Monday, March 01, 2010 

Patriotic duty and Michael Ashcroft.

Yesterday David Cameron said that it was the party's "patriotic duty" to to win the general election. Strange then that this patriotic duty doesn't actually extend to the party's deputy chairman paying his full dues in this country, despite the Tories' then leader William Hague promising back in 2000 that he would become a "permanent resident" in order to ascend to the Lords. Here's Billy with another pearl:

This decision will cost him (and benefit the Treasury) tens of millions a year in tax, yet he considers it worthwhile.

How much has Lord Ashcroft in reality paid to the Treasury thanks to his non-domiciled status since 2000? One suspects next to nothing.

There is some truly exceptional spin going on here: it turns out that when Ashcroft said he would become a "permanent resident", he actually meant that he was only going to become a "long-term resident". This seems to be somewhat different to the assurances which were given to the Lords' scrutiny committee, which asked Downing Street to ensure that Ashcroft became a resident before he could become a peer, and indeed the statement that Downing Street issued after his ennoblement was confirmed, which said they had been given a "clear and unequivocal assurance" that he would take up "permanent residence". Either Ashcroft at the time had a completely different definition of what "permanent residence" meant, or he had no intention whatsoever of keeping his promises.

Ignore the obsfucatory nonsense being raised by the Tories about donations to Labour or the Liberal Democrat donations from non-domiciles. None of them gave such cast-iron assurances that they would become permanent residents in order to enter the Lords. Neither have they ascended to such positions of personal influence over the parties they've donated to, as Ashcroft has. Ashcroft for a time was essentially keeping the Tories afloat with his donations and loans, the latter of which were almost as large as the total amount he's donated over the years, at one point as high as £3.6m. When he isn't funnelling money to the party, then he's personally transporting the party's nobility around in his private jet, via his Flying Lion company, registered, typically, in Bermuda. Compare and contrast the treatment of Ashcroft with that of Zac Goldsmith, who also admitted recently that he was a non-dom: Goldsmith was quickly slapped down and told to become a UK taxpayer as "rapidly as can be done", while Ashcroft, despite promising almost 10 years ago that he was going to become a permanent resident is only now getting around to it, all while the Tories have been repeatedly saying in response to any questions that Ashcroft's tax status was a private matter between him and HMRC. Did Cameron know that Ashcroft was a non-dom, or did he purposefully ensure that he didn't know until very recently? Sir George Young said a month back on Newsnight that Ashcroft had the same status as some Labour peers, with Tory sources later saying that Young had "misspoke". Misspoke in the sense that he had inadvertently told the truth when he wasn't meant to.

If it hadn't been for the freedom of information request that forced Ashcroft into making today's statement, would Cameron have actually followed through on his sudden conversion to parliamentarians of both varieties being fully domiciled for tax purposes by ensuring that his deputy chairman was resident here? It doesn't seem so, to judge by his strange refusal to accept, even now, that Ashcroft's tax status is a matter for anyone other than himself. All the parties may be guilty in accepting funds from donors who are not full taxpayers, but none have elevated those individuals to such a position of power and authority in the party. It's this kind of cynicism, of double standards, of turning a blind eye, that so angers the public and turns them off politics. And who can blame them when someone like Ashcroft decides "permanent residency" means something entirely different to what everyone else does and essentially lives a lie for almost a whole decade?

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3/01/2010 10:31:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, October 22, 2009 

A very much precendented case of newspaper hyperbole.

Last night Keir Starmer, the head of the Crown Prosecution Service, gave his usual annual lecture to the public prosecution service. It was a typical lawyerly sermon, touching on both human rights and the independence of the prosecutors. Those who were there and awake probably didn't give it a second thought; Starmer gave a decent defence of the Human Rights Act, but hardly the strongest and most detailed one ever. The Telegraph however thought that this was somehow worthy of a splash. "An unprecedented attack", it bellowed, and since then the usual Tory suspects, the two Davies', have added their voices at this apparent broadside at Conservative policy.

Starmer, as it happened, didn't so much as mention the Conservatives, probably because he wasn't just attacking the Tories but also Labour. Here is what he did say:

However, one cannot escape, particularly in recent months, the debate that has emerged around the extent to which it is appropriate - and these are my words here - to repatriate the Human Rights Act and make it "more British."

While the Tories have promised to repeal the HRA and introduce a "British" Bill of Rights in its place, without of course providing any detail whatsoever as to what these rights would be and which might be different to those enshrined in the HRA, Labour has also continued to talk about a bill of Rights and Responsibilities, even though it has been shelved for now. These Rights and Responsibilities, Jack Straw hoped, would give a British feel to the HRA. It doesn't matter that, as Starmer points out, the European Convention of Human Rights, on which the HRA is based, was mainly drafted by us Britishers, because it's "European" in origin this somehow infers that it's a foreign creation imposed on us. The Sun, the main campaigner for a repeal of the HRA, has so often mistakenly referred to the ECHR as being a construct of the European Union when it is not and is entirely separate from it that it's difficult to believe it isn't being done deliberately.

The main flaw with any plan to repeal the HRA, something which Starmer doesn't mention, is that it's difficult to believe that we would also then leave the ECHR in its entirety, something we would have to do to make sure that the "criminals' charter" doesn't interfere with our law in any way, shape or form. All repealing the HRA will do is mean that breaches of the ECHR will not be able to heard in our own courts; instead those seeking redress will have to go to Strasbourg, and wait potentially years for their case to be heard, such is the backlog which has built up there and continues to mount. As Starmer argues, it's absurd that rights which the rest of Europe has never had any problem with should "stop in the English Channel". After all, even Russia is signed up to ECHR, even if it isn't as proactive in falling into line with its rulings as the more democratic nation states of Europe are. The closest Starmer gets to really attacking those who wish to do away with the HRA is this line:

And it would be to this country's shame if we lost the clear and basic statement of our citizens' human rights provided by the Human Rights Act on the basis of a fundamentally flawed analysis of their origin and relevance to our society.

It doesn't really help the Tories' cause that Starmer is entirely right. The main reason why the Conservatives want to get rid of the HRA is not because it's a criminals' charter or any of the other things which its critics say it is, but because from the very beginning the press, and especially the Sun and the Daily Mail, have been worried about its implications for their business model. Article 8, the right to privacy, has meant that the tabloids can no longer be certain that their celebrity stories and sex scandals will get into the papers unmolested, or if they do, that they won't then be brought up before the beak afterwards. There is, it must be noted, potential for abuse of Article 8, but this is slight when compared to the overall benefits which the legislation as a whole brings. In any case, the real threat to press freedom is not Article 8 but our libel laws and the tenacity of the libel firms and their pursuit of "super-injunctions", as last week's assault by Carter-Fuck on behalf of Trafigura showed. The supposed "madness" which the HRA has brought is partially dealt with by Starmer, although not fully:

A police force unable to circulate a photo of a wanted, dangerous and violent criminal because it might breach his Article 8 rights to privacy? My advice - go ahead - it is essential to protect the public.

