Third Carnival on Modern Liberty
The third edition of this weekly round-up has been posted to LibDemVoice, prepared by Alix Mortimer.
Next week’s carnival will be hosted by Jennie Rigg and you can make your submissions from this page.
Mayor spends £17k on ‘propaganda’
The Mayor of London spent £17,000 to hold an anti-Third Runway rally, a cost that included £1,000 just for taxis.
The information was unearthed by blogger Will Parbury through a Freedom of Information Request which is detailed here.
The £1000 spent on taxis alone will be particularly hypocritical given that the Mayor himself had said he would try and keep his transportation costs down.
The Hillingdon event was originally criticised for being a “Tory propaganda” event.
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A smear job by the MoD
Why has there been so little outrage about the smears and innuendo directed against Colonel Owen McNally and Rachel Reid in Afghanistan?
I wrote a piece about for CiF yesterday and Rachel Reid also has an article about it today. But yesterday, even the Guardian’s initial coverage seemed to accept the story at face value.
It appears that Colonel McNally was arrested for doing his job – that is giving an on-the-record briefing to a human rights researcher asking completely legitimate questions about civilian casualties from NATO air strikes.
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Copyright and ‘The Left’
On my recent post on the ‘database economy’, Tim F threw me a bit of a curve ball in comments by asking what demands I thought the left should be making on copyright.
Mmm, tricky.
It’s a big subject, not least because its one that difficult to get into in any detail without considering the question of intellectual property, generally, which drags the equally complex issue of patents into the frame. Nevertheless, I think its safe to say that, as a matter of general principle, we should apply the same basic principles to people who earn a living from their creative endeavours as we do to any other workers. A fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work seems a good point from which to start, regardless of whether someone plys their trade on an assembly line or in a recording studio or concert hall.
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Binyam Mohamed: Miliband should release the report
Binyam Mohamed may or may not have received firearms and explosives training from al Qa’eda or fought alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan. He may or may not have been involved alongside Jose Padilla in a dirty bomb plot that may or may not have existed.
If there is evidence of involvement in conspiracy to murder and commit terrorism – and those are the charges Mohamed faces – it is right that the matter be brought before a court. If he is found guilty, it is right that he be punished.
None of this is in dispute. Yet the very same first principles underline that Mohamed, like any person standing in the dock accused of any crime, is entitled to justice. Even if the argument from the ABCs of jurisprudence were not so wholly persuasive, brute pragmatism points in the same direction too.
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Top Stories and Blog Review – 6th February
Nationwide
Stampede by banks to beat bonus crackdown
‘The MoD has dragged me through the mud’
Backlash against Labour on Lords scandal
‘We must protect privacy from over-zealous state’
International
Obama urges stimulus as job losses mount
Hard man of the right is Israel’s kingmaker
China’s unemployment swells as exports falter
News Corp. loses $6.4 billion in 2Q
DAILY BLOG REVIEW / by Sarah
Bartholomew’s Notes: Reports on a blogger under threat:
Bleeding Heart Show: Israel is being Obamafied. Friday Fun.
Faith in Society: An essay on Christianity.
Feministing: Courtney reviews a book.
Hywel Morgan/LDV: Some questions for the foreign secretary.
Liberal England: Privacy? What’s that?
Ministry of Truth: Science and religion don’t mix.
Victoria Brignell/New Statesman: On the ethical issues raised by assisted death.
Medusa’s daughter and the golliwog
In the league table of personal insults, calling someone a ‘golliwog’ ranks about on a par with calling them a ‘muppet’. Even as a racial insult, it’s not quite the sort of epithet that you hear bandied about at BNP meetings (though they do sell golliwogs in BNP t-shirts at some of those meetings, apparently).
Nevertheless, if Carole Thatcher had said it on air, I don’t suppose there would have been much disagreement about her being taken off air as a result. Nor do I think there can be much disagreement with The One Show presenter Adrian Chiles, Jo Brand and others for picking up Medusa’s Daughter over her use of the word during an after-show conversation in which she blabbed out her ‘off-the-cuff remark made in jest’ to describe a tennis player in the Australian open.
(Why the widespread coyness, by the way, in naming the tennis player concerned? I couldn’t find one mainstream news outlet prepared to say that Thatcher was talking about French player Gael Monfils. Didn’t any of them think it might have been instructive to get his opinion on the subject?).
I don’t think it suggests any degree of sympathy for the use of racially-based epithets, however, to feel that the reaction to Thatcher’s foot-in-mouth has been just a little OTT. When the Beeb doesn’t have the bollocks to broadcast a DEC appeal for Gaza, it feels a mite disproportionate to start acting all macho over an ex-prime minister’s gobby offspring.
TPA bullies score own goal
Hot on the heels of the Guardian’s excellent Tax Gap series, LabourList’s Derek Draper sparked a shouting match – real and online – when he invited the TaxPayers’ Alliance to condemn corporate tax avoidance. He pointed out – quite reasonably – that corporate tax avoidance increases the burden on those ordinary taxpayers that the TPA claims to represent.
But the TPA’s campaign director, Mark Wallace, complained that Draper’s tone was quite unreasonable – and added: “Corporate tax avoidance is a rational response to an overly complex and burdensome tax code.” So no condemnation there.
I find the spectre of being shouted at by Draper less menacing than the TPA’s own sneering condenscension towards seemingly everyone involved in providing public services.
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The “Italians” on wildcat strikes
“If the Brits kick us out, we’ll do the same to their workers here”
As I translated this article from the Italian daily la Repubblica, I discovered that about one hundred Brits are currently working on a regasifier on an oil rig in the Northern Adriatic. This is the stuff the Daily Mail & chums conveniently don’t tell you about.
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Top Stories and Blog Review – 5th February
Nationwide
Foreign labour deal reached to return to work
Christians hit back at the atheist bus
Queen’s shop removes golliwog toy
Daily Mail spiked Northern Rock story, MPs told
International
Obama caps executive pay at $500,000
Police investigate Holocaust-denying bishop
Agency says Hamas took aid intended for needy
Citing US threats, British court blocks data on torture
DAILY BLOG REVIEW / by Lee Griffin
Mark Easton has a view from Finland regarding the rights of child criminals.
Yourfriendinthenorth is very much in agreement with the idea that equality is for all, not just for British workers that shout loud enough.
Shiraz Socialist breaks down what seems to be a successful election for secular democracy in Iraq.
Lay Science delves in to the reality of the nurse “suspended” for offering a prayer.
Obsolete on yet more reasons why our government lacks a moral backbone, this time about torture.
Himmelgarten cafe really doesn’t like change(4life).
Stuart King wonders what his local Tory council are thinking when it comes to housing strategy.
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