The Scottish Parliament seems to be undecided about seals, in the run up to the Marine Bill.
On the one hand, we have Robin Harper, the Green MSP, who has, according to news reports, issued a call for a moratorium on the shooting of seals for the foreseeable future, in respect of the fall in the numbers of common or harbour seals in Scottish waters.
There are those who would argue that this is a Scottish matter, to be discussed by and on behalf of Scots only. But I hope those in charge of Scottish legislation, including the Marine Bill which has sparked this debate, will appreciate there is a much wider constituency beyond the borders of Scotland, in the form of people like my wife and I who visit Scotland on holiday every year, and who contribute lifeblood to the tourist economy.
As the author of a book on Arran, an island my wife and I visit each summer to photograph, document and sketch the seals, I think it needs to be made clear to those in power in Holyrood that the answer to this problem lies not in shooting the seals -who, after all, were around long before the fish farmers – but rather in better technical barriers to protect the salmon and to allow fish farmers and seals to continue to co-exist.
This would include making it clear to people such as Michael Russell, the Scottish Environment Minister, who was - rather sadly - noncommital about the issue when quizzed recently by Eddie Mair for Radio 4's PM programme. And certainly to those who in the past have been backing the idea of a seal cull off Scottish waters, this time in conjunction with European Union Fisheries Commissioner Joe Borg.
You have probably divined by now that I have a great admiration for these noble creatures. However, even if seals were not such a photogenic proposition, and an asset to Scotland’s tourist industry, I still believe that culling them is not the answer to the problems besetting Scotland’s fisheries.
The real problem has to be seen as part of a world problem, in context. We simply cannot carry on allowing factory ships of all nations to hoover up anything larger than a stickleback without the inevitable consequence that the human race will run out of fish. This will not be solved by killing seals. Even if all of the seals in UK waters were culled, this wouldn’t stop the overfishing which is the real cause of the problem, as set out in the recent report which predicted that we would run out of fish altogether by 2050.
Unfortunately, EU law probably prevents us from culling Spanish fishermen, but I must observe that the time of MSPs would probably be better spent in lobbying for EU fisheries reform, or for alternative employment for the fishing industry, than in the minimal effect that would result from killing seals and interfering with the natural food chain. Please stop using seals as a scapegoat for man-made problems.
This is the same in Canada, where every year the Canadian government ignores please from hundreds of thousands of people like me who are so disgusted with Canada's annual harp seal pup cull, that we would never dream of contemplating going on holiday to their backward uncivilized and barbaric country 'til they drag themselves into the 21st century.
Even if it was necessary to cull seal pups every year, even accepting for a moment the spurious premise of the fishing lobby that the seals are responsible for the depleting fish stocks, surely even they can see there must be a more humane way of culling an animal than clubbing it to death? And skinning it while it is still alive, in some cases?
Once again, this spring, I will be emailing everyone I know suggesting they join in a total trade and tourism boycott of Canada. Let's hope we don't have to add Scotland to the list. Again.
Wednesday 31 December 2008
It's (Not) That Man, Again!
In the second world war, there used to be a long-running radio series called ITMA which stood for “It’s that man again”. Such is the identikit interchangeability of the apparatchiks in the present government, that this was my first reaction on hearing of their intention to police, curb and generally censor what is available on the internet. I was confusing Andy Burnham with James Purnell. An easy mistake to make, since neither of them appear in many photos. (At least, not when the photo was taken, anyway.)
Andy Burnham has, apparently, spent £1,986.84 of taxpayers’ money on “media training” during 2008. Judging by his latest sally, we should be asking for a refund.
Now, no-one is defending the sick and illegal sites that show abuse happening to children, or adults for that matter, or animals. But these sites are generally illegal anyway and can be quickly shut down, and/or their adherents pursued through credit card records. Beyond this criminal hardcore, which I again stress is illegal, lies a whole hinterland of “softer” material which some would also wish to ban. There are compelling arguments both ways; those who maintain that pornography on the internet cheapens and demeans the status of women, versus those who argue that its presence sublimates a desire which exists anyway and which, were it not for the “safety valve” element of the internet, would manifest itself in other, darker, more concrete forms. I suspect that no one knows for sure.
The internet, though, can generally be relied upon to police these sites itself, and there are now increasingly sophisticated ways in which responsible adults can prevent children in their care from viewing it. The problem there is not the technology but the irresponsible adults. They could also take a look at the access children have to computer games, particularly violent ones with a pornographic tinge, rather than worrying about the chances of an impressionable teenager stumbling on a home movie of a chartered accountant from Droitwich bonking his wife.
But the government, of course, despite the fact that no-one “owns” the internet, is not content to let matters be. Oh, no.
“There is content that should just not be available to be viewed. That’s my view. Absolutely categorical,” says Mr Burnham, proposing a cinema-style rating system for sites.
Yes, well, we all think that, but the problem is, who decides what should just not be available? I would much rather rely on the collective weight of international law then the decision of one Andy Burnham or his civil servants. Plus, in one of his media interviews (£1,986.84, remember) Mr Burnham used the chilling word “unacceptable”.
This is the crux of the problem. Not “illegal”, which no-one would have an issue with, but “unacceptable”. When we get to the stage of people in government deciding what we can and can’t see on the internet on the basis of what is acceptable and “unacceptable”, then it’s time to worry. That is the thin end of a very large wedge. What is “unacceptable” can grow and change – once the government gets the power of veto over what is acceptable or unacceptable for you and I to look at on the web, then basically anything the government does not like could find itself on the “unacceptable” list. Sites criticizing government policy. Sites promoting animal welfare, even, if they contravene the government's unquestioning support for big pharma and vivisection.
Hermann Goering once memorably said, “When I hear someone mention ‘culture’, then I reach for my revolver” and I’m getting a similar twitchy feeling. Though in my case it would involve adding the words “secretary, Andy Burnham” into that sentence, at the appropriate point.
Andy Burnham has, apparently, spent £1,986.84 of taxpayers’ money on “media training” during 2008. Judging by his latest sally, we should be asking for a refund.
Now, no-one is defending the sick and illegal sites that show abuse happening to children, or adults for that matter, or animals. But these sites are generally illegal anyway and can be quickly shut down, and/or their adherents pursued through credit card records. Beyond this criminal hardcore, which I again stress is illegal, lies a whole hinterland of “softer” material which some would also wish to ban. There are compelling arguments both ways; those who maintain that pornography on the internet cheapens and demeans the status of women, versus those who argue that its presence sublimates a desire which exists anyway and which, were it not for the “safety valve” element of the internet, would manifest itself in other, darker, more concrete forms. I suspect that no one knows for sure.
The internet, though, can generally be relied upon to police these sites itself, and there are now increasingly sophisticated ways in which responsible adults can prevent children in their care from viewing it. The problem there is not the technology but the irresponsible adults. They could also take a look at the access children have to computer games, particularly violent ones with a pornographic tinge, rather than worrying about the chances of an impressionable teenager stumbling on a home movie of a chartered accountant from Droitwich bonking his wife.
But the government, of course, despite the fact that no-one “owns” the internet, is not content to let matters be. Oh, no.
“There is content that should just not be available to be viewed. That’s my view. Absolutely categorical,” says Mr Burnham, proposing a cinema-style rating system for sites.
Yes, well, we all think that, but the problem is, who decides what should just not be available? I would much rather rely on the collective weight of international law then the decision of one Andy Burnham or his civil servants. Plus, in one of his media interviews (£1,986.84, remember) Mr Burnham used the chilling word “unacceptable”.
This is the crux of the problem. Not “illegal”, which no-one would have an issue with, but “unacceptable”. When we get to the stage of people in government deciding what we can and can’t see on the internet on the basis of what is acceptable and “unacceptable”, then it’s time to worry. That is the thin end of a very large wedge. What is “unacceptable” can grow and change – once the government gets the power of veto over what is acceptable or unacceptable for you and I to look at on the web, then basically anything the government does not like could find itself on the “unacceptable” list. Sites criticizing government policy. Sites promoting animal welfare, even, if they contravene the government's unquestioning support for big pharma and vivisection.
Hermann Goering once memorably said, “When I hear someone mention ‘culture’, then I reach for my revolver” and I’m getting a similar twitchy feeling. Though in my case it would involve adding the words “secretary, Andy Burnham” into that sentence, at the appropriate point.
Wednesday 24 December 2008
63,000 reasons to be ashamed to be British
According to figures I have seen on the news this morning there are 63,000 families homeless in Britain, this Christmas.
There should be no more rejoicing until this figure is zero, and instead of giving the banks another bucketload of money to waste on junketing, the Government should give local authorities the money to build low rise, low density, eco-friendly housing at socially affordable rates, and renovate existing brownfield sites, until the evil of homelessness is banished from our streets.
Plus, building a new generation of social housing will provide a much-needed stimulus to the construction industry.
Oh, and could somebody hand the Pope and Branson a trowel each. It'll keep them out of mischief too.
There should be no more rejoicing until this figure is zero, and instead of giving the banks another bucketload of money to waste on junketing, the Government should give local authorities the money to build low rise, low density, eco-friendly housing at socially affordable rates, and renovate existing brownfield sites, until the evil of homelessness is banished from our streets.
Plus, building a new generation of social housing will provide a much-needed stimulus to the construction industry.
Oh, and could somebody hand the Pope and Branson a trowel each. It'll keep them out of mischief too.
Tuesday 23 December 2008
Scilly Buggers' Outing
Well, it's been another week for exponents of Cornish offshore electronic surveillance.
Pope Benedict - gay people are a bigger threat than the destruction of the rain forests? What's that all about then? He needs to get off his throne, take the jiffy bag off his head, and read what it says in the Bible about loving each other.
I cannot believe, in a world where people are dying because they don't have enough food and clean water, or being slaughtered in arbitrary wars in Africa and the Middle East, that this is all the Catholic church has to concern itself with.
Richard Branson - the NHS can be freed of MRSA by simply isolating the staff who are MRSA sufferers and keeping them in the back room? And presumably feeding them through a grille in the door? Why not go the whole hog and paint a red cross on the entrance with "Lord Have Mercy On Our Souls"? Has anyone worked out how the front line staff are to avoid coming into contact with the back room staff? Or how we're going to manage with surgeons doing the filing?
Idiot. Shut up, you beardy fool.
All we need now is for Cameron to suggest putting rubber wheels on the Underground again, and we'll have a set!
Pope Benedict - gay people are a bigger threat than the destruction of the rain forests? What's that all about then? He needs to get off his throne, take the jiffy bag off his head, and read what it says in the Bible about loving each other.
I cannot believe, in a world where people are dying because they don't have enough food and clean water, or being slaughtered in arbitrary wars in Africa and the Middle East, that this is all the Catholic church has to concern itself with.
Richard Branson - the NHS can be freed of MRSA by simply isolating the staff who are MRSA sufferers and keeping them in the back room? And presumably feeding them through a grille in the door? Why not go the whole hog and paint a red cross on the entrance with "Lord Have Mercy On Our Souls"? Has anyone worked out how the front line staff are to avoid coming into contact with the back room staff? Or how we're going to manage with surgeons doing the filing?
Idiot. Shut up, you beardy fool.
All we need now is for Cameron to suggest putting rubber wheels on the Underground again, and we'll have a set!
Saturday 20 December 2008
Barclays Wank
So, the boss of Barclays says we'll be lucky if the banks start lending again before 2010. OK, then, I might just stop paying my loan back to Barclays til 2010, since the fat smug bastard is already sitting on a huge pile of money. I can't say "taxpayers' money" since Barclays declined the government handout in favour of still being able to award themselves huge bonuses, which is presumably why they haven't got any money to lend.
