It’s clichéd to say, but the next 6 months really will be a vital period for English Higher Education. The first cohort of students enter the new university fees and funding system in the autumn, raising higher education up the agenda once more.

Student groups, anti-cuts activists and political organisations must be ready for this moment, not least because with every term that passes the Coalition’s disastrous changes to higher education will become harder to roll-back.

Campus activism, protests, publications and lobbying are all important responses. But they’re not enough.

But broader and more strategic political action is needed too. This is the motivation behind the ‘Which Side are You On?’ campaign, which is seeking to pressure university Vice-Chancellors into a very simple act: namely, stating whether they favour or oppose burdening typical undergraduates with over £40,000 of debt, and the withdrawal of public funding for university teaching.

This may not sound particularly dramatic. But that’s exactly the point.

Why on earth should a university VC – as head of a higher educational institution – refuse to put on record where they stand on these vital issues? And yet, almost all Vice-Chancellors (with laudable exceptions) have thus far managed to avoid doing so. VCs have found time, mind you, to grant themselves massive pay rises, even as they equivocate over fundamental reforms to their institutions.

We believe this is indefensible, but moreover that it provides an opportunity for action. This is why a number of student groups are coordinating an open letter calling on all university Vice-Chancellors to make their positions on fees and cuts public. We already have signatures from a number of high-profile academics and student groups – but we need more to ensure that VCs are pressured to respond.

If it turns out that VC’s are willing to publicly oppose the Government’s reforms en masse, we shift pressure back on to the Coalition over HE. This would be a small but significant victory in itself.

And in the (likely) case that VC’s refuse to publicly oppose higher fees and the withdrawal of public funding, we provide students, staff and activists with a potent focal point on campus around which to base activism, protest and debate at the start of the academic year.

The letter is here: and what we need now is for activists to circulate it for signatures as widely as possible – amongst students but particularly amongst university staff and academics.

Once it is sufficiently supported, it will be published in the national media, and student groups – particularly those new students paying up to £9000 a year – can demand that their VCs finally answer: “Which side are you on?”

—
Richard is part of Southampton Students for Education

What better time could there be to have a wide-ranging debate over the BBC you want and the UK needs? The BBC “we” need, as in “We, the people” in all our pluralism.

Many of us have criticised the BBC for its ‘regime’ like instincts and softness towards corporate power. But it remains distinct from the marketplace.

The BBC was created by a real Tory, Lord Reith, who would have been appalled at unconservative commercialism and lack of respect for tradition and the needs of open public access exhibited by the Mayor of London and his hedge-fund haircut.

As with the debate over the NHS, this goes to the heart of public life in Britain.

This is the argument ourBeeb aims to provide. It will have contributions from regular folk and what is left of the great and the good.

It will use video and debate the role of culture and sport; consider the future for a digital commons and the nature of funding models; ask about the nations and the union and local media in the age of internet broadcasting.

As the BBC Trust figures out who it wants to put in charge of the BBC, we will be hosting a debate about how a democracy should be in charge of our BBC.

—-
OurBeeb is edited by Dan Hancox and supported by openDemocracy. The point of ourBeeb is to take the questions of the day and run with them – with your help. You can see his initial list of questions and issues here.

One very interesting finding is that, if the proposed boundary changes go through, Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith faces an uphill battle to remain an MP.

The Boundary Commission is proposing a new ‘Chingford and Edmonton’ seat, bringing together six wards from Waltham Forest and three from Enfield.

In this month’s elections, Labour held an overwhelming lead over the Tories across this area – ahead by 46% to 30% on the London-wide list vote and 54% to 27% on the constituency list. Ken Livingstone led Boris Johnson more narrowly, by 45% to 42%.

These figures exclude postal votes, which would narrow Labour’s lead, but this is still a seat where Labour are stronger, and the Tories weaker, than the London average.

This will give Iain Duncan Smith, who has already been whining about the boundary changes, even more of an incentive to try and see the boundary changes amended or dropped entirely.

Alternatively, it would be no surprise if he decided to quit parliament at the next election, rather than waiting for the verdict of the voters on his hopeless performance as minister responsible for rising unemployment and poverty.

I kid you not.

Below is a graph by Ipsos-Mori, from their latest monthly political monitor.

David Cameron’s negative net approval rating of -28 (satisfied minus dissatisfied) is down eight points since April, while Nick Clegg’s net rating of -39 is also down by the same amount. Both are their worst ratings ever.

Enjoy!

.

These remarks are more significant than generally thought.

I suspect they are the bewildered howls of frustration of men who realize that their god has failed them.

What I mean is that, for at least 40 years the central tenet of Conservative economic thinking has been that if only government could "get out of the way", entrepreneurial spirits would be unleashed and the economy would grow.

This belief has not always been wrong. But it is now. Record-low interest rates, a quiescent labour force and the (prospect of) a public spending squeeze has not boosted the private sector. British businesses' get up and go has got up and gone.

Quite why this is so is a long story, but it involves:

» the dearth of investment opportunities, due to a lack of monetizable innovations and the migration of low-wage industry to Asia.

» the fact that geography is against the UK. It shackles us to the euro area, and men rarely swim strongly when they are tied to a drowning man.Today's figures show that export volumes grew just 0.3% in the last 12 months, quashing hopes that we can export our way out of austerity.

» the absence of credit growth.

These factors don't just mean that Osborne's hopes of expansionary fiscal contraction are misplaced. They bring into question a decades-old Tory ideology of faith in business and smaller government.