Unelected judges can now tell Parliament that their laws need not be enforced? No - judges cannot strike down legislation.

Human Rights mean that school teachers cannot enforce discipline at school? No - it is domestic legislation - section 548 of the Education Act 1996 - passed 2 years before the Human Rights Act - that banned corporal punishment in schools. Interestingly enough, it is section 93 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006 - passed 8 years after the Human Rights Act - that now allows school teachers to use reasonable force to prevent a pupil from committing an offence.

It is often in the interests of those who want to debase a principle to chip away at it by citing examples of its occasional misapplication. We should all take care to examine critically the so-called restrictions brought about by the Human Rights Act and consider where the misunderstanding truly lies before condemning a constitutional instrument that has provided legitimate comfort to so many.


Some of these I've touched on before, but it's indicative of the misinformation which surrounds the HRA that the Telegraph in its report repeats the myth that Learco Chindamo, murderer of headteacher Philip Lawrence, couldn't be deported back to Italy when he finished his sentence because of the HRA. It was in fact because of the EU's 2004 directive on citizenship, but as usual the initial myth has become fact.

Has Starmer though strayed into politics with his pronouncements, something that the head of the CPS shouldn't be doing? Despite the Telegraph's suggestion, the previous head of the CPS, Ken Macdonald, did something rather similar in a speech to the Criminal Bar Association, where he made clear his view that terrorists should always be treated as criminals, and that there was no such thing as a "war on terror", something uncontroversial now, but rather more heated back in 2007 when the attempt to ram through 90 days without charge was fresh in the memory. Macdonald also made clear on a number of occasions that he felt 28 days detention without charge for terrorist suspects was sufficient, something which was hardly popular with the government, and which was definitely straying into politics. Few now object when the police demand new powers, although they should; why shouldn't the head of CPS express his view that the Human Rights Act shouldn't be abolished? Is it that it's only when it's the government that it's critiquing that it's OK, when if it's (perhaps) the opposition that it isn't?

The Tory plan to repeal the HRA has always struck me as something which they're likely to forget about once they actually do get in power. Labour has thrashed around hopelessly with the Rights and Responsibilities idea, and if you really believe that the Tories are more suited to constitutional change for the better, I don't think you've been paying enough attention. It's true, as Henry Porter has argued repeatedly, that the HRA has not prevented this government from its attacks on civil liberties, but the key to that is not more legislation, but better governance in general. It seems just as unlikely we will get that from the Tories.

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10/22/2009 08:50:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, July 18, 2008 

Investigative blogging, the Tories and watching the ministerial written statements.

A whole load of investigative blogging has been going on of late, especially over at the Ministry. Unity first uncovered that one of the individuals who officiated on the employment tribunal in the case of Ladele vs Islington shares a name with a person who was previously the chairman of governors at an independent Catholic girls' school, quite obviously a potential conflict of interest when ruling on matters of discrimination involving a registrar refusing to officiate on civil partnerships.

Next, in response to the Charity Commission report on the Smith Institute, which although critical did not find the smoking gun that Guido amongst others hoped it would over its connections to Gordon Brown, Unity raises the question of Policy Exchange and its extreme closeness to Cameron and co, which bears much of a resemblance to that which the Smith Institute has been criticised over. While trying to gain full advantage from the report, Guido happens to link to the Centre for Open Politics, which models itself on the American Sunlight Foundation. Their gambit is:

Our work is inspired by and based on the work of the Sunlight Foundation in Washington D.C. We are committed to helping voters, bloggers and journalists be their own watchdogs, by improving access to existing information and digitising new information, and by creating new tools and websites to enable all of us to collaborate in fostering greater transparency.

Underlying all of Sunlight’s efforts is a fundamental belief that increased transparency will improve the conduct of politics itself and the public’s confidence in the political process.

All well and good, you might think; more transparency in politics is exactly what we need. You would expect however that those who have set-up this Centre for Open Politics would be, well open about their politics and transparent in their reasons for setting it up. The slightest Googling by Unity, and amazing as it may seem, it turns out that COP's founders, Harry Cole and Amanda O'Brien are respectively formerly Vice Chairman/Treasurer of the Edinburgh University Conservative Association, as well as running some of the recruitment drive for the youth Tory organisation Conservative Future, while O'Brien is likely to be the same Amanda O'Brien who's currently the deputy chairman of Essex Conservative Future. What's more, the domain name for COP's is registered at the self-same building out of which MessageSpace operates, which just so also happens to be associated with Guido.

Elsewhere meanwhile Cameron's decision to publish the expenses of the vast majority of his MPs might well backfire after it was noted that 78 of them are using their allowances to pay for the party's "Parliamentary Resources Unit", the Labour equivalent of which MPs have to pay for out of their own pockets. The Tories are on the defensive and confident they'll be found not to be breaching any rules, but John Mann has asked the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards to investigate.

Even more interesting for those of us keeping an eye on the habitual liar and fantasist which is Nadine Dorries is that her expenses show that she spent £2,938 on the services of Media Intelligence Partners. As Tim on Bloggerheads notes, the services provided by MIP are Media strategy', 'Media relations', 'Crisis management', 'Media Training', 'Public relations and political consultancy', 'Identity management' and 'Analysis and research'. According to the Green Book rules on what can and cannot be charged to the taxpayer, expenditure under the Incidental Expenses Provision is not permitted for "Advice for individual Members on self promotion, or PR for individuals or political parties." Dorries used taxpayer cash on MIP during her campaign for the abortion limit to be cut to 20 weeks. Could it be that she's been caught bang to rights yet again misusing her expenses, after previously using Commons notepaper inappropriately and funding her website also from the IEP?

Finally, Matt Wardman brings our attention to the government's usual habit of flooding out written ministerial statements just before parliament goes into recess and the silly season begins in earnest. Well worth watching.

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7/18/2008 11:49:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, May 26, 2008 

On yer chain-gang!

As Labour prepare yet another doomed comeback, it's instructive to examine exactly what it is that's going to be replacing our current overlords in a couple of years' time. If you thought that New Labour was heartless, callous and Machiavellian, you ain't seen nothing yet:

A future Conservative government will bring in "boot camps" for unemployed young people aged between 18 and 21 who refuse to take a job, Chris Grayling, the party's welfare spokesman, will say tomorrow.

In a significant hardening of Conservative policy towards welfare claimants, he will announce the abolition of benefit payments for any able-bodied person under 21 who is out of work for more than three months and who refuses to go on a compulsory community service programme or a "boot camp" training course aimed at improving their work discipline and giving them basic skills to get a job.


It's about time that someone broke down the barrier between the unemployed and the criminal classes, because, let's face it, they're one and the same. Both are robbing from the taxpayer and both only understand one thing: the cold steel. Thought that boot camps were only for those that broke the law? Think again!