It makes you want to go round and do an unauthorised withdrawl at the point of a sawn-off shotgun. I really don't know how these people have the brass neck to show themselves in daylight. At least Dick Turpin wore a mask. This is the set of stripeyarsed bastards who made me do cash flows and forecasts and management accounts that kept me up until 2 and 3 in the morning sometimes, and all the while they were pissing away our money on dodgy hedges.
If there was any justice, they'd all be struck by lightning
It makes you want to go round and do an unauthorised withdrawl at the point of a sawn-off shotgun. I really don't know how these people have the brass neck to show themselves in daylight. At least Dick Turpin wore a mask. This is the set of stripeyarsed bastards who made me do cash flows and forecasts and management accounts that kept me up until 2 and 3 in the morning sometimes, and all the while they were pissing away our money on dodgy hedges.
If there was any justice, they'd all be struck by lightning
Wednesday 17 December 2008
The Last Post
No, don't get excited, I am not giving up this blog. This is about the Post Office. And I am afraid it will probably turn into a bit of a rant.
People often complain about Royal Mail. Usually the sort of predictable stuff, whipped up by tabloid journalists who complain that the post doesn't get delivered in Notting Hill until lunchtime, and lamenting the great days of the Penny Post when they could have sent a postcard to their Auntie in Tulse Hill to say that they were coming round for tea, and it would be delivered before they got there. Etc, etc.
And so, off the back of this sort of thinking, a few years ago, in some misbegotten corridor of government, was born the idea of "privatising Royal Mail".
Now, I will nail my colours to the mast here, and declare some more fundamental policies of The Bolshy Party. I believe very strongly that there are certain parts of our society that belong to us all and should be owned by, and operated for the benefit of, all British people.
These are Hospitals, Schools, Courts, Prisons, The Emergency Services, Public Transport and the Postal System. There may be others. I am in mid-rant right now.
Of course, if you are going to set up a "competitive" market in an area where there has previously been a state-owned monopoly, you would of course make sure that the process was scrupulously fair and that all concerned had a level playing field, yes?
Well, er no. Because someone must have realised, pretty early on, that if Royal Mail's competitors were to truly compete for the work, then they too would have to wind time back to 1848, invent the Penny Black, and the Railway network, and build a load of sorting offices etc etc. Oh no, that will never do. So the first indignity heaped on the Royal Mail was that they were forced to accept the idea of their "competitors" using Royal Mail staff and infrastructure for the so-called "Last Mile" delivery.
And the postal services regulator was also given the power (misguidedly again in my opinion) of stopping Royal Mail increasing its prices, so Royal Mail was forced to adopt a "price minus" model of charging these people, instead of a cost plus model. In other words, the regulator said to Royal Mail - you can't add a mark up on to what it costs and then charge your competitors that, instead you have to give them a discount off the fixed price.
So, not only was Royal Mail forced to accept unfair competition, and accommodate that competition (even to the extent of having to widen the gates of its local delivery offices to accommodate the vans owned by the competition) but it was prevented from increasing its prices to maintain its own margins.
Now, Royal Mail has not been entirely blameless in its own demise. Its management have made some dumb decisions (Elton John fronting an ad campaign, anyone?) but you have to feel sorry for them, ultimately they have been handed the shitty end of the stick. The government was of course happy to keep taking money out of Royal Mail, money that could have been invested in better sorting machinery for instance, all the time this was happening. In fact successive governments of differing hues have starved Royal Mail of investment.
So much so that in August 2006, Royal Mail took the decision to move to a system of pricing called "Pricing in Proportion" which rigged the pricing structure to price penalise "large letters" and "packets" in fact, anything that the Royal Mail could not machine-sort. Anything larger than extended C5 size. Of course, all Royal Mail's competitors followed suit. So the overall result of this particular segment of Royal Mail privatisation is already a worse service to the general public at large.
So, since January 2006, Royal Mail has been steadily losing custom in the areas of bulk mail to companies like TNT, UK Mail and DHL, while Royal Mail has still been forced to shoulder the "universal delivery obligation." In other words, with the task of delivering a letter to the remote Highlands of Scotland for 36p. Royal Mail are not stupid, and have already been making exploratory approaches to the regulator about "zonal" pricing - ie pricing more for that delivery to the Highlands than for a delivery to a town centre office, for instance. This hasn't yet come in, but if it does, this will be another way in which Royal Mail privatisation will inconvenience the public it is supposed to serve.
Then there is the question of VAT. Postage in the UK is currently VAT-exempt. But of course, once Royal Mail's monopoly is gone for good, and we have to "harmonise" with other EU countries, this may not remain the case. (As a short aside, why do we always end up harmonising with other EU countries, rather than vice versa?).
So, now we have a situation where Royal Mail has been losing money, and now needs "outside help" in the form of investors from abroad. And we can all guess who those are, can't we? TNT, UK Mail, Deutsche Post, et al.
So, let's sum up, shall we:
it's a self fulfilling prophecy. First you open the bulk mailing market to "competition" - though if it was real competition, the likes of TNT would have to wind the clock back to 1848 and invent the Penny Black and Railways and stuff, then you watch Royal Mail's revenue from bulk mailing fall while you insist (via a regulator) that they can't put their prices up AND they must still deliver to the back of beyond for 36p and you also continue to cream off cash from their pension fund (if you are the government that is)
Then, when, surprise surprise, they get financially weaker, well, the only option is to sell them off to one of their "rivals" People in the property world have been using the same principles of "benign neglect" to get rid of old troublesome and unwanted listed buildings by letting them deteriorate to the point of no return for years, now it's going to happen to the post office, courtesy of Mandleson.
Yet we can seemingly find bottomless buckets of squillions of pounds to keep the banking system in the luxury to which it has become accustomed, but we can't have a publicly owned and publicly funded socially useful postal system operated and owned for the good of all British people, no siree. The EU wouldn't like it, or something. Well, if they don't like it, they can bloody well invade, or at least they can try for nowt. I am just about ready for them today.
I hear as I am typing this that a junior government minister has resigned over the issue. Good for him, let's hope it's the first of many.
In other news of course this week we have had the wonderful Mr Madoff, who made off with all the money, and someone has discovered a black hole in the pensions calculations dating back to the 1970s which has gone undetected for three years. Oh, and the Financial Services Authority is inciting people to ring them up and tell them if they suspect financial shenanigans. Pardon me, but I sort of thought that was their job.
The more I look at the bunch of boobies who are in charge of the financial system, the more I think it should be official Bolshy Party Policy to liquidate the Hedge Funds and give all the money to hedgehogs.
People often complain about Royal Mail. Usually the sort of predictable stuff, whipped up by tabloid journalists who complain that the post doesn't get delivered in Notting Hill until lunchtime, and lamenting the great days of the Penny Post when they could have sent a postcard to their Auntie in Tulse Hill to say that they were coming round for tea, and it would be delivered before they got there. Etc, etc.
And so, off the back of this sort of thinking, a few years ago, in some misbegotten corridor of government, was born the idea of "privatising Royal Mail".
Now, I will nail my colours to the mast here, and declare some more fundamental policies of The Bolshy Party. I believe very strongly that there are certain parts of our society that belong to us all and should be owned by, and operated for the benefit of, all British people.
These are Hospitals, Schools, Courts, Prisons, The Emergency Services, Public Transport and the Postal System. There may be others. I am in mid-rant right now.
Of course, if you are going to set up a "competitive" market in an area where there has previously been a state-owned monopoly, you would of course make sure that the process was scrupulously fair and that all concerned had a level playing field, yes?
Well, er no. Because someone must have realised, pretty early on, that if Royal Mail's competitors were to truly compete for the work, then they too would have to wind time back to 1848, invent the Penny Black, and the Railway network, and build a load of sorting offices etc etc. Oh no, that will never do. So the first indignity heaped on the Royal Mail was that they were forced to accept the idea of their "competitors" using Royal Mail staff and infrastructure for the so-called "Last Mile" delivery.
And the postal services regulator was also given the power (misguidedly again in my opinion) of stopping Royal Mail increasing its prices, so Royal Mail was forced to adopt a "price minus" model of charging these people, instead of a cost plus model. In other words, the regulator said to Royal Mail - you can't add a mark up on to what it costs and then charge your competitors that, instead you have to give them a discount off the fixed price.
So, not only was Royal Mail forced to accept unfair competition, and accommodate that competition (even to the extent of having to widen the gates of its local delivery offices to accommodate the vans owned by the competition) but it was prevented from increasing its prices to maintain its own margins.
Now, Royal Mail has not been entirely blameless in its own demise. Its management have made some dumb decisions (Elton John fronting an ad campaign, anyone?) but you have to feel sorry for them, ultimately they have been handed the shitty end of the stick. The government was of course happy to keep taking money out of Royal Mail, money that could have been invested in better sorting machinery for instance, all the time this was happening. In fact successive governments of differing hues have starved Royal Mail of investment.
So much so that in August 2006, Royal Mail took the decision to move to a system of pricing called "Pricing in Proportion" which rigged the pricing structure to price penalise "large letters" and "packets" in fact, anything that the Royal Mail could not machine-sort. Anything larger than extended C5 size. Of course, all Royal Mail's competitors followed suit. So the overall result of this particular segment of Royal Mail privatisation is already a worse service to the general public at large.
So, since January 2006, Royal Mail has been steadily losing custom in the areas of bulk mail to companies like TNT, UK Mail and DHL, while Royal Mail has still been forced to shoulder the "universal delivery obligation." In other words, with the task of delivering a letter to the remote Highlands of Scotland for 36p. Royal Mail are not stupid, and have already been making exploratory approaches to the regulator about "zonal" pricing - ie pricing more for that delivery to the Highlands than for a delivery to a town centre office, for instance. This hasn't yet come in, but if it does, this will be another way in which Royal Mail privatisation will inconvenience the public it is supposed to serve.
Then there is the question of VAT. Postage in the UK is currently VAT-exempt. But of course, once Royal Mail's monopoly is gone for good, and we have to "harmonise" with other EU countries, this may not remain the case. (As a short aside, why do we always end up harmonising with other EU countries, rather than vice versa?).
So, now we have a situation where Royal Mail has been losing money, and now needs "outside help" in the form of investors from abroad. And we can all guess who those are, can't we? TNT, UK Mail, Deutsche Post, et al.
So, let's sum up, shall we:
it's a self fulfilling prophecy. First you open the bulk mailing market to "competition" - though if it was real competition, the likes of TNT would have to wind the clock back to 1848 and invent the Penny Black and Railways and stuff, then you watch Royal Mail's revenue from bulk mailing fall while you insist (via a regulator) that they can't put their prices up AND they must still deliver to the back of beyond for 36p and you also continue to cream off cash from their pension fund (if you are the government that is)
Then, when, surprise surprise, they get financially weaker, well, the only option is to sell them off to one of their "rivals" People in the property world have been using the same principles of "benign neglect" to get rid of old troublesome and unwanted listed buildings by letting them deteriorate to the point of no return for years, now it's going to happen to the post office, courtesy of Mandleson.
Yet we can seemingly find bottomless buckets of squillions of pounds to keep the banking system in the luxury to which it has become accustomed, but we can't have a publicly owned and publicly funded socially useful postal system operated and owned for the good of all British people, no siree. The EU wouldn't like it, or something. Well, if they don't like it, they can bloody well invade, or at least they can try for nowt. I am just about ready for them today.
I hear as I am typing this that a junior government minister has resigned over the issue. Good for him, let's hope it's the first of many.
In other news of course this week we have had the wonderful Mr Madoff, who made off with all the money, and someone has discovered a black hole in the pensions calculations dating back to the 1970s which has gone undetected for three years. Oh, and the Financial Services Authority is inciting people to ring them up and tell them if they suspect financial shenanigans. Pardon me, but I sort of thought that was their job.
