Third runway given go-ahead
The BBC is reporting that: “Ministers have approved a controversial plan to build a third runway at Heathrow, the BBC understands. Despite opposition from residents, environmental campaigners and many of its own MPs, Labour is set to confirm the decision officially on Thursday.”
Help save Royal Mail!
Lobby your MP now to support EDM 428, calling on government to abandon privatisation plans.
Following media reports over the Christmas/New Year period of our forthcoming campaign on the Post Office and Royal Mail, we’re today asking for your urgent help to get MPs to support EDM 428.
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Dyslexia a ‘myth’? The Dorries Effect
It seems to one of the unwritten laws of British political life that if you’re unfortunate enough to be one of those nondescript backbenchers who’s name provokes only the question ‘who?’, if mentioned anywhere out the narrow confines of their own constituency, then the only reliable method you have of getting your name into the national press is by making a complete and utter arse of yourself:
A Labour MP has claimed dyslexia is a myth invented by education chiefs to cover up poor teaching methods.
Backbencher Graham Stringer, MP for Blackley, describes the condition as a “cruel fiction” that should be consigned to the “dustbin of history”.
He suggests children should instead be taught to read and write by using a system called synthetic phonics.
For the sake of clarity let’s call this phenomenon ‘The Dorries Effect’, which can defined as the outward manifestation of Dorries’ Law of Parliamentary Media Coverage:
The degree of media attention afforded to a backbench MP is proportional to their capacity for making public demonstrations of their own, deeply ingrained, ignorance.
So, how do we know when the Dorries Effect is in play? continue reading… »
Is it time to boycott Israel?
The above is what the Palestinians of Gaza have now been living with for 17 days. Presumably a “bunker busting” bomb, which the United States only very recently sold Israel, the ostensible target is supposedly the smuggling tunnels out of Gaza into Egypt.
Those tunnels, which do smuggle weapons, were also helping to keep Gazans alive by bringing in fuel, food and other essential products which were either in short supply or blocked from entering the Strip by the Israelis. If the blockade is not lifted and the tunnels are successfully destroyed, the people of Gaza will suffer more once this is over than before.
There were around 60 air-strikes on the Strip on Monday night/Tuesday morning, not all probably of the same horrifying, shocking power as that one but undoubtedly more than enough to utterly destroy countless buildings and the humans that may well have been inside them. One such strike targeted a Christian Aid health clinic that contained hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of medical equipment, desperately needed in Gaza. The attack was not a mistake, but completely deliberate: the owners were telephoned 15 minutes before and told to get out, along with the family that lived above it. Why an ordinary home and clinic were methodically chosen and given the OK to be destroyed is a question that will probably never be answered.
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Top Stories and Blog Review – 14th Jan
Nationwide
Friend of Charles addressed as ‘Sooty’
Third runway rebels hear from the whips
Labour postal rebellion growing
Cameron ready to gamble on Clarke comeback
International
Citigroup said to consider plan to split in two
The challenges of closing Guantánamo
Sri Lankan editor row escalates
How Hillary won over the Senate
Conflict sees Gazans hit with water shortages
Gaza: Israeli troops reveal ruthless tactics
Iraq questions Obama’s ‘silence’ on Gaza
Arab-Jewish tensions rise in France
DAILY BLOG REVIEW / by Douglas Johnson
Matt Buck’s Hack Cartoons Diary - Will parties start employing satirists again?
Dave Godfrey - wants to know how Christians could possibly develop a persecution complex.
Innerbrat - likewise thinks Stephen Green is wrong.
Shuggy’s Blog - on the problems of training teachers.
Hagley Road to Ladywood - Has New Labour discovered the concept of social mobility?
The Escapist - on the portrayal of latinas in video games.
What century do our monarchs live in?
The last few days have pushed me firmly into the open arms of campaign group Republic. First it was Harry’s ‘paki-gate’ and now its Prince Charles and ‘sooty-gate’. As I’m already bored of talking about this faux-controversy, but keep getting asked about it, I’ll keep this short.
If two friends are joking around with each other and use names for each other that may have racial connotations, frankly its no one else’s business. But words have connotations, regardless of what idiot libertarians may like to pretend. So if someone unknown called me a paki or a raghead (which especially makes my turban-wearing brother see red), then they should expect a swift punch in the face. That’s not political correctness, that’s just me.
