Labour PPCs sign letter calling for reform
35 Labour PPCs and sitting MPs have signed a letter to Prime Minster, Gordon Brown, demanding a referendum on electoral reform to be held on the day of the General Election.
Coming just ahead of the Queen’s Speech, the PPCs say “…we do not believe that Labour will benefit at the next general election unless voters see that we are prepared to actually deliver a chance of real change.”
The letter was welcomed by Vote for a Change Director, Willie Sullivan who said:
There is clearly a reform dividend for any party that is ready to deliver real change that will both provide fairness and deal with the mess surrounding MPs expenses.
—————–
Dear Gordon.
We welcome your conference announcement that the next Labour manifesto would contain a commitment to hold a referendum on electoral reform marks a welcome recognition that the people must be given a say in the way their representatives are elected.
However, while this offer is made in good faith, we do not believe that Labour will benefit at the next general election unless voters see that we are prepared to actually deliver a chance of real change. Given the depth of public cynicism towards politicians then – without demonstrable proof of intent – it will be regarded as just another paper promise.
A referendum on polling day on a system that delivers real voter choice would see hundreds of Liberal Democrats switching to Labour, hundreds more stay-at-home Labour supporters coming out to vote for the government and every Tory opponent on the back foot trying to explain why the failed old system is worth keeping and why Cameron wouldn’t give the people a say. So we just need to switch the date and fulfill our 1997 manifesto pledge.
The ideal situation for Labour and for British democracy would be to hold the referendum on the same day as the next election. A government bill could facilitate this and there is also the opportunity to amend the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill to legislate for a future date for the referendum. Subject to detail, we will be supporting such an amendment.
Yours sincerely
Kathryn White: Aylesbury
Ian Saunders: Beverley and Holderness
Sharon Carr-Brown: Bournemouth West
John Piasecki: Bracknell
Simon Brugess: Brighton Kemptown
Nancy Platts: Brighton Pavilion
Jude Robinson: Camborne and Redruth
Daniel Zeichner: Cambridge
Julian Ware-Lane: Castle Point
Alex Hilton: Chelsea and Fulham
Damien Welfare: Chipping Barnet
Cath Arakelian: Chingford and Woodford Green
Dave Rowntree: Cities of London & Westminster
Colin Swindell: Derbyshire Dales
Pat Merrick: Eddisbury
Liam Robinson: Fylde
Tim Shand: Guildford
Darren Barrenger: Harwich and North Essex
Robert Smith: Havant
Steve Terry: Hertford & Stortford
Andrew Skudder: Horsham
Stephen Twigg MP: Liverpool West Derby
Swatantra Nandanwar: Maldon
John Tizard: Mid Bedfordshire
Andrew Pakes: Milton Keynes North
Michael Castle: Norfolk South
Stephen Morgan: Orpington
Jack Scott: Sheffield Hallam
Jon Tandy: Shrewsbury and Atcham
Derek Wyatt MP: Sittingbourne and Sheppey
James Normington: Sleaford and North Hykeham
Matthew May: South Northamptonshire
Kevin Bonavia: Southend East
Tom Flynn: Southend West
James Alexander: York Outer
Signatories to this letter were gathered with the assistance of Progress and the Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform
Watch: Fox News pushes global warming denialism
Extolling his widely known scientific credentials, Fox News host rubbishes global warming by saying it was the codest year on record. The two are not always related.
[via Kevin Blowe]
PCC in crisis as Rusbridger resigns
Guardian editor, Alan Rusbridger, has resigned from the Press Complaints Commission’s code committee days after the Guardian’s coverage of the News of the World phone-hacking affair was criticised by the regulator.
The PCC said it found no evidence that it was “materially misled” by the News of the World over the alleged hacking of celebrities’ mobile phones or that the practice was “ongoing”, prompting Rusbridger to respond by saying:
“If you have a self-regulation system that’s finding nothing out and has no teeth, and all the work is being done by external people, it’s dangerous for self-regulation. If you have a regulator behaving this uselessly, I suspect MPs will start saying this is not regulation,”
More – http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/nov/17/guardian-editor-resigns-pcc
God’s work: Goldman Sachs vs Church of England
When it comes to deciding the will of God, who you gonna call: Goldman Sachs chief exec Lloyd Blankfein, or archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams?
I only ask because both of these men have recently offered their verdicts on the forces of Mammon, with the £41m a year Big Swinging Dick getting his retaliation in first, in the shape of a recent interview with the Sunday Times.
Blankfein knows full well that ‘people are pissed off, mad, and bent out of shape’ at the profession which brought the world close to economic collapse, and disarmingly adds: ‘I know I could slit my wrists and people would cheer.’
So how does he justify not doing the business with the razor blade? He comes up with a wisecrack, of course, arguing that investment bankers deserve unlimited bonuses because they are ‘doing God’s work’. Heck, I must have missed that week at Sunday school, although I remember vague injunctions about camels, eyes of needles, money changers in the temple, and such like.
continue reading… »
Getting Labour’s prison record wrong
Having attacked Gordon Brown personally last week and came off the worst for it, this week the Sun seems to have decided to stand on surer ground, by attacking Labour on crime.