The question is: where does this leave Tory economic thinking? The right's answer is to double up, and demand more cuts in taxes and spending – apparently ignorant of balanced budget multipliers. Ministers' answer seems to be just exhortations to business to do better, accompanied, I suspect, by the hope that something will turn up.

But what if it doesn't? I suspect we'll then see a crisis of Conservatism of the sort that afflicted Labour for years after the collapse of social democracy in the 1970s.

On April 28, the Co-operative announced it will be ending contracts worth £350,000 to four of Israel’s largest export companies known to operate in and profit from the occupation of the West Bank.

The Group has not stocked goods sourced from West Bank settlements or the occupied Golan Heights since 2009 and have emphasised that this is not a boycott of Israel:

the Group will continue to trade with Israeli suppliers that do not source from the settlements, and currently has supply agreements with some twenty Israeli businesses, a number of which may benefit from a transfer of trade.

There are four companies integrated into the settler economy, but there are dozens of others with direct links to the United Kingdom.

It is international inability to tackle Israel’s settlement programme which is a key obstacle to any negotiations. A poll in October 2010 showed that 70% of Palestinians will support negotiations if Israel ceases its settlement program.

In the same month YouGov Siraj polling showed that an overwhelming 90% of Palestinians would not support the negotiations as settlement construction continued.

A 2011 report from the Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem (ARIJ) and the Palestinian Ministry of Economy detailed how the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza saps nearly 85% of GDP from the Palestinian economy (nearly $7 billion) a year. Furthermore, “over USD 4.5 billion per year, a full 56% of GDP, is the cost (in terms of both foregone revenues and higher costs of raw materials) for the Palestinians for not being able to access their own resources.

The cost of the settlement enterprise, and the occupation built around it, is astronomical, but increasing settler violence is another vital reason to begin to put pressure on its economic underpinning.

According to mapping by the UN, the weekly average of settler attacks resulting in Palestinian casualties and property damage increased by 32% in 2011 compared to 2010, and by over 144% compared to 2009. Research from Israeli NGO Yesh Din shows that over 90% of monitored complaints regarding settler violence filed by Palestinians with the Israeli police in recent years have never led to prosecution.

Backlash
But Labour Friends of Israel and Progress have both promoted an article by Eric Lee, which accuses the Cooperative Group of “demonising Israel” and suggests that any move away from economic ties with Israeli companies who directly support the settlement enterprise is a “slippery slope” towards a complete boycott of Israel.

Neither organisation has offered any rationale behind that claim. Lee’s only argument against the move appears to be that the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and the Guardian have welcomed it. Lee even admits that:

For those of us who support a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine and who oppose the building of settlements in the occupied West Bank, it is easy to dismiss this as irrelevant.  After all, it’s not like the Co-op voted to ban all Israeli products.  In fact the Co-op went out of their way to say precisely that. They’re not boycotting Israel.  They’re just boycotting companies that profit from the occupation.

The reality is that the United States, European Union and the Quartet have so far failed to prevent the on-going, and accelerating, expansion of Israel’s illegal settlement programme. Meanwhile, the Cooperative Group have taken a measured, sensible and practical step towards ending the economic stranglehold the occupation imposes on the West Bank by refusing to be complicit in it.

If we support a two-state solution, as both Progress and LFI claim to, then it is incumbent upon us to speak out against settlement construction and support activity aimed towards the creation of a viable Palestinian State.

Now we must ask why other retailers maintain their unethical economic relationship with Israel’s settlement programme and pressure them to follow the Co-op’s example.

—
A longer version of this blog is here.

The Taleban hope that each new killing of a Nato soldier will be the straw that breaks the back of the resolve of America, Britain and their Isaf partners to linger in Afghanistan a minute longer than the 2014 deadline they have already set.  Who knows? – the Taleban wonder – it may even spur them to pick up their skirts and run away even sooner if pressed to do so by restive electorates at home.

Imagine, restive electorates, possibly pressing their governments over an eleven-year long war!

Well, here we are in 2012.  Osama is toast, his evil crew long since captured or incinerated and the US has been running high-profile victory laps around Al Qaeda’s smoking corpse for about two years. 

So, why do we still have thousands of soldiers in Afghanistan?  According to The Times:

To make clear to Afghanistan’s militants that the withdrawal of British troops from the country will be dictated by a timetable set in Downing Street and the White House, not by murderers in Afghanistan.

Now, here’s a lesson from American military history – if you’ve been training an army to defend its capital city for eleven years and it still isn’t up to the task, it’s probably not that interested in defending its capital city.

Bonus points too for the sunk-costs fallacy:

A premature exit that abandons the ambitions and achievements of the past decade would be a betrayal of those who have given their lives to make Afghanistan more stable.

Translation: We must continue to get our soldiers killed in an effort to achieve the impossible, because doing otherwise would be disrespectful to all the soldiers that we have already got killed by trying to do the impossible.

Additionally, Barack Obama hopes that his recent agreement with the Afghan government will “persuade the Taleban that negotiating now will pay greater dividends than waiting for American soldiers to leave”.  Diplomacy, after all, is the art of saying “Nice Doggie” while groping for a rock that doesn’t exist, in a room full of ravenous timber wolves.

And that’s it.  That’s the sum total of their best case, their most convincing justification for British troops staying for the next two years. 

If we want to show our gratitude for our soldiers, we could always repay them by bringing them back to Britain and buying them a round of drinks, rather than by forcing them to act as target practice for any passing Pashtun with a grudge.

