Identity Politics and the ongoing self-destruction of the Left

This post has been cross-posted at Harry's Place

The continuing story of the disintegration of the Women's March movement in the US is important in how it demonstrates the intellectual bankruptcy of todays Left.

Take this now infamous statement from Tamika Mallory, one of the original organisers :

“Since that conversation, we’ve all learned a lot about how while white Jews, as white people, uphold white supremacy, ALL Jews are targeted by it,” Ms. Mallory said in a statement to The New York Times.

The meaning of this seems to be that Jews can only be on the progressive side if they don't have white skin. Now what hue of whiteness for a Jewish person are we talking about exactly that puts you across the border into being acceptable or unacceptable ? Do we need a colour chart to decide a persons level on the chart of right-on ness ? Its like we are going back to Victorian times when class distinctions were so important maps showed the social level of areas by colour.

The idea that anyone could follow or go along with a movement that has such people as leaders is extraordinary.

But unfortunately this is now where much of the Modern Left is. I'm sure there are many who see themselves as progressive who are aware how bizarre this kind of statement is but if you speak out and show up the likes of Mallory for their obvious failures you face possibly being shunned and thrown out of the movement or even worse (for the social shame) being dubbed a racist.

In this vein look how Diane Abbott has recently accused the BBC of "legitimising racism" because Fiona Bruce called her out for her manifest flaws on Question Time last week. I wonder if Fiona Bruce was black what would Abbott have said ? Should we only have minority female presenters on political shows so figures like Abbott feel safe ?

How did we get to this position ? Sadly a succession of post war Left thinkers have cynically (and because the working classes refused to follow them as they should have) exploited group identity politics to get support (after everyone else sussed them out). The leaders of these movements don't care about the logical absurdity of their positions - for them the potential outcome of their divisive politics (ie the violent overthrow of Western capitalism) is the only important thing and who cares about logical debate. And unfortunately their greatest discovery has been how to sustain support by moral and social shaming (as is often the case with authoritarian idealists).

Along with many others, I really don't think I can any longer identify of the Left while it goes down the rabbit hole of such absurdities. The whole narrative of identity politics is now based on the overriding importance of the feelings of minority groups who feel threatened by the discourse of partisan obsessives and extremists from opposing groups. This leads to a never ending circus of accusations and finger pointing.

There is also no doubt identity politics has been a major factor in the rise of right wing populism in the West, as whites have jumped on the group politics grievance bandwagon. This has had major repercussions for democracies worldwide and I fear we have not even seen the full results, in fact it may well be we have only seen the start of a long term and uncertain path of events.

Corbyn and the Moderate Labour Splitters

So it looks like some of the moderate Labour MPs have finally had enough and decided to go, with Frank Field resigning being what could be the start of a major split.

For Frank as well as others it is apparently the anti-Semitism issue that matters, this is the thing that has brought it to a head.

Now I oppose Corbyn as leader of Labour (and will not be voting for them again unless the Far Left is booted out - which could take quite a time) but I do wonder about the sudden attack of conscience from these moderates.

Its almost as if they are looking for a moral reason for going which sounds to me really what is called virtue signalling, that is a decision or statement that purports to show the importance and depth of ones basic and deep moral values but is in reality an exercise in using the appeal to conscience to show one's status amongst (what you identify as) “right thinking” people. This reflects how identity politics has created the mind set amongst the liberal intellectual class that one's views and statements on gender and race issues are of such extraordinary importance that other more mundane political issues like economics and foreign policy are of lesser value.

I mean the moderates in Labour have known all along about the Corbyn/McDonnell gangs’ mad views on economics (e.g. the policy of nationalising the water companies without proper compensation) and foreign and security policy (i.e. hating NATO and pretending to support peace in NI by only ever talking to hard line republicans). Didn’t they care about all that quite important stuff ?

All the latest revelations that are coming up now about what Corbyn did and said over the years in support of the Palestinians were all known when he was elected. How come these moderates are now only being so horrified about Corbyn's historic utterances ? I'm not sure it makes much sense.

