PoliticalDom

Recycling and Charging

2010-06-08T18:47:00.001Z

The government has announced that it has ruled out plans to look into charging for the amount of non-recyled domestic waste and is instead looking to 'reward' people based on the weight of the waste they leave on the kerbside for recycling. In this article I consider this approach, both in effectiveness, cost, and motive.

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GM crops

2008-04-14T17:01:00.004Z

There have been some worrying noises coming from the government about GM crops recently, and the pro-GM case is being made more loudly every day. One might think that we don't have to worry about this since public opinion is so strongly against GM, but such opinion is easily swayed by only hearing one side of the argument, or worse, invalid argument. This has been demonstrated recently by the shift of opinion towards nuclear power that has taken place in a relatively short timescale, thanks mainly to piggy-backing a genuine concern (CO2 emissions). The government presented a false dichotomy - it's either nuclear power or more fossil fuels - rather than anything valid. Will the same thing happen with GM?

The news has recently been full of reports of food riots in developing countries due to the increasing costs of grain. The 'obvious' solution to this, as trotted-out by sections of the press, ministers, and those with vested interests, is the use of GM crops. However, what would these crops actually achieve, and are they in fact our only choice?

The main selling-point of GM crops is their resilience to herbicides. Companies such as Monsanto don't try to hide this fact, and yet it's a commonly held belief that using GM crops would allow us to use less chemicals on the fields. This is a myth. Many GM crops make the plants more tolerant of them, allowing the farmers to use far more. This does its job and kills the weeds, but also causes far more pollution. Funnily enough some crops, such as Monsanto's ''Roundup Ready' varieties, are specifically engineered to be resistant to their 'Roundup' herbicides. It's not unusual for GM crop producers to modify plants to further their other products.

Monsanto is a particularly shady company, of course. They have a history of suing farmers who happen to have had their crops wind-pollinated by GM crops in neighbouring farmers fields. It's actually amazing that Monsanto win in such cases - what are farmers meant to do? Pollen can travel for several miles and can remain active for up to ten years, and if it happens to fall onto non-GM fields it can pollenate plants there, making it very difficult to prevent contamination. If your crop is contaminated with GM pollen like this then you lose the ability to say GM-free, through no fault of your own. However, it gets worse - if you decide to keep some grain to replant next year, and unknown to you it has been contaminated, you can be sued by Monsanto, as this farmer in Canada can testify. Of course, some countries wouldn't want to allow this sort of thing, but it's useful for Monsanto when the US mandates GM crops as part of an aid package. GM crops or starvation? It's not a tough choice, but once GM is there it's there for good.

The pro-GM groups usually trot-out the line that GM crops will save poor countries. Let's assume that an African farmer decides to make use of GM - what should he grow? He'd probably want to grow crops suited to the climate, such as yams. However, he's unlikely to find that the GM companies are willing to help him here. The biotech companies are like the drugs companies in that they invest in the areas most likely to make them money, hence lots of research into cancer (which hits the rich, western world) and little into malaria (which doesn't). So we end-up with plenty of GM wheat that will make lots of money from western farmers, but little that will grow in Africa and actually help the poor.

The power of GM food producers and the rest of the biotech food industry is immense. For instance, a bill currently being considered in the US prohibits organic milk producers from being able to label their product as free from Bovine Growth Hormone, but it fails to force any milk produced from hormone-treated cows from being labelled as such. This bill is being pushed-through by Monsanto and other GM lobbyists and is almost certain to succeed, and it shows immense contempt for the consumer. Whether consumers want GM food or not, they should be given the choice.

In the end, it is wrong that a corporation can 'own' any species, whether they created it or not. Now that the possibility of doing so is legal, where will it end. As scientists develop more complex 'artificial' animals, as will happen with the human-hybrid work recently in the news, what is the point at which a life should no longer be owned? How can a corporation decide what forms of life can breed, and which must die without doing so? Isn't a fundamental purpose of any living thing to reproduce?

If you have time, be sure to watch The World According To Monsanto", which was shown on French TV. It's excellent and contains many important facts to help you make up your own mind on the issue.

Inheritance Tax

2007-10-10T16:57:00.000Z

Inheritance tax seems to be making the news at the moment, with both the Tories and Labour trying to outdo each other in reducing it. This only goes to show just how similar the two big parties have become. Inheritance tax should, if anything, be increased.

One thing that seems bizarre to me is quite why so many people worry about inheritance tax in the first place. In reality it simply isn't an issue for the vast majority of us. Last year 40,000 estates in England and Wales were liable to inheritance tax, while the same year there were 502,599 deaths. As a very rough guide that suggests that considerably fewer than ten percent of people who die have to worry about the tax at all. The reason that people worry about it is because they have an irrational optimism of their own financial future. Let's face it, most of us don't get rich. It's the sort of thinking that makes the public hostile to policies like 50% income tax on earnings over 100,000 - there's no way that's going to be a problem for most people, yet you hear people saying things like 'why tax success?' and other nonsense.

So what about the level at which the tax is payable? Well, until today it was 300,000 pounds. It has now (or will shortly) go up to 600,000 - a level which a tiny percentage of estates will reach. I think that this is a terrible decision, and if anything it should be reduced. The level at which tax starts to be paid all rather depends on what you want the tax to achieve, and inheritance tax is basically performing a redistribution function. It is one of the methods the state uses to make sure that too much money does not stay in the hands of too few people. If anything, this is becoming more of a problem, not less, so why on Earth are we reducing the effectiveness of one of the tools that we can use against it?

It's worth tackling the 'I've paid tax on it once, why should I pay again?' argument too. The reason that people are suddenly concerned about the tax in the first place is because property prices have increased so much. Houses have gone up in value far faster than inflation recently, which means that an initially modest investment is now worth hundreds of thousands. What people seem to forget is that the sum where 'tax has already been paid' is usually a small percentage of today's value, so in fact for most estates only a small percentage of the value has had tax paid on it anyway. It's only right that tax is paid, and paying once you've died seems like the most convenient time to me.

In the end we have to tax people on death precisely because property prices are high. By placing a tax on inherited properties people will be forced to sell them, placing the house back into the market. More houses on the market will help to bring prices down to a reasonable level, benefiting everyone. If the tax is reduced then the government will still need that money so they'll just tax something else, and that's going to be something that we all have to pay when we're alive, and probably something that has to be paid by far more people. Inheritance tax has so many logical advantages to such a majority of the population, so why has reducing it become so popular with voters? In the end we can probably put it down to selfishness and misplaced optimism, yet again. And so the wheel of capitalism turns...

Green Taxes 'Making Billions'. Or not.

2007-09-03T08:30:00.000Z

It was hard to avoid the item on the news this morning about a group claiming that 'green taxes' are 'making billions'... far more, it is claimed, than the cost of pollution itself. Stating that fines and taxes are 'revenue generation' as if this is a bad thing is an old argument of course, and one that is often used against speed cameras. However, in this case the target is a much more serious one than speed cameras as it's an issue that is of vital importance to the whole world.

First let us look at the claims. Apparently 'green taxes' brought in 21.9 billion last year, while the emissions had done 11.7 billion worth of 'damage'. 'Green taxes' here include things like fuel duty - hardly a green tax.. more like something that the government has always charged. It also includes landfill tax and other taxes that could be considered green of course, but the scope is rather wide. What they actually mean therefore is a collection of taxes that is levied against things that may harm the environment, rather than green taxes in particular.

What I really have a problem with is the 'cost' of emissions they have come up with. Just how have they calculated this, exactly? Is the 'cost' of a landfill the amount it would be to dig it all up? No - it's the cost of burning-off the methane. I don't think that their idea of costs and mine, or any normal person, are quite the same. Also, how do you put a cost on the effect of a ton of CO2 going into the atmosphere and having some part in flooding yet more of Bangladesh? No, the whole 'cost' is a nonsense. 'Green' taxes aren't there to level some sort of account we have with the environment, they're there to stop people polluting in the first place. The only thing that will make some people stop is to hit them in the wallet, since appealing to their morals seems to fail. People must be priced out of their cars and flights, and motivated into recycling by the cost of not doing it. Society isn't profiteering from this, just making people pay something closer to the real cost of their selfish ways.

