Over the last few days, both Matthew Sinclair and Chris Dillow have written ‘abortion debate’ posts from the standpoint of the sceptic/uncommitted, a perhaps usual looking position in a debate where taking sides can almost seem obligatory, but a respectable one nonetheless and one that should be addressed.
Chris is struggling a little with his instincts, […]

The notion that sport and politics should never mix is a curious, and also deeply political, one. Sport, after all, is just the waging of international politics by other means. Ask the East Germans.
Rarely has the mix been quite as fruity as this weekend’s end to the Italian football season

Consistency is not really her strong point, Bookdrunk said yesterday when Unity blogged the amendments Tory MPs are proposing to the HFE Bill. There’s Mr Edward Leigh supporting amendments to reduc the limit to 12, 14 or 16 weeks and there’s Nadine Dorries supporting reducing the limit to 20 weeks and 16 weeks! Is she not conviced by her own arguments?

But you see, that isn’t her ultimate agenda and neither is it of these other mysogynist MPs and organisations…

A quick interview with pro-choice MP Katy Clark on gearing up for next week’s vote on the existing abortion time limit of 24 weeks:

Remember this, says Katy Clark: the abortion debate we’re having should not be about the 24-week time limit for the legal right for abortion. The issue is purely and simply one of a woman’s right to choose - whether the state should make it lawful for a woman to terminate a pregnancy. The End, in many ways.

Except that it’s not the end, of course: there are only a few days left before MPs take a vote on proposals to amend the Abortion Act via the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, and Clark is certainly one that feels that a woman’s right to choose a legal abortion is ‘under a very real threat.’

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This weekend has not been a good one for the dangerous freaks and dissenters among us. I spent it mostly in the garden under a scrap of boiling London sky, contemplating all the things I’m suddenly not allowed to do anymore. That, and reading the papers, most of which have spent the post-Boris comedown wanking grotesquely over the Fritzl case.

In case you’ve spent the past month hiding in a box, this is the big Austrian incest story that made headlines across the world when it emerged that a grandfather in his seventies had imprisoned his daughter in a custom-built dungeon under his house and fathered seven children by her whilst the rest of the family lived upstairs in complete ignorance.

Horrific, utterly, stunningly horrific. And not something you’d ever see on these civilised islands, of course.

When was the last time you read a home-grown incest story in the British press? You can’t remember, can you? There’s a reason for that. No, it’s not that they don’t happen. It’s that both the law of the land and the journalists’ code of practice (PCC, ed.2006) expressly forbid the reporting of child sex cases and especially of incest cases.

Here’s the PCC:

Article 7. Children in sex cases

1. The press must not, even if legally free to do so, identify children under 16 who are victims or witnesses in cases involving sex offences.

2. In any press report of a case involving a sexual offence against a child, i) the child must not be identified; ii) the adult may be identified iii) the word ‘incest’ must not be used where a child victim might be identified; iv) care must be taken that nothing in the report implies the relationship between the accused and the child.

All jolly sensible stuff; thank you, the PCC. This law is specifically in place to prevent, just for example, the terrible feeding frenzy with which the British tabloids and dailies and even the broadsheets have descended on the hapless, vulnerable Fritzl children, ensuring that wherever they go in later life, they will be ‘those kids from the cellar’.

In the UK, a story like this simply would not have broken, or not in any matter which would have retained the human interest of this staggering piece of news. If Fritzl was identified, any sexual activity or abuse would have been omitted from the reports; if ‘incest’ was retained, reporters would have had to leave out everything else: a non-story. But because it happened in middle Europe, it’s open season for the press, and no doubt the bones of this tragic story will be picked clean before the summer is out. That, after all, is what the British press are here for.

But that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen here, too. Incest happens in this country, every day. The sexual abuse of young girls and boys happens in this country, all the time, which is why gloating over something that happened in ‘Hitler’s homeland’ makes for such teeth-itching cultural hypocrisy. Everywhere, sad men are getting their grizzled rocks off on sexual power-trips over the young and fragile. It happens.

This, of course is also why internet paedophila is such a news fascination over here: as long as the story’s not about actual sex with an actual child, we can break it gloriously, splashing snaps of picture-hoarding perverts across the tabloids, whilst actual pederasty - physical sexual interference with children rather than just sick appreciation thereof - remains practically unreported.

