Why is the UK failing Bahrain’s people?
contribution by Peter Tatchell
The international community has failed in its duty to protect the civilian population of Bahrain from arrest, detention without trial, torture and murder by the regime of King Hamad ibn Isa Al Khalifa.
Close to 1,000 Bahrainis have been arrested since the start of protests in February, although about 300 of these have since been released. Twenty-one opposition activists and human rights defenders are being prosecuted on trumped up charges.
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Nearly a million union members threaten strike
More than a quarter of a million civil and public servants will ballot for a strike over cuts to pensions, jobs and pay, following an overwhelming vote at the Public and Commercial Services union annual conference today.
Ballot papers will be issued from next week and the ballot will close mid-June, with the first action possible later that month.
PCS union is working closely with education unions who are also balloting over pensions or have already voted and taken strike action, bringing the total to 750,000 union members.
The union wants: no detrimental changes to pensions or the civil service redundancy scheme; a strengthening of the Cabinet Office-agreed measures to avoid compulsory redundancies; and an end to the pay freeze and a fair pay rise for all.
The conference agreed to: hold a national ballot in defence of jobs, pensions and pay; and continue to work with other trade unions to co-ordinate action for maximum impact.
In a speech to delegates, PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: “Everything we have ever worked for is under threat”
On pensions he said:
The government’s strategy on pay makes no economic sense. And George Osborne says public sector pensions are ‘unsustainable’ but the National Audit Office disagrees and Lord Hutton’s report showed the cost of public sector pensions is falling.
On strike action:
The government is trying to divide us – picking off different workers at different times. But if we vote for strike action we will be co-ordinating with unions representing another half a million public sector workers.
On wider campaigning and working with other organisations, including UK Uncut and community campaigners, he said:
For years our union has been at the forefront of the tax justice campaign, and we are proud to support UK Uncut that has popularised our message that the real fraudsters and the real scroungers are to be found in the boardrooms not in the jobcentres.
Like many I have been inspired by the student protests that erupted at the end of last year – hundreds of thousands of young people taking to the streets because they had been betrayed, again.
Their passion and their organisation surprised me and it also inspired me – because too often people have labelled young people as apolitical and apathetic.
He ended by saying:
We will need to be creative in our campaigning, tough in our bargaining, and prepared to take action. We will continue to work, and build links, with other trade unions to make our voice as powerful as possible in our campaigning and in any industrial action.
We can work together, campaign together and, yes, strike together – and together we can win.
Does the law see ‘rape as rape’?
Are some rapes more serious than others? So far as the law is concerned, the answer is “Yes”.
What the law recognises is that the specific circumstances in which a rape take place may give rise to a number of aggravating factors and/or mitigating factors that must necessarily be taken into account when handing down a sentence following a successful conviction.
Use of extreme violence – i.e. beating the victim to a pulp in addition to raping them – multiple/repeat victimization and/or the existence of prior convictions for rape are treated as aggravating factors and result in a much longer sentence.
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No 10 u-turns on rape sentencing plans
Ken Clarke is not really relaying government policy, No 10 said today, after his comments that date rape was not really rape, or as bad as violent rape.
Update 1: A No 10 source has now told Channel 4 News that Crispin Blunt (also at Ministry of Justice) was “kite flying” policy by suggesting rape sentences could be halved. So that’s dead in half a day then.
At PMQ, Ed Miliband called for him to go. Later on BBC News, Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper called his comments “shocking” and said: “You cannot have a justice secretary who has this attitude to rape victims.” She added: “He does not understand rape victims and does not understand rape.”
No 10 immediately distanced themselves from him. Channel 4′s Cathy Newman says: “Ken Clarke just told me “all rape is serious” so sounds like he’s had an earful from No 10…”
There are various dynamics here.
1. Ken Clarke may be liberal on rehabilitation policy, but he has said abhorrent things about in the past too. Yvette Cooper is right to say he does not understand rape victims.
2. This is a potential political disaster for the Tories partly because they recognise voters are increasingly seeing them as ‘soft on crime and sentencing’. So the Tories will immediately want Clarke to pull back, not because they care much for rape conviction, but because it feeds into the narrative that their sentencing regime is too lenient.
3. While this is being spun by some as “Labour attacking from the right” – the party has always fairly hardline on crime sentencing since Blair. The Labour front-bench have gone on the attack. Jack Straw questioned how only giving half a sentence would protect the public, while Sadiq Khan said his comments were “remarkably flippant”.
4. Some Tories are happy to pile into Ken Clarke because of political opportunism. They hate his ‘soft’ policy on rehabilitation and do not want Ken Clarke as Justice secretary for other reasons.
The background
The real issue is that Ken Clarke is to unveil plans to halve sentences for rapists who plead guilty at the first opportunity. He says that is because it will save women who do not want to go through the trauma of the trial too.
But a woman who went through almost two years of distress trauma before her attacker pleaded guilty in courts branded Mr Clarke’s plans “a disaster”.
She said she had fought the criminal justice system for 688 days, only for the rapist to have his sentence reduced for pleading guilty – and then go on to commit another offence.
Judges say the plans could mean a convicted sex attacker serving as little as 15 months in prison.
What Ken Clarke said on BBc radio
Tory NHS plans: the LOLcat competition!
