neil O'Brien

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/29/cameron-make-conservatives-look-like-nation

This one's a hoot. O'Brien is another of these creepy young men that hang around the political scene who has a first class degree in PPE at Oxford and yet knows jack shit about anything important. He's the director of a creepy right-wing think-tank called Policy Exchange.

Cameronism meant that middle-class people no longer felt guilty voting for a party that had previously looked homophobic, bigoted and old-fashioned. This was a big achievement, made in the teeth of opposition from the right. But there was a whole second thrust to the modernisation project that has made less progress. The "blue collar" dimension of modernisation was about giving ordinary working people a reason to vote Tory. It was about reviving the party in the north, and shaking off perceptions that the Tories were just a party for the rich. However, in polling we carried out in February (long before pastygate or the changes to the top rate of tax), two-thirds of voters still thought the party "looks after the interests of the rich, not ordinary people". Even a quarter of Tory voters agreed.

Their problem is specifically in the great northern cities, which remain Tory-free zones. Despite the party's revival elsewhere, there are still no Tories on city councils like those of Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield and Newcastle.

Firstly, the Conservatives need to look more like the nation as a whole. A new YouGov poll for Policy Exchange asked people how the Tories need to change. Voters want the party to field more candidates who are working class, and have business experience outside politics. Tory swing voters in the north also think the party urgently needs more northern voices. This matters, because if you take people doing identical jobs in the north and the south, our poll shows that people in the north are much more likely to describe themselves as working class. Voters now think even Labour is too middle class, and that problem is even more acute for the Conservatives.

As we observed yesterday, Baroness Warsi has the advantage of being a black woman who speaks with a slight northern accent, and for this reason, as well as her sheer ability to waffle and bullshit, she keeps getting wheeled out by the Tories to speak for them whenever they have a problem (which is most of the time) - even though she's never been elected to Parliament.

Policy needs to change too. Voters' most important priority is to get the economy moving and get people off the dole. One popular way to reduce unemployment would be to increase work requirements for welfare claimants.

Higher unemployment in northern cities explains a lot of the north-south divide in voting patterns. So getting dole queues down is also the key to the Tories doing better in the northern cities.

The Nazis had a similar problem with their economy and unemployment, and look how well they did with compulsory work for the unemployed at (what shall we say?) . . . very low wages.

Ask people about their own lives and the number one issue is the cost of living – particularly for people in the north. People are gobsmacked by soaring electricity and fuel bills, and think politicians don't understand the pressure they are feeling. 

And who was it that privatised our national utilities so as to make huge private profits out of providing basic energy supplies? - oh yes, Thatcher and her pals. Still unforgiven for that, amongst many other things.

How could the government tackle poverty when it has no money?

Er - excuse me? See Galloway's comments above on money wasted on unusable weapons of mass destruction, on fighting useless and counterproductive wars, etc. Let alone the money we've allowed the rich and the super-rich to take out of the country and into tax havens. Let alone the money that could be brought in through a wealth tax and if necessary earmarked for directly tackling poverty. And of course that would also boost tax revenues because the poor are more likely to spend their money immediately, and in so doing generate more tax receipts through extra VAT on all goods and services. And that's before we even get to the fact that employed people don't need dole payments or as much additional support such as housing benefit.

So what else does Tory Boy propose?

Voters overwhelmingly think the real way to fight poverty is to tackle the root causes, like educational failure, rather than spend more on benefits. The government should pilot a successor to Labour's Sure Start programme. 

The 'real way'? The 'root causes'? Which are nothing to do with greedy and corrupt bankers or useless politicians? So let's just re-start the Labour Early Years programme that was slashed by Cameron and Osborne, with a little help from Cleggie and little Danny.

And finally -

How about introducing much tougher penalties for hate crimes? After all, when there is disorder and crime it is not the rich or strong who suffer, but the weak, the poor, and those who are "different". It would be tough and fair. These are the values that should shape the next phase of tory modernisation.

Same old, same old. And that's all, folks. Of course we need punishment for those who commit hate crimes. But what about education and rehabilitation for those who vent their anger and frustration through ignorance and bigotry and sometimes violence? And what does this Tory muppet propose we do by way of meaningful education to tackle the ignorance and the bigotry before it becomes embedded in children's hearts and minds? Nothing?

As for the 'disorder and crime' that impacts so strongly on 'the weak, the poor, and those who are "different"' . . . have we learned nothing at all from last year's riots? Do we still not understand that it's poverty and hopelessness and gross inequality that breed disorder and crime in the first place? (Disorderly and criminal bankers excepted.)

...............................................

Dammit - I was intending to write about -

Pay teachers according to performance, MPs propose
Schoolteachers' pay should be tied to the value they add to pupils' performance, MPs are to recommend
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/may/01/pay-teachers-according-to-performance

Bollocks to that. You can read about it for yourselves. You can bet they won't be rewarding those teachers who are responsible for raising young people's levels of social, emotional and spiritual intelligence. When politicians talk about 'performance'-related pay you know very well that all they're interested in is attainment in timed tests and examinations. Fucking outrageous. Thank goodness there are decent people in the teachers' Trades Unions who are speaking out against this bullshit on this grey and grim May Day.

..........................................

* Right-wing governments have traditionally sought to repress the message behind International Workers' Day, with fascist governments in Portugal, Italy, Germany and Spain abolishing the workers' holiday, the official May 1st holiday in the US being Loyalty Day, and the Conservative party in the UK currently attempting to abolish the UK's annual May Day Bank Holiday.  -  Wikipedia

............................................

STOP PRESS!

Rupert Murdoch 'not a fit person' to lead News Corp - MPs

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17898029

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17910089

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17905775

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17908839

"If at all relevant times, Rupert Murdoch did not take steps to become fully informed about phone-hacking, he turned a blind eye and exhibited wilful blindess to what was going on in his companies and publications.

"This culture, we consider, permeated from the top throughout the organisation and speaks volumes about the lack of effective corporate governance at News Corporation and News International.

We conclude therefore that Rupert Murdoch is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company".

'That description of Mr Murdoch by the British parliament as "not a fit person" is likely to have significant consequences.' - Robert Peston

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/may/01/rupert-murdoch-not-fit-select-committee

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/01/rupert-murdoch-news-international

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/video/2012/may/01/rupert-murdoch-select-committee-video

.

Layer 534 . . . Hunt, Cameron, Murdoch, BSkyB, and Urgent Questions for the Prime Minister

So the latest polls indicate that support for the Conservatives has fallen back to 29% - which is pretty much their 'core' vote. This simply confirms that come hell or come high water somewhere between a quarter and a third of our population will continue to support the Nasty Party - either because those supporters are wealthy enough to directly benefit from Tory policies, OR because they are stupid enough to believe Tory propaganda and the crap published by Tory supporters who act as Conservative cheerleaders in our mass media.

