Saturday, September 19, 2009 

Weekend links.

Back to the usual hodge-podge format this week. Lenin recalls the massacres of Sabra and Shatila, Dave Semple and Shiraz Socialist comment on the TUC's passing of a motion supporting certain actions against Israel, Bob Piper is fed up at getting Iain Dale's magazine through his door every month, Jamie also doubts whether the Tories will be better when it comes to civil liberties, Next Left defends Daniel Hannan while Dave Semple (again) distrusts the motives of Hannan and Douglas Carswell. Finally, Third Estate argues against capital punishment whilst also dismissing its opponents.

In the papers, or at least their sites, both Matthew Parris and Peter Oborne are a bit presumptuous regarding the rise and fall and then rise again of George Osborne, while in a Lib Dem special considering it's their conference, David Howarth claims only they will safeguard civil liberties, Polly Toynbee thinks it could be their moment if they go for Labour's jugular, and Andrew Grice says only well-defined policies can win them support, which I don't think has made much difference in the past. John Kampfner calls for the left to reclaim civil liberties, as if the genuine left (or at least the libertarian left) hasn't always opposed Labour's authoritarianism, while Mark Thompson himself makes an excellent riposte to James Murdoch's speech of a few weeks' ago, and about damn time the BBC defended itself. Lastly, I was amazed to think I was going to agree with Tim Worstall on something other than civil liberties or drug legalisation in his piece on pursuing the great possible happiness, until his remedy is a flat tax of 30% on incomes above £15,000, which just happens to be the policy pursued by err, UKIP.

The Mark Thompson speech and article is probably why the Sun has gone to war over the incredibly consequential scheduling of Strictly Come Dancing and The X-Factor at the same time, which the BBC simply must have done deliberately to ruin the biggest TV night of the week, as we move onto the worst tabloid piece contenders. We aren't treated to Simon Cowell's thoughts on the matter online, but it's strange no one is suggesting the obvious: record one and then watch it after the other's finished, or watch Strictly on the iPlayer later. Simples, right? Not in Murdoch land, where it is verboten to point out that BSkyB (prop. R Murdoch) owns a 17.9% share in err, ITV, not to mention News International's interest in seeing the BBC cut down to a husk which can then be abolished entirely later once support has fully dripped away. This is also happening at the same time as BT and Virgin are counter-attacking Sky over their "unfair pricing" and "manipulation" of the distribution of sports and movie channels. Sky defending its monopoly while demanding that the BBC's online activities be cut down to size so News International's piss-poor websites can make a profit? No hypocrisy there.

That isn't the worst though, as that instead comes in the Sun proper, with a simply delightful article on Vikki Thorne, the police officer sentenced to a despicable 15 months in prison because she spent her time while not on the beat moving to a quite different one as an escort, in a Daily Mail type report on how a respectable middle class girl should have known better. Quite how the judge justified the sentence on public interest grounds, let alone knowing full well what she is doubtless in for as ex-filth inside is naturally not considered, but every other aspect of her time is. There's also this clearly invented quote:

A close friend told The Sun last night: "It was a clear-cut case of greed coupled with a seedier side of Vikki's personality, which had obviously been lurking under the surface.

"You don't get rich working for the police and suddenly a TV programme showed her the way to do just that."


Yes, I'm certain that a close friend said that. The sort of article which doesn't make you feel dirty because of the topic being discussed, but because of the sheer relish (sex mad, yeah, I bet she was) with which the hack tells it, without even an ounce of sympathy.

Labels: , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

9/19/2009 10:07:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, September 18, 2009 

A response to the Heresiarch on the Conservatives and liberty.

(Apologies for the crap blogging of the last couple of days. Hopefully will be better next week.)