The more I look at the bunch of boobies who are in charge of the financial system, the more I think it should be official Bolshy Party Policy to liquidate the Hedge Funds and give all the money to hedgehogs.
Wednesday 10 December 2008
Human Rights, Government Wrongs
I am used to the likes of the Tories attacking the Human Rights Act. However, when it gets to the stage when the likes of Jack Straw pop up saying that "its rights need balancing with responsibilities", then it's really time to worry.
Any attempts to row back from the Human Rights Act should be resisted.
Because these people want to untimately replace the Human Rights Act with a "Bill of Rights" (which is really another word for a limited list of things that you are actually allowed to do, signed Jack Straw. Everything else ist verboten.)
Any attempts to row back from the Human Rights Act should be resisted.
Because these people want to untimately replace the Human Rights Act with a "Bill of Rights" (which is really another word for a limited list of things that you are actually allowed to do, signed Jack Straw. Everything else ist verboten.)
Unfair Dismissal
I see that the witch-hunt for scapegoats over both the Baby P imbroglio and the Shannon Matthews case has gone up a notch, with the enforced departure of Sharon Shoesmith from Children's Services at Haringey, and the announcement of an enquiry into Kirklees social services.
By caving in to the mob mentality fostered by the likes of The Sun, the government has plumbed new depths. Thank God for the House of Commons committee today that showed up Ofsted as the hopeless boobies they are. Considering the crap job Ofsted have done in testing schools and fostering education by box-ticking in the pursuit of mindless targets, it is a mystery to me why anyone thought Ofsted could ever test anything.
I really hope Sharon Shoesmith sues for unfair dismissal.
By caving in to the mob mentality fostered by the likes of The Sun, the government has plumbed new depths. Thank God for the House of Commons committee today that showed up Ofsted as the hopeless boobies they are. Considering the crap job Ofsted have done in testing schools and fostering education by box-ticking in the pursuit of mindless targets, it is a mystery to me why anyone thought Ofsted could ever test anything.
I really hope Sharon Shoesmith sues for unfair dismissal.
Who Benefits?
Cui Bono used to be a latin tag used by lawyers when they were wanting to find out who was behind a certain set of nefarious circumstances. If they were unable to find out who was at the bottom of it, they were encouraged to look at who would benefit most. They were usually the guilty party.
The government, in the form of James Purnell, the man who did for photoshop what Ken Dodd did for tickling sticks, has been all over the media today, blethering on about how they are going to make people work for their benefits in future. I loved the quotation where he said, in effect that there was no room for freeloaders who "worked the system". There are 600-odd of them at Westminster - let's put them on workfare, thescrounging bastards!
Benefits are only the symptoms. Dewsbury Moor is the disease.I mean, fine, if people really do want to get a job and they can be helped to do so, and they will be better off, but personally I don't know where all the jobs are going to come from, even for able bodied people, when unemployment tops three million, as it will, mark my words - perhaps James Purnell could photoshop us a few
And I would feel much happier about it if I thought it was a genuine effort by government to right social wrongs, even though they ARE still treating the symptoms, not the disease, but I suspect it's more of a dog-whistle policy aimed at Middle England over the heads of Labour Backbenchers.
I often wonder what planet the government is on. They are inventing imaginary jobs in the same way as Hitler, cowering in his bunker, invented imaginary divisions coming to save him from the Russians. They can't really be that stupid, on a day when Woolies has gone tits up and people like Sony are announcing 8000 job losses worldwide, can they? Can they?
Who benefits? Certainly not those people already struggling who will now have the added stress of government agencies trying to harrass them to take on jobs that might make them £1.50 a week better off, just to tick a box and massage the unemployment stats.
The government, in the form of James Purnell, the man who did for photoshop what Ken Dodd did for tickling sticks, has been all over the media today, blethering on about how they are going to make people work for their benefits in future. I loved the quotation where he said, in effect that there was no room for freeloaders who "worked the system". There are 600-odd of them at Westminster - let's put them on workfare, thescrounging bastards!
Benefits are only the symptoms. Dewsbury Moor is the disease.I mean, fine, if people really do want to get a job and they can be helped to do so, and they will be better off, but personally I don't know where all the jobs are going to come from, even for able bodied people, when unemployment tops three million, as it will, mark my words - perhaps James Purnell could photoshop us a few
And I would feel much happier about it if I thought it was a genuine effort by government to right social wrongs, even though they ARE still treating the symptoms, not the disease, but I suspect it's more of a dog-whistle policy aimed at Middle England over the heads of Labour Backbenchers.
I often wonder what planet the government is on. They are inventing imaginary jobs in the same way as Hitler, cowering in his bunker, invented imaginary divisions coming to save him from the Russians. They can't really be that stupid, on a day when Woolies has gone tits up and people like Sony are announcing 8000 job losses worldwide, can they? Can they?
Who benefits? Certainly not those people already struggling who will now have the added stress of government agencies trying to harrass them to take on jobs that might make them £1.50 a week better off, just to tick a box and massage the unemployment stats.
Sunday 7 December 2008
Rusty lane Redux
I realise that last week, my anger about the continued existence of Dewsbury Moor may have led me into incoherence. The reference to Rusty Lane, West Bromwich, comes from a stirring passage in English Journey by J B Priestley (1936).
It's one of those touchstone texts, along with George Orwell's The Road To Wigan Pier, which I keep coming back to, every time I feel I am going soft and maybe David Cameron has some kind of point.
Anyway, here's the full text of the passage:
The whole neighbourhood is mean and squalid, but this particular street seemed the worst of all. It would not matter very much - though it would matter - if only metal were kept there; but it happens that people live there, children are born there and grow up there. I saw some of them.
I was being shown one of the warehouses, where steel plates were stacked in the chill gloom, and we heard a bang and rattle on the roof. The boys, it seems, were throwing stones again. They were always throwing stones on that roof. We went out to find them, but only found three frightened little girls, who looked at us with round eyes in wet smudgy faces. No, they hadn't done it, the boys had done it, and the boys had just run away. Where they could run to, I cannot imagine. They need not have run away for me, because I could not blame them if they threw stones and stones and smashed every pane of glass for miles. Nobody can blame them if they grow up to smash everything that can be smashed.
There ought to be no more of those lunches and dinners, at which political and financial and industrial gentlemen congratulate one another, until something is done about Rusty Lane, and about West Bromwich. While they still exist in their foul shape, it is idle to congratulate ourselves about anything. They make the whole pomp of government here a miserable farce. The Crown, Lords and Commons are the Crown, Lords and Commons of Rusty Lane, West Bromwich... and if there is another economic conference, let it meet there, in one of the warehouses, and be fed with bread and margarine and slabs of brawn. The delegates have seen one England, Mayfair in the season. Let them see another England next time, West Bromwich out of the season. Out of all seasons, except the winter of our discontent.
Amen
It's one of those touchstone texts, along with George Orwell's The Road To Wigan Pier, which I keep coming back to, every time I feel I am going soft and maybe David Cameron has some kind of point.
Anyway, here's the full text of the passage:
The whole neighbourhood is mean and squalid, but this particular street seemed the worst of all. It would not matter very much - though it would matter - if only metal were kept there; but it happens that people live there, children are born there and grow up there. I saw some of them.
I was being shown one of the warehouses, where steel plates were stacked in the chill gloom, and we heard a bang and rattle on the roof. The boys, it seems, were throwing stones again. They were always throwing stones on that roof. We went out to find them, but only found three frightened little girls, who looked at us with round eyes in wet smudgy faces. No, they hadn't done it, the boys had done it, and the boys had just run away. Where they could run to, I cannot imagine. They need not have run away for me, because I could not blame them if they threw stones and stones and smashed every pane of glass for miles. Nobody can blame them if they grow up to smash everything that can be smashed.
There ought to be no more of those lunches and dinners, at which political and financial and industrial gentlemen congratulate one another, until something is done about Rusty Lane, and about West Bromwich. While they still exist in their foul shape, it is idle to congratulate ourselves about anything. They make the whole pomp of government here a miserable farce. The Crown, Lords and Commons are the Crown, Lords and Commons of Rusty Lane, West Bromwich... and if there is another economic conference, let it meet there, in one of the warehouses, and be fed with bread and margarine and slabs of brawn. The delegates have seen one England, Mayfair in the season. Let them see another England next time, West Bromwich out of the season. Out of all seasons, except the winter of our discontent.
Amen
Mean Streets
Following on from Rusty Lane, West Bromwich, and while I have still got a bee in my bonnet about things which should not be allowed to exist in Great Britain in the 21st century, here is another one - homelessness.
Last Christmas, Westminster Council stopped the soup run to homeless people in Westminster on Christmas day. Ostensibly, this was because they wanted to encourage people to seek professional help and also because they said that some people from hostels had been turning up and claiming soup to which they were not entitled.
Of all the miserable parsimonious penny-pinching bastard scrooges.
The real reason of course is that rich people in Westminster don't like to be reminded that there are poor and homeless people, often on their very doorstep.
I feel really, truly, sorry for anyone sleeping rough these bitter nights, in the frost and snow we're having at the moment. I've spent some pretty cold and uncomfortable nights in our oldcamper van, when we've been out and about, but even that is luxury compared to sleeping on cold concrete in a cheap nylon sleeping-bag with only a cardboard box between you and the damp. Or sometimes, just the cardboard.
Anyway, Westminster Council, I am watching you, this year. More on this will follow. In the meantime, how do we get to the point where no-one is homeless in Great Britain in the 21st Century?
Last Christmas, Westminster Council stopped the soup run to homeless people in Westminster on Christmas day. Ostensibly, this was because they wanted to encourage people to seek professional help and also because they said that some people from hostels had been turning up and claiming soup to which they were not entitled.
Of all the miserable parsimonious penny-pinching bastard scrooges.
The real reason of course is that rich people in Westminster don't like to be reminded that there are poor and homeless people, often on their very doorstep.
I feel really, truly, sorry for anyone sleeping rough these bitter nights, in the frost and snow we're having at the moment. I've spent some pretty cold and uncomfortable nights in our oldcamper van, when we've been out and about, but even that is luxury compared to sleeping on cold concrete in a cheap nylon sleeping-bag with only a cardboard box between you and the damp. Or sometimes, just the cardboard.
Anyway, Westminster Council, I am watching you, this year. More on this will follow. In the meantime, how do we get to the point where no-one is homeless in Great Britain in the 21st Century?
Thursday 4 December 2008
Sympathy for the Devil?
I know this will probably count as "sympathy for the devil" and it's very easy to put the boot into Karen Matthews now she's on the floor, but I think the question we should be asking right now is how, in Great Britain, yes, that's GREAT Britain, in the 21st century, we allow such places as Dewsbury Moor and such societies/communities to exist?
I go every day to South Yorkshire and I see similar places. Places where unemployment has been the main industry since the pits closed. I can quite easily understand how - to someone like Karen Matthews and Mike Donovan, someone with limited skills and no abilities, someone who has never known anything but the crushing boredom of the benefits culture, it might seem a plausible wheeze to do what they did, and to people like them, £50,000 reward money is the equivalent of a lottery win - enough to get themselves and the kids away from Dewsbury Moor forever.
Just because I understand it, doesn't mean I condone it. I can understand why Margaret Thatcher felt the need to wage class war instead of being Prime Minister for the whole of our country, it doesn't mean I agree with her. What Matthews and Donovan did to that girl was terrible, shameful, and they must be punished, and what happened to Shannon will scar her for life, but what a desperate hole-in-the-wall existence, what a corner must they have been driven to, to even consider this as a "way out". And how bad must Dewsbury Moor be, if this is a "way out".