Anyone with half a brain now understands that there really isn't any such thing as 'compassionate' Conservatism. Meet the new boss - same as the old boss. Clearly Cameron wasn't just trying to placate (and finesse) the extreme right wing of his party when he said that his mission was to finish whatever it was that Thatcher started. He really means it. He really is bent on privatising or at least marketising (which is almost as bad) our public services, on cutting them back as far as possible, on boosting the entry of private enterprise into our public services, and on selling off anything he can get away with selling off. Just like the old boss.

I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, I really did. But look at his recent behaviour. A stupid and nasty budget. One of his own backbenchers* calling him and Osborne a couple of posh boys who understand nothing about real people and their lives. A lack of apparent concern that the national economy is back in reverse gear, and back in recession. And now the revelations as to what he and his Culture Secretary have been up to vis a vis Rupert Murdoch and his News Corp empire.

As a matter of fact, even Tory commentators have been expressing their disquiet. Here's Simon Heffer ( a dyed in the wool Thatcherite) writing for the Mail today -

There is enormous public disquiet about issues that the Coalition refuses to address, presumably because it does not find them to be so important. For example, the disastrous state of the economy, and the arrival of the double-dip recession that some of us had long feared inevitable.

Here is a problem that voters would love the Government to address. It is one that is keeping well over three million of them out of work (rather than the official figure of 2.7 million, which has been massaged in various ways). 

The recession is handicapping manufacturers and service providers, and deterring entrepreneurs. Outside central London, it is driving down property prices. It is depressing tax revenues. The threat of unemployment is also causing millions more to fear for their own financial security. It is, in short, a calamity.

The reaction of David Cameron and George Osborne to Wednesday’s announcement that Britain had fallen into a double-dip recession was to bury their heads in the sand. Perhaps backbench Tory MP Nadine Dorries — a proper tribune of the people — had a point when she berated ‘posh boys’ in power for not understanding how the other 99 per cent live.
However, I fear the reason for the failure of Messrs Cameron and Osborne to get a proper grip is not because they are posh, but because neither can bear to lose face by admitting his serious errors.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2136402/Nadine-Dorries-point--politicians-detached-real-lives-voters.html#ixzz1tWk7sGPP

Of course extreme right-wingers such as Heffer will always seek to blame the leadership when Tory support falls below 30% (rather than blame or question Tory ideology as such), but obviously he makes some very good points - those points that are blatantly obvious to anyone who has eyes to see and a little bit of their brain in working order. He goes on:

If that wasn’t enough to make people feel politics was no longer relevant to them, along came the exposure of Jeremy Hunt’s activities as Culture Secretary in the proposed takeover of BSkyB by the Murdoch empire.

Recent history shows that nothing revolts the public more than proof their elected representatives are behaving improperly. Mr Hunt has, of course, denied any wrongdoing. However, the notion that no wrong was done was exploded on Wednesday, when Mr Hunt’s special adviser resigned, admitting he was ‘too close’ to the Murdoch empire. 

What inspired him to get too close? Could it have been that he thought Mr Hunt wanted it? And if Mr Hunt wanted it, why did he? Could it have been because he thought Mr Cameron wanted it?

So, from the point of view of the public, we have a Government not only adamantly in denial about the gravest problems facing the British people, but also up to its neck in cronyism, impropriety and downright sleaze.

So - our extreme right-wingers such as Heffer can see all of this, our extreme left-wingers can see it, and so can the vast majority of us in the middle. This government is in deep excrement.

As for Cameron refusing to investigate what Hunt and his pals were up to, it's pretty obvious that he's terrified of anyone examining too closely Hunt's text messages and emails because some of them will have been copied to Cameron to keep him in touch with what he was doing, and therefore making him an active participant in the conspiracy to hand complete control of BSkyB to Murdoch.

It seems to me Cameron will continue to stall on this issue until Thursday's local elections are out of the way - at the very least. This week of all weeks he can't afford to have any more shit hit the fan, which it will do if either Hunt resigns or if he has to sack Hunt.

This lunchtime the unelected Baroness Warsi was again on Radio 4 news to tell us that the people of this country don't care about the Hunt affair. How come this person is usually the one the Tories put forward to do their bullshitting and dissembling? Is it because she speaks with a slight Northern accent, and is less likely to say something downright idiotic than Cameron's actual MPs? How come she spouts such patronising rubbish - telling us what we do and don't care about?** Of course she's spoken with 'ordinary' people who don't care about the Hunt affair, and who probably aren't even aware of it - but we can all go out and find a few dipsticks to say what we might want to hear. This doesn't mean they're in the majority, or are even 'representative'. The Baroness ought to be aware that more than 70% of us are now fully aware of what the Tories are doing (and not doing) and we don't like what we see and hear.

.....................................................................

* "On March 6, 2012, Nadine Dorries MP attacked the leadership of the Coalition over their taxation policies. Referring to the proposed cuts in child benefit, she told the Financial Times "The problem is that policy is being run by two public schoolboys who don't know what it's like to go to the supermarket and have to put things back on the shelves because they can't afford it for their children's lunchboxes. What's worse, they don't care, either". She again criticised Cameron, and also George Osborne, in similar terms on 23 April, calling them "two arrogant posh boys who don't know the price of milk - who show no remorse, no contrition and no passion to want to understand the lives of others"." - Wikipedia

** These are the actual words of Warsi today:
"If you go out and speak to ordinary people, this is not what they are obsessing about. When people look in Westminster Village and see us obsessing about these kinds of issues, and see us playing party politics, using systems and processes to score points against each other in this way, they say 'a plague on all their houses'. What people care about is their schools, their future, and that is what they want us to be talking about."

........................................

Speaker Bercow has agreed to summon Cameron to the Commons this afternoon to answer "urgent questions". He's due to appear live on the Parliament Channel sometime after 3.00pm. The following is taken from the Guardian's 'politics live' blog today:

1.23pm: Ed Miliband should get hold of a read-out from the Number 10 lobby briefing before he asks his UQ on Jeremy Hunt. The exchanges illustrated some of the questions which David Cameron could find it hard to answer. Here are more details.

• Will Cameron definitely order an inquiry into allegations that Jeremy Hunt broke the ministerial code? Cameron has said that he wants Hunt to be allowed to give evidence to the Leveson inquiry and his spokesman repeated this line this morning. "We should let the process run its course, let the inquiry establish the facts," the spokesman said. But Leveson has said that it is not his job to investigate breaches of the ministerial code, and the prime minister's spokesman was unwilling to say categorically that Cameron would refer this matter to his independent adviser on ministerial interests, Sir Alex Allan, if Leveson did not address it. All he would say was: "The prime minister has been very clear that he would not duck his responsibilities on the ministerial code." That's a hint that Cameron will order an investigation in due course, but not a confirmation. Cameron may have to firm that up this afternoon.