To be slightly more serious, who can honestly say that they're surprised that it's the weakest in society who can look forward to getting whacked again once we're back under the security of a Conservative government? They've got off slightly under Labour, despite all the rhetoric about getting tough on welfare and the triangulation policies that have already led to Brown stealing some of the Tories' original idea, but the unemployed, single mothers and foreigners can all be assured that the old guard are back in town. Nasty party doesn't even begin to cover it.

You can also rest assured that this would just be the rolling out of it to begin with. The "healthy" young (the so-called NEETs can almost always be defined by their depression, desperation and profound pessimism about their chances of getting anywhere, and mostly they're right to be) are the easiest to demonise: after all, if you can't find a job within 3 months when you're that age, they might as well be put down and save the taxpayer the money entirely. It doesn't seem to matter that this is the equivalent of the bringing back of the workhouse, getting the poor to sing for their supper rather than allowing them to sit on their arses all day, as that's clearly what they do with their time. The Tories would put them to work on "community service programmes", doing all the jobs that even the immigrants won't do: cleaning the graffiti that they probably sprayed up in the first place off, washing out drains, cutting the grass, picking up rubbish, and all for much less than £70 a week! As we're so often reminded, there's the deserving poor and the undeserving poor, the aspirational and the feckless, and the feckless will be made to face up to their lot in life by receiving far, far less than minimum wage for doing so.

The community service programme will be what the lucky get off with. "Boot camp" training course, it just sounds so inviting, encouraging and bound to enthuse, doesn't it? It's just what these kids need, discipline, a jumped-up man with a thin moustache screaming at them when they put a foot wrong, ensuring that they get the "basic skills" needed for a job. First question: can you read what this tin says? If yes, please report to nearest supermarket for the rest of your life. If you work hard enough, you might even get to become manager in 20 years time! Now that's an aspiration we can all respect.

If you thought Labour wanted to privatise everything and use PFI to build everything, then again, the Tories are prepared to go that little bit further. It's quite obvious that the welfare system just isn't working at the moment: the Jobcentre Plus is providing jobs mainly for the private sector, so why don't we just square the circle? The private and "voluntary" sector can pick up the slack straight away, and we all know that they'll be far more efficient and realistic with the unemployed than the current lot, who tend to get attached to those they're working with. There's no room for sentiment in big business, and when there's the dirty great big carrot of £5,000 for every young person they stick in a dead-end job which makes hell look like an attractive proposition, they'll soon forget there's an actual person they're dealing with and instead turn it into the conveyor belt one size fits all system which it should be. Doubtless, these firms won't be providing the Tories with funds in the mean time, or be directly offering money to Tory shadow ministers studying the portfolio. That would be an unthinkable slur and allegation of corruption.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. The Conservatives under Cameron have looked at New Labour under Blair and found a lot of it that they like. Just one problem: it's not quite right-wing enough, and the Conservatives are determined to be even less subtle than the Blairites. All the things Blair wished he could have done they will be straight on to push through, and this welfare package is just the beginning. Inheritance tax will be next, then a huge expansion of the "academy" system, directly bribing the middle classes, a huge prison building programme, a major rise in defence spending, tax cuts for those who declare that they are "one of us", while all will be forgotten about those they're currently trying to appeal to over the 10p rate. As for tackling tax avoidance, which some studies suggest takes far more from the exchequer than the welfare system even does, that won't even get a mention. The Conservatives are the new, real Blairites. And Labour only has itself to blame.

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5/26/2008 09:14:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, May 14, 2008 

The hounds of love are calling.

All together now, everyone say "awwwww":

The Hounds of Hell are chasing me.

Her arguments debunked, the only thing left to Nadine Dorries to resort to is pure emotional blackmail, and to claims that her opponents are victimising her.

We received another unpleasant parcel in the post today. Nasty web sites set up, email account and post bag bombarded, people crawling all over my expenses, which they are entitled and I am very very happy for them to do...

Come now Nadine, let's not mess about with euphemisms, spit out exactly what was in this "unpleasant" parcel. See, the trouble is, when you either lie or be blatantly dishonest, or refuse to apologise to others when you've accused them of things they haven't done, it tends to make it more difficult to believe them when it comes to everything else. As Unity says, incidentally, if there is a moron out there sending Dorries dog shit or something similarly nasty, then don't, because as Dorries is attempting to do with this post, it then blackens everyone who is arguing against her pitiful campaign. It is worth questioning though where these "nasty" web sites are; as far as we're aware there are two that Dorries might claim are "nasty", one set-up to hold comments for her posts when she removed them from her own blog, and one which has now been dead for months. All the rest have been exposing her claims with at times remarkable restraint.

Scary, threatening angry and downright nasty phone calls. A message smeared on my window.

As said, I'm not going to say that Dorries is either making it up or lying about this stuff, but it would make it easier to believe if she provided some evidence beyond just a blog post, or indeed, informed the police of what's been happening.

This is all meant to destabilise or distract me.

I have a very clear message to those who are attempting to do this – back off. You will not stop me, you will not undermine me, you do not scare me. In fact, you make me much more determined than I ever was before. You give me strength.


And then just to rub in how she doesn't care for anyone else's opinion or indeed, the facts themselves, she once again posts the image of Samuel Armas with the doctor Joseph Bruner, lifting the baby's arm and gently putting it back in the womb, not the other way around, as both she and the photographer, Michael Clancy, continue to propogate. It would be difficult for an anaesthetized mother and/or child to move in such a way, but again, this just shows the sort of impervious to reason individual we are dealing with: despite formerly being a nurse, despite attempting to claim that she is arguing on the basis of science, she continues to use the most base pro-life propaganda for her cause.

You can almost understand why someone might send her their dog's defecation, can't you? It would also help if she and the others didn't have such apparent contempt for their opponent's points of view, as Simon Hoggart wrote in his sketch on Tuesday:

Dari Taylor, a Labour MP, made a moving speech in favour, describing how it might have meant she could have had the baby she yearned for. The effect was, I fear, slightly spoiled by Ann Widdecombe and Nadine Dorries - both vocal opponents - talking loudly on the Tory frontbench while she spoke.

Dorries herself reaches for the emotion and expects everyone to listen, and weep along with her at the tragedy of babies being brutally put to death, and then demand action. When someone else does the same thing, her intention is to drown it out. Yet it's us, "the hounds of hell", which are chasing her. Maybe it's actually her conscience trying to tell her something.

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5/14/2008 09:05:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, May 09, 2008 

The lying lies and dirty secrets of Ms Nadine Dorries MP.

By her own admission, Nadine Dorries MP is a liar. Back in March she presented an known urban myth as an emotional case for why the current abortion limit of 24 weeks should be cut to 20 weeks, and when this was pointed out to her, she responded by making arguments that only exposed her ignorance. Dorries has a long record of never apologising and never admitting that she has made mistakes: last year she accused Ben Goldacre of "a serious breach of parliamentary procedure" after he downloaded information from a parliamentary committee's website which Dorries thought he had obtained from a committee member, something for which she never apologised for and when asked when she was going to do so on her blog she removed the comments sections. She additionally, after accusing Caroline Flint among other MPs of having been "bought by the abortion industry", a claim rejected by the parliamentary standards commission, not only refused to apologise to Flint after she confronted her but crowed about not doing so on her "blog".

