As both Liberal Conspiracy and OurKingdom report today, a new poll by ICM shows that the public does not actually support extending pre-charge detention to 42 days from 28 days (which I think is too high anyway).
I think this is important because the government and its supporters (The Sun newspaper especially) used pushed their plans by saying the public was behind them. But that was based on this poll that had very slanted questioning. This poll and an earlier one by Liberty show the opposite. That poll also said 54% of the public believed the government’s proposals were merely meant to look “tough on terror”. The govt might take us for fools, but I’m glad at least the public isn’t buying it.
Meanwhile, a top Tory peer, Lady Manningham-Buller, director general of MI5 for five years until her retirement last April, said: “On a matter of principle I cannot support the 42 days pre-charge detention in this bill. I don’t see on a practical basis, as well as a principled one, that these proposals are in any way workable … because of the need for the suspect to be given the right to a fair trial.”
Aw shucks, Gordon Brown is looking a bit isolated isn’t he?
Is Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II a feminist icon? I don’t know if she is, but a strong case could be made for it (perhaps the F Word can tell us). What better retort to those who believe that women can’t survive at the top, or cope with pressure, then to point to her? Yes, she inherited the position, but in the fifty six years since her father died, she has been a widely respected figure and is almost universally praised for the way that she has conducted herself in an age of 24-hour news and blogs where the slightest mistake gets pounced on.
Can the feminist movement benefit even more from Elizabeth II however? At present, the succession to the throne is weighted in favour of males, so that any male child is automatically closer in line to the throne than his sister(s), whatever their ages. This arrangement made sense five hundred or more years ago when this was the norm in most households. If the monarchy had attempted to reform it then, it could well have led to civil war, as many would have flocked to the banner of a male pretender to the throne, angry at the change in customs or simply to exploit the situation.
Having flown to Japan with a large numbers of hangers-on, The G8 leaders have decided to call for a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, an agreement which is designed to replace the very (un)successful Kyoto treaty. This agreement comes shortly after Gordon Brown tucked into his six-course lunch and seven-course dinner while telling us to waste less food. Meanwhile, In Britain, MPs voted not to reform their expenses, agitated for a pay rise, while expressing concern over the financial state of the poorest in society (who are also amongst the most heavily taxed). To paraphrase Chris Dillow, our political class is increasingly beyond parody.
This is from a briefing that the Equality and Human Rights Commission has sent out. The emphasis is mine:
42 Days Pre-Charge Detention - Summary of the Commission’s Position
1. The Equality and Human Rights Commission has made it clear in our parliamentary briefings for the Commons Second Reading debate and Report Stage that we consider the provisions in the Bill relating to pre-charge detention for up to 42 days to be contrary to human rights law.
2. The Commission also obtained authoritative legal advice that endorses this view and the Commission therefore remains minded to use its powers to challenge the lawfulness of these provisions if they are enacted.
3. In addition, the Commission has sought the views of Muslim communities on the probable impact on community cohesion of the extension of pre-charge detention.
Just switched this on, and say some guy talk about “cockroaches” walking and taking over everywhere, and making the obvious link with Muslims. No different to Melanie Phillips’ more flowery “dhimmification of Britain” narrative then.
A prize for someone to spot the first blogger to take a comment from the programme out of context and state that Oborne was “kowtowing to Islamists” or something like that.
Below it, someone made a comment that has now been taken off, saying (and I paraphrase): “Sunny, you used to be good earlier by writing about taking on community leaders and what not, and now you’ve just become an apologist and talk about brown people voting Tory, and what not. What happened to you?”
I want to address this not only because the two (my article and the comment) are related, but because it encapsulates something I’ve wanted to write about for a while on PP. Call it a change in direction if you wish.
[Peter Oborne's Dispatches film, "It Shouldn't Happen to a Muslim", will be screened on Channel 4 at 8pm on Monday. The pamphlet Muslims Under Siege, by Peter Oborne and James Jones, is published next week by Democratic Audit]
I got this from the Southall Black Sisters over the weekend:
Demonstration 17th and 18th July 2008 from 9.30am onwards at the High Court on the Strand
Many of you are already aware that SBS has been locked in struggle against Ealing Council with regard to its decision to withdraw funding for our domestic violence services for black and minority women. On 17th and 18th July 2008, the High Court will hear a challenge brought by our users against Ealing Council for its failure to have proper regard to existing equality legislation, especially the Race Relations Act, in reaching its decision on our funding.