But it happens. Violence against women and children happens. And whilst the law of this country protects young people from media scrutiny up to a point, we’d do well to remember the number of things we still don’t adequately protect them from. Perhaps we’re not quite as civilised as we think.

And that, frankly, is all I have to say on the matter. If anyone wants me, I’ll be in the garden smoking a fat reefer the size of a baby’s arm and watching zombie-porn. Come and join me, bring drinks.

Not 100% sure what delights Sunny has in store for everyone today…

(’Sunny delights’, GEDDIT!!! - Sorry, bit of a Glenda moment there, only to be expected when you’re monitoring Dorries)

…but in the mean time, the list of amendments to be debated on 20th May is mounting up, necessitating an update.

As far as the upper time limit for abortion goes, the current list (with sponsors) looks like this:
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Abortion, and of course the wider issue of reproductive rights, still seems to be an area that the left need to be pushed on.

Yeah they will often make the right noises, but they will make excuses for anti abortion men such as Galloway, and yet I can’t see them being quite so tolerant if someone was, ooh let’s say pro-war. But abortion is a women’s issue isn’t it, it’s not quite up there with the serious male leftie men and their real politics about war and arguing the toss over the finer obscure theoretical points of Marxism or who did what when to whom in 1983.

That’s not to say the majority of the left aren’t pro choice and I’m not going to bang on about Galloway as it’s pointless. Back to the subject, the left and pro choice, why should they get their finger out on this?

Much has been said on this, so I will try to focus on what I see as specific issues for the left, starting with the fact that working class women are those who lose out the most when abortion rights are restricted. Money has always helped procure such services from discreet private doctors.

Working class women, pre 1967, had to make do with the back street abortionists and the resultant risks to health, potentially fatal.
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1) On March 19th Nadine Dorries MP published a blog-post titled The Hand of Hope, which featured this image of a small hand apparently coming out of a uterus. She said:

When the operation was over, baby Samuel, at 21 weeks gestation, put his hand through the incision in the uterus and grabbed hold of the surgeon’s finger, a gesture which was apparently met with a huge amount of emotion in the operating theatre. Dr Bruner said that it was the most emotional moment of his life and that for a moment he was just frozen, totally immobile.

Except, it was a hoax and Dr Bruner himself had said so. This was pointed out on several blogs including LC and Dorries wrote another post defending her actions with the view that the photographer, a born-again Christian, should be believed over the surgeon (who she had earlier quoted herself).

The Hand of Hope also makes an appearance on the pictures and video section of her new campaign. In other words, a member of parliament is actually perpetuating a hoax that has been debunked several times.

In many ways, this sums up her entire campaign.
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Until relatively recently, standard British usage meant that describing someone as ‘a progressive’ was more or less the equivalent to branding them a communist fellow traveller. Not any more; we are all progressives now, it seems.

Isn’t anybody willing to stand up for honest-to-goodness barking mad reactionaries these days? It’s not as if they are an endangered species, after all. Surely such a sizeable constituency surely deserves a spokesperson more articulate than Melanie Phillips.

Yet the way things are going right now, most politicians would rather confess diabolism or an entry on the sex offenders’ register than admit to being on the wrong side of this divide.

This silliness reached its apogee in an article in the Independent last Friday, in which Tory leader David Cameron - pictured - attempted to rebrand the Conservatives as ‘the true progressives’:
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Whilst the weekend papers were regurgitating the ‘revelations’ in Cherie Blair’s autobiography (did you know Gordon & Tony don’t really get on? Yeah, I was stunned too!), the former Prime Minister’s wife was plotting to make an even more audacious attack on his successor. Why, you might ask, didn’t this feature prominently on Andrew Marr’s Sunday show or get plastered across the tabloids as a ‘Bollocking For Beleaguered Brown’? Well, probably because she was attacking him on a matter of substance.

A cell in Borstal, taken by Flickr user Flipsy (Creative Commons)
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A week ago Nadine Dorries launched the 20 weeks Campaign through the Daily Mail, which wrote up this glowing story and dedicated its editorial comment strip to supporting it. The 20 Weeks website has Nadine Dorries MP’s picture on every page and she has promoted it relentlessly through her blog. So we can reasonably assume it is her campaign.