• Why does Cameron think Hunt has not breached the ministerial code when people like Lord Butler think he did? Asked about the remarks from Butler the spokesman just said that Cameron "has said that he has seen no evidence that the code has been broken".

• Has Cameron asked Hunt directly what he knew about what his special adviser, Adam Smith, was saying to News Corporation about the BSkyB takeover? Asked about this, the spokesman said that this would be covered by the evidence given to Leveson. He also said that Leveson has given a ruling asking people not to disclose their evidence before it is heard by the inquiry.

• Why did Hunt tell MPs that he had published all details of his department's exchanges with News Corporation when he hadn't? In March last year Hunt told MPs: "We are publishing all the documents relating to all the meetings – all the consultation documents, all the submissions we received, all the exchanges between my department and News Corporation." But he did not release details of the exchanges between his special adviser and the News Corporation lobbyist, Fred Michel. This information only emerged in a 163-page dossier released by the Leveson inquiry last week. Asked about this, the prime minister's spokesman said that Hunt addressed this point in his statement last week. When journalists said that Hunt did not actually answer this question last week, the spokesman replied: "I have nothing further to add to what the secretary of state said."

• Why did Hunt tell the Commons that he always accepted the advice of independent regulators when he did not follow Ofcom's advice and refer the BSkyB bid to the Competition Commission? Asked about this, the spokesman insisted that Hunt said he was minded to refer the bid to the Competition Commission. (David Leigh went into this in more detail in a Guardian article last week.)

• Will Cameron reveal all his text messages and emails with Rebekah Brooks? Do the text messages still exist? And, if they are disclosed, will they be redacted? All the spokesman would say on this was that Cameron would provide the Leveson inquiry with "whatever he is asked to provide".

• What contact have government officials had with Lord Justice Leveson about his inquiry? Last week it was revealed that Sir Jeremy Heywood, the cabinet secretary, spoke to Leveson about the Hunt affair. Today the prime minister's spokesman said: "I am sure that there have been contacts between senior officials and the Leveson team." Some journalists found this potentially suspicious, particularly when the spokesman declined to elaborate what those contacts were, but the spokesman said contacts of this kind were to be expected given the fact that several ministers are giving evidence to Leveson. The spokesman also insisted that the inquiry was "entirely independent".

.................................................

1.19pm: Here's what Ed Miliband said this morning about the Jeremy Hunt affair. He was he was asking an urgent question about it because it "goes to the character of the government".

"People need to know, particularly in these times, that they have a Government that stands up for them, not the rich and powerful. People need to know that there is the utmost probity and integrity in the way that government is run. I am afraid the events of the last week suggest that something other than that has been going on.

It is a pattern with this prime minister, particularly around News International. He resists the calls for change. He resists the calls to do the right thing. Exactly as he did in phone hacking last summer, exactly as he did with Rebekah Brooks, exactly as he did with Andy Coulson. He is doing the same now when everyone can see that the obvious thing for him to do is make this referral to Alex Allan. That is what he should get on and do rather than seeking to use Jeremy Hunt as a firewall."

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2012/apr/30/cameron-hunt-statement-politics-live

Here's a piece on Harriet Harman's concerns:

http://www.labour.org.uk/ministerial-code-investigation-on-bskyb,2012-04-25

Here's the Independent's view:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/exclusive-hunt-on-the-brink-as-he-is-accused-of-misleading-parliament-7687530.html
.

Layer 430 . . . Posh and Posher, Public Schools, Grammar Schools, Government, People Power and Spy Power

.

Working class men and women used to be in Parliament, but not any more. These days you need to be something like the son or daughter of a church minister, preferably with a first class degree in politics, philosophy and economics, or law; preferably from Oxbridge.

So said Oxzen in Layer 428.

Andrew Neil presented an interesting and serious programme on politics this week -

Posh and Posher: Why Public School Boys Run Britain

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00y37gk

David Cameron and Nick Clegg seem made for each other: Eton and Oxford meets Westminster School and Cambridge. But does the return of public school boys to the top of our politics say something worrying about the decline of social mobility in Britain?

Andrew Neil goes on a journey from the Scottish council house he grew up in to the corridors of power to ask if we will ever again see a prime minister emerge from an ordinary background like his.

In this provocative film Andrew seeks to find out why politicians from all parties appear to be drawn from an ever smaller social pool - and why it matters to us all.

Dear Andrew! What a wanker.

Just like the public schoolboys he interviewed for the programme he thinks life is all about "competition", and getting to "the top". Therefore his answer to increasing 'social mobility' is to create more and more highly selective grammar schools.

You can't fault his logic, really. Bring back selection, hot-house more of the working classes and middle classes, get more of them into Oxbridge, get more of them studying PPE, and get more of them into Parliament. Brilliant. What's more, (ex-working class) wanker Tony Parsons agrees with him. Such a pity their logic is based on false premises.

Their thesis seems to be that you can't change the system - and what's more all the main parties will continue to want MPs who have been to Oxbridge, studied PPE or law, moved on to being "special advisors" for MPs, and put themselves up for selection for safe seats. Therefore we need to create more confident, more academically successful young people from 'ordinary' backgrounds (ie non-public school) who can 'compete' for the right to go down that route.

These dopey fuckers don't even realise the many contradictions in what they're proposing. They don't approve of Parliament being full of elite toffs who know nothing about real people - therefore they say we should use selection at the age of 11 to create a non fee paying elite of 'ordinary' people who will go to Oxbridge and go forward to become our political elite - who then may or may not identify with the communities they came from, and may or may not represent their interests adequately.

These guys can't even conceive of a Labour party (let alone a Tory party) that chooses people for safe seats on the basis of being rounded, experienced, enlightened human beings who are in touch with the real world, and have a decent value system, rather than arrogant Oxbridge graduates with PPE degrees.

All credit to Neil for questioning the existence of a Parliament full of toffs, millionaires, ex-public schoolkids  and Oxbridgeites - but null points for wanting a Parliament full of grammar school educated Oxbridgeites.

Next thing you know these people will be recommending selective breeding as well. Fucking working class Tories.

Interesting that Parsons dropped out of his Essex grammar school when he was 16, according to Wikipedia. Maybe he got bored with it, or frustrated with academia. Maybe he just needed to earn a living. Or maybe he just saw himself as a bit of a rebel, fancied a bit of a rock & roll lifestyle, and fancied his chances as a self-styled "hip, young gunslinger".

........................................................


Katharine Hamnett CBE was on Newsnight last night, arguing that our forests should stay in public ownership.

"Why do you want the government to own the forests?" asked the presenter.

Hamnet shot back, "NOT the government! The forests are OURS! They're not the property of the Labour Party or the Conservative Party - they're ours!"

The presenter looked gobsmacked. But this is the real point. People are starting to understand that we don't want government to be our rulers - we should expect them to do things on our behalf. But first we have to articulate what we really want. It's stupid to just vote for parties on the basis of what they offer in their manifestos. WE have to make demands and expect our elected representatives to act on our behalf.