One lesson from this disaster should be that placating the Far Left who are far more ruthless in obtaining their aims than moderates is just stupid. Labour had the opportunity to remove the likes of Corbyn in the past but just ended up treating him and his ilk as eccentrics to be indulged. Frank Field even nominated Corbyn as leader ! As usual moderate liberal types in the West lack the ability to forcefully argue for and implement difficult but necessary measures. You can see that in the fatal lack of sense and purpose in implementing immigration rules in Western countries that has directly led to the rise of populism. That failing is also because arguments about immigration have become so bound up in the moral fervour surrounding identity politics and minority rights amongst the Western liberal intellectual class.

I don’t see any way out of this mess for centrists until there is a sea change in their attitudes to these issues. Otherwise populists of Left and Right will continue to gain ground and the future looks bleak for sensible centrist pragmatic politics.

Labour and the PLP - will it be total surrender or a fight back ?

This post has been cross-posted at Harry's Place

Jeremy Corbyn is still going around as if he won the election and his popularity seems to be on the way up. What are sensible Labour MPs going to do about it ?

Now although Labour won 30 extra seats it is nowhere near enough to be able to form a government. All the Ulster Unionist MPs are against him and I would imagine that the Liberals in reality would want nothing to do with Corbyn and his fantasy manifesto if the offer to go into government with him was on the table.

As for that manifesto its clear the moderates just let Corbyn and co hatch up whatever they wanted and boy did they go for it. Bribes for students and other giveaways with a semblance of a funding plan arranged (although it was still dodgy) and wow the electorate went for it. Then there was the cost of renationalisations which would just be magicked up. Of course the Tory campaign was dire and inexplicably failed to hold Labour to account on any of this but I doubt that will happen again. 

Presumably now all this stuff will be party policy. Will all the party come in behind it ? ATM the craven behaviour of the likes of Harriet Harman (see here) and others seems to say they will but surely once the Tories get back on track they will be holding Labour to account for their lavish promises.

The other big issue in Labour is Brexit, it is clear now that Corbyn and McDonnell are for hard Brexit, unfortunately some of the Remainer electorate don't seem to realise it, or don't care as they are lost in Corbyn worship. One of the reasons Corbyn and McDonnell may want hard Brexit is that then they won't be constrained by EU laws which might stop them renationalising companies (see here), which is a big part of their vision. Again once this becomes apparent lets hope things change in Labour (and indeed we see Keir Starmer being more flexible over Brexit here). Or perhaps none of them care and they will all just swallow their doubts as they might get back in power. If so what a bunch of disgraceful turncoats.

I still think Labour will never win from the Left and hope this is Corbyn's high point but if it isn't and we somehow get the nightmare of a Corbyn government then it will very much be the Labour moderates who are to blame.

"Fake News" ? Not News more like it

The supposed furore over Judge Kushner's remarks about rape is a perfect example of the kind of pointless fake news that our MSM and even the likes of the BBC indulge in.

This is the way it goes :

1. Person in authority (or celebrity even) says something supposedly controversial because it (in some journos opinion) goes against accepted opinion and could be an example of "Xism" or an "Xphobia".

2. Concerned group produces a boiler plate statement of concern once notified of 1 by MSM journos looking for a story.

3. Broadcast media start "debate" on said non-issue after phoning rent-a-mouths on either side of "debate" so in this instance this was the first story on the BBC Today programme on Saturday morning and still the main news story on the Radio 5 headlines at midday.

3. Issue drags on over a few days and gets onto the phone-in circuit (there was a phone-in discussing it this Monday morning on LBC)

4. People get more and more pissed off with the whole nonsense and smash their radios/PC screens in despair (maybe that's only me).

This particular issue seems to boil down to an Humpty Dumpty like battle over the meaning of the word "blame" as far as I can see but maybe I'm not informed or bright enough to discover the larger important issue. Whatever that is though is it really enough to dominate the BBC's coverage when there are literally thousands of other more important things going on in the world ?