So now Karen Matthews will serve many years in prison, her food will be spat in, Michael Donovan will never be the partner she wanted him to be, he will spend many years in prison, watching his back, as a "nonce", and the family is broken up for ever, those poor kids.
All these people have souls and all these people are now suffering in their own way. There are no winners here.But while we're all putting the boot in to Karen Matthews, Mike Donovan, and the social workers, no doubt, eventually, if Jeremy Vine has anything to do with it, we need to also ask
WHAT IS WRONG WITH OUR SOCIETY??????????????
AND HOW MUCH LONGER, seventy two years after J.B.Priestley first described this sort of society in his English Journey ARE WE GOING TO HAVE RUSTY LANE,WEST BROMWICH???????????
I go every day to South Yorkshire and I see similar places. Places where unemployment has been the main industry since the pits closed. I can quite easily understand how - to someone like Karen Matthews and Mike Donovan, someone with limited skills and no abilities, someone who has never known anything but the crushing boredom of the benefits culture, it might seem a plausible wheeze to do what they did, and to people like them, £50,000 reward money is the equivalent of a lottery win - enough to get themselves and the kids away from Dewsbury Moor forever.
Just because I understand it, doesn't mean I condone it. I can understand why Margaret Thatcher felt the need to wage class war instead of being Prime Minister for the whole of our country, it doesn't mean I agree with her. What Matthews and Donovan did to that girl was terrible, shameful, and they must be punished, and what happened to Shannon will scar her for life, but what a desperate hole-in-the-wall existence, what a corner must they have been driven to, to even consider this as a "way out". And how bad must Dewsbury Moor be, if this is a "way out".
So now Karen Matthews will serve many years in prison, her food will be spat in, Michael Donovan will never be the partner she wanted him to be, he will spend many years in prison, watching his back, as a "nonce", and the family is broken up for ever, those poor kids.
All these people have souls and all these people are now suffering in their own way. There are no winners here.But while we're all putting the boot in to Karen Matthews, Mike Donovan, and the social workers, no doubt, eventually, if Jeremy Vine has anything to do with it, we need to also ask
WHAT IS WRONG WITH OUR SOCIETY??????????????
AND HOW MUCH LONGER, seventy two years after J.B.Priestley first described this sort of society in his English Journey ARE WE GOING TO HAVE RUSTY LANE,WEST BROMWICH???????????
Sunday 30 November 2008
Sense, Sentamu and Sensibility
I was pleased to see an outbreak of common sense from one of my favourite clerics, John Sentamu, last week. He attacked Phil Woolas MP, who had said that many asylum seekers were "just economic migrants" and that their lawyers and advocates were just "playing the system".
Mr Woolas seems to have the function in the government of being the mouthpiece for any unpleasant right wing dog whistle policies on immigration which they might want to float just to send an inaudible message to Daily Mail and Sun readers and also to gauge public reaction generally.
Sentamu quite rightly pointed out such instances of "working the system" as the example of a seriously ill Ghanaian mother-of-two who was deported from the UK in January because her visa had expired. She died two months after returning to Ghana because she could not afford the treatment she was receiving on the NHS.
He could just as equally have pointed out cases of asylum seekers being shipped back to face arrest and torture in Zimbabwe.
Or what about the case of failed asylum seeker Ekrem Ovunc (41) who was seized in a terrifying dawn raid from his home in Brighton and taken away for deportation striking terror into Ibrahim, Ekrem’s 17-year-old son. While Ekrem awaited deportation at Colnbrook Detention Centre at Heathrow Airport. Ibrahim, a conscientious A level student at a local Sixth Form College, disappeared. His friends and teachers were deeply concerned for his safety. Ekrem was reported to be deeply depressed. He was in no doubt that he would be tortured or killed if he was sent back. He was put on suicide watch.
Yes, sure, on the planet Woolas, all these people are only "working the system". Snap out of it, Ekrem! Here to steal our jobs, send em all back, and put a cap on immigration to prevent any more!
For a start, a cap on immigration per se is unworkable because you can't apply it to the EU, where there is free movement within member states. So what Mr Woolas is really talking about is a cap on swarthy people, which would be racist if he actually came out and said as much.
I have never felt so ashamed to be British as I did on that day when that Ghanaian woman was bundled onto a plane and shipped out of the UK. I could not believe that our country, which stood for fairness and tolerance and has given refuge over the centuries to the Lollards, the Huguenots, and the Jews fleeing Hitler, has now turned into such a hard faced edifice of hate.
And as far as the economic migrants argument is concerned, if the Poles are all giving up and going back to Poland, and despite record UK unemployment (for which Mr Woolas - or at least the government he represents, are in part responsible) British people are still unwilling to do foul low paid jobs, I don't see the problem with letting Asylum seekers work, if they want to. Give them some sort of temporary permit, make them pay tax on what they earn, and let them work while their cases are sorted out. Bish bash bosh, end of problem, they are no longer a drag on the state (if they ever were, I'd be interested to see which costs more, Asylum seekers or government IT cockups) they are in the system, you know where they are, and if at the end of it they have to go back, then at least they have been able to provide for themselves and their family in the interim. I'm sure they'd rather flip burgers than be under effective house arrest with the threat of being tortured, I know I would, if that was the only choice.
Recently, four families of beavers were brought in via Heathrow. They will live in the beaver equivalent of luxury for six months before being released in the Scottish Highlands in an attempt to reintroduce beavers into the wild in Scotland. While I am all for seeing animals well treated (it's Bolshy Party Policy, more of that anon) and while I welcome the news that Scottish Natural Heritage has weaned itself off killing hedgehogs, in favour of promoting beavers, and while John Sentamu could undoubtedly provide me with chapter and verse for the biblical reference that says there is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth... I can't help but contrast the treatment of the beavers with the treatment of asylum seekers.
It seems we have an establishment that values the humanity of asylum seekers below the welfare of rodents. As Lord Longford once chided the Hindley lynch mob (under different circumstances, but the quotation is apposite) "Where is your humanity?"
And, if so, they should hang their heads in shame. Another reason why I will be voting to cause them maximum damage in the marginal Holme Valley in the next election, unless they buck their ideas up.
Mr Woolas seems to have the function in the government of being the mouthpiece for any unpleasant right wing dog whistle policies on immigration which they might want to float just to send an inaudible message to Daily Mail and Sun readers and also to gauge public reaction generally.
Sentamu quite rightly pointed out such instances of "working the system" as the example of a seriously ill Ghanaian mother-of-two who was deported from the UK in January because her visa had expired. She died two months after returning to Ghana because she could not afford the treatment she was receiving on the NHS.
He could just as equally have pointed out cases of asylum seekers being shipped back to face arrest and torture in Zimbabwe.
Or what about the case of failed asylum seeker Ekrem Ovunc (41) who was seized in a terrifying dawn raid from his home in Brighton and taken away for deportation striking terror into Ibrahim, Ekrem’s 17-year-old son. While Ekrem awaited deportation at Colnbrook Detention Centre at Heathrow Airport. Ibrahim, a conscientious A level student at a local Sixth Form College, disappeared. His friends and teachers were deeply concerned for his safety. Ekrem was reported to be deeply depressed. He was in no doubt that he would be tortured or killed if he was sent back. He was put on suicide watch.
Yes, sure, on the planet Woolas, all these people are only "working the system". Snap out of it, Ekrem! Here to steal our jobs, send em all back, and put a cap on immigration to prevent any more!
For a start, a cap on immigration per se is unworkable because you can't apply it to the EU, where there is free movement within member states. So what Mr Woolas is really talking about is a cap on swarthy people, which would be racist if he actually came out and said as much.
I have never felt so ashamed to be British as I did on that day when that Ghanaian woman was bundled onto a plane and shipped out of the UK. I could not believe that our country, which stood for fairness and tolerance and has given refuge over the centuries to the Lollards, the Huguenots, and the Jews fleeing Hitler, has now turned into such a hard faced edifice of hate.
And as far as the economic migrants argument is concerned, if the Poles are all giving up and going back to Poland, and despite record UK unemployment (for which Mr Woolas - or at least the government he represents, are in part responsible) British people are still unwilling to do foul low paid jobs, I don't see the problem with letting Asylum seekers work, if they want to. Give them some sort of temporary permit, make them pay tax on what they earn, and let them work while their cases are sorted out. Bish bash bosh, end of problem, they are no longer a drag on the state (if they ever were, I'd be interested to see which costs more, Asylum seekers or government IT cockups) they are in the system, you know where they are, and if at the end of it they have to go back, then at least they have been able to provide for themselves and their family in the interim. I'm sure they'd rather flip burgers than be under effective house arrest with the threat of being tortured, I know I would, if that was the only choice.
Recently, four families of beavers were brought in via Heathrow. They will live in the beaver equivalent of luxury for six months before being released in the Scottish Highlands in an attempt to reintroduce beavers into the wild in Scotland. While I am all for seeing animals well treated (it's Bolshy Party Policy, more of that anon) and while I welcome the news that Scottish Natural Heritage has weaned itself off killing hedgehogs, in favour of promoting beavers, and while John Sentamu could undoubtedly provide me with chapter and verse for the biblical reference that says there is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth... I can't help but contrast the treatment of the beavers with the treatment of asylum seekers.
It seems we have an establishment that values the humanity of asylum seekers below the welfare of rodents. As Lord Longford once chided the Hindley lynch mob (under different circumstances, but the quotation is apposite) "Where is your humanity?"
And, if so, they should hang their heads in shame. Another reason why I will be voting to cause them maximum damage in the marginal Holme Valley in the next election, unless they buck their ideas up.
VAT was the question again?
The more I think about it, the more I remain unconvinced that the cut in VAT announced by Alistair Darling will do anything to help put money into people's pockets.
I think big retailers will just quietly pocket the extra percentage and not bother to reduce prices, on the grounds that in three weeks, no one will notice. Sure, they will lose some sales because there are people who do shop around, but given that the difference is probably about £4.50 on a £250 purchase (a laser printer, for example) they know that with a gross profit margin of 30% you can put your prices up 10%, lose 25% of your customers, and still make the same gross profit, and they ain't gonna lose anything like 25%.
If you are a major office supplies organisation, mentioning no names, with an annual turnover of £114M, then keeping the prices the same and pocketing the difference is worth £2.1M pa to you, whereas individually in one-off consumer purchases, they will hardly notice they are going to be ripped off.
I suppose in a situation where big high street names are feeling the pinch - Woolworths has gone, PC World Dixons Currys are posting profit warnings, we should be grateful that the extra turnover might tip the balance and safeguard some jobs, but even there, I hae me doots.
So, tinkering round the edges and unlikely to work. Especially since the duty on fuel will be increased to compensate for the VAT cut, and the energy companies will carry on bleeding us white. At least Dick Turpin wore a mask.
I think big retailers will just quietly pocket the extra percentage and not bother to reduce prices, on the grounds that in three weeks, no one will notice. Sure, they will lose some sales because there are people who do shop around, but given that the difference is probably about £4.50 on a £250 purchase (a laser printer, for example) they know that with a gross profit margin of 30% you can put your prices up 10%, lose 25% of your customers, and still make the same gross profit, and they ain't gonna lose anything like 25%.
If you are a major office supplies organisation, mentioning no names, with an annual turnover of £114M, then keeping the prices the same and pocketing the difference is worth £2.1M pa to you, whereas individually in one-off consumer purchases, they will hardly notice they are going to be ripped off.
I suppose in a situation where big high street names are feeling the pinch - Woolworths has gone, PC World Dixons Currys are posting profit warnings, we should be grateful that the extra turnover might tip the balance and safeguard some jobs, but even there, I hae me doots.
