Make yourself heard on the Digital Economy bill
The government are refusing to back down. They are pressing ahead with plans which even they admit could punish innocent people: by disconnecting whole families and companies where one individual may have infringed copyright.
The music and film lobbies have portrayed copyright infringers as thieves endangering their entire industries.
They have pressed for harsh and indiscriminate punishments and persuaded Peter Mandelson that any appeals should be narrow, and focus purely on legal technicalities.
‘I didn’t do it’ will be no defence: if somebody else seems to have shared copyright content on your account, that will be your problem. You will be punished.
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Protest against Pope tomorrow (London)
No Pope, No Vatican – London for a Secular Europe – oppose Pope Benedict’s state visit to the UK
This Sunday 14 February 2010
Meet at 1pm outside Westminster Cathedral (not Westminster Abbey).
Victoria Street, London SW1 (near the corner with Ambrosden Avenue)
March to the Italian Embassy in Grosvenor Square for a rally at 3pm.
We support:
· Women’s equality and reproductive rights
· Equal rights for LGBT people
· A secular Europe – immune to the Vatican’s agenda
· One law for all, no religious exemptions from the law
· State neutrality in matters of religion and belief
We oppose:
· European Union collusion with religion (Lisbon Treaty Article 16c)
· The special status of the Vatican in the United Nations
· State-funded faith schools
· The economic privilege and political influence of the Vatican in Italy
· Taxpayers funding the Pope’s State Visit to the UK this September
· Misogyny, homophobia, fascism, racism and xenophobia
Protest against the Pope’s State Visit to the UK
“We want a secular Europe, where the Vatican and the Catholic church cease attempting to impose their harsh, intolerant morality on everyone else,” said Peter Tatchell of OutRage!, who is speaking at Sunday’s protest and assisting with its organisation.
“The Pope opposes women’s rights, gay equality, embryonic stem cell research, death with dignity and the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV.”
“He wants the Catholic Church to be exempt from equality and anti-discrimination laws that apply to everyone else.”
Sunday’s demonstration is organised by the Central London Humanist Group in partnership with the British Humanist Association, the National Secular Society, One Law for All, the Gay And Lesbian Humanist Association, the Rationalist Association and OutRage!.
It is in solidarity with the demonstration happening the same weekend in Rome, also against the Vatican and its reactionary interference in Italian, European and world-wide politics.
Program of the demonstration:
- Assemble: 1pm at Westminster Cathedral (not the Abbey)
- March: 2pm – 3pm from Westminster Cathedral to the Italian embassy
- Rally: 3pm – 5pm at the Italian embassy (Grosvenor square)
Speakers at the Italian embassy (3pm) :
* Bob Churchill (British Humanist Association),
* Derek Lennard (Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association)
* Maryam Namazie (One Law for All)
* Gerard Phillips (Protest The Pope)
* David Pollock (European Humanist Federation)
* Terry Sanderson (National Secular Society)
* Peter Tatchell (OutRage!)
* Josh Kutchinsky (Central London Humanist Group)
Tory gas security fears exposed as “hot air”
Since before their conference in October the Conservative party have been raising fears of energy blackouts in Britain.
Greg Clark, Shadow energy minister, even claimed in his party conference speech that ‘there must be immediate action to keep the lights on‘ – a speech which, for dramatic effect, began in a darkened room.
The same language was trotted out at a debate about gas security in Westminster we helped organise, when Charles Hendry, Conservative Shadow Minister for Energy, raised the spectre of energy blackouts.
What’s going on here? Well, the thinly veiled subtext behind the Tory line goes like this: Britain is at the mercy of foreign powers – in particular the Russians – who supply us with our gas. It’s a pretty strong challenge. But is it right?
At the event, the experts who actually run our energy systems were pretty dismissive of the ‘energy blackout’ rhetoric. Chris Train, Network Operations Director at the National Grid, said that gas had not been in short supply during the cold spell, despite seven of the twenty coldest days on record in the UK.
Where gas had cut out, it was a result of the ‘Grid balancing supply and demand – reducing supply to some industrial customers on cheaper tariffs, who get lower bills in return for less predictability.
Sussex University energy expert Dr Jim Watson outlined new research showing that most challenges to energy security come from ropy domestic infrastructure (I’m paraphrasing) or limited gas storage capacity, but not from uncertainties in foreign supplies.
Binyam Mohamed: own goal
Spy boss Jonathan Evans cannot even be bothered to spell Binyam Mohamed’s name correctly, rendering it with three Ms in both the online and print versions of his article in defence of MI5 carried by the Daily Telegraph this morning.
