Iain Dale costs Mail “substantial damages” for allegations
In April leading blogger Iain Dale wrote an article titled ‘Smears, glowering henchmen-like the Nixon White House’ for the Mail on Sunday – alleging not only that Tom Watson MP was copied into the ‘smeargate’ emails to Derek Draper, but that he “encouraged” them.
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Feminists and allies: vote out the stupid!
There are going to be European elections soon, and the fascist British National Party are hoping to get an MEP elected. On top of the far-from-insignificantly fucking scary racism, xenophobia and homophobia that riddles their policy platform, the BNP are pushing a specifically and deliberately sexist agenda. Stopping these stupid bigots from gaining any more of a toehold in our nation is a feminist issue, too. Here’s why:
The BNP hate what they call, without a shred of irony, ‘feminazis’. By this they seem to mean not just self-identified feminists but any woman who, in the words of a recent BNP candidate, is ‘unnatural and vile… it is a strange kind of woman who would want to invest [her] energies into her job rather than into a man.’ The BNP are specifically and explicitly AGAINST equal rights between men and women. Party leader Nick Griffin has described the very idea of gender equality as ‘feminist poison’.
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Will Tory drug policy be worse?
If you want to see what a future Tory government’s approach to drug policy might be, you could do worse than having a peek at a new report that’s just been published by The Centre for Policy Studies. Entitled ‘The Phoney War on Drugs’, author Kathy Gyngell essentially argues that the reason Labour’s attempts to curb drug use have failed is because they’re just not trying hard enough.
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Labour activists ‘disappointed’ by party leadership
Labour party candidates and activists who organised a letter to the NEC urging strong leadership on the MPs expenses said last night the Prime Minister had lost the opportunity to get back in touch with public opinion.
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Time to offer political parties a new deal – ‘reselect.org’
Both Labour and the Conservatives have moved to take away the whip – and effectively deselect – MPs that have offended public morality with their expense claims.
But is this really enough? Are we simply to be satisfied that a few examples are made of the most egregious cases of an abuse of parliamentary expenses and leave it at that? Or is there a wider crisis the the quality of representation that needs addressing?
I think that this provides us with a fantastic opportunity to renew the entire political class in the UK. It is time for us to think about how we can reinvigorate widespread participation in political parties – old and new. For this reason, I’d like to propose that we – the voters – offer the political parties a new deal. It runs like this:
“We will double the membership of the local party that we support – but only if they will let us re-select our candidate.”
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Blaming for the BNP ‘protest’ vote
Firstly, you absolutely must go here and read this from last year. It’s a wonderful piece that removes all the fluff and nonsense that surrounds the issues of why people vote for fascist scum, leaving you with one inescapable conclusion: that scum are scum and vote for scum because they’re scum.
But no. People – ironically, it’s often the exact kind of people who would be deliberately simplistic about issues like crime, claiming that kids who nick a penny chew from the pick’n'mix are ‘feral’ and so on – like to get all complicated about the reasons why people vote BNP.
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Speaker resignation is a convenient sideshow
There’s no doubt Michael Martin had to go – his attempt to blame MPs when the reputation of parliament crumbled was absurd. But it was also very convenient for the Tories to move the focus move to a detested Labour figure that could carry the can for everyone. It was less convenient for Labour because they’re fully implicated anyway. continue reading… »
Why I’ll be voting Green on June 4
It is widely held that Euro-elections are little more than an expensive white elephant, a charade conducted in order to put various failed and eccentric politicians on the gravy train to the continent. This year, however, they have taken on a new importance as there is a very real possibility that the fascist British National Party could gain representation for the first time at a European level. Voters are turning away from the established parties in droves, and I believe it is likely that the rise in support for the minor parties will prove to be understated on the day.
Tories have an easy if rather peculiar alternative in the UK Independence Party (UKIP), and that group’s support is rocketing predictably. For disaffected Labour voters however, the choice is not so easy. Those on the left who half-heartedly call upon people to vote for “the political expression of the working class” are wasting their time, and in any case are selling people a turkey. The idea of asking the working people of the UK to vote for a party that has overseen their houses being reposessed, their jobs being lost, their children being sent to war and their public services being privatised, has me reaching for the sick bucket. I cannot conceive of the thought process that allows people to continue reciting the same tired old doctrines about “historic ties to the labour movement” which lead them to call for a Labour vote. In any case, the electorate are not going to listen on June 4.
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Nadine Dorries: an enemy of science?
Recently, Nadine Dorries is emerging as a prominent figure in Tory politics, and since Conservatives are almost certain to be in power by this time next year that’s bad for people who support evidence-based policy, because her relationship with science and rational thinking has been rather fraught.
Dorries’ influence in the party was demonstrated in Prime Minister’s Questions on April 22nd, when dozens of other Conservative MPs sacrificed their opportunity to ask a question in order to allow Dorries to demand a personal apology from Gordon Brown over smeargate. This backfired so badly that Dorries achieved what no amount of Labour spin has been able to in recent months – she made Gordon Brown look good as he brushed her aside.
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The media is downplaying Greens and talking up the BNP
Recent polling since the expenses scandal broke shows the Greens have been reaping the rewards of public anger at the main Parliamentary parties. Some indicate we may even receive a result rivaling the 15% highpoint of the ’89 election.
A ComRes poll this weekend put the Tories at 28%, Labour at 20%, the Lib Dems on 14%, below UKIP’s 15%, with the Greens on 11% and the BNP on just 4%. A YouGov poll out yesterday showed that could be the tip of a more radical, positive mood: 34% said they may vote Green at this election.
But here’s the funny thing: the primary focus of the media, and the BBC in particular, has been on the BNP. It remains a party that appears to be falling short of expectations for them.
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