So, tinkering round the edges and unlikely to work. Especially since the duty on fuel will be increased to compensate for the VAT cut, and the energy companies will carry on bleeding us white. At least Dick Turpin wore a mask.
Sunday 23 November 2008
Pull My Vest Down When You've Finished
Maybe I have got a short attention span, or maybe I just don't share everybody else's appetite for an unleavened diet of media bad news, but I am now getting heartily sick of constantly hearing about doom, gloom and recession at every end and turn.
Credit credit credit, crunch crunch crunch: it sounds like a tape-loop of frogs eating frosties. OK, so the capitalist system nearly went ping and vanished under the desk like an old laggy band, OK, so it's gonna happen, OK, so in the best case scenario the banks will just swallow that bailout whole, sit on it, breathe a huge fat collective sigh of relief and go back to the mixture as before, while we all pay with our livelihoods and our jobs, and in the worst case scenario we'll probably all end up scrabbling for loaves of bread thrown from the back of an army lorry, while they watch us on CCTV and the troops fire warning shots over the looters, while the seas boil and the rivers fry and the trees die.
Well, do you know what? I'm SICK of all this crap, and I DON'T CARE, and I AM NOT SCARED, so can we have a bit less of this strange alternative universe* where we have all fallen through the earth's crust and become trapped in an infinitely-extended edition of Moneybox, please BBC? and others?
*But can we keep the bit of the alternative universe where Hull City are going to be in Europe next season, or failing that, if it is all a dream, can I wake up in the shower next to Sue-Ellen? Thanks.
Credit credit credit, crunch crunch crunch: it sounds like a tape-loop of frogs eating frosties. OK, so the capitalist system nearly went ping and vanished under the desk like an old laggy band, OK, so it's gonna happen, OK, so in the best case scenario the banks will just swallow that bailout whole, sit on it, breathe a huge fat collective sigh of relief and go back to the mixture as before, while we all pay with our livelihoods and our jobs, and in the worst case scenario we'll probably all end up scrabbling for loaves of bread thrown from the back of an army lorry, while they watch us on CCTV and the troops fire warning shots over the looters, while the seas boil and the rivers fry and the trees die.
Well, do you know what? I'm SICK of all this crap, and I DON'T CARE, and I AM NOT SCARED, so can we have a bit less of this strange alternative universe* where we have all fallen through the earth's crust and become trapped in an infinitely-extended edition of Moneybox, please BBC? and others?
*But can we keep the bit of the alternative universe where Hull City are going to be in Europe next season, or failing that, if it is all a dream, can I wake up in the shower next to Sue-Ellen? Thanks.
Saturday 22 November 2008
Bad IDea
Every time I see Jacqui Smith, my first reaction is that she looks as if she should be working on a till at Superdrug. I have to pinch myself hard to remind myself that she is in fact not only a dangerous fascist who wants to deprive most if not all of us of our civil liberties, but also, even worse, she has somehow currently contrived to become Home Secretary.
The latest proposals for the government's ID card scheme have been published this week and from them it would seem, at least if the media reports are accurate, that we could be fined up to £1000 for failing to update our ID card details. This is on top of the existing costs, of course, which will already be heavy.
The supposed justification for ID cards is that they will make us all feel safer by somehow deterring terrorism. Their real purpose, of course, is to extend government control of the individual and to add another plank to the raft of anti-libertarian measures that the government has been building under the pretext of anti-terrorism since 2001 (and, in this country, 7/7) provided them with a convenient excuse.
Quite how the news that transsexuals will be able to have two cards, one for their male and one for their female identities, makes the system more secure, is lost on me. I can imagine Al Quaeda are even now queueing up in the lingerie department of Marks and Sparks and looking at the Bravissimo web site. And homeless people will be able to have a card which gives their address as being the place where they might usually be found. Nothing wrong with that - homeless people are often stigmatised by officialdom because they don't have an "address" as such, but it does rather make a mockery of the security argument.
How long before a terrorist with the ID of "Ms Bina Laden, Underneath the Railway Arches, Acton" manages to perpetrate some form of atrocity, I wonder.
This of course presupposes that terrorists will be bothered by ID or the lack of it anyway. I can't see some nutjob religious fanatic saying "Damn, I was going to fly a hijacked plane into Canary Wharf today but now I've gone and left my ID at home".
Just supposing though, (let's go into fantasy mode here) that the government had a point. Let's ignore for the moment that for the last 900 years or so, it's been the government that had to justify its doings to the individual, and that the concept of ID cards reverses that relationship at a stroke. Let's ignore the fact that the government could store any nefarious information about us that it likes on the chip, and we would not know. Let's ignore the cost, both the cost to the individual, and the cost of the whole thing, coming out of a falling tax revenue that could actually be spent on better policing. Just suppose the government has a point. For the sake of argument.
How secure would ID cards be? To get one, presumably you would have to provide some form of existing, secondary ID. So in fact, already, it's only as secure as the existing system, and you don't have to drill down very far before you get to "proofs" of ID such as recent utility bills and Blockbuster membership cards. Plus, the government has a marvellous reputation for cocking up IT projects. Not just the hapless fools who lose memory sticks in car parks and send unencrypted CDs by second class post, but at a larger level. The history of government large-scale IT procurement (think NHS) is littered with overruns of schedule and budget, and systems that then collapse under the strain because they were designed by committee and never properly specified in the first place.
Plus, don't underestimate the government's capacity for getting things wrong. Just plain wrong. At the moment, if one bit of information about you is wrong, it can be annoying, but not crucial. Just imagine spending hours on the phone to a call centre in Sunderland trying to convince them that your details, as shared across all government departments (assuming that bit works) are wrong.
Doubt has also been cast over whether the biometrics will work, and it looks like there have already been IT compromises on that score.
So, given that it's costly, probably won't work, and almost certainly will have no deterrent effect on terrorism, why is the government so keen to press on into the valley of death in the face of all logic and reason.
This brings us back to Jacqui Smith, the exemplar of New Labour. It is because they want to control us. They want to know where we are, what we are doing, who we are talking to. They want to film us every time we leave the house, they want to record our car number plates, they want to store and read all our emails and phone calls. Because they fear us. They know that they have no legitimate reason for doing this, and they seek to control us to make it harder for people to ask awkward questions. Questions like "why are we putting so much effort into treating the symptoms of terrorism when it would be easier to treat the diseas, by getting out of Iraq?" If you ask questions like that, you might just find yourself banged up for 42 days without the option.
They want to be able to go on fishing expeditions. They want to be able, once they have put this raft of legislation in place, to extend it to the likes of animal rights activists, and ultimately, anyone who disagrees with them or looks a bit funny. They won't be happy, ultimately, until everyone has a bar code tattooed on their forehead, and the coastline of Britain is ringed with barbed wire dotted with machine gun towers. Only then will the freedoms our fathers fought for in 1940 be safe! Har har.
One of the more heartening aspects of the BNP membership being leaked on the internet last week, is that there are apparently only 10,000 of the buggers. Mind you, their vote has been going up at elections because, like Hitler before them, they are past masters at invoking scapegoats and appealing to fear and greed. But still, only 10,000 members.
Pause, though, and think, what living in Britain would be like if one day there was a combination of New Labour's profoundly anti-libertarian legislation and a BNP government. Don't say it couldn't happen, they thought that in 1930s Germany. Once all this stuff gets on the statute book, it will be there for ANY future government to use, and those who say "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" should ponder long and hard on this fact, and on the well-known poem by Pastor Niemoller.
The latest proposals for the government's ID card scheme have been published this week and from them it would seem, at least if the media reports are accurate, that we could be fined up to £1000 for failing to update our ID card details. This is on top of the existing costs, of course, which will already be heavy.
The supposed justification for ID cards is that they will make us all feel safer by somehow deterring terrorism. Their real purpose, of course, is to extend government control of the individual and to add another plank to the raft of anti-libertarian measures that the government has been building under the pretext of anti-terrorism since 2001 (and, in this country, 7/7) provided them with a convenient excuse.
Quite how the news that transsexuals will be able to have two cards, one for their male and one for their female identities, makes the system more secure, is lost on me. I can imagine Al Quaeda are even now queueing up in the lingerie department of Marks and Sparks and looking at the Bravissimo web site. And homeless people will be able to have a card which gives their address as being the place where they might usually be found. Nothing wrong with that - homeless people are often stigmatised by officialdom because they don't have an "address" as such, but it does rather make a mockery of the security argument.
How long before a terrorist with the ID of "Ms Bina Laden, Underneath the Railway Arches, Acton" manages to perpetrate some form of atrocity, I wonder.
This of course presupposes that terrorists will be bothered by ID or the lack of it anyway. I can't see some nutjob religious fanatic saying "Damn, I was going to fly a hijacked plane into Canary Wharf today but now I've gone and left my ID at home".
Just supposing though, (let's go into fantasy mode here) that the government had a point. Let's ignore for the moment that for the last 900 years or so, it's been the government that had to justify its doings to the individual, and that the concept of ID cards reverses that relationship at a stroke. Let's ignore the fact that the government could store any nefarious information about us that it likes on the chip, and we would not know. Let's ignore the cost, both the cost to the individual, and the cost of the whole thing, coming out of a falling tax revenue that could actually be spent on better policing. Just suppose the government has a point. For the sake of argument.
How secure would ID cards be? To get one, presumably you would have to provide some form of existing, secondary ID. So in fact, already, it's only as secure as the existing system, and you don't have to drill down very far before you get to "proofs" of ID such as recent utility bills and Blockbuster membership cards. Plus, the government has a marvellous reputation for cocking up IT projects. Not just the hapless fools who lose memory sticks in car parks and send unencrypted CDs by second class post, but at a larger level. The history of government large-scale IT procurement (think NHS) is littered with overruns of schedule and budget, and systems that then collapse under the strain because they were designed by committee and never properly specified in the first place.
Plus, don't underestimate the government's capacity for getting things wrong. Just plain wrong. At the moment, if one bit of information about you is wrong, it can be annoying, but not crucial. Just imagine spending hours on the phone to a call centre in Sunderland trying to convince them that your details, as shared across all government departments (assuming that bit works) are wrong.
Doubt has also been cast over whether the biometrics will work, and it looks like there have already been IT compromises on that score.
So, given that it's costly, probably won't work, and almost certainly will have no deterrent effect on terrorism, why is the government so keen to press on into the valley of death in the face of all logic and reason.
This brings us back to Jacqui Smith, the exemplar of New Labour. It is because they want to control us. They want to know where we are, what we are doing, who we are talking to. They want to film us every time we leave the house, they want to record our car number plates, they want to store and read all our emails and phone calls. Because they fear us. They know that they have no legitimate reason for doing this, and they seek to control us to make it harder for people to ask awkward questions. Questions like "why are we putting so much effort into treating the symptoms of terrorism when it would be easier to treat the diseas, by getting out of Iraq?" If you ask questions like that, you might just find yourself banged up for 42 days without the option.
They want to be able to go on fishing expeditions. They want to be able, once they have put this raft of legislation in place, to extend it to the likes of animal rights activists, and ultimately, anyone who disagrees with them or looks a bit funny. They won't be happy, ultimately, until everyone has a bar code tattooed on their forehead, and the coastline of Britain is ringed with barbed wire dotted with machine gun towers. Only then will the freedoms our fathers fought for in 1940 be safe! Har har.
One of the more heartening aspects of the BNP membership being leaked on the internet last week, is that there are apparently only 10,000 of the buggers. Mind you, their vote has been going up at elections because, like Hitler before them, they are past masters at invoking scapegoats and appealing to fear and greed. But still, only 10,000 members.