Dorries is therefore the perfect figurehead for the "20 reasons for 20 weeks" campaign, a coalition of Conservative MPs with single token Liberal Democrat and Labour supporters, along with religious, mainly Christian anti-abortion organisations. Like her, they rely on abusing, misinterpreting and distorting available information for their views, or alternatively, on the evidence of individual doctors which has been called into question by others. As well as that, in order to not come across as opposing abortion in all circumstances, something which would result in their campaign becoming an even damper squib than it already is, they instead claim to be pro-choice but feel that the current limit is too long as more foetuses survive beyond the 20 week mark.

The only problem with this is that little by little, their real views are being exposed. The already noted lone Labour supporter of the 20 weeks campaign, Jim Dobbin, is in fact in favour of a 13-week limit, but regards the current campaign as being a step towards that. He is also, coincidentally, opposed to contraception. The Christian Medical Fellowship openly states that this is just the first step towards the abolition of the right to abortion altogether. CARE currently has a news article up on their web site expressing their horror at the European Parliament passing a resolution which states "that women have a right to access safe and legal abortion, and calls on all member states to decriminalise abortion 'within reasonable gestational limits'". Christian Concern for Our Nation, whose website is the most clap-happy and even more religiously inclined than the Evangelical Alliance's is, urge their members to pray for "a great miracle" when the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill goes through the Commons. Coincidentally, a founder member of CCON is the man behind the 20 weeks' website, directly linking Dorries, who has mostly eschewed religious dogma in her personal campaign, with them. The LIFE charity only supports abortion where the life of the mother herself is threatened. The Prolife Alliance, as one would expect, is also completely opposed to abortion (PDF).

Perhaps those organisations might then be surprised to learn that Dorries herself, when a Conservative parliamentary candidate for Hazel Grove, campaigned on a pro-choice platform. It's not clear whether Dorries at the time was in favour of the limit as it stands, or whether it's just another example of her being wholly disingenuous, as she claimed, when questioned on her current views last year on the Spectator website, to favour a 9-week limit, even lower than that of Dobbin. She was also formerly a director of BUPA, one of the companies she now accuses of being part of the "abortion industry".

Unfortunately for Dorries, the shit over her underhand means is likely to hit the fan if not this weekend, then certainly next week. Dorries' website and blog is funded from the incidental expenses provision, the rules of which clearly state that such funds should not be used for campaigning on the behalf of a political party or a personal cause: Dorries' website is chock-full of her doing just that, the most egregious examples her vindictive posts on female pro-choice Labour MPs. A complaint to the commissioner for parliamentary standards is in the offing.

Meanwhile, Dorries has been highly vexed by the latest research published in the British Medical Journal, as reported today in the Grauniad and elsewhere. Like in the Epicure 2 study, this found that while the survival rates of babies born at 24 and 25 weeks is improving, there was no statistical improvement in those born at 23 and 22 weeks. At 23 weeks 18% survived; at 22 weeks none did. Her response to this peer-reviewed study, which completely blows her argument that neo-natal survival rates are increasing out of the water, was to say:

"I think this report insults the intelligence of the public and MPs alike. No improvement in neonatal care in 12 years? Really? So where has all the money that has been pumped into neonatal services gone then?" She called the study "the most desperate piece of tosh produced by the pro-choice lobby."

As BD says, the study actually does show that neonatal care has improved, just at 24 and 25 weeks. As those against lowering the limit have consistently argued, this research backs up the point that the viability threshold has been reached, and that those that have survived at 22 weeks are extremely welcome but overall rare anomalies and blips. They do not support lowering the current limit as it stands.

That though, despite the 20 weeks' campaign's insistence, has never been what they really thought. They want abortion restricted no matter what the science and evidence suggests, and if it takes one step at a time and hiding their real arguments behind pseudo-scientific bluster, so be it. Out of all the MPs that this blog has covered over the last few years, it's safe to say that none (with the exception of dear Tony) has been as underhand, as genuinely unpleasant, manipulative, vindictive and dishonest as both Dorries has been and apparently is. She is both a disgrace to politics as a whole and a liability to the Conservative party. The crushing of her current malignant campaign will be just the first step of the fightback.

Related posts:
Laurie Penny - 24 reasons for 24 weeks

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5/09/2008 09:48:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, March 20, 2008 

When is an urban myth not a urban myth? When it's propogated by "pro-abortionists".

Do the people of mid-Bedfordshire really know just what sort of moron is representing them in parliament? Nadine Dorries, who has repeatedly been brought to book for her use of partial and questionable sources, has just suddenly discovered an urban myth that has been kicking around since 2000, and posted the following on her blog yesterday:

This picture show a pregnant uterus laying on the exterior of the mother's abdomen, having been lifted out of her abdominal cavity, via a c-section incision made in the abdominal wall.

Dr Joseph Bruner performed this procedure in order to operate on the baby whilst still in utero before it was born. The baby had spina bifida and would not have survived if removed from his mother's womb.

When the operation was over, baby Samuel, at 21 weeks gestation, put his hand through the incision in the uterus and grabbed hold of the surgeon’s finger, a gesture which was apparently met with a huge amount of emotion in the operating theatre.

Dr Bruner said that it was the most emotional moment of his life and that for a moment he was just frozen, totally immobile.

In the UK we are aborting babies just like this and older every single day.

There are union funded organisations such as ‘Voice for Choice’ that campaign and fight to maintain the right to abort babies like Samuel.

There are organisations such as the BMA who vote and endorse the right to continue to do this.

There are organisations which are paid for by the government, such as BPAS, who argue the right to keep aborting babies Samuel's age and older.

Little Samuel made his case from within the womb in a way which none of the shrill late abortionists will ever manage.

There are two ways to live your life.

One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. (Albert Einstein)

Enter Ben Goldacre, the Guardian's Bad Science columnist, who Dorries previously accused of a "serious breach of parliamentary procedure," a crime committed when he downloaded the evidence given to the parliamentary committee, from err, its website. Dorries has never apologised for the slur on Goldacre, as you would expect from the finest of the Tories' bloggers. Goldacre quickly ascertained that the story was a myth propagated by anti-abortionists, with the surgeon himself stating in two newspaper articles that it was him lifting the baby's arm out of the uterus, not the baby reaching out to hold him.

Anyone with even the slightest decency about them would then admit that they'd got it horribly wrong and apologise. Not Dorries, who seems to know better than the surgeon himself what had happened:

I’ve had an amazing response to the ‘Hand of Hope’ blog posted yesterday.

Of course, the pro-abortionist lobby have attempted to rubbish it and say it is a hoax, which it most definitely is not. Some of the pro-abortionists, who know that they can’t get away with calling it a hoax, are saying that the surgeon was operating on the hand, which didn’t reach out; and, that in fact the baby was anesthetised so reaching out would not have been possible.