That alone points to a worrying lack of attention on the part of Britain’s security services. You kind of want to hope that the funny people manage to identify the right guys to keep tabs on and bust when necessary, at least most of the time.
But Mr Evans – looking all calm and relaxed in his open neck Tattershall check shirt, sleeves rolled up to indicate readiness to get down to work – does make one very important and entirely correct assertion.
The international Islamist far right will indeed extract maximum advantage from the Mohamed case, enabling them to undertake ‘propaganda and campaigns to undermine our will and ability to confront them’. So the pertinent question becomes: who provided them with this wonderful opportunity?
The tale of Robin Hood, re-visited
This is the first in an occasional series, in which traditional English tales are retold by Tories. Today, the tale of Robin Hood:
“Back in the Middle Ages, there were a heroic group of sturdy Englishmen called the Barons. The Barons were responsible for making sure that the lazy peasants were kept in order and did their work.
This was tremendously hard work as even though there was no welfare state to create a dependency culture amongst the poor.
the Barons always needed to make sure that the common folk grew enough crops and produced enough wealth to allow the Royal Family to hold banquets, go on crusades and perform other such duties.
continue reading… »
Astonishing transcript of Boris evading questions
Yesterday Dave Hill posted this astonishing transcript of a question-and-answer session between London’s occasional Mayor Boris Johnson and Assembly Members Jenny Jones and Darren Johnson.
It’s worth reading in full to get the extent to which Boris is trying to evade questions on his promises.
Jenny Jones: Mister Mayor, since we questioned you in January the final report of Smarter Travel Sutton has been published. And Kulveer Ranger…said at that time that the results were phenomenal, with a 75 percent increase in cycling and a 16 percent increase in people travelling on the bus.
And you yourself said to the TfL board on 3 February, “This is our vision for transport in Outer London, this is what we want to achieve.” And so I’m curious about why your budget only gives a minimum amount of funding to actually extend that scheme and if there is a possibility to roll that out too all twenty outer boroughs and really make a difference on cycling and lowering car use.
Boris Johnson: Well thank you, ah, Jenny and, you know, you and I have discussed this many times and I think it’s finally now common ground between us that we are spending record sums under this mayoralty on cycling. Unless my memory deludes me it’s eleven million, far more than any previous, ah, mayoralty.
And on the outer boroughs there’s, I think, we’re already starting to see the fruits of the activity that we’ve been pioneering. We now have twelve, no fewer than twelve, outer London boroughs who are interested in doing a big Skyride…
Jenny Jones: You haven’t given them the funding for it. You’ve only given funding for possibly two more boroughs.
Boris: I would remind you, Jenny, that the Skyride is brilliantly financed by Sky. Hence its name Skyride. And since I’m a frugal, cost-cutting Mayor…
Jenny Jones: He’s not answering the question, chair. He’s not answering the question. Smarter Travel in outer boroughs…
Darren Johnson: Can we have a response from the Mayor to that please?
Boris: Well, the answer is that I think we’re having fantastic success in promoting cycling. As I said before, we’re spending record sums…
Jenny Jones: Tell him to answer my question. Why haven’t you funded Smarter Travel for more outer boroughs? If it’s such a fantastic success, if this is what we want to achieve, why aren’t you actually putting your money where your mouth is?
Boris: As I say, we have no fewer than twelve Outer London boroughs who are interested…
Jenny Jones: Yes, but you haven’t put the funding there for those twelve! You’ve only put the funding there for two!
Boris: I think, I er, I ah, if you won’t listen to my answer there’s no point in my giving the answer.
Jenny Jones: But you’re not addressing the problem of the lack of money in your budget.
Boris: Well, ah, what I’m telling you Jenny is that we’re in very tight financial times. We’re spending record sums on cycling, and we have no fewer than twelve boroughs who are interested in the Skyride…
Jenny Jones: I’m sorry, this is repetition of the most horrendous kind. You are avoiding my question. I think that’s an offence to this Assembly, actually. Alright, let me move on. If you won’t do that [answer my question], um, in your final budget you dismissed my proposal to freeze bus fares, citing the loss of £76 million of income and your transport adviser Kulveer has dismissed my idea of raising charges on cars as lunacy.
Now, it seems to me lunacy to actually raise bus fares and drive people off the buses while at the same time actually benefiting car drivers who’ve had it fairly easy over the past few years. So you’re actually penalising bus passengers and not helping them in the outer boroughs where we could make the biggest gains.
Boris: Well, just a couple of things if I may through you, Chair. The reality is that bus ridership is now at an all time high, even though…
Jenny Jones: It’s no thanks to you, Mr Mayor! It’s thanks to the previous Mayor!