But who is behind this campaign? Is it just Ms Dorries? The website doesn’t say. On the Q&A page however it does have this question: Is this a religious campaign?. Answer: “No. There are people of all faiths and of no faith who support this campaign.”

But that’s about it. Shouldn’t we be told who is running a campaign fronted by a Conservative MP?
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A guest-post over at Harry’s Place by ‘Ben’ advertises what it means to be a ‘Decent.’ Seemingly this is shorthand for someone who supports the war, is opposed to anyone further left than Jon Cruddas and genuinely thinks that the Parliamentary Labour Party should be staffed by people like Oona King.

With these blanket labels flying around, it is difficult to know the extent to which any given author is perpetrating a deliberate slander, or to which they’re simply caught up in their own misguided rhetoric.

I’m not sure which is the case when guest-poster Ben makes the following declaration about why he turned from Stopper to idiot:
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Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris, with parliamentary colleagues, at an event in support of the Human Fertility and Embryology Bill, which will protect and extend the right of scientists to perform crucial stem-cell research.

More about all this at the Coalition for Choice website.

Today on Liberal Conspiracy we have a treat for you. This week we officially launch our campaign: Coalition For Choice, to support the HFE Bill and develop an online advocacy group in favour of extending abortion rights over the longer term.

See the website for more about our aims.

To mark this launch we have a week of Nadine Dorries MP on Liberal Conspiracy! We will illustrate how this Conservative MP:
- has consistently misrepresented the arguments around abortion;
- is fronting campaigns by Christian groups without declaring so;
- is promoting hoaxes on her websites;
- has frequently and wrongly smeared reputable journalists and scientists;
- hides her true long-term intentions on the issue of abortion
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The sharp fall in the take-up of the MMR vaccine is a cautionary tale of our times. The World Health Organisation advises that a 95% take-up rate should be targeted for “herd immunity”.

Britain falls well short, largely because the unfounded scare about the safety of the MMR vaccine behind the sharp reduction in take-up, from 92% in 1996 to 80% in 2004 (though there has since been a smaller reversal).

The consequences have been serious.

2006 saw the first death from measles in Britain for 14 years, while there were . And while the mumps epidemic in the UK in 2005 had more to do with children not being immunised before the introduction of MMR in 1988, a loss of confidence and a lack of take-up would make future occurences more likely.

Next week’s Fabian Review health issue seeks to reopen the public debate about how to raise immunisation rates.
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There has been a great deal of suspicion in the blogosphere regarding the political integrity of Total Politics, the new venture run by several former 18 Doughty Street operatives, and Politics Home, the hideous spawn of Stephan Shakespeare (the original financial progenitor of 18DS - yes, it’s all a bit incestuous). Both titles have taken measures to buttress themselves against these predictable criticisms, by creating cross-party advisory boards as a check against bias. It’s easy to understand why a nascent political publication or website would be concerned about appearing to favour one political party and take steps to provide evidence of its fairness. But what about an existing publication, especially one that hasn’t historically been particularly political?

The worries I have are in regard to Condé Nast’s GQ, which is edited by one Dylan Jones. In 2006 GQ featured David Cameron on its front cover, a rather surprising departure from the disrobed Hollywood sirens who usually adorn it. There is nothing necessarily wrong in the leader of the Conservatives starring on a magazine cover, I guess, but as a subscriber to GQ (a valentine’s day present), I have noticed the distinguishable stench of political bias throughout the magazine of late. Continue reading…

This is the start of a weekly round up of what various think tanks and such organisations on the liberal-left are doing and publishing. I do a weekly round up on my blog for think-tanks on the left and the right.

