Baby P back to being a political football
Lord Laming’s review of child protection ordered after Baby P appears to have been leaked to the News of the World ahead of its official publication on Thursday.
Whether or not the content reported by the paper is genuine (one authoritative source has suggested to Community Care the NotW is merely guessing) it raises the question of the motivation behind the story. A clue could lie in the way the main political parties have used the tabloids for point-scoring over Baby P. Was the “leak” placed by the Tories in yet another attempt to attack Labour’s record on child protection since Victoria Climbie?
continue reading… »
Telegraph.co.uk hacked; hasn’t told users yet
Softpedia reports that the Telegraph.co.uk was compromised by an anonymous hacker, exposing that its security is so lax that details of its 700,000 registered users can be accessed fairly easily. Someone from Trend Micro advised that:
…if you are a Telegraph subscriber and are concerned about the safety of any other online accounts you may have I would encourage you to change your passwords on those other accounts, and of course on the Telegraph web site.
via Schmoo. People usually have similar passwords for their different accounts, so their details may already be compromised. The problem of course is that Telegraph.co.uk haven’t yet, as far as I can see, informed their users and asked them to change their passwords yet. Many of our readers are unlikely to be Telegraph readers but, you know, just saying.
Update: Telegraph technologists post a response.
Top Stories – 9th March
Nationwide
Has Clegg discovered a new cause?
Lib Dems look to game theory for coalition
Real IRA ‘behind army shootings’
Unemployment ‘to hit 3.2 million’
International
Questions over ratings on Coke’s carbon footprint
Saudis race all night, fueled by boredom
N Korea warning ahead of military exercise
Sudan threatens more expulsions in Darfur
DAILY BLOG REVIEW
Tom Freeman waves a critical “hello” to The Jury List – a new political party. (see also Sunder’s comments from Sunday)
Jim Jay asks :: What do Labour members think?
Alix posts a conference dispatch on the MSM’s coverage of the event.
John Quiggin on Citigroup :: Abort, Retry, Fail?
Anton Vowl reports that The Daily Express has sunk to new lows. No, really.
Mark Pack talks twitter… BTW. follow LC on twitter @libcon
Dolphin Hotel reminds you that The Wire is the “best TV show ever made”. It is. Quite brilliant.
Identity politics and the internet
I’ve been thinking a lot, over the past few days, with all the shilly-shallying around International Women’s Day and this whole issue of violence against women and whether or not it’s important. I’ve been thinking about what it means to be a feminist writing online, and whether I can hack the amount of abuse I’ve been getting recently. Whether it just depresses me too much to carry on. People have been telling me to shut up and get a real job for a while now. Perhaps I should listen to them.
On the internet, identity is fluid – and so choosing to adopt and pursue a female identity, or indeed any identity which deviates from white heteronormativity, is a statement with which makes a lot of people uncomfortable on a very basic level. Choosing to be proud of an identity that consciously others itself from the white, male consensus with which the internet, like so many other fiefdoms, emerged, is problematic. It can and does draw an horrific quantity of abuse, including on the pages of mainstream debate sites such as Comment Is Free, Lablist and even – sometimes – this site.
continue reading… »
Crying Wolf on Intimate Violence
It should already be perfectly apparent that, unlike Sunny, I’m far from satisfied with Amnesty International’s response to queries about the veracity of its claim that:
‘Each year, around 1 in ten women in Britain will experience rape and or other violence‘.
To understand exactly why I’m not happy lets look at some real data on intimate violence, taken from the most recent Home Office statistical report on ‘Homicides, Violent Offences and Intimate Violence‘ which takes its data from the 2007/8 British Crime Survey: continue reading… »
It’s not easy being a protester
When it comes to protests like Leila Deen’s yesterday morning, it’s difficult to know where exactly to draw the line. Undoubtedly, having any liquid substance thrown over you is unpleasant, yet unless it’s something spectacularly nasty, such as the far more available urine rather than the “acid” mentioned by the likes of John Prescott, there really shouldn’t be any repercussions for such rare political statements, and Peter Mandelson doesn’t seem to want to take it any further.
In fact, if anything I’d further support the sliming of politicians, or the throwing of custard pies in some circumstances: a politician that can’t take the odd act of direct action is one that really ought to get over themselves. The power they wield, especially someone unelected like Mandelson, is out of all proportion to that of the humble protester; sometimes you have to take your cause to the next level. Deen might have came out of this looking slightly infantile, and her arguments are not as convincing as she might believe, but she succeeded in getting her own personal message across.
It would also be nice if some people could digest such events without restorting to straw men, as the noble Martin Kettle just had to. The greening of Mandelson proves that we don’t live in a police state, even though only those addicted to hyperbole have said we do. Sleepwalking towards one potentially, already in one no. Still, it seems to have been good timing for Kettle to say just that, as the Guardian today has an exclusive on… the police building databases on peaceful protesters.
Amnesty’s statistics on violence against women
Some commenters recently raised concerns about Amnesty UK’s statistic: ‘Each year, around 1 in ten women in Britain will experience rape and or other violence‘. So, Rachel North emailed them and got this response:
continue reading… »
Top Stories – 7th March 2009
Nationwide
Revealed: databank on thousands of protesters
Neal Lawson & John Harris: No turning back
Clegg urges staff stake in Royal Mail
Why I threw green custard over Mandelson
International
Brazilian archbishop embroiled in abortion row
Mystery crash kills Tsvangirai’s wife
Truce in Pakistan; leeway for Taliban
‘Must Jews always see themselves as victims?’
WEEKEND VIDEO / by Sunny
Against ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ on teenage pregnancy
We’ll begin, as is the vogue when writing about this topic, with some of those tiresome anedotes which somehow prove the observations which follow.
Back when I was still lugging crates of cheap pop around a newsagents in Meadowhall, I worked with a girl named Claire*. Claire was sexually active well before the age of consent, was pregnant by the age of sixteen and had only a handful of GCSEs to her name. So far, so ‘Shameless ‘. Except, as soon as her maternity leave was up, Claire returned to work whatever hours she could manage whilst still looking after her newborn. Some two years after giving birth, she enrolled on a part-time hairdressing course, which she squeezed-in between her paid work and all the hours where she simply had to be a mum. She finally qualified last year and, last I heard, was working in a hair salon with dreams of one day opening her own.
Challenging tabloid lies
After the Sun Lies comes along the new revamped and improved Daily Mail Watch, again masterminded by Tim from Bloggerheads. Do at least go and read Jamie and 5cc’s opening messages: both are great arguments for why challenging tabloid bullshit is worthwhile.
You can read articles through the front page, via Twitter or RSS feed. You can also get them by email and through our Facebook group.
» 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
|
62 Comments 15 Comments 23 Comments 8 Comments 24 Comments 19 Comments 16 Comments 83 Comments 203 Comments 85 Comments |
|
LATEST COMMENTS » the a&e charge nurse posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » Chaise Guevara posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » Chaise Guevara posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » Oliver posted on Job snob? No, I've got the T-shirt » Brummie Protestor posted on Workfare - what does the evidence show? » the a&e charge nurse posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » Hannah posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » mr_hopkinson posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » Amy Finlayson posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » the a&e charge nurse posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » pagar posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » Oliver Conner posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » pjt posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » Lee Griffin posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » JIm posted on Workfare - what does the evidence show? |
