Top Stories and Blog Review – 6th Jan
Nationwide
Photographers criminalised as anti-terror laws abused
Bookmakers will be forced to pay £5m for studies
M&S cuts 1,000 jobs as fashion sales dive
Tories want tougher primary tests
International
Sarkozy leads int’l pressure; Israel rejects calls
Israelis deny using white phosphorus
Russia reduces gas flows to Europe
Germany ready for economic stimulus U-turn
DAILY BLOG REVIEW / by Jennie Rigg
Andrew Hickey on why he is a Lib Dem.
Lynne Featherstone on why the number of female MPs matters.
Amused Cynicism reports on the début of Atheist Buses (with picture!).
Alas, a Blog! has more reasons why sexism hurts men too.
Rhetorically Speaking has issues with something in The Daily Mail (don’t we all?).
Pickwick punctures prejudice.
And McGillianaire marks the final passing of a British institution. Farewell Woolies.
What is Israel’s motivation?
Perhaps the most dispiriting aspect of the invasion of the Gaza Strip is the utter pointlessness of the exercise; while military victory is all but certain, at every other level, Israel can only be the loser.
Decades of refusal to allow Palestinians their legitimate political rights has not left it even marginally more secure, and its current savage actions will only serve further to galvanise support for Hamas.
The brutalities that the Israel Defense Forces are perpetrating right now guarantee the rocket launchers and the suicide bombers more recruits then they will know what to do with, for a generation and more to come.
continue reading… »
Labour MPs letter over Gaza crisis
Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East and 53 Labour politicians have written a letter to Foreign Secretary David Miliband, calling for action to stop the bombing of civilians in Palestine. The letter is signed by 53 MPs, MEPs, peers and members of the Welsh Assembly, London Assembly and Scottish Parliament.
The Letter and list of endorsers can be found below.
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Hazel Blears getting the smaller picture
If there is one thing I detest when it comes to TV it is adverts that make spurious claims about a product based upon the dismal opinion of less than a handful of only one demographic; also usually people that at the same time are reading a magazine or buying at a store that has a heavy advertising deal with said product. Be it hair products where 93% of 140ish people surveyed in Marie Claire said it was definitely the most awesome hair care product (that they received a free trial of with the magazine), or butter that less than 50% of people say they preferred (yet the loop hole of those 7% of people that “don’t care” allows the brand to claim “most” people like them best).
So then, with that lengthy precursor to the article, perhaps you can understand why Hazel Blears and her team of community action planners have so frustrated me this week, publishing a report about the attitudes of white working class people in the UK. Well, I say published but the master of making information accessible to the public has yet to even ensure that even the news is reported on the communities.gov.uk website (as of Midday, 5th Jan), let alone the actual report, methodology and findings.
What we know from various newspaper articles is that an astounding 43 people were asked their opinion across various locations in the UK for their opinion on…well…we don’t exactly know, but it mostly seemed to revolve around immigration. Again. continue reading… »
Shadow cabinet meets, online
I have to admit, I think this new widget by the Labour party poking fun at Tory hypocrisy is rather amusing (via Tom Miller). New Labour have been quietly developing a whole host of online widgets, which aren’t bad. It won’t help them win the election though, will it?
Top Stories and Blog Review – 5th Jan
Nationwide
New powers for police to hack your PC
PM admits recession could last until 2011
Call to stop ex-ministers cashing in on contacts
Heathrow may get 4.5 billion pound rail hub
International
‘It breaks my heart to see Israel’s stupidity’
Israeli attack splits Gaza; truce calls are rebuffed
Hardliners play well to Israeli electorate
Mostly civilians at a Gaza hospital full of tears
EU sending delegation to Middle East
Obama plans to unveil big tax cuts
Baghdad bomb kills Shia pilgrims
Before election, Iran’s hard-liners crack down on reformists
DAILY BLOG REVIEW / by Jennie Rigg
Mushkush is one of many posting about the proposed new police powers to covertly search YOUR hard drive.
Mr Quist doesn’t want us all to celebrate international fetish day next week at all, honest.
Peter Black AM is pointing out James Purnell’s idiocy.
Stephen Tall on LDV is bleary-eyed and wants your tips for how to get himself out of bed.
Lizbee has a slightly worrying royal comparison.
Casting back: Who remembers the cold war? Here are some Soviet Era maps of Britain for you to geek over.
And Jonathan Calder has this week’s Britblog roundup, and the first Scottish Roundup of the year is now up also.
How to find out if you could be a conservative
There must be something about the holiday season that brings out the political philosophers in us all.
Matthew Taylor has been trying to redefine a new progressivism; I have been musing on the legacy of Bernard Crick and also on the nature of Fabianism to mark our 125th birthday this week.