Finally, just who are The Tax Payers Alliance? Well, take a look. Surprise surprise, they are the usual right-wing nutjobs. Just who let a story by these people make the headlines? The chairman Andrew Allum left the Tories 'having lost faith that it represented his brand of free market, individualist and compassionate politics', that is to say that they probably weren't quite right-wing enough for him. The chief executive, Matthew Elliot, is a young chap who has worked for 'Britain’s leading Eurorealist think-tank', so he's clearly going to look at European issues objectively, right? Finally, Florence Heath works... and this is a good one... for an oil company. Brilliant. She's bound to be fully committed to the environment then.

Honestly though, what the hell is the BBC doing even giving these people the time of day? Three people who make the UKIP look sensible manage to get headlines on the Today programme?! Maybe I'll start my own 'think tank', since I seem to be just as qualified to do so. The trouble is, when you take the 'green' side you probably find that industry is slightly less willing to grease your palm. Perhaps the BBC should just ignore press releases from organisations that can't be bothered to get their own domain for their Web site? It doesn't show a lot of commitment to their cause does it? Either that or they're technically inept, but neither of these possibilities inspire a huge amount of confidence...

Less privacy, more work

2007-08-13T16:53:00.000Z

An interesting policy from the Tories emerged today. They'd quite like to scrap our data protection laws. These are the laws that put restrictions on what businesses can do with your personal data, such as not selling it to people who send junk mail. Apparently this 'red tape' is annoying for businesses. Another annoying bit of 'red tape' is the Working Time Directive, which they also plan to scrap.

Much as I don't want the Tories to win, some of their moves are beyond belief. How are either of these changes meant to be vote winners? Sure, they make sense if you are a CEO, or perhaps just a bit evil.. but the man on the street? How can be gain from a change which means he can be forced to work even longer hours than he does now? And when he gets home from his longer day, he can expect to find tons more junk mail thanks to the fact that companies he has dealt with have sold his personal information (potentially to people who want to steal his identity). Note that they also want redundancy regulations to be 'relaxed' so that we can all lose our jobs more easily too.

Some would say that these moves are 'liberal' in a 'libertarian' sort of way, but I'm afraid that they are many facets of libertarianism that lead to corporations ruling the world, and we can see some examples right here. We need state control when it comes to not exploiting workers. 'Red tape' is sometimes useful, but for some reason it is one of those phrases that have stuck into the public mindset as a 'bad thing'. In reality, here are the Conservatives showing their true colours. They don't care about anyone except the 'boss class' and making their lives easier. Quite why anyone who is a decent human being would support things like this is beyond me. Having said that, this will of course be overlooked at the next election and we'll all be concentrating on some non-issue. You have to love the British press.

Trains, transport and money

2007-07-24T22:52:00.000Z

So the government has said that they will give a whole load of money towards improving the rail network. This can only be a good thing, but it does seem to be a case of too little too late in a lot of respects. For all of the governments talk of green and sustainable transport policies, we're seeing a lot of funding for roads and aviation, but not a lot else. Road and air travel are cheaper in real terms now than they have ever been, yet since privatisation rail travel has become quite a lot more expensive. This is despite the fact that more people are travelling by rail all of the time.

The ESRC have some interesting statistics on travel, such as the cost to the UK of road accidents being 16 billion pounds per year. Road travel is not cheap, but the government doesn't worry about paying for roads and road improvement with public money. Why should the railways be any different? It goes without saying that I think they should be renationalised, but what else could be done to improve them?

I think that a big improvement could be achieved by putting a much higher tax on road transport of goods that could be transported by train, for one thing. We need new train lines to new depots in each town and city where goods can be unloaded and only the last part of the journey done by road. It is madness that we drive lorries with containers on them down motorways when rail is so much more efficient.

The railway network needs to be expanded. Where old lines closed in the 60's remain clear, they should be either reopened or protected from any development until such a time as they are economically viable. These lines were viable once, and the population was smaller then. If the costs of road transport start reflecting the true environmental costs, then these rail links will undoubtedly become useful again.

Fares need to become cheaper. Renationalisation is necessary for this, since I think it is fundamentally wrong to pay a public subsidy to a private company that makes a profit for its shareholders. If the railways were nationalised we could put an extra tax on petrol for road transport.. a couple of pence per litre say, and use that as a direct rail subsidy. Taxes on larger cars could also go to public transport, since taxing luxury cars takes the burden from the poor, who may still need to drive.

Finally, we need to think very hard about the way we build our towns and cities. As long as people feel that they need their cars then they will probably keep them, so we should do as much as we can to remove that need. This is already true in most of London and other big cities, where cars are a luxury. All new housing developments should include local shops and pubs etc within half a mile of any house to prevent people from having to travel just to buy food. This isn't some pipe-dream since this always used to be the case! Rail and buses should link residential areas so that people can get to work, and there should be tax incentives to live in the town or city you work in, to reduce the need to travel. We can do this if we try. If we don't tackle it and just bury our heads in the sand, things are only going to get worse... especially when the oil starts to run out.

Convicted Traitor? No jail for you!

2007-07-03T17:02:00.000Z

My complete despair when it comes to American politics continues to deepen. The widely publicised news of the day is that Bush has 'spared' Libby from 2.5 years in jail. His reason? It seems that he thought it was an 'excessive' punishment, so obviously 'no jail at all' is the correct amount for lying to a grand jury and exposing a CIA agent, potentially threatening their life, because their husband had criticised the invasion of Iraq.

At a fundamental level the leader of any democratic country should not have the power to overrule the courts anyway. What sort of example is this to countries we accuse of corruption? The message is that you can do anything you like as long as you are chums with those in power. Hardly inspiring. However, just because previous presidents have done it isn't an excuse for its continuation! It's fairly telling that the Republican defence of pretty much anything stupid, immoral or just plain illegal that Bush and his cronies do is that 'Clinton lied about having an affair!'. Yes he did, and of course he shouldn't have done it. He was also no saint in many other areas of course, but let's face it, Bush has done more to make the world a worse, more dangerous, divisive, polluted, greedy and generally bad place than almost anyone else in the last decade... apart from Cheney, perhaps.

Closer to home we are right to worry about the BAe bribery scandal, and the corruption and very dubious morals in the Labour government that stopped the investigation into it. However, it's pretty galling to hear that the US DoJ want to investigate that deal while their president is letting his friends out of prison for serious crimes. The Murdoch press wonder why there is what they consider to be anti-Americanism in this country. The answer is obvious - how can you have any respect for the American government with the current idiots in charge? They even make our lot look good. Like it or not, other countries judge you by the actions of your government, and if they carry on the way they're going then driving Jeeps into Glasgow airport will be the least of our worries.

Religious Exemptions

2007-07-01T08:42:00.000Z

A magistrate in Manchester has walked out of a court because a defendant refused to remove a full-face veil, and this seems to have caused some controversy. Admittedly the magistrate could have handled it better than just walking out, but his point remains valid. You can't turn-up in court with your face covered - you could be anyone. Whose word do we have to take that this is actually the person who it should be?

I don't know how the law stands on this. Could anyone turn up in court with their face covered and expect everyone else to go along with it? Somehow I doubt it, and if it's true for one person it should be true for all people. We can't give special permission for people to be exempt from laws and conventions because of some belief they hold. Where would it stop? If it is indeed the case, then hey, my brand new and convenient religion forbids me to appear in court unless I'm provided with beer and strippers! I'm being silly of course, but how is that any more silly than the demands of any faith? They are all essentially made-up to fit some possibly questionable historical anyway.

It's time for the government to put its foot down and state that no religious 'rules' are valid for any exemptions or special treatments in any walk of life. It doesn't matter what your magic book or man with super powers from the past says - we are all equal, and we all have exactly the same rights, along with the same responsibilities. The overriding motivation behind any of our actions should be for society, not because we're scared of some mythical punishment that might befall us when we die. A life that is lived well purely because we fear a supernatural punishment is not worthy of admiration at all. It is to be pitied.

