Why not legalise gay marriage, Ed?
At several points in his interview with Sunny, published yesterday, Ed Miliband comes across either as lacking the courage of his leftwing convictions, or as lacking those convictions altogether.
And then there is this:
Would you allow gays to be legally married, rather than just be registered as a civil partnership?
He hesitates. “I will listen to what people have to say on going further than that if there is a demand. No one has yet put that to me in the leadership election.” He said his feeling was that not enough people were asking for the policy.
Tom Watson calls Gove a “miserable pipsqueak”
Watch this highly amusing exchange from yesterday during Michael Gove’s apology to the House of Commons.
Tom Watson MP calls him “a miserable pipsqueak” and is told off by Speaker Bercow.
(a good quality video also hosted by Dave Naylor)
Political Scrapbook provides the transcript:
He can embarrass himself; he can disgrace his party; but what is intolerable is that he has cynically raised the hopes of hundreds and thousands of families. You’re a miserable pipsqueak of a man, Gove!
Bravo Tom Watson!
Rising hostility between No. 10 and the MOD
This blog post by James Kirkup at the Telegraph may be an interest indicator of things to come:
On the front page of several newspapers today (including this one) was the news that British troops will leave Sangin. Dr Fox has just confirmed this to the Commons, but his thunder was clearly stolen since everyone already knew what he was going to say and had done since last night.
I think it’s safe to say that senior folk at the MoD were far from happy that their story leaked last night. And who are they blaming for all this? That’s right, their chums over the road at No 10.
In less than three months, the Coalition government has reached a point where there is a general atmosphere of suspicion and distrust between No 10 and the MoD. In other words, not everything has changed since Labour’s day…
What’s interesting is that Liam Fox was repeatedly touted as a man deeply respected at the MOD, and knowledgeable on defence policy.
And yet within weeks he was slapped down quite publicly for making “racist comments”.
And followed a string of embarrassing leaks to the press over plans.
Is it time to put Liam Fox on the re-shuffle watch list?
Why the left needs to set its own questions and debates
When Philip of Macedon – father of Alexander The Great – fought his opponents, he always won. His army had the longest spears. Until the Romans came along.
For unlike their previous opponents, the Romans didn’t attempt to beat Philip at his own game. They simply threw javelins to disable their shields, then walked between the spears to kill the Macedonians with their short swords. The lesson is obvious – you don’t beat your enemy on their own turf.
Today, the same lesson is famous among political hacks, and is most often expressed as: every election is a referendum, the winner is the person who sets the questions.
continue reading… »
7/7 conspiracy theories: why false flag claims fail
The 0740 train from Luton to London was cancelled that day. The bombers left enough explosives to equip another full operation in the boot of their car. Either that, or the materials in question were far too sophisticated for amateurs to manufacture without outside help. One of the two.
Yeah, and y’know that guy who was supposed to have blown himself up on the bus, right? He was caught on CCTV in a McDonalds at least 20 minutes after the explosion. And here’s the clincher; the 30 bus route doesn’t even go through Tavistock Square.
I managed to contrive to be in Cardiff on 7/7, the fifth anniversary of which falls today. Even so, I found the events traumatic. Mobile phone networks were hopelessly overloaded, meaning that it was several hours before I was able to establish that my kids were OK. I later discovered that a friend, albeit one I had not seen for a while, was among the dead.
continue reading… »
Tory marriage policies rely on “little evidence”
Does being married rather than cohabiting lead to more stability in relationships between parents?
The government’s recent State of the Nation report stated:
Around 3 million children in the UK have experienced the separation of their parents. This is partly attributable to a rise in cohabitation, given the increased likelihood of break-up for cohabiting couples relative to married couples.
But a new report out today by the Institute of Fiscal Studies challenges this assertion.
The introduction states:
Our findings suggest that while it is true that cohabiting parents are more likely to split up than married ones, there is very little evidence to suggest that this is due to a causal effect of marriage.
Instead, it seems simply that different sorts of people choose to get married and have children, rather than to have children as a cohabiting couple, and that those relationships with the best prospects of lasting are the ones that are most likely to lead to marriage.
Our analysis suggests, therefore, that if more cohabiting parents decide to get married, it is very unlikely that a significant number would become more likely to stay together.
It also means that it is highly unlikely that the increasing rate of childbearing among cohabiting couples has caused an increased likelihood of break-up among parents.
This issue is important, because enhanced relationship stability is often considered to be one of the key pathways through which formal marriage between parents might lead to better outcomes for children.
To establish that this is the case, however, it needs to be clearly shown that marriage itself promotes relationship stability, rather than it simply being the case that people who are more likely to stay together are the ones who get married.
—–
The report can be downloaded from here.
Is this why Sir Alan Budd distanced himself from the Tories?
Sir Alan Budd’s sudden resignation from Osborne’s Bureau for Rebuttal is the perfect moment to remind ourselves of his astonishing – but essentially correct – analysis of Tory economic policy in the 1980s (from Adam Curtis’s 1992 documentary Pandora’s Box).
(video clip after the fold)
continue reading… »
Our interview with Ed Miliband: ‘I am the candidate of change’
Labour leadership contender Ed Miliband has called for the government owned bank Northern Rock to be fully mutualised, in a special interview with Liberal Conspiracy. Although the policy was included in the Labour manifesto at the 11th hour, the younger Miliband is the only contender to make it again, prominently.
In fact he goes further and says Labour needs to embrace mutualism more strongly as other countries in mainland Europe have.
The call underlines a shift in focus in his campaign to explain how Labour’s relationship with the public would be different if he were elected leader.
——————
Key points
- Calls for Northern Rock to be mutualised
- Says 50% of his shadow cabinet would be comprised of women.
- “I am the candidate of change”
- Rules out going back to ID cards.
- “I’ve never hesitated in calling myself English”
- Doesn’t rule out a coalition with the Libdems
——————
continue reading… »
TaxPayers Alliance caught out confused on “wasteful” spending
Q: When is state spending considered ‘wasteful’ by the TPA?
A: When it was instituted by a British Labour government.
This is the impression one can’t fail to get when reading the following two statements by the Taxpayer’s Alliance on the subject of government-developed iPhone applications, which improve civic engagement.
continue reading… »
BBC cuts out Jeremy Clarkson’s homophobia
The BBC has edited out an exchange from Sunday night’s BBC2 Top Gear which featured an exchange with his guest Alastair Campbell.
Campbell wrote about this exchange on his blog:
I cannot remember how the subject of homosexuality came up, but I said at one point that he wasn’t very sound on gay rights … Oh yes I am, he said, adding, to more laughter from the largely adoring (of him) crowd ‘I demand the right not to be bummed.’
I had the immediate thought that this was unlikely to be broadcast at 8pm on a Sunday, with Songs of Praise still ringing in some ears, but nonetheless chipped in that I suspected he was worried that he might like it. He seemed to enjoy that, and recalled his public school education, though without any detail.
Needless to say the BBC edited out Clarkson’s homophobic remarks in order to maintain his cult of personality.
Clarkson is paid £1 million a year by the BBC.
In 2007 he was nominated for Stonewall’s Bigot of the Year award for refusing to apologise after being reprimanded by BBC bosses for derogatory gay jibes on primetime TV.
The BBC told Pink News that the above exchange was not broadcast because the section had to be cut down from 25 minutes to nine.
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