Is the government doing a u-turn on selling off public services?
contribution by Richard Blogger
In February David Cameron wrote a bold article for the Daily Telegraph entitled “How we will release the grip of state control“. He announced that the government will allow any private provider (the voluntary and community providers were dropped) to take over a public service.
This is not competitive tendering, this is simply the case of a private company saying, ‘we want to provide that service‘ and they will be handed the contract. This is Letwin’s big plan for the NHS, something that he first wrote about for the right wing Centre for Policy Studies in 1988 (together with John Redwood).
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Bin Laden’s death and the idea of ‘justice’
The question of whether “justice has been done” to Osama bin Laden raises a little paradox.
Roughly speaking, one can think of justice in terms of either a process or an outcome. From the perspective of process, justice has not been done; bin Laden did not get a fair trial*. But from the perspective of outcome, it might well have been; if anyone deserves to die for their crimes, it is bin Laden**.
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Republic go to lawyers over Met’s arrests
Campaign group Republic is to seek an urgent meeting with senior Metropolitan police officers after reports of peaceful republican protesters being arrested and released without charge over the weekend.
Republic has previously raised serious concerns over statements from the Met that suggest the police force has been seeking to silence dissent on the day of the royal wedding.
Spokesperson Graham Smith said today:
Republicans have every right to protest against the monarchy, on any day and at any time. We fully support the police’s right to uphold law and order and to deal with actual criminality, but when peaceful protesters are being arrested before they’ve done anything, when they are being held overnight simply to ensure they can’t make their voices heard, then that’s a serious threat to what little democracy we have in this country.”
Republic added they were taking legal advice and seeking an urgent meeting with senior Met police officers.
We will be staging stunts and protests in the year of the jubilee and we need to know that the police will allow those protests to go ahead.
They are asking for anyone who was arrested while on their way to their street party or arrested for seeking to carry out a peaceful protest to get in touch.
Where are the right-wing defenders of liberties now?
Over the weekend I highlighted the disgraceful arrest of Chris Knight – who neither planned to commit any crime nor was there any evidence he would.
The same went for the squats in Brighton. But that wasn’t the end of it: during the Royal Wedding the Met police carried out many more similar operations.
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What do these two kinds of patriotism tell us? #royalwedding #OBL
I found it impossible not to make the mental link between the celebrations in America, and the recent flag-waving down on The Mall. Both events have been obvious moments of unity for the respective countries.
Both events also mark symbolic endings to a particular period of national history.
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FPTP helps Canadian Tories win election
Canadians went to the polls yesterday to elect a new government.
The elections saw a surge in support for the centre left New Democratic Party, which increased its share of the vote from 18% to 30%, and the collapse of the Liberal Party, whose leader, Michael “savant idiot” Ignatieff, even lost his own seat.
The Bloc Québécois also collapsed, winning just four seats as many of their voters switched to the NDP.
Despite the New Democrats, Liberals and Greens polling 53% between them, the election – conducted under First Past the Post – was won by the Tories, who secured an absolute majority of seats with 39.6% of the vote, winning seat after seat where the anti-Tory vote split between different parties.
Full coverage and election results can be found here.
Did 9/11 really change the world as much as journalists claim?
September 11th 2001 was the day the world changed.
That journalistic truism will be endlessly repeated this week in the wake of the killing of Bin Laden, some 3520 days after Al Qaeda’s terrorist attacks on New York on Washington. This will now symbolise closure for many people on those terrible and shocking events.
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Blogging Against Disablism Day: my experience
I have a “Hidden Disability”; no wheelchair, no visible deformity, no crutches. So surely I wouldn’t experience disablism?
Well, tell that to the two fat Mamas who shouted across the street at me to “eat a fucking donut!”. Or the woman behind me in the supermarket queue telling her daughter perfectly audibly that if she didn’t eat properly she’d end up “looking like that” (Me)
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