Will the left’s renewal come from the web?
contribution by Ed Wallis
The Fabian Review New Year special is out now, and it previews the major political schisms of a pivotal political year.
Whatever the outcome of this year’s election, the air is going to be thick with renewal. James Crabtree has some interesting advice in the magazine for lefties seeking the next big thing: don’t bother.
“Hoping for a British Obama to turn up is even less likely than wishing for some kind of super-charged Geoff Mulgan-on-steroids to dream up an entirely new vision of social democracy.”
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Did US evangelicals urge Ugandan anti-gay Act?
Last March, three American evangelical Christians, whose teachings about “curing” homosexuals have been widely discredited in the United States, arrived here in Uganda’s capital to give a series of talks.
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For three days, according to participants and audio recordings, thousands of Ugandans, including police officers, teachers and national politicians, listened raptly to the Americans, who were presented as experts on homosexuality. The visitors discussed how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys and how “the gay movement is an evil institution” whose goal is “to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity.”
Now the three Americans are finding themselves on the defensive, saying they had no intention of helping stoke the kind of anger that could lead to what came next: a bill to impose a death sentence for homosexual behavior.
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The Ugandan government, facing the prospect of losing millions in foreign aid, is now indicating that it will back down, slightly, and change the death penalty provision to life in prison for some homosexuals. But the battle is far from over.
Instead, Uganda seems to have become a far-flung front line in the American culture wars, with American groups on both sides, the Christian right and gay activists, pouring in support and money as they get involved in the broader debate over homosexuality in Africa.
Islam4UK: free speech for bigots?
Lady Gaga is going to Hell, according to a fringe Christian denomination in the US. OK, I admit I haven’t listened to very much of the woman’s music, or any music at all recorded much after 1983, come to that. But it’s only rock ‘n’ roll, as the saying goes. Surely she can’t be that bad?
Oh yes she can, argues Topeka-based Westboro Baptist Church, which has revealed that it will picket the singer’s gig in St Louis on Thursday this week. The press release is a minor classic.
What of the Rev Fred Waldron Phelps and his flock? Well, this lot have certainly have got form. Westboro Baptist is infamous for hold demos outside the funerals of victims of anti-gay hate crime and those who died from AIDS, with placards bearing the charming slogan ‘God hates fags’.
As a sideline, Westboro Baptist also organised similar protests at the burials of the repatriated remains of US military personnel killed in Iraq. This time the placards read: ‘Thank God for dead soldiers’. Even for the country that gave the world the first amendment, that was a bit much. In 2006, Dubya signed the Respect for America’s Fallen Heroes Act into law, outlawing any repeat performance.
Meanwhile, back in Britain, Islamist sect Islam4UK is seeking permission to stage a protest march in Wooton Bassett, the small town near Swindon through which regularly sees processions of hearses bearing the coffins of servicemen and women who lost their lives in Afghanistan. Rev Phelps and Islam4UK leader Anjem Choudary patently want to thank the same God for the same dead soldiers.
How right-wing economics has trouble standing up
When it comes to the economy, right-wingers have one simple narratives: to reduce the size of government so it can aid job creation and growth in the economy.
That is, after all, what Milton Friedman advocated. The theory goes that government spending crowds out more efficient private spending – and therefore job creation – and the economy suffers.
But the evidence fails to support that, when applied to Capitalism’s natural home: the United States of America.
First, right-wingers frequently say they are committed to reducing the deficit and size of the government. But as the graph below shows: Republicans have actually presided over a growth in US national (and world debt) more than Democrats.
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Graph: why UK health spending better than US
This graph published first on the National Geographic blog clearly illustrates the difference between spending and outcomes in the UK and US healthcare systems.
It shows how much more Americans spend just to do slightly better than the UK in life expectancy.
It doesn’t even take into account that lack of health insurance contributes to an estimated 45,000 deaths a year in the US.
Despite David Cameron’s claims that he is fully committed to the NHS – he has recently had meetings with advocates who seek to undermine the NHS as it stands now.