Honours and Dodgy Peers

2007-06-19T13:21:00.000Z

So the honours have been announced, and they include a knighthood for Salman Rushdie. This is fine, after all, his novel Midnight's Children won the 'Booker of Bookers' as the best book in 25 years - quite an achievement really. It's a prize that is definitely deserved.

However, it was bound to upset some religious fundamentalists, who are still a bit upset that Rushdie wrote a book that they believe mocked their religion, or Mohammed, or something (most of them haven't read it so it doesn't matter anyway). This was to be expected, and ignored. However, when Labour peer Lord Ahmed waded-in and started saying he was "appalled to hear Salman Rushdie had been given a knighthood ... honouring the man who has blood on his hands, sort of, because of what he did, I think is going a bit too far". So then, Lord Ahmed, what did Rushdie do, exactly? In what way has he got blood on his hands? Is he the one suggesting that someone should become a suicide bomber and kill Rushdie, much like the oh-so-innocent Pakistan parliament? No, he was simply writing a piece of fiction, something that we have a right to do in this country. Why are you siding with religious nutjobs rather than someone you're actually meant to represent?

Lord Ahmed has no right to be representing Britain and should be sacked immediately. No, we don't cave-in to the lunatic demands of religions in this country. In fact we pander far too much to them as it is, and I'm not just talking about Muslims. No religion has any right to infringe on our basic liberties. They should all be ridiculed and mocked far more often for the backward, illogical, dangerous things that they are. Just because you believe in a big man in the sky who tells you to avoid pork, not use condoms, stone women to death or whatever, it doesn't make it a valid viewpoint. Why should we listen to you? Why should we even tolerate you when you start using your religion to reduce our liberties? By all accounts you can let your fairy tales and superstitions tell you what you can do with your own life, but as soon as you start affecting anyone else - including your own children... by God, you'd better to be ready to be ridiculed and mocked. Ignoring you hasn't worked after all, so it's time we told you exactly where you can stick your bigotry and intolerance.

Lunch With Simon Hughes

2007-04-04T11:55:00.000Z

I've just got back from a buffet lunch where the guest speaker was Simon Hughes. It was good to finally hear him speak and see him face to face, as during the leadership election I got to meet the other candidates, but not Simon who was my favourite and who I voted for! Still, it was good to feel vindicated by my choice - he comes across as a genuine guy who cares about the issues that matter, such as social inequality.

It's nice to meet a politician who has genuinely been responsible for saving lives (he introduced legislation requiring landlords to have annual gas safety checks) - perhaps that's the biggest 'difference' any of us can make? I guess he just 'gets it', like most left-leaning politicians. The state is there to help society, not make the rich richer. It seems easy for people to forget that.

Budget

2007-03-22T10:02:00.000Z

Yesterday's budget was a bit of a surprise really. With the current (and very welcome!) competition between the parties on who can be the most 'green' I expected more green taxes for one thing, yet the only real difference is a slight increase in fuel duty and a higher road tax for the most polluting vehicles, although the threshold for this is so high that it doesn't even cover most 4x4.

The move that surprised almost everyone was the 2p cut in the basic rate of income tax, although this came with the scrapping of the 10p band, so those on the lowest wages will actually pay more. Now I'm probably in the minority in thinking that we don't pay enough tax as it is, so I didn't want to see cuts to income tax. At least it wasn't to the higher rate payers I suppose. What was worse was the cut in corporation tax, although small companies now have to pay more. I hate these blatant bribes to big industry, so this move was pretty appalling. There were the predictable small increases to beer etc too of course (but spirits escape for some reason).

So anyway, where were the progressive moves? Where was the scrapping of car tax and big hike in petrol prices? Where was the duty on aircraft fuel? Where was some sort of sensible tax system on food miles? Or non-degradable packaging? Or incandescent light bulbs? What a wasted opportunity, and what's worse, this budget looked more Conservative than I would have expected from the Tories. I used to console myself that while we may have a Labour government it's probably better than a Tory one when it comes to wealth redistribution and the environment (we'll forget Iraq for a moment), but now I'm not so sure. What's the world coming to when you start wondering that if there can't be a liberal government, a Conservative one is the next best choice?

Wind Farms Don't Kill (many) Birds. Fact.

2007-02-13T18:30:00.001Z

...well, not many anyway. A while ago now, David Bellamy accused wind farms of killing thousands of birds. Notwithstanding the fact that Bellamy, a childhood hero, has now gone mad and is gibbering on about things like global warming being made up, some people who are against wind farms noticed and starting using his support like it was some sort of argument winner.

Now it was clearly untrue (I've lived near windfarms and never noticed piles of dead birds), but without any peer-reviewed proof I was stuck. After all, buildings, cars, cats and so on kill far more birds and only an idiot would claim otherwise. I was therefore quite happy to see this study which shows that wind farms don't in fact kill any noticeable number of birds after all. Yay! I guess the NIMBYs, Neocons and other assorted idiots will now have to try to find another reason not to build wind farms other than the pretty selfish 'I don't like looking at them' argument.

The BNP lie - there's a surprise.

2007-02-13T18:12:00.000Z

On my walk in to work this morning I was surprised to see the headline of the local paper. Apparently the BNP are running 'patrols' here in Bath, and the story was about the police saying it was a bad thing. Curious, I went to the paper's Web site where you can comment on stories and saw this.

At the time of writing nearly all of the comments are obviously from BNP members who have rallied to their 'cause' to put a positive spin on it. There are a couple of comments from normal people, including one who points out that some comments are from members who aren't local and have been told to lie about it. These are still in the minority though.

I obviously posted a comment myself but it was taken down within minutes. I thought it was reasonable, but perhaps the paper thought I was being too 'harsh' on the BNP. I don't know, but I think I've blown my chance. So here is a request - would anyone who reads this and realises that the BNP are in fact racist thugs (which is all of you, I suspect) please take two minutes to post a comment on the paper's site saying.. well, anything you like - it's your comment. I think we just need a better proportion of comments that aren't pro-BNP.

Who would tell us what to hate if it wasn't for the Daily Mail?

2007-01-23T17:40:00.000Z

Whereas I could possibly accept that Daily Mail readers are simply misguided, most of the people who actually create it are clearly a waste of DNA. How the country can react so angrily to Jade Goody being a not-particularly-racist bully yet ignore the actually-racist and deeply, deeply vile Daily Mail is completely bizarre. I would include the Daily Express too, but their paranoid Diana fixation has relegated them from the world of 'newspapers'.

Anyway, I was reminded just how morally corrupt The Mail was today by two stories. Firstly the current investigation by the Commons Joint Committee on Human Rights into the incitement to hatred by the Mail and Express. The last few paragraphs in the BBC article just about sum the newspapers up really. However, what can the committee do anyway? I doubt they'll pass a law allowing you to slap anyone you see reading the Daily Mail and taking it seriously, even though that's probably exactly what we need.

In an unrelated and yet equally stupid move, Paul Dacre, the editor of the Daily Mail, ranted about politicians all loving the BBC. This is the BBC that has just been told it can't have enough money by the government of course... the BBC that was smacked-down by the Hutton report for telling the truth... the BBC that every Tory and most of Labour would like to scrap. What world is he living in? Well, that was a slightly rhetorical question of course since we all know he's living in a world full of scary immigrants who want to steal his job and kill his children. Of course he hates the BBC - it balances the world of the UK media a bit and counteracts some of the racist, homophobic, vomit-inducing output of his 'newspaper'. Paul Dacre, you are a loathsome man - don't you dare infect the minds of people who ignore your paper with your lunatic hate-filled jabberings.

PFI Deals and the NHS

2007-01-22T17:40:00.001Z

'Private Finance Initiatives' are one of those scandalous realities that nobody except Private Eye seems to care about. With any luck more stories about it will appear in the mainstream media and people will notice. Take today's story on the BBC about how PFI firms will make a 23 billion pound profit from the NHS over the next 30 years. Think how many hospitals, operations and drugs could be bought for that much money... money which has come from the taxpayer to help the NHS, yet finds its way into the pockets of shareholders and CEOs.