The Council will seek to justify its decision on the grounds that a generic domestic violence service will be better placed to meet requirements of the equality legislation and the so called ‘cohesion’ agenda.
I nearly called this weekend open thread ‘Why I love Bill Hicks‘ but figured better of it. I reckon it’s right the guy speaks for himself:
Imagine what he’d been like had he lived?! 8 years of Bush 2 would’ve probably had him running back to the mushrooms!
So anyway, guys and gals, what you up to this weekend? Me, I’m running about Central London tomorrow getting last minute stuff then packing; off on Sunday morning to Italy! Can’t wait, it’s been a looong year…two weeks, no work, probably very little politics and current affairs (unless another Bojo aid quits); love it!
Remember kids play nice, this thread is for kicking back and having some fun, sharing videos, cooking tips but absolutely NO politics or serious stuff!
Update: Ken Livingstone pulls no punches with his view of Ray Lewis’ resignation:
“In a mere two months in office Boris Johnson has already suffered the second resignation from among his most senior officials - Deputy Mayor Ray Lewis following Deputy Chief of Staff James McGrath two weeks ago. In my entire eight years in office I suffered only one enforced resignation of any of my most senior officials, Lee Jasper - and that only after seven years - and this extreme contrast shows vividly the incompetence of Boris Johnson and his administration. It is an equal crisis for David Cameron who, it should be remembered, chose to make his first photo opportunity as Tory leader with Ray Lewis.”
“Award winning journalist” Andrew Gilligan wrote this article for the Evening Standard yesterday, saying Boris should do everything to bring back the Routemaster. He says: “The reason I fell out with Ken Livingstone wasn’t his cronyism, waste, or arrogance. The reason I, and I think many other Londoners, parted company with Ken was that he got rid of the Routemaster.”
It wasn’t mentioned that Andrew Gilligan himself contributed to a Policy Exchange report published several years ago which specifically said the Routemaster should be used as a good wedge issue to drive out Ken Livingstone. Bizarre, since its quite central to the article. Last night I posted a comment saying this, underneath the article. Today, all the earlier comments have vanished and you can’t post comments underneath the article any more. The comments are back but mine didn’t get published. Awwwww, after Ray Lewis, poor Gilligan must be feeling a bit annoyed that his mate is getting so much stick already. Sorry - what was that Andrew? I should just get over Ken’s loss and accept it?? I wonder how long you’re going to keep repeating that old chum.
I went to the launch of a pilot survey from the Woolf Institute of Abrahamic faiths last Tuesday, where they introduced their research on Muslim, Christian and and Jewish seminaries. They recommended that every one of these seminaries include a compulsory interfaith module, which is brilliant. No doubt the Institute is doing interesting work, theologically, but are they getting too big for their boots campaigning on how other faiths teach their faith?
Bridget O’Koro arrived in the UK seeking asylum after committing the terrible crime of choosing her own boyfriend. Worse still for the oppressive thugs that regard these things as their business rather than Bridget’s, her boyfriend was not a Muslim and not of her Hausa tribe. Needless to say news of her pregnancy to this man was not greeted with joy and congratulations. Instead her father and the local Islamic Council threatened to kill her.
Despite the fact that Nigeria is in no ones top ten nations to have a uterus in Bridget is being sent back to face at best a life lived looking over her shoulder and at worst death.
I’m not an atheist, but religious advertising mostly annoys me. In fact most people who talk about religion annoy me because they’re rarely well informed on the subject. So I was particularly amused by this recent piece by Ariane Sherine, who by the way blogs here and is now added to our ‘in-laws’ blogroll because she’s a great writer, which proposed that atheists should band together and take out an ad on a bus advertising atheism. (yes, should have blogged earlier but better late than never).
This morning I published extracts from a speech David Lammy MP, minister for skills, on Liberal Conspiracy. He had said he liked the US primary system for party internal elections. Anyway, to my surprise it turns out his office had seen it published and Mr Lammy himself turned up in the comments to address his critics. Apart from Tom Watson, I think that’s the first time I’ve seen a cabinet minister get involved in blog comments. Hey, these guys are learning fast. I’m impressed… though obviously less impressed with the Labour party overall.
Keith Vaz questioned why 42 days was needed if the government now agreed to post-charge questioning. “If they agree the three points set out in the Home Affairs Committee report, I will support them. That would mean the vote is much closer. If the committee votes with the government it would bring about 20 waverers on-side. If not, they’re likely to lose.”