Boris: I, I. Would you like me to answer the question?
Jenny Jones: Yes, I would like you to answer the question! You’re not answering my questions!
Darren: If we could have a brief response to the question from the Mayor…
Boris: What was the question?
Jenny Jones: Is it sensible to put up bus fares when you’re trying to encourage people to use the buses?
Boris: Is it sensible to do what?
Jenny Jones: Put up the bus fares by twenty percent when you’re trying to encourage people to use the buses?
Boris: The bus fares have not gone up twenty percent. And the objective, as everybody understands in London, is to finance a huge black hole in TfL’s budget, left by the last Mayor, who cynically held down fares in the deluded hope of being re-elected. We have a recession which…
Jenny Jones: I want to put on record my dissatisfaction with the Mayor’s lack of answers to my questions. This is not being accountable to the London Assembly when you repeat yourself endlessly and don’t answer questions. That is not fair and it is not democratic.
Darren: Can we have a very quick response to that because the Green group are now out of time…
You can also watch the Webcast.
To summarise: Boris Johnson argued for extending a scheme that would encourage cycling and bus usage, but failed to offer the necessary funding for it.
Meanwhile he has dropped the idea of raising charges on cars, which he claims he wants to discourage use of, but increased fares on poorer people using London Transport.
Boris is also reducing police officers in London – in direct contradiction to promises – and has increased press officers – once again contradicting earlier promises.
Happy to stand up for rich bankers while penalising London’s poor.
Did a Labour ‘spending splurge’ really take place?
Has the government really gone on a spending ‘splurge’ since 2007 and worsened the deficit?
The thinking goes like this:
Before the recession, in 2005/6, government spending was already 41% of GDP. Then, the crisis hit. The Labour government lost all common sense and resurrected Keynesianism. This meant a spending splurge – as their own figures show (tables B13 and B14), spending leapt from 43% to 48 or 49% over the crisis. Cash spending went up from £627bn to £706bn in two years. If that ain’t a splurge, what is? So, the government used the cover of a crisis to relaunch defunct economic policies and takeover the economy, to the detriment of our long term prosperity.
Government spending is a higher ratio of GDP since 2007. It is true. But the methodology is incredibly misleading.
Keep this in mind:
* Businesses and households plan forwards. And they do so in terms of nominal cash. But we don’t base our plans on what proportion of GDP our spending is. If GDP expectations fall massively from £1.5trn to £1.2trn, so that my £1500 holiday has leapt from being 1 billionth of GDP to 1.25 billionths, I do not think I am spending more.
continue reading… »
Glenn Beck comes to UK; advertisers run away!
Very quietly, it seems, Glenn Beck has come to the UK. Or at least his show has started broadcasting here on Fox News on Sky.
And for the last three days it has run without any advertising, thanks to a cross-Atlantic effort to keep up a boycott of the presenter.
The US based campaign ‘Stop Beck’ reports:
Glenn Beck’s show in the United Kingdom has not run any commercials during the past three days (Tues-Thurs). Glenn Beck’s show in the UK used to run commercials. The shows that come on before and after Glenn Beck still run commercials. But, for the past three days, Mr. Beck hasn’t had any sponsors in the U.K.
During the commercial break, instead of running ads, they cut away to Sky News updates or the weather. Perhaps they’re having trouble finding sponsors willing to subsidize Glenn Beck’s misinformation, vitriol, sexism and race-baiting?
That is very likely to be the case.
The US campaign group has just confirmed three more advertisers that have dropped Glenn Beck, taking the total to 102 advertisers.
The British arm of the campaign launched recently and has been tracking advertisers on the show.
It confirmed that advertisers on the show are slowly petering out. Past sponsors include Calvin Klein, Simply Health, Land Rover, McDonald’s and Nintendo.
You can follow the UK arm of Stop Glenn Beck via their website or on Twitter.
Glenn Beck first came to infamy by asking the first US Muslim congressman to prove he was not a terrorist.
He has since acquired a long history of spouting mad paranoia and misogyny.
Watch
Amnesty and its impartiality
The suspension of Gita Sahgal for allegedly briefing the Sunday Times against her employer, Amnesty International, follows the suspension a few months ago by a Human Rights Watch employee, Marc Garlasco, who was revealed to be a collector of Second World War memorabilia.
Perhaps predictably, some of the people who were most vociferous in calling for Garlasco’s suspension have been equally forthright in calling Sahgal’s reinstatement.
I do not know either Sahgal or Garlasco and I do not know all the circumstances surrounding their suspensions, but I do have some experience of operating disciplinary procedures in a human rights organisation.