People argue that the banks, for example, shouldn't be nationalised, on the grounds that governments are crap at running banks. More false logic. We don't want the government to run the banks - we simply want and need the banks to belong to we, the people, and it's then down to us, by whatever means necessary, to appoint the right people to run them. If the banks are now too big to fail, which they clearly are (as Robert Peston has shown), and far too powerful for governments to control, then we need to take control of them, and make them work for the long term benefit of the country as a whole, and not just their shareholders.

As for governments doing the bidding of their people, events in Tunisia and now Egypt are showing what can happen even in the most repressive of societies when people start to stand up and make demands. It was the same in Eastern Europe some time ago. Non-violent people power can cause massive political and social change, when governments are seen to be illegitimate.

Nobody asked for our country to be run by a load of toffs and bankers. It's now up to David Cameron, who I still think would ideally like to be a One-Nation Tory, to demonstrate that his is a government of the people, and for the people, even if it isn't by the people.

.......................................

The News Corps phone hacking scandal is hotting up. We now have police officers investigating why other police officers failed to investigate the hackers and the hackers' paymasters properly. They will also have to look into whether police officers were receiving money from journalists and newspaper groups. The stench of corruption hangs heavy in the cold winter air. Rupert Murdoch has even cancelled his Davos jaunt in order to direct strategic operations aimed at salvaging the image of News Corps, such as it is.

..................................

Curb the banks? The government has propped them up at every opportunity

Here's the story of how Cameron and Osborne secretly tried and failed to kill tougher European rules on bankers' bonuses

by George Monbiot

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/24/curb-the-banks-government-propped-them-up

It's bonus season, the time of year when bankers show us what they really believe. As soon as they get their money, they spend much of it on land and houses. They know that these are safer investments than the assets in which they trade. If they trash the economy again, they at least will survive.

This year the frenzy will be almost as bad as ever. But it could have been worse. Here is the story, revealed by a leaked document, of how our government covertly tried – and failed – to kill tougher European rules on bankers' bonuses, and how the chancellor of the exchequer appears to have misled parliament.

The prime minister and the chancellor have been playing a double game. They claimed they wanted to tame the banks. In reality, they were protecting them. They never meant to address the economic polarisation of this country, or to check the incentives which caused the last crash. Their intention was always to pamper the rich and to make the poor pay for their follies. As the leaked document shows, the Conservatives are ready to risk the whole economy to help the filthy rich get richer.

.

Layer 317. . . The Mace is in Place

.

As the TV presenter said - it's been a momentous morning this morning . . at the Chelsea Flower Show.

A wonderful, colourful occasion, full of nice, well-off  people trying their hardest to impress and to keep the old traditions going. To judge only from appearances you'd never guess the amount of shit that's been shovelled and the heavy lifting that's gone on behind the scenes.

Meanwhile, a short distance away, outside the Palace of Westminster, another significant event was taking place:

Protester Brian Haw arrested before Queen's speech

Anti-war campaigner one of two arrested as police clear protest camp on Parliament Square

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/25/protester-brian-haw-arrested-queens-speech

................................................

Inside the palace, having just trotted down from her own palace, the Queen was performing her regular duties. And very well she did them too. A flawless reading of her script, with every word perfectly enunciated, without any hesitation, repetition or deviation. And she's 84 you know! Isn't it just wonderful that she's still the head of state for Australia, Canada and New Zealand? Prince Philip will be 89 next month. Bloody marvellous! I must say he still looks splendid in his uniform with his medals & stars.

It's a bit odd though that the Queen doesn't kick things off with even a "Good morning folks!" A few warm-up exercises might also be good, if the great and the good gathered there didn't already know one another too bloody well already.

So here comes the Sergeant At Arms, with his arms swinging like pendulums, at the head of The Speaker's Procession, making sure the mace is in place - because that has to happen before anything else can happen. Obviously.

We also have the Lord Great Chamberlain, The Earl Marshall, the Lord High Chancellor, and finally, in the centre of the State Procession, the Queen herself, clutching the hand of her consort, surrounded by playing-card people, a mad hatter, a girl called Alice and a hooker-smoking caterpillar. (I made the last bit up. About the caterpillar.)

All of this takes place in complete hushed silence, apart from when some mad person shouts "Hats Off!" to no-one in particular, since no-one seems to be wearing a hat in that particular part of the palace, and apart from when Dennis Skinner shouts something rude or sarcastic about the royals, which is also traditional. This year it's about Fergie's financial dealings.

So here we have it - the wigs, the cloaks, the ermine, the crown! The page boys! What do you have to do to be a page boy?

And now, as we approach the climax ( - the reading of the speech) we have Black Rod, or rather the person who's today deputising for the indisposed Black Rod - someone called The Yeoman Usher - walking towards the House of Commons . . . only for the door to be slammed in his face.

So then there's the pounding on the door with a big stick with a big knob on the end, and finally the cry goes up - "The Queen commands this House to attend her immediately!" And so they do.

There's Harriet walking side by side with the Cameron, and looking very human and real, which is good because none of the New Labour leadership contenders can quite manage it, as they walk along in file like the arseholes they truly are.

The Duke is impressive - looking relaxed, with a slightly sardonic smile on his face. As well he might.

And so to the big speech . . .

This government will abide by its principles of freedom, fairness and responsibility. Good start.

Its priority will be the management of the public finances, and the structural deficit. Mmmmm.

They will make the tax system fairer. They will prioritise work and employment. They will regulate (re-regulate?) financial services. They will invest in high-speed broadband and trains. They'll reconnect pensions with average earnings.

They will limit non-EU "economic migrants". They will make us energy efficient, and sufficient. They will promote flexible working and equal pay. They want a strong and fair society. They want individual and social responsibility. They want more academy schools. They want teachers back in control of the curriculum. They want to improve public health and to reduce health inequalities.

They want to make the police more accountable, to diminish the effects of alcohol on bad social behaviour, and to reduce the costs of bureaucracy.  They will give greater powers to councils and neighbourhoods.

They will instigate parliamentary and political reform. They want to rebalance the relationship between the citizen and the State. They will legislate for 5 year fixed terms between general elections. They want equal sized constituencies, and an elected second house on the basis of PR. They'll hold a referendum on an AV system for electing the Commons. They want a new way of funding political parties.

They want to restore freedoms and civil liberties. They will give additional powers to Scotland, Wales and N Ireland. They want no more powers being given to the EU. They want effective global collaboration - for example on combatting climate change.

They will carry out a strategic defence review. They will work for a 2-state solution and a viable state for Palestinians. They want to reduce the threat from nukes and proliferation. They will maintain a 0.7% of GNP commitment to development and third world aid.

And I reckon a more enlightened Labour party could have gone for most of that lot. So why the fuck didn't they? Because they were New Labour!

......................................