Trump elected - Islington reacts

This post has been cross-posted at Harry's Place

Seen this morning in the liberal lefty Corbynite cosmopolitan paradise of Islington. I don't think this helps to be honest.

To be serious though this kind of thing (ie abuse of others who don't agree with you) is absolutely part of the issue for the Left. Do you think these cafe owners would put up a similar sign saying "All Zimbabweans/Russians/Iranians must be accompanied by an adult" after those countries had elected unpleasant leaders ? If not, why not ?

Calais Jungle to be closed down

This post has been cross-posted at Harry's Place

The announcement that the French President Francois Hollande is to close down the Calais Jungle immigrant camp and deport all those who are not granted asylum (or do not claim it) is welcome news to Calais locals, tourists and lorry drivers who have had to put up with dangerous and disturbing scenes on their way to the Channel ports and the Eurotunnel terminal.

Why have the French not done this before ? I have tried to find out both by asking French emigres and looking at news analysis. It appears they just did not want to have to process these people properly because its too much trouble, costs too much and the legal process takes too long. Did they also want to annoy and embarrass the Brits their allies and fellow EU partners. Well who knows but if they did it was a disgusting tactic that I find hard to comprehend.

I wonder how many peoples views on the EU were affected by the Jungle fiasco ? Personally mine were. What is the point in being part of a group one of whose main members behaves in such a manner ignoring the rule of law in this way ? How can you be in a close union with countries that behave with such bad faith ?

The other thing is how our media has reported this issue. They have reported in all seriousness the nonsensical pronouncements of French politicians on how the UK government needs to do something about this totally French problem. That might have some sense if the French had documented the Jungle occupants as they were required to do and processed their asylum claims - then perhaps there could be some kind of agreement to take eg children with family in the UK. But they have up until now just left the people living in squalor and done nothing.

We never seem to get such sensible questions asked though, it is always about how our government needs to do something, not the ludicrous behaviour of the French. No wonder people are losing faith in the establishment and the MSM, and this is probably another one of the reasons they voted for Brexit.

Freedom of Speech rally at NUS headquarters

This post has been cross-posted at Harry's Place

Yesterday there was a rally outside NUS headquarters in central London for Freedom of Speech and against the NUS attitude towards the likes of Maryam Namazie and Peter Tatchell who have recently been treated as if they were "problematic" speakers in the NUS's now infamous "safe spaces".

The crime of these respected campaigners is to speak out about Islamism and Islamist speakers and expose their vile views (which many of their defenders like to characterise as "socially conservative" as if they were middle class church elders). About 150 people attended the demo and it was good to see support from the likes of Nick Cohen. Also present was the feminist Julie Bindel who has recently been "no-platformed" for falling foul of some other feminists and trans activists.

Many of the speakers were students who are trying to restore the principles of free speech to universities including the Right2Debate group. You can see what they are up against by reading some of their case histories here.

One issue I would have with the campaign is that they want to reform the no-platform policy rather than abolish it. This muddies the waters a bit I think. Peter Tatchell said that this was because speakers promoting violence or spreading slander should not be allowed. But there are laws against that kind of thing anyway. Groups or individuals should not be banned just because the current leadership of the NUS doesn't like them.

Jessica McCallin on Cologne in the Telegraph

There's a very strong article in the Telegraph here by Jessica McCallin about the Cologne and elsewhere attacks on women by mainly Arab and North African men. The author details her experiences while a young woman in Istanbul and some of the horrendous treatment she was subject to. Having personally seen how women are treated in Turkey and other Middle Eastern countries it all unfortunately rings just too true.

What is to be done ? McCallin says :

If liberal Europe wants to continue with the current level of Muslim immigration it needs to have an urgent debate about how much cultural relativity it is prepared to tolerate. It needs to stop clinging to the idea that “cultural imperialism” is a purely white western thing, or that to criticise aspects of another culture is to criticise all of it. We need to decide what our values are, protect them and insist that new arrivals respect them.

A excellent statement that should serve as a rallying call to rebuild the Liberal Left out of the morass of intellectual nonsense it has sunk into.