Are Harry and Charles racist? Who knows, that’s for their friends to decide. But what does irk me is that both seem to think words like ‘raghead’ and ‘sooty’ are even jokey words. In the last century maybe, but who still uses those stupid terms anymore? It’s a silly controversy, but what I do like about them is the opportunity to keep drawing the boundary lines of polite behaviour. Just because some think ‘Paki’ is just shorthand for Pakistani and has no negative connotations here, doesn’t mean I’m obliged to accept their version of history. Nuff said.
Whatabout Prostitution
There’s never a dull moment at Lib Con.
One minute we’re issuing statements condemning the trenchant ‘whataboutery’ that habitually poisons the public discourse on the politics of the Middle East, and within a matter of days a debate opens up, on an entirely different subject which, itself, neatly demonstrates the absurdities of credo of whataboutery.
I’m talking, as the title of this piece indicates, about prostitution.
On a working definition of ‘whataboutery’, you can see this explanation from Slugger O’Toole as a general definition.
Whataboutery is a general phenomenon in political discourse, one you’ll find in any debate between two diametrically opposing viewpoints where there are the participants in the debate who are so concerned with the presumed moral, intellectual or ideological ‘purity’ of their own position that they flat out refuse to concede that their opponents might have valid arguments of their own or that there may be evidence which fails to fully support their chosen position.
Debating the moral, legal and ethical status of prostitution is an argument that lends itself very well to whataboutery, albeit one that can be a little more interesting than most because participants on both sides of the debate make their most fundamental mistakes in exactly the same place and for the pretty much the same reason -they habitually treat prostitution as a singular phenomenon, a single uniform market to which one can apply a generic set of ‘rules’ that are applicable to all forms of prostitution, rather than see it for what it actually is, a complex social and economic phenomenon in which one size definitely doesn’t fit all.
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Times attacked for Google story
A story in the Sunday Times of London sent Google’s public relations machine into an advanced search for answers. The Times reporters wrote about a new Harvard study that examines the energy impact of Web searches.
The story’s lead paragraph: “Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research.”
One problem: the study’s author, Harvard University physicist Alex Wissner-Gross, says he never mentions Google in the study. “For some reason, in their story on the study, the Times had an ax to grind with Google,” Wissner-Gross told TechNewsWorld. “Our work has nothing to do with Google. Our focus was exclusively on the Web overall, and we found that it takes on average about 20 milligrams of CO2 per second to visit a Web site.”
And the example involving tea kettles? “They did that. I have no idea where they got those statistics,” Wissner-Gross said.
Do you “deserve” your rights?
Anyone who thinks our civil liberties will be any better protected by a Conservative Government should think again. Speaking in Bangor (the Northern Ireland flavour) on Friday, the News Letter reports Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve saying:
… there is “a rights culture” which is “out of control”, not just in Ulster, but throughout the UK. It did not help that “the undeserving in society” can often use rights legislation for personal gain, he added.
The Conservatives, he suggested, intend to create a UK Bill of Rights which would have in-built safeguards to prevent those “whose own behaviour is lacking” from abusing the powers.
I’m used to people from across the political spectrum differentiating between the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor when it comes to welfare but not when it comes to fundamental rights. This rhetoric even goes beyond the talk about Wrights and duties.”
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More New Statesman journalist face axe
The New Statesman’s associate editor, Barbara Gunnell, and literary editor, Ian Irvine, are facing redundancy.
Staff at the magazine are understood to be shocked at the redundancies, which come as the magazine’s management are refusing to grant the magazine’s National Union of Journalists’ chapel recognition.
Arts editor Alice O’Keefe has resigned from the magazine, apparently reluctantly, to take a job at the Commission for Equalities and Human Rights.
After the redundancy process is completed, the three-day-a-week arts editor and three-day-a-week literary editor posts will be merged. The magazine plans to appoint a full-time culture editor, which Irvine is free to apply for.
The weekly’s owners, Labour MP Geoffrey Robinson and entrepreneur Mike Danson, have repeatedly refused to grant the chapel voluntary recognition. The NUJ chapel plans to seek statutory recognition.
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