And owing to New Labour's failure to regulate the fat cats and the City, and to forsee a perfectly forseeable financial crash as a consequence of the financial bubble, we now face an era of drastic cuts, increased unemployment and reduced standards of living.

The good news is that the Tories really are sounding pretty liberal, and far more concerned with civil liberties than New Labour. Of course they'll want to keep Trident, but I'll be the first to congratulate them in the unlikely event of the defence review coming out against its replacement.

Unfortunately they'll fiddle the new constituency boundaries, and they'll never support PR, or even AV.

But I keep finding myself feeling strangely optimistic that Cameron really will force his party to be liberal and "progressive" in order to carry on occupying the electoral middle ground. I keep on fantasising that politics in this country might become more enlightened and based on a consensus around well-understood and agreed liberal principles, with the Labour party eventually returning to its socialist roots and making the case for greater equality and the elimination of poverty and social injustice as the way to a better and happier society.

 . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Some Guardian comments here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/25/queens-speech-bills-coalition?
.

Layer 302 . . . Tales of Two Cities, Enchantment, Politics, Peace Camps, Demos, PR, and a Progressive Alliance

.
Paddy Ashdown, now pushing 70, showed this morning how to wear an open-necked shirt and still look funky. These younger politicians who wear their normal suit shirts without a tie just look - stupid.

........................................

Here's my recommended viewing for today:

Crisis Capitalism - Naomi Klein and Raj Patel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ji_8tI0sbY

........................................

There was a very funny moment on TV this morning when Dame Anne Leslie, the notorious right-wing hag, argued against PR electoral systems on the basis that they let into parliament undesirable parties such as Austria's neo-nazi Freedom Party and BZO. A fellow panellist then pointed out that these are exactly the kind of parties that Cameron and co have joined up with in the European parliament. Brilliant.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_Freedom_Party
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B6rg_Haider

.....................................

Tales of Two Cities

1. Venice - by Francesco da Mosto; BBC4

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0078ssj

"Not just beautiful. Enchanting."

So said a guy who's been sweeping St Mark's Square at dawn every day for 22 years. Venice is enchanting.

So here we have it: there's something beyond beautiful. There's something more than aesthetically pleasing and visually stunning. There's another dimension where aesthetics trigger . . . the divine. The transcendental. The spiritual. The realm of satori that lies beyond the merely physical. The connection with the metaphysical; the one-and-all; the source of all meaning and ultimate joy and delight. The source of our higher being. This is what the street sweeper connects with, every morning in Venice, as he watches the sun rise.

This programme is a visually stunning, brilliantly conceived, wonderfully edited, superbly written and beautifully narrated essay on an amazing city.

Now available on DVD.

............................................

2. London

Is London enchanting? Er . . . no. On the whole. London is something else. An amazing place in its own right, but not a place which of itself produces transcendental enchantment; though parts of it can, on certain days.

Arriving in Trafalgar Square yesterday I found it full of Morris dancers and their entourages, plus passing tourists, and this was only an hour after there was supposed to have been a massive demonstration in favour of PR and electoral reform. Hardly an Athens-like scenario.

Walking down Whitehall it was clear that the majority of people were tourists, speaking a variety of languages. This is a weird and not very wonderful street - though it's very impressive. All the financial and political pomp and power of the State is on architectural display. I'd really love to see there, every weekend, parties of visitors consisting of neighbourhood groups giving their young people an educational tour. Children and young people from all over the country should have a right to a guided tour of the throbbing heart of government, in order to stimulate their interest in politics, government and citizenship. How many schools, especially London schools, even bother to do this? You have to experience it, to begin to understand it.

Parliament Square yesterday was full of tents belonging to a peace camp set up as a 'democracy village' by activists who want to see our troops pulled out of Afghanistan, amongst other things

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/05/450803.html

 (c) Oxzen Pics

I noticed Sally Bercow had said she'd go to live in a tent in the Square when she was told to move out of the Speaker's flat for the duration of the election. An interesting character.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1233127/Sally-Bercow-I-binge-drinking-ladette-downed-bottles-wine-day-night-stands.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/7353788/Sally-Bercow-I-will-sleep-in-tent-in-Parliament-Square.html

(c) Oxzen Pics

There's now an amazing media village on the green opposite parliament, which is dominated by a two-story black-glass prefab belonging to the BBC. This is the studio that was used for the BBC's political broadcasts this morning.

I finally came across the "Demo for Democracy" in Smith Square - which had been organised by POWER2010 and its Take Back Parliament campaign. They gave a huge cheer when Vince Cable emerged from Transport House, which was fronted by a row of police officers, and made his way on foot back to the Lib Dems HQ a couple of streets away, accompanied by chants of "No sell out!"

(c) Oxzen Pics

Walking back past Millbank Tower and Parliament an hour later, after a visit to the Tate - the Westminster village's very own art gallery - I came across Chris Huhne and David Laws on their way to LibDem HQ, deep in conversation. These guys, in terms of influence, appear to be in the top six of the Lib Dem hierarchy. In our current circumstances they are therefore in the top six power brokers in the entire country. Their backgrounds are very interesting - both of them public school and Oxbridge educated politicians who were originally investment bankers, operating deep in the throbbing heart of the City.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Laws
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Huhne

............................................................

Helena Kennedy said on TV this morning that political tribalism is in decline, and her own record in the Lords shows she's always focused on issues and principles, not Party bickering and manoevering. PR allows us to have a more mature and intelligent democracy.

Which is pretty much what Oxzen wrote in response to Henry Porter's article on PR today.

Is this really the end of Punch and Judy politics?

The adversarial system we have lived with for so long is outdated and a bar to true progress

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/08/henry-porter-proportional-representation?showallcomments=true#end-of-comments

During the election, I took part in a dozen or so public meetings. I was struck by the incredible focus of the audiences. People were paying attention in a way that was quite new to me and was also rather moving. They wanted to believe; they wanted the best for those around them, particularly the new generation of voters, which is what makes the failure in all those polling stations such a scandal. The idea that people in those audiences were divided into first- and second-class voters because of their political allegiance was appalling.

We rediscovered the wonder of free elections last week and saw its potency and that is where we should start on the issue of PR. Two hundred-odd years ago, you might have met a stout man of affairs, probably a Tory, who would have deplored the idea of extending voting rights and abolishing rotten boroughs: he was swiftly consigned to history by the Whigs and their Great Reform Act of 1832. A hundred years ago, you would have met the same type spluttering at the mention of votes for women; he was swept aside by the suffragettes.

Today, that very same conservative voice will tell you that first past the post is the only system that can produce stable, decisive governments. But the view that says we have to tolerate an unfair voting system will go the way of all that self-serving opinion of the past.

The election seems to be telling us to settle on PR as a principle and then find a system that suits our politics. Neither of the main parties properly concedes this need, because it threatens their power, but a hung parliament is the clearest possible hint to them that we demand changes in the political culture that are more than spin.

