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.

April 30th, 2010, posted on Taxpayer’s Alliance website.

“In the Dutch city of Eindhoven, citizens can now report broken street lights, potholes, graffiti etc. using an app on their iphones. Users can take a picture and locate the problem on GPS and maps and send it directly to the local authority so they can easily locate and solve the problem. Obviously not everyone has an iphone, but it’s a great innovation that involves citizens in looking after their community.”

July 6th, 2010, statement given to media by Mark Wallace, TPA campaign director, after news leaks via FOI requests that the previous government spent £40,000 on something similar.

“It seems many Government bodies have given in to the temptation to spend money on fashionable gimmicks at a time when they are meant to be cutting back on self-indulgent wastes of money…It is ridiculous not only that they are commissioning these apps but that some of them are supposedly secret on grounds of national security.

“Someone who is faced with losing their home because of high tax bills, or whose life is being ruined by crime isn’t going to get any reassurance from knowing there’s an app for that.”

The recent furore is over the government developing iPhone apps to provide DVLA services, to provide Jobcentre services and so on. Personally I think it’s a great idea – I don’t have an iPhone, but I do have a smartphone, and applications have a way of transferring across, once developed.

What I found particularly amusing about the blatantly churnalistic BBC report (some of which was cribbed direct from the wire service report by the looks of it) was this:

By the end of May there were over 53,000 downloads of the Jobcentre Plus app, although critics have asked why someone who can afford both an iPhone and the expensive running costs would need a Jobcentre Plus app.

Because even those who have been prudent with their savings and worked hard to amass them can be made unemployed, and even bottom of the chain workers can fit this particular bill?

Nice to know what the BBC generally thinks of the unemployed though; if they have anything remotely fancy, there’s something funny going on.

In the late 1980s, prison populations under the Tories began to fall as Douglas Hurd and others tried to establish consensus around non-custodial ideas, which would see people avoid prison.

But to leave the matter there is to ignore staggering contradictions on the part of the Tories.

Firstly, there’s no proposal to get rid of what has essentially become a people-herding industry of private companies, to whom a lot of services have been outsourced.

Clarke’s proposition of pay by performance on the basis of re-offending avoided will not fly – as in other outsourced industries, without cast-iron government guarantees of profit, private companies will avoid sectors that don’t look profitable.

Tory rhetoric here doesn’t escape the New Labourite paradigms.

Secondly, for all this talk about prisons being places of education – a solid and welcome return of a very old liberal idea – this won’t help a great deal if there aren’t any jobs to go to when people get out of prison. With millions unemployed, and Tory plans to slash the State sector to ribbons proceeding apace – and private sector investment not yet prepared to pick up the slack – education won’t stop a slide to crime.

Thirdly, if the answer to the second problem is the social welfare net, then this adds a further contradiction to ‘progressive’ Conservative plans for rehabilitating offenders. Said social welfare net is to face cuts.

This, I suspect was one of the key problems with Douglas Hurd’s attempt to reduce prison populations; on his watch, he wanted fewer people in prison – but as inequality rose and communities fragmented under the Tories, crime rose.

Thus the voices on the Tory Right sounded a great deal more authoritative.

Fourthly, Clarke’s proposal is aimed in part at cutting costs – he has said so himself. Apparently the new soundbyte is that sending a man to prison (£38,000) is now more expensive than sending a boy to Eton.

Several academics – such as Prof. Malcom Davies – have come forward to suggest that actually leaving potential re-offenders at large (and even with continuing educational measures, reoffending jumped by 8% from 2006-8) costs more than prison.

Since a large number of these people will surely be released to unemployment, this type of false economy can be compared to the Tory false economy of slashing Labour’s job creation schemes and calling it a saving. The upshot is a lot more people claiming various types of benefits, whereas the strategic use of Labour’s funds would have allowed private industry to reduce the cost of employing someone whilst still footing some of the bill.

If the Tories are allowed their own way on the economy, coalition or no coalition, the deeply reactionary hang ‘em and flog ‘em brigade on the right of the Tory Party will not be long in re-establishing themselves – something that happened to Ken Clarke when he was last Home Secretary. As privatisation and the attempt to extract ever more labour for less pay from prison staff continues unabated, I worry to think how our prisons will end up.

This is, after all, the same Conservative Party which resoundingly endorsed Labour’s massive expansion plans – worth some £4bn – of the prison system.

Not only will they be able to parade in their non-partisan laurels when the report is delivered, but it’ll be tweedle-dum to Iain Duncan-Smith’s tweedle-dee.

Banging the education drum will be met with Tory plans to ‘individualise’ education provision by reintroducing credits for kids to go to private schools.

Any action recommended to reduce poverty already has handcuffs placed upon it – it must be ‘consistent with the government’s fiscal strategy’ – and IDS has already made clear what that means.

[1.4 million long term unemployed] is set against a backdrop of 13 years of continuously increasing expenditure, which has outstripped inflation…Worse than the growing expense, though, is the fact that the money is not even making the impact we want it to. A system that was originally designed to support the poorest in society is now trapping them in the very condition it was supposed to alleviate.

It should be easy to read between the lines and see what the Tories are aiming at: cutting costs, plain and simple. What’s more is that IDS makes it easy for me to be so cynical; he clearly doesn’t understand the welfare system that he has been put in charge of, as Conservative Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

There are specific measures for low-earners which the Labour government instituted, to ease the transition from welfare to work, and to ensure that in all cases, working would pay more – even drawing a specific low-paid benefit if wages were tight. This isn’t all; the continuing narrative about welfare dependency and an indifferent state is nonsense.

IDS suggested that, “People basically get parked on [incapacity] benefit and forgotten about.” Which is nonsense. It was Labour which introduced harsher assessments for existing benefits claimants as well as introducing ESA, Employment and Support Allowance, to separate off short-term from long-term illness, with corresponding assessments.

Basically Iain Duncan-Smith is taking the credit for Labour’s wankerish attitude to social welfare. And it all fits within the continued line that no matter how much money is thrown at poverty, money alone will not cure it. In this context education and all sorts of things are mentioned. Which is silly, because even if everyone who could work had a degree, we’d simply have the best educated workforce of shop assistants and bus drivers in the world.

Meanwhile nothing would have been done about low pay and the cyclical nature of unemployment, which have been identified as key sources of poverty by every report since the 19th century.

From 1997/8-2004/5, Labour’s clear increases in benefits reduced poverty. Between ’97 and ’01, social security benefits climbed by six billion and retirement pensions were boosted by about seven billion. And poverty dropped. After ’05, spending declined as a percentage of GDP and the rising unemployment precipitated by the economic crisis spread the spending (which still increased in real terms) over more people.

Unsurprisingly, poverty rose. Obviously I’ve simplified things considerably, but one would think there are easy conclusions that can be drawn. They don’t have to be if you can get Frank Field on to cover your Left flank.

The issue has recently flared up because Tesco came out to support a minimum pricing system, and because NICE has subsequently also come out for a minimum price per unit of alcohol.

What few enough people noticed when Tesco came out for the law is that this view is self-interested; it will mean they no longer have to worry about cutting prices.

To give an example of how this work, Professor Anne Ludbrook, one of the authors of the NICE report, said the following:

“At the example price of 50 pence, a bottle of vodka would be just over £13. Whereas in the supermarkets currently you could find vodka selling at below £8. Cheap white cider, for example, would go up to over £7 a bottle. It’s currently selling at about £2.” [BBC]

Self-interest beats outright misinformation, however, which is where the drinks industry have put their faith.

Simon Litherland of Diageo GB said: “Yet again it is disappointing to see continued support for minimum pricing despite no credible empirical evidence that it would be an effective measure in reducing alcohol-related harm.”