While it is true that the current Labour government have increased NHS funding, most of the increase has been absorbed by private companies doing things much more expensively than they could have been done under a completely public NHS. PFI deals are great if you want to use figures from one particular year to impress voters, but they are much less impressive in the long term. If only the bigger picture was shown to the public then perhaps the madness would come to an end? The figures speak for themselves and are useful ammunition in the argument against involving the private sector in healthcare. While I am one of those absolutely opposed to it on moral grounds, it's always useful to have financial grounds to convince people who think with their wallets (or taxes).

I took the opportunity to sign-up as a member of Keep Our NHS Public. Let's hope this group gains some momentum and saves our public NHS before it's too late. Once it's all sold off then we face a greater struggle to get it back - just look at the railways...

Wind farms

2007-01-05T11:42:00.002Z

Polly Toynbee's article in today's Guardian about wind farms makes interesting reading. NIMBYs are usually more of a bother than a benefit, since bad things (out of town supermarkets, nuclear power stations, airport expansions, etc) get pushed through anyway while good things get blocked. Wind farms are a case in point.

Being anti-wind farm is the default Tory position, whatever David Cameron may say. I've seen this effect myself with my parents. While naturally quite green, being paid-up Conservative members and reading the Telegraph and Spectator have taken their toll. They now have the strange flat-Earth style faith in bad science that Polly describes in the article. I guess it's inevitable if you just believe the right-wing press, but it bothers me that the Conservatives pretty much brainwash their members. 'Group think' and all that. Of course, the power of the right does come from ignorance and fear, but allowing this to help destroy the planet is going too far.

So, what are we to do? As the article says, a firm hand from Westminster is a good idea. It saddens me to see that some LibDem councils are just as bad and block wind farms too - they should be slapped-down for it. However, discipline from parties themselves doesn't go far enough. I think that wind farms and green energy in general should be made almost impossible for local councils to block. This sounds quite draconian, but let's face it, most people won't want one on their doorstep. It doesn't matter that they wouldn't want a nuclear power station either - those are so universally unpopular that they get forced through anyway. No, I'm afraid to say that where politicians depend on rural votes then there is a risk that they will block wind farms whatever they think of the environmental benefits. If they are forced through by the government then the council won't lose votes since they can't block them anyway. Problem solved.

While people are dithering about with tiny numbers of wind farms we're still killing the planet. It's time to get serious about building them on a massive scale. In the end, who cares what they look like if it means we are getting clean energy? Better that than global warming or a legacy of nuclear waste left for the next thousand generations.

Saddam Hussein

2006-12-31T19:54:00.000Z

So Saddam Hussein was executed yesterday. I have my reservations about the trial itself and the fairness of it, although I wouldn't expect him to be found innocent of course. Whatever the outcome of the trial though, no society that wishes to consider itself civilised has any business condemning people to death. We are responsible for this really - the government hasn't been very vocal in its criticism of course, but apart from that, we generally have a policy of not turning prisoners over to countries where they may face execution. I believe that he was being held by the Americans, but in an ideal world we may have at least tried to influence them.

Objections to the death penalty aside, no good can come from this. A life in prison would have been a 'worse' punishment for him and wouldn't have turned him into a martyr. Also, there's bound to be knowledge that he had which has gone with him to his grave that we've lost - locations of graves, who helped him in certain crimes, and so on. Killing him is an act of vengeance rather than justice, just like every other execution.

Church and State

2006-12-23T15:37:00.000Z

Hello, and sorry for the lack of posts recently. Normal service has been resumed.

The separation of church and state should be one of the fundamental objectives of anyone who supports democracy, so we should all take note when something happens that works against this goal. I noticed this story today about a couple of Christians campaining against homosexuals who have just received an out of court settlement from the police after getting into trouble for calling 'homosexual practice' morally wrong.

The article does not give a few key details, such as where the couple wanted the leaflets displayed. We can assume that it was a council property though, hence them asking Wyre Borough Council permission. It is therefore completely correct that the council refused, since it is not their place to help any church distribute its propaganda. The leaflets that the couples were objecting to were simply informing gay people of their rights, and were therefore exactly the sort of thing that the council should be distributing.

Let's leave aside for a moment the fact that the views of these people is bigoted, unpleasant, and down to some deeply objectionable beliefs. What we should be concerned with is the fact that they felt that they had to 'counter' a leaflet explaining someones rights with one containing their bigotry, which doesn't help anyone at all. Even worse, they expected facilities run by the council (and therefore at the tax payers expense) to aid them and their religion. This is fundamentally wrong, and the council were correct to refuse. I would argue that the police involvement went too far since free speech is important, and this ended-up being counter-productive. However unfair this may have been though, the state has no business distributing religious propaganda. I would encourage anyone living in Fleetwood to remind the council of this.

2006-09-28T16:07:00.000Z

For a while now the public have seemed strangely happy with the fact that 'suspected terrorists' can be held without charge for an increasing amount of time. The government would like us to think that three months is reasonable. This has resulted in the somewhat scary ability of the government to lock anyone up as they feel like it without even having to say why. That's a power I can't see being abused, oh no.

This is all bad of course, but consider the poor Americans for a minute. The government there can lock you up on a whim indefinitely of course, thanks to their handy secret CIA prisons and popular Cuban bases. That was bad enough, but now they're about to pass a law that will allow them to torture you too. Granted, they won't be chopping off your hands, but they'll do pretty much everything else that doesn't leave a mark. Reading the linked article might well make you angry with the disgusting things some of their politicians are saying, but the scary thing is that they say them at all. Yeah, Democrats voting against this are 'helping the terrorists' by saying the government shouldn't torture people are they? Well, good on them. Not that the Democrats are much better of course, but at least they're not quite so obviously keen as fascism as the Republicans.

The fact that a 'cilivilsed' society is changing the law (and the Geneva Convention) to allow torture is appalling. Torture obviously doesn't work - you'd admit to anything if you were subjected to enough pain. Not only that, but if the US do it, there's the green light to all of their enemies to do it too. They've lost any high ground they may have had. As someone on Digg has said: "The provisions are intended to protect CIA interrogators from being prosecuted for war crimes." If you remember nothing else from that article, remember this.. And one more wise comment: When you allow your government to take away the rights of one group, you are destroying your own rights. If you believe this is a good thing then you do not deserve those rights.

Meanwhile, if you're a Christian and a terrorist, hey, it's ok, no torture or secret prisons for you!. Nice to see the same standards apply to everyone, isn't it?

Planes

2006-08-10T16:09:00.000Z

Nobody can have escaped the news this morning about the 'disrupted terror plot'. Apparently 21 people have been arrested over a plot to destroy 10 planes bound for the US with explosives hidden in drinks containers. The immediate result is that lots of flights have been cancelled, and security on those that have flown as been tightened (no hand luggage, etc).

Of course nobody has actually been charged yet, so please forgive me if I'm slightly cynical of todays events. It's a good thing they've put our brand-new 'alert level' up to 'critical' isn't it? That's the highest it can go of course - I'm not sure what they'd do during an actual attack. Also, I don't know about you, but I'm so glad that those alert levels are there. I mean, I was thinking of going to the shops later, but at 'critical' alert level I think I'll just cower in my bed under the duvet. What a load of nonsense! These alert levels are simply a tool for scaring the public and keeping them under control.

Is it a massive coincidence that John Reid talked about 'imminent' attacks yesterday, and how we may be 'forced to give up our freedoms? This seems like a good way to make people accept it doesn't it? Of course, Reid knew what would happen today when he gave that interview, which is handy. It's good that these things crop up when public disquiet over real events and our governments complicitness in them, such as Lebanon and Iraq, start getting tricky for the government to ignore. It's almost like it's deliberate isn't it?

Galloway on SkyNews

2006-08-09T11:39:00.000Z

I have mixed feelings about George Galloway. He doesn't spend enough time in parliament (last time I checked, only one MP had a worse voting record - Tony Blair) so I would feel slightly robbed if he was my MP. His Big Brother appearance was also ill-advised. However, his position as an MP does get him a platform, and his views really do need to be heard in these days when public figures shy away from having opinions, especially if they are the truth.

