Hanging out in the midst of the EDL

by Sunny Hundal    
February 5, 2011 at 10:59 pm

Around 3000 supporters of the English Defence League came to the town of Luton today. Around 12,000 were expected, but in the end the turnout was far below anyone expected. There were nearly as much police as the EDL supporters.

The EDL supporters had three pubs they could congregate at, on a narrow road behind Luton station. I decided that rather than just take pictures from afar, I would go into the crowd and speak to some of them.

To be fair to the EDL supporters, I got no hostility or any racial slurs thrown in my direction. But then I mostly hung out with Denis Edwards, a black EDL supporter who knew lots of people there. He has a long history of being involved with football supporters – travelling up and down the country. Many people knew him and they were happy to talk to me.

A brief video, from the midst of the supporters, mostly to catch a sense of the rowdy crowd

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

How the Tory right could become Labour’s best friend

by Hopi Sen    
February 5, 2011 at 2:30 pm

As a result of the coalition putting existing political loyalties to great tests, there’s a coming battle for dominance in British politics.

In that fight, The right of the Conservative party are the hidden and undeclared allies of Ed Miliband.

They don’t know it and would shudder at the thought, but in every action they take there is a brutal internal logic which strains the coalition to its limit, and in doing so, allows Ed Miliband to position himself in precisely the territory that would make most sense for the coalition.
continue reading… »

The type of social mobility no one talks about

by Guest    
February 5, 2011 at 10:30 am

contribution by James Plunkett

Ed Miliband yesterday addressed the issue of social mobility in a speech in Gateshead. His argument was built around the concept of the ‘British Promise’ – the idea that each generation of children will do better than their parents.

It’s our own rather less lofty version of the American Dream, and it’s a promise, he says, that’s in danger of being broken.
continue reading… »

Couldn’t BBC Question Time find anyone informed on Egyptian politics?

by Guest    
February 4, 2011 at 6:15 pm

contribution by MediaInsider

Despite the obvious limitations of the BBCs coverage of Egypt, including an apparent inability to get as close to the action as many of their news rivals, one thing they have certainly got right across the whole news network has been the interviews over the last two weeks.

Coverage has been driven by leading figures like El Balderai, Boutros Boutros Garli and Mona El Tahawy: all Egyptian, all relevant and all adding significantly to the debate. The conspicuous absense of white, western scholars talking at length about the intricacies of the the situation has been wholly refreshing.
continue reading… »

Another complaint to PCC on benefits articles

by Sunny Hundal    
February 4, 2011 at 5:54 pm

The online campaigning website Broken of Britain have lodged another complaint to the Press Complaints Commission over its coverage of disability benefits.

Last week the Daily Mail ran an article titled, ‘The great disability benefit free-for-all: Half of claimants are not asked to prove eligibility‘.

But the article was revealed as grossly inaccurate by several bloggers.

The fact-checking site Full Fact pointed out:

The Mail appears to have conflated the proportion of cases that don’t require the collection of ‘additional medical evidence’ with cases that require no evidence and no checks of eligibility. This does not follow when we look at the initial application process. It can hardly be claimed that half of claimants are not asked to prove eligibility since all claimants fill out an application form, although it is not clear what proportion of applications include evidence from a doctor at the initial stage.

Broken of Britain said this week that they would continue complaining to the PCC about the newspaper’s campaign against disabled people, and wanted to “show the Daily Mail that their tirades against disabled people will not be put up with anymore”.

Their complaint to the PCC states:

This claim is not only grossly inaccurate and misleading, but is also a distortion and misrepresentation of the truth. There are no Disability Living Allowance claimants who have never been asked to provide evidence – filling in the long application form is a prerequisite of a successful claim. There are Special Rules for claimants who need their claim processed quickly – in cases of terminal illness, for example – but these rules only apply to 1.2% of the DLA caseload or 37,800 people.

In late January, Broken of Britain lodged a complaint to the Cabinet Office to investigate a transgression of the Ministerial Code by Chris Grayling.

They pointed out:

The title of this press release – Majority of people found fit for work as Government presses ahead with reforms” – is highly misleading. The figures given in the text of the press release are “Fit for Work – 39%”. This is far from being a majority. The first sentence of this statement is also problematic as the emphasis is placed upon “vast majority” and “fit to work”.

The only way to arrive at the “majority” mentioned in the title is to add the figures for those found Fit for Work and those whose claims were closed before the assessment was complete – the suggestion implicit in the opening sentence. However, there is no evidence at all that cases closed before completion of assessment equate to fitness to work, and it is a manipulation of data to do so.

They have also written to the PCC over the Daily Mail and Daily Express coverage of those remarks.

Let’s see if the toothless PCC or the Cabinet Office take these complaints with the seriousness they deserve.