Left as a comment on the Heresiarch's post, but felt was reasonable enough to dedicate a post to as well:

I think you're being far too credulous. You're talking almost rapturously about a party that only recently was advocating a "21st century clip round the ear", i.e. the police "confiscating" mobile phones or bikes off teenagers summarily, almost exactly like the very worst proposals made under Blair. A party that thought David Davis at best an eccentric when he resigned, and at worst a lunatic. And just what exactly was the Conservative response to the police riot at the G20 protests? There wasn't one, mainly because when it's the police beating up crusties, hippies, greens and lefties the Tories couldn't care less and even cheer it on.

A lot of people seem to make the mistake that the current strain of authoritarianism began in 1997. It didn't. It can instead be linked back almost certainly to the murder of James Bulger, and while Labour made the most out of it, the Tories were no slouches either, as Michael Howard's record as Home Sec testifies. It was after all he who first proposed ID cards, even if they're nothing like the ones we may soon have to get used to.

I don't deny that on some things the Tories may well be better, and I expect they'll keep to their promises on the various databases, mainly because they'll be one of the easiest things to cut and shut down. I don't believe for a second though that as soon as the Sun starts screaming about the latest moral panic that they'll ignore it or argue against instant measures which must be introduced right now; after all, why bother getting an ex-tabloid editor as your spin doctor if you're not intending to govern with a firm eye on the tabloids? It might not quite be New Labour MKII but it probably won't be far off . That "principled opposition" to extending detention without charge will be forgotten in an instant if we get another 7/7 or worse. And as for that "British" bill of rights, well, it either won't thankfully happen or we'll have the HRA repealed and one of the very few excellent pieces of Labour legislation will be gone. Then there's the apparent Tory intention to further politicise the police, likely to make things even worse, not better, and Kit Malthouse's claim that the Mayor's the real one in charge of Scotland Yard is probably just the start.

All that said, there are some Tory policies which show promise - such as the recent green paper on prisons, which if implemented could do a lot of good, but I'm not exactly going to be holding my breath. To be not as beyond redemption as Labour isn't going to be difficult; to actually be better might well be.

Labels: , , , , , , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

9/18/2009 09:36:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, September 17, 2009 

Surrender and cowardice on welfare.

You can't really help but read this and weep, as well as also knowing this was exactly the sort of response Laurie Penny was always going to get from James Purnell:

At some point during the meeting, I got tired of the equivocation. So I decided to tell him the truth and see if I couldn't make him listen. Very quietly, and mindful of how ridiculous I might sound, I said* -

"Look, James. You know and I know that the damage has already been done. There are hundreds of thousands of young people and people with disabilities out there whose lives have been entirely scuppered by a batting team of the recession and your damn stupid benefit policies. Sure, you're trying to guarantee jobs for one in ten of them now - but that's not enough, and we both know that. I'm not here to shout at you or to tell you how angry I am with you, and I'm not here to point out the massive hypocrisy in your personal behaviour over the expenses scandal -there wouldn't be a lot of point in that. I'm here to ask you, please, to listen.

"People are hurting, right now; people like my partner and my former housemates are in desperate situations and they are hurting. You're a highly ambitious, brilliant politician. There's not a small chance that by the time you're leader of the Labour Party or Prime Minister of Britain [note: neither Purnell nor his aide moved to correct me at this point] we will still be hurting, still be desperate, and some of us might still be unemployed. I want you to remember, please, that you owe us a voice. I want you to remember that our votes count, too, and that we are people just as much as people who are lucky enough to be employed. It's too late for some of us now; but we're good, bright young men and women who just want to earn our way, and our votes count as much as anyone's. So when you're powerful again, please remember us, and remember that you owe us. And that's all I have to say."

At which point, Purnell said, "Thank you. That seems like a good point on which to end the meeting".

It's probably instructive that it's the likes of Iain Duncan Smith's Centre for Social Justice that are now making the running when it comes to welfare reform, such has been the intellectual cowardice and surrender shown by those on the left. Smith's report is undoubtedly wrong-headed and hardly practical with its suggestion that you can somehow turn 51 benefits into just two, but it genuinely does seem to believe in help without dangling a tiny carrot while also wielding a dirty great big stick. We've all laughed at the Conservatives pretending that they're the "new progressives", a term which is so devalued to be worthless in any case, but wouldn't it be the biggest irony of all if actually turned out to be true?