Part of the British genius for progressive reform is that we used to understand that with each advance in people's rights and enfranchisement, government improved. PR is not a threat to government, but the only way to renew its legitimacy and improve its performance. PR means progress as well as equality at the ballot box.

Oxzen commented:

Good article, but

    . . . with each advance in people's rights and enfranchisement, government improved.

There have been important advances, but it's not clear that government has always improved. Would you say that the Blair/Brown government was an improvement on the Attlee government, which was arguably our one and only socialist government? Would Attlee have left it to the markets to dismantle, asset-strip, sell off, and cease to invest in British industry, and inflate property bubbles?

The reason that PR is essential, and has been adopted by more enlightened countries, is that it encourages and enables government on the basis of coalitions around ideology, and not just personalities and parties. The age of 'broad church' parties such as Labour and the Conservatives, which mainly provide career paths for professional politicians, has to come to an end. People need to know what and who they're really voting for when they take the trouble to vote. The New Labour brand fooled far too many people for far too long. A trade descriptions act is needed for politics as well as retailing.

Government on the basis of which party has the biggest share of seats and/or votes, even though their share of the vote is way below 50%, is almost as childish as government on the basis of personal popularity contests between individual politicians. This is what now enables the Tories to claim they have a right to govern when they know very well that the majority of voters are against them ideologically, and probably always will be.

The nonsensical neoliberal theories of market efficiency have been tested to destruction, trickle down economics have been shown to be a deception, and only government by coalitions of social democrats and others on the left is going build a better Britain based on social justice and sound economics. It's time for our politics to grow up and for politicians to persuade people to vote for them on the basis of where they really stand and who they'll work with in a balanced parliament. This is what happens in mature democracies.

The Tories have nothing to offer this country - certainly not PR - but New Labour are little better, unless they now admit they've been seriously going down the wrong road for the past 13 years.

..........................................

Alex Salmond has said that the country now needs a "progressive alliance" consisting of all the anti-Tory parties coming together. Can't argue with that.

(c) Oxzen Pics

.

Layer 285 . . . The Shock Doctrine, Privatisations, PR, and Big Issues for the Big Society

.

It's becoming clearer that come what may in the new parliament we'll be heading for more of the Shock Doctrine - using the failure of the banks and the current state of the national finances to summon up a virtual state of emergency - and then to create a huge cutting back of public services, in the name of stopping "waste", with all its consequences for unemployment and deflation.

Phase two will be more privatisations and outsourcing - even in education and health.

Cameron's piece in yesterday's Observer described his philosophy for a Big Society, which is a kind of anarcho-conservatism, through which money will be handed over to those who want to "run their own schools" etc - i.e. pay for for-profit companies to run schools, using hired hands posing as "successful" management teams.

Peter Preston wrote in yesterday's paper, talking about the debates on TV and how they're reported in the press, "We can make up our own minds . . . and you'll keep on winning, if you can be bothered to keep sitting up and taking notice."

Which is a fair point. But how many can really be bothered, how many have the time or inclination, and how many are prepared to inform themselves from the precious little quality writing about the key issues?

..............................................

More good stuff in the Observer yesterday, and some Big Issues for the Big Society:

If you're old and still in touch with your family, count your blessings

by Mary Warnock

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/18/ageing-healthcare-dementia

.................................................

So, how do the parties match up on protecting our freedom?

The New Labour manifesto asks you to ignore all the suspicion the government has created during its term in office

by Henry Porter

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/18/henry-porter-manifestos-election

......................................................

Simon Singh's historic win is also a triumph for his online allies

by Nick Cohen

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/18/nick-cohen-simon-singh-libel

.....................................................

In today's Guardian we have these:

Cameron, beware. Cake baking and sports clubs can't fix inequality

An east London estate offers a potent picture of the Big Society. But there is a big gap in Cameron's big idea

by Madeleine Bunting

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/19/cameron-big-society-inequality

.......................................................

On libel, the really big battle awaits

Two years on, I welcome politicians' libel pledges. But tinkering won't do. Reform must be radical

by Simon Singh

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/19/libel-laws-reform-simon-singh

.................................................

And for the Lib Dems' next trick? Electrify the foreign debate

Nick Clegg will squander his gains if he shies from a row on Europe, Iraq and Afghanistan. It's time to get properly stuck in

by Jackie Ashley

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/18/nick-clegg-europe-foreign-debate

...............................................................

In tomorrow's Guardian we have John Harris:

Clegg surge could kill first past the post

A three-way split would fatally undermine FPTP and signify the time has arrived for a historic push on our broken voting system

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/19/clegg-surge-first-past-the-post?

Some of us desperately want the political and constitutional crisis Martin Kettle wrote about on Cif the other day . . .  electoral reform is British politics' most fundamental issue.

Cleggmania notwithstanding, look at the state of the election debate. Where are such white-hot issues as housing, and low pay? The same goes for such baffling no-shows as climate change, the banks, Afghanistan, Europe, etc etc. This is what FPTP does to the national argument: it kills it.

Maybe not too late: despite the aforementioned grip exercised by the Brownites, might Labour signal its willingness to at least consider the more proportional AV-plus system, and thus begin to build a coalition for post-election reform? If, even post-election, plenty of Labour high-ups prove to be resistant, so be it: that'll be a signal that starting the realignment of the left that some of us speculate about is now a matter of urgency.

A Labour friend of mine just called me and said we seemed to have reached a Ceausescu moment: representatives of both main parties trying to sustain all the contortions of traditional politics, trying desperately to seize power on the support of around a quarter of the electorate, and triangulating their way around the meaningless middle – while their assumptions are shredded, and Britain moves somewhere else entirely. Let's hope so.

.

Layer 224 . . . More Bullshit Bingo, Strangling, European Union and Parliamentary Standards

.
More synchronicity . . .

Following on from yesterday's musings, I came across this piece about The Stranglers:

When did you first realise that The Guildford Stranglers, as you were then called, had the makings of a really good band?

JJ Burnel: Well, not for quite a while, because the very few places we could get booked into usually asked us never to return again, or they'd pull the plugs on us! We tried a variety of different musicians, but nothing really clicked. Then we advertised for a keyboard player. We thought that was the extra voice that we needed. Hugh and I had been writing all the songs and they were starting to take shape, but it wasn't until Dave joined us a year later in 1975 that things really clicked. He sounded great and really reminded us of Ray Manzarek from The Doors. But Dave had never heard about them then. It was all down to synchronicity really. From then on, we started writing a lot more.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/totp2/artists/s/stranglers/located/page1.shtml

 He's right of course - Ray Manzarek was one of the best and one of the most well-known keyboards players in the Sixties, and obviously The Doors were one of the very best bands. It always seemed me that those guys had a very similar keyboard style, playing in what were in some ways similar bands – capable of hard rock but also writing great original songs with terrific melodies and good lyrics.

….........................................................

