A prison scandal we uncovered
contribution by Phil Chamberlain
More than three years ago I thought I’d ask the prison service a relatively simple question. What kind of contracts do individual prisons hold with private companies for inmates to carry out work?
Not so simple apparently, as it took a ruling from the Information Commissioner to force them to answer.
This week the Guardian published the first fruits of our investigation sparked by that question, and the digging of myself and my colleague Richard Cookson.
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Can Jon Cruddas reinvent social democracy?
Roll calls of great thinkers, from ancient Greeks to trendy continental PoMo merchants, probably do not constitute a staple of pub conversation in his Barking and Dagenham constituency. So if nothing else, Jon Cruddas deserves credit for name dropping so many star philosophers and economists in his speech on the renewal of social democracy earlier this week.
Rarely can references to Aristotle, Crosland, Kondratiev, Rorty, Hobbes, Rand, Foucault, Schumpeter, Minsky, T.H. Green, Hobhouse, Hobson, Tawney, Cole, Laski, Rousseau, Marx, Hume and Polanyi have been delivered in the same peroration, and all in a mockney accent to boot.
Perhaps I am missing something. Maybe the small talk at the local Labour club goes something like this: ‘That’s three pints of Pride, two pints of Stella, large G&T with ice and a slice, packet of pork scratchings and ‘ave one for yerself, love. Now don’t mind us, we’re just discussing the extent to which Schumpeterian creative destruction is ultimately derivative of long wave theory.’
The logic of the ‘left-wing’ BBC
Here’s a BBC reporter on Radio 5 Live (around 47 mins and 30 secs in) quizzing Ian Gray, Scottish Labour Leader, on the political response to Diageo’s decision to a) slash 900 jobs in Kilmarnock and b) turn down flat alternative plans put forward. This is the same Diageo plc which posted £2bn profits on August 27th.
I just wonder, when we face public spending cuts two years from now, whoever wins the election, with what authority do politicians push through those spending cuts when you criticize companies for looking for efficiencies in their operations?
Get that? Remember it well, because it’s a new interviewing tactic thought up by those clever BBC journalists in the wake of Labour’s admission that it’s planning spending cuts as well as the Tories. I’m sure we’ll hear it lots more.
And just marvel at the logic that lies behind it:
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On progressive causes, Obama continues to disappoint
Yesterday’s Times reported that, in his speech to Congress, Barack Obama made a ‘strong case’ for the so-called ‘public option’ (the part of his healthcare reforms that offers government-run insurance to people who cannot get affordable healthcare). Frankly, the writer must have been watching another speech. Here’s what Obama said:
It’s worth noting that a strong majority of Americans still favor a public insurance option of the sort I’ve proposed tonight. But its impact shouldn’t be exaggerated – by the left, the right, or the media. It is only one part of my plan, and should not be used as a handy excuse for the usual Washington ideological battles.
Obama failed to give unequivocal support for the public option. In fact, he signaled that he is not really committed to it at all, and invites proposals to replace the public option. Those who want to scrap it will be emboldened.
This is just the latest maneuver by Obama to have disappointed the left. There is, also, e.g., his failure to stand up for a decent stimulus. And his heart-breaking capitulation on LGBT rights.
Liberals assumed, when Obama entered the White House, that he would be a transformational president, able to reorient America’s politics leftwards. That hasn’t happened.
And this is because Obama’s political strategising has been all wrong.
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No.10: Treatment of Alan Turing “appalling”
The Prime Minister’s office today described as “appalling” the way mathematician was treated during WW2 for being gay.
He was most famous for breaking the German Enigma codes, but was convicted of ‘gross indecency’ in 1952 and sentenced to chemical castration.
An e-petition on the Downing Street website prompted the response. It had gathered over 30,000 signatures by today.
The statement, issued today evening, said:
Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can’t put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted as he was convicted under homophobic laws were treated terribly. Over the years millions more lived in fear of conviction.
I am proud that those days are gone and that in the last 12 years this government has done so much to make life fairer and more equal for our LGBT community. This recognition of Alan’s status as one of Britain’s most famous victims of homophobia is another step towards equality and long overdue.
The full statement is on the No. 10 website.