Labels: , , , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

9/17/2009 10:23:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, September 16, 2009 

Falling for Columbine.

When a jury manages to see through a court case that lasted for two weeks within 45 minutes, it's only natural to wonder whether it should have ever been brought. When it involves two teenagers who had previously never been in trouble with the police and their being kept on remand in a young offender's institution and Strangeways respectively for 6 months, it becomes a necessity.

Both Ross McKnight (the son of a police officer, no less) and Matthew Swift were found not guilty of conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to cause explosions, their plans for a supposed massacre at a school in Manchester as well as the bombing of a shopping centre on the 10th anniversary of the Columbine massacre ripped to shreds both by the defence, McKnight's father, who seemed to have sealed the verdict when he talked of his son's many "harebrained" schemes and finally by the jury. What really seems to have gone on here is nothing more than teenage angst and alienation being taken slightly too far up the scale. The rants the pair wrote in diaries are hardly out of the ordinary: the only real surprise might be that they didn't post them on a social networking site or somewhere else where they were even more easily accessible. The other slight indication that this went any further than just two friends messing around and engaging in fantasies was that they had "plans" of the school, although whether these were just simple sketches of outlines which they made themselves or genuine plans we don't seem to know.

It's easy to make presumptions, but you can't help but feel that if they hadn't mentioned Columbine or supposedly fetishised the two murderers who carried out that most notorious of school shootings, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, or were meant to have planned to carry it out on the anniversary of their assault, that this "plot" wouldn't have got anywhere near the court system. There is indeed perhaps some cause for concern in this area: it's quite true that some teenagers, especially those who feel themselves outsiders or not accepted by their peers, not to mention those who are bullied, can engage in the kind of fantasies which these two boys were meant to have, and while such feelings of striking out at those that have harmed them are natural and are very rarely acted upon, they do need to be nipped in the bud. Some of those at the very extreme end of this type of thinking do indeed idolise the likes of Harris and Klebold; Seung-Hui Cho in his claim of responsibility for the Virigina Tech massacre referred to both as martyrs, and there is a strain of thinking surrounding such spree-killers that all such attacks are in fact copy-cat crimes, a view that I'm partial to. The vast majority though who dream or fantasise about doing violence to their tormentors never do; hell, I can even remember at one point during my early teenage years writing a list of those that I'd kill if I had the chance. As far as I'm aware I never carried through on my written promise.

Undoubtedly the female friend that reported McKnight's drunken referral to the supposed attack was right to let the authorities know of her concerns. That was though surely as far as it should have gone. Dave Osler compares the case to that of the "lyrical terrorist", Samina Malik, but if anything a far wider comparison to terrorism is equally applicable. Just as in cases like that involving Dhiren Barot, neither McKnight or Swift had the guns or explosives necessary to carry out their plans, nor the funds to get hold of them but they did have ideas or nous which suggested they could have done. As it happens, Barot's ideas were even more fantastical than the teenage pair's were, whether it involved destroying builders by filling limos with gas canisters, a plan thoroughly debunked by the Glasgow airport idiots, exploding a bomb on the Underground which would somehow penetrate the tunnel and cause the Thames to flood in, or constructing a dirty bomb out of smoke alarms by placing the americium he harvested from them in a coke can. He however was sentenced to 30 years in prison, more on the fact that he had been trained and probably had connections with al-Qaida, even if his ideas were even more harebrained that McKnight's. Interesting here is that Swift had a copy of the Anarchist Cookbook, a book which another teenager was previously prosecuted for possessing, despite it being freely available, as well as also a gun which could fire ball bearings. You can bet that if someone with links to extremist Islam had either that they would have also been indicted on similar charges.