Can you get cats to say funny things about the NHS proposals by Andrew Lansley?
We’re having a LOLcat competition and we’re joining in. They’ll also publish and link to the best pics.
You can create your own LOLcats from this page for free and submit them below or send me the link via Twitter.
Here’s some funny ones to start you off
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You can create your own LOLcats from this page for free and submit them below or send me the link via Twitter.
‘Blue Labour’ pamphlet published today
A new pamphlet called ‘The Labour tradition and the politics of paradox’ is published today, in the same vein that has been dubbed the ‘Blue Labour’ movement.
The e-book is edited by Maurice Glasman, Jonathan Rutherford, Marc Stears and Stuart White.
The aim of the essays in the booklet, they say, is to, “start laying the political and philosophical groundwork for a new Labour politics for the coming decade”.
They also say the aim was not to define policy or determine what should be done, but “to ask some fundamental questions about the condition of the country” and the Labour party following its General Election defeat in May 2010.
Ed Miliband has written a foreword to the booklet.
In his introduction he says:
One of the central challenges we face is revisiting our approach to the balance between state and market. Historically, debates within Labour have often been conducted on the basis of a choice between ‘more state and less market’ or ‘more market and less state’. That approach needs revisiting for three fundamental reasons.
First, because Labour’s approach to prosperity and fairness should rely on an effective combination of both strong, good government, and efficient, well-regulated markets.
Second, because a twenty-first century Labour project must pledge to be reformers of both the state and the market.
And third, because in Labour’s debates of the past, both the statists and the pro-market voices underplayed the importance of the aspects of our lives and our communities that must be protected from the destructive effects of both markets and the unresponsive state.
Contributors to the book include, Jon Cruddas MP, Graeme Cooke, Lord Maurice Glasman, Ben Jackson , David Lammy MP, David Miliband MP, Duncan O’Leary, Anthony Painter, James Purnell,
Jonathan Rutherford, Marc Stears, Stuart White and Jon Wilson.
The full e-book can be read from here.
How Lord Ashcroft hopes to deliver a ‘Conservative majority’ for 2015
A year into the current government, Lord Ashcroft has done a detailed analysis of voters perceive the Conservative party and what is required for a majority (a vote share of around 40%) can be achieved in 2015.
It’s an impressive document that is worth dissecting; usefully, posted online. Here are some excerpts on the direction of travel Lord Ashcroft thinks Conservatives should take.
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Clegg pushes back at Lansley on NHS regulator
Nick Clegg has singled out the role of Monitor, the NHS regulator, as the area of the embattled NHS bill that needs the “most substantial changes” and has said that all references to the body being an economic regulator “should be removed”.
In a presentation by the deputy prime minister to the weekly meeting of his parliamentary party and leaked to the Guardian, Clegg circulated a page-long document in which he set out how he believes the regulator should be reconceived.
“Instead of having a duty to promote competition, Monitor’s main duty should be explicitly to protect and promote the interests of patients,” Clegg wrote, saying the NHS cannot be regulated as if it was just a utility “like electricity or telephones”.
A new role for Monitor has long been a running sore in the health secretary’s plans. Last week Steve Field, the man appointed by David Cameron to oversee the “pause” in the health legislation, said he also thought the proposed new role for Monitor should be scrapped. Instead, it should promote co-operation and collaboration and the integration of health services.
Thousands to march for NHS today
Thousands of health workers and campaigners will take to the streets of London today to protest against the Government’s NHS plans and cuts to frontline health services.
The protests have been called by: London Keep Our NHS Public and The Health Worker Network.
People will assemble at University College Hospital at 5:30pm and march on the Department of Health.
Organisers of the protest say they are calling for:
- The Health and Social Care Bill to be scrapped
- A commitment from Government to sustainable investment in the NHS and an end to all cuts in jobs and services
- An end to the public sell-off of the NHS
They also say that 450 staff are currently being made redundant at the Royal Free Hospital in Camden and the planned closure of the Connaught Day Hospital, Whipps Cross.
The Guardian’s daliy NHS reforms blog will be covering the protests today.
Meanwhile, in the run-up to their NHS action day on 28th May, UKuncut have published this video showing how to turn a bank branch into a hospital
Why today’s inflation figures spell disaster for Osborne
Today’s inflation figures revealed that with constant indirect tax rates (VAT, duties, etc) CPI inflation would have 3.0% rather than the current 4.5%.
In other words tax and duty changes are adding substantially to inflation – explaining, for example, the record monthly jump in alcohol & tobacco prices in April. As Labour’s Angela Eagle noted, January’s VAT rise has added to inflation, making the Bank of England’s job and Osborne’s position all the more difficult.
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» Revealed: govt to restrict abortion counselling despite Nadine Dorries vote
» Would raising the tax threshold actually help the poorest?
» To win London, Ken Livingstone has to step outside his comfort zone
» This trade agreement with India will destroy thousands of lives
» UK debt hasn’t hit £1 trillion – mostly because of QE
» The benefits of being a “burden” on society
» Today’s economic figures will simply confirm UK’s “lost decade”
» Have Labour realised the election is more than three years away?
» Violence in the office
» Want a more responsible capitalism? Reform how pensions work
» The world is entering the third phase of the crisis, warns ILO
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