After all, as an American politician once famously asked – How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?

The answer comes back firmly and confidently from the Times editorial board: On pain of court-martial.

—
The full editorial is here (non-paywalled).

Both are distractions, they scream!

Turns out the public doesn’t quite see it that way.

This is what Yougov found when it asked (via The CoffeeHouse)

So much for them being distractions. Since the government can’t get the economy going it may as well make a start with these two.

Leaving the euro, goes the argument, will be a victory for the Greek people, and a real slap in the face for the Merkelian forces of austerity.

This is total bollocks. Leaving the euro may well be exceedingly good for a few Greeks, but it will be very bad news indeed for the vast majority.

These will be among the consequences of re-establishing the Drachma:

1. Within a day of the creation and flotation of the New Drachma (probably only electronic and virtual at first as it will take three to four months to print a new currency in sufficient quantities), its value will crash against ‘hard’ currencies, and the purchasing power of Greeks for anything imported will be slashed. It’s impossible to know by how much, but a cut of 75% purchasing power is certainly not out of the question.
2. In an internationalized economy like Greece, there is no such thing as ‘out of the euro’. Most rich Greeks able to do so will already have stored their wealth elsewhere and the capital flight will continue to happen. The idea of proper capital controls is frankly fanciful. As holders of still-valid euros, or other ‘hard’ currencies, they will then be in position to purchase both the assets and labour of the mass majority of increasingly desperate Greeks at rock-bottom rates.
3. A dual economy will swiftly emerge, as in pretty well all countries without their own hard currencies. This will further deepen inequalities in daily life, potentially even with usual services and products only available to those with access to hard currency, as will the emergence of black market currency trading, where the New Drachma is even less valuable than at the official exchange rate.
4. This might be exacerbated by the government seeking (understandably) to gather its tax revenues in hard currencies, although for the long-term it is better off using taxes collected in New Drachma as a way of stabilising and promoting its use within the wider economy.

Fortunately, the signs are that the hard-left party Syrzia have decent economists, who realise what the official exit from the Eurozone would mean for their constituents. While they are firm in their commitment to ending self-defeating austerity, they have already stated that they want Greece to remain in the Eurozone.

If British and other European socialists really want to help their comrades in Greece, they would be better off stopping the reality-free anti-German rhetoric, and starting to throw up alternatives that might assist their Greek comrades, as the latter enter an inevitable period of brinkmanship with Merkel and the European Commission.

One alternative already exists, of course. This, as our very own union economist Duncan Weldon has set out, is through “artificial devaluation”:

By imposing a duty on imports and equal subsidy to exports a country can, in effect, devalue its currency without leaving the Eurozone. A, say, 15% surcharge on imports and a 15% subsidy to exports in Greece would be effectively a 15% devaluation in the currency.

The question for socialists outside Greece is whether they prefer an end to this crisis which leave Merkel with egg on her face but the Greek people destitute, or one which lets Merkel leave office without the eggy bits but keeps the Greek people somewhere above the bread line.

Call me a hoary old social democrat washout, but I know which I prefer.

Dear Daily Telegraph,

You had the scoop of the decade with MPs expenses. You are clearly a paper that employs excellent journalist with great research skills. It is a shame these skills weren’t utilised when you interviewed Ian Duncan Smith yesterday about the changes to DLA.

Here are the basic mistakes in your article;

1. The subheader says IDS is going ahead with changes to DLA to “rid the system of abuse and fraud”. The Government’s own figures show DLA fraud is 0.5% for 2010/11. To start the article as you did just cements the idea in the mind of the public that all disabled people are scroungers and consequently increases disabled hate crime.

2. IDS says the number of claimants have risen by 30%. This isn’t true. According to IDS’s own department, the claimant case has risen by 16% amongst working-age claimants, to whom these changes will only apply, once population growth has been taken into account.

3. “The rigorous new process being introduced by Mr Duncan Smith could lead to those without limbs, including former soldiers, having their payments reduced as their everyday mobility is not undermined by their prosthetic limbs”.

If you read the Government’s draft qualifying criteria for Personal Independence Payments (that is replacing DLA) you’d have realised this statement is disingenous. It clearly says that even if your everyday mobility is severely limited through amputation, under the new system you’ll receive minimal support to help with this.

Case study 7 says “Andy is 50. His left leg was crushed and had to be amputated above the knee and his right leg was also injured.The scar on his left stump has not healed very well so he has difficulties with his prosthesis and his right leg is weak. He finds it very tiring if he walks more than 40-50m so he often uses a wheelchair if he is going outdoors. Mobility activities = 10 (standard rate Mobility component)”. This means that the Government recognises that Andy cannot walk more than 50metres, that, to use IDS’s terminology, his ‘everyday mobility’ is undermined but will only award him 10 points. This means he will no longer be able to access the motobility scheme which allows him to rent a car to give him the freedom that his body no longer allows him.

4. “In the assessment, lots of people weren’t actually seen. They didn’t get a health check or anything like that”. To get DLA you are medically assessed by the doctors and hospital workers that see you regularly. They need to provide supporting evidence to the DWP that your disability or illness is as you have described it. The DWP regularly contacts doctors who have provided supporting evidence for extra information before it makes a decision. This is why it is actually very hard to be awarded DLA and why the fraud rate is so low.

