We recently reported the hilarious, if disturbing, remarks of Tory MP Tim Loughton:

“We need a message that actually it is not a very good idea to become a single mum at 14. [It is] against the law to get pregnant at 14. How many kids get prosecuted for having underage sex? Virtually none. Where are the consequences of breaking the law and having irresponsible underage sex? There aren’t any.”

So, The Guardian asked, should there be prosecutions?

“We need to be tougher. Without sounding horribly judgmental, it is not a good idea to be a mum at 14. You are too young, throwing away your childhood and prospects of developing a career.”

Without sounding horribly judgmental, anybody who thinks that there are no consequences to getting pregnant, and that a criminal record promotes a happy childhood and helps develop a healthy career, is a Platinum Imbecile.

Platinum Imbecility aside, there’s something to note about the bizarre universe Mr Loughton resides in: girls get pregnant by magic. continue reading… »

When the Metropolitan Police shot the innocent Jean Charles de Menezes in the head, seven times, we didn’t get the truth. We got anonymous sources briefing the media that de Menezes had run away from police, that he’d leaped the barriers at Stockwell tube, that he’d been wearing a heavy coat thought to be concealing a suicide bomb. It was all spin – or as it used to be called, lies.

Luckily for the police it distracted the press for a long time – at least until an inquest was finally able to white-wash the case.

When a Met officer struck newspaper vendor Ian Tomlinson with a baton and pushed him to the ground without provocation, we didn’t get the truth. After Tomlinson collapsed and died, the police briefed the media that Tomlinson was a rowdy protestor, that he suffered a heart attack, and that G20 protestors pelted an ambulance with bottles as it struggled to reach the dying man.

It was all lies – but almost all the MSM swallowed it, at least until The Guardian obtained damaging video evidence to the contrary.

So we know that the police lie when they mess up. By now, you’d hope the media would be alive to their tricks. Sadly not. continue reading… »

Last night the Muslim Council of Britain held a special closed-meeting of parliamentarians, journalists, police, public servants, community representatives, academics and, erm, me. The topic of discussion was Tackling Islamophobia: Reducing Street Violence Against British Muslims.

The event was timely. “Since 9/11 anti-Muslim hate crimes appear to have become more prevalent than racist hate crimes where black and Asian Londoners are the victims.” (PDF) Testimony from a range of academic experts and politicians substantiated the claim that street violence against Muslims is rising.

Speakers stressed that there are “tangible links between Islamophobia or anti-Muslim bigotry in both mainstream political and media discourse…extremist nationalist discourse, and anti-Muslim hate crimes”. Peter Oborne – a journalist on the Conservative right by his own admission – described how after 7/7 he became aware that journalists in mainstream newspapers got away with telling lies and distorting facts about Islam and Muslims on a regular basis. Indeed he collected his findings and took them to Channel 4, who turned them into a special episode of Dispatches. This sort of dishonesty – he said – would not be tolerated if it were directed at any other minority group. Yet the smearing of British Muslims, usually playing on fears of terrorism, is standard fare in the British media.
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Given the Tories’ continuous slide in the polls, there was an almost tangible feeling of opportunity at last night’s “Osbornomics” event.

Hosted by the New Political Economy network and Compass, debate was mainly focused on what can be expected from a Tory chancellor.

The audience and panel focused enthusiastically on how Labour can stop the Conservatives, and even what it can do differently if it wins. There was talk of a hung parliament with Vince Cable as Chancellor, even of a small Labour majority.

As members of the audience and panel became enthusiastic about a Labour resurgence, the understated but excellent Andrew Gamble had a small and important point to make: be careful what you wish for.
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So The Observer really rained on New Labour’s parade, deflecting attention away from Saturday’s policy launch and onto whether Gordon Brown is a dominating, paranoid, near-psychopathic bully.

Let’s assume – on the grounds that Andrew Rawnsley is a serious journalist and The Obs continues to keep up the pretence of being a serious newspaper – that the allegations are broadly true.