Have a look at this interview he did on Sky News. All credit to Sky for letting it play out I suppose, but nearly every point he makes is excellent. The last few seconds are especially good and are an excellent point.

Turning up the heat

2006-07-27T13:55:00.000Z

Things in the Middle East are still insane. Our government have yet again made me ashamed to be British. Even though I didn't vote for them we'll all still be considered collectively responsible for their actions. Anyone who thinks that supporting Israel isn't going to make us more likely to suffer from terrorist attacks is a fool. Israel are currently generating plenty of future terrorists all over the world by their actions, and while we could have avoided a lot of ill-will by trying to stop their war, we're now part of it. To rub salt into the wound, the Americans are even using our airbases as stop-off points for the weapons their are providing the Israelis with. If that doesn't make us complicit, I don't know what does...

Israel

2006-07-20T00:09:00.000Z

Israel is still intent on starting wars with all of its neighbours. It's a sketchy situation there, so I'm not massively surprised to see us doing nothing about it. Of all the polarising issues, Israel seems to be the one that is the most clear cut. When anything to do with the middle east and Israel crops up, people here roll their eyes, make a tutting noise and complain about how Israel should get back to its borders and stop causing trouble. Speak to most Americans though and they say that of course Israel should 'defend itself' by attacking pretty much anyone and blaming everyone else. If it was fair to attack countries that 'funded terrorism' then surely the US funding of the IRA for God knows how long makes them a legitimate target? Of course, funding terrorists is ok when we like them, much as we did the Taliban in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. I'm not sure why quite so many people on the right have a problem spotting hypocrisy. I tend to think that a combination of gullibility and Rupert Murdoch are probably to blame...

Pandering to idiots

2006-07-14T10:51:00.000Z

At the risk of sounding like someone much older... what is the world coming to? Anyone in the UK can't have escaped this story about a vicar who kissed a schoolgirl on the cheek when giving her an award and found himself in the centre of a criminal investigation. He was found not to have committed any crime of course, but he still ended-up having to give-up his post as a school governor.

So the school loses one of the few people who are willing to give up their time to help out purely to satisfy some insane mother who seems hell bent on someone hanging for innocently kissing her daughter. The quote from her at the end of the article about sums it all up really:

But the girl's mother said she was not satisfied with the investigationor the findings and continued to allege that Mr Barrett's kiss was an assault. "I am so disappointed with the way it has been handled and Iwould like him to be removed from his position," she said.

There are too many idiots in the world and we need to do something about it. To this end I think I will start to 'name and shame' them, so this woman (who sadly remains nameless for now) will be the first person on the list when I get it onto my web site this evening. It might be a very small and probably completely ineffective thing, but I'd get some small satisfaction if these people or their friends Googled their names in future and found themselves on a list of idiots.

2006-04-04T18:48:00.000Z

Labours plan to turn Britain into something like Nazi Germany are picking up pace quite quickly now. In my post earlier today I mentioned their intention to avoid having to use parliament to pass any laws, just like Hitler's Enabling Act. Now the Defence Secretary John Reid is calling for international law to be rewritten so that we can lock people up indefinitely, Guantanamo-style. His proposals would also allow us to invade other countries pretty much on a whim.

Changing the law to make it 'alright' to lock people up for any reason we feel like and torturing them is one way around the pesky Guantanamo issue of course. These proposals would also make it easy to do pretty much whatever we liked to anyone. And this 'protects' us from terrorism how? Every day we slide into fascism and the population sit there and take it like blind sheep. It's easy to conclude that they don't deserve their liberty and the people who do should just up sticks and go and live somewhere that doesn't have a government that seems to have the goal of creating Orwell's 1984 in real life?

Help to save Parliament

2006-04-04T11:50:00.000Z

Further to my last post, there *is* something we can do to try to save democracy in this country. Go to www.saveparliament.org.uk and read about the problem, then follow their handy hints for actions you can take. I would argue that we all have a moral duty to do this - I think most rational people would agree.

Our Loss of Democracy, Again

2006-03-23T00:29:00.000Z

In the years leading up to WWII Hitler passed very similar laws to this one that our government is passing now. Why haven't we heard more of this? For all of the complaining that the Tory/Murdoch press do about the BBC being left-wing, they're pretty complicit in not making a big deal about this sort of story.

I don't know about you, but going by his record so far I don't want Blair to find it even easier to remove our freedoms by avoiding the whole 'parliament' thing. What next?

2006-03-13T13:47:00.000Z

The western world continues its slide into a police state. The latest news from America is a bill going through the Senate that would make it illegal to tell people if the President is breaking the law. Great. I've been meaning to add re-reading '1984' to my to-do list for a while - I bet it's now scarily close to how the world is at the moment. I think one of the comments in the linked Slashdot article sums it up pretty well:

"Orwell is spinning in his grave. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. We are always at war. We live in constant fear of terror attacks.

The dystopian future I studied in high school is coming true. He erred only by two decades."

Work Your Proper Hours Day

2006-02-24T11:45:00.000Z

Today is Work Your Proper Hours Day. In the UK we work longer hours than in the rest of Europe, yet productivity doesn't always follow. In lots of companies (and this is certainly true in my field of IT) there is a certain amount of pressure to work beyond contracted hours despite not being paid for doing so. Sometimes there is pressure from 'on high', but oddly it seems that in most cases the pressure comes from the fact that other people do it. This results in a sort of peer pressure in that people don't want to be seen as slackers, so they stay late too. The company gets used to this and reduces estimates for work based on this free overtime, thus making it impossible to reach targets unless everyone works late.

I don't think that it is reasonable to refuse to work long hours in a professional workplace, but these long hours should be the exception. Employers need reminding of this occassionally, so events like this Work Your Proper Hours Day are important. Make sure you take part! Note that there's also an 'anonymous email' generator on the site where you can send an email to your boss telling him about the day (it doesn't reveal your name!). Make sure you use it!

Freedoms, and lack of them

2006-02-15T13:52:00.000Z

It has been an interesting few days. Yesterday we learned that parliament has voted in favour of ID cards, despite it being one of the more obviously stupid ideas that the government has ever come up with. ID cards now look increasingly likely unless people actually do something about it.

Elections are the way we get rid of politicians with fascist aspirations of course, but what can we do at a more immediate level? Well I for one am a member of No2ID, and along with many thousands of other people I will refuse to carry an ID card whatever the law says. No2ID have started a fund to pay the legal costs for defending anyone who does this, but hopefully it won't come to that. The point is that if enough people refuse to carry the card the whole thing will become unworkable and the government will have to drop the plans. I won't say any more about it - check out the No2ID site to see for yourself.

In other news, smoking will be banned in enclosed public places from next summer. Smokers have tried to use 'civil liberties' and 'freedom' against this decision, but that is nonsense. I'm afraid that freedom of speech and movement are freedoms, not the ability to go and give other people lung cancer. Smokers are addicts who are too weak to give up and I don't have any sympathy for them - go and pollute your own homes. Hopefully I'll be able to go for a night out without choking on smoke and coming home stinking. All good things. If you want the 'freedom' to smoke near me, then I want to freedom to carry a canister of chlorine gas with me and empty it into every pub I go to. As I enjoy breathing poisonous fumes then it's my 'right' to inflict that on everyone else, according to smokers logic.

Freedom and civil liberties aren't words and phrases to band around willy-nilly. Smoking in public isn't a 'freedom' to defend - smoking itself is a relic of an age where science didn't know that it caused so many illnesses, and the sooner it stops completely the better. There are some real, important and critical freedoms which we're in the process of losing, and we must fight for these. If necessary we must break these laws if they are passed. It's the least we can do to defend freedoms that our ancestors died for.

