What is the future of social democracy?
contribution by Arjun Singh-Muchélle
When social democrats write about the future of social democracy, there is a conspicuous absence in their writing of ownership. They make references to elusive ‘social democracy’ and ‘social democrats’, without ever referring to themselves.
I am a social democrat, avowedly so. This offers my final cry on the future of our ideology.
Our ideology is in need of an intellectual renaissance. When the first and second ways of our ideology faltered, we created a third way, branded it ‘new’ and sold it, en masse. This however, was a momentary lapse in judgement. This third way has now failed, with its intellectual foundation in tatters.
It is our imperative, as social democrats, to dispense of this third method in to the dustbin of history.
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Religion and politics at work: how much slack?
Flabbergastingly risible though I find the notion that the Old Bill should hire mediums to contact murder victims on the other side of the grave and find out who bumped them off, I naturally uphold the right of Britain’s 30,000 or so spiritualists to worship as they see fit. Indeed, if any of you guys are reading this, can someone please say ‘hi’ to my mum for me?
But it must surely be unacceptable to have civilian trainers teach obviously hopeless detective techniques to wannabe Special Constables at hobby bobby training school. I mean, it’s not as if the deceased can reasonably be expected to pitch up to give evidence, is it? Few corpses could even get their arse in gear to sign a witness statement.
Yet thanks to a new legal ruling, Alan Power has been given the go-ahead to sue Greater Manchester Police, his former employers, who gave him the boot for doing exactly that. Thanks to Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003, Britain is about to enter a whole new (next) world of pain.
New call to overhaul entire financial sector
Only radical reform of the UK banking and financial sector can deliver institutions capable of investment and lending that is economically and socially productive, an alternative white paper on banking reform says today.
The Ecology of Finance is published by nef (the new economics foundation) in anticipation of the Treasury’s follow-up White Paper on banking, expected this month.
It calls for recasting the entire banking and financial sector according to what the proper function of finance should be.
Recommendations include:
- Separating retail from other banking and preventing deposit-taking banks from engaging in other, risky activities
- Setting up a social investment bank, a green investment bank and a Post Bank
- Regulating financial institutions according to their functions and how risky their activities: the bigger the bank the higher the capital requirements
- Reforms to encourage more mutuals, co-ops and community finance
- Legislation to force banks to be open about their lending and to lend to the financially excluded.
Sargon Nissan, nef researcher and co-author of the report said:
Instead of fixating on failed banks and returning to the failed one-model-fits-all ethos, reform of the financial system needs to look at what it is for and identify how a stable and diverse ecology of financial institutions appropriate to that task can be brought about.Instead of a monoculture of mega-banks deemed too big to fail and answerable only to the demands of private shareholders, The Ecology of Finance envisages a landscape characterised by transparency, stability and sustainability – three crucial benefits the current financial system has so signally failed to deliver.
Key changes such as long-term investment and finance that meets the needs of small businesses, an end to financial exclusion and an economy that is environmentally sustainable and socially just will not happen without radical top down reform and measures to enable alternatives to flourish.
The alternative white paper on banking and financial sector reform, is available to download from www.neweconomics.org
From a press release
Which planet do Spectator writers inhabit?
Until recently I was only barely aware of a magazine called the Spectator and its accompanying website, but I’ve noticed it a lot just recently.
I’ve noticed it because everything in it seems to be such utter nonsense, and the trolls even worse than elsewhere.
Yesterday its columnist David Blackburn takes the plaudits for the new ’most woefully inaccurate journalist of the week award’, with not one but two entries – posted within a couple of hours either side of lunch? – which are simply wrong with a capital W.
First, at 12.43pm, is his suggestion that a political party, well the Labour party anyway, trying to maximise postal votes might be illegal in some way, and that Labour is bound to be up to no good. That brought the trolls out for sure.
Chris Paul’s already dealt with that one, and got the following comment published:
This seems to be speculative nonsense. People with PVs are about three times as likely to vote as those without. Weather doesn’t intervene. Holidays don’t. Illness doesn’t. Work doesn’t. Can’t be bothered less likely. Which is why all parties in close run seats try to get their known or likely supporters on PV. Conflating a perfectly logical optimisation exercise with cheating seems sloppy and ignorant. I repeat: sloppy and ignorant.
Revealed: How Tory staffers are astro-turfing leftwing blogs
Will Straw at Left Foot Forward published an astonishing story the other day. He said:
An employee of the Conservative party has used a fake name and email address to comment on a Left Foot Forward guest post about anti-semitism in Poland.
You won’t be surprised to hear that the comment was typically of the “so what?” kind that sought to play down Michal Kaminski’s background. Just the kind we’ve also been getting a lot of since the controversy erupted.