The terrorist trials where the prosecution have tried and almost always convinced juries that that extremists were only days or weeks away from mass murder or horrific casualties are perhaps the significant precursor to both the police and the Crown Prosecution Service imagining that they could do much the same in this instance. It does though have to be asked, did they genuinely believe their own case, or rather did those unlucky enough to prosecute it believe it? It certainly doesn't seem, for instance, that the headmaster of the school believed it. There is of course a very fine line between caution and a potential tragedy, but in this instance what just seems to have been very normal teenage ennui could have been criminalised, and if they weren't bitter and depressed prior to their time on remand, McKnight and Swift very well may be now.

Labels: , , , , , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

9/16/2009 09:44:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, September 15, 2009 

Some closure to the Glen Jenvey/TERROR TARGET SUGAR saga.

An indication of just what a disgraceful and shameless newspaper the Sun really is can be seen in their non-apology/clarification for the "TERROR TARGET SUGAR"/Glen Jenvey story which has been posted on their website today. Finally stirred into action by Jenvey's appearance on the Donal MacIntyre show on Radio 5 Live on Sunday, they have naturally passed all of the blame straight onto his already quaking shoulders:

A PHONEY terrorism "expert" has confessed to duping newspapers and a senior politician.

Glen Jenvey has admitted making up stories about Islamic fundamentalism, including a faked list of prominent Jewish "targets", which included Lord Alan Sugar.

He revealed his scheming in an interview with BBC reporter Tom Mangold, aired on Sunday's edition of Donal MacIntyre's Radio Five Live show.

Jenvey told how he fabricated the list of Jewish targets by posing as a fundamentalist on an extremist website where he urged others to suggest names.

He then leaked the made-up list to a trusted news agency, used by The Sun, and online forum Ummah.com was wrongly accused of being used to prepare a backlash against UK Jews.

Jenvey - who had been described as "an extremely capable and knowledgeable analyst" by Tory MP Patrick Mercer - said: "I'm fully responsible for the story. The Sun was deceived.

"The Sun did not know that I was behind the postings.

"I would like to apologise to all the British Jews who we scared and I'd like to apologise to The Sun newspaper."

Jenvey was not of course fully responsible for the story; he hardly forced the Sun to publish what had been supplied to them by the South West News Service, whom he had initially provided the story to (and also presumably paid him through). The fact remains that there was no story here, even with Jenvey's posts on the Ummah.com thread as abuislam. It was a thread, as the initial post pointed out, to use entirely peaceful methods (writing letters) to supporters of Israel. You can criticise the fact they chose to specifically targets Jews, when being Jewish and supporting Israel does not always go hand in hand, as well as some of the more "colourful" language used by some of the posters in the thread, but there was still no story here, even when "abuislam", now exposed as Glen Jenvey, suggested doorstep protests, which while unpleasant, are not illegal and which was not going to mean "terrorists" or "Islamic extremists" descending on the doorstep of Alan Sugar, David Miliband or Mark Ronson.

This story is an example of the Sun's fundamental contempt for the very standards of journalism. Any reputable news organisation which still somehow imagined that there was a story here would have checked, checked and then checked the "facts" again. They would have made certain that abuislam was not one and the same as the person providing them with the story, especially considering the way that abuislam was quite clearly acting as an agent provocateur in the thread, "bumping" it repeatedly, and resurrecting it finally three days after the last post. They would have checked whether there was any realistic prospect of one person's suggestion on a forum being put into action, and contacted those named and both alerted them and asked whether they had been sent either letters or had protesters outside their houses. They would have further checked Glen Jenvey's credentials, not just relying on the word of a Conservative MP. Then, and only then, would they perhaps have published the story, and even then it was hardly deserving of front page status, or the ludicrous claim that Alan Sugar was to be a "TERROR TARGET".