Andrew Opie, food policy director at the British Retail Consortium, said: “It’s too simplistic to say the UK’s alcohol problems are down to price. Irresponsible alcohol consumption is primarily a cultural issue that needs to be addressed through education and information.”

There is evidence, from studies prepared for the Scottish Parliament, as it debated minimum pricing laws that a) price increases do correlate to decreased demand, b) that binge dringers, young drinkers and harmful drinkers all choose cheaper drinks and will be hit by minimum pricing laws and c) that increased taxation and prices do reduce harm.

All of which escapes the point I raised the last time, that the people who are likely to be affected by drinks with an enforced minimum price will be poor people. We don’t routinely tax or look down upon any number of practices which cost the NHS and other social services money. Why should alcohol be different?

If it is the social effects of binge drinking we want to combat, then challenging the culture that our cities inspire with ever decreasing number of social places except pubs would be a start. So would challenging the culture of silence around things like domestic violence, or educating people in safe practices to protect against rape.

Meanwhile, NICE can get off their high horse, from which they claim that alcohol consumption problems, including 15,000 direct deaths, cost the NHS £2 bn per year. Which is awesome, because the taxes levied on alcohol bring in well over £5 bn per year.

If the government wants more revenue, to devote to social purposes like making our cities sociable once more, they can get it from the breweries, and end the monopolistic practices which drive our pubs to seek high-turnover rather than a social clientele.

There is also the question as to whether or not the unions like Unite have been feeding this money back into the Labour Party. If that could be proved to be the case, then it’s all the more reason to get rid of the current morons at the top of the Labour Party; first the scandal of private donations from millionaires, and cash for peerages, now this.

Lest people forget, if any of this were true, the government was not just using State money to stay in government through a funded political machine. They were using it to retain control of the Labour Party, which is a much greater offence, so far as I and many other socialists would be concerned.

Reality is not so simple, however. There are several funds which have channelled money to the unions, (e.g. Partnership at Work, the Union Modernisation Fund and the Union Learning Fund) and none of them are to do with political donations. The amount gathered from each member for a political fund must be stipulated, only money from the political fund may be used for political activities and money from other accounts may not be used.

That is the law. No one has said that the law has been broken, and the Guardian’s disingenuous chart (shown right, courtesy of Iain Dale) is simply a case of attempting to secure a guilty verdict by very dodgy inferences. All the accusations of money laundering – of this money passing through Unite or the other unions en route to Labour – are silly.

A fair contention, however, is that there is a moral case to answer. A Labour government is channelling money directly to the unions – for admittedly benevolent, non-political purposes. But presumably – as well as reaching difficult to organise workers, and coaching people to get qualifications and training – this bolsters the prestige and attraction of the trades unions. Union Learning Fund projects, for example, seem open only to union members.

Higher union membership means more money for the Labour Party. Or does it?

Actually I don’t think this moral case holds up. Since every member of a union chooses whether or not to pay into the political fund, people who don’t want to support Labour can benefit from these programmes. There’s also the numerous cases of unions which have political funds that don’t contribute to Labour – such as the National Union of Teachers, the RMT, University and Colleges Union or the Fire Brigades Union.

The actual programmes involved, through which all this money is channelled, break down the moral case further still.

On a political level, programmes like Partnership at Work were not designed as vehicles for left-wing policy – they were the opposite. Their whole purpose was to suppress open conflict in the workplace. It’s my view that this type of thing directly led to a harmful increase in the pressure put on staff, in an environment free of the danger of industrial unrest.

On a practical level, programmes like Dignity at Work had the support of employers, employees, unions and the State – and these channelled large sums to educate on and prevent workplace bullying and other issues which are not just Left issues, since bullying affects productivity. Similarly with the Union Learning and Union Modernisation Funds.

Far from being bungs to union allies, this money was to serve a purpose that was not so crassly ‘political’ as is being made out and which gave little succour to “the Left”, unless we’re to recycle and adjust Harold Wilson, “Socialism is what unions do”, regardless of what they actually do.

By all means, people should object to unions being used as the vehicle for such policies – and I haven’t made up my mind yet, though I’m leaning towards a separation of unions as agitational bodies of workers from educative and training bodies paid for by the State. They can object to the specific policies as being inefficient or poor uses of money. But they can’t reasonably object that this money is a bung to union allies of a Labour Party.

The last refuge for such an accusation is whether all the money allocated for these purposes was spent on what it was supposed to have been spent on. The suggestive comments in the media – and the near-hysterical comments in the Right-blogosphere – betray ignorance over just this. So audits should be done, and we should see how it was spent.

None of it will have found its way into the political funds; I take that as a given. If it has, an offence has been committed and the guilty individuals responsible should be punished – but I doubt union officials are so stupid.

It is more believable that money left over may have been spent on more general concerns or union administration not necessarily relating to the projects mandated by the specific aims of these funds. To allay concerns, turn over the books. Open government is our friend. What is not acceptable is the high pitched screeching before any facts are known.

All the recent talk about whether or not British troops have been given the equipment they need reflects a fundamental problem in British politics: all of the main parties accept Britain’s intervention in Afghanistan, and, to a lesser extent, Iraq. William Hague’s speech gives every indication that a Tory government will continue, and risk expanding, Britain’s military presence abroad.

Hague, unsurprisingly, also repeats the meme about Britain’s credit rating being a worry, citing the ‘recent’ Fitch warning about the loss of the triple-A rating. I say ‘recent’ because Fitch has been carping about this since last year, so a new press release about it is hardly serious news. What makes this interesting is that Hague is all about the deficit reduction…and yet continuously talks up “Britain’s role” abroad.

With what equipment, in this Tory-led deficit-free utopia? Spitballs and paper aeroplanes?

Far better, surely, that Britain does step back from foreign engagements. Getting rid of the new naval carriers and the nuclear deterrent are the first steps, but cutting back the armed forces drastically should be a high priority all across the board, not just with the latest toys.

Contra the moralising about what equipment the troops did and didn’t get in Afghanistan or Iraq, it isn’t spending issues which have caused problems. Ask the Americans, who have spent nearly US $1 trillion, compared to the piffling billions of the United Kingdom. It is being there in the first place, when the government was warned of the consequences, creating conditions that exacerbated ‘terrorism’ until now it threatens nearby states.

It’s not the contradiction of a pushy but low-spending Britain that makes the clearest impression, however. It’s the interpretation of economic performance as merely a gateway to Britain being able to punch its weight in ‘world affairs’, rather than both economic performance and that weight in world affairs being tools to securing jobs, homes, healthcare and education at home.

In essence, this is high politics at its worst – talk of leaders and prestige, of power and the military rather than jobs and homes. Interestingly, Hague insinuates a future Tory government is prepared to invest in the military, to build new industries…but what about investment in higher education and research for the same purposes?

At the Times Higher Education debate back in February, Tory David Willetts was all about the euphemistic “rebalancing” of higher education, with more focus on students, and no reversals of Labour’s cuts to the teaching block grants, capital budgets or research. Hence Labour won the vote, at the end of the day, on which party had the best policy.

So we return to a bonfire of regulations and taxes, to encourage private investment to come to the UK, to shoulder the burden which the Tory state wants to shed. But of course there’s no talk of retreating public services, and when there is, it’ll be blamed not on Tory economic orthodoxy but on the failures of the Labour government. Which, in this hypothetical, future rhetorical encounter, will no doubt have been ‘in hock to the unions’.

But hey, don’t worry! Though people may want for their basic needs, our army will still be free to kill johnny foreigner when he doesn’t do as ordered.