So, Unity ran a quick scan on our own comments. We’ve found four instances where someone with that IP address also posted comments here – in each case defending the party or its sympathisers.
The comments go as far back as March this year when I revealed that the think-tank Policy Exchange had been forced to apologise to a Muslim group. At the time we experienced a whole bunch of new readers coming here to rubbish my story without any substance to back it up.
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We need a million affordable homes
Most people are aware that waiting lists for council homes have hit an all-time high. Trouble is, courtesy of industrial-scale tabloid bombardment, most people would probably blame immigration and single mothers. The reality, however, is different.
Here’s the facts. It is true that the queues are dramatic. The crisis brought a massive increase in repossessions (65,000 homes this year and 45,000 in 2008). At the start of 2009, 200,000 extra families (not people, families), were added to already long queues: 1,8 million families are waiting their turn as opposed to 1.6m in 2008.
Yet how many people are aware that there are one million fewer homes available for rent from councils and housing associations than in 1979?
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No EU Cash for Griffin
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – The European Alliance of National Movements, the coalition of far-right parties formed last month in Budapest, has failed in its an attempt to get its hands on European Parliament cash, as the jumble of reactionary rightists did not manage to file the application on time.
The alliance, which includes the UK’s BNP, France’s Front National and Hungary’s Jobbik, says it wants its share of the around €11 million that the parliament hands out every year to pan-European political parties, informally known as ‘europarties’.
Plan to help victims of domestic violence greeted
Amnesty International has cautiously welcomed the Home Office’s three-month pilot scheme to grant women facing violence and who have insecure immigration status the ability to access a refuge and seek specialised support.
Women who hold spousal or international student visas, or who are in the UK on temporary work permits are currently unable to access a refuge or specialised support because of the ‘no recourse to public funds’ rule.
The pilot proposal outlined by the Home Office Minister Alan Campbell MP now provides the security of funding a woman’s refuge place for up to 40 days and enabling her to access the support required by survivors of domestic or other violence.
The government initiative will run for three months, and will be followed by an evaluation which will be conducted in March 2010.
Amnesty International UK Director Kate Allen said:
This announcement is certainly a welcome step in the right direction, albeit a long time coming, which would enable hundreds of women to escape an abusive situation and access a refuge. However this is only a short term pilot scheme.
The Minister Alan Campbell stated that this pilot trial will serve to inform the government towards developing a longer-term solution to this issue. We will hold the government to this and expect to see detailed plans in March which will outline how this project will be permanently implemented.
Amnesty International has interviewed dozens of women who have been affected by the no recourse to public funds rule and gathered testimonies from dozens of refuge workers, police and medical professionals who have previously been obliged to turn women away and leave them with no other option but to return to the place of violence.
One caseworker interviewed by Amnesty told of a woman who was physically and sexually abused by her husband and family – at one point she was doused in petrol and threatened to be set alight. She was returned to her home after fleeing to her GP for help because she was on a spousal visa and had no access to a refuge.
Women who have no recourse to public funds have been until now trapped in a cycle of violence. Only once the Government provides a permanent solution to providing assistance and support for these very vulnerable women will they have fulfilled their human rights’ commitments to provide safety and justice for all women fleeing violence living in their jurisdiction.
After all, this is what the Government agreed when it signed the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women.
A full copy of a report produced by Amnesty International and Southall Black Sisters is available on request.
From a press release
Financial solutions to the financial crisis
contribution by Riz Din
How should the left respond to the financial crisis? Here are some issues to think about.
Clarity and Transparency
The complete hotch-potch of initiatives earlier in the year pointed to a government scrambling about in the dark. Now, at least, policy measures seem centered on the key prongs of fiscal stimulus, a gigantic asset protection scheme and quantitative easing. However, significant uncertainties remain and the lack of transparency suggests the public may be being hoodwinked at a very basic level.
Let’s take the example of the government’s asset protection scheme, an insurance programme that has so far agreed to underwrite losses on over £600 billion of toxic debt from RBS and Lloyds alone. If the economy stages a sudden recovery the solution could cost the taxpayer almost nothing, but if things go completely belly up it could well be ‘game over’ for the public finances.
Either way, the government surely has a figure for expected losses in mind that it is not revealing, or has it just written hundreds of billions of insurance without understanding the risks involved (can you hear the scary ringing echoes of AIG?). Is the outlook not foggy enough that we must add our own smoke to the mix with unnecessary obfuscation?
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Fox News caught in new fake footage scandal
This week the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart exposed how Fox News re-used footage to exaggerate the number of people attending a Fox promoted anti-healthcare rally.
It is increasingly difficult to find clips of The Daily Show to show in the UK as Comedy Central have stopped clips being shown outsides the US.
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