Late term abortions ruling could be alarming
The Information Commissioner’s ruling on Friday to release statistics on late term abortions carried out because of disability has alarming implications.
The figures were requested under FOI by the ProLife Alliance, and the case has already led to an op-ed in the Telegraph calling for “an open debate on the merits of late term abortion” once the numbers are out.
It’s clear that the potential for this information to be misused to promote an anti-choice agenda and to restrict women’s reproductive freedom is strong. The Telegraph state within their editorial that concerns over the identification of women and their doctors are “spurious”. They suggest that when the statistics were previously available, up until 2002, no one was harmed.
However, they fail to acknowledge the Jepson case, where a legal challenge was mounted against doctors who performed a late term abortion for a fetus with a cleft palate, and the area and hospital in which the doctors were working were identified by police and local papers.
The “deeply worrying” issue of identification of doctors who perform late term abortions as a result of the information being public was raised in a joint statement by Brook and the Family Planning Association.
There’s clearly a tension here between the public’s right to access information and the potential for statistics to be misused to promote a harmful agenda. If the Department of Health do not challenge the ruling in the High Court, and the information becomes public, there are clear ways to respond and mount a defence.
Instead of accepting a narrative of late-term abortions being carried out to “ensure that ‘designer babies’ are being born” (thank you, The Telegraph, for that excellent turn of phrase) we need to deconstruct these claims.
Rather than abortions being carried out for ‘cleft palates’ a facial disability which can be corrected by surgery, we can point out the huge number of disabilities and birth defects associated with clefting, which may only be part of the story.
We can also support medical professionals who perform abortions at late stages, and voice our support for women in the UK to have full access to reproductive freedom.
Jan Moir issues half-apology in new column
Daily Mail writer Jan Moir has written another article for the newspaper about Stephan Gately and the controversy last week.
The article looks like a sort of an apology before blaming people for misunderstanding her.
First, the half-apology:
To be the focus of such depth of feeling has been an interesting experience, but I do not complain. After all, I am not – unlike those close to Stephen Gately – mourning for the loss of a much-loved partner, son, family member and close friend.
To them, I would like to say sorry if I have caused distress by the insensitive timing of the column, published so close to the funeral.
Not an apology for writing it, but for distressed caused by the timing.
She goes on later to justify her views:
My assertion that there was ‘nothing natural’ about Stephen’s death has been wildly misinterpreted.
What I meant by ‘nothing natural’ was that the natural duration of his life had been tragically shortened in a way that was shocking and out of the ordinary. Certainly, his death was unusual enough for a coroner to become involved.
As for Stephen’s civil partnership, I am on the record as supporting same-sex marriages.
Yes, and Unity highlighted that abysmal ‘record’ here.
Then there is the reference to the “orchestrated campaign” against her:
To say it was a hysterical overreaction would be putting it mildly, though clearly much of it was an orchestrated campaign by pressure groups and those with agendas of their own.
However, I accept that many people – on Twitter and elsewhere – were merely expressing their own personal and heartfelt opinions or grievances. This said, I can’t help wondering: is there a compulsion today to see bigotry and social intolerance where none exists by people who are determined to be outraged? Or was it a failure of communication on my part?
Of course not. Those 22,000 people complaining were merely imagining the homophobia.
And finally:
Can it really be that we are becoming a society where no one can dare to question the circumstances or behaviour of a person who happens to be gay without being labelled a homophobe? If so, that is deeply troubling.
Translated: Censorship, that’s what it is! Political correctness gawn maaad!
You can read the full article, without soiling the Daily Mail website, from here.
Left Outside blog has a parody of her article
Griffin claims he got on well with Greer
Nick Griffin has sent out this missive to supporters following BBC Question Time last night.
Fellow British Patriot
“The man’s got guts!” “At last, someone saying exactly what we all feel”. “The hand-picked audience in the studio hated what Nick had to say, but we loved it”. “I’ve never seen such political bullying on TV in my life.” “When he pointed out how all the others are racist against the English, we were all cheering”.
Just a few of the responses to the long-awaited BBC Question Time with Nick Griffin tonight. It was never going to be easy: Central London is the most ‘enriched’ and ‘diverse’ part of Britain, the BBC audience selection process is clearly guaranteed to ‘weed out’ politically incorrect guests, and the other panellists shared one aim: to rough up Nick Griffin.
As it is, no-one who saw Jack Straw turn ashen-faced when Nick responded to his ‘Nazi’ smear by pointing out that “my father served in the RAF during the Second World War – yours spent it in prison for refusing to fight Adolf Hitler.” Time and time again Nick gave as good as he got.
