As a voter who’s long felt left behind by Labour, who’s unimpressed by the wet flannel liberalism of Nick Clegg and who remains underwhelmed by parties on the electoral fringe, this election has often felt like a choice between “the lesser of who cares?”.

For me, the prospect of voting this May – a task I might have once grasped with enthusiasm – seems like a tawdry chore, with each party appearing like a cheap imitation of my own values.

Still, after a good few months of dismayed dithering and yawning, I finally came to a decision about how I’m going to vote in this election:

I won’t.

Here’s the thing: 6 years ago a British prisoner called John Hirst went to the European Court of Human Rights demanding that our government give him and his fellow inmates the right to vote. The court ruled that our blanket ban violated the Human Rights Act, and ordered the government to make the necessary changes.

Naturally, the government has deliberately dragged its feet ever since; issuing objections and obfuscations at every turn, and getting no closer to changing the law than the establishment of some weak-willed ‘consulation exercises’.

This was fine for the first five years, but now the election has brought the matter into sharp relief. After ignoring repeated warnings that the General Election must not take place without the ban being lifted, in December the Council of Europe suggested that the election may breach the European convention on human rights. The council repeated that claim last week, along with the notice that, unless the law is changed, tens of thousands of prisoners would be within their rights to sue the British government.

As it stands, the coming election promises to be the first in modern history where tens of thousands of British citizens have illegaly barred from casting a ballot. Whatever crimes these men & women may have committed, however dubious their character, can we really claim to be tough on those who break the law when we are happy for the state to break its own laws in order to punish them?

For me, the answer is an unequivocal ‘no’. I cannot, in good conscience, exercise my legally-guaranteed right to participate in the democratic process when tens of thousands of Britons are illegally deprived of theirs. For that reason, I will be staying at home come election day. Not out of apathy, nor out of a lack of available alternatives, but as a small protest against a big injustice.

Guest post by luis enrique

I wish people spent more time looking at data and less time pontificating, so in theory I ought to love the flourishing of attention paid to household income data

But I don’t, because I think it’s being misused. It’s possible to misuse data like this in lots of ways, but I want to focus on just one. The household survey data offers a static snapshot of household incomes, but the right way to think about poverty, and wealth, is to look at lifetime income profiles.

Here’s what I mean. continue reading… »

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… »

As a bit of fun for a Friday morning we thought we’d offer our readers an opportunity to choose their political scumbag of the week, largely because this week has conveniently provided us with a strong field of contenders.

The rules are simple. just read through the following list of political low-lifes, decide which one is biggest scumbag and then use the either the comments facility or twitter* to hurl a bit of pithy but well-merited abuse at them.

*If you tweet in a response you’ll need to include a link to this post for it to be picked up

Sometime during the day – which is likely to more or less when I can be arsed – I’ll tot up the scores and we’ll have ourselves a winner.

So without further ado, lets list the nominees…

continue reading… »

Over at OurKingdom, Guy Aitchison has posted again on the news that Labour is considering making the retention of DNA samples ‘an issue’ for the election. The latest twist in the tale is that Alan Johnson is reputedly scuppering a compromise with the Conservatives on this issue in order to make it something that Labour can campaign on. The Tories are to be branded as the party that is friendly to burglars.

In a matter of weeks the Labour party leadership will be expecting party members to get out there and make the case for a Labour government on the doorstep. How many in the party agree with the government on DNA sampling and the ‘Tories are friends of burglars’ line?

Let’s remind ourselves what is being proposed. Back in 1995 the police set up a national DNA database. Anyone who was arrested was liable to have a DNA sample taken. This was then put on the database. When a crime is committed, and there is DNA evidence, the police can check it against the database.

The European Court ruled in 2008 that the practice of holding indefinitely samples taken from those not convicted of a crime is in violation of the European Convention of Human Rights (specifically in violation of Article 8 which upholds the citizen’s right to ‘a private life’).

The government responded, somewhat reluctantly and hesitatingly, by proposing to modify the original policy. Under what we may call the Johnson proposal, those arrested but not convicted of a crime will have their samples removed from the national database – but only after six years.

The Johnson proposal has the advantage that, in one respect, it may make it easier for the police to solve crimes. And this, of course, is the basis of the charge that opponents of the proposal are thereby ‘friendly’ to criminals.

But there are at least two strong reasons to oppose the proposal other than sympathy for criminals continue reading… »

Guest post by Tom Freeman

This month’s Prospect magazine has a section on neuroscience, and in particular its political implications.