What interested me about this story was the outpouring of well-wishes from Iris Robinson’s colleagues at Stormont and Westminster. Danny Kennedy, David Ford, Shaun Woodward, Nigel Dodds and others have held forth on their wishes for a speedy recovery and/or admiration for Robinson as a “dedicated” parliamentarian. I’m curious as to how honest they are each being.

It is rather expected that, when someone from the opposition is ill or suffers a bereavement, you wish them well. But how many of these wishes are genuine? I certainly don’t wish Iris Robinson well; I’d happily see the entire DUP dropkicked into the Atlantic Ocean. Indeed were she gay, and not such a vigorous gay-basher, there’d probably be some obscure Free Presbyterian Minister claiming her ill-health was vengeance sent by God.

Whilst it would further the goals of socialism not one drop, a few less homophobes in Westminster, or in Stormont, is never a bad thing. So why should I wish her well? For those who have been living under a rock, let me put these sentiments in context using some of the remarks Iris Robinson herself has come up with:

We all agree that few issues arouse as much interest or concern in the community as that of sex offenders. The sentences served and their subsequent placement back in the community cause considerable disquiet among the public. There can be no viler act, apart from homosexuality and sodomy, than sexually abusing innocent children. There must be sufficient confidence that the community has the best possible protection against such perverts and it is important that there be a mature public debate on the issues, but the security of our citizens must be our overriding priority.

Let’s look at it. Can you think of anything more vile than man and man or woman and woman and sexually abusing children? What I say I base on biblical pronouncements, based on God’s word. I am amazed that people are surprised when I quote from scriptures. It shows the churches either aren’t preaching God’s word or are watering it down,

These followed remarks in Parliament wherein Robinson said she knew a psychiatrist who could ‘turn around’ (cure) homosexuality.

Robinson is in good company back in the North. There’s the wonderful example of Rev. David McCullough, who used language reminiscent of Nazi conspiracy theories about Jews, in denouncing the “homosexual propaganda machine”. Or the advert taken out by the Kirk Session of Sandown Free Presbyterian Church describing gays as perverts and claimed they provoked violence against themselves.

Can anyone tell me why we can’t be utterly indifferent to the suffering of such people, when they have caused such suffering to others?

Firstly, the inclusion of the 800 workers who are leaving (the number provided by BA’s legal team) could not have altered the outcome of the ballot. Unite represents 12,500 staff. On an 80% turnout, with 92.5% voting to strike (figures from BBC), 9,250 workers voted to strike. Even if all 800 of those leaving voted and voted yes to the strike, it would still not have been enough to sway the outcome.

Secondly there are some of the remarks made by Justice Cox herself:

“A strike of this kind over the 12 days of Christmas is fundamentally more damaging to BA and the wider public than a strike taking place at almost any other time of the year,” (BBC)

One wonders what business it is of Justice Cox to express her opinion on a matter that should have had no bearing on the ruling handed down. It was obviously at the forefront of her mind to the point where she felt quite happy to attack a democratically arrived-at decision in her summation.

Whilst not being of the legal professions myself, it strikes me as an outcome opposed to common sense where a judge can strike down the ballot on a technicality that had no bearing on the final outcome of the vote anyway. The judge also ignored the claim by the union that it could not have known who the 800 staff were. I’d be interested to know whether the judge ruled that Unite were lying in this claim or ignored it for some other reason.

What is perfectly clear is that, for all the people who are still attacking the notion of class struggle, the bosses themselves haven’t lost the knack:

“In recent days, we believe Unite has formed a better understanding of our position and of the ways in which we could move forward.

“It has also become very clear that our customers do not believe that old-style trade union militancy is relevant to our efforts to move British Airways back toward profitability.”

This wasn’t old-style trade union militancy. It was a limited strike directed against bosses who were attempting to completely bypass the trade union which the vast majority of their workers (12,500 out of 14,000) had chosen to represent them. Walsh and his PR goons can try and re-frame the debate all they like, but it comes down to the question of whether workers should get a say in decisions made by their employers that change their terms and conditions, or status of employment.

Of course they should. But it looks like the only possible way to achieve this end is through precisely the old-style trade union militancy that everyone seems so quick to attack.

There was some fantastic rhetoric flying about yesterday morning on Radio 4. BA Chief Executive Willie Walsh was reported to have said that the union shouldn’t bother going on strike, it should concentrate on helping the company reduce costs.

Of course the union might well have been in the mood to do that, but it wasn’t asked to help out. It was simply bypassed.

And now, though Walsh claims to be available for talks at any time, he has said that the central issue is not up for negotiation. So the union is absolutely correct to go on strike; this is not a case of simple costs it is now an attempt to de-recognize the whole union.

I was pleased to hear that Unite has offered the cabin crews strike pay for as long as they are out.

This article posted at the Guardian meanwhile is utterly preposterous and without merit.

It suggests that BA staff are likely to find themselves on dole queues through their own fault, because the strike is the “ultimate kamikaze action”.

Surely it’s the bosses who are performing said action by going out of their way to attack the union and staff terms and conditions, not to mention plenty of jobs? Why, in these fucking liberal papers, is it never the bosses doing the kamikaze stuff?

There’s more than enough evidence to point that way.

Some of what Seldon says is pure comedy gold, such as his comparison of Blair to Gladstone: “For them, moral conviction in foreign policy was core.” One wonders what difference it makes if your foreign policy is still resulting in the deaths of the same foreign people as that of your “immoral” Opposition.

He was dealing with someone who was an evil dictator and that was the right thing to do, in his mind, because what was at stake was world peace. In another sense he has been remarkably consistent and I think is tremendously frustrated at not having the opportunity to say that.

If there is one thing worth pointing out to Professor Seldon, it’s that Mr Blair is very good at re-writing history all by himself, without needing the help of his accomplices in the declaration of war, or the media.

Moreover, he’s had ample opportunity to put his side of the case – whether it’s in ridiculous speeches to Labour Party Conference or making disingenuous comments about faith on Parkinson. To help the Professor along, here’s some remarks from Blair at the 2003 Labour spring conference is Glasgow:

I hope, even now, Iraq can be disarmed peacefully, with or without Saddam [my bold]. But if we show weakness now, if we allow the plea for more time to become just an excuse for prevarication until the moment for action passes, then it will not only be Saddam who is repeating history.

The menace, and not just from Saddam, will grow; the authority of the UN will be lost; and the conflict when it comes will be more bloody.

If that were not sufficient, then the March 12th draft resolution before the United Nations proposed conditions which Saddan Hussein could have met in order to be ‘let off’. The six conditions all concerned the weapons of mass destruction, none of them concerned the human rights of Iraqis or free and fair elections. On that note, quite a few sources have since indicated that the Iraqi government was willing to offer a deal which would ultimately have resulted in a democratic Iraq. The US and UK did not take up these offers.

On a wider note, the glibness with which Seldon dismisses Saddam as an “evil dictator” offends me. There’s no question he was a dictator, but how are we identifying his evil traits? Killing people? Then what makes his “evil” nature different from Blair, who notched up wars in Serbia, Afghanistan and Iraq, where somewhere over a million people have died, rather dwarfing Saddam’s total. Or perhaps the issue is not one of bodycount – perhaps it is a moral distinction.

Is killing lots of people somehow more moral if you do it for a ‘better’ purpose than someone else? Hitler and the Jews or Stalin and the ‘kulaks’, this is the sort of attitude which is the signature of people we traditionally regard as “evil”. We tend to ignore it when it’s exhibited by people on our own side – such as Trotsky and the hostages he took, or Eisenhower and the order to firebomb Dresden and Cologne, or Truman and the decision to use the Atom bomb.