The real story here though is that Jenvey, after his association/collaboration with other "amateur" 'terror experts' such as Dominic Wightman (aka Whiteman) had been supplying the tabloids with either false or hugely exaggerated stories of terrorist threats, with the help of the Tory MP Patrick Mercer. The Sun had worked with Jenvey before, and not caring whether his claims were accurate or not, had no reason or inclination to doubt him this time round. It just so happens that Jenvey had become lazy and left this time a trail which Tim Ireland picked up (and, I must add, which I myself started off on), and who has only been grudgingly credited by the BBC.

Even then the paper could have quickly accepted that its story was ridiculously sensationalist and that this time round they had been had. Instead, the Sun's managing editor Graham Dudman sent a letter to the Press Complaints Commission on the 27th of January which defended every aspect of the story. Tim Ireland will hopefully be revealing the text of the letter in full later in the week, but having seen a copy, I can whet appetites by saying that some of his arguments are truly jaw-dropping.

It's still not clear what action, if indeed any the PCC is going to take against the paper over the story. Indeed, it might well agree with the paper that Jenvey was fully responsible, going by its past record, and that today's non-apology is sufficient. It's also unclear just what Alan Sugar's lawyers will make of Jenvey's confession, considering his decision to sue the paper over the story. What clearly should happen however is that for a front page story of such prominence, which was so categorically wrong in almost every aspect, and may well have scared some prominent Jews, as well as smearing the Ummah.com forum, there should be at the very least a front page apology. It has to remembered this story came at a time of high tension surrounding the Israeli attack on Gaza, with angry well-attended demonstrations taking place almost every weekend during the conflict, with more than potential to substantially harm community relations further. It was also yet again a Sun story on Muslims which portrayed them in at best a very bad light, straight out of the school which led to the £30,000 payment to the bus driver Arunas Raulynaitis for claiming he ordered passengers off so he could pray, and of the non-existent "Windsor Muslim yobs" who had supposedly attacked a house which soldiers had looked at with a view to moving in. I don't think I can really add to what I wrote at the time of the former:

It goes without saying that such unsubstantiated journalism threatens community relations and is often used by extremists, even after such reports have been proved false, to stir up hate. Reporting such topics requires great care, care which the Sun has neither the time nor the inclination to use.

Nor has it the courage, the honesty or the humility to admit when it gets a story so drastically wrong.

(Update: edited in line with the Sun - Tabloid Lies cross-post.)

Labels: , , , , , , , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

9/15/2009 11:31:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

List-o-rama.

Just noticed, thanks to Socialist Unity, that as well as my entry on inventor of blogging Iain Dale's list of left-wing blogs, I've also rather strangely made 30th on the Labour list, what with my being a card-carrying member and all. It also doesn't make a whole lot of sense: I make 30th on the Labour list and 60th on the left-wing list, yet Though Cowards Flinch, which came above me on the left-wing list (38th), only scrapes into the Labour list at 100.

I'm sure there's some reasonable explanation, and as before, you can't really complain when you don't vote. Dale's mechanisms for voting though are not exactly transparent, and you do have to wonder whether there's any point whatsoever to carrying the entire charade on.

Labels: ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

9/15/2009 09:47:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, September 14, 2009 

The unions, cuts, and Mandelson.

For organisations which once upon a time had their own newspaper correspondents, the trade unions increasingly resemble Christmas decorations: let out once a year and allowed to slightly sparkle for a few days, then packed away and forgotten about until the holiday comes around again. It's a shame, because what was once a debate that Labour were trying to define as "investment versus cuts" has become the word they dare not speak but which means cuts versus, as Peter Mandelson said today, in one of the more accurate statements from his speech at the LSE, "foaming at the mouth excitement" at scaling back the state.

Few outside left-wing circles will agree with Brendan Barber's delivery of his message at the TUC, but the arguments he makes are far more compelling. Already it's being moved to the back of our minds that this crash was caused by the failure of the private sector, not the public sector, yet it's the public sector which is now going to bear the brunt for the bailing out of the banks' rapacious business model. True, it can be argued that the public sector also failed in properly regulating the private sector, yet that's no excuse for the entirety of the punishment being inflicted upon the state. If the crash had affected the way that the top 100 companies do business, then there also might be an argument for recognising their changes in practices, yet today's Guardian survey of executive pay shows that while everyone else has been cutting back, they've awarded themselves a basic salary rise of 10%.