5. “Something like 70 per cent had lifetime awards, (which) meant that once they got it you never looked at them again”. This 70 per cent figure may be true and it is very high, but to suggest that some people should not receive lifetime awards shouldn’t automatically mean that no-one receives lifetime awards. Many claimants have degenerative incurable illnesses such as Parkinson’s or, like me, Cystic fibrosis, or are permanently paralysed. We can’t get better, so if we are found to need help this year then the same will be true in four years time. It is a waste of taxpayer’s money to reassess all claimants every few years.

6. You quote IDS as saying “Tony Blair’s government tried to attack DLA, just to restrict it. We’re not doing that”. Actually IDS is. The Government declared in its Budget 2010 policy costings document that it intends to save 20% from its DLA budget by changing the way it is allocated – this is the very definition of restricting DLA.

There are other things I do not agree with with this article, but as they are matters of tone not fact you have a right to editorial control over these issues.

I appreciate that the Telegraph is right-leaning and therefore broadly supportive of the current Government, but by swallowing every fact uttered by IDS without question, this piece reads as a poor piece of advertorial for the Government’s cuts not as a strong, piece of quality journalism.

Yours sincerely,
Sharon Brennan

—-
Shannon is a writer and journalist living in London and living with Cystic Fibrosis. Her blog focuses on the latest news and opinions on NHS.

32% now say he is doing well, while 55% say he is doing badly. In net terms (% saying ‘well’ minus % saying ‘badly’) his rating his now minus 23. Cameron’s rating is now minus 29, and Nick Clegg’s minus 54.

But I would suggest this is wrong indicator to look at. What Cameron should be more worried about is that more people now seem him as “weak” rather than decisive and strong.

Rather paradoxically, Conservatives do better during times of crisis when they’re unpopular. This is because voters think that to get them out of the current mess (“…the last Labour government left us in”) – some difficult decisions need to be taken.

They might then hate the Tories for those decisions but will grudgingly accept (without looking into details, unfortunately) that difficult decisions were taken for the good of the country and things will get better soon. So they grudgingly vote for them again.

But there are two big dangers: 1) things don’t get better but actually get worse; 2) the PM looks weak and indecisive.

Point 1 is self-explanatory: the decline in real incomes of Britons is virtually unprecedented and set to continue past 2015. By then, expecting a significant portion of voters to believe Labour are still to blame for their problems would be very difficult for Cameron. His ‘working class problem’ would be intractable.

Point 2 is now gaining ground too.

The same poll by YouGov found that 40% of voters now think he’s “a weak leader”, while only 26% think he’s a “strong leader”. That’s a 10pt difference from March.

The shift is partly because Labour’s vote has strengthened, because Libdem voters are cooling after his party’s growing attacks, and Tory voters angry over the EU vote.

But that isn’t all. Cameron looks weak over the Leveson inquiry, where he defends ministers and friends even though it looks terrible on him. He also looks weak in the face of the Tory right, who are trying hard to torpedo House of Lords reform and gay marriage while not getting slapped down over it.

Even the operation to get Nadine Dorries to shut up hasn’t been successful.

Cameron is in a weak position because the economy isn’t going to improve. His personal ratings will recover somewhat but he may be fatally weakened in the eyes of a resurgent Tory right, who will use the faltering economy to push their agenda. That will only make Cameron look more weak.

Channel 4 Dispatches reveals how easy it is to buy our most personal and confidential information.

Here’s an exclusive clip from tonight’s film at 8pm.

Daily Mail headline: “NHS spends £1 million a week on repeat abortions” bit.ly/JLax7U < whole piece is riddled with rubbish #mailfail

— Abortion Rights (@Abortion_Rights) May 14, 2012

For example: “figures reveal 1000s of women are using abortion as form of contraception” HOW does it reveal that? Evidence?? #mailfail

— Abortion Rights (@Abortion_Rights) May 14, 2012

Next, what does the marital status of the woman having an abortion matter if all DM is concerned about is the cost of their sluttiness?

— Abortion Rights (@Abortion_Rights) May 14, 2012

BUT, collapsing single & cohabiting women into same category is ridiculous. Half of women having abortions are married/cohabiting #mailfail

— Abortion Rights (@Abortion_Rights) May 14, 2012

Next, wheeling out idea that introducing ‘independent’ (ie anti-choice) abortion counselling will reduce abortion rate. Evidence?? #mailfail

— Abortion Rights (@Abortion_Rights) May 14, 2012

Finally, standard anti-choice tripe about abortion as ‘lifestyle choice’, ‘trivialising procedure’ need for ‘responsibility’ #mailfail

— Abortion Rights (@Abortion_Rights) May 14, 2012

Unity explains the £1m figure is bogus:

This is an issue I looked at in some detail last year and back then I found that even with government incorrectly including the costs on non-elective procedures in theeir figures they still managed to come up with an average cost per abortion of £680, which would give an annual cost of £43.7 million for ‘repeat’ abortions if you don’t try and fiddle the figures, and when I re-did the figure using the government’s own calculation methods, but excluding non-elective procedures, the average cost per abortion came down to just £580 per abortion, giving an annual cost for ‘repeat abortions’ of just £37.3 million.

Even that lower figure may be an overestimate as I used a base cost of £494, extrapolated from figures given in BPAS’s accounts, only to discover some months later that BPAS actually charges the NHS around £420 per abortion. Based on that last figure, the average cost per abortion comes down to around £515 with an annual cost for ‘repeat abortions’ of £33-34 million a year.

On a claimed figure of £44.2 million a year for England and Wales, the Daily Mail’s figures are out by anywhere from £6-10 million a year.