We can argue about the greater good that may or may not have emerged from such situations – but this doesn’t bring back the dead, and it doesn’t help their families. And in my eyes, the “end” which Blair sought was both illusory and reprehensible. Illusory because the idea of a free, democratic Iraq was never going to be achieved with force of arms, and reprehensible because what has been achieved isn’t better than the “disappearances” or militarism of Saddam’s regime.

So if Saddam is an “evil dictator”, does that make TB an “evil democrat”?

See also: Ten Percent.

The facebook application amused me. Much in the way of the age old question, “Have you stopped beating your wife?” it asks “President Obama says that they will have a Holiday Tree this year instead of a Christmas Tree. Do you agree with this?”

It’s popping up in discussion forums and on news sites like myFOX. It’s going up as a question on Yahoo.

It’s being posted about on right-wing blogs. No mainstream news organisation that I can see has picked it up yet, but you just know that Bill O’Reilly is waiting in the wings to condemn someone, somewhere for not being Christian enough, as he did with a hapless group of Seattle atheists last year.

No doubt millions of outraged voters will say no, but the whole idea is a hoax. The White House will have two main Christmas Trees, the Obama family Christmas Tree and the National Christmas Tree, across the street from the White House, in the Ellipse. Neither of these are being renamed holiday trees, as FactCheck.org points out:

No less an authority than the National Christmas Tree Association states that this year’s tree was chosen in August and is a Fraser fir grown by Eric and Gloria Sundback of Shepherdstown, W.Va. The news was duly reported by the Associated Press, [...]

That’s confirmed by Semonti Stephens, deputy press secretary to Mrs. Obama. “The Christmas tree will be called the Christmas tree,” she told us in an e-mail exchange. [...] [The national Christmas tree] isn’t being renamed a “Holiday Tree” either, according to the National Park Service, which has jurisdiction. The park service is already putting together the National Christmas Tree Music Program to be kicked off at the lighting ceremony.

Why is it that people find this rubbish so easy to believe? We know the phenomenon in the UK; Melanie Phillips runs something stupid about it almost every year – which, almost every year, is shot down in flames by people with a blog, a brain and ten minutes to make a few calls and check the sourcing of the story. Or, better yet, access to Google, where the story can often be proved false.

The sort of people who come up with this nonsense are like the crowd in this famous scene:

As Dave Osler points out, the issue has gone far beyond the mere question of who is right and who is wrong over the specific issues of modernisation. The question is now whether or not Royal Mail has the unmitigated right to do what it wants with its business.

Bearing in mind that the business survives on the labour extracted from tens of thousands of postal workers up and down the country, few of whom are paid very well – whilst their bosses enjoy bonuses on a level with parts of the City of London – I’m inclined to say that no, they do not. Modernisation must be agreed with the workers, or it simply should not be permitted to happen. It hasn’t been agreed.

In fact, Royal Mail have now said that they will only take the question to arbitration if the CWU give up their planned strike – which has been endorsed overwhelmingly by CWU members in a national ballot.

This amounts to asking the union to surrender before negotiations begin, and with the leaked Royal Mail policy document indicating that they want nothing less than union derecognition, it would be criminal to concede it.

Questions over the Royal Mail pension schemes, the continuing profitability of the business and so on are pertinent questions which need answering. The problem is not that trades unionists are too blockheaded, socialists too stubborn and workers too thick to come up with answers – but that any number of answers have been precluded in advance by the government’s attitude to privatisation – and the sale of profitable elements of Royal Mail to private providers, which continue to utilise the socialised distribution network.

These questions have been superceded by the attitude of Royal Mail management, which has become ever more intransigent as they see the government lining up to support them. A defeat for the CWU now would cast a cloud over all previous victories – such as the effort to fight the bullying culture which independent reports identified within Royal Mail.

Royal Mail abolished their anti-bullying awareness week in what can only have been an attempt to thumb their noses at CWU and provoke them into a fight.

Now it is a fight, alea iacta est. The working class, and all socialists, labourites and everyone on the Left, should stand behind the posties.

Turn up to their picket lines and wish them well. As one young pluck did, bring them homebaked goods. Donate some money to the strike fund. Attend solidarity group meetings. The bottom line is this; the posties are the men and women who deliver a service we all take advantage of.

If, in our own jobs, we know about mismanagement or the government neo-liberal ideology getting in the way of efficiency, if we’re sick of being lectured at and told things which are blatantly untrue, of being bullied and cajoled into overtime we’re not getting paid for, and we ever want the support of other workers, now is our time to shine.

Don’t ask the electorate a question unless a) you actually want to hear the answer or b) you think you can control the answer. Which is why virtually no country has held a referendum on the Treaty of Lisbon – the only one that did hold such a referendum was Ireland.

And if the people of Ireland had rejected the Treaty? Well then there would have been another referendum, or the question would have been folded into a General Election where it would have been obscured by fifteen other concerns.

Not to mention that the two political parties which campaigned for a no vote have neither the manpower or resources to beat every major Irish political party, the Irish media, the Irish Business and Employers Confederation (the Irish version of the CBI) and certain sections of the trades unions in an election.

Leaving aside the politics of whether or not the Treaty is a good thing or a bad thing, the fact that yet again, the government held a second referendum because it didn’t like the answer of the first one is scandalous.

If you believe the “Yes” camp in Ireland, it’s because the Treaty of Lisbon will secure jobs. Which is incredible when you realise that it’s an Irish confederation of employers saying this.

Tony O’Brien of C&C, Donal Byrne of Cadburies and Gary McCann of Kappa, three Directors of IBEC, have been responsible for hundreds of redundancies in the last eighteen months alone – all the while, some of these companies are posting huge profits or buying over still other companies with their spare capital.

Meanwhile both media and political players are being distracted by the process story of who scared voters more: both sides dangled the future of the country in front of voters.

If there’s one thing the Left should agree on, it’s that EU policies have not worked, have not been able to keep unemployment under control. It’s that EU policies condone in every respect the undermining of one group of workers by another from a different locality, spurred on by business which now wholesale imports them rather than employing the people on the ground.

None of which will be solved by further enmeshing ourselves with the European Union – and all of which validates the supposed scare-mongering of the Left “No” campaign (pictured above).

Despite giving the European parliament more power and making voting in Council by majority rather than requiring unanimity, these measures are not about democracy – as the sniffy attitude of European politicians frequently demonstrates when ‘democracy’ doesn’t go their way.

It is about resolving the tensions between competing national capitalisms, strengthening the ‘legitimacy’ of the EU by ensuring that one national capitalism, as represented by its State government, cannot hold the rest hostages to its own fortune, threatening the economic bloc.

Socialists should not be voting for this.

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A long version is at Though Cowards Flinch

We do tend to release the terminally ill on compassionate grounds, in this country, and it probably saved the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of pounds in continued appeals anyway – not to mention the cost of keeping the man prisoner. So what is the furore about?

Then I read these two articles by Cllr Piper. Iain Dale, Newmania and the other Tory trolls are involved; suddenly all becomes clear. Despite the Westminster government having nothing to do with the release – beyond Bill Rammell saying that he and his colleagues hoped al-Megrahi wouldn’t die in prison – the issue has become a stick with which to beat Gordon Brown.

Presumably it never occurred to the SNP, a party with no love for Labour – who are the main Opposition in Scotland, to tell London to stuff it up their jumpers. Tory blogger Iain Dale predicates his claim of pressure on the fact that three Ministers sent letters to the Scottish executive outlining the position of the UK government on the issue. Dale dismisses, of course, that in each of these letters the outlining of position is counterbalanced by acknowledgement that the matter is one for the Scottish government entirely – and so it is.