Who's Talking?

More bullshit bingo. Heard on the radio this morning -

“We need to look at how we drive more efficiency out of the business . . . ”

Leaving aside the small point that the correct grammar should be “drive more efficiency INTO the business” - this is still technobullshit. The key word here, of course, is DRIVING. Powerful people have to drive – like they're in a powerful vehicle. And of course they're the one with their hands on the steering wheel, putting the pedal to the metal.

So who is this talking? Obviously a top businessman or woman, or a top civil servant who's in charge of A  Business or A System?

No. The guy talking runs the Association of Chief Police Officers. The Top Cop. And I'd put a very large bet on whether he, and most top cops these days, have at some stage been to a business school to get an MBA. Or is this jargon just something he's picked up from his dealings with Home Office officials who've been down that route and therefore habitually talk this bullshit?

He went on to say -
“You can deliver accountability, but you can't deliver policing under direct political control.”
“. . . the savings we need to deliver out of the back end of the business.”

He even talked about “a British brand of policing”!!!
Aaaaarrrrggghhhh!

How does anyone 'deliver' accountability? How does anyone 'deliver' policing? When did people start talking like this?

It's that macho thing again. It's maximum macho. I think the first time I heard this word 'deliver' it was in connection with the local Co-Op bringing a boxful of groceries to our house. The second time must have been at school during prayers - “Deliver us from evil”. So delivering is also something God or gods do. Is that how he sees himself? Or is he seeing himself as some kind of grocer? I think not. It's definitely an all-powerful omnipotence thing.

He went on to say,
“I would not want to lead a police force that was being told how to deliver policing.”
Of course he wouldn't. He wouldn't want to be told how to do anything.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8369000/8369748.stm

Probably quite right too. Maybe the top man at the national association of headteachers should have said many years ago that he would rather resign than bow down to politicians and bureaucrats who thought they had a right to micro-manage schools - people who invariably, by virtue of having climbed to the top of the political or bureaucratic greasy pole, are full of ambition and ego, and are determined to manipulate and maneuver their way to positions of power and authority. Usually ignoramuses who haven't a clue what goes on in schools. Just like the New Labour bastards who are now claiming they will guarantee 'delivery' of this and that in schools from now on.
…..............................................................

European Union

Bloody hell – Lady Ashton has a regional accent! And she was appointed by the Socialist Group in the European Parliament! How many people even knew there was a 'socialist' group!
Grew up near Skelmersdale and Wigan. She didn't go to Oxbridge either.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_Ashton,_Baroness_Ashton_of_Upholland


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/19/lady-cathy-ashton
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6923856.ece

............................................

Parliamentary Standards

David Curry's the guy who was appointed to oversee the Parliamentary Standards committee. Yesterday he referred himself to – the Parliamentary Standards Committee.

On November 19th, 2009 Curry stood down from his position as chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Standards and Privileges after claims from the Telegraph newspaper regarding his expenses and has reportedly referred himself to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority for investigation.[2] - Wikipedia

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/6609018/MPs-expenses-David-Curry-quits-as-standards-chief-over-new-Telegraph-disclosures.html

You couldn't make it up.
.

Layer 207 . . . Free Speech, Privatisation, Annual Elections and Parallel Universes.

.
Some things the Guardian gets wrong, but there's a very great deal which it, and its writers,  get absolutely right.

George Monbiot, for example:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/oct/19/eady-libel-tourism-free-speech 

How our senior libel judge stamps on free speech – all over the world

This is a very important focus on this country's appalling libel laws, and how they serve mainly the interests of the rich and powerful. Starting with the Guardian's clash last week with Trafigura and its solicitors' attempts to prevent publication of information that ought to be in the public realm -

“Trafigura's super-injunction is weird for lots of reasons. But the strangest fact is this: it has nothing to do with the Honourable Mr Justice Eady. The company's lawyers injuncted the Guardian, injuncted their injunction, and tried to injunct reports of parliament's proceedings. And they did all this without enlisting the help of the hanging judge of the Queen's Bench Division, the legal censor who appears to be fighting a one-man battle against freedom of speech. That's quite an achievement.

But even as the Trafigura case was being discussed in parliament, the court of appeal was handing down yet another damning ruling on Sir David Eady's judgments.

Eady [appears]to see the interests of the state and the interest of the public as the same thing.

In another case

"The law lords decided that Eady was "hostile to the spirit" of the public interest defence and that he had "rigidly applied the old law" in a way that was "quite unrealistic … unnecessary and positively misleading". In one amazing passage, Lord Hoffmann compared Eady's approach to that of the Communist party censors in the Soviet Union.

But perhaps the gravest judgments against the Honourable Mr Justice Eady are those made by legislators in the United States. Such is the reach and severity of his illiberal rulings that four states have so far passed what are, in effect, Eady laws, and Congress is currently considering a federal bill whose purpose is to defend US citizens from his judgments, and the English law he interprets. The Eady laws arise from his encouragement of libel tourism: allowing cases with only the most tenuous connection with this country to be heard in London, and using them to stamp on free speech all over the world.

Monbiot then goes on to say

Eady's clerk tells me that the judge doesn't want to comment, but I expect he would answer that he was merely applying the law. And, though his interpretation is draconian, the sad truth is that he would be right. Long before Eady's reign of terror began, gangsters such as Robert Maxwell were using the defamation laws to sue the backside off anyone who tried to investigate their crooked affairs. Such are the perversities of this law that the English courts can be used by criminals to prevent exposure of their crimes. With average costs 140 times higher than those of other European countries, libel proceedings here can be defended only by people . . . who have a lot of money and a lot of guts. Until the law is changed, men like Mr Justice Eady will continue to hold free speech to ransom.

Perhaps the real target of this column should have been Straw, whose determination to preserve this bookburners' law means that all of us are forced to share his terror of upsetting the rich and powerful. Through 12 years in power, a government of frightened little men has done nothing to reform the democratic world's most illiberal laws, which permit an old-fashioned judge to punish us for holding power to account.

…................................................

Polly Toynbee, meanwhile, says

Beware the zealots selling miracle cures of privatisation

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/19/beware-zealots-selling-miracle-cures

"Harsher, deeper and faster, comes the call from the CBI, licking its lips as it eyes up public services cuts. Yesterday's report from the business lobby group urges an eye-watering extra £120bn to be cut two years earlier than the government proposes. Whatever remains of the public sector after all these cuts should, they say, be subject to outsourcing and privatisation with "wider use of co-funding" – the polite word for making people pay for services that are at present free.

Less for more is what happened when Tony Blair rushed out independent sector treatment centres (ISTCs) to inject private sector values into NHS surgery. In 2003, Blair and Alan Milburn commissioned 36 centres with a few mobile and diagnostic units to add extra surgery beds for rapid-throughput, simple routine surgery, mostly on hips, knees and cataracts. Some more capacity was needed to speed up waiting times: old people were waiting up to eight months for cataract operations. Some consultants who kept long lists to promote their private practice needed a sharp prod.

