So how should a serious political party of the 21st century faced with the acute and growing problems [of obesity] react?

The Foresight scientists highlighted the fact that for an increasing number of people, weight gain is inevitable and largely involuntary as a consequence of exposure to a modern lifestyle.

They used the term “passive obesity,” and pointed out that it particularly effects the socially and economically disadvantaged.

Not every child is lucky enough to live in an environment that promotes good health. Not every family has a leafy back garden for their kids to play in. Not every family can afford to buy fresh organic produce from the local farmer’s market, or to put food on the table that their children will refuse to eat.

Our strategy made clear that in approaching this problem, we reject both the “nanny state,” which polices shopping trolleys and institutes exercise regimes and the neglectful state, which wipes its hands of the problem, and wags the finger in the direction of the most vulnerable families in the vague hope that they will do as they are told.
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James Purnell says the long-term unemployed “will be required to work full-time or undertake full-time work-related activity in return for their benefits.” (par 2.18 here).

This raises several questions. Isn’t this an abuse of language? I had thought that if you work, the money you get in return is wages.

And if you have to work 40 hours a week to get Job Seekers Allowance of £60.50, you’re paid £1.50 an hour. How is this consistent with the principle of a minimum wage?
But there’s a deeper question. Purnell could have sold a similar policy differently. He could have spoken thus:
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For years, the Green Party operated on a system of collective leadership. Up until 1991 it had 6 co-principal speakers. Since then it’s had two. That’s led to certain groups labelling the Greens as political amateurs - with good hearts, but no idea of what to do.

But last summer the party voted by a margin of 73% to elect a single leader. The Yes campaign argued that a leader was necessary for the party to ever achieve its full potential. The bulk of the party agreed - and so this September the Greens will have their first leadership elections.

The story so far
The first nomination came in last Monday. Caroline Lucas (pictured), at present an MEP and a principal speaker, launched a campaign focused on radical politics delivered with a professional punch. Her website summed up the message:

On climate change, scientists tell us that the next 10 years will be critical in terms of whether we have any chance of avoiding the worst of climate chaos. It is still the case that only the Green Party has both the radical policies, and the political commitment, that are so desperately needed to ensure that we do.

And on social justice, we face a country more unequal than it has been for decades. Only the Green Party has coherent alternatives to government policies that are privatising public services, increasing inequalities, and leading to greater violence and exclusion.

Lucas wants the party to provide discontented liberals and lefties with a credible home. Recent events and policies clearly show the party to be of that liberal-left; where else could a party that challenged David Davis as too authoritarian sit? The energy is clearly there, and Caroline Lucas says she’ll provide the professional quality to bring that vision to the voter.
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“Now Labour plans to bar white men from jobs” – just one of the recent screaming tabloid headlines about the Equality Bill.

What a fantastic nine-word summary of what is wrong with so much of our tabloid journalism: whipping up fear and division based on a fairy tale.

I’m not sure what is worse – believing that the person who wrote the headline was so ignorant of the story they thought it was true – or so cynical they were happy to write it knowing it wasn’t.

Because the truth is there is no provision like that in the Equality Bill. Nowhere. All the Bill proposes is that if two different people are equally qualified for a job (and that is a very big if!), it should be ok to choose between them on gender or race grounds.
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It was back in April this year that Ealing Council voted to withdraw funding from Southall Black Sisters, a women’s support group, on the spurious grounds that targeting services at black and minority ethnic groups ran contrary to the “equality” and “integration” agenda.

In a complete misinterpretation of the Race Relations Act, Ealing Council’s Conservative-run council furthermore proposed that in the interests of “community cohesion”, domestic violence services in the borough should henceforth be generic.

Specific services to vulnerable women were then in serious danger of being lost, and one of the women’s sector’s most powerful and influential campaigning organisations was under threat of closure. That all ended on Friday, when Ealing Council conceded defeat in the High Court.

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Spirit of 1976 has found a secret video exposing the Gay Agenda to Take Over the World.

Steph Ashley can’t understand why everyone quotes Iain Dale as if his views actually matter. I share her mystification on this.

Alix Mortimer compares Lib Dem and Tory campaign slogans and (surprisingly!) finds the Tory one somewhat wanting.

Dreaming of Simplicity wants to pee on Aaron’s bonfire in linking to this article on Digital Spy about the BBC’s commercial impacts.

Aberavon and Neath Lib Dems examine the Tax Credit train wreck.

And finally, Lady Mark Valladares has been up in my neck of the woods. He (and Ros) will be in Bradford today and I shall, if I can drag myself out of bed, be going to have a cream tea with them. The perils of Lib Demmery…

Throughout my teenage years and early twenties I had many jobs as a waitress, in a number of different restaurants. Sometimes fun, with friendly customers, plenty of staff camaraderie and after-work drinks, other times gruelling with hot hours spent in a nasty uniform trying not to look embarrassed as I handed over another overcooked/overpriced/much delayed by a fight between the chefs, pizza.