Dammit, those gays are getting the upper hand

by Dave Osler    
February 4, 2011 at 3:28 pm

Picture the Britain of the not-too-distant future, in which an omnipotent Pink Stasi mounts a 24/7 undercover surveillance operation on all straight pick-up joints, listening out for anybody who invites a member of the opposite gender to go back to their place for a coffee.

The man and the woman are trailed home by a squad of heavily armed Muscle Marys, who wait outside the premises for about half an hour, thereby allowing time for all necessary seduction preliminaries. And as soon as the bedroom light is switched on, a snatch squad hammers down the front door just as the hapless couple are about to make the beast with two backs.
continue reading… »

The evidence for more democracy at the workplace

by Chris Dillow    
February 4, 2011 at 2:23 pm

Here’s some laboratory evidence that workplace democracy raises productivity:

We report evidence from a real-effort experiment confirming that worker performance is sensitive to the process used to select the compensation contract. Groups of workers that voted to determine their compensation scheme provided significantly more effort than groups that had no say in how they would be compensated. This effect is robust to controls for the compensation scheme implemented and worker characteristics.

continue reading… »

How Labour’s Movement for Change got this retiree involved in campaigning

by Guest    
February 4, 2011 at 11:30 am

contribution by Marion Maxwell

I was delighted to hear the news that Movement for Change will be being continued and expanded to bring community organising back to the Labour movement. My community and I have already benefitted from some of the methods that M4C wants to equip all party members with.

One of the first actions of the government was to cancel the creation of Norwich Unitary council, one of the consequences being that we were forced into a by-election in September 2010. I was selected as Labour candidate for the Mancroft Ward, a Green Party stronghold, and deemed difficult to win by the Labour Party.
continue reading… »

Supermarkets to become driving test centres

by Newswire    
February 4, 2011 at 9:30 am

Documents leaked to the PCS union from the Driving Standards Agency, highlighted today, show that senior managers have been hatching plans to close driving test centres and privatise driving tests.

The PCS say that the leaks mention plans to “make use of community centres, supermarkets etc as a base for examiners to work from”.

In one of the documents, transport minister Mike Penning told four MPs on 2 November 2010 he was looking at “whether [driving tests] could be provided more efficiently at a lower cost; and whether they could be undertaken by other organisations inside or outside of the public sector”.

The memo goes further in suggesting private firms could use more ‘delegated examiners’ – private testers whose pass rates are 20% higher than DSA examiners – leading to fears the driving test will be dumbed down as an incentive.

PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said:

These new documents shed more light on the plans being hatched behind closed doors by senior managers and ministers.

Worryingly, it is the latest evidence of the creeping privatisation of the agency’s work, which puts ideology before road safety.

Another document shows the DSA is exploring options around closing down test centres and allowing private firms to charge others to use their premises, with the suggestion private companies could be paid by the DSA for this.

From a press release

Why the Big Society will be as dead as a Dodo

by Sunny Hundal    
February 4, 2011 at 9:05 am

I’m on the board of a local charity, which deals in ‘conflict resolution’. Basically, it reaches out to young kids in areas where there is tension (gangs, racial tension, religious etc) and gets them involved in activity to deal with that tension. It also does a lot of local community work with people of different backgrounds.

Its also teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, thanks to funding being slashed at local councils, schools and grant donors. Several other charities and local community organisations in the area have already gone bust.
continue reading… »

RECENT OPINION ARTICLES

How useful is Tesco’s u-turn on Workfare? 62 Comments Watch: Obama sings the blues at White House 15 Comments Why is YouGov’s Kellner endorsing the NHS bill? 23 Comments ‘Move Your Money’ planned against RBS 8 Comments Rupert Murdoch cheers Rick Santorum to win 24 Comments Labour: public pay won’t be frozen entirely 16 Comments Revealed: That ‘dossier’ on Progress 16 Comments Is Guardian as bad as Tesco on experience? 83 Comments Bigots launch coalition against gay marriage 203 Comments Revealed: other companies benefit from ‘work experience’ 85 Comments

LATEST COMMENTS » JIm posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » pagar posted on Workfare - what does the evidence show? » Chaise Guevara posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » Katie posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » Chaise Guevara posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » TimJ posted on How Scotland Yard monitors prying bloggers and journalists » Shatterface posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » Cylux posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » pagar posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » pjt posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » nothingspecial posted on Workfare - what does the evidence show? » Chaise Guevara posted on How Scotland Yard monitors prying bloggers and journalists » Patron Press - #P2 posted on Workfare - what does the evidence show? » karl meyer posted on Workfare - what does the evidence show? » BevR posted on Workfare - what does the evidence show?