Pause, though, and think, what living in Britain would be like if one day there was a combination of New Labour's profoundly anti-libertarian legislation and a BNP government. Don't say it couldn't happen, they thought that in 1930s Germany. Once all this stuff gets on the statute book, it will be there for ANY future government to use, and those who say "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" should ponder long and hard on this fact, and on the well-known poem by Pastor Niemoller.
Sunday 16 November 2008
Jodrell Bankers
When I was at school, in the heady days of the 1960's, in the white heat of Wilson's technological revolution, Jodrell Bank's famous radio telescope was often in the news. It didn't take a crowd of snotty nosed 13 year old boys long to start sniggering and using "Jodrell Bank" as cockney rhyming slang for a particular act of self-abuse.
The connection between "Bank" and "Wank" has been brought home again by a few pieces of news I've spotted this week.
The Credit Crunch "proper" happened before I started doing this blog, but had I been blogging at the time I think I would have said in no uncertain terms that I was not happy about the fact that the only choice available to me was either to stand by and watch as the capitalist system collapsed and slid into the River Hudson, or to stand by and watch while the politicians pumped in gazillions of our money in the form of taxes to prop them up so we could all keep going. Either way, we lost, either way we were shafted.
True, the potential burden of higher taxes and a world-wide recession is slightly preferable to having to scramble for hunks of bread thrown off the back of an army lorry while the troops fire warning shots at the looters, but what a choice, eh?
And all the time these bastards in stripey suits were oppressing us and making us do cash flows and projections and charging us a fortune in bank charges, they were actually taking our money and buying recycled mortgages that shysters in America had granted to old guys sitting on porches picking banjos, people who had no collateral apart from a houn' dawg and a pick up truck. Either that, or they were pissing it away investing in Iceland, a volcano surrounded by haddock.
Well, we've bailed them out, in my case under local anaesthetic and with great reluctance, and we've seen Swervin' Mervyn cut interest rates to their lowest in 50 years, and we all sat back and waited for the economy to fire up again and for the wheels to start turning... and we're still waiting.
In the meantime, credit card borrowing has increased in price, and HBOS have apparently had a party that cost them (ie us) £300,000. In the circumstances you could be forgiven for thinking that it would have been better to have just let the banks go to the wall and given the money directly to small businesses instead. Instead of lending them our money so they could lend it back to us at rates too far above the base rate, and siphon off the surplus into parties and bonuses.
There is NO WAY that these bastards should just be allowed to swallow the bail-out whole, give a huge self-satisfied belch of relief, and then batten down the hatches for the mixture as before, while the rest of us suffer for their mistakes.
I'd like to see taxation at 100% on bank bonus payments over a certain figure, I'd like to see the banks being forced to declare their actual trading position so they can then abandon this deadlock of not lending to each other because they don't know who's solvent and who isn't, and I'd like to see them being forced to use their redundant branches, where there have been enforced mergers, to keep open socially useful post offices in the areas of previous post office closure.
We have been ripped off by energy companies hammering us with unscrupulous price rises. We've been ripped off by oil companies increasing prices at the pumps because the price of oil went up to $150 a barrel, then leaving their pump price there for weeks after the oil barrel price fell back to $47 a barrel, we are NOT going to be ripped off by banks failing to pass on the benefit of the cut in Bank of England base rates, and we are looking to our politicians to do something about it. And come election time, I for one, in this wonderfully marginal constituency of the Holme Valley, will be making sure that they know that their actions have been scrutinised.
The connection between "Bank" and "Wank" has been brought home again by a few pieces of news I've spotted this week.
The Credit Crunch "proper" happened before I started doing this blog, but had I been blogging at the time I think I would have said in no uncertain terms that I was not happy about the fact that the only choice available to me was either to stand by and watch as the capitalist system collapsed and slid into the River Hudson, or to stand by and watch while the politicians pumped in gazillions of our money in the form of taxes to prop them up so we could all keep going. Either way, we lost, either way we were shafted.
True, the potential burden of higher taxes and a world-wide recession is slightly preferable to having to scramble for hunks of bread thrown off the back of an army lorry while the troops fire warning shots at the looters, but what a choice, eh?
And all the time these bastards in stripey suits were oppressing us and making us do cash flows and projections and charging us a fortune in bank charges, they were actually taking our money and buying recycled mortgages that shysters in America had granted to old guys sitting on porches picking banjos, people who had no collateral apart from a houn' dawg and a pick up truck. Either that, or they were pissing it away investing in Iceland, a volcano surrounded by haddock.
Well, we've bailed them out, in my case under local anaesthetic and with great reluctance, and we've seen Swervin' Mervyn cut interest rates to their lowest in 50 years, and we all sat back and waited for the economy to fire up again and for the wheels to start turning... and we're still waiting.
In the meantime, credit card borrowing has increased in price, and HBOS have apparently had a party that cost them (ie us) £300,000. In the circumstances you could be forgiven for thinking that it would have been better to have just let the banks go to the wall and given the money directly to small businesses instead. Instead of lending them our money so they could lend it back to us at rates too far above the base rate, and siphon off the surplus into parties and bonuses.
There is NO WAY that these bastards should just be allowed to swallow the bail-out whole, give a huge self-satisfied belch of relief, and then batten down the hatches for the mixture as before, while the rest of us suffer for their mistakes.
I'd like to see taxation at 100% on bank bonus payments over a certain figure, I'd like to see the banks being forced to declare their actual trading position so they can then abandon this deadlock of not lending to each other because they don't know who's solvent and who isn't, and I'd like to see them being forced to use their redundant branches, where there have been enforced mergers, to keep open socially useful post offices in the areas of previous post office closure.
We have been ripped off by energy companies hammering us with unscrupulous price rises. We've been ripped off by oil companies increasing prices at the pumps because the price of oil went up to $150 a barrel, then leaving their pump price there for weeks after the oil barrel price fell back to $47 a barrel, we are NOT going to be ripped off by banks failing to pass on the benefit of the cut in Bank of England base rates, and we are looking to our politicians to do something about it. And come election time, I for one, in this wonderfully marginal constituency of the Holme Valley, will be making sure that they know that their actions have been scrutinised.
Wednesday 12 November 2008
Don't slam the stable door on social workers
The tragic death of Baby P at the hands of his carers is of course an appalling crime. I think everyone would agree that it should never happen again. Which is why it depresses me almost beyond belief to see people using the murder as a political football, and the social worker in question being potentially castigated in the media, and by definition, all social workers.
I know a social worker. Not the sort that has to make difficult, almost impossible, desicions about child welfare, instead she looks after two guys who can't fend for themselves very well. She works 24 hour shifts, including sleepovers, and when she is on call she has to watch out for things like self-harming, and to try and engage with them, oh, and if one of them has an epileptic fit in the middle of the night, she has to administer rectal valium.
She has an acre of paperwork to fill in, mostly to cover the arses of the people in the management structure above her. Risk assessments, individual learning plans, you name it. And, for all of this, last year, she earned under £16,000. Social Work is one of those jobs like being a teacher, where everyone thinks they can do it better than you. You wouldn't dream of standing over a heart surgeon while he was performing an operation on your auntie and saying "Oi, you've sewn that bit up wonky" - but everyone feels that they can do Social Work and everybody thinks they can teach, egged on by government initiatives to foster "choice" in the public services - choice that people really, actually, don't want. They want public services that work and deliver, not to have to choose between two dysfunctional underfunded public services (often contracted out to the private sector, because we all know how good the private sector is at running things, I mean we have only got to look at the financial services industry .... er...oh.)
While today's shenanigans at Prime Minister's Question Time between Broon and Cameron were vaguely entertaining, sort of a bout of "PMT at PMQ's", they will do nothing to help save future Baby Ps. Why the government feels it can run Haringey social services better than the people who are currently running it beats me (unless they have discovered a secret pot of money) and Cameron of course will not hesitate to jump on any passing bandwagon, especially one that allows him to indulge in a little bit of shroud-waving.
So, once again we hear the sound of stable doors shutting all over Westminster with a resounding clang. There will be an enquiry, involving Ofsted, the Chief Constable, Lord Somebody and probably the Keeper of the Queen's Privy Seal, for all I know.
But nobody wants to talk about the real problem, the lack of that secret little pot of money. Everybody's happy to talk about the symptoms, but not the disease. Until social work is properly funded and resourced, you will always have the situation where potentially, a harrassed, lowly and inexperienced public official can make a mistake with tragic consequences. Unless the downtrodden underclass that we seem to be determined to create with our modern way of life with its relentless obsession with money, fame, celebrity and success as expressed by material possessions, all have a miraculous personality transplant overnight, you will still have kids at risk because of the breakup of what Mrs Thatcher once derided as being non-existent - "society". And it's that mismatch between the growing need and the diminishing resources, coupled with a culture of targets and box ticking which has been fostered and inspired by this government almost to the exclusion of common sense, that causes the problem.
It's a common assertion, especially around the dinner tables of middle England, that the public sector is overstaffed and feather-bedded. It's true, there is some wasteful and totally unecessary spending in public life - MP's expenses, for instance, are a complete scandal. There is no way we should be paying David Cameron's mortgage! But, given that MPs aren't about to sacrifice their salary and expenses to make Haringey social services better funded, then there's only one other option: if you want a social services which really makes a difference because the caseload is not overwhelming and the people who work there are properly-rewarded public sector careerists, then the answer is a simple one - higher council taxes, but that is precisely the thing the angry mob fuelled by the likes of the Daily Mail, the Sun, and the News of the World refuse to countenance. You can't rebuild the ravages of sixty years of social decay on the cheap.
And so poor little Baby P, who was, it seems, sometimes treated like a real football in life, will continue to be kicked around after death by the politicians and the media, in a bizarre competition to see who can wring their hands the most and spout the biggest load of sanctimonious claptrap.
I know a social worker. Not the sort that has to make difficult, almost impossible, desicions about child welfare, instead she looks after two guys who can't fend for themselves very well. She works 24 hour shifts, including sleepovers, and when she is on call she has to watch out for things like self-harming, and to try and engage with them, oh, and if one of them has an epileptic fit in the middle of the night, she has to administer rectal valium.
She has an acre of paperwork to fill in, mostly to cover the arses of the people in the management structure above her. Risk assessments, individual learning plans, you name it. And, for all of this, last year, she earned under £16,000. Social Work is one of those jobs like being a teacher, where everyone thinks they can do it better than you. You wouldn't dream of standing over a heart surgeon while he was performing an operation on your auntie and saying "Oi, you've sewn that bit up wonky" - but everyone feels that they can do Social Work and everybody thinks they can teach, egged on by government initiatives to foster "choice" in the public services - choice that people really, actually, don't want. They want public services that work and deliver, not to have to choose between two dysfunctional underfunded public services (often contracted out to the private sector, because we all know how good the private sector is at running things, I mean we have only got to look at the financial services industry .... er...oh.)
While today's shenanigans at Prime Minister's Question Time between Broon and Cameron were vaguely entertaining, sort of a bout of "PMT at PMQ's", they will do nothing to help save future Baby Ps. Why the government feels it can run Haringey social services better than the people who are currently running it beats me (unless they have discovered a secret pot of money) and Cameron of course will not hesitate to jump on any passing bandwagon, especially one that allows him to indulge in a little bit of shroud-waving.
So, once again we hear the sound of stable doors shutting all over Westminster with a resounding clang. There will be an enquiry, involving Ofsted, the Chief Constable, Lord Somebody and probably the Keeper of the Queen's Privy Seal, for all I know.