Most of all though, this wasn’t a proper Question Time at all. The usual format was done away with for the first time in 30 years as the BBC over-compensated for allowing us on by setting things up for a televised lynching.
There was nothing about current affairs at all; no postal strike, nothing about the announcement that Tony Blair is about to be appointed EU President, nothing about the continued slaughter of young British soldiers in Afghanistan, nothing about the latest stages of the banking crisis and the scandal of the Government propping up corrupt banks while imposing savage cuts on essential services. On all those subjects and many more, the BNP’s nationalist position offers a real alternative to the three old internationalist parties.
But the only non-BNP/immigration question was about a Daily Mail article on the death of Stephen Gately, and even that was a trap – which Chairman Nick Griffin avoided with both ease and principle.
Where does it leave the BNP? On this day alone our website has had in the region of 15 million ‘hits’ and over 2,000 new registrations for future membership before QT even started! Millions were shocked by the violence of the leftist mob sponsored by – among other MPs – Peter Hain and David Cameron.
With millions more people beginning to grasp the extent to which the three old parties are essentially the same, while the British National Party is really different. With millions of people knowing that in just a couple of killer soundbites in the middle of the programme, Nick Griffin summed up exactly how they, and all their friends and neighbours, feel about the mess that Lib-Lab-Con have made of our poor country.
They will also have noted very well that Nick Griffin and Bonny Greer clearly got on well, and that Nick listened with respect and answered with consideration even hostile questions from members of ethnic minorities in the audience; the hostility tonight wasn’t from Nick towards anyone on account of their ethnicity or religion, it was from the representatives of the failed old parties towards the new kid on the block.
When the details of all the personal attacks against Nick Griffin are long forgotten, people will remember him standing up bravely to a barrage of hate to say things on behalf of the Silent Majority that have never been said on the flagship programme of British politics before. “Nick Griffin – he speaks for us”.
Live chat – #BBCQT tonight
BBC Question Time starts at 10:30pm but it’s already being trailed on BBC News 24…
Update: Some reviews from across the web following QT
Our Kingdom: BBC/BNP after the programme
Shiraz Socialist: A Bonnie lass routs Griffin
Hagley Road to Ladywood: The BNP has the tabloids to thank
Bad Conscience: Not the apocalypse, but…
Paperhouse: Nick Griffin’s day out
Left Outside: Give ‘em enough rope
Sim-O: “I’m scum and I’m a racist”
How can the left deal with the BNP?
The BNP’s appearance on Question Time has prompted a wave of revisionism on the political right – with some going as far as saying that the right is better at dealing with the BNP and apparently the left is to blame for the rise of the BNP. And then there are some who say we should not heap abuse on Nick Griffin and instead need to deal with the concerns of BNP sympathisers. Let’s address this head on.
It’s farcical to watch right-wingers now adopt anti-racist credentials and pretend they don’t have a deeply racist past. This isn’t the party of anti-racism, this is the party with a history of opposing Nelson Mandela and supporting apartheid, the party of ‘If you want a nigger for a neighbour vote Labour’, and the party of Enoch Powell (who is still widely revered).
There is a key difference between the left and right on anti-racism: the right actually believe and perpetuate many of the lies that have fulled the BNP’s rise. They may not be racist, or see themselves as racist, but they implicitly agree with the BNP’s concern that immigrants are “swamping” Britain, that they are getting preferential treatment, that most Muslims are dangerous etc.
The right is not only unwilling to take on the right-wing media which has created the conditions for the BNP to thrive, by pushing lies on immigration especially, but they support it. For example you won’t see them challenge the Daily Mail on the view that immigrants get special treatment.
In that sense the BNP has become a trojan horse for the right: they keep condemning the party while claiming hysterically that the concerns of those voters must be addressed. Funny, they never say that in relation to Muslim extremists, only white extremists.
continue reading… »
White riot: welcome to mainstream fascism
It’s ten days before the next election and Nick Griffin is on walkabout when a white leftist with a history of mental health problems plunges a breadknife through his heart before the skinhead heavies can stop him. The British National Party leader is pronounced DOA at the hospital.
Or maybe it’s ten days before the next election and a huge bomb goes off at a mosque during Friday prayers. Some 19 Muslims are dead, dozens injured. Nobody claims responsibility, although police inquiries centre on the theory that this is the work of a lone wolf white supremacist.
Or maybe an Islamist cell gets lucky once – to coin a phrase – and blows a nightclub-load of dancing slags to kingdom come or brings down a couple of transatlantic airliners.
Or maybe an English Defence League march kicks off big time, with a punch-up between the boot boys and the counter demonstrators drawing in passers by until cars are overturned and shops are looted.