Two points from me: first is that if the experienced paediatrician operating on the 21 week old baby had anesthetised, then that fact endorses the Professor Anand position that a foetus can feel pain; otherwise why would this doctor, who operates on unborn babies all the time, bother?

Dorries is obviously too idiotic to not see past the obvious fact. The surgeon had not anaesthetised the baby; he had anaesthetised the mother, who, believe it or not, is connected to the baby, who therefore also was anaesthetised. Dorries has two children, incidentally.

My second point is look at the tear in the uterus. See how jiggered it is just above the hand; and yet the rest of the surgically incised openings are controlled and neat.

This is, in all likelihood, because the hand unexpectedly thrust out. It would be a poor surgeon who allowed the uterine tear to be so messy, and this is no ‘poor’ surgeon.

Over then again to Ben, who unlike Dorries just happens to be a doctor and also know what he's talking about:

My recollection, from assisting in many Caesarean deliveries in my earlier years, is that instead of making a big clean cut into the uterus (not a good idea for obvious reasons ie there’s a baby in there) you make repeated shallow superficial incisions into the uterus, between which you spread the tissues by hand with your fingers, until it eventually (and satisfyingly, surgery’s great fun) opens up.

She’s also very keen on the photographer’s account. Which I linked to above. As I said, it’s up to you whether you prefer the account of the photographer, or the surgon who does these operations for a living, and may know rather more about the subject.

Dorries' entry is hilariously called the "hand of truth". Dorries, rather than being able to back up her arguments with anything even approaching knowledge or evidence instead refers to everyone who pointed out that it's a well-known and old-hat myth by calling them "pro-abortionists", the typical disparaging remark towards those who defend a woman's right to chose. Dorries also claims to be pro-choice, but uses the language and tactics of the anti-abortion movement as part of her campaign to lower the limit on abortions from 24 weeks to 20 weeks. Even more bizarrely, she states that the surgeon might have said what he did because the "pro-choice and pro-life lobbies in America are far more vociferous, and unfortunately violent, than they are in the UK". As Unity points out, there's only one side in the US which has turned violent, and that's the "pro-life" side, as Wikipedia attests.

Instead of being laughed at or told she's got it wrong by other Tory bloggers, Iain Dale in his round-up gives the impression that actually Ben has got it wrong. There are comments pointing this out, as well as Dorries' update, but no comment from Iain or a correction. Going by the past, it's not likely either will happen. The good burghers of mid-Bedfordshire though can vote out their collective embarrassment at the next election.

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3/20/2008 10:13:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, March 10, 2008 

Robbing from the poor to give to the rich.

George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, said yesterday that corporation tax rates should be reduced to help revive the economy and boost competition.

The main rate is due to fall from 30% to 28% in April, but Osborne said he wanted it cut to 25%. The shadow chancellor ruled out offering immediate tax cuts after a Tory election victory and highlighted a squeeze on welfare as the most likely route for finding savings.

He said: "We will be squeezing budgets like welfare, which are a drag on the British economy. This country has more children, a higher proportion of children, in workless households than any other country in Europe. And that is not acceptable."


Chris calls Osborne an obnoxious prat, and I think that's being incredibly kind. Not that our glorious Labour government thinks much different, as Dave Osler writes.

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3/10/2008 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, March 07, 2008 

A very Tory tax policy.

Yes, it's old, but it illustrates the point well.

The moral panic over binge drinking is firmly in swing. You know the whole thing is reaching a height when such potentially disingenuous information as there were nearly 100 children under 8 admitted to hospital for "alcohol-related problems" is being used as evidence that the whole thing is out of control; that those children seem most likely to have broken into alcohol cabinets or got hand of booze somehow with the parents panicking once they've realised what they've done is the most likely explanation is apparently too obvious of one to be considered.

Moral panics usually develop something like this. A problem, which might well be a genuine problem is identified; the media jumps on it, exaggerates it out of all reasonable proportion, usually starting campaigns to rid the country of this filth, as in the video nasties case, or currently by making clear that something must be done, either by raising the price or clamping down hard on the alcohol fuelled "yobs"; the politicians then either legislate, or it dies a natural death. The former usually happens far more often the latter.

Up until now, the political parties have eschewed the simplistic demands that tax on booze be raised so that it simply becomes unavailable or out of reach for those "most at risk", knowing quite well that there would likely be a significant backlash against them rather than the more "nannying" commentators calling for it. Although Labour under Blair was most susceptible to jumping on bandwagons regardless of the consequences, so far David Cameron hasn't managed to see one he hasn't fancied riding on either. Hence the proposals from George Osborne for raising the taxes on the drinks apparently most favoured by the yobboes who ruin the fun for everyone else.

The proposal is about as politically bankrupt as they come. While few are going to object to the likes of Special Brew and Tennents Super, drunk chiefly by tramps and alcoholics being more heavily taxed, it simply shows all the signs of not being thought through, especially the idea that duty could then as a result be reduced on "lower-strength" beers and wines. Has the idea not occurred to the Tories that this will mean the person drinking to get drunk as quickly as possible will simply switch their consumption to the now cheaper but still fairly strong lagers, resulting in them actually not being out of pocket at all? Indeed, if the taxes, the putative rise on a can of super-strength lager being around 38 pence, are meant to be prohibitive and for sales to drop, won't that actually result in less tax coming into the exchequer and therefore the slashing of duty on other alcohol costing even more from the public purse? It also wilfully ignores the fact that simply raising the price won't stop an addict from consuming when they have to; it will simply mean even more money being spent which can't be afforded.

Taxing "alcopops" more heavily is also similarly without merit. How many times does it have to be pointed out to politicians that teenagers drinking to get drunk don't buy them, both because they're already expensive, small in size and also because despite the supposed image they're meant to have, drinking booze where you can't taste the alcohol means that you aren't a man, something that the average teenager, beset by peer pressure, will avoid at all costs? The whole thing is already turning passe; the mentioning of Bacardi Breezers, which went out of fashion a good few years ago, shows it up for being out of touch. They'll be denouncing Hooch next. Those affected will instead be those who enjoy them reasonably responsibly, and who aren't especially keen on Wifebeater and its variants, which will be unaffected. Osborne was also explicit in saying that they're targeted mainly at young women, who correct me if I'm wrong, but mostly don't cause the trouble that binge drinking is associated with. It's the hectoring sort of tone that almost comes across as sexist, as though women shouldn't be drinking such awful sweet liquids at all. That Osborne is rumoured to have been a prolific user of substances that are illegal rather than legal and cause far more harm and damage across the globe than alcohol also certainly doesn't make him anything approaching a hypocrite.

Whether the Tories would actually implement such a policy if elected is beside the point. It's a cheap gimmick, meant to influence the government into acting, and knowing this one they'll be more than happy to steal it or come up with one even more draconian. The press has reacted; now it's up to the government. Then the next passing craze will come along.

