Top Stories and Blog Review Sunday 25th January
National
Return of the Three Day Week?
Council Tax used to fill pension black hole.
Women hit twice as hard as men in recession job market.
15 year old boy stabbed to death in London.
International
Belgians discover new stuff about Dinosaurs! YAY!
Obama unveils recovery plan.
Tamil Tigers driven back to last bastion.
Catholic Church loves Holocaust deniers.
DAILY BLOG REVIEW / by Jennie Rigg
Eddie Mair wishes us all a happy Burns Day, with appropriate poetry.
The Award-Winning Alix Mortimer examines uses of the word “progressive” in politics on LDV (she also has a few words to say about the cash for questions thing).
Lee Griffin examines Gordon Brown’s question-answering record (maybe we should bung him a couple of hundred grand? Oh no, that’s just to ASK questions, isn’t it, not answer them…).
Hagley Road to Ladywood points out the obvious with regard to modern degrees (not that I’m bitter. Oh no).
Andrew Hickey is unimpressed by the Lib Dem’s eCanvass tools.
Costigan Quist wonders if it’s the government’s job to make us happy (perhaps not, but I’d say it’s not their job to actively pursue ways of making us UNhappy too).
James Graham discusses abortion.
Stephen Glenn has congratulations for a Tory.
And as always, Septicisle has more.
DEC Gaza Appeal
The situation
After an 18 month blockade of Gaza and three weeks of heavy shelling the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is now completely overwhelming.
- Donate online to the DEC’s Gaza Crisis now
Thousands of people are struggling to survive with many having lost their homes and most down to their last supplies of food and only limited amounts of fresh drinking water. - Just £25 can buy warm blankets for 8 children
- Just £50 can provide a Food parcel for a family for one month
- Electricity – supplies to Gaza are erratic at best with 75% of the area cut off completely. There is a significant public health risk arising out of the almost collapse of Gaza’s water and sewage system, the running of which is dependent on electricity.
- Water – Around 500,000 people are without running water with 37% of Gaza’s water wells not working effectively and fuel reserves depleted due to restrictions on access and damage to pipes.
- At least 412 Children have been killed and 1,855 injured
- 60% of the population is living in poverty
- 1.1 million people are dependent upon aid to survive.
- Health – The capacity of the health system has been significantly reduced due to the damage of at least 21 clinics. Ten primary health care clinics are functioning as emergency clinics and hospitals and intensive care units continue to treat the mass casualties.
Or visit the DEC appeal page
What we need is a leap of faith
This discussion about a ‘British Barack Obama’ has been so overdone even I’m getting tired of it despite having politically obsessed about him for over two years. But there are two points I’d like to make.
I don’t entirely buy Unity’s reasons for why there won’t be a British Obama, neither am I persuaded by Sunder and Sadiq’s emphasis on current representation and stats. On that, I’d like to see a more dispassionate analysis like this on 538. I’m a bit more more influenced by the work I did out there on the campaign.
Obama’s narrative was that America is the land where any dreams are possible and he was the culmination of that dream. He needed them to believe in three things: that he was capable for the job, that America could elect a black man (important during the primaries) and most importantly that they could make that change happen. These were leaps of faiths that were explicitly tied to the ongoing myth-making that is The American Dream.
continue reading… »
Palestinians – not human enough for the BBC
That the BBC has refused to broadcast the DEC appeal on Gaza is shocking. In other words, the BBC have given in to those just waiting to grasp at the slightest hint of bias before they’d even had a chance to. It wasn’t as if this was just going to be on the BBC; the other channels would have carried it as well.
They’ve in effect decided that the Palestinians of Gaza are not as human or as equal as those who have been victims of natural disasters; it seems it would take something far worse than the man-made carnage Israel visited upon Gaza for the impoverished and hungry citizens of a tiny, cut off piece of land to be treated the same as everyone else.
I didn’t think that the BBC’s coverage of the assault on Gaza was that bad, or certainly not as terrible as some of those on the fringes of the left thought, judging by there being another protest outside the BBC today before the march heads to Downing Street. You get the feeling that if the BBC doesn’t change its minds about this tomorrow that they’ll be a hell of a lot more there than there otherwise would have been.