So why should UK ministers be answering questions about it to the Press rather than getting on with their job? Search me. Not to say that Labour are faultless in the matter – if Dale and his trolling companions wanted something to carp and bitch about it should be the point-scoring behaviour of Scottish Labour. The Scottish parliament voted to condemn the actions of the Executive in releasing Megrahi, with all the Opposition parties uniting against the SNP. That seems frankly cowardly and opportunistic to me. Measured against that, Bill Rammell telling the Libyans the position of his government and reiterating that it is a Scottish decision hardly seems worth much comment.

That the government doesn’t want people dying in prison should be taken as read, and as for whose responsibility Scottish prisoners are, half an hour on Wikipedia could have told the Libyans that.

Instead, Dale winds up comparing the release of al-Megrahi to the early release programme of the Good Friday Agreement.

Indeed, this is a stick with which Dale again beats Labour. Perhaps a brief history lesson is in order: 71% of the people of Northern Ireland ratified the early release of paramilitary prisoners, not to mention the sister party of the Conservatives. It was this gesture of trust which secured the co-operation and eventual disarmament of the IRA. If we’re going to talk political pragmatism, releasing such prisoners was a stunning success for Labour.

Again, it seems organisationally hypocritical for a subsection of the Labour Party which welcomed the Good Friday Agreement to suddenly oppose the release of al-Megrahi. All the rest is just blowhards doing what they do best – those within the mainstram media and those outwith.

What Sunny doesn’t highlight is the ‘twin’ of this article, written by Peter Hitchens, which attempts to refute the contentions of Hassan, asserting instead that of course the BBC is left-wing, though BBC bigwigs are unlikely to notice it, having never questioned their own assumptions in their journey from Oxbridge junior common rooms to White City.

Because the Oxbridge universities are such a bastion of socialism. Beyond such absurdities, however, I think the Hitchens article is much more instructive than its Hasan counterpart. The Hitchens article is mostly waffle, rarely reaching for examples which can be said to encompass the whole of BBC political, social and cultural coverage – whereas the previous allegiances of people like Andrew Neil and Nick Robinson probably do have an effect on coverage – but to dismiss Hitchens is to miss an incisive and important point.

“What troubles the BBC is not a party bias. (…) It is a set of potent cultural, moral, social, sexual and religious assumptions, which touch on all topics from cannabis to the EU, and which affect everything from the plot-lines of The Archers to the use of the metric system on nature programmes.”

A set of potent cultural, moral, social, sexual and religious assumptions. Hitchens is absolutely correct – but then the same is true about every individual and every organisation. It’s not a big deal that Hitchens is correct; it is his choice of words to describe the nature of BBC assumptions. I can feel the hairs on my neck rise as I wonder what he means by ’sexual assumptions’. I can almost see the accumulated and vengeful anger of social conservatism reaching out from dead years gone by to strangle all the social change feared and resented by white, Anglican, men.

To some extent, I think, here is the key to the “BBC-is-biased” meme. Amongst the wider population and probably even amongst the Conservative Party, social conservatism is in a minority. Not to say even those who describe themselves as social liberals will voice respect for the Anglican church and other touchstones of the Establishment – but it is generally accepted that women should be equal to men, that gay relationships deserve parity with ’straight’ relationships and that Christianity will just have to coexist with Islam, atheism and a majority who aren’t bothered.

Hitchens’ views on gender equality I can’t speak for – though his moralising over how women who are raped while drunk deserve less compensation surely speaks volumes. On the rest though, Hitchens definitely is a dinosaur – so much so that he has openly stated that he thinks most of Cameron’s policies are indistinguishable from New Labour and that a new political party needs to be set up. I recite all of this in the hope of proving incontrovertibly that Hitchens is in a very small minority, and to correct BBC ‘bias’ in his favour would be unacceptable.

If the rest of the population has pretty much come to terms with gay marriage and doesn’t really care about organised religion anymore, beyond a vague belief in god, surely these are the core assumptions which the BBC should reflect? What Hitchens calls the ‘permissive society’, most people call a Saturday night. And that may be deplorable or not, it may be harmful to society or not, but you can’t attack the BBC for being the preserve of one political strand in the hope that it will simply become the mouthpiece for another, even less representative, one.

Of course the BBC will seem biased to such people. Speaking as a revolutionary Marxist, I think the BBC seems biased towards a parliamentarist approach, or biased towards the government (any government) against trades unions or biased in a plethora of other ways – but at least I can recognize that I’m in a tiny minority of people and don’t expect the BBC to conform to my views of the world as of right. I do wish Radio 4 wouldn’t give Melanie Phillips an airing, because she’s a moron – but then the same goes for most journalists, especially the thousand anodyne CiFers.

The small group of social conservatives in the media who regularly whinge from their bully-pulpits that the BBC is left-wing have absolutely zero chance of ever rolling back the calendar. They are screaming nutters – Hitchens on Blair’s ’slow motion coup d’etat’, Phillips calling Barack Obama a ‘revolutionary Marxist’, Littlejohn on gay people going door to door ‘like Jehovah’s witnesses’ – they aren’t in any way in touch with what passes for truth (or reality) for most of the population and even large swathes of the politicized Right.

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Paperhouse: Conserving ignorance

This will not be helped by the announcement that the BNP are to face court over their non-compliance with the 1976 Race Relations Act.

I have no doubt that the EHRC doesn’t see it like this: they have a duty under the law etc etc, it’s not a choice, it’s built into their mandate etc etc. But I suspect that go-to excuse of the BNP is at least partially correct – that the Labour government have a hand in this somewhere. At the very least, it is endorsed by the upper echelons of Labour, as Harriet Harman made clear today.

A great number of people in this country feel alienated from the institutions of power and the ‘respectable’ faces of democracy and civil society. Pitting these ‘respectable’ faces against the BNP will not warn people off the BNP, it will solidify their reputation as anti-establishment.

Moreover, the use of what will be presented as ‘human rights’ legislation against the BNP easily feeds into their narrative about how human rights is designed to work against white people, to the benefit of minorities.

Law or not, this could all too easily backfire from the point of view of those who wish to defeat the BNP and fascist sentiments they represent. At the very least, the BNP will point out that this is persecution of minorities like the “Celtic Scottish folk community” or the “Anglo-Saxon-Norse folk community”.

Worse still, the BNP might actually change its constitution so that it explicitly permits the admission of non-whites: I can’t think of better (but completely meaningless) symbol which the BNP could use to fuel the “we’re not racist, just British” meme. Whatever the BNP constitution says, black or Asian people are not going to be signing up to the BNP in record numbers – the text of said constitution can’t change the violent, alcohol-driven, jackbooted, Sieg Heiling, lumpenprole, white trash membership and the ‘welcome’ they would give to ethnic minority members.

The use of State mechanisms to suppress a political party is not acceptable: the alternative, an activist response, is a much better idea.

We need to move beyond the ‘beat them in the great debate’ attitude of some more liberal commentators on the issue: as I have pointed out on numerous occasions, democracy is not just a great debate. The BNP take advantage of disaffection with prevailing norms, keeping the working class divided and opposition to capitalism weak, but they operate within the same paradigms as the establishment: on immigration or Europe for example, the BNP may be more ‘radical’ but they present the issue in essentially the same way as Right-Tories and UKIP.

This is why anti-fascists shouldn’t be sharing a platform with UKIP, Tories or Right-Labour speakers: they can denounce fascism all they want, but their presentation of the issue is only different by degrees. The solution to fascist appeal is not the restriction of immigration, or to pass laws forcing the conformity of ethnic minorities to rose-tinted majority archetypes or the denunciation of everything European as “Marxist”. It is the unity of the working class in the face of common exploitation, not one subset blaming that exploitation on the other.