But ISTCs were ideologically designed to part-privatise the NHS, with no level playing field for fair competition with existing hospitals. All were centrally commissioned by diktat without local consultation. The priority was "to increase private capacity" so even the most flourishing foundation hospitals were banned from bidding for the contracts. Some companies that won contracts, such as United Health, later employed key Blair health advisers. To prevent competition with the NHS, only foreign doctors were employed, many of them unfamiliar with British practice.

The contracts were disastrous from the start. They guaranteed higher prices per patient than the NHS tariff, though it should be cheaper to treat routine surgery patients in brand new units with no untidy emergency cases or old people with complex broken pelvises.

Ignoring local need meant many beds stayed empty – but the ISTCs were paid anyway. By the time many units opened, the NHS had already cut waiting lists to target levels, and there was no work to be done. When Gordon Brown came in he took one look and cancelled most of the second wave: Alan Johnson found one centre with bed occupancy under 10% and closed it at once, though cancelled contracts cost the NHS £37m. The Tories, egged on by private health companies, unfairly accused Brown of being the roadblock to Blairite "reforms" for ideological reasons. The truth is that the Department of Health finds ISTCs still cost 11% more per operation, and government sources say bed occupancy falls as low as 78%, far below the NHS which is well over 90%.

How is the quality? Officially, it's good, but a two-year study published last month in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery casts doubts: examining patients sent from Cardiff to the Weston-super-Mare ISTC, two-thirds of hip replacements showed evidence of poor technique, with 18% needing repair surgery. That is 20 times the normal NHS rate for revisions and each costs about £15,000. Leading orthopaedic surgeons report similar evidence, pointing out that ISTCs should perform better, since they are never sent complex cases.

Weak public managers are often even worse at drawing up private finance initiative, public-private partnership or even bog-standard procurement deals with the private sector. The danger is that canny companies will run rings round civil servants with neither the knowledge not the greedy motivation to squeeze out every penny's worth.

I have a small example: researching my book Hard Work, I took an agency job as a hospital night cleaner and it was plain that far too many hours had been assigned to a simple routine. The hospital manager who drew up the contract had long lost touch with cleaning and was clueless as to how long a job should take. There are worse examples, where hospital cleaning companies undercut each other and skimp on the job, with disastrous consequences. Either way, ward sisters have lost the power to manage cleaners to their own standards, as they used to in cleaner pre-contracting days.

There is no one-size-fits-all. The lesson of the ISTC debacle is that politicians who dash for eye-catching quick fixes, "modernising" and "reforming" with an ideological zeal for the private sector will come a cropper. Blair did it often with his "scars on my back" political distaste for the public sector; Brown's worst case was his botched PPP for the London tube, done to spite Ken Livingstone. Beware politicians of all complexions who defy complexity to opt for political, not pragmatic solutions.

One of the main reasons for highlighting so much of this is that my own mother was one of the victims of those badly performed hip replacement operations.
….............................................

Geoffrey Wheatcroft this week writes a good column about the need for annual parliamentary elections -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/19/chartists-electoral-reform-annual-parliaments

Now more than ever, Britain needs the last Chartist reform

"The expenses scandal has prompted a panoply of ideas to fix politics. But the strongest of all is missing: annual elections

Although the expenses scandal has prompted various schemes for constitutional and electoral reform, here is one that has gone missing. And yet it was among the radical Chartists' demands for parliamentary reform more than 150 years ago, and is the simplest and potentially the most effective of all.

But repellent as the MPs' impenitence is, institutional reform of parliament is desirable in its own right – and should be achievable. Looking over our political history, it's striking how daring radical demands once seemed, and how almost all were met, and quite soon at that.

The People's Charter in 1838 demanded six reforms, only one of which has not been achieved to this day. Universal suffrage took less than 80 years to accomplish, and property qualifications for voting were finally ended . . . The secret ballot was introduced as early as 1872.

Successive reform acts slowly addressed the Chartists' demand for "equal representation", in the sense that all constituencies should have electorates of roughly equal size.

As to the fifth demand, payment of members began in 1912, and has had an unintended consequence, not to say a lamentable one: the emergence of a new class of permanent, if often mediocre, professional politicians. This was further encouraged by a system of expenses that, even when it wasn't flagrantly dishonest, rested on the assumption that politics was a full-time profession. That has now met its nemesis.

And the sixth demand? This was the one never achieved, rarely mentioned now, but simpler than any of the others: annual parliaments.

To those Victorian radicals it was axiomatic that the best way to make the government accountable to parliament was to make parliament accountable to the electorate – every year. The objections to this are themselves revealing. Too expensive? But elections don't need to involve enormous sums of money spent by parties, and we would be much better off without that. Governments would be less stable and weaker? Well, yes, that's the point. Electing parliament every year would keep our rulers on their toes. More than any other possible reform it answers the simplest call of all: power to the people."

…............................................................................

A very lucky universe

There's a fascinating column by John Gribbin on the subject of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN which has “suffered a series of mishaps preventing it from commencing its search for the elusive Higgs Boson particle”.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/19/cern-higgs-boson-particle

As I understand it, Gribbin is saying that in a parallel universe this collider did actually work when it was switched on, and it immediately caused that particular universe to unravel and disappear. The reason we're still here and still trying to get the collider to work is because it refuses to work each time we press the switch, in our particular universe at least. However, several other parallel universes have probably already disappeared owing to the thing actually working (in them) each time we've tried to switch it on. Lucky us! All we have to do now is stop trying to make it work.

PhillipD comments -

As Niels Bohr once (more or less) said: 'If you don't get a headache thinking about this stuff, you don't understand it'.
Fortunately, I don't understand it so just maybe I'll sleep tonight :-) If I could really grasp this stuff I suspect it would drive me nuts!

AllyF says -

I read about multiverses, time-travel, particle transportation and all this stuff. I think hard about it.
Then I return to the conclusion that you're all making it up as you go along.
But good luck to you. It's more entertaining than sociology.

ThurrockHunt says -

Future ripples and multiverses my arse, it doesn't work because they've ballsed up the wiring. Same thing happened with our boiler.

DomC -

This is all very well but both Blue Peter and Tomorrows World promised me Jet powered rocket pants by now... where are they? That's what I'd like to know

ChanceyGardner -

Computer says No.

delphinia -

Schroedinger's blasted cat wakes me up at 3 am on alternate mornings.
Did you know he ( Schroedinger, not the cat) is buried in Alpbach, Austria, with a minging little plaque?

Butwhatif -
If 8 out of 10 of Shroedinger's cats prefer Whiskas, what about the other 10?

Haliborange -
Parallel universes?
You can buy one here for a quid.
http://www.youruniverse.co.uk/

Bristol Boy -

excellent artic .  .  .  .  .
.