Current thoughts on the leadership contest

2006-01-28T14:10:00.000Z

On Friday I went to a meeting with Menzies Campbell to hear what he had to say. He spoke for a bit about his objectives as leader and about the current situation with Hughes and Oaten, then answered some questions. I've not met him before or seen him speak in person and he seems like a nice guy, and he said all the right things about the leadership. However, I don't think any questions came up that I feel I would disagree with him on (there was limited time before he had to dash off to another event).

I think he'd do a good job and is clearly an intelligent and knowledgeable man, but is he what the party needs? Floating voters might be (wrongly) put-off by his age, and we have to take that into account. I also don't know as much as I'd like to about his attitudes to things like privatisation of the Post Office, and from what I've heard he's a bit too keen in private sector involvement in healthcare. Don (our MP) likes him and is backing him as are the majority of the MPs, and in a sense they should 'know best' seeing as they work with all of the candidates. My own straw poll of activists also revealed people being pretty split between the candidates, so there is no obvious front-runner at a local level.

I think I'm still going to vote for Simon Hughes. I would have liked to see the hustings in Plymouth the other day, but the media coverage was appalling - funny how someone being gay receives so much more press than why you should vote for them. Still, if you're liberally inclined (even with a small 'l') the media generally doesn't want to know. Thank God for The Independent!

China

2005-10-10T14:58:00.000Z

It's interesting how we can overlook this sort of thing if it means we can get cheap T-shirts and consumer electronics. The sad thing is that it's not as if people don't know about the Chinese authorities stamping on democratic movements. If they sell us cheap stuff then hey, they can have our money (even if it's for the skin of executed prisoners for injection into our lips).

What's the solution? I imagine that a total ban on imports would cripple businesses the depend on the near-slave labour available in China, so how about setting a level of duty that rises every month until China does something about its human rights abuses? I'm suggesting we enforce democracy, but we can make trade dependent on their government stopping events like the one in the linked story. If we continue to trade with them without some sort of real pressure then what sort of people does that make us?

Tories reject migrants? Surely not!

2005-10-06T14:38:00.000Z

OK, so I don't think anyone would be surprised that the Tories don't like Foreigners much. However, they are the friends of industry, so which way do they go on the migrant workers/skills shortage debate? Well, it seems that their xenophobia wins the day when push comes to shove...

Blunkett

2004-12-16T11:03:00.000Z

Today is one of those days where I feel like singing that song from The Wizard of Oz, "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead". The news that Blunkett has been forced to resign is fantastic isn't it? It also seems very just that the man who is actively campaigning against 'asylum seekers' and immigrants has come unstuck by helping someone through the immigration process. Hmm.. hey David, here's something for you to think about - if we are being 'flooded' with immigrants as you and the Daily Mail suggest, why did you feel the need to get someone in and accelerate the process of doing so? If we are 'flooded' with such people, all of whom are sponging off benefits, why didn't you just select one of those? Could it be because you are actually lying about the whole immigrant thing, or at least exaggerating? Heaven forbid. Anyway, it's interesting that the only people who have anything nice to say about him are the police. I bet they found laws allowing them to lock people up without charge or trial quite useful.

Having said all that, the new Home Secretary Charles Clarke might not be much better. He's almost as authoritarian as Blunkett, although not quite (well, who is?). It doesn't look like he has any plans not to force in compulsory ID cards, but at least he distanced himself from Blunkett's most outrageously Orwellian comments about freedom being 'airy fairy' and so on. We can but hope for a better future.

2004-12-14T11:04:00.000Z

Surprise surprise, today the Conservatives announced their support for compulsory ID cards. Well we all knew that Howard was a big fan all along of course, seeing as he tried to bring in ID cards himself. Of course back then the Labour party weren't verging on Fascism, so he was rightly challenged. These days the main parties are falling over themselves to see who can take away all of our rights and freedoms fastest of course, so it is natural for the 'opposition' to agree with the government on this. Again.

People need to think very hard, come the general election. Without thinking about it too much they will throw all of our hard-earned freedoms away by voting for one of the main parties, somehow thinking that they are making the sensible choice. I'm afraid that voting Labour or Conservative in the coming election will be a vote for the forces of fear, hatred, denial of rights, and the rise of the far right. The fact that people can't see this is beyond comprehension. Wake up people! Why can't you see what is happening?!

For people who are 'ok' with ID cards because they have 'done nothing wrong'... well, I'm afraid that they are stupid, selfish idiots. There's no other way to say it. It is your duty to protect those in society who are persecuted (as people are in these days without trials and juries). Not to do so is disgusting. We should all bear in mind this quite by the German anti-fascist Martin Niemoller:

"First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out.
Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out.
Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out.
And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me."

Conservative and Labour voters, this is the Britain you are building. Shame on you all.

2004-11-25T11:05:00.000Z

Peter Hain recently claimed that Britain is 'safer' under Labour as they are the party making all of the 'anti-terror' policies. With that, he has brought the 'fear of terror' issue into party politics. When I first heard this I was slightly worried that the public would fall for it, but seeing views like this one on the BBC from members of the public are greatly reassuring.

The public isn't stupid enough to fall for this line - the tricks that Bush used to win the US election won't work here. Hopefully it will backfire and cost Labour votes when this extra coverage makes people realise that far from protecting us, Labour are simply trying to scare us into believing them. The Tories may be indignant, but they are no better with their support of ID cards and removal of other liberties. Only the LibDems seem to care about freedom these days, and hopefully the public will be aware of this come the election...

2004-11-23T13:17:00.000Z

Anyone who saw the front page of race-hating bigot rag The Daily Mail today will have seen that a supposed 'terror plot' targeting Canary Wharf has been 'foiled'. Hmm. It is interesting that this has been revealed on the same day that the Queens Speech, outlining the beginnings of a police state as I mentioned yesterday, is taking place. This is a terror plot that has been revealed by 'a senior source', with no proof of any kind. Well, that's good enough for me!

Let's think... if this story was at all newsworthy is it at least possible that the government would capitalise on it a bit more, rather than just smugly sitting back and smiling at panic among Daily Mail readers. Anyway, The Register sums it up quite well.

Blunkett and the police state. Again.

2004-11-22T18:27:00.000Z

By all rights you should be terrified by Blunkett's proposal to lock people up without trial, and secret trials without juries. No longer would the authorities need a court order to tap your phone - they can listen in whenever they like. Oh, did you mention something about not liking the government? Well, they will be quite entitled to come and lock you up with no evidence. Once there, good luck trying to get out! Without a jury your secret trial could be non-existent, since nobody will be allowed in and would just have to take your word for it.

Why should anyone who has done nothing wrong face this? This quote from Blunkett is scary: "We'd be able to use civil law, like anti-social behaviour orders, to say, 'If you step outside what we've precluded you from doing, if you, for instance, use this particular banking network... then we can move you from the civil into the criminal law', and then we can use the normal criminal justice process, " he said. OK, so if the government decides that I might be using the Internet to organise a group they don't like (for example), they can forbid me from using the Internet at all. If I then do so I can go to prison, despite being completely innocent!

I've never liked Blunkett. He's a power-crazed idiot who would seemingly have been rather at home serving under Hitler. I don't think that's over reacting. Anyone who know about how the Nazis gained control will be able to spot that the government is doing the same thing now. OK, they say 'Islamists' not Jews, but they have the same basic principles. There is a bogeyman out to get us, so we have to do dramatic things to save ourselves. Blunkett is a danger to you, me and society. The man must lose his seat at the next election even if the government stays in. The dead from two world wars didn't die so this fool could throw all of our freedoms away and create a police state.

2004-11-09T11:34:00.000Z

The fallout from the US elections continues. I can't believe how many people justified voting for Bush because of his 'Christian values'. Hmm. Is it 'Christian' to be proud of a record as governor that saw a massive increase in the number of executions? Is it 'Christian' to invade a country and kill 100,000 people in order to get one man? Is it 'Christian' to screw over the poor so that you can give your rich mates tax cuts? Is it 'Christian' to not sign up to Kyoto or in fact pass any environmental legislation that would cost "even one American job"? I guess the bible has changed since I last saw it.