Labour MP Keith Vaz has dismissed suggestions he was offered incentives to vote for the controversial 42-day limit on pre-charge detention. It follows exchanges between Gordon Brown and David Cameron, over a letter suggesting Mr Vaz may be “appropriately rewarded” for his support.
Some people are so idiotic, so over-the-top nutty, that one can only assume they escaped from some mental hospital. The American elections have got to a stage where even the John McCain campaign has distanced itself from these supposed pro-Clinton anti-Obama nutcases (oh sorry, “Democrats”).
The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) has been working with English local authorities to come up with a new set of priorities and targets for each authority, rather than impose the same targets on each authority. This seems sensible enough, as it allows local authorities (who get the bulk of their money from central government), to react to local conditions. Each area then ranked its priorities from an approved DCLG list, and the DCLG has published the twenty most popular targets on its website (each authority had to pick 35 targets). Allowing each local area to choose its own priorities seemed like a dangerous outbreak of common sense in government, but fortunately the local authorities have restored the status quo with their choices.
Out of 150 local authorities, only 75 felt that ‘repeat incidents of domestic violence’ was one of their top 35 targets. In comparison 89 thought that ‘stopping smoking’, which is currently a legal activity, was amongst the most important. Laughably, the website links to a newly-published YouGov poll where people ranked their top five priorities, to try and show that the state is responding to people’s needs. Yet upon examination, the YouGov poll reveals that the most important issue for people is crime (83%). Only 82 councils thought that reducing the ‘assault with injury crime rate’ was important, compared to 99 that were really concerned with ‘obesity among primary school age children in Year 6 [ie.10-11 year olds]’. The YouGov poll saw 23% rank improving children’s health as one of the top five, the second lowest of any of the choices. The ‘re-offending rate of prolific and other priority offenders’ and ‘serious acquisitive crime rate’, the two other crime targets, were also considered less important then year six obesity by councils.
This is a rather amusing story. Scotland’s Tayside police produced an ad for non-emergency calls featuring a puppy. A Dundee councillor, Mohammed Asif, pointed out the problem. The article says: “The advert has upset Muslims because dogs are considered ritually unclean and has sparked such anger that some shopkeepers in Dundee have refused to display the advert.”
That’s their right of course. But oh noes… the Daily Mail is outraged! It’s political correctness gone mad! Get Richard Littlejohn on the phone! Don’t you know this is why the BNP is doing so well?via Ben
ConservativeHome has published a list of pointers by people who have become MPs or climbed the greasy pole. The section titled ‘It’s not what you know but who you know‘ is enlightening… and rather obvious. And apparently the average cost of becoming a Tory MP was over £40,000. Oh and don’t forget to kiss ass all the way up.
And yet people are still claiming that politics is a meritocractic business? Is it any wonder women and working class people are excluded from this exclusive tribe?
I apologise for bringing this news late: I’ve been bogged down and was missing an interenet connection for a while. I finally finished slugging through the debate at the House of Lords on Britishness that took place on the 19th and consider myself much more confused than I was before reading it. I got very little out of what was at best a wishy washy debate, with statements like “Britishness is like freedom. Freedom is a journey that never ends, because each generation discovers new aspects” from Lord Haskel and which had the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State concluding that the debate itself was very British; possibly the kind of British that is confused, vague and involves a lot of fumbling along.
I thought Lord Addington, the only hereditary peer speaking at the debate, had something interesting to say:
Where does the idea of Britishness come from? Where does it go? It comes from historical accident. It is going we know not where. It is changing as we speak. Is it a good or a bad thing that Afro-Caribbean youth culture is currently dominant? It is a reality. How will that new culture develop in the future? The minute we start talking about issues like this, I feel we are out of date, because things are developing and changing in ways we would never have suspected in our youth.
The level of integration in certain areas is incredibly high and in others it is not. Is that not the same as the class differences we all felt so much more confident talking about a few years ago? I do not know. The two issues clearly cross over. Certain people from certain ethnic backgrounds have found themselves to be slightly more successful at integrating into the middle classes than others
Most agreed that Britishness was something that could not be imposed from the top. As proof of the elusiveness of its definition, most also highlighted the multiple identities of Britain, from as far back as time immemorial, perhaps, to its modern devolved constituent nations and multiple religions and denominations. Recent waves of immigration have added more mixture to the already mixed cocktail of cultures that make up Britain, so what is new all of a sudden? I can’t help thinking it has something to do with Islamist terror.