I don’t disagree that there’s cynical political maneuvering gone on here. Nor that there are partisan interests at play. But nonetheless, it seems that if these allegations are true then now had to be the right time to bring them out.

This is because a significant difference exists between the office of the Prime Minister and ordinary bosses. Namely, a normal supervisor or manager can be sacked for their unacceptable bullying of staff, or an employer taken to court over a lengthy period on harassment charges. Often the process isn’t ideal, but it’s there.
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There’s been something wrong with all the Tory campaign posters so far, even before their myriad and amusing spoofings.

Take the “We Can’t Go On Like This” line, first seen accompanying David Cameron’s shiny airbrushed forehead. Rather than a reason to vote Conservative, it reads like the first stage of a relationship break-up. Almost as bad as “It’s not you, it’s me”, but somewhere above “If you liked it, then you shudda putta ring on it”.

Last week there were the tasteful “R.I.P OFF” gravestones, taking a mooted proposal, dishonestly elevating it into Labour policy, and turning the morally complex issue of end-of-life care into a macabre political football. But again, the message was hardly, ‘here’s a reason to vote Conservative’. It was more “OOOOHHHH be SCARED, evil Gordon is coming to steal YOUR MONEY when you’re DEAD!”

The most incredible thing about these and the latest campaign is that the Conservatives are practically admitting that they are a rubbish party, hence why people don’t normally vote for them.
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There’s a worrying tendency emerging in some sections of the left to cite China as a positive example for the UK.

At the Progressive London” conference, Ken Livingstone gave a speech in which he declared that the proof that government investment ends recessions lies in China’s staggering rates of state spending, and enormous correlate levels of growth.

Later, John Ross of Socialist Economic Bulletin (and Ken’s former economic adviser) took some time out from claiming that Britain’s national debt didn’t need to be repaid, that the triple-A rating is meaningless, and that all spending cuts are completely a choice and not imposed by brute economic circumstances, to cite China as proof-positive that government-led investment ends recessions. He waxed lyrical about China’s 9% growth in the last quarter, and how the Chinese government simply told banks to lend and – hey presto – they lent.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for keeping government spending as high as possible to protect the tentative recovery. But citing China as a model for UK growth is idiotic, and deeply troubling.
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Over the weekend I was invited to observe the campaign group Power2010’s “Deliberative Democracy” event in London.

Chaired by Baroness Helena Kennedy, it was billed as drawing upon the work of Stanford Professor James Fishkin to pioneer methods in which ordinary people might “set priorities for electoral reform, MPs expenses and political scandals.”

My usual cynicism about these sorts of things was initially over-ridden by how impressed I was with the democratic process at the Power2010 weekend.

There was something actually inspiring about watching ordinary people debate on equal terms, get enthused about their political system and work in a sense of reforming solidarity.

But the more I reflect, the more my usual scepticism returns. Because it seems highly unlikely that Power2010 can bring about the reforms (whatever they turn out to be) it champions.
(Channel 4 report at the end)
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Wednesday’s ridiculous abortive coup against Gordon Brown got me thinking about leadership in democracies.

A consistent complaint against Brown is that he hasn’t been directly elected by the people. And it’s the conventional wisdom that if he were decapitated, whoever takes over the Labour reigns will have to hold a snap election. The People of this green and pleasant land wouldn’t tolerate another “unelected” leader, apparently.

Toryboy Nick Robinson repeated the mantra too:

Weeks before the country gets to choose who should be its next prime minister Labour MPs are considering taking the decision for them. If they succeed a man or woman who has not been elected by the public would replace a man who has himself not been elected by the public.

The conventional response to this is to repeat the truism that no British Prime Minister is ever elected by the public directly. Anyone with basic knowledge of the UK constitution understands this. The Prime Minister is the leader of the party which gains the most seats (and not even necessarily the most votes) at a general election. The only people who “elected” Tony Blair in 1997 were those living in Sedgefield. Ditto for Margaret Thatcher and the people of Finchley.
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Shadow culture secretary Jeremy Hunt says he’s going to “develop an online platform that enables us to tap into the wisdom of crowds to resolve difficult policy challenges”. Marina Hyde thinks the Tories may have solved the problem of their lack of policies. But with what significance?