One thing came up in their roundtable discussion that always gets my goat: the idea that neuroscience is going to be a good way of telling what effects on people different policies will have. Barbara Sahakian, a clinical neuropsychologist at Cambridge, says:

For years we changed our education system again and again, but these changes weren’t based on evidence about how we learned. Instead, wouldn’t it be useful if we thought about how the brain really works, and how children learn best, and in turn formulated educational policy based on that?

And the RSA’s Matthew Taylor adds, in a similar but more nakedly political vein:

I am confident that, as we find out more about our brains, it will strengthen the progressive case, in the sense that children learn best when they are actively involved, not being passive.

No, no, no.

Think about it: how could you use neuroscience to tell which teaching methods promote the best learning? continue reading… »

There’s a race on, and no it’s not the Cheltenham festival. Should the election be held on the 6th of May as is expected then parliament will be duly dissolved around the 6th of April, which leaves only 10 days of parliamentary time to debate all the remaining laws trying to be passed. It is this reason that when the Lords finally passed the Digital Economy Bill on the 15th of March they spent a significant portion of time discussing the issue of the “wash-up”, or a (relatively) clandestine period of legislative discussion that occurs in the twilight between an announcement of an election being made, and parliament being closed down for the impending election.

The Government here has one hope and one set of plans, get the Digital Economy Bill through to the “wash-up” in such a way that they can add bits and pieces to an already illiberal piece of legislation without the proper scrutiny of parliament. Instead of our elected representatives ensuring that we are protected from bad law, it would come down to the front benches and the party political whims of the main parties. In short, representation takes the back foot in place of backroom dealing to pass the bills, even if they are slightly watered down in the process. It’s for this reason that we have to stand our ground and ask our MPs to ensure this controversial bill receives proper scrutiny. If they do not provide that scrutiny, if the law goes through on the nod, then the government will have every power to do what they wish, opposed only by the minority Lib Dem party and the Tory party who are surely not the best example of a party beholden to public democracy over business interests.

For those that are writing to your MPs, specifically point them to the areas of the bill that are problematic (and do so in your own words, it has more impact!):
continue reading… »

Liberal Conspiracy has obtained a set of notes taken at a recent seminar which show that the Conservative Party is pushing ahead with plans to provide state funding to a network of independent schools with close ties to a controversial occult society.

The notes were taken at a recent seminar organised by the Steiner Waldorf Schools Fellowship (SWSF), an offshoot of the Anthroposophical Society, which exists to promote the occult philosophies of the German mystic Rudolf Steiner, and also suggest that a newly registered educational charity with close ties to the Conservative Party may be actively engaged in the promotion of Conservative education policy in such a way as to breach the Charity Commission’s regulations on charity involvement in political activity.

The meeting, which took place last November, was described as a ‘pre-election seminar about possible developments in the state funding opportunity for Steiner Schools’ and included seminars with Sam Freedman, the head of Policy Exchange’s education unit and a current advisor to Shadow Education Minister, Michael Gove, and Rachel Wolf, the Founder/Director of the New Schools Network and former education advisor to the Conservative Party. continue reading… »

Israel’s announcement of plans for 1,600 new settler housing units in illegally occupied Palestinian territory has triggered both stern condemnation from Washington and rioting on the streets of East Jerusalem. And just to highlight their heartfelt regret over these adverse reactions, the Israeli authorities have today confirmed their desire to build 300 more.

It is difficult to interpret such intractable obstinacy as anything other than deliberate provocation, and not just in respect of the timing. As Netanyahu is well aware, substantial withdrawal is the sine qua non for the two-state policy increasingly pressed on his government by the rest of the world.

Yet his evident determination to scupper this outcome is so deep that he is willing quite literally to try and build his way out of his impasse. Not only can he not be allowed to succeed; he cannot succeed, even within his own terms.

Netanyahu’s hardline position puts him directly at odds with majority opinion in his own country. Most Israelis do not regard preservation of settlements in Palestinian territory as a fundamental objective of the state, and do not believe that the interests of settlers take priority over those of the population in general.

continue reading… »

Today the European Commission release their (Reuters-leaked) report under the ‘excessive deficit procedure’ warning the UK that it needs to get its deficit down towards 3% of GDP quicker than the government is currently planning.

Stephanie Flanders has a good article setting out the way in which the Tories have been talking a good game about all of this, while actually being a lot less specific about how they’ll do it than Labour have.

Here, though, I’ll focus on why the European Commission is producing this report, and what this tells us about the European Union as a whole. continue reading… »

It’s a matter of common knowledge that the Daily Express has long since scraped right through the bottom of the barrel and is now busily digging its way to Australia.