Part of what drew me to these jobs was the tips - by smiling, being helpful and pandering to odd food requests I could significantly increase the amount I took home at the end of a ten hour shift thanks to the generosity of some of those I waited on. Lucky, since these jobs usually had pretty low hourly rates.

But I was furious when I realised the last restaurant I worked in not only paid a low hourly rate but actually took money from my tips as a top up to the minimum wage.
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The extreme decision of an employment tribunal in the case of Ladele vs Islington (pdf), that of the registrar who claimed to have discriminated against on religious ground for refusing to officiate in civil partnership ceremonies, has naturally drawn a considerable amount of attention.

Thus far, the general consensus amongt legal bloggers is that the tribunal’s ruling is, at best, extreme, if not bordering on perverse and in the days since the ruling it transpires that Ms Ladele, whose views on marriage were described in the judgement as follows…
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Ziauddin Sardar, an Equality Commissioner, made a common sense plea in yesterday’s Guardian for a “sensibility for civility” in the way we treat others. It was an attempt to acknowledge how “derogatory words make way for degrading treatment” while seeking to sidestep the flame wars, and backlash, generated by an excessive policing for ‘political correctness’.

Our experience with PC language argues this is not something we can, or should, police. But that does not mean being indifferent and taking no action to promote civility through language that is neither jargon nor the ungainly, unspeakable invention of impersonal committees. What we need is common sense and a commitment to a sensibility that values the dignity of all.

This is well argued and sensible, though it is probably true that, in Britain at least, ‘political correctness’ has largely been a caricature (a “straw person”, as it were), rarely used other than to complain about ‘political correctness gone mad’.

But attempts to promote this approach may still face that kind of backlash.
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Sunder Katwala recent article on the BBC raises two issues: editorial bias and funding. Many of us have encountered what we regard as examples of BBC lack of impartiality.

Anthony Barnett on Our Kingdom lambasted the BBC’s coverage of the David Davis campaign. I have spent nearly six years trying to persuade the BBC to acknowledge, let alone make amends for, the worst breach of impartiality in its history (a documentary on the Mau Mau rebellion purporting to be objective but actually presenting a lone scholar’s highly tendentious - and subsequently widely discredited - opinions).

In truth, these concerns regularly arise, and for the most part the BBC is aware of its obligations, especially under the new governance structure, which was responsible for a recent report by John Bridcut on the whole question of alleged liberal bias in the BBC. For me, funding is a much more important long term issue.

There are those who would die in a ditch to defend on principle the present licence fee - what former BBC DG Greg Dyke regularly calls an unfair poll tax. I would have much less of a problem with the licence fee if it were equitably levied: on those who can afford to pay tax, in proportion to their taxable income. A BBC charge of 0.75% of taxable income, collected with each individual’s tax payments, would leave the BBC with roughly its present income, but excuse those too poor to pay tax.
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SnapsThoughts has a photo essay on the fraughtness of union links with Labour. Each image is accompanied by some thought-provoking words. Highly recommended.

Douglas has news of a sexist Tory. In other news, bears are Catholic and the pope poos in the woods.

Spirit of 1976 discovers his inner Clarkson and feels DIRTY.

Sexual Intelligence Blog reports on John McCain’s reluctance to discuss sexual matters. Not in front of the children, dear.

Jonathan Calder is rather cross about curfews, and people who hail them as a success before they even start.

Lee Griffin has some praise for the home secretary’s plans on knife crime.

Feminist SF covers the finale of the most recent series of Doctor Who.

That’s all folks. Tips to the usual address, and I’ll see you Sunday.

I need David Cameron lecturing me on moral responsibility in much the same way as I need a layer of icing applied to my lasagne.

Cameron had the gall to give this speech on the eve of the Glasgow East by-election campaign, in a deprived city licked to a splinter by the economic policies pursued by his party in the 1980s.

He said:
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I don’t suppose I need to repeat the refrain about this government’s authoritarianism. In its eleven years in power, Labour’s base instinct has been to legislate its way out of every problem, every bad headline and every moral panic.

We’ve seen a criminal justice policy dictated more by Paul Dacre than common sense and we’ve seen public health campaigns that achieve Cromwellian standards of piety. Such is the level of disgust with the overbearing Big Brother State, we’re frequently seeing liberals, libertarians and some left-wingers converge onto a common ground they rarely share.

And then this week the government went and threw a fork in the road.
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What stories can we tell about poverty in the UK? As prices rise and wages stagnate, a new era of industrial action may turn up some new ones.

The second Tube Cleaners’ Strike this week is a flashpoint for a city and a country sick to its stomach of scraping by or stumbling over whilst the rich get richer under New Labour.

We are sick of market-licking policy promising us jam tomorrow; for a generation, now, we’ve been waiting for Thatcher’s economic reforms to trickle down and lift the rest of us out of squalor, as we were promised they would.