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3/07/2008 11:37:00 PM | | | links to this post

Saturday, February 23, 2008 

A cheap holiday in someone else's misery.

Much risible finger-pointing and political point-scoring over the supposed "gaffe" by David Cameron of calling visits to Auschwitz a "gimmick". In actuality, the Tories, in a ham-fisted and similarly pathetic press release (PDF) attacking 26 supposed political gimmicks since Gordon Brown became prime minister, are criticising the fact that schools and colleges are still having to stump up £100 to fund the trips to Auschwitz, despite the £4.65 million of funding given towards it. Even this isn't clear: it's not apparent whether the schools would have to pay £100 for every sixth-former who wanted to go or even for just the two that the government are definitively providing funding for.

The Tories have hit back saying that they would provide funding in full for those who wanted to go (yeah, right), but the danger of linking "Auschwitz" to the word "gimmick" should have been plain to the most gormless of Conservative party workers doubtless employed to draw the document up. It was supposedly a response to a document released by Labour charting their top 50 "achievements", examined in detail by Lee Griffin here. The Tory document is just as dishonest as parts of that though: for instance, it attacks Brown for announcing a review of 24-hour drinking and for "his aides spinning" to the Mail that the policy would be scrapped, without providing evidence that was what actually occurred. That the review is presumed to find that the legislation is working well and therefore doesn't need to be changed is hardly gimmickry. It's on surer ground attacking Jacqui Smith over powers for confiscating alcohol from teenagers, powers the police already have, then blots its copy book over Jack Straw and titan prisons, which although an idiotic policy, has not been cancelled at all. It's similarly stupid over Caroline Flint's disgraceful plans on kicking social housing tenants out if they didn't find work, which was clearly being floated as an idea and not as actual policy. The charges of gimmickry over migrant charges and knife scanners are similarly unsubstantiated.

In any case, as Chris Paul points out, David Cameron is hardly one to talk about gimmicks when his whole reign has been one after the other. To bring this back to Auschwitz, I'm pretty sure that even the most feeble of teachers can express the horror of the extermination camps without actually needing to take students to see them at first hand. There's something eminently distasteful about places like Auschwitz and Belsen becoming almost tourist attractions; as powerful as I'm sure they are, and preserved as they should be, we really ought to be starting to make an effort to move on from the second world war, which still so dominates our thinking in a whole plethora of different ways. Believe it or not, there is history beyond Hitler, Stalin and the Holocaust. We must never forget, but nor should it constantly be on our minds.

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2/23/2008 09:13:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, November 13, 2007 

No easy answers, but Cameron tries anyway.

If you were a politician and had to pick a crime to give a 20-minute speech about while launching a sort of new policy on it, you'd be hard pressed to find one more welcoming and with less potential pitfalls than that of rape. Rape isn't quite murder, which poses an unique moral dilemma for all political parties (Bring back capital punishment? Life imprisonment that means life? Can you forgive a murderer, and can they rejoin society without being forever tainted?) but a crime of a similar magnitude where you can propose changes with few people likely to disagree with you because of the horrendous impact that rape undoubtedly has. Add into this how the government itself has over the last couple of years been freely wondering out loud how it can bring the conviction rate up, and Cameron was left with something of an open goal.

Unity and Rhetorically Speaking have gone into Cameron's speech in depth, Unity especially on the figures front, while Channel 4 News's FactCheck section looked into the statistics behind the claim that Britain has the lowest conviction rate in the EU, and found that while on the surface it looks accurate, with us sharing the ignominy with Sweden, if you go by number of convictions per head of population, we're about in the middle. It also discovered that we partially have such a low conviction rate because we also recorded the 4th most rape offences in the EU. The whole study underlines how difficult it is compare statistics on rape, both thanks to the differences in law systems, but also down to what the very definition of rape is.

Cameron's example of the tragedy of Lindsay Armstrong is also an especially extreme case. Armstrong killed herself after being cross-examined by the defence counsel, on two occasions having to hold up the underwear she had on on the night she was raped. The defence counsel was able to do this as Scotland had yet to implement the rules allowed in force in England and Wales which stopped the alleged perpetrator from cross-examinging the alleged victim, which also made clear that lawyers for the defence would only be able to bring up the past of sexual history of the victim if they could prove it was relevant. Armstrong's parents say that Lindsay was a virgin, but that she liked wearing skimpy underwear, which the defence moved in on. Cameron is right to say that we should never forget cases such as Armstrong's, but the changes in the way courts deal with rape cases make any larger point almost moot.

No one will argue with Cameron's calls for more funding for centres that deal with rape, which is timely, but infinitely more questionable is his call for "cultural change". Despite polls that often suggest that some individuals put a certain amount of blame on women who either "dress provocatively" or who are raped while inebriated or consuming alcohol, Cameron quoting one by Amnesty International (PDF), which as Unity points out, suggests that such views are more widespread in the older age groups than the youth of today, I find it hard to believe that rape is not already viewed as one of the most horrific, if not the most damaging crime which can be inflicted upon someone. This is simple common knowledge; like with Cameron's suggestion that sex education should emphasize that "no means no", it's almost suggesting that society doesn't understand the impact of the crime, or that because children aren't taught about consent that somehow in any way explains the low conviction rate. You don't need to be taught that no means no, it ought be already more than clear, especially at the age at which secondary sex education takes place. "Ignorance" has never been an excuse. He's on slightly surer ground when he mentions the increasing sexualisation of society, yet his claim that the low rate of conviction is somehow a moral failure, linked naturally with his rhetoric on the broken society is insulting: it's not for lack of trying, and it has nothing to do with a sudden descent in morals. Rape, like with prostitution, has always been with us and always will be with us.

All the statistics show that "stranger rape", the kind most feared, is still thankfully rare. Far more prevalent is rape as a means of control: whether from an abusive spouse or otherwise. It could be argued that it's attitudes to domestic violence, both within the police, the courts and wider society that still need to change. While rape conviction rates are still low, Cameron might have been better targeting that rather than going for the easier target.

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11/13/2007 09:00:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, October 30, 2007 

Their figures are wrong, but their policies are rubbish.

Seeing as this blog on occasion is highly critical of tabloids when they get important figures either wrong, or in some cases, willfully wrong, it would remiss not to suggest that the government really ought to be able to better estimate/count the number of foreign workers that have arrived here since 1997. To be out by 100,000 would have been bad enough, but by 300,000 is ridiculous. It's true that estimating and confirming the numbers of those who arrive and leave each is not an exact science, but getting it wrong doesn't just hinder government arguments and those who wish to make their own political points from those figures, it also makes it doubly difficult for the local authorities who are the ones that have to deal with the new arrivals to request adequate resources, which in turn breeds the resentment that does nothing to help with local cohesion.

Who knows then whether the figures now being quoted by the BBC, that 52% of new jobs created since 1997 have gone to foreign workers, are accurate. It seems a figure that is likely to further up the ante and political pressure, especially when the latest polls are suggesting that Labour is falling even further behind the Conservatives.