The wisdom of crowds phenomenon observes that if you get a lot of people together and ask them to guess something – the weight of a pig at a county fair, say – then the more people you have guessing, the more likely they are to collectively get it right if you average out all the individual answers.

For every ridiculously far-out over-estimate, someone else under-estimates by the same margin. Eventually, the over- and under-valuations even each other out. The more people guessing, the closer the collective guess gets to a remarkable degree of accuracy.

The problem with applying such theorems to the realm of politics is that they only have purchase if the crowd or jury is being asked to discover something objectively certain. But politics is essentially conflict and struggle between clashing world-views. Large groups of people cannot discover the “correct” political policies, because the notion of “correct” politics is a chimera.
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The Daily Mail is really, really horrible.

But we already knew this.

But as casual misogyny and general nastiness goes, the following headline is something of a paradigm example: “Stripper jailed for lacing lover’s Angel Delight with poison” – screams the Dail Mail.

I don’t trawl the Mail website for entertainment. I know about this because the “stripper” in question is (deep breath) my girlfriend’s housemate’s ex-boyfriend’s sister.

A stripper, was she? Well even the Mail’s own article manages to note that:

The court heard that Mardon carried out the attacks because she was in an abusive relationship and was forced to work as a stripper to bring in extra cash.

From what I’m told, “abusive relationship” is something of an understatement. But for the Mail, it’s just a woman’s place in the home:

She had a day job as a clerical assistant and had been pressured by him to work at night as a stripper.

Mardon would then return to the two-bedroom house in Thornbury, Bristol, owned by Martyn’s father. She lived there with Martyn and his brother and their father.

She would then be required to cook for the men and do the housework.

And despite all that she is referred to merely as a “stripper”.

A couple more thoughts on class war following on from yesterday’s post.

Sunny picked up the tenor of my argument about how 21st century appeals to privilege and minority interests is neither a disastrous retreat to 1970s antagonisms nor the suicidal doom-and-gloom message that New Labour dinosaurs claim. Yet he seems insistent on labelling the overall strategy one of “class war”.

To be fair to Sunny, he does say that this is intended merely as shorthand, holding his nose and agreeing with Ed Ball’s on this matter. But even then, I’m suspicious of using the term even as shorthand in strategy-debate. For terms have a tendency to stick. Especially when a predominantly right-wing media has already shown itself desirous of squawking about the “class war” label.

And there’s (at least) two more reasons why “class war” is an unwise use of language, on top of yesterday’s list.
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Faced with the evidence, one would be tempted to say that many of our homegrown deniers are just stupid. After all the scientific facts are so overwhelmingly against them, and the improbability of AGW being either a conspiracy or an illusion so enormous, how could anybody deny that climate change is the single biggest threat facing humanity?

Someone like Lord Monckton appears to avoid the thicko label at first. After all, he publishes long-winded pseudo- explanations of why AGW is bunk (armed with his degree in, erm, classics). Then again, there comes a point when an individual’s staggering arrogance that they are right whilst (virtually) the entire scientific community is wrong shades off into stupidity, albeit of an especially hubristic kind.

But it’s hard to categorise all AGW deniers as idiots. Iain Dale, for example, can be extremely erudite and incisive when he chooses to be. I’ve seen him debate, and the man is sharp and intellectually very capable.

Similar things must be said of Tim Montgomerie: he’s one climate sceptic it’s unrealistic to categorise as stupid. Fraser Nelson – regardless of his attention-seeking flirtations with AIDs denialism – hardly comes across as thick.
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There are two adverts currently doing the rounds that really get on my nerves.

The first is for Clover, or Utterly Butterly, or one of those other butter-substitute spread things. You’ll have seen it, the posters are everywhere. They have a picture of some twit in a van holding a crumpet, and the words “Now With 70% Less Fat*” emblazoned in giant letters above him.