Problem is, it can’t seem to do so without telling some whopping great lies, as yesterday’s leader shows:
Prison policy, in particular, has become a joke. Early on, Labour decided not to build more jails and instead focus on alternatives to prison and early release for prisoners.
In 1997 the average prison population was 61,470 (page 4). The population last Friday was 84,593 (DOC), a rise in just 12 years of more than 20,300. I can’t seem to find any concrete figures on just what the total number of places available in 1997 was, but ministers themselves boast that they have created over 20,000 additional places, and the Prison Reform Trust agrees, noting in this year’s Bromley report that the number of places has increased by 33% since the party came to power (page 5).
continue reading… »
The new PCC chair will let journalism down too
“Let me make sure you know exactly who I am and what I am going to do at the PCC” – so said Baroness Buscombe, the new chair of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC), at the annual conference of the Society of Editors.
Having read her speech in full, I fear I do know what she is going to do at the PCC – and that I’m not going to like it.
It’s a curious speech in several ways. She started off by recounting in some detail her Conservative Party roots. Leading off with the fact that she’s a Conservative, added to the jibes at Labour and the silence about other parties (even though her reference to civil liberties gave an obvious opportunity to mention the Liberal Democrats, for example), leaves an obvious question about what her motives were.
I’m sure she’s a smart person and can’t have been unaware that the message many people will take from her speech is, “I’m a Conservative”. Is that really the right message for the chair of the PCC – which has to deal with complaints about political stories all in an equitable manner – to send? Is it the best way to reassure the public about how self-regulation will work on her watch?
There were also some rather astringent comments about Google and news aggregators:
continue reading… »
Maybe that’s what grown-ups do
There is a good piece at the Bleeding Heart Show on the recent attack on Laurie Penny at Harry’s Place. I completely agree with the following section:
As it happens, I think it’s quite possible (providing you don’t venture into the comment threads) to read Harry’s Place and not find much which is quarrelsome or controversial. It’s not often that a day passes without HP posting something I generally agree with . . . .
But it’s posts like this which give HP the reputation for bullying and sectarianism which Laurie was decrying. The habit of singling individuals out and ‘exposing’ them as morally or intellectually deficient doesn’t speak well of the site, particularly when the writers claim to be interested in some of the big international debates of our time. This leads on to my main frustration with the site: for all the intention to stand up for democracy and human rights around the world, and all the time spent standing against ideologues, racists & militants wherever they may be found, the actual foreign policy content on Harry’s Place is incredibly superficial.
I will now wait to be assailed by the wit and wisdom of Habibi and Morgoth.
Daily Mail-o-matic updated
Thanks to the Virtual Stoa for drawing our attention to the Daily Mail automatic headline generator, now updated to include 2009 bogeymen.
Other valuable resources include the New Daily Mail Oncological Ontology Project, an ongoing quest to track the Daily Mail’s classification of inanimate objects into two types: those that cause cancer, and those that cure it, and the Postmodern article generator.
Best randomly generated headline which you can find and tell us about in the comments wins a prize.
The Right’s confusion on challenging the BNP
David Blackburn writes for the Spectator’s CoffeeHouse blog that the BNP is, No longer a racist party, but a party of racists, in response to the news that BNP membership looks to vote overwhelmingly in favour of allowing non-whites to join the party.
David is highly confused. This is because he says:
The Spectator has maintained that the party’s domestic policies are inspired by racial supremacist ideology and that its economic policies are like Dagenham – that is, three stops beyond Barking.
Yes, I’ll agree with that. The party’s domestic policies are indeed inspired by a racial supremacist ideology. Which is why people should avoid following those policies right? Except, he does on to say centrist parties “must engage with (and I mean engage with, not shout down)” BNP policies. What a muddle. ‘Engage’ is a mealy-mouthed word that usually means ‘follow’.
Earlier this year Tim Montgomerie at ConHome said:
but I do think part of any anti-BNP strategy means addressing popular concerns about immigration, access to housing and championing people’s patriotic instincts… while ALWAYS attacking their racism.
They’ve banned Christmas! Sort of!
contribution by 5 chinese crackers
They didn’t actually. Last year, the Observer reported on 2 November that Oxford City Council had banned all reference to Christmas in its WinterLight Festival (which was nonsense).
This year, it wasn’t until the 13th that the Times managed ‘Christmas lights switch-on ceremony renamed ‘Winter White Night’‘. Guess what? It’s nonsense!
Okay, Dundee Council really have named the night the Christmas lights get switched on ‘Winter Light Night’ (not ‘white’, see), but according to the Times:
Christmas will not be Christmas in Dundee this year. All references to the religious holiday have been dropped from the switching-on ceremony for the city’s festive lights
Sounds familiar. In fact, it sounds almost exactly the same as last year’s nonsense about Oxford.
continue reading… »
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