And Tim Montgomerie, the esteemed editor of ConservativeHome, has been thinking out loud about how to write a modern statement of conservatism.
Now my view, in principle, is that we should approach these exercises in a spirit of generosity and even mutual exploration, wherever possible. It would be good to have more discussion of political ideas, and not less; and parties which competed on distinct visions, values and ideologies would have less need to make daft claims to be uniquely possessed of managerial competence. Tim’s initial list struck me as a pretty scattershot selection of propositions. Neil Robertson has already pointed out the tensions inherent in an alliance of social conservatism and economic liberalism. But Tim is thinking out loud, and so we will await his great statement with interest.
However, Tim’s latest post today does prompt the friendly advice ‘stop digging’, or at least start digging in a rather different direction.
This bizarre post entitled “six indispensible hallmarks of a Conservative (and why Hitler was a socialist)” recommends this second-hand tosh outlining six litmus tests without which one can not be a conservative. Why not see how you do?
Why Obama is silent on Israel
As Israeli tanks thunder into Gaza towards an outcome where the only certainty is the loss of yet more innocent life, the demands for Obama to publicly address the crisis get louder and more numerous, as do the interpretations of his silence. Is he implicitly condoning Israel’s actions? Is it a sign that he’s reluctant to criticise Israel until he’s in office? Or is it an example of what some critics have long thought to be a fence-straddling cautiousness that his soaring rhetoric manages to disguise as unifying leadership?
My hunch, which is based partly on observing his positions for the past two years and partly on the methods of the Clinton era, is that a President Obama would’ve supported limited, intelligence-based air assaults on known military targets, most probably Hamas’ rocket-launching sites. That would’ve been too hawkish for my liking, particularly as the civilian casualties involved would’ve been considerable and the chances of destroying Hamas’ rocket-launching capability from the air would’ve been slim.
Welfare reform: chuck the nutter in the gutter
The tendency not to want to believe in mental illness festers across the Western world, and particularly in Britain, the nation that gave us Shakespeare, concentration camps and the stiff upper lip.
From the friends and families of sufferers to the upper echelons of government, the suspicion that mental health difficulties are forms of weakness – simple personality flaws that could be eradicated if more of these mentalists would jolly well buck up – informs policy and influences behaviour. We need to look this institutional prejudice in the face and call it what it is: outdated, destructive and desperately unhelpful.
The response of our government in boom times had been to quietly shunt the sick onto a government poverty package and tell us to be grateful. However, as incapacity levels continue to rise, the DWP’s new Work to Welfare policy threatens to shunt us just as quickly back to the jobcentre, telling us that we’re scroungers who were actually making it up all along. This comes in the teeth of a recession. Nice timing, Purnell.
Many of the 40% of Britain’s 2 million IB claimants who are unable to work due to mental health difficulties already have a few problems with paranoia. But, as the noted social theorist Kurt Cobain observed, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re not after you.
continue reading… »
Top Stories and Blog Review – 4th Jan
Nationwide
London protest ends in skirmishes with police
Disabled rights delay criticised
Clegg joins attack on VAT ‘waste’
Downgrade ecstasy to class B drug, say advisers
International
Death toll at 460 as Israel continues assault
Austria takes over bank hit by Madoff case
Sex and the superdelegates
Gas dispute has effects past Russia and Ukraine
DAILY BLOG REVIEW / by Jennie Rigg
The world is going to hell in a handcart, credit is crunching, Gaza is imploding, and what’s the biggest story on the Blogosphere? The new Doctor Who. The first (and one of the best) of the reactions came from BBC insider Pickwick, but many others followed. Here are the ones that jumped out at me from the clamour: Alex Wilcock, Love and Garbage, Will Howells, Exmoor Cat, NetgirlY2K, Lizbee, Chicken Yoghurt, Baggage Reclaim, Andrew Hickey, Paul Mudie, James Graham, and the sainted GNeil.
In non-Who news: not much
Unity meets the new year, same as the old year.
Aldabra wishes the British government would stop throwing good money after bad.
Junkfood Science on the politicisation of food and the fact that the fandom word bansturbation has gone mainstream.
Dan Dan the Wikio Man gave me an exclusive.
And, as always, Septicisle has more.
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» The real agenda behind Telegraph’s abortion investigation
» How Scotland Yard monitors prying bloggers and journalists
» When disabled people want to work – employers can hold the back
» Revealed: the reality behind Workfare and why it doesn’t work
» Job snob? No, I’ve got the T-shirt
» Why country-by-country reporting matters to our wellbeing
» If Unions want to become stronger, they need to modernise
» Why work “reforms” in Spain are a warning for workers across Europe
» Five things you need to know about the NHS bill
» Bigger. Fatter. Gypsier. More Racist.
» Laziness levels in Britain getting lazier, wails government
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