Additionally, such establishment politicians often shy away from awakening the socialist solidarity of many trades union members (however those members vote come election time), preferring instead to rest with high-profile speakers and conventions. Whereas we could have the CWU organising boycotts of fascist leaflets and journalists and publishing workers refusing to print or broadcast BNP advertisements, an activity based on the active political choice of individuals rather than the power of the State, politicians run from this option as they always have.

At root, that is our only choice: either to abdicate our responsibility to organize mass opposition to the fascists, allied to mass organisations like the trades unions, or to leave it to the pontifications of our politicians, many of whom are compromised by their role as the root of much working class alienation, and their use (abuse?) of State power. So, hands up, who thinks the windbaggery of Harriet Harman and her parliamentary colleagues is going to get the job done?

Perhaps not for Guardian readers, who are a bunch of simpering, effete wet-noses obviously – but this will definitely chalk up some points with the solid English-as-the-White-Cliffs readers of the Daily Mail. Well on this one I’m joining the effete Guardian readers, because damned if I’m not unpatriotic too – and so should you be.

I don’t care whether the issue is Malkin attacking Dunkin Donuts, or Pelosi attacking immigration laws, or Hannan on the NHS or the Home Office declaring that protesting against British troops is considered unpatriotic and grounds for denying people citizenship.

Patriotism is a retarded sentiment which should be left to the fifteen year old kids in AOL and MSN chatrooms who type variations on a theme of “My country can beat your country!!!” as fast as they can, as though this justifies any action and can win any argument.

Patriotism is not a yardstick against which to measure an idea. It wasn’t a good idea during the run of the House Unamerican Activities Committee, and it isn’t today.

Burnham could have hit back at Hannan’s slurs against the National Health Service by saying that the NHS provides millions of people who couldn’t afford it with healthcare. He could have hit back saying that the NHS and the redistributive taxes which fund it are a good way to ensure that the wealthy, when they aren’t secreting money in offshore tax havens, are contributing something to the communities they plunder and destroy for profit. He didn’t.

The idea of attacking Dan Hannan MEP as unpatriotic makes me sick. To echo General Melchett, “I don’t care if he’s been rogering the Duke of York with a prizewinning leek!”

Hannan has been lining up with the scummiest of right-wing broadcasters in the US – Glenn Beck, the irresponsible dickhead who accused President Obama of being a racist, and who claimed that Obama is using redistributive healthcare as a means of paying African Americans reparations for slavery.

You can’t get more nuts than this particular wingnut, and it’s not like the US talkshow circuit doesn’t try really hard. Yet the worst that Burnham can say of Hannan is that he’s unpatriotic?

Fuck. Off.

When attending picket lines or passing out leaflets there isn’t a lot of time to be denouncing the parasitic organism that is the Royal Family. Not when there are Tories aiming to take every last penny from the working man’s pocket and the Fascists aiming to relocate half of Britain abroad just because we don’t measure up to what they consider to be British.

However, the news of that the BNP are to be invited shouldn’t surprise me so grievously. After all, it’s well recorded that various members of the Royal Family are outright racists, and their ancestors – ironically, German immigrants – were no less so.

These are people who presided (and preside!) over the bullying and butchering of how many people and nations simply because our armies are stronger and it is in the interest of our native capitalists to do so. Far from being the doting parents of the nation, the Royals personify everything that is plain evil about a class-based system of exploitation.

Let the BNP have their garden party. If one fucking member of the Greens or Labour appears at such an event, alongside that odious racist Griffin, then they are a traitor to their movement.

Yet long have been the years since MacDonald and his cabinet went cap in hand to recieve their offices from the King, dressed in finery far removed from the conditions of the workers they were supposed to represent, and many have been the betrayals – of men and women fighting to put bread and butter on their table, no less.

One more such betrayal will probably not plague their consciences.

The crisis has gone to waste as the clock runs down on a Labour term of office. No mighty reforms to banking, more of the same tokenistic gestures (e.g. the £200 million to be raised by a 50% income tax band) and little else.

I’m probably being a bit too harsh, since there were some very helpful measures included – on pensioners, retraining for employment and on the carers of young people – but delivered with brevity and solemnity amid the jeers from the opposition benches, a 2009 “People’s Budget” it was not.

There was no watershed moment, excepting that the Labour leadership published a headline grabbing tax band whilst extending corporate subsidies through tax relief on profits for the last three years, without tying that to a promise to keep workers in jobs.

It should be painfully clear to even the Newest of New Labourites that the leadership has lost direction and focus. This is not to do with the individuals – it’s to do with an equivocation caused by NuLab’s realisation that they’ve been essentially abandoned.

By Labour activists, by the working class, by the wealthy (to whom New Labour offered so many anti-tax or PFI carrots) and by history.

Before the budget was announced, John Band made a good joke by saying that now is the time for socialists to rejoin Labour. I damn near looked at the calendar to see if it was April 1st.

The Labour Party’s internal democracy is corrupt (as if we needed Alice Mahon’s resignation letter, Erith & Thamesmead, or Calder Valley, to prove that!). The membership has been depoliticized; however abandoned Brown may be, there are still members touting David bloody Miliband or some other cabinet figures perceived as ‘more left.’

With its token populism, this budget has demonstrated that Labour’s leadership has not the inclination to turn back the clock on Labour policies. What it hasn’t demonstrated is that Labour’s leadership has lost control of the Party – in fact, it hasn’t. The same student hackery, the same policy wonkery, the same endless carousel of circle-jerking junkets is still going to produce leadership figures because it still has iron controls over parliamentary selection and over a marketing machine that invalidates internal democracy – and Conference is toothless besides.

The people in charge of Labour are champagne socialists and their control is nigh unshakeable. No leadership battle, no economic crisis is going to change just how far individuals can get by knowing the right people and mouthing the right platitudes.

In Labour, out of Labour; the difference has now been rendered irrelevant by a continued course of massive borrowing and no structural change. Amongst all those opposed to capitalism, we’ll swim together as we arrange protests, pickets and occupations, to derail what comes next or we’ll sink together. Such weapons as we need – new media to communicate and new methods of inspiring and organising the working class – we’ll have to fashion without reference to the leadership of any political party but according to our principles.

Otherwise we’re simply asking to repeat the whole situation all over again – and, as this budget and this crisis clearly demonstrate, we can’t afford that.

A longer version is over at my blog

Or are they? Fox News and right-wing talk radio hosts have been agitating for something like this for months now. It shouldn’t surprise us that people are willing to get out and protest about high taxes. In fact, it should encourage the Left – because we don’t have a problem with low taxes…for the working class.

But as far as I can see, this is not an argument being made in the US. Liberal commentators like Keith Olbermann have been very swift to denounce the protests as hypocritical, or astroturf groups or whatever.

In some cases, no doubt these allegations are true. It’s certainly hypocritical for some of these protestors to be carrying “Protest is Patriotic” banners, when I suspect they’d not have had the same sentiment about anti-war protests. That escapes the point, however. No matter how brainwashed these people are, if stripped of the veneer added by the professional right-wing commentators, their basic point is right. They are being taxed in order to rebuild the economy that then goes on to exploit their labour, when it doesn’t leave them unemployed.

Not only should they be protesting, but so should we. On one glance, it may seem to render the whole idea preposterous when you consider that Obama is raising income taxes on the richest to some ten percentage points less than they were under Reagan. However, we need to swallow our immediate urge to indignation and reach out.

How much more effective would it be if there were trade union banners on these protests, where union activists could talk to the very mob called into existence by right-wing jerk offs and make the counter arguments?