Sarah Ditum also points out the Daily Mail’s confusion:

The Mail is keen for there to be more unmarried mothers. Don’t look so staggered, it’s on today’s front page. “NHS spends £1m a week on repeat abortions: Single women using terminations ‘as another form of contraceptive’”, the headline wails, and the body copy adds plaintively, “According to the statistics, single or unmarried women account for five out of every six repeat terminations.” There’s only one implication I can see: the Mail thinks abortion should be available exclusively to those with a ring on their finger.

Which would leave those women who aren’t married to carry their unwanted pregnancies to term, which would finally bring an end to the nuclear family and induce the matrilineal society that the crypo-Marxist Daily Mail has always wanted! Hang on, that isn’t what the Daily Mail has always wanted at all, is it? There’s something rum going on here.

Could the Daily Mail get any more ridiculous? Don’t answer that…

In the announcement says that “I will also be able to dedicate even more of my work to the political frontline, putting the Green case for change in Parliament and in all circles of national political debate.”

This is an extremely positive development despite the fact that Caroline Lucas is clearly the most capable, extra-ordinary green politician.

Lucas currently has the four most difficult jobs in the Green Party. She is a fantastic constituency MP, the sole Party voice in Parliament, the main port of call for the media and the leader of the party.

It’s in her interests and the long term interests of the party that she creates room for someone to take at least one of those jobs off her hands.

It’s been five years since the referendum in the Green Party to adopt a leadership structure.

However, the moment the party adopted that new structure, the discussion on how it should use that structure stopped in order to move on from that debate.

There’s been no real development of the position of leader (and deputy leader) within the party and Lucas’ announcement gives the Greens a chance to do that.

The party will need to decide in September not just who it wants to elect as leader but how it wants to use the leadership position itself.

A collapsing Coalition government opens up new political opportunities, but getting taken seriously as an opposition party out from under the shadow of the Labour Party will be no mean feat in the second dip of an economic recession.

1. That means popularising a clear vision of how we deal with the politics of austerity and a drive to help local parties embed themselves in growing community movements, trade union struggles and opposing the politics of reaction.

2. We live in times where there is a growing confidence on the fringe right. There needs to be a strong voice against the demonisation of immigrants, homophobic bigotry, and anti-abortion campaigning.

3. That means a focus on building a campaigning party that champions the needs of disabled benefit recipients, opposes every local instance of privatisation of our health and other public services, that keeps pushing for real action on climate change in times when it has dropped down the political agenda.

Caroline Lucas has been, and will continue to be, an outstanding and articulate advocate for Green politics.

She needs to be joined by other higher profile Greens fighting their corner, developing new voices and ensuring that in every town and city in the country there is a viable Green group which makes a real contribution to the politics of the area.

Exit polls say the Greens remained on 12% and the SDP regained the votes they lost in 2010, rising from 35% to 39%.

But the big story really has to be the continuing decline of Chancellor Merkel’s CDU, who saw their vote decline by a quarter from 35% to 26%.

With Germany’s General Election due next year, this almost makes Merkel’s administration a lame duck, and it can’t even be blamed on the collapse of her coalition partners the FDP (whose vote again held up, as it did last week in Schelswig-Holstein).

In Germany’s most populous state, covering cities like Dusseldorf and Cologne, this is a major blow, and, coupled with Hollande’s ascent to the French Presidency, will put German-led austerity in Europe under increasing pressure this summer.

The 23 May informal summit of EU leaders will not quite see Merkel isolated, but certainly increasingly embattled.

By the way, a lot of the comment will focus on the entry into yet another state legislature of the ultimate post-modern fringe party, the Pirates, up from 2% to 8%.

But as in Schleswig-Holstein’s regional elections last weekend, their entry into the legislature has seen the left-wing Die Linke party exit the stage.

So yet again, Germany has given only minimal support to the narrative that says voters are abandoning traditional, centrist parties for the extremes.

So far as the substance of these complaints are concerned, the advert included a claim that ’70% of people say keep marriage as it is’ giving the source of this claim as poll conducted by ComRes on behalf of Catholic Voices, a semi-official Catholic propaganda and astroturfing operation, and this is being challenged under rules 3.1, 3.3 (Misleading Advertising) and 3.7 (Substantiation) of the CAP code.

To add insult to feigned injury, rule 4.1 (Harm and Offence) has also been brought into play by a number of complainants who’ve alleged that the advert is ‘offensive’ and ‘homophobic’.

This is all a desperate imposition on our fulminating faux cleric.

Not only is he, of course, being ‘persecuted’ by the ASA’s request for evidence to back up the factual claim in the advert but, as always, any awareness of the Godwin’s Law is amongst the first casualties in this conflict…

Since His Grace does not dwell in Iran, North Korea, Soviet Russia, Communist China or Nazi Germany, but occupies a place in the cyber-ether suspended somewhere between purgatory and paradise, he is minded to ignore that request. Who do these people think they are?

They are, of course, people who are tasked simply with doing a job which entails investigating complaints about advertising lodged by members of the general public, and all they’ve done so far is contact Cranmer and offer him the chance to give his side of the story.

The ASA hasn’t ruled on anything as yet and on reviewing the material facts of these complaints I think it unlikely in the extreme that they’ll be upheld.

As regards the 70% claim, the poll was conducted by ComRes, which is a member of the British Polling Council, and the full results are available on its website, from which we find that of the 2004 people who took part in the poll, 70% did indeed agree with the proposition that:

Marriage should continue to be defined as a life-long exclusive commitment between a man and a woman

Okay, for a social scientist’s standpoint, the poll stands out as a pretty blatant bit of push-polling.