The things is, if you follow the asterisk and read the tiny print at the bottom of the poster, you will see that it says “When compared to ordinary butter”. I don’t think you’d be a fool for assuming that the claim of a 70% reduction related to the fat content of the same product but as formerly produced, not to ordinary butter generally. But then, you’d be wrong. Personally, I think this is misleading to the point of near-absurdity.

The other advert (or series of adverts) that irritates me is the T-Mobile “what would you do with free texts for life?” nonsense. Specifically, I’m annoyed by the bloke who is allegedly starting a “superband” now that he’s got free texts for life. Maybe I’m missing something, but I’m fairly sure that what was stopping him from forming a superband was never the cost of sending inane chatter to people he knew (he’d surely have heard of Twitter already).

The whole T-Mobile advertising campaign is simply daft. Right? Then again, T-Mobile must have done extensive market and advertising research before ploughing huge sums of money into this campaign. So they must think it will work. Which leads me to wonder: are people really so stupid that this sort of campaign, rather than causing them to scoff at the ridiculous premise, will instead encourage them to switch phone companies?

Perhaps many people are that dumb. Or perhaps advertising makes them that way. That and the cold, cynical manipulation of Simon Cowell et al.
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Most of the comment on the fall of the Berlin Wall has come from people who experienced life in the eras both before and after it came down, and for obvious reasons. So here’s something different: a reflection from somebody who doesn’t remember the wall, because they were 3 years old in 1989.

My generation lives, for all intense and purposes, without ideology. There’s plenty of ideology knocking about in the world, as we all know from the daily death count in Afghanistan. But there’s not much of it here in Britain amongst the under 25s. It’s a platitude that political parties have seen declining membership for years, and that apathy and disillusionment with politics has been steadily on the rise.

Yet it doesn’t follow that people of my generation are completely uninterested in politics per se. Most – I imagine – would tell you that Gordon Brown is a bad prime minister and needs to go. Most would say the recession is a bad thing that needs to be sorted out. Many – possibly most – will have other concerns: opposition to university tuition fees, the spectre of global warming, and so on.

Yet whilst there remain political beliefs and issues that the young are interested in, it’s rare to find a young person who holds all these issues and beliefs (should they be interested in more than a couple) to be unified by any under-lying and coherent worldview.

Rather, they are presented and held as broadly freestanding political preferences, which may connect with other preferences in some respects, but are essentially self-sufficient. In short: politics without ideology.
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The busier you are, the faster time passes. So right now it feels to me like we’re hurtling towards the day David Cameron will be in Number 10. And i’m increasingly scared.

I’m scared because of the Conservative’s rhetoric on economic policy. Tory grassroots have already launched an attack on the Financial Times (that renowned bastion of worker solidarity) for allegedly being biased against Cameron and Osborne.

But it’s not just the FT that’s sounding alarm bells about Conservative economic rhetoric.

Think tank Centre:Forum last week released a report on Tory economic proposals. Despite having many political differences with CF, over the past few months I’ve come to respect their economic output – and in particular, their chief economist Giles Wilkes – a great deal.

I’ve not had time to read the “Slash and Growth?” report yet, but I have read part of the conclusion posted on Free Thinking Economist:
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I’ve already commented frequently about the fact of gender inequality in our society, but also of the fact most people just don’t see it.

But it’s always good to have up-to-date examples.

Take Amanda Platell, writing in the Daily Mail, for example:

“All the more so when Labour’s own experiment with female shortlists proved to be so disastrous. Has Cameron learned nothing from the catastrophe that was Blair’s Babes – the female intake of the 1997 election? Remember Ruth Kelly? Jacqui Smith? Caroline Flint? As with so many Labour ladies, they turned out to be stunningly incompetent or ill-suited for high office. It was a national embarrassment.”

As Sunder at Next Left points out (h/t owed for the above), neither Kelly, Smith nor Flint were actually selected via women-only shortlists. So Platell’s article commits a basic error of fact, if her argument is that all-women shortlists returned particular examples of bad MPs.