Trades unions…protesting against high taxes on their members? I think Rush Limbaugh’s head would explode. More importantly, if some of the liberal media and bloggers could stow their unconcealed disdain for right-wing populism for a moment, they’d also see that for most of the people being encouraged to take to the streets, their interests don’t lie with an unfettered capitalism. Sure, tax workers less…but what about the people who created this economic mess? Well, tax them more.

American ‘liberals’ should also be enheartened that roughly 48% of the country believes that their taxes are about right. The other 46% of the country that thinks taxes are too high cannot possibly ALL be Wall Street brokers whose direct financial interests lie in sticking it to the rest of us. In fact, I’d guess that a large chunk of that figure are groups like the auto-workers, struggling against the repossession of their homes, having had their wages stiffed by the government’s ‘bail-out’.

We cannot allow the conservatives of America to lead that resentment, and the tactics of political satire, of laughing at the poor deluded fools who clearly have no conception of political economy (for such is how people like Olbermann seem to treat them) are not going to get the job done. Our mantra must be, “Organisation, organisation, organisation!”

Why bother writing about it then? These are good questions, and the answer is that not five minutes ago, I spotted a ridiculous article on the BBC website titled, Star dubs Jade ‘Primark Princess’, and then made the mistake of reading it. Thankfully we don’t allow firearms in this country or I reckon I’d feel compelled to hunt down Russell Brand and kill him, earning myself a British Comedy Award for services rendered.

Brand came up with the following wank, which outdoes any Existentialist for pretentious fuckwittery.

One of the charges often levelled at Jade was that she was just a normal girl with no trade or practiced skills. Well people didn’t care and our heroes are not prescribed to us, we have the right to choose them and the people chose Jade. Fame has long been bequeathed by virtue of wealth and birth and this was the first generation where it was democratically distributed by that most lowbrow of modern phenomena – Reality Television…When Big Brother 3 made her famous she was vilified in the paper and bullied in the house but through her spirit she won people back round and became a kind of Primark Princess with perfumes and fitness videos and endless media coverage – because people were interested in her.

Brand has bought in, hook-line and sinker, to the notion that fame is now in the gift of ‘the people’, perhaps thanks to the concept of telephone voting, such that it can be ‘democratically distributed’ on the basis of individual likes and dislikes, which we in turn presume to be beyond reproach precisely because they are individual and we’re all entitled to our own opinions.

Our very likes and dislikes are not formed in a world with infinite choice. Our choices, especially in the matter of subjects covered by the media, are limited to the options offered by the industry that exists for the purposes of creating and extolling celebrity. Even when we make a conscious choice not to be interested in something, its transmutation into a cultural meme means that few of us can escape it, howsoever we wall ourselves off.

When one section of the media works itself into a lather, the very fact of commenting on commentary extends this unhealthy attitude all across the nation. It is almost a textbook example of some of the processes which Nick Davies describes in his book, Flat Earth News. It is not new. Other, perhaps worthier, subjects have their place in the media usurped by this story on the basis that editors know we’ll succumb to the same frenzy-whipping techniques which have succeeded in the newsroom.

Brand’s point about Jade’s personality is therefore dead wrong. The whole charade has nothing to do with the personality or qualities of Jade Goody. It is not the case that the punters are simply ‘choosing’ the Jade Goody story out of an infinite list of stories they could be interested in. For a couple of days last week, it was the only story and received coverage in every medium imaginable. Similarly, the media themselves aren’t interested in Jade’s qualities or personality – and they were quite happy to demonize her in the past.

In fact, the celebrity cancer theme is readily exploited because people are basically caring, and because many thousands of people get cancer. It’s a problem with which our society is familiar. Russell Brand himself, foppish shithead though he is, is a clear example of how cancer as a theme can cause people to relate to the story of Jade Goody. The terminal illness, the kids, the last-minute wedding – all are eminently marketable, and I suspect the wedding and Jack’s release from prison were dreamed up by Clifford for that purpose.

It may be revealing that the ‘Primark Princess’ (or People’s Princess or any other populist epithet) is what the PR gurus have arrived at as the best vehicle for commercial exploitation, but we must remember that the audience in this process is essentially passive. The audience can applaud or shout its dissent – but even for the dissenters, there’s a marketing angle to be played. Some of the more high-brow papers and blogs denounced Jade, denounced the media circus around her and so on and so forth.

It would surprise me not a bit if Max Clifford’s PR firm was behind a few of those as well. This should tell us something about the concept of Hegemony, which I wrestle with quite a bit.

Hegemony entails not merely the exploitation of labour for the purposes of extracting surplus value, it also entails the exploitation of the basic oppositional drives between the classes, a contained subversion manifesting itself as populism but never actually challenging the inequalities that this populism implicitly or explicitly rejects.

It is a frightening thought that for a government that continues to make noises about empowering communities, the man in charge of DCSF seems intent on grabbing an insane amount of power. Despite claims that it would only be used to counteract something like the scrapping of Shakespeare, one wonders if this government actually believes its own communitarian rhetoric.

These proposals from the apprenticeships, skills, children and learning bill that would give the Secretary of State huge amounts of control over precisely what is taught in a classroom. The guidance notes accompanying the bill apparently state that the Secretary could specify which authors and their works had to be studied in order to pass an English literature-based GCSE or A-level.

As it stands, the system is far from perfect. Each exam board carries its own restrictions on what can and can’t be studied, meanwhile Chief Examinations Officers have a nice little sideline in pawning their mutterings on a given subject because they know what’s going to be on the exam. This power is set to increase in certain subjects as coursework options – ranging from ‘a local study’ to pretty much anything – are gradually phased out. Again, I’m mostly talking about history, since it is what I know.

The choice by heads of department as to what exam boards are followed is largely based on what pupils will score highly in, and what the department staff can actually teach. Important subjects such as the French Revolution therefore have no chance of a look-in, since they are perceived as more difficult to grasp by pupils and many staff in history departments simply aren’t qualified to teach them. Not to impugn other subjects such as the Risorgimento, German unification or Russia under Stalin and Khrushchev, of course.

I am just as guilty of this as any teacher – I’d rather eat my own liver than teach a course on the Suffragettes. Not because I am against women’s rights or women’s history, but simply because I find the whole course boring. Yet imagine the question of what is taught being removed from the classroom environment – in such an environment, the preferences and skills of the teachers and pupils are important. Teaching at A-level would go from being responsive to classroom needs to dependent upon some arbitrary opinion of the Secretary of State.

Frankly that would be disastrous.

Do I think there’s a sinister element about the whole thing? No. Rhetoric about 1984 is far from my mind – more important is focussing on the hypocrisy of the government and the needs of students.  That said, the apparatus will be in place to restrict the study of certain books – and none of the new apparatus addresses the rather appalling ability of independent schools to teach whatever they want – whether it’s true or false or questionable. The state system isn’t perfect at addressing that – but there are means towards improvement.

What I want to know is this: for what reason does Ed Balls really want this power? For those who hysterically scream about “state worshipping fascists” the answer might seem obvious, but normally for powers such as this there are obvious reasons – and right now, there are none that I can see.

This news has been picked up by our own Bob Piper and has received stinging rebuke from Tory Harry Phibbs of Conservative Home. One wonders if Councillor Phibbs knows what sort of company he is keeping on the issue. He should do, if he reads his own comment box.

It has always seemed something of an irony that the imagery adopted by parts of the far right in the UK has been of a mythical individual, a foreigner, who never visited England.

That England celebrates St. George’s Day as its national day has always struck me as somewhat absurd, bearing in mind the number of eminent Saints who graced these shores: the healing St. Cuthbert, the humble St. Thomas Becket who stood up to autocracy, or the learned humanist, Thomas More.