Nevertheless, the results of this poll do back up the 70% claim and unless the ASA is prepared to get into it with ComRes and challenge their polling methodology its highly likely that this poll will be accepted as adequate substantiation of the advert’s main factual claim.

As regards the allegation that the advert is, itself, offensive and homophobic well. let’s be honest, we’re hardly in ‘God Hates Fags’ territory here are we? And, in any case, this is essentially a single issue political campaign and should, therefore , attract a greater degree of protection under Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights than would be the case for purely commercial advertising.

In short, it should take no more than 10-15 minutes to compose a suitable response which addresses and roundly dismisses the complaint.

What’s interesting here, therefore, is not the complaint itself but the stereotypical ‘How very dare you!’ overreaction to the ASA’s decision to investigate the matter, a reaction that is entirely characteristic of other incidents in which complaints have been made alleging either religious homophobia or, in some cases, inappropriate proselytising.

If the only argument here was these complaints are misconceived and even, perhaps, vexatious then I’d be inclined to agree wholeheartedly but, as seems to be invariably the case, that’s not the only thing with which Cranmer and others are taking issue.

What seems to rankle some Christians, whenever such complaints are made, is the mere fact that those complaints have to be investigated and they are not, therefore, afforded the kind of privileged status and unthinking deference that the believe they should be afforded.

Where ‘persecution’ once meant getting nailed to tree or tossed into an arena to fight for life, it now means nothing more than ‘How dare you treat us the same as everyone else, you inconsiderate bunch of bastards.’

On 10th & 17th June, we have a two-round electoral contest potentially as exciting, and as important for France, as the election of President Hollande.

That’s because Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the leftwing group Front de gauche (FG), has just confirmed his candidacy in the 11th circonscription of the Pas-de-Calais département, where he will go up against Front National leader Marine Le Pen in the legislative elections, at which 577 deputés are elected across France to sit in the Assemblée Nationale.

This is a somewhat risky strategy, as Le Pen led here on the first round in the Presidential election with 31.4% of the vote. The second round (Hollande vs. Sarkozy) went to Hollande with 60.5% of the vote as FN voters obeyed Le Pen and abstained.

Much will depend, therefore, on whether Parti Socialiste (PS) voters choose to back Mélenchon at the expense of their own candidate, Philippe Kemel, in the second round (unlike in the Presidential elections, in the legislative elections all candidates gaining more than 12.5% if the vote in Round 1 vote go on to Round 2).

Alternatively, Mélenchon may step back, and advise FG round 1 voters to back the PS in Round 2 and allow Kemel to retain this Assemblée Nationale seat for the PS.

I suspect this is unlikely; Mélenchon will feel he has done the right thing by Hollande for the Presidential election, and that the favour should now be returned. Certainly he feels he has unfinished business with Hollande, and will want to be seen to hold Hollande to his promises e.g. the renegotation of the Merkozy Fiscal Compact.

In this case, much may depend on how much Kemel really wants to be deputé, and how willing he is to risk letting Le Pen through on a split leftist vote. Early indications from the Libération coverage suggest that Catherine Génisson, the boss of the FS Federation the Pas-de-Calais départment suggest, may indeed be open to a second round pact to allow Mélenchon through on the PS vote, but there are bound to be countervailing voices.

In any event, keep your eyes on results as they come out on 1oth June. While clearly who gets the seat in Round 2 is the most important, the symbolic value of round 1 can hardly be underestimated either (and may well lead to a significant PS to FG switch even in Round 1).

If Le Pen is beaten in Round 1 on home turf (she is already on the Regional Council here), then Mélenchon may attain national, even European leftie-hero status, and the Front National will have been dealt a significant blow. If it all goes pear-shaped, with Le Pen winning Round 1 and, heaven forbid, even sneaking through in Round 2, then it will be very bad news.

One day, when I was a teen, I started to cut myself, making thin little slits on my ankles and arms with a penknife. I stopped sleeping. I started to hear strange noises and voices in my head at night.

Then I started to fall out with everyone at school; I found myself dipping into a weird sense of ecstasy: watching myself saying and doing vicious, nasty things to my peers, incapable of stopping myself. I told my parents I wanted to kill myself.

There was no reason for this to happen: I had been happy enough at school.

The road to normality took a year of counselling and hospital appointments. During that time, I never thought I might be mentally ill. No one who treated me ever said that could be the case. My family and I never discussed my problems in terms of illness. I was just going through a difficult patch. The suspicion I might be a loony – that was just unpalatable, to me and everyone else.

Andy Burnham wants to tackle this culture. In an under-reported speech earlier this year he said: “A country which has so often led the world in challenging discrimination needs to recognise we’ve much to learn from other countries when it comes to the stigma.”

It’s a noble aim. One in four of us will suffer from a mental health problem at some point in our lives, yet still the shame persists.

Just as he wants to change public attitudes, so Burnham wants to reform services. He cites the fact that 70% of prisoners have two or more mental health conditions. I’m surprised the number’s that low.

When I was researching gangs I remember a psychiatrist telling me to look out for “frozen watchfulness” among the kids – their faces would be expressionless, their eyes constantly shifting around – a legacy of domestic abuse.

I remember meeting a former gang member who was undergoing counselling for what was essentially PTSD. If you live your life in constant fear of being shot, it’s what you’ll get – a lack of empathy, of bottled up emotions.

I spoke to Amanda and Steve (names changed), a pair of psychiatrists based in the Midlands, and asked them about Burnham’s claim that the NHS “treats, rather than prevents” because of these splits.