Imagine the logic, applied to men:

“All the more when the United Kingdom’s centuries-old practice of either only – or overwhelmingly (in recent years) – selecting men to be MPs has proved to be so disastrous. Has Cameron learned nothing from the catastrophe that was the last 400 years of Parliamentary supremacy? Remember Anthony Eden? Neil Hamilton? David Amess? As with so many Tory gentlemen, they turned out to be stunningly incompetent or ill-suited for high office. It was a national embarrassment.”

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So, you’ve gone and formed a new grouping in the European Parliament, forsaking your moderate allies in a desperate attempt to stop haemorrhaging votes to frothing right-wing lunatics in the Home Counties (led by a nonsense-spouting twit).

But there’s a catch! Your new alliance is full of frothing far-right loons, and if this becomes a point of mainstream discussion, people might stop moaning about the guy your grassroots keep smearing as “mental” and start to wonder if they really want you in power after all.

But never fear! There are 5 easy steps that your party can take to make this all go away! Do it right and you’ll be laughing all the way into Downing Street…
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The Tax Justice Network this week launched the world’s biggest website for the study of “secrecy jurisdictions” – those shady little corners, more commonly known as “tax havens”, where the rich and well connected hide their ill-gotten gains, or clean dirty money on its way to legitimate western bank accounts.

Secrecyjurisdictions.com is a massive, on-going research project.

It collects key data on the world’s 60 secrecy jurisdictions and aims to “map the faultlines” of the global financial infrastructure (including the “pinstripe army” of lawyers, bankers and accountants).

These are the people that enable tax evasion, terrorist financing, organised crime, the looting of developing world assets and a whole host of other evils to take place.

As the website overview states:

Secrecy jurisdictions facilitate illicit financial flows stemming from three overlapping sources: bribery, criminal activity and cross-border trade mispricing. Secrecy jurisdictions and those operating through them undermine development for the poorest countries, and create a criminogenic environment in which all sorts of crimes can thrive and feast on the fruits of law-breaking.

Secrecy jurisdictions facilitate a wide range of crimes such as tax evasion, non-payment of alimonies, money laundering, terrorist financing, drug trafficking, human trafficking, illegal arms trading, counterfeiting, insider-dealing, embezzlement, fleeing of bankruptcy orders, all sorts of fraud, and many more.
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Financial opacity undermines the rule of law and destroys trust in markets. Loss of trust seriously damages market efficiency, raising the cost of capital and wrecking confidence in democracy.

Its purpose is to serve as a resource for those seeking to bring about positive change in the international financial system.

That change is desperately needed.

Global Financial Integrity has estimated that each year, developing and transnational economies experience $800 billion – $1.06 trillion of outflows due to illicit financial flows.

Each year, the developed world gives these economies just $100 billion in aid. By facilitating illicit financial flows, secrecy jurisdictions are at the heart of global poverty, as well as a wider web of corruption, crime and financial abuse.

This is an early step in global attempts to clean up the international financial system, to create a better world.

More information can be found at the Tax Justice Blog, and at Tax Research UK.

www.secrecyjurisdictions.com

So Vince Cable has announced Lib Dem policy to introduce a “Mansion Tax” targeting the very wealthiest. The tax would be paid at a rate of 0.5% on the value of properties over £1m, and would affect around 250,000 people who would pay an average of £4,000 a year.

Cable – unlike the Tories – has apparently been reading his Adam Smith, who said:

The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principle expense of the rich; and a magnificent house establishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. A tax upon house-rents, therefore, would in general fall heaviest upon the rich; and in this sort of inequality there would not, perhaps, be any thing very unreasonable. It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expence, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in proportion” (The Wealth of Nations, Book V, Ch II, Pt II, Art 1).

But it’s also a shot across Tory bows: “You want to give millionaires a tax break? We want to reel them in and help ordinary people”. Not only is this the right thing to be saying in a country where inequality has increased – it is likely to be electorally wise.
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