I worked as a middle level manager in Amnesty International UK Section’s Campaign Department 10 years ago and a large part of my job involved personnel issues. I have absolutely no doubt that if a member of my staff had behaved as Sahgal is alleged to have done I would have had to take disciplinary action against her and this applies not just to Amnesty International, but to every management job in every organisation I have done before or since.
As even her friend and supporter, Rahila Gupta, admits here Sahgal was not a whistle-blower because she was not revealing activities that anyone was trying to conceal. She went to the media because she disagreed with a decision that Amnesty had taken to give a platform Moazzam Begg and to work with his organization Cageprisoners on behalf of people detained in Guantánamo Bay.
She must have done it knowing this would be used by journalists like Nick Cohen who is on record as supporting the torture of detainees in certain circumstances, as part of his ongoing campaign to denigrate the organization.
At a professional level I have more sympathy with Garlasco whose hobby, while slightly weird, had no bearing on his professional activities. However, I think that, on balance, Human Rights Watch were right to suspend him and both cases should provide a wake-up call to human rights organizations.
As Frances Crook notes, Amnesty used to operate a very strict ‘joint-platform’ policy in which it was reluctant ever to mount joint campaigns with other organizations. I remember that part of my recruitment process was an in-tray exercise that included telling Campaign Against the Arms Trade why we would not be signing a hypothetical letter to the Guardian with them condemning the sale of arms to Turkey.
I also remember the first report I wrote (with Keir Starmer) coming back full of paragraphs with red lines scored through them because, in by boss’s opinion, they had broken the ‘work on own country’ rule.
These procedures were awful for those of us who had to operate them. Getting out public statements was slow and cumbersome and we often appeared stand-offish and aloof to other organizations. Staff were also expected to observe considerable discretion in their personal lives; a friend of mine who worked as an Indonesia Researcher resigned her job because she fell in love with a resistance leader in East Timor.
It is on that basis that I think Human Rights Watch was right to suspend Garlasco but why I also think that Sahgal’s – on the face of it appalling – behaviour should not detract from her political argument. Her basic criticism of Amnesty is that it has allowed itself to be seen as too close to someone who has strong views on the position of women in society, which many people (myself included) find repugnant.
Begg has every right to hold whatever political views he wants and – as he points out – nearly everyone familiar with the situation in Afghanistan has concluded that ‘engagement and dialogue’ with the Taliban may be the only route to peace in the country.
But, as Southall Black Sisters have noted, ‘We know from experience around the world, including post war Iraq that women’s rights are the first to be traded in such political settlements’. Indeed Amnesty itself has warned of the danger of such a development in Afghanistan.
Some argue that Begg’s actions, for example, in developing dialogue with his former prison guards, could be used as a model for peace-building and that Amnesty should encourage this process. However, I think that misunderstands the basis of how human rights organisations should work in conflict and post-conflict situations.
Despite its name, Amnesty has played a leading role in opposing those who argue that human rights violators should be forgiven in the name of ‘peace and reconciliation’.
I think that the position that it has taken on the ‘justice and peace’ trade-off has sometimes been too dogmatic in places such as Northern Uganda. However, part of the reason why Amnesty International is so important is that it has been so uncompromising in defence of human rights above all other political considerations.
In its statement justifying the suspension of Sahgal, Amnesty made clear that it welcomed a ‘vigorous internal debate’ and my memories of the organisation are that those debates were very vigorous indeed. But one thing that has always held Amnesty together is a realisation that the organisation’s core purpose is bigger and more important than any of our factional considerations or ideological disagreements.
Amnesty is listened to and taken seriously at the highest and lowest levels because of its reputation as a neutral, impartial and independent organisation. It is capable of generating a deluge of letters, faxes, phone calls and emails that may save a life or stop someone from being tortured.
Those who seek to undermine that reputation – for whatever reason – had better be clear that their own ‘higher purpose’ justifies the suffering that will go unchallenged as a result.
Did Goldman Sachs rig Robin Hood tax poll?
With hindsight, perhaps it should have looked fishy from the start that the British public had decided to take sides with the Sheriff of Nottingham.
Campaigners for a “Robin Hood tax” watched with alarm as thousands of votes poured into their website, rejecting their proposal for a levy on City wheeler-dealing, to raise money to fight poverty and climate change.
After a bit more investigation, though, the unlikely backlash against the rob-the-rich plan – almost 5,000 no votes against the Robin Hood tax within 20 minutes – turned out to emanate from just two computer servers, one of which was registered to the investment bank Goldman Sachs.
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