Amanda replied: “He’s absolutely right about the physical division of services. It makes relations strained. But my problem is that his take is idealistic. I’ve heard a lot of it before. People throw these buzzwords around – ‘collaborative’ is another one – but simply changing the language isn’t going to help.

“The real problem is that GPs have ten minutes with each patient. If someone comes to see them with a sore throat, of course that means they’ll dish a prescription out for a sore throat. There are some perceptive GPs who realise that mental and physical health problems can manifest as each other, but they’re constrained by time.”

What about Burnham’s claim that failure to centralise mental health costs money? Steve said: “He’s right. If you have a doctor who’s receptive to mental health needs, you could save millions. So many mentally ill people are heavy smokers, for a start, or can’t manage their diabetes. But the problem is this: if you refer them, you will save money in acute care but those savings won’t be passed on to us.”

Within this culture, it must be very difficult to see the wider picture. Amanda says: “I sometimes think politicians don’t realise people go into healthcare because they’re caring people. The police will hand people over to us as a way of filling the gaps. And I had an old lady in with dementia. We could have discharged her, but we didn’t – basically because her social worker was anxious she wouldn’t let her care workers in.”

But Nick Clegg pressed the opposite case for the Bill, using mental health as an example. He told ITV’s Daybreak: “GPs will tell you many of the people they see actually have mental health problems. If you give those people greater say maybe they’ll provide more support to mental health services.”

It’s a fairly big maybe, and it’s not one with reams of evidence to support it.

——-
Alan White’s work has appeared in the Observer, Times, Private Eye, The National & TLS. As John Heale, he is the author of One Blood: Inside Britain’s Gang Culture, republished this year. He tweets @aljwhite

It could have huge repercussions for politics in London, especially since the Conservatives are now a minority administration.

The pact also includes a number of positions for the Conservative Group.

It states:

It is important the performance of the Mayor and all the GLA’s Functional Bodies, as well as other organisations that run public services in London, are scrutinised in depth and held to account. We are open to more constructive working between the Assembly and the Mayor over the four year term.

The agreement will last for four years but will be subject to review after two years.

It is agreed that Labour will Chair the Assembly in the first, third and fourth years.

There will be a Green Chair in the second year. There will be a Green Deputy Chair in the first year and a Labour Deputy Chair in the second year.

They say they hope the Conservative Group will nominate a Deputy Chair for the final two years.

Click here to see the full break-down of jobs for each year.

Here it is (via Guardian live-blog). Looks like the end of the line for Jeremy Hunt.

Fred Michel to Rebekah Brooks:
27 June 2011 16:29

Hunt will be making references to phone hacking in his statement on Rubicon this week.

He will be repeating the same narrative as the one he gave in Parliament few weeks ago.

This is based on his belief that the police is pursing things thoroughly and phone hacking has nothing to do with the media plurality issues.

It’s extremely helpful.

On the issue of the privacy committee he supports a widening of its remit to the future of the press and evidence from all newspaper groups on the regulatory regime.

He wants to prevent a public inquiry. For this the committee will need to come up a strong report in the autumn and put enough pressure on the PCC to strength itself and take recommendations forward.

JH is now starting to looking to phone hacking/practices more thoroughly and has asked me to advise him privately in the coming weeks and guide his and No 10′s positioning…

Fred

Source close to Hunt: ‘This is another Fred Michel email which wasn’t from a conversation with Jeremy. He’ll answer questions at Leveson’

— James Chapman (Mail) (@jameschappers) May 11, 2012

Jeremy Hunt/Adam Smith asked Newscorps toundermine Ofcoms case for BskyB referral to CC. Now we know asked them to guide Govt on hacking!

— Ivan Lewis (@IvanLewis_MP) May 11, 2012

Here is what Jeremy Hunt said to Parliament on June 30 2011 as prefigured by Michel on June 27 in his email to Brooks (next tweet)

— Dan Sabbagh (@dansabbagh) May 11, 2012

JH – “Therefore while the phone-hacking allegations are very serious they were not material to my consideration” regarding Sky bid.

— Dan Sabbagh (@dansabbagh) May 11, 2012

The result was an endorsement of the Green Party’s focus on pay equality, lower fares paid for with a pay-as-you-drive scheme (“Oyster for your car”), lower rents delivered with co-operatives and private rented sector reform, and healthier streets thanks to less traffic and cleaner vehicles.

We are determined to push forward with these ideas on the London Assembly.

This election also saw an energetic and well organised cycling lobby. Both the well-established London Cycling Campaign and the newly formed Londoners On Bikes did an amazing job at getting out the vote for the best cycling candidate (me) and the better of the fruntrunners (Ken), showing that cycling lobby can no longer be ignored.

Ultimately, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, and the London Cycling Campaign all endorsed my candidature, along with more unexpected groups such as the family campaign group 4children. They all gave Ken second place.

Although the Greens felt Ken Livingstone was far from perfect, we knew from his last time as Mayor that we could work with him to make positive changes in a way that has proven impossible with Boris Johnson, and would be with many other senior Labour politicians.

Around half of the people who voted for me as first preference gave Ken their second, so that Green voters delivered him just under half of all his second preference votes.

As the Labour Party consider their future, they should be mindful that candidates without a strong track record on the environment, equality and quality of life will fail to impress Green voters and organisations that agree with our politics and policies.

For Greens, the importance of the vote will depend on what we do next on the London Assembly.