But now the bubble has burst, and it’s the poor who are taking the fall for the City. The recipients of Income Support in London who rode in with their discounted travel cards to vote Ken Livingstone out of City Hall are now feeling the pinch after Johnson cut that benefit, in one of his first acts as Mayor. And with wages across the board failing to rise in line with inflation, Alastair Darling’s plea that we all ‘tighten our belts’ rings hollowly in the ears of those not earning an MP’s salary of £62,000 plus expenses.
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Below are some details of the conference on the 12th : Women in Struggle! Left Women’s Network Conference

The Left Women’s Network (LeftWN) is the women’s section of The Labour Representation Committee, an open democratic organisation committed to the development of a radical policy agenda for the Labour Party, the trade unions and the wider labour movement. Since 2007 we have been successful in bringing women together from within The Labour Party, trade union movement, campaigning organisations and the wider labour movement.

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I feel the need to rant (in a gracious way) about the liberal Abortion Act amendments that have been tabled for the fast-approaching report stage of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill.

My male chum Unity has already reported on the time-limit amendment tabled (again) by the one and only Mad Nads Dorries: I wanted to start a little something on the sensible contributions.

Tabled by Evan Harris, Chris McCafferty and Frank Dobson, the two liberal amendments would improve the Abortion Act by - rightly - making access to legal abortion easier than it is. The proposals are to get rid of the present requirement for two doctors to approve a request for an abortion, and to make it legal for nurses to perform the procedure.
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Sorry the netcast is a bit late today, folks. I got caught up in emailing Woman’s Hour and lost track of time. As always, tips to the usual address (although we give no guarantees you’ll be included) and hope you find something of interest in this.

Paul Walter has a handy précis of ConHome’s “How to become a Tory MP” guide. Essentially it involves throwing lots of money at it. *I* thought that was supposed to be the *Labour* way…

Lynne Featherstone calls people who don’t support Harriet Harman’s proposal to allow positive discrimination “Tory Boys”. Thank, Lynne! I assume the penis and blue rosette must have been lost in the post…

Lee Griffin is a Tory Boy like me, then. I particularly like this rabid right-wing point: “If schools want more male teachers then incentives are necessary to increase numbers, not putting a worse teacher in charge of educating our children for the sake of some equality figures.”

Anthony Hook thinks that the age discrimination proposals might be ill-thought-out too. Continue reading…

The image on the right is a good example of modern xenophobia. Its not racist in the traditional sense, with a picture of some black guy running off with a white woman for example.

It’s part of a narrative that says: the Muslims are not only here, but they’ll take over by multiplying and destroying us. The bomb is the womb… etc. I don’t even have to deconstruct it too much - its obvious what the message is.

Stuff like this has a long tradition. Decades ago the narrative was that the world was controlled by a “Jewish copnspiracy”, and you can still this prevalent on far-right websites where they talk of the ZOG (Zionist Occupation Government).
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I have spent about five hours so far collating reactions to last night’s Who and am still not done yet, so if this is a bit disjointed, blame Russell T Davies. When I’ve finally done I’ll be making Liberal use of this and picturing Rusty in the role of Boss.

Tips to the usual address: all submissions will be considered, although there’s no guarantee of inclusion.

Andrew Hickey has a great post about why the Lib Dems’ current strategy is completely arse-about-face, which neatly encapsulates my own feelings on the matter and chimes with Mike Smithson’s recent post too.

Stuff White People Like dissects Godwin’s Law: “all human beings can be neatly filed into one of two categories: People I Agree With, and People Who are Just Like Adolf Hitler.”

Shakesville reports on a fiscal fly in John McCain’s soup.

On my blog there are tips for those who wish to pile the pressure on Heinz like Lynne F. Continue reading…

So - 200 complaints about two men kissing and Heinz - wimps that they are - withdraw the advertisement.

Just when you think that we have moved beyond the bigotry and homophobic hatreds of the past - something like this (or Iris Robinson) pops into the limelight and reminds us that we still have a long way to go to eradicate homophobia. We may have been able to make homophobic behaviour subject to the law - but it is clearly still there in the people - and in corporate cowards.

Would Heinz have pulled an advert if 200 people had objected to it containing a woman? Or a black person? I certainly hope not! But if such blatant sexism or racism isn’t acceptable, why treat homophobia as ok to give in to?

Andrew (a former employee of mine!) has blogged on the subject at his blog - and gives details of how to lobby Heinz. It’s very easy - just an email or a call to their free phone number.

I have signed an Early Day Motion condemning Heinz for their action - and I hope this whole episode does them the damage they deserve.

(If you aren’t a constituent of mine, do pop over to http://www.writetothem.com/ and email your own MP asking them to sign EDM 1889. Don’t worry if you don’t know who your MP is - the site will look it up for you and sort out sending the message.)

Sunny adds:
There is also an online petition, now signed by over 10,000 people, and a Facebook group.

Anyone know what products other than those under the Heinz name should be boycotted?