Why we have to have a Saint’s day as a national day is a debate for another time, but suffice it to say that the militaristic St. George complements the vision the political Right have of British history. In particular, it’s easy to see the difference between the Irish celebrating St. Patrick’s day and the English celebrating St. George’s day. As nations, neither Ireland, Scotland or Wales have much history of subjugating other nations to their power. England, on the other hand…

That’s not to say that the ‘loony left’ – that’s me – don’t object to overt and irritating celebrations of other national days. Overt patriotism bugs me, and it’s hardly ameliorated when the overt patriotism is essentially a celebration of several hundred years of butchery. I should be immune, having grown up between two armed camps where green, white and orange, and red, white and blue adorned even the kerbstones, but somehow that makes it even worse.

But Councillor Harry Phibbs, and the various further right commentators, skip over the part where Sandwell council actually organised an investigation into incidents that were reported from the previous years’ events.

This included interviews with witnesses, as reported by the BBC. They also skipped over the part where Sandwell council pointed out it would be spending £38,000 on St. George’s Day celebrations, just not on the parade element; this would include a family fun day and a concert at the town hall in West Brom.

Hardly a case of criminalising Englishness, I would think. Phibbs asks, “do the Councl not see that cancelling the event is a gift to the BNP?” It’s a gift only when berks like you don’t report all the facts, nor correct some of the flagrantly ill-informed assertions in your comments post. The same goes for the local media, which had a details-light article on the subject.

Parades are a difficult issue; they tend to bring out the worst in people. In Northern Ireland, ordinary Protestant workers who don’t care about religion for 351 days a year get worked up over the course of the 12th of July fortnight and dangerous things happen. If the council thinks there are better, more family-friendly ways to celebrate St. George’s day, while still actually celebrating St. George’s day, isn’t that to be applauded? Especially by the Right, one would think, since they’re still getting the celebration.

Instead, Phibbs rather short sighted article tries to trumpet the activities of Conservative-run Calderdale….which, significantly, don’t include a parade. Sandwell and Calderdale actually share numerous features, such as entertainment at the city hall and the raising of English flags on April 23rd.

If the Conservatives and their allies in the media ever wonder about the inscrutable actions of the ‘loony left’ (me again), perhaps they should first consider how their behaviour and misinformation contributes to the problem, rather than solving it.

It says something when both animal liberationists – many of whom are also involved with organisations such as the League Against Cruel Sports – and pro-hunting lobbyists can get on the same bandwagon. Why would we jump into bed with this group?

Similarly, why would we allow Conservatives to take stands at a Convention on Modern Liberties? David Cameron has already admitted, on numerous occasions, that he will not be seeking to overturn a lot of the government’s legislation – and indeed, it was the Thatcher government where the trend of legislating for every tabloid headline truly started. Equally, the drive for tougher sentencing and reduced judicial discretion has often come from the Conservative benches.

Or the media. Every time a judge finds something redeeming about a rapist or a drunk driver and reduces his sentence accordingly, the tabloids scream. Every time there appears a chance someone charged with terrorism might be coming home from Guantanamo, the newspapers jump all over it…and from there it’s only a short trip to “Soft Touch Britain” rhetoric. These pressures will not disappear with a Conservative government – however much people like Paul Kingsnorth and other liberals may have fallen in love with the idea.

What the Convention is not is a programme of direct action – and that is significant. In our search for a broad coalition on civil liberties, first of all we’ve forgotten that the fight is not purely ideological. We’ve forgotten the database economy – as Unity argued in a piece of superb clarity. All the bloggerati and lobbying of pro-liberties groups won’t combine to equal Tesco, Sainsbury and the other giants who benefit.

Conservatives are just as in hock to these groups as Labour. For all that Henry Porter might pontificate about Labour MPs using their time on an important committee to read letters instead of pay attention to critiques of Labour policy, it was a Liberal government who first introduced the authoritarian Official Secrets Act, rushed through in a sparsely populated chamber, one Friday afternoon.

A Convention on Modern Liberty that focusses on the main parties is going to fail because it will be blind to this crucial issue. For the same reason, any answer which is focussed on voting out those MPs who don’t stand up for civil liberties is bound to fail also.

The challenge
So instead of pushing people towards a parliamentary answer, which remains at all times trapped within the logic of a media and business lobbyists who disdain liberties – one for the purposes of whipping up moral frenzy and the other for a quick buck – why don’t we begin building an activist response to the issue? This may not overturn the Coroners and Justice Bill immediately, but, on the other hand, it might begin to challenge that very logic which we’re working against.

Strand one would involve harassing MPs. A sufficiently well organised and funded campaign could start by sending lots of letters to them, especially to their home address, to remind them just how much we hate spam; it could arrange protests outside their constituency offices whenever their surgery hours are scheduled, whenever votes are coming up.

Strand two could network local government workers, health workers and others involved in creating our uber database to resist implementation of the laws passed.

Our coup de grace would be, in the case of the Coroners and Justice Bill, to arrange a boycott by the Coroner’ Society of England and Wales, especially if this could be backed by well-funded legal challenges every time the government tried to use its new-found powers. Getting prominent figures on board is an important step in creating the credibility necessary to exert influence over professional bodies, trades unions and other groups we might need in a bid to stop the implementation of laws.

I suspect an added bonus to such an approach – targeting MPs at home, organising the public sector and getting bodies like the BMA or Coroners’ Society to go along with us – would be a separation of wheat of chaff in respect of which parliamentarians climb on board. Many would probably be alienated by any potential campaign of direct action or civil disobedience – the latter of which is particularly relevant in the case of laws clamping down on our rights of protest and dissent. Photographing police is one example of such a campaign.

Yet we should welcome this. If we can keep out the opportunists, it’ll make the political statement of that campaign all the stronger. To broaden our appeal, we shouldn’t be afraid to take a leaf out of the Countryside Alliance’s book. It went from being a primarily pro-hunting organisation to attempting to speak on behalf of rural England, on every grievance that could be thought of. Our equivalent would be generalising from infringement of liberties to linking underfunding of public services with wasteful and invasive measures such as ID cards.

More importantly, organising in this manner dictates a ground-up method, rather than “interested individuals” being invited to take part in a day’s event or longer campaign. Accountability, if we’re to seek it in government, should also be a watchword for our campaign on modern liberties.

A longer version of the article is here.

It’s a good idea, since it prevents the BNP from using the name of the Church of England at any meetings or six-person rallies they might hold, but it rather misses the point.

If Christianity means something, within parameters prescribed by the Bible, surely it is impossible to have clergy on one side spouting racist filth, whilst clergy on the other side think Jesus was the first socialist? More importantly, while banning BNP membership will give people something to think about, the next time the BNP stands up for Christianity, it won’t change the fact that numerous CoE devotees sympathize with them.

Surely that’s a bigger issue, and one which needs to be challenged urgently? The underlying racist (or, more probably, theocratic) ideas which permit supposedly God-fearing men and women to think that a racist party might have the answer are surely a danger to the tolerance and liberality which the Church of England is trying to convince us it possesses it great measure.

A response from some BNP oik deserves reporting for a larf:

“It’s a witch-hunt…You can’t have an organisation passing itself off as Christian while embarking on thoroughly vindictive and un-Christian behaviour.”

I don’t think irony comes in a more beautiful, unadulterated form than that. It’s a pity, I think, that BNP members probably won’t appreciate the irony of one of their number telling the Church of England it’s not Christian because it discriminates…whilst the BNP does the same, as often as not in the name of St. George. Wonderful stuff.