• The IPPR challenges a union \ left-wing shibboleth in highlighting that at least some of the problems we see in education can be attributed to poor teachers. “[I]n the last ten years teachers’ pay has improved and the number of people choosing teaching as a career has increased. But teaching is still not attracting the very best graduates and poor performing teachers are not being dealt with effectively”
• They also carry an worthwhile report on the complexity of UK migration numbers - half of those who’ve arrived from new EU members since May ‘04 have now left but I think the Daily Mail missed that story.
• “New Labour is now dead” - according to Compass who, to be fair, have been trying to administer last rights since about 1998. Last Thursday’s results have boosted their confidence somewhat - “The strategy that saw the Party continually triangulate interests and concerns, tacking endlessly to the right, doing what the Tories would do only doing it first, fixating on a mythical middle England and denying that free market policies are having a damaging effect on society is now finished”
• Also on Compass Hilary Wainwright takes a pop at the impact triangulation has on traditional supporters and one of their regular ‘thinkpieces’ tackles ‘Capitalism and Social Recession’.
  Anthony Painter also did a write-up on LC after a Compass event here.
• The Social Market Foundation have an interesting piece on individual behavioural change and the challenges policymakers face in linking that with broader cultural changes.
• CentreForum have a great (and timely) piece on whether Liberal Democrats and Conservatives can co-operate. David Cameron and Nick Clegg are “two declared liberals [who] share a vision of a new, ‘post-bureaucratic’ politics in which power is devolved, not just from central to local government, but from government at all levels to individuals, families and communities”

So David Cameron the political shape-shifter, just like Odo from Deep Space Nine but with less humanity, is spinning away the true nature of the Tory Party again today.

This seems to be his main tactic - either lie about what your party believes in, ignore anything your party may have believed in the past, or preferably believe nothing at all.
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Boris is enjoying a honeymoon as London Mayor, as Andrew Grice of The Independent writes on his politics blog.

Will it last? I fear that Boris Johnson’s critics are already repeating the mistake they made during the campaign, as I argue in a New Statesman column on the Mayoral race fallout.

Gleefully anticipating a gaffe-filled mayoralty that will wreck David Cameron’s project helps Johnson to set expectations very low. Johnson benefits as much as Ronald Reagan or George W Bush ever did from being seriously “misunderestimated”. Which other candidate would have got away with floundering and being roughly £100m out on their sums for buses in the televised mayoral debates?

But if he merely remembers to put his trousers on every morning and get to work, Johnson’s mayoralty will be acclaimed as a triumph. But the real test must be the same any other mayor would face: delivery. That - with Johnson presented as a hands-off “chairman of the board” - is truly a test of the Cameron project”.

Rather than expecting a total fiasco, we should be scrutinising what the Tory modernisers want to do with power.

Perhaps the (conservative) answer will be not very much at all.

Last weekend, Clive Stafford Smith, the Director of the legal action charity Reprieve, travelled to Sudan to meet the recently released al-Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj. He had been represented by Reprieve since 2005 and was now a free man. This is an edited version of Clive’s report, which includes a passage specifically refuting Pentagon claims that Mr al-Haj, who had been on a hunger strike for 16 months prior to his release, and was taken to a hospital on his arrival in Sudan, “seemed like a healthy individual” as he departed from Guantánamo.
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What has the Liberal Left got to say about obesity? Or parenting? Or green taxes? Or organ donarship? In short, where does it draw the line between public and private issues – and what kind of government intervention, if any, should it support?

We are increasingly aware of the public consequences of private decisions – but where do we draw the line? These are the questions posed by The Politics of Public Behaviour, published by Demos today.

The liberal case against intervention from government in these issues is easy to make.

Libertarians argue that it instrumentalises citizens, reducing politics to the achievement of goals established not by people themselves, but by a small governing elite who believe they know best.
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As part of her campaign to force the government to reduce the 24 week limit within which women can legally have abortions, the MP Nadine Dorries yesterday unveiled 20 reasons for 20 weeks.

Today, we publish 24 reasons for 24 weeks, as part of our own campaign to fight for women’s rights to abortion.
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The game looks pretty much up for Hillary Clinton now, as John Zogby makes plain. Lawyers notwithstanding, the hope of seating the ‘lost’ delegates of Michigan and Florida to pull the margin back to under 100 is a pipedream. George McGovern is the first major figure to call on Clinton to stand down. And if Barack Obama can get promises from 40-50 ’super-delegates‘ in the next day or so, the race for the Democratic nomination should be over.

I’m much more sceptical about Obama than many people I know (including many around here). In practice, I don’t think he’ll be as progressive as is wished or assumed, nor Clinton as regressive as her campaign has sometimes sounded. Andrew Stephen in the New Statesman is right:
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