But nobody wants to talk about the real problem, the lack of that secret little pot of money. Everybody's happy to talk about the symptoms, but not the disease. Until social work is properly funded and resourced, you will always have the situation where potentially, a harrassed, lowly and inexperienced public official can make a mistake with tragic consequences. Unless the downtrodden underclass that we seem to be determined to create with our modern way of life with its relentless obsession with money, fame, celebrity and success as expressed by material possessions, all have a miraculous personality transplant overnight, you will still have kids at risk because of the breakup of what Mrs Thatcher once derided as being non-existent - "society". And it's that mismatch between the growing need and the diminishing resources, coupled with a culture of targets and box ticking which has been fostered and inspired by this government almost to the exclusion of common sense, that causes the problem.
It's a common assertion, especially around the dinner tables of middle England, that the public sector is overstaffed and feather-bedded. It's true, there is some wasteful and totally unecessary spending in public life - MP's expenses, for instance, are a complete scandal. There is no way we should be paying David Cameron's mortgage! But, given that MPs aren't about to sacrifice their salary and expenses to make Haringey social services better funded, then there's only one other option: if you want a social services which really makes a difference because the caseload is not overwhelming and the people who work there are properly-rewarded public sector careerists, then the answer is a simple one - higher council taxes, but that is precisely the thing the angry mob fuelled by the likes of the Daily Mail, the Sun, and the News of the World refuse to countenance. You can't rebuild the ravages of sixty years of social decay on the cheap.
And so poor little Baby P, who was, it seems, sometimes treated like a real football in life, will continue to be kicked around after death by the politicians and the media, in a bizarre competition to see who can wring their hands the most and spout the biggest load of sanctimonious claptrap.
White Poppies, white feathers
Sorry, I got a bit aereated yesterday.
I don't have a baseball bat anyway, and ultimately nothing is solved by lamping people who you disagree with. Even if they crassly suggest that in some way white poppies are inferior to red poppies. And what about the people who wear both - red to remember the needless waste of lives, white to show they are trying never to let it happen again.
Mind you, lamping people you disagree with would make Prime Minister's Question Time more entertaining, and we nearly got there today. Of which more later
I don't have a baseball bat anyway, and ultimately nothing is solved by lamping people who you disagree with. Even if they crassly suggest that in some way white poppies are inferior to red poppies. And what about the people who wear both - red to remember the needless waste of lives, white to show they are trying never to let it happen again.
Mind you, lamping people you disagree with would make Prime Minister's Question Time more entertaining, and we nearly got there today. Of which more later
Tuesday 11 November 2008
White Poppies, white feathers
There's some bloke at the Daily Telegraph who has got the bag on about White poppies.
He says
People who wear white poppies - who include the sanctimonious prats of the "Christian" think tank Ekklesia - not only dishonour our war dead: they also assert their supposed moral superiority over the 40 million Britons who wear British Legion red poppies.
What should you do if you see a white poppy wearer today? At the very least - if I may borrow a phrase from my colleague Alan Cochrane - you should give them a cheery wave not involving the use of all your fingers.
Really, when I read bilge like this, I am torn between praying for this dickhead and going round there with a baseball bat. The white poppy was invented by the Peace Pledge Union, which was started by Dick Sheppard, who has been a chaplain to military hospitals on the Western Front in the First World War, and had decided "never again".
I can't imagine ANYONE wearing a poppy, white or red, to glorify war. It doesn't matter what colour your poppy is, any more than it matters what colour your skin is. or is this fucknugget saying war is a good thing?
He's called Damien something, I can't be bothered, to be honest, all I know is that is family must be experts in audio electronic surveillance in a small archipelago of holiday islands off the coast of Cornwall.
Yes, it's obviously Scilly Buggers' outing today.
He says
People who wear white poppies - who include the sanctimonious prats of the "Christian" think tank Ekklesia - not only dishonour our war dead: they also assert their supposed moral superiority over the 40 million Britons who wear British Legion red poppies.
What should you do if you see a white poppy wearer today? At the very least - if I may borrow a phrase from my colleague Alan Cochrane - you should give them a cheery wave not involving the use of all your fingers.
Really, when I read bilge like this, I am torn between praying for this dickhead and going round there with a baseball bat. The white poppy was invented by the Peace Pledge Union, which was started by Dick Sheppard, who has been a chaplain to military hospitals on the Western Front in the First World War, and had decided "never again".
I can't imagine ANYONE wearing a poppy, white or red, to glorify war. It doesn't matter what colour your poppy is, any more than it matters what colour your skin is. or is this fucknugget saying war is a good thing?
He's called Damien something, I can't be bothered, to be honest, all I know is that is family must be experts in audio electronic surveillance in a small archipelago of holiday islands off the coast of Cornwall.
Yes, it's obviously Scilly Buggers' outing today.
Sitting on Defence
Well, I had better make a start on the Bolshy Manifesto somewhere, and it might as well be Defence of the Realm, given that today is Remembrance Day and on the way to the Lakes on Sunday we saw a World War II Dakota complete with authentic paint job, flying over the M62. Unless it was a hallucination of course.
I am not, technically, a pacifist. I wish I was. I have to say, though, that my desire and admiration for the British way of life is such that I can foresee a situation where, if the invaders were at the gates, I would be there, lined up alongside such of my countrymen who were prepared to stop them invading. Not that I would be any practical use but, as a moral relativist, I have to concede there are times when, if for instance another Hitler came along and could not be stopped by any other means, then you might, in extreme circumstances, have to resort to violence.
Unfortunately, this also then implies the need for professional armed forces to defend the country, and all that this entails. And, in an uncertain world, where the idiots in charge of our foreign policy have been wedged so far up Bush’s chuff they haven’t seen daylight for years, we’ve now made a lot of enemies. Which is why, unfortunately, reluctantly (see how those words recur like a tolling bell), we’ve got to replace Trident. I know, I can hear the howls from here. And it ties us in to the Americans. I know, I know. (I’m assuming a slippery operator like Blair made Trident help a condition of being America’s “Blind Ally” this last few years, and if he didn’t, he’s a bloody fool.)
In the question of Trident, I find myself reflecting that it’s like the situation where ideally, you would like to go to the shops but you are actually stuck up to your ankles in an unfamiliar peat bog in the middle of nowhere, it’s getting dark and it’s coming on to rain, you’ve got no torch and you’ve lost your map. Ideally, given the choice, you wouldn’t start from here.
So it is with Trident. Ideally, the Bolshy Party wouldn’t start from here, but given that, by slavishly following the Primrose Path of dalliance promoted by Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, we’ve now made ourselves the target for every hothead east of the Euphrates with an AK-47 (and quite a lot west of the Euphrates as well), it seems we have no choice. Great legacy, George, Tony, thanks a lot.
However, this doesn’t mean we want to go exporting aggression. It’s perfectly possible to be proud of England without feeling then obliged to invade France (or Iraq). I can see (sort of) an intellectual justification for invading Afghanistan, given that it was a hotbed of fanaticism, but someone should have a) asked the question – what is it about the USA that these people hate so much that they are willing to fly planes into buildings and kill themselves in the process? and b) someone should have taken Bush aside and told him that western armies have very poor track records of invading and subduing Afghanistan, ever since the North-West Frontier wars of the nineteenth century.
Another justification for invading Afghanistan was the plight of Muslim women under the Taleban. Yes, this was pretty dire, but is it possible to coerce an entire religion, especially in a situation where the most militant fringe of it has gained political power by force, into making 600 years of progress in half-a-dozen? Islam and Islamic scholars kept the flame of knowledge alive in the Middle Ages, providing the vital link back to Classical Greek and Roman thought and texts that fuelled Western Europe’s Renaissance. Yet militant Islam is still stuck in the 1100s, when it comes to the place of women, especially. But you can’t bomb someone forward to civilisation, you can only bomb them back to the Stone Age.
So, for these reasons, it’s Bolshy Party Policy to withdraw straightaway from the American-induced adventurism in Iraq. Their mistake, their mess, they can stay and clear it up if they still want the oil, which they will do, even under Obama, I predict. There will be US involvement in Iraq for generations yet, military bases and military “advisers”, private security firms (mercenaries or contractors, depending on who you talk to) and joint exercises.
We would use the men, weapons and materiel freed up by the withdrawal from Iraq to ease the strain on the UK contingent in Afghanistan, while planning a phased withdrawal from there, too. The women will have to be helped by other means – by intellectually challenging the bankrupt assertions of the Taleban and their questionable spiritual authority.
The possession of professional armed services doesn’t mean, either, that you have to use them for fighting. Every year there are scores of disasters, natural or otherwise, around the world which require specialist logistical expertise in relief efforts. Even in the UK, when we get the by now regular floods each summer as a result of climate change. I look forward to the day when the Army, Navy and Air Force have largely morphed into a sort of global logistics and rescue service – a bit like International Rescue but with fewer "strings" attached. A plane can be used to drop food aid instead of bombs. A temporary bridge can allow food convoys to cross a swollen river, rather than tanks.
The Bolshy Party believes that it is perfectly possible to be proud of the achievement and expertise of our nation’s armed forces without that translating over into a sort of gung-ho Little Englander patriotism that sees its mission in the world as being to teach Johnny Foreigner what’s what, keep him in his place, and give him a bloody nose.
The only justifiable intervention outside of the UK, apart from humanitarian aid, should be in the pursuit of international law and justice, and this should be carried out rigorously, without fear or favour, if it is to be done at all, and certainly not done with a sort of lip service attitude, only in areas where it suits the broad aims of US foreign policy.
Soldiers are probably the last people who want to go to war:
Soldiers who wanna be heroes
Number practically zero
But there are millions
Who want to be civilians
- that old protest song from the Vietnam era of the 1960s has it more or less right. So, in those circumstances, we at the Bolshy Party do not consider that if you wear your poppy on Poppy Day, for instance, you are automatically glorifying war. We see it, on the contrary, commemorating all of the countless millions of ordinary blokes and women who didn’t particularly want to go to war, who were quite happy where they were, thanks very much, but who, when the call came, put down their spades, their scythes, their tools, their pens and marched to meet the challenges.
There are different reasons for remembering the dead of the two different wars. For the dead of the First World War, men such as Harry Fenwick and William Evans, we remember the waste and the futility, the sadness of all those millions of unfulfilled lives. For the dead of the Second World War, at least on the Allies’ side, those emotions are also mingled with a kind of thanks for stopping Hitler – or stopping the Hitler war fascist machine. For the dead on the German side, again, there is only sorrow at unfulfilled lives. And of course, potentially the most tragic waste of that conflict, the millions of innocent civilians who were killed, wounded or displaced, some of the consquences of which we still feel today, in the Arab-Israeli standoff.
So to sum up, the policy of the Bolshy Part on defence is: we’ve got to start from where we are, not where we’d like to be, and the longing we feel for where we’d like to be is irrelevant in that context. We’ve got to extract our troops from the two areas in the world where at present all they are doing is providing targets for fanatics. Ideally, in Afghanistan, if we can improve the lot of women by continuing to challenge militant Islam intellectually, if we can cut off the Taleban’s funding by buying up the opium crop and turning it into diamorphine for the NHS, there are still things we can do to pull out the troops without leaving the Afghans in the lurch.
We’re stuck with Trident’s replacement, but that doesn’t mean that we have to go looking for excuses to lose it. It’s a deterrent.
Finally, let’s not also forget that the government gets an easier ride thanks to the efforts of the British Legion and other people who deal with the welfare of veterans. You can say this about many charities. The government gets off lightly in many areas where they should be spending money wisely because goodhearted people who recognise a need for action, get stuck in and sort it out. I’ve written about this dilemma before, in the context of overseas aid.The problem is, if the charities go on strike, it isn't the government that gets hurt by that, it's the people or cause the charity was trying to assist, but no, we should never let our politicians get away with short-changing the people who fought their battles for them.
And it’s possible to be proud of our armed forces without indulging in gung-ho patriotism, and it would be possible to be even more proud of them if we succeed in turning their planes into ploughshares. And if you wear a poppy, it doesn’t make you a war-monger – just the opposite, in fact.
