Most Libdems have also started to shift against the cuts
The Independent on Sunday/Sunday Mirror ComRes polling yesterday brought bad news for the Coalition, as John Rentoul sets out, with opinion shifting against the government on every front.
The long lost “fair cuts” argument haemhorrages further. Trailing by 28-57% on whether the government is cutting too severely and too fast suggests the these ‘cuts are necessary’ case is in increasing trouble too.
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Tory MSP asks: was rape victim a prostitute?
A leading Scottish Conservative MSP is under attack for suggesting the latest victim of rape in Glasgow may have been a prostitute.
Bill Aitken, shadow minister for community safety, apologised to the woman after making the comments in an interview with the Sunday Herald.
Aitken has been a District Court Judge, Justice of the Peace and is a Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Glasgow. He is also convenor of the Scottish Parliament’s justice committee – which helps formulates rape laws.
Police officers and women’s organisations reacted with outrage to his claims.
…
Detectives in Glasgow were“incredulous”. One senior source said: “Is he saying she deserved it? It’s mind-boggling. How will that poor girl feel?”
At the F Word, Jess McCabe adds:
This is an ignorant and disastrous message for any elected representative to be spouting, but Aitken is the shadow minister for community safety and convenes the Scottish Parliament’s justice committee, which the Herald says helps to formulate rape policy. Aitken has also been a District Court Judge and a Justice of the Peace, and is a Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Glasgow.
Melanie Phillips rails against gay marriage
Oh joy, Melanie Phillips is angry again!
On countless occasions, David Cameron has declared that he is a tremendous fan of the institution of marriage. So big a fan, it now becomes clear, that he generously intends to bestow its status and privileges far beyond what most people consider marriage actually to be.
Time and again, the Tory leader has used his promise to strengthen marriage so as to reassure people that he was fully committed to defending this core value of conservatism.
…
For it was revealed yesterday that ministers are planning to change the law to allow homosexual couples to ‘marry’ in religious ceremonies, including in church.Gay partnership ceremonies in other venues will also be allowed for the first time to contain a religious element, such as hymns or readings from the Bible. These unions will then be called ‘marriage’,
The Church of England says it will not allow gay marriages at its churches.
The same law will also apply to Sikh, Hindu and Muslim temples. My feeling is that a Hindu temple, given its a highly decentralised religion, will be the first in the race.
Anyway, back to Melanie Phillips:
If still in doubt, try this thought experiment. Imagine the Government was planning to recognise polygamy and polyandry (marriage with more than one woman or man), or marriage between ‘zoophiles’ (people who have ‘loving and committed relationships with mammals’, or bestiality to you and me) and their, er, partners.
You know, I think that Melanie Phillips is holding on to cultural values that are out of date in this country. Isn’t this a failure on her part to integrate with the majority? Multi-culturalism has failed! Get this woman to a corrective facility!
Four reasons why tax avoidance makes us all worse off
The continuing rise of UKuncut and the publication of Nick Shaxson’s book Treasure Islands has highlighted tax avoidance and tax havens like never before.
Predictably, the usual suspects on the right wail that all this is legal and should be allowed. So I think it’s time to knock down some of the arguments against tax avoidance and tax havens.
It’s worth pointing out that tax havens have fuelled tax avoidance, and vice versa. The two are not the same but are highly inter-connected; one cannot be tackled without the other.
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Are people with mental health problems being let down by representatives?
contribution by Richard Shrubb
“I have a dream…” said a great man, speaking of equal rights for the sons of slaves in his country. Joining in the fervour, another great man said “Say it out loud, I’m black and I’m proud”. Others in the same movement frightened the US government with talk of armed insurrection.
I had a dream. I dreamed of people seeing my education, skills, background and personality and a long way down the list, that I have mental health problems. So in 2005, fresh faced from university yet jaded already from discrimination because of a neurochemical imbalance in my brain, I joined a movement which I thought would change the minds of the public about mental illness.
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In the battle to reshape Labour, a new force is emerging
contribution by Marc Stears
Probably for the first time since the mid-1990s, a loud debate is taking place within the Labour party to reshape its core identity.
One key effort in this process is encouraging the Party towards a celebration of tradition, locality and even some forms of social conservatism. It is urging a shift away from the focus on the left on material redistribution and the need for public services always to be delivered directly by the state.
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How will Israel and Saudi Arabia respond to Egypt’s revolution?
contribution by Matt Hill
On Friday, the UK followed the lead of Mubarak’s former ally the US, in withdrawing its support only when it became clear it was backing the wrong camel. Leaders and opinion-makers in Israel were even less enthusiastic about the protests: freedom and democracy are all well and good, they seemed to say, so long as they don’t expect to move in next door.