Beware of people who claim that the law needs more of a religious input. We might end up with a situation like those schools in America where teaching evolution is risky. Whether you agree with euthanasia, abortion, and all that stuff or not, we should be debating in terms of moral issues rather than religious ones. Otherwise where do we draw the line? And just whose religion do we follow anyway? Even the old and new testaments disagree on stuff. From an eye for an eye' to 'turn the other cheek', that's quite a different approach. The Old Testament is crap anyway. Even Jesus knew this, hence his one rule over all others - "Treat others as you would have them treat you". That's a rule we could all do with living by.

Thank God for the serious papers

2004-11-04T16:19:00.000Z

I thought that today's front cover of The Independent was brilliant. With just three words it said so much - classic newspaper journalism. However, the excellent stuff that is written in some of our papers is overshadowed by some of the lesser quality ones. Take a look at the front of some of the other papers on that link. Some of them completely fail to mention the US election! It's only one of the most important things to happen!

You have to despair sometimes that the most popular newspaper in this country is The Sun. To be fair to them they did actually mention the election (despite supporting Bush), but you can hardly call it an educational paper. I don't think there is anyone to blame for this really. It is a sad fact of life that some people are just selfish and don't really give a toss about anything outside their own lives, so what would they care about world news? Sure, they'll complain if petrol prices go up because of war, but they really couldn't care less about 100,000 dead civilians in Iraq or genocide in Rwanda.

It's not lack of education, poverty, or anything else that is to blame - morals are something that is intrinsic to the soul. The tabloids, with their stories about naked women etc, cater for this. They are not all bad of course - despite its faults, the Daily Mirror does try to actually show people what's going on. Even the Daily Mail and the rest of the right-wing press do try to inform, even if it is just to make its readers hate black people or whatever. Until people actually care about our world though, genocide, destruction of the planet and gross injustices will continue. There is no easy solution to this, and that is the depressing thing.

Unbelievable

2004-11-03T10:15:00.000Z

I can't quite believe the way the US elections have gone (barring a miraculous result in Ohio). Words fail me.This is a very dark day for the world indeed...

Fair play, Jeremy Hardy

2004-11-02T15:23:00.000Z

I've always liked Jeremy Hardy. His 'Jeremy Hardy Speaks To The Nation' programme on Radio 4 is always amusing. It seems that he has upset Burnley council by suggesting that the BNP and their supporters to be shot. If you heard the programme you'll know that he didn't mean this literally and was making a comedic point about their opponents (although he doesn't like the BNP, obviously). Anyway, the council (which actually has BNP members) have decided to ban his show because of this.

I say 'well done' to Jeremy Hardy. The fact of the matter is that anything that upsets the BNP has to be a good thing, especially as (whether they admit to it in public or not), shooting is exactly the sort of thing that they'd like to do to anyone who isn't white. Reap as you sow, and all that.

Bin Laden tapes

2004-11-02T13:40:00.000Z

Far from endorsing Kerry, Bin Laden's tape mainly criticised the corruption of the Bush administration. Unsurprisingly, what US viewers saw on television was a very edited version. Now I'm not saying that Bin Laden is a figure who should be believed, but why have CNN changed his words to involve Kerry when he didn't mention him at all? There is something fishy going on here. Read the link and make up your own mind...

American Election

2004-11-02T11:08:00.000Z

Today is, as the front page of The Independent puts it, 'A day that will decide the fate of the world'. On the one hand we have a president who, if you put him in charge of, say, Russia instead of the US, would make a perfect Bond villain. Kerry isn't that great either if you want to be realistic - he still sticks to the American principles of the rich getting richer and the poor being denied healthcare etc. He is slightly less of a zealot when it comes to this though, and he appears to at least have a clue when it comes to foreign policy, so when it comes down to it he is the obvious choice.

Just how the whole election seems to be so close is something that wouldn't be believed if it wasn't actually happening. Under Bush the US has done from a massive trade surplus to an unsustainable deficit, and a general feeling of goodwill from the rest of the world that has turned to contempt, and sometimes hatred. At the same time he has made a select few Americans richer, at no benefit to majority. Just why do Americans seem to want to vote for him? The man is a fool, and the fact that this is clear to everyone apart from the people voting has to make them wonder if they're being fully informed by their media.

What it comes down to is the fact that a lot of Americans don't like to question that fact that they are 'right'. Consider the fact that even publishing a book from certain countries is illegal in the US (even if it was won top prizes). If some book was banned in Afghanistan by the Taleban you can bet that the US would be the first to complain. The same is true of their last election, where the result was decided by their 'supreme court' by judges strictly to their party lines. This was outrageous, yet somehow it stood. How can a country where the whole electoral system is so clearly broken and corrupt lecture other countries on what they should do?

I won't be surprised if Bush wins. You know what though? Maybe it's for the best. If Kerry wins he will no-doubt be blamed for the aftermath of Bush's actions. If Bush wins then he will pay the price for the last four years. Not only that, but the US will be so financially weakened and lose so much standing in the world that it might lose its superpower status. This might well be for the good of the world. It is only through co-operation that the world can move forward. The days of unilateralism are over. We must go forward with consensus or possibly face a period of fear, war and terror that we can't imagine.

More Bush election lies

2004-10-29T16:10:00.000Z

You may remember when the Republicans faked a picture in an advert that they produced showing John Kerry at an anti-Vietnam rally (not that this would have been a bad thing if it was true, but there you go). Well, they are at it again, this time faking pictures to show extra supporters at a Bush speech. They admit that the footage was faked and give some bad excuse about the original being obscured, but the point here is that they have effectively made it look like there were more people at the speech than there really was. This isn't as serious as the fake featuring Kerry of course, but the fact that these two adverts have been found to be false does rather make you wonder how many others have gone unnoticed...

ID Cards

2004-10-27T13:43:00.000Z

So, even though ID cards aren't 'compulsory', they will be if you want to go abroad, thanks to being issued with passports. Oh good, here comes that police state that the government is so keen on.

What's that? You can't think why ID cards would be bad? Well, this will give you a few reasons why you should fear it. No doubt the majority of the public will just roll over and let go of our rights. Christ, not even the Americans would put up with an ID card! There has to be something wrong when something is a bit too 'Big Brother' for them, yet we seem to accept it.

2004-10-27T10:22:00.000Z

Political progress, with The Guardian switching its support from Labour to the Lib Dems at the next general election. The editor of The Independent is also close to the party, of course. This can only be a good thing, not only because a proper three party system is good for democracy, but also because the politics of fear, prejudice and selfishness from the main two parties have got far too mainstream. We are desperately in need of a shift to the left in popular political opinion, and until a few heavyweight newspapers do this I fear it will be a bit of a struggle. If they get on board then I really believe that the Lib Dems can be the official opposition after the next election. Then, maybe, we can get some decent questioning of government policy in Iraq, xenophobic attitudes to Europe, and the slide into to the police state that the two main parties are both fans of.

Top TV

2004-10-21T09:32:00.000Z

If you missed The Power Of Nightmares on BBC2 last night, you missed one of the best programmes I have seen about the current climate of fear being generated by the government, and how they are using this for their own political ends. It was very, very interesting. It may have been preaching to the converted of course, but it's the sort of thing that these pro-war terrorist-fearing members of the population really should be forced to see. Of course they won't though - they'll be too busy being told that BBC2 is 'snobbish' or 'elitist' by the Murdoch press...

More Dodgy Deals

2004-10-19T14:20:00.000Z

George Monbiot is a brilliant investigator and journalist, and everything he writes is worth reading. Today's article in The Guardian is typically thought provoking. British aid money is a direct cause of people in South Africa having their water supply taken away from them. Yet another good argument against 'public/private' deals - here we can see the logically ultimate conclusion.

2004-10-19T14:00:00.000Z

It looks like the government is lying again about Iraq, this time by dissing the Lib Dems who were the only mainstream party against the war (correctly, it turns out - although some of us never doubted this position). It's interesting to see that Jack Straw is saying that by not wanting to rush into a pre-emptive war the Lib Dems were 'strengthening' Saddam. No, Jack - they just wanted to obey international law and, let's go crazy here, show some decent morals. But then what would Jack Straw know about morals? The other person in government who I trust less is Blunkett, and it's a pretty close thing. Between them they'd be 'chip and pinning' us all while arresting us for not being hope by 7pm, given the chance.