We believe that a cornerstone of the gains made this year was the resonance of our key messages; that the idea that green politics are a luxury at a time of economic crisis is dangerously wrongheaded; and that the fight for greater social justice is tied inexorably to the need to protect and improve our environment.

I hope to use the next four years to work with progressives across London in making equality, affordability and a healthy environment completely mainstream.

Together we can build the irresistible case so that London – overwhelmingly a left/green leaning city – gets the politicians and policies it deserves.

This is what he says today in a piece for the Telegraph:

While gay marriage was being endorsed in the White House, it was being quietly shelved in Westminster. There was no mention of it in the Queen’s Speech; nor is there likely to be in future.

I said this just a few days ago – gay marriage is off the agenda and kicked into the long grass.

And yet the Libdems have barely made a peep about it – naively convinced they will prevail and it will go ahead as planned.

It won’t.

At least, not unless they take a stand on this issue and push hard. Otherwise, expect marriage equality to end up in the Conservative and Libdem manifestos at the next general election but no sooner.

Time to wake up Libdems.

The case of gangs of British-Pakistani men grooming and raping young white girls in Bradford should be a cause of huge concern to all of us. And yes, sometimes it is political correctness gone mad when the police and social services ignore cries of help for risk of looking racist (which they clearly did).

I’m not new to this issue: I’ve been saying for nearly a decade that this problem needs to be exposed and rooted out or it will get worse. Nevertheless, some accusations and assumptions about this case have annoyed me.

Accusation 1: It’s about their ‘culture’
Broadly, this can mean only two things: they targeted white girls because of their race, or their culture encourages this sort of behaviour. Both of these miss the wood for the trees.

No doubt these men felt it was OK to exploit white girls. But don’t think for a second they had any regard for Asian women either. Misogynists rarely make racial distinctions – they are willing to exploit any woman that comes their way. They just found it easier to groom and rape white girls in this case. They may be racist too – but I highly doubt that was their motivation for this crime

The second argument implies something in their culture encourages such behaviour towards white women. But does it really? Thousands of women in Pakistan get trafficked and/or raped every year. They definitely don’t get special consideration in the culture.

Or is the implication that Pakistani culture (or Islam itself, if you’re Melanie Phillips or David Aaranovitch) that is to blame? In which case, is Irish culture in general to blame for what happened in the churches? Is Catholicism overall at fault? Is Judaism to blame for ultra-Orthodox Jews suppressing sexual abuse of kids?

Is ‘white culture’ to blame for this sex abuse ring? I’d like people to spell out what they mean when they blame ‘culture’ and apply the same standards to other cases and groups of people.

Accusation 2: The Asian community should take responsibility
I have spent years arguing that Asians are not a homogenous group any more than white people are. Even Pakistanis aren’t a homogenous group: they speak different languages and live differently.

There isn’t an ‘Asian community’ any more than there is a ‘white community’, and so-called ‘community leaders’ are mostly a bunch of self appointed middle-aged men who want to feel important.

It is not the job of any community to police themselves: it is the job of the police to prevent crime and protect girls from exploitation. Local families should help, obviously, but blaming them all is like saying all Irish, Scottish or Jews are to blame for cases I mentioned above.

And how many families want to get involved against or deal with people who deal drugs and move about in gangs?

Accusation 3: We shouldn’t be afraid to say its a Pakistani problem
Sure it is – if you just want to concentrate on one type of crime in one area over a specific period of time. But sexual violence in the UK is rife. Lots of white men do it too – just in different contexts. So why do the same people not get heated about that? Why not get heated an angry about internet grooming?

Why not call for legislation to deal with domestic violence, rape, grooming and molestation? Why do these people suddenly find their morality when Asian men are involved, and focus just on those kinds of sex crimes?

Accusation 4: Liberals have said nothing for years
Like night follows day, almost every incident is used by right-wing political commentators to score points. According to Ed West for example, liberals have kept quiet about this for years.

Erm, you could have fooled me. Or you could have fooled Adil Ray. The BBC Asian Network too has covered this issue repeatedly. In 2006 a group of Muslims clerics even issued a warning that children were being abused in Muslim schools and set out to reform institutions.

Furthermore – feminists have been saying for years that sexual violence is endemic and authorities have ignored it (in all areas, not just gang-grooming). Commentators who routinely dismissed feminists in the past regarding rape culture now have the temerity to accuse them of being quiet.

—
It goes without saying: we need stronger legislation to deal with this problem; the police need to be more pro-active; some people need to stop blaming the girls.

Update: A few have asked what more legislation is required. For a start, there is no criminal offence of ‘on-street grooming’ – though arguably covered by other legislation. Secondly, more needs to be done to deal with the CPS disbelieving many survivors.

He also apologised for the focus on gay marriage. Nice.

The letter was sent to the South Wales Argus:

MAY I sincerely congratulate councillors of all parties, and none, who were elected to Monmouthshire County Council last week. I shall be very happy to work with you all on improving local services.

May I also offer my apologies to those who feel the Conservative-led coalition has let them down. I must acknowledge there has been incompetence at the highest levels of government over the last few months in a number of departments.

Meanwhile, there has been an emphasis on issues such as gay marriage and reform of the House of Lords, at the expense of explaining the financial situation; a failure to deport dangerous terrorists because of concerns about human rights; and an apparent unwillingness to listen to the concerns of electors and the backbench MPs who represent them.

I shall have no hesitation in expressing my concerns in Parliament.
David T C Davies MP, Member for Monmouth

You go right ahead buddy.