Israelis fear that a new, populist Egyptian government will threaten the two countries’ 1978 peace agreement, the soundest plank in Israel’s fragile neighbourly relations. That is not an ureasonable concern: four wars since 1948 exacted a terrible price on both sides, and thanks to $25 billion of US military aid, Egypt boasts a powerful army.
Its next rulers are unlikely to risk provoking the superpower to the east into full-scale conflict. But free elections would surely produce a government less cordial to Israel’s interests than Mubarak’s, whose collusion in the blockade of Gaza most Egyptians reviled.
If Israel concludes that its long-term security is best assured by nurturing its ‘cold peace’ with Arab regimes who pay lip service to Palestinian rights while suppressing dissent, it will have learnt precisely the wrong lesson from the ‘Arab spring’.
That’s why the revival of the peace process is more urgent than ever in the wake of Mubarak’s departure. Israel has never had a more willing partner on the Palestinian side, as leaked documents detailing peace negotiations show.
When Menachem Begin and Anwar El Sadat signed the Camp David Accords in 1978, leading to peace between the two nations, Israel promised withdrawal from the occupied territories and full independence for the Palestinians within five years. 33 years and many failed negotiations later, numbers of Israeli settlers in the West Bank have swelled from 10,000 to over 300,000. But the scale of the challenge makes it no less crucial.
80 million Egyptians have just roared onto the world stage, and the Middle East will never be the same. It’s about time Israel started making some real friends.
* * * * * * * * *
contribution by Ranjit Sidhu
Wikileaks confirmed what was an open secret: individuals from Saudi Arabia are responsible for the majority of funding for the Sunni terrorist organisations in the region, including Al Qaeda.
However, there was an insight into the Saudi government’s approach when it is alleged on the 29th of January that the Saudi King Abdullah told President Obama that they would bankroll Mubarak’s Egypt if the US withdrew its aid program despite the public uprising.
What must be recognised is that the Saudi Arabian government is fanatical in spreading it’s branch of Islam at the expense of all others; Wahhabism, which is considered extremist by most Sunni and Shia muslims.
It is not afraid to throw money to those governments who follow its lead donating, $49 billion by 2006. We can be sure that when the financial problems appear in Egypt, Saudi Arabia will be there ready to use its cheque book to spread it brand of religious extremism.
Unfortunately, it would be highly unlikely that the democratic movement in the middle east could effect the totalitarianism of the Saudi government itself (we can hope!). That we have been supportive of such a regime is a shame that we in the west have to carry and history will judge us on.
But, we are duty bound to try to prevent this most corrosive of countries interfering with the likes of Tunisia and Egypt.
Like the oil that has made us kowtow to this monarchy, it will try to seep its influence through any cracks appearing in these fledgling democracies- we need to stand guard to mop it up before it poisons the burgeoning flower democracy that is arising in the middle east.
TakeVAT target Aviation tax at Heathrow
Activists from a newly formed protest group were chased by police around Heathrow airport yesterday in an attempt to highlight the fact that the aviation industry pays no VAT.
Modelling themselves on UKuncut, protesters from TakeVAT ran around Terminal 3 at Heathrow airport ‘confiscating items’ such as luggage trolleys and toilet roll.
They say there is no VAT paid on airline tickets, the purchase of planes or on spare parts for aircraft.
They say the aviation industry also pays no VAT on fuel or aircraft, avoiding £9 billion in VAT every year.
A coordinated protest took place at Leeds / Bradford international airport.
A spokesperson said:
It is simply unfair that aviation pays no VAT. Why should one of the dirtiest and noisiest industries in the world get away scot-free when ordinary people are charged VAT on basic necessities like toilet rolls?
TakeVAT website // Twitter account
More pictures by Jonathan Warren here.
Poll: Huge majority against tax avoidance
A new poll by the Financial Times-Harris shows the publicly overwhelmingly against tax avoidance
It found that six out of 10 Britons thought it was wrong for UK businesses to “employ controversial but legal means of reducing their tax contribution at a time of economic uncertainty”.
Only 15% of respondents agreed it was acceptable to use legal tax avoidance techniques.
The poll also showed a big jump in the number of people opposed to the government’s austerity measures.
Half of people now think George Osborne’s spending cuts are likely to harm the economic recovery, compared with just 31% when the same question was last posed back in June, says the FT.
Alternative Vote contains FPTP within it
As a #Yes2AV supporter, I am sometimes asked this question: “Will there be an option, in AV, to just vote for one party when not wanting any of the others in at all?”
The answer is YES. Under AV, if you simply place a ’1′ next to your favoured candidate (rather than a cross), then you are voting as if it is FPTP (the current system), and that is completely allowed.
In fact, there is a very important point here: It really is unnecessary for FPTP-lovers to oppose AV at all. FPTP is ‘contained within’ AV.
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