Big Brother is arriving, and the population seem to like it. Of course it's easy to blame the public, but it's not really their fault - most people are decent. However, with hate-mongers like Murdoch and the Daily Mail peddling their xenophobic filth and pushing it into people's homes 24/7, it's no wonder people have these slightly crazy thoughts. It's fairly telling that we live in a time when the Tories aren't really right-wing enough for most people. so groups like the UKIP crop up, with their barely hidden messages of hate, fear and ignorance. I never thought I'd say this, but even the BNP are a bit less isolationist in some of their views than the UKIP. That's scary.

Iraq

2004-10-15T10:03:00.000Z

My respect for Robin Cook is increasing all of the time. He's one of the few Labour MPs to actually do the right thing when it came to Iraq, without worrying about his career or other such selfish things. His article in today's Guardian is absolutely right. How long will it be before the government falls over this? It's looking more inevitable every day...

Fuel for thought

2004-10-05T14:24:00.000Z

So it appears that those fuel protests a few years ago have cost the country two billion pounds per year. Yes, that's us paying for it, thanks to some selfish people who held the country to ransom because they wanted to continue their subsidised destruction of the planet - something they seem to think it is their God-given right to continue to enjoy.

OK, fuel protestors - how should we raise that 2 billion you have cost us? More income tax that we all have to pay? Or how about more VAT, which we can't opt out of either? It seems to me that a fuel tax is as close as we can get to an optional tax that costs the selfish more. Surely this is a tax ideal that we should be encouraging? If people choose to buy 4x4's or use their cars instead of public transport, that's their choice. They should pay for that choice. 'Taxes on motorists don't go to the roads!' they wail. Well, good. Screw them. They pay nowhere near the long-term environmental cost of their selfish actions, so why shouldn't they pay towards the public transport and green options that they shun?

It is inevitable that some people live in areas that are difficult to access by public transport, such as rural villages etc. This problem can be solved by providing these people with a subsidy. However many of these people there are though, there are many, many times more in towns who can easily reach public transport. These people will only change their ways if not doing so hits them in the pocket. There is sometimes little point in appealing to someone's conscience if they really don't care. Money is what they understand, so we must use the same language.

How many schools could 2 billion a year have bought? How many hospitals? How many starving children's lives could have been saved if that money had gone in foreign aid? These people are immoral. What is their extra 2p a litre to them? Great, so they can afford another pint of beer a week. We will all end up paying for it in the end.

I have cars, I admit. However, I rarely drive (once a week or so at most), so while I could of course be more green, I choose not to be occasionally. However, despite owning a car I would have no problem with an increase on fuel duty. I know it is my choice to drive, so the cost is one of the things I must consider. I don't go on some rant about how 'unfair' the price of fuel is when I have to buy petrol. If it gets too high I will stop owning a car. This will be a sad day, but it will not bother me too much. Any irritation will be countered by the fact that others will have to do the same, and that will mean that traffic reduction is a reality. This is necessary for our future. We can choose whether to fight the inevitable or accept it earlier and adjust. I think we all know what would be best, deep down.

Bonkers conkers

2004-10-04T09:43:00.000Z

"It's political correctness gone mad!", the Daily Mail might shout. In this case I'm afraid I have to agree with them. More and more schools are stopping kids playing conkers because of fears that some crazy parents might sue them or something. At least this school is doing something about it, however over-the-top it might seem.

Parents need a good slap. They are going to bring-up kids who are exposed to so little risk that they'll be scared to do anything at all. Don't get me wrong - I wasn't a great risk-taker when I was a kid. I didn't worry about playing conquers though, or walking home on my own from school, or riding my bike on the road. All of these things are judged a little bit too scary by parents now, so they drive their kids to school in killer 4x4's and forbid them to do anything other than sit on their fat arses in front of the telly, drinking 'Sunny Delight' and eating McDonald's (thanks to pandering to any pathetic 'dislike' for decent food that their spoilt brats get away with).

Childhood involves a bit of danger. This is all part of growing up. Having said that, playing conkers isn't dangerous! Has anyone ever actually been seriously hurt playing it? And if conkers is banned, what on Earth do they say about British Bulldogs? That was the sure-fire way to injury when I was at school. Even Off Ground It had a far greater chance of scraped knees and broken arms. I think we need to put it all into perspective a bit. Let the kids live a life and learn from their own mistakes. We all did, and we've (mostly) turned out ok, and very few (if any) of us were blinded by conkers.

Missed Opportunity

2004-10-01T15:29:00.000Z

So, Labour have held Hartlepool, despite an inept candidate who couldn't help but be bitter and mean spirited in his 'victory' speech. A 10,000 majority reduced to 2,000 is still a result worth celebrating of course, but it could have been better! I think this article from the Guardian sums it up really. Give it a read - they make a very good point.

Transport

2004-09-28T11:46:00.000Z

It's nice when the government actually does something good, and it deserves some credit for doing so. It's a shame that for every good thing they seem to do a bad thing of course. Take yesterdays announcement that they are selling-off BBC Technology, for example. Sure, sell the infrastructure of the public broadcaster (which we all own, of course) to some private company. That makes sense.

Anyway, back to the positive. The government has made Transport Direct, a web site that will plan out journeys for you. Simply type in your from/to details, and it will suggest a route that combines all forms of public transport, as necessary. You can even tell it to include journeys by car if you like, so it can replace things like the AA route planner (no more annoying pop-ups!). The front page also has a handy real-time list of traffic jams if you want to drive. Top stuff. No doubt they will sell it off at way below cost if it gets too good or popular though.

But he's not sweet! Can't you see that? Hello?

2004-09-21T13:40:00.000Z

Stories like this make me wonder just how some people think. A reporter was kidnapped by the Taliban and held against her will. Upon returning to the UK she decides to join Islam.

This is all fair enough - I wouldn't want to question anyone's reason for joining any particular religion. However, some of the stuff she says in this article is bizarre. For example, that crazy one-handed Muslim cleric rang her up to 'congratulate her' for becoming a Muslim, but ended the call by saying "...there is just one thing I want you to remember. Tomorrow, if you have an accident and die, you will go straight to hellfire". She then calls him 'quite sweet'. She went on to take her final vows despite being scared to death in the meantime.

Are these the actions of a sane woman? Far be it from me to judge, but Yvonne Ridley, you are wrong in the head. If there was one thing that would put me off joining a religion, it would be that crazy one-handed loony phoning me up and telling me I'd go to hell unless I converted quickly. It's hardly a positive encouraging tactic. She also uses the fact that men are no longer interested in her as some sort of bonus. Sure, whatever. You didn't have to go out with men before you became a Muslim, you crazy fool! Sheesh.

Healthcare

2004-09-14T16:29:00.000Z

Both the government and the opposition are making worrying noises about getting more private finance into the NHS. There is also talk of having to prove who you are before you are treated. The logical conclusion of this is some sort of health insurance (even if the state pays - at the start at least).

It is an indication of a cilivilsed society to have healthcare free at the point of treatment, without having to fill in means-testing forms or questionnaires. People often cite America as some sort of model, but there are plenty of things wrong with it. Stories like this show how free healthcare</a> is a good, necessary thing. Sure, the NHS might be underfunded to an extent, but nobody suffers due to inability to pay. All we need to get over now is the unwillingness of the British public to pay more reasonable taxes, then our healthcare system can be the envy of the world once more, without the immoral aspects arising from shareholders making money from the sick.

The Public Whip

2004-09-07T13:05:00.000Z

I found a link to The Public Whip on Slashdot today. It's a really good site. Try this link to see how your MP (or any MP) stands when it comes to how close their votes align to everyone else. The main page contains links to lots of interesting tools and statistics. You can see how your MP voted and where they rebelled against the party line. There is also a 'dream MP' section, where you can enter how you would have voted in parliament had you been there yourself, then see which real MP most closely matches your views. It's really good - and quite revealing.