[hat tip @CharlesArthur]
Taking apart Conservative party policies
contribution by reader ‘Donut Hinge Party’
Some time this month everyone’s expecting David Cameron to release his manifesto. The conventional narrative, “the Tories have no policies other than the inheritance tax one,” frankly isn’t true.
A quick skip over to conservatives.com will show a vast swathe of information about policy. Admittedly, much of it is woolly thinking about encouraging this and fostering that, but there are a few hard commitments, too.
I thought it might be interesting to fisk it and see how much actually makes its way to the final manifesto.
Now, I’m no partisan, so let me say here and there; not ALL of the policies are a load of rubbish. Although most of their ‘new’ policies are already in action: ensured support of those on Incapacity Benefit, minimum tariffs for crimes, councils publishing expenses online, flexible working hours for parents.
I like their energy ideas; get farmers to use their fallow land for wind turbines and biofuels. However, these are vastly outweighed by some of the ill conceived policies writ large.
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Watch: Fox News guest – strip-search all Muslims
“We have to use profiling. And I mean be very serious and harsh about the profiling,” retired Lt. General Tom McInerney of the U.S. Air Force tells Fox News.
But such attempts are likely to increase our threat from terrorism.
Studies have showed that many militants and terrorists are actually driven by humiliation they suffered from authorities and deep sense of revenge that inspired.
[via Mediaite]
The Tories seek out wisdom of the crowds
Shadow culture secretary Jeremy Hunt says he’s going to “develop an online platform that enables us to tap into the wisdom of crowds to resolve difficult policy challenges”. Marina Hyde thinks the Tories may have solved the problem of their lack of policies. But with what significance?
The wisdom of crowds phenomenon observes that if you get a lot of people together and ask them to guess something – the weight of a pig at a county fair, say – then the more people you have guessing, the more likely they are to collectively get it right if you average out all the individual answers.
For every ridiculously far-out over-estimate, someone else under-estimates by the same margin. Eventually, the over- and under-valuations even each other out. The more people guessing, the closer the collective guess gets to a remarkable degree of accuracy.
The problem with applying such theorems to the realm of politics is that they only have purchase if the crowd or jury is being asked to discover something objectively certain. But politics is essentially conflict and struggle between clashing world-views. Large groups of people cannot discover the “correct” political policies, because the notion of “correct” politics is a chimera.
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Indy keeps batting for Tories with Eton intvw
The Independent continued its tacit support for the Conservatives yesterday in an interview with the headmaster at Eton School.
The deeply sympathetic interview by deputy political editor Nigel Morris said it was a: ‘Warning for Labour over attacks on public school background of Tory leader’.
The interview helpfully highlighted the apparent effort Eton makes in attracting students from a range of backgrounds.
Tony Little, who has been head of the £9,617-a-term school for seven years has criticised politicians who have used its name to score points.
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Mr Cameron, in turn, has been trying to play down his schooling in an attempt to boost his credibility with the general public and avoid being dismissed as an out-of-touch toff.Mr Little said “one might have hoped” such tactics had been left behind in the last century, but added that he and the school tried to rise above them.
2010: A crunch year for us progressives
[image by Gary Barker]
A General Election which always is a watershed moment in any countries political history.
This one will see a resurgent Conservative Party face an increasingly tired looking Labour Party and a Liberal Democrat Party that has aspirations to greatness.
Meanwhile, the Green Party could well be on the cusp of a breakthrough moment in Brighton Pavilion.
It is my sincere belief that David Cameron is wrong when he says that people throughout politics share a commitment to progress and that all the signs indicate the election of a Conservative government (with or without assistance from AN Other in the form of a coalition) will damage the cause of progress dramatically in this country.
Given that the question becomes for progressives; how do we stop this occurring? Do we look to Labour, the Lib Dems or the Greens?
continue reading… »
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» The real agenda behind Telegraph’s abortion investigation
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» Job snob? No, I’ve got the T-shirt
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» Why work “reforms” in Spain are a warning for workers across Europe
» Five things you need to know about the NHS bill
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» Laziness levels in Britain getting lazier, wails government
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