I am not, technically, a pacifist. I wish I was. I have to say, though, that my desire and admiration for the British way of life is such that I can foresee a situation where, if the invaders were at the gates, I would be there, lined up alongside such of my countrymen who were prepared to stop them invading. Not that I would be any practical use but, as a moral relativist, I have to concede there are times when, if for instance another Hitler came along and could not be stopped by any other means, then you might, in extreme circumstances, have to resort to violence.
Unfortunately, this also then implies the need for professional armed forces to defend the country, and all that this entails. And, in an uncertain world, where the idiots in charge of our foreign policy have been wedged so far up Bush’s chuff they haven’t seen daylight for years, we’ve now made a lot of enemies. Which is why, unfortunately, reluctantly (see how those words recur like a tolling bell), we’ve got to replace Trident. I know, I can hear the howls from here. And it ties us in to the Americans. I know, I know. (I’m assuming a slippery operator like Blair made Trident help a condition of being America’s “Blind Ally” this last few years, and if he didn’t, he’s a bloody fool.)
In the question of Trident, I find myself reflecting that it’s like the situation where ideally, you would like to go to the shops but you are actually stuck up to your ankles in an unfamiliar peat bog in the middle of nowhere, it’s getting dark and it’s coming on to rain, you’ve got no torch and you’ve lost your map. Ideally, given the choice, you wouldn’t start from here.
So it is with Trident. Ideally, the Bolshy Party wouldn’t start from here, but given that, by slavishly following the Primrose Path of dalliance promoted by Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, we’ve now made ourselves the target for every hothead east of the Euphrates with an AK-47 (and quite a lot west of the Euphrates as well), it seems we have no choice. Great legacy, George, Tony, thanks a lot.
However, this doesn’t mean we want to go exporting aggression. It’s perfectly possible to be proud of England without feeling then obliged to invade France (or Iraq). I can see (sort of) an intellectual justification for invading Afghanistan, given that it was a hotbed of fanaticism, but someone should have a) asked the question – what is it about the USA that these people hate so much that they are willing to fly planes into buildings and kill themselves in the process? and b) someone should have taken Bush aside and told him that western armies have very poor track records of invading and subduing Afghanistan, ever since the North-West Frontier wars of the nineteenth century.
Another justification for invading Afghanistan was the plight of Muslim women under the Taleban. Yes, this was pretty dire, but is it possible to coerce an entire religion, especially in a situation where the most militant fringe of it has gained political power by force, into making 600 years of progress in half-a-dozen? Islam and Islamic scholars kept the flame of knowledge alive in the Middle Ages, providing the vital link back to Classical Greek and Roman thought and texts that fuelled Western Europe’s Renaissance. Yet militant Islam is still stuck in the 1100s, when it comes to the place of women, especially. But you can’t bomb someone forward to civilisation, you can only bomb them back to the Stone Age.
So, for these reasons, it’s Bolshy Party Policy to withdraw straightaway from the American-induced adventurism in Iraq. Their mistake, their mess, they can stay and clear it up if they still want the oil, which they will do, even under Obama, I predict. There will be US involvement in Iraq for generations yet, military bases and military “advisers”, private security firms (mercenaries or contractors, depending on who you talk to) and joint exercises.
We would use the men, weapons and materiel freed up by the withdrawal from Iraq to ease the strain on the UK contingent in Afghanistan, while planning a phased withdrawal from there, too. The women will have to be helped by other means – by intellectually challenging the bankrupt assertions of the Taleban and their questionable spiritual authority.
The possession of professional armed services doesn’t mean, either, that you have to use them for fighting. Every year there are scores of disasters, natural or otherwise, around the world which require specialist logistical expertise in relief efforts. Even in the UK, when we get the by now regular floods each summer as a result of climate change. I look forward to the day when the Army, Navy and Air Force have largely morphed into a sort of global logistics and rescue service – a bit like International Rescue but with fewer "strings" attached. A plane can be used to drop food aid instead of bombs. A temporary bridge can allow food convoys to cross a swollen river, rather than tanks.
The Bolshy Party believes that it is perfectly possible to be proud of the achievement and expertise of our nation’s armed forces without that translating over into a sort of gung-ho Little Englander patriotism that sees its mission in the world as being to teach Johnny Foreigner what’s what, keep him in his place, and give him a bloody nose.
The only justifiable intervention outside of the UK, apart from humanitarian aid, should be in the pursuit of international law and justice, and this should be carried out rigorously, without fear or favour, if it is to be done at all, and certainly not done with a sort of lip service attitude, only in areas where it suits the broad aims of US foreign policy.
Soldiers are probably the last people who want to go to war:
Soldiers who wanna be heroes
Number practically zero
But there are millions
Who want to be civilians
- that old protest song from the Vietnam era of the 1960s has it more or less right. So, in those circumstances, we at the Bolshy Party do not consider that if you wear your poppy on Poppy Day, for instance, you are automatically glorifying war. We see it, on the contrary, commemorating all of the countless millions of ordinary blokes and women who didn’t particularly want to go to war, who were quite happy where they were, thanks very much, but who, when the call came, put down their spades, their scythes, their tools, their pens and marched to meet the challenges.
There are different reasons for remembering the dead of the two different wars. For the dead of the First World War, men such as Harry Fenwick and William Evans, we remember the waste and the futility, the sadness of all those millions of unfulfilled lives. For the dead of the Second World War, at least on the Allies’ side, those emotions are also mingled with a kind of thanks for stopping Hitler – or stopping the Hitler war fascist machine. For the dead on the German side, again, there is only sorrow at unfulfilled lives. And of course, potentially the most tragic waste of that conflict, the millions of innocent civilians who were killed, wounded or displaced, some of the consquences of which we still feel today, in the Arab-Israeli standoff.
So to sum up, the policy of the Bolshy Part on defence is: we’ve got to start from where we are, not where we’d like to be, and the longing we feel for where we’d like to be is irrelevant in that context. We’ve got to extract our troops from the two areas in the world where at present all they are doing is providing targets for fanatics. Ideally, in Afghanistan, if we can improve the lot of women by continuing to challenge militant Islam intellectually, if we can cut off the Taleban’s funding by buying up the opium crop and turning it into diamorphine for the NHS, there are still things we can do to pull out the troops without leaving the Afghans in the lurch.
We’re stuck with Trident’s replacement, but that doesn’t mean that we have to go looking for excuses to lose it. It’s a deterrent.
Finally, let’s not also forget that the government gets an easier ride thanks to the efforts of the British Legion and other people who deal with the welfare of veterans. You can say this about many charities. The government gets off lightly in many areas where they should be spending money wisely because goodhearted people who recognise a need for action, get stuck in and sort it out. I’ve written about this dilemma before, in the context of overseas aid.The problem is, if the charities go on strike, it isn't the government that gets hurt by that, it's the people or cause the charity was trying to assist, but no, we should never let our politicians get away with short-changing the people who fought their battles for them.
And it’s possible to be proud of our armed forces without indulging in gung-ho patriotism, and it would be possible to be even more proud of them if we succeed in turning their planes into ploughshares. And if you wear a poppy, it doesn’t make you a war-monger – just the opposite, in fact.
Friday 7 November 2008
I come from Old Obama, with a banjo on my knee
Well, I am still gathering together the Bolshy Manifesto, so in the meantime, a quick welcome to Barack Obama. (I keep wanting to type Burt Bacharach Obama, but that is probably a different guy).
Welcome ba(ra)ck, America. We've missed you. We didn't like you much in those years when you traded the fiddle for the drum. You look a bit more like your old self this week.
Now get it sorted, and keep away from grassy knolls and school book depositories for the next four years.
One of the funniest things (apart from Paxo interviewing Dizzee Rascal - "Mr Rascal, do you consider yourself to be British?") this week has been the reaction of our home-grown politicians to the American presidential election. Forgetting that "this is no time for a novice!" Broon immediately welcomed Obama.
As for Cameron, you could almost see the little light bulb come on over his head. It can only be a matter of time before he starts wearing bling and rapping at Prime Ministers' Question Time. I am sure he's already sent Osborne round to the shops for a tin of Cherry Blossom, a stripey blazer, and banjo.
Much has been written in a short time about Obama's race. I think I stand with Martin Luther King on this, and that equality will only truly have been achieved when the colour of the President's skin is just not an issue.
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character"
Well - Personally, I hope he is everything they say and more, but it's early days yet, and fine words butter no parsnips. I see Hazel Blears has been bleating on about political blogging making everyone cynical and apathetic about politicians. I am actually quite sick of being labelled cynical and apathetic by the very politicians who made me cynical and apathetic.Show me a cause and I'll be there with you at the barricades. Self serving perpetuation or crass opportunism (the two options available to us in the UK at the moment) are not causes as I understand the word.
But yes, let's hope when Obama's finished handing out puppies, he gets the job done. Should be an interesting meeting when the people who funded his campaign attempt to cash in their chips and he says no. I'd love to be a fly on the wall*
*figuratively, obv. If I was a /real/ fly on the wall, I'd have six hairy legs and have to vomit on my food before hoovering it up my nose. But on the upside, I would be able to do a flick roll and land upside down on the ceiling, something I can only perform at present while listening to Question Time...
Welcome ba(ra)ck, America. We've missed you. We didn't like you much in those years when you traded the fiddle for the drum. You look a bit more like your old self this week.
Now get it sorted, and keep away from grassy knolls and school book depositories for the next four years.
One of the funniest things (apart from Paxo interviewing Dizzee Rascal - "Mr Rascal, do you consider yourself to be British?") this week has been the reaction of our home-grown politicians to the American presidential election. Forgetting that "this is no time for a novice!" Broon immediately welcomed Obama.
As for Cameron, you could almost see the little light bulb come on over his head. It can only be a matter of time before he starts wearing bling and rapping at Prime Ministers' Question Time. I am sure he's already sent Osborne round to the shops for a tin of Cherry Blossom, a stripey blazer, and banjo.
Much has been written in a short time about Obama's race. I think I stand with Martin Luther King on this, and that equality will only truly have been achieved when the colour of the President's skin is just not an issue.
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character"
Well - Personally, I hope he is everything they say and more, but it's early days yet, and fine words butter no parsnips. I see Hazel Blears has been bleating on about political blogging making everyone cynical and apathetic about politicians. I am actually quite sick of being labelled cynical and apathetic by the very politicians who made me cynical and apathetic.Show me a cause and I'll be there with you at the barricades. Self serving perpetuation or crass opportunism (the two options available to us in the UK at the moment) are not causes as I understand the word.
But yes, let's hope when Obama's finished handing out puppies, he gets the job done. Should be an interesting meeting when the people who funded his campaign attempt to cash in their chips and he says no. I'd love to be a fly on the wall*
*figuratively, obv. If I was a /real/ fly on the wall, I'd have six hairy legs and have to vomit on my food before hoovering it up my nose. But on the upside, I would be able to do a flick roll and land upside down on the ceiling, something I can only perform at present while listening to Question Time...
Thursday 6 November 2008
Welcome
Welcome to the Bolshy Party.
Neither left nor right, but Radical, in the old 18th-century use of the word.
We'll be publishing The Bolshy Manifesto over the next few days. On everything from affordable housing to inflatable Popes.
It will be .. er... interesting. To us, at least.
For the moment, though, from Dusty the cat and from me, goodnight.
Neither left nor right, but Radical, in the old 18th-century use of the word.
We'll be publishing The Bolshy Manifesto over the next few days. On everything from affordable housing to inflatable Popes.
It will be .. er... interesting. To us, at least.
For the moment, though, from Dusty the cat and from me, goodnight.
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