Creating the ‘Prime Mentalist’
So. Rumour has it [well, Guido has it] that Prime Minister Gordon Brown is taking a course of mood-stabilising anti-depressants. Several blogs and broadsheet columnists of all stripes have gone public with the allegation that Gordon Brown is taking “heavy duty antidepressants known as MAOIs (Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitors)”.
This rumour, along with what Guido reminds us are “the stories of rages, flying Nokias, smashed laser printers, tables kicked over and crying Downing Street secretaries subjected to foul-mouthed tirades”, have led many in the national press to suggest or imply that Brown’s leadership is inherently undermined by his alleged mental health difficulties, as well as by the medication he supposedly takes for those difficulties.
We have no way of substantiating this rumor, but let’s for a moment run with the assumption that Brown is taking anti-depressants.
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Megrahi vs Myra: who dies in jail?
There are prisoners, there are political prisoners and then there are politicised prisoners. In the latter category, we must place those whose crimes, real or alleged, attain such notoriety that the quotidian standards of the law are somehow suspended.
But if what you have done gets you on the front page of The Sun, forget about it. If you’re Ian Huntley or Levi Bellfield or Ipswich serial killer Steve Wright, the cry will go up that ‘life must mean life’. No home secretary – and frighteningly, we haven’t had a liberal in the post since Kenneth Clarke – is going to take the tabloid rap for letting you go.
Two prisoners to which the ‘they should die in jail’ argument has been applied are alleged Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi and indisputably guilty Moors Murderer Myra Hindley. They are both, in their separate ways, emblematic of the popular characterisation of something called wickedness.
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Libdems launch campaign against airbrushing
The Liberal Democrats launched an online campaign yesterday encouraging people to report adverts featuring heavily airbrushed images of women to advertising watchdogs.
The online campaign at www.realwomen.org.uk/takeaction is encouraging people to complain to the Advertising Standards Agency and the Committee of Advertising Practice about adverts which portray unrealistic and unhealthy body images.
The campaign also seeks a ban on adverts aimed at under-16s using digital retouching to portray unrealistic body images
Liberal Democrat MP Jo Swinson, who chairs the party’s working group on women’s policy, said:
Adverts that feature heavily retouched images of perfect skin, perfect hair and perfect figures mean that women and girls increasingly feel that nothing less than perfect will do.
Advertisers should be honest and upfront about the extent of airbrushing that goes on. It is frankly dishonest to advertise an anti-wrinkle cream and then airbrush out all of the wrinkles in the ad. And it is simply irresponsible to take already underweight women and then slice off pieces of their thighs or hips in the computer suite.
Consumers should have as much information as possible and children should have the space to develop their self-esteem without constantly being bombarded with a narrow range of manipulated images that promote conformity.
After the Libdems earlier called for digital retouching to be banned in adverts targeted at children, and clearly indicated in adverts aimed at adults, a spokesperson for the Advertising Standards Authority said digital retouching (airbrushing) was not an issue it received many complaints about.
But he added that the ASA would respond to complaints which were drawn to its attention.
Apparently the Tories saved the economy!
I realise that Ben Brogan is political commentator at the Daily Torygraph but even a pretence of impartiality is nice sometimes, no? His latest wheeze: Let’s give Dave and Osborne the credit for saving our rating
Dear god. That is some serious leap of logic. Let’s ignore the fact that lefties were arguing for ages that public debt was not at unprecedented or dangerous enough levels to bankrupt the economy. Let’s ignore the fact that Osborne and his crew got it completely wrong over nationalisation and had to humiliatingly accept that later. Let’s even ignore the economy is only bouncing back so quickly because of a stimulus the Tories argued against and Labour nevertheless pushed through.
Their own treasury secretary was still arguing yesterday that our credit rating was going to be downgraded even though it wasn’t. Let’s ignore all that to give this sorry shower of shadow ministers full credit for making rubbish arguments throughout shall we?
What Brogan is doing is offering a talking point for the Tories as the economy starts to recover – they should claim credit for being right all along. You’ll soon see this repeated across the same right-wing media that was recently claiming we were on a path no different to Zimbabwe’s. All that hysteria around quantitative easing will be forgotten as Tories rush to scrub their memories and start fresh.
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