A lot of the speakers made the important distinction between civic nationalism and cultural and ethnic identity. As long as we carry out our duties as citizens and respect the rule of law, it doesn’t matter what ethnic group you belong to or culture you identify with. All in all, I’m baffled as to what the point of this kind of debate is. Is it the last gasp of the nation state?
Charlie Beckett and his Tim Watts are rather underwhelmed by the impact Barack Obama’s campaign has had on making politics more democratic online.
In fact, the general view amongst participants was that while Barack Obama has the most open and decentralised organisation of any campaign in history, strategy, policy making and message development remained extremely tightly controlled by the campaign team. Many of the working journalists at the conference have noted that Obama was by far the least accessible candidate for media inquiries. Similarly, on the only policy issue when the campaign head quarters and the decentralised Obama organisation have violently disagreed, the decision to opt out of Federal campaign funding, campaign headquarters announced a decision on the issue with next to no formal consultation with the organisational base.
I think this misses the point for two reasons. Firstly, for various reasons Barack Obama had to run a very tight campaign. He was running against a much better known candidate so his team wanted to ensure they could define him properly… plus Hillary Clinton’s campaign visibly suffered by all the leaks and backbiting that came with having a much more open campaign.
Secondly, and more importantly, when it comes to online politics there are two distinct groups: the politicians and the voters. Each have different aims and I think its important to recognise this in a way the post doesn’t seem to. From Obama’s perspective, using the web to galvanise supporters, raise funding and spread the message is the optimum strategy. Why would any politician want to take on more work simply to make politics more democratic?
But the internet has also helped voters organise themselves whether Obama likes it or not. And to me this is the more exciting territory. How can ignore the impact MoveOn.org or HuffingtonPost have had on the liberal establishment in the States? Both are unashamedly left-wing organisations that have used the web and become focal points for leftwing supporters there. Both have shaped the election in their own ways. So just because Obama has been reclusive doesn’t mean online politics is getting nowhere fast. I’m surprised Charlie missed this bit out.
Until recently I paid little attention to politics within the Church of England. The Anglicans are hardly the most exciting bunch around. But this changed when constant attacks by Bishop Nazir-Ali, the most well-known conservative Bishop within the Church, on Muslims led me to believe he was trying to build up a base against Archbishop Rowan Williams. See this article on CIF. So I became interested in what Nazir-Ali was up to and how we going about building his power base.
Last week when the big bomb dropped that the Anglican Church faced a major split from more conservative bishops from Africa, objecting against increasingly liberal moves within the Church of England to allow women bishops and bless gay marriages, I thought - what’s Nazir Ali going to do now?
He joined the conservative faction from Africa of course, because it challenged Rowan William’s legitimacy. I expect he thought that people might nominate him as the new Anglican Church head so he could smooth things over with the Africans and restore unity again. The first problem is that Rowan Williams isn’t taking this lying down.
The bigger problem for Nazir Ali is that this looks more like a power play from the African Anglicans, who want the centre of Anglican gravity to shift to the south. Over the long term they probably don’t give a toss for Nazir-Ali either. Which means that many conservative Anglicans in Britain, recognising this is as a serious long-term blow to their power, will rally towards Rowan Williams. They still want the power after all. Here’s the religion editor at the Telegraph (which has been supporting Nazir Ali a lot) saying he has become a “useful idiot”.
Which basically means Lord Nazir Ali may be left hanging out to dry and all those conservatives who secretly supported his bid to be the next Archbishop will have to ditch him. Fun and games. I, for one, can’t see the back of Nazir Ali back into obscurity.
There’s an old saying: “the left want all the power but none of the responsibility”. And its very true, most of the time. Now, I’ve always supported Barack Obama but I have never been the Obama is the messiah kind, contrary to popular belief. Hence, unlike most of the American left, I’m not squealing about his recent decisions because they were more centrist than usual. And hell, I wouldn’t rule out the death penalty for child rapists either.
He is simply adhering to the ancient political axiom that Democratic presidential candidates run to the Left and Republicans to the right in the embryonic stages of the campaign. Then when the chips are down they move quickly to the center, the conservative center that is.
…
The Left can moan over Obama’s political role reversals all it wants. But the hard reality is that presidential wannabes routinely do policy back flips to win. It’s simply part of the American political game.
That, and the fact that he is particularly vulnerable to certain accusations (black men will let off black kiddie rapists!) that could have surfaced during the election. As Michael Tomasky said, “It’s acceptable - and necessary - for Barack Obama to compromise his liberal principles in order to get elected.” Amen to that.