Nevertheless, the latest entry in it ongoing ‘thieving foreigners’ series really takes the biscuit:

NOW POLES GET FREE ABORTIONS ON NHS

POSTERS advising Polish women to fly to Britain for free abortions on the NHS sparked outrage ­yesterday.

They urge women to take advantage of EU rules allowing Poles free medical care in the UK.

And it tells them it is cheaper to fly to the UK to end an unwanted pregnancy than to pay for an illegal ­backstreet ­termination in Poland.

The advert – which borrows tastelessly from a famous “Priceless” credit card campaign – is promoted by a Polish feminist group. It was condemned last night for encouraging “abortion tourism”, and piling pressure on the hard-pressed NHS.

Poland has the fourth, or maybe fifth, most restrictive abortion laws in Europe behind the Vatican City, Malta, Andorra, the Irish Republic and, sad to say, Northern Ireland, and that makes thing kind of thing both inevitable and the clearest possible demonstration of the utter futility of  placing draconian restrictions on access to abortion services. continue reading… »

The acute observer may have noted that, whenever the scandal of multi-millionaire non-dom top party donor Lord Ashcroft is brought up, the Tories’ default reaction is “yeah but the Unions too, they bankroll Labour”.

Let’s leave aside the long list of differences (technical, fiscal, substantial, ethical, practical, etc) between the two types of “donations”. Let’s leave aside “solemn and binding” promises.

The best way to gauge weight and influence as carried by Lord Ashcroft vs the Unions is to check the relationship between donors and political parties.

Not a single senior Tory has publicly said a bad thing against the Belize-based tycoon. They said a lot of things, but nothing bad. And how could they, given that the Baron has pumped around £5m into Tory coffers?
continue reading… »

William Hague’s recent remarks in an FT interview, and in a speech to the Royal United Services Institute give us some idea of the purposes and shape of Conservative foreign policy, in the aftermath of a Tory election win. In short, it is exactly the same sort of interventionist twaddle spouted by New Labour, overlaid with the same veneer of humanitarian concern that Blair liked to bathe in.

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? continue reading… »

Spring is a time of year that full of firsts. The first newborn lambs. The first snowdrops and daffodills…

…and the first election leaflets to feature an inaccurately drawn graphs, the credit for which appears to be going [inevitably] to the Lib Dems in Camden for this delightful effort>

(Hat Tip: Ben Goldacre)

Obviously, the actual graph that Ben ran across is on the left with my own rather pointed commentary on the right.

So, what are we going to do about this kind of thing?

Rather than run through the usual exercise of taking the piss on a case by case basis, I thought we might try a bit of different approach in an effort to encourage political parties to be a bit more honest in their dealings with the y-axis.

So, today, I’d like to announce the official launch of Liberal Conspiracy’s own Graph-Fix service, which is open to all our readers of whatever political persuasion.

The way the service works is all pretty straightforward.

If you do receive an election leaflet that features a dodgy-looking graph, and it can be any kind of graph from any party, not just the LibDems, then all you need do is send a scan or digital photograph of the graph to me at talkpoliticsuk[at]gmail[dot]com along with the details of the party/candidate responsible and the constituency in which it was delivered.

For purely practical reasons, I would prefer that you only send General Election leaflets – unless you run across something particularly egregious in a local election leaflet – and because there are a fair number of boundary changes this time out, you should also include any information that the leaflet might contain about the source of the information contained in the graph.

I’ll then check the graph for accuracy and, if necessary, redo it so that it provides an accurate visual representation of the information it contains, after which I’ll contact the party in question and send them over a set of corrected image files for future use, including a high quality .eps file for use in their printed materials and jpeg and png files for use on their website.

If we get a few of these, then I’ll also produce a weekly round-up/rogue’s gallery post of the most egregious pieces of y-axis abuse I’ve received that week together with a few suitably sarcastic comments to keep you all entertained.

And that’s all there is to it…

Oh, and regardless of whether you do choose to make use of this service, I would still recommend that you take the time to scan and upload any leaflets you receive to the Straight Choice’s live election leaflet archive.

You don’t have to be a non-dom to avoid paying income tax. Over the last 12 months, I’ve paid less than 10% tax and national insurance on my income. This isn’t because I’m a non-dom – I haven’t been abroad for 15 years – or because I have a fancy accountant. continue reading… »

Guest post by Tom Freeman

Justin McKeating argues:

If you are the sort of person who approves of, or allows their voting preference to be swayed even a little by, the interventions in our electoral process by the wives of the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, you are a moron who should be interned until after the general election.