Whether they will be influenced by Cameron's speech yesterday on immigration is another matter. Meant to be a "grown-up conversation", he deserves credit for not mentioning political correctness or racism, as so many others on the right would be wont to do, claiming that either one or the other or both stop a debate from taking place, one of the most ludicrous arguments there is, especially in a country where we've been talking about the effects of immigration for decades. (See today's Scum leader.) Beneath the lack of political sniping however, with there only being one real line of full attack on Labour ("Labour have no vision, no strategy, no policy") there's very little meat on the bones.

Cameron's biggest error is in conflating two entirely separate issues - migration and family breakdown, or as he refers to it throughout, "atomisation" - and attempting to connect the dots between the two. His main evidence that atomisation is occurring is the large numbers of those who are deciding, for whatever reason, to live on their own, claiming that "divorce and separation" accounts for 24% of the increase in the number of households. He doesn't even consider the possibility that this might be down to the rise in independence, ruthlessly encouraged by the Conservatives, but instead mainly family breakdown and immigration. Living longer factors in, but nothing else does. He then stretches this argument even further past breaking point, arguing that the rise in single households puts more pressure on the NHS (really? As opposed to families?) and even more resources, with those living alone apparently using 40% more water than two people living together.


That inevitably brings the jibe of this being a wet, damp argument. Cameron then considers our current level of "demographic change" to be unsustainable. Both immigration and family breakdown are too high. Again, to Cameron's credit, he accurately quotes the exact immigration figures from the most recent release from the Office of National Statistics (PDF), then he spoils it later on by claiming that "non-EU migration, excluding British citizens returning to live here, accounts for nearly seventy per cent of all immigration." This is strictly true, but it doesn't take into account the fact that 36% of 2005's immigrants came from either the old or new commonwealth, where those who have a British grandparent can come freely to stay in dear old Blighty, as Hopi Sen points out. Cameron is hardly likely to close the door on them, meaning that in actual fact, rather than 70% of all immigration coming from outside the EU, only 25% comes from countries which have no material link with us at all. Cameron wants to impose a limit, although neither he nor Labour want to come up with a figure on exactly what that is, although the Tories have suggested it would be lower than 150,000.

And that, really, is it. Sure, Cameron talks of imposing further limits on "marriages across national boundaries" which have a negligible impact on immigration figures, with the spouse having to have a "basic level of English", which sure sounds nasty and incredibly illiberal, considering how they supposedly want to be encouraging marriage. Can you seriously imagine that being put into practice? "Hi, I'd like to bring my wife back here so we can get married." "Does she speak English?" "Well, a little, she gets by..." "Sorry, no, piss off." Lovely. The plans for thwarting family breakdown are equally threadbare. Apart from Duncan Smith's £20 a week bribe to the already married middle classes, they'll also remove the "couple penalty" they claim is in the benefit system, which others are equally adamant doesn't exist.

Compared to Labour's points-system proposal, and especially considering that the Conservatives have had years to get this policy right, it's close to being intellectually bankrupt. Anyone can say that they'll limit immigration, without saying exactly what numbers that will mean in practice. It's not as though this makes any change from 2005, when billboards sprouted everywhere informing us that it's not racist to talk about it, or impose limits on it; that was similarly based on no actual figures, with asylum seekers being dumped on some island which was never even identified to be processed. The very least the Conservatives could have done is recommend that it's vital that local authorities have the power devolved to them to make their own estimates on the number of migrants in their area and then request any extra funds which they deem necessary. That would be a simple, effective reform that would do much to stem the problems that have cropped up in certain areas before they become too pronounced.

Cameron says at the end that "[they will] make clear how our approach joins up and fits together into a coherent long-term strategy." There's certainly no sign of that here so far.

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10/30/2007 08:55:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, October 09, 2007 

Oh, Darling...

For the first time in years, the Conservatives tonight seem to be the ones defining the current political agenda, thanks to the panic-striken, knee-jerking antics of Darling and Brown. The idea behind stealing the policies or the ideas behind them of your political opponents is that you wait a favourable amount of time so that the general public forgets who came up with them first; only then can you take the credit, even if the pipsqueak that first mooted them then pipes up and complains.

The cliché says that a week is a long time in politics, and last week arguably proved the cliché, but it's an incredibly short time in the memory. For Alistair Darling in his first pre-budget report to announce an effective doubling of the inheritance tax threshold, even if it actually isn't that and is less generous than it looks on close inspection, not just smacks of desperation, it suggests that Labour now need the Conservatives, the party with no new ideas except soaking the rich and well-off while pounding the poor and sick to lead the way before they move. It's actually worse than that: as well as considering the Conservatives' uncosted, ludicrous inheritance tax policy as worth emulating, he also directly pinches the Liberal Democrats' proposal for taxing flights rather than passengers. That might be a sound idea as it stands, but this was meant to be the Brown government's first major chance to show both how it was going to be different to the 10 years of Blairism, but also to ridicule the Tories' spending plans and their lack of intellectual rigour.

What we got instead was reasonably solid, but disappointing in the extreme. The inheritance tax change is on much firmer economic ground than the Tories' laughable idea to charge non-domiciles £25,000 to pay for the raise to a threshold of £1 million, but just looks like a reaction to their hugely popular but spineless and indefensible new tax cut. Private equity bosses face an 80% rise in tax, but seeing as that they were only paying capital gains tax of 10% to begin with, a rise to 18% is hardly going to break their stuffed piggy banks. As Robert Peston also points out, this will not just affect them but also those who start up and sell their own small businesses, who pay capital gains tax when they do. That's a tax on aspiration, whilst inheritance tax is most certainly not.

As Chris says, this really ought to put the nail in the coffin of Labour as the party of the working class. About the only real reforms or changes in this report which affect them are that Darling's been kind enough to pledge an extra £30 million to go on tax credits, which have been notoriously badly managed. Larry Elliot explains that's only £970 million less than what Darling will be blowing on raising the IHT threshold. The amount of child maintenance a family can receive without it affecting their other benefits will also rise to £40 by 2010, while £4bn will be given to help those in what the BBC describe as "poor-quality" housing spruce up their dwellings. How very kind.

If this was going to be the statement which would have launched the election that never was, then for Labour's sake if no one else's it was for the best. It would have only showed how threadbare the ideas currently are on both sides of the so-called debate. Would those in the marginals, who went all weak-kneed at the chance of passing down their wealth and property without any being grabbed by the taxman have felt the same about Darling's proposals today? Why have the monkey when you can have the organ grinder? For all Brown's undisguised glee and grinning during Darling's statement, itself a horrible, frightening sight to behold, the Tories will be the ones left feeling delighted. They might have dropped their big, vote-winning policies in order to stave off an election, but now they've had that their decision to do that vindicated by Labour's instant response. With possibly two years to go until the next election, that's more than enough time for them to mold more dog-whistles to the middle classes, when Darling could have used today to start the argument against them. Brown's cowardice only shines through again.