Open Primaries: Right diagnosis, wrong solution
contribution by Jason Kitcat
I was interested to see the launch of the ‘Open Up’ campaign, with a very slick website and duck-house videos. I would expect nothing less given the people behind it including the immensely capable Becky Hogge, ORG’s former Executive Director.
There is as a whole swathe of campaigning going on at the moment calling for reform in one sense or another. This is extremely encouraging and welcome, it’s wonderful that people are speaking out and getting involved.
However, in my view party political representative democracy is still the least worst option available to us. All lasting democracies develop groupings of some form another.
Interestingly the Speaker’s Conference in Parliament has recently been touching on these issues too. Clegg was the most honest in admitting many of the people they need weren’t coming forward. He also argued that Westminster itself wasn’t the right kind of place to attract the people we need in politics.
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Blogs “highest form of political journalism”?
… and other things that came out of the debate on politics, journalism and the general election held at City University last night.
The panel, including Sam Coates, The Times’s Chief Political Correspondent, Steve Richards, Commentator for the Independent and Pippa Crerar, political correspondent for the Evening Standard discussed topics including the Sun’s defection from Labour to the Tories (which was seen as having little impact) , blogging, youtube and the BNP.
Sam Coates, despite dismissing twitter’s role in campaigning with the whimsical “please, god, no more twitter” said that blogs would have far more influence in the next general election and could potentially become the “highest form of political journalism.”
Steve Richards announced that the next general election would be “the election of the internet” with coverage being far more web-based.
He argued that the internet had the potential to derail carefully co-ordinated general election campaigns, suggesting that if a candidate were to say something off message “it will be on YouTube within 10 minutes.”
Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time was also criticised by Richards who suggested that the format was too easy for him.
One of the most interesting points made in the debate was about Gordon Brown and the future of the Labour party.
He was amusingly described by Richards as a combination between a “lofty academic and a deranged journalist” who constantlyover-analyses the media impact of his actions (see biscuitgate)
All three panellists predicted a swing towards the conservatives, and Crerar suggested that it would make very little difference to Labour’s prospects in the general election if Gordon Brown stayed on as a leader or not.
Cameron’s Euroscepticism was also briefly discussed, with Richards suggesting that this was too easily dismissed as a pragmatic response to the traditional Euro-phones within the Conservative party, and actually represented one of the Conservative leader’s few genuine convictions.
Boris embarrassed over Rape Crisis vote loss
The London Assembly yesterday voted, by a large majority, to demand the Mayor of London delivers the £744,000 a year he promised to give to the beleaguered Rape Crisis network in his election manifesto.
A motion tabled by Green Assembly Member Jenny Jones, called on the Mayor to ensure his promised funding was delivered by the end of the year since ‘not a penny’ of funding has yet arrived at London’s only remaining centre, despite assurances by the Mayor, and that if other funders could not be found to plug the shortfall he should fulfil his commitment by paying the remaining £833,000 from his own budget.
Originally the Mayor was found to have only allowed for £233,000 to go to Rape Crisis but, under enormous pressure he then upped the figure to £1.4 million over three years, still a shortfall of £832,000 from his manifesto pledge.
All Conservative members voted against the motion which passed 14 to 9, calling it “cynical” and “party political”.
Matty Mitford, spokesperson for the Boris Keep Your Promise campaign says: “London’s elected representatives have spoken. Boris should keep his promise.”
Go and support your postman tomorrow
Early tomorrow morning, I shall be awake and walking down to the local Royal Mail depot to support the postmen and CWU in their dispute.
As Dave Osler points out, the issue has gone far beyond the mere question of who is right and who is wrong over the specific issues of modernisation. The question is now whether or not Royal Mail has the unmitigated right to do what it wants with its business.
Bearing in mind that the business survives on the labour extracted from tens of thousands of postal workers up and down the country, few of whom are paid very well – whilst their bosses enjoy bonuses on a level with parts of the City of London – I’m inclined to say that no, they do not. Modernisation must be agreed with the workers, or it simply should not be permitted to happen. It hasn’t been agreed.
In fact, Royal Mail have now said that they will only take the question to arbitration if the CWU give up their planned strike – which has been endorsed overwhelmingly by CWU members in a national ballot.
This amounts to asking the union to surrender before negotiations begin, and with the leaked Royal Mail policy document indicating that they want nothing less than union derecognition, it would be criminal to concede it.
continue reading… »
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» Even by economic standards Hester’s £1m bonus is unworthy
» Revealed: govt to restrict abortion counselling despite Nadine Dorries vote
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