Barber notes that amid all the optimism of something approaching a recovery, this completely ignores that people are still losing their jobs, and doubtless will for some time yet to come. This is hardly the time to already be planning how many of those in reasonably "secure" jobs will be losing them in the near future. This isn't to pretend that cuts can't be made, or that tax rises alone will have to fill the gap: it's quite apparent that cuts are coming, starting preferably in those areas which Labour are thinking of broaching, such as tax credits for the already comfortably off and the end of universal benefits such as the winter fuel allowance. Trident and ID cards could both be easily scrapped, as could the NHS IT programme and many other IT schemes costing billions, although how much the former would bring in is still unclear, not to mention the ridiculous ISA vetting quango. The putting together of £50bn shopping lists of cuts though is verging on the obscene; tough choices are going to have to be made, but also key is that private is going to have to pay its share as well as the public.

Into this breach enters Peter Mandelson, former prince of darkness, now ostensible leader of Labour. That no longer seems to be hyperbole: his speech today at the LSE to the impeccably Blairite "Progress" faction was one which Tony Blair would have given without a second's thought, and indeed, could have been a Blair speech. It contained the same mixture of brilliance and obfuscatory nonsense which they had, if not the verb-less sentences which epitomised them. Why then was Gordon Brown not giving this speech which quite clearly either a chancellor or a prime minister should have given, rather than just a mere business secretary? The answer would probably be that Brown's real keynote address is tomorrow at the TUC, or at the fast approaching Labour conference, but it also seems to be because it was so out of step with Brown's former device of investment vs cuts as alluded to above. The one other major difference with the speech is that Blair wouldn't have been comfortable with even referring to himself or to his party as "social democrats", as Mandelson did repeatedly and pointedly. Just one abashedly dubious paragraph is this:

We reject the argument of those on the right who argue that the state is an obstacle to human freedom and who espouse a vision of the good society based on a smaller state, shrinking public services and essential support delivered somehow through the voluntary sector with top-ups and opt-outs for the wealthy few.

Except that New Labour hasn't rejected this argument: in both the NHS and the JobCentre system it has introduced both voluntary and private sector contractors to deliver "essential support", with no evidence whatsoever that it has saved money, in fact, when it comes to the independent treatment centres, quite the opposite. As ever, the devil is in the details: if it was true, then Mandelson would be onto something and it would be something to crow about, yet the emperor has no clothes.

Much of the rest is taken up with the return of the mantra of "reform", without Mandelson noting that the permanent revolution which was going on in the NHS up until after the departure of Patricia Hewitt from health secretary was one of the most unpopular things the government had done to the public services. It might have delivered the government's key targets, although how much they are worth is harder to quantify, but as a way to demoralise your workers it was an even greater success. Mandelson is sharpest, as always, when attacking rather than defending, but the very idea that the Tories will spend less and expect less is ridiculous: this is the party that believes that less is more. The left might still have in some quarters the better arguments, but the Labour's greatest failure is that it can no longer persuade anyone to listen.

Labels: , , , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

9/14/2009 07:31:00 PM | | | links to this post

Sunday, September 13, 2009 

Glen Jenvey on Donal MacIntyre.

The latest twist in the Glen Jenvey saga is his appearance today on Donal MacIntyre's show on 5 Live, where he again admits to being abuislam, which you can listen to here. Not too much credit given to Tim or indeed the whole Sun Lies team, but then the MSM is loth to give the blogosphere any kudos at all.

Labels: , , , , , , , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

9/13/2009 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

About

  • This is septicisle
profile

Links

Last posts

Archives

Email me
Syndicate this site (XML)
Powered by Blogger
and Blogger Templates