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10/09/2007 09:05:00 PM | | | links to this post

Saturday, October 06, 2007 

The honeymoon's over.

Well, that's that then. After two weeks of febrile, wildly over the top speculation that Brown was about to take the risk of calling an election, he, as the Guardian's leader today called for him to do, has put an end to it all. No trudging around in darkness as fireworks go off around and about for the activists of all parties, and only the blankness and dreary weather to look forward to for us sad, lonely political anoraks.

As Nosemonkey also points out, the hyperbole now swirling around is also surely out of all proportion. Is this really in any way a crisis? While Brown's advisers and pollsters can most certainly be accused of hyping up the prospect of an early poll, and he did himself no favours whatsoever by bringing the announcement on NHS reform to Thursday and the spending review and pre-budget report to early next week, this is hardly the beginning of Brown's downfall. The honeymoon is certainly over, and that is more than partly his own fault, but the chances of the Tories now managing to keep themselves focused without once again falling into infighting are slim.

It's true this is a mess of Labour's own making, and Cameron will naturally try to exploit it as much as he can. How quickly though things change: at the beginning of the week this was "mission impossible" or "make or break" week for the Conservatives, while for now at least they look the stronger and more focused. Their job, far from challenging Brown to call an election, as they fatuously urged this week, was to make certain that he couldn't risk doing so, and in that they've succeeded. It doesn't seem to have been Cameron's speech wot won it however, but Osborne's uncosted and discriminatory inheritance tax proposals, which were far more of a dog whistle than anything that Brown put forward. Promising to cut a hugely unpopular tax that very few actually currently pay was enough to get those in the marginals and soft, well-off Lib Dems in the south-east to change sides, at least for the opinion polls'.

Those same opinion polls in reality offer very little comfort for Cameron. He's squandered a huge lead over the last few months; while everyone knew full well there would be a bounce for Brown once he took over, the Conservatives both managed to underestimate just how long it would last and to lose their faith in Cameron at the exact second as the polls for the first time turned against him. Even if Brown had thrown all caution to the wind and decided to take the Tories' on at their own game by seeking his own mandate, as they taunted him to do, the very best result the most optimistic current polls for the Tories predict is a hung parliament. The Liberal Democrats would almost certainly have then gone into some sort of coalition with Labour, despite their previous pledges not to do so: the possibilities of power would certainly be too much for the overwhelming majority of the party to resist.

In fact, such a result would have been overwhelmingly welcome. The shenanigans of the last two weeks have only confirmed what many have long feared: that the arrival of Brown, rather than heralding a return to the left, as the Tories scaremongered about, would if anything result in an even further shift of the political "centre ground" to the right. Brown's courtship of Paul Dacre, the supposed political weather vane of the middle classes has meant that the difference between Labour and the Tories has narrowed yet further. A popular new parlour game could be to guess how many policies they have that aren't almost exactly the same: the only differences this blogger can discern is that the Tories will scrap ID cards only to waste it on even more prison cells, keep the detention without charge limit for "terrorist suspects" at 28 days, shaft the single mother and those on incapacity benefit ever so slightly harder, and rob the super-rich to give to the already well-off. It's hardly 1983 all over again, is it?

Which would have only exacerbated the likelihood of an even poorer turn-out than last time, which increased by a massive 2% on the record low of 2001. A hung parliament could have helped change that: the Liberal Democrats could have demanded proportional representation in exchange for going into a coalition, ending once and for all the insanity of having to appeal to those who care only about what politicians are going to do for them, rather than for everyone. Ming could also have rightly followed up his call for fixed-term parliaments, putting a stop to any repeat of this week's exasperating charade. We've been denied that for now, but if there's no change in the lack of choice whenever the next election is called, the calls for the above are only going to inexorably grow.

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10/06/2007 09:37:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, October 03, 2007 

"Well, that's it. That's what I believe."

Is it cos I is white?

If there's one thing you can't accuse David Cameron of, it's half measures. His speech wasn't just long; it was bladder pressurizingly lengthy. Delivered with only light notes, as both he and the Conservatives are crowing, it was in the region of 8,500 words of not very much. Prime example was that he just had to mention MySpace and Facebook, as every politician who wants to look vaguely "with-it" has to do, to help with a highly dubious point about having "to take what we're given" with politics, as if his entire speech wasn't an example of just that.

If anything, Cameron was taking his cue from Gordon Brown's similarly lengthy and rudderless speech last week. Both had no overall theme, a pedestrian stroll through their respective policies, without anything to draw it all together. Cameron's, if it's possible, is even more soporific; if I feel like dozing off speed reading through it, what was it like to actually sit there, in the probably stifling heat having to clap your hands together like a deranged seal every five minutes?

His real triumph, if you can call it that, was that his scattergun approach helps make it more difficult to object to the policies that were somewhat fleshed out. He rehashed the exact same things said by David Davis yesterday, for instance, but while his speech was aggravating and objectionable, Cameron has the quality to soften the blow. He still talked nonsense, obviously, like that you can't deport those responsible for gun and knife crime because of "Labour's Human Rights Act", or that Brown's speech was full of "dog whistles"; just ever so slightly rich from the man who wrote the dog whistling manifesto to end them all just 2 years ago.

Perhaps most significantly, he didn't mention inheritance tax once. The Tories' really big grab for middle class, middle England support, and he didn't cast minds back to it. Either this was because he felt he didn't need to, after the banner headlines, or that he wanted to be this person who is still all things to all men, rather than this tax-cutting, middle class subsidising traditional Tory pressing all the familiar buttons, just with a green tinge. Families were the biggest nod towards that front: 10 mentions, whether as the best welfare system or as the justification for ending the (non-existent) benefits bias towards single parents. Those who really don't need it are still going to get the equivalent of £20 a week simply for being married, a bribe of the sort that New Labour, for all its failed policies and quirks has never been as blatant to attempt.

Truly offensive and a hark back to the old nasty Tory party though was Cameron's promise that those on benefits who refuse a job "that they can do" will lose their money, while the ever wonderful private and voluntary sector will provide such brilliant jobs that no one ever will. We're talking about some of the most vulnerable, sick and depressed people in our society having their umbilical cord cut simply if they reject a job they don't feel up to or simply aren't suited for. So much for the broken society, but then those who might lose out are never going to vote Conservative anyway.

This wasn't an election winning speech, and Cameron never intended it to be so. It was a further attempt to mould him as this acceptable, friendly face of the Conservative party, an alternative to Gordon Brown, but without pretending to be anything like him, even if the vast majority of their policies are so similar that you couldn't get a cigarette paper between them. It was enough, and they'll now see what the wider response is. The real battle, if Brown is to risk an election as Cameron dared him to, is still yet to come.

Related posts:
Tygerland - More of the Same
Chicken Yogurt - Re-branding the herd
John Harris - Not Dave-ing, but drowning

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10/03/2007 09:36:00 PM | | | links to this post

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