I completely agreed with this until I thought of an even better idea.

The position of Prime Minister’s Spouse should be directly, and separately, elected. So we could pair Gordon with Samantha, Dave with Sarah, or maybe even Nick (Clegg) with Nick (Griffin). The possibilities are as endless as the attention span of an ITV early evening news viewer.

The morons would vote for the spouse, and the rest of us would vote for the actual government. Everyone gets to engage with the election on terms that they can understand.

Guest post by Phil BC

Once upon a time you would be hard pressed to find a more solid Labour stronghold than Stoke-on-Trent. The potteries, the mines, and the steel works gave birth to a close-knit working class that produced generations of Labour party activists who absolutely dominated the city’s politics. But all that began to change when the wind of deindustrialisation blew through North Staffordshire. The pits and steel mill are gone, and the ceramics industry is but a pale shadow of a former colossus. In their wake came call centres, casualised retail jobs, long term joblessness and bleak prospects.

The splintering of Stoke’s working class eventually found expression in its politics. continue reading… »

This afternoon, I attended a speech by the Minister for Identity, Meg Hillier MP, hosted by the Social Market Foundation. The address was titled “Building a national identity service for all” and presented much softer case for identity cards, compared to the terror-focused arguments of a few years back. (I will link to the full text of the speech when it is published).

The new reasoning centres around access to public services. Many people, the poorest people, don’t have any form of identification at all: no passport, credit card, driving licence, or even household bills in their name. ID cards, says Hillier, will provide a solution for these people, guaranteeing that they can quickly access the public services they need. The idea that a robust and trusted form of identification can be a tool for empowerment is something that the liberal left, instinctively against ID cards, needs to consider.

The approach is not without problems. Hillier says that people may miss out on a job, because employers are legally required to check you have the right to work in the UK, and inadequate identification might hinder this process. Likewise, she says people may miss out on renting a flat, or be refused a bank account, due to lack of ID. This may be so, but the hurdles that ID cards are designed to solve are actually regulations put in place by the government! Why not lower the hurdles? Why not create a new, entry-level type of bank account, with less overdraft and laundering possibilities? That way, ID barriers and credit checks could be safely reduced (perhaps some economists amongst our readers could comment on the practicalities of this, or whether such accounts already exist).

Discussing the technicalities of the new card, Hillier mentioned the ubiquity of the iPhone and other modern gadgets that can run any number of applications. “Why not put a chip in the phone?” she asked. After all, it is the chip that is the important bit, not the waterproof plastic. Quite right… but the wags will soon ask why we can’t put chips in our foreheads, too.

continue reading… »

Guest post by pagar

The policy of multiculturalism is built on two theories.

Firstly, there is the idea that human beings need, at a very primal level, some sort of attachment to cultural heritage. Without such attachment, the argument goes, people are likely to be less fulfilled and lack personal foundation. Without our cultural reference points, we are but leaves blowing in the wind.

Secondly, multiculturalism demands that all cultures have equal value. Indeed, it says that the value of a culture cannot be empirically measured because there is no fair starting point. The person making the comparison and value judgment will necessarily do so from a position that is informed by their own culture.

When these two theories are put together, we are logically driven towards embracing diversity- where everyone is encouraged to celebrate and codify the differences between cultures. Divergence is seen as positive and homogeneity is outlawed. In this climate immigrants are not required to integrate into the host culture and it is considered wrong and regressive for anyone to ask or expect them to do so.

But for liberals, the multiculturalism agenda brings with it some difficulties. continue reading… »

Lord Adonis says the British Airways strike is ‘deplorable’, and Gordon Brown says the British Airways strike is ‘deplorable’. Adonis calls the impending walkout ‘totally unjustified’, but Brown holds back and simply designates it ‘unjustified’.

Woooah! Did you see that? The prime minister failed to use an adverb of degree. Labour leadership split! Hold the front page!

Such is the underlying logic of what was at the time of writing the lead story on the Daily Telegraph website, which was running under the headline:  ‘Brown declines to criticise Unite over BA strike’.

I notice that the Torygraph piece runs under the triple by-line of Rosa Prince, Heidi Blake and Chris Irvine, so perhaps the publication’s sub-editors made some sort of slip in bolting three pieces of copy together. Or perhaps this really is plain and simple distortion of the truth, in line with the newspaper’s strident rightwing agenda.

continue reading… »