Top Stories and Blog Review – 24th Jan
Nationwide
Fears over stop and search powers
City Minister in furious attack on bankers
CoE schools with only Muslim pupils
Court fees plan ‘tax on debtors’
International
Washington feels the whirlwind of change
Obama changes foreign abortion-funding policy
Bolivia nationalizes BP subsidiary
Obama freezes Bush on emissions, food-labeling
WEEKEND VIDEO / by Sunny
Will the red Tories spill blue blood?
The Conservatives would like to claim to be the “progressive” force in British politics.
Few would take seriously the rather thin pamphlet ‘Who’s progressive now?’ on that theme published a year ago by Greg Clark and Jeremy Hunt, which even its authors would admit was a somewhat tongue-in-cheek smash and grab raid on the centre-left lexicon. But a more concerted attempt to produce some intellectual ballast for this political repositioning was launched yesterday by Demos, an event blessed by the presence of leader David Cameron and party big brain Oliver Letwin alongside several luminaries of the left.
Cameron barely said anything new at all, articulating the progressive ends (fairness, equal opportunity, sustainability, public safety) towards which he hopes to find some conservative means (work in progress, to say the least). But he stayed on for a much more interesting speech by Phillip Blond (read it here), who is heading the Demos progressive conservatism project, before the leader and the thinker took questions together.
Coroners and Justice Bill – destroying data protection
Currently if anyone wants our data in this country they have little to no luck in obtaining it (unless they ask a company registered to sell your information, but even then you need to opt-in), the Data Protection act stops anyone from being able to share our information around willy-nilly. The only body that has comprehensive legal paths to obtain our data, no matter what, are the police and security services. If this happens, then it is only in matters of national security or child protection that the police may contravene the Data Protection Act.
Essentially what this means is that the state has the power to watch you if it has sufficient belief that to do so would prevent a crime that would threaten the security of the UK, or the welfare of children, but no more than this. The new Coroners and Justice bill contains clauses that will blow this out of the water, completely destroy such boundaries to our civil liberties and allow the government to effectively become the managers of our personal data.
What does this mean to you and me, the normal, law-abiding citizens of the country? continue reading… »
The Database Economy
Tell you what, let’s get all the shilling out of the way in the first paragraph. There’s the Convention on Modern Liberty – great idea, horrible-looking website. A regular Carnival on Modern Liberty, with the first revelries seemingly imminent, if the first deadline’s anything to go by. The Guardian has launched its new Liberty Central section (cheeky!) with a mildly amusing bit of grandstanding by Henry Porter – I’m keenly awaiting the ‘errr, about your CiF username…’ email, and…
…and if I’m absolutely honest, I’m beginning to wish that some people, Henry included, would just back off from the whole ‘database state’ thing for a little while simply because they really have only, at best, a partial understanding of the issues. continue reading… »
NO2ID: Comment on Coroners and Justice Bill
NO2ID have released their latest newsletter that details hidden clauses allowing the government more control over our data.
continue reading… »
BBC’s politicisation of Gaza aid is disgraceful
The BBC is defending a decision not to broadcast a Disasters Emergency Committee appeal for Gaza, saying it would compromise its political impartiality. This is complete crock. That a humanitarian disaster exists in Gaza is beyond doubt – its own website has describes the situation in dire terms. Even the British government, which has always been pro-Israeli, accepts Palestinians are facing a humanitarian disaster and pledged over £30m in aid. In fact the government has listed the DEC appeal on their website.
In effect, the BBC is trying to deflect criticism from nutjobs like Melanie Phillips, who continually accuse it of pro-Palestinian bias, by politicising the issue of aid. It never had qualms about broadcasting the DEC tsunami appeal a few years ago, even though a lot of the money went to Sri Lanka, where Tamil terrorists benefited. Those who think the BBC is leftwing is out of their minds. This decision is a disgrace.
Far more principled are student organisations, who have now launched Gaza protests and fundraising drives across eight universities.
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