One element of the above could be amended however, as the author mentions she has has not met with the same treatment in all Muslim countries, in Sub Saharan Africa and Indonesia these problems are not such an issue. The problem is mainly specific to the culture of North Africa and the Middle East. This fact destroys the basis for the charge of racism or Islamophobia being shouted at anyone bringing up this issue.

So how should we deal with countries with this culture ? Should we single out countries in some way because we find their culture vile ? We could start with being very strong about our dislike of the policies of eg Saudi Arabia, but for a government to try to do this is problematic - look what happened to Sweden when the Foreign Minister Margot Wallström criticised the Saudis here. Wallström has not given up however - hopefully she will be seen by other governments as a beacon of change.

As for immigrants from Syria and the Middle East driven out by war, well most now see how Germany's policies of letting anyone in has been a disaster especially as many of the immigrants have been young single men. The UK's policy of only allowing in people from UNHCR camps seems like a far more sensible approach.

As to what we should do about immigrants who flout our laws and values by a backward violent attitude to women, the Germans are looking to change laws to allow deportation to be made easier :

On Tuesday, German officials outlined plans to make it easier to deport foreigners. They say the plans could be passed into law as early as next month. 

The new rules would lower the threshold of criminal offending for expulsion, allowing authorities to deport offenders found guilty of sexual or physical assaults or resisting police officers. 

Previously, foreigners could be deported only if they were found guilty of crimes punishable by a sentence of one year or more.

This sounds like a reasonable first step and no doubt other practical changes could be made in eg the education of immigrants who want to come here.

The main good thing would be of course for the Liberal Left to start robustly standing up for its values at home and abroad and to stop indulging in ludicrous false equivalences and whataboutery. There are signs this is happening at last but its been a long and frustrating road.

Corbyn elected leader - FFS

So the much rumoured disaster has happened and Corbyn has been elected Labour leader. What will happen now ?

Well having listened to his acceptance speech I really wonder how long he will last. He managed to sound vacuous and paranoid at the same time with his platitudes interspersed with railing at the media. At one point it sounded like he was ordering them to leave his family alone (no Jeremy you don't get to tell the press what to print yet). 

On that, what was he going on about ? As far as I can see all of the coverage about his connexions has been about his dodgy political friends such as Sinn Fein, Hezbollah and almost every opponent of the West you can think of. This is his political family of course, is that what he meant ? The only other member of his family I've seen mentioned is Piers Corbyn the weatherman and I don't think he's been upset about the extra publicity he's been getting.

In the Independent yesterday he said this about the criticisms of his political friends (or "personal attacks" as he terms them) :

He said they were a symptom of today's "yah-boo politics" that were part of the reason why so many people are "totally turned off" politics in Britain as he called for a more positive approach in Parliament and on the airwaves. 

Mr Corbyn told a packed-out crowd in Islington that one of the main reasons behind the consistently low turnout at elections in the UK was due to people being "totally turned off by a style of politics which seem to rely on the levels of clubhouse theatrical abuse we throw at each other in parliament and throw at each other across the airwaves."  

He added: "As nasty and unpleasant much of the stuff printed is and remains and is deeply hurtful to my wife, family and close friends, we’re not responding in any way; we don’t do that kind of politics."

Yes Jeremy being called out on the loons and far-Left types you hang out with must be most upsetting but it isn't an attack on your loved ones. In fact your responses to criticisms along these lines looks like a deliberate attempt to avoid legitimate questions.

Corbyn looked quite wound up when he was going on about the press, well I think we're going to see him being a lot more upset in future. He said today he won't be doing any interviews tomorrow (he was due to go on Andrew Marr am), is this a sign of things to come ? Its all very well putting on the noble unsullied tribune act when you're surrounded by cheering crowds its a bit different when you're getting tough questioning from journalists.

And what will happen at PMQ's next Wednesday ? The Tories are going to be welcoming him like a Messiah with gales of hilarity while most of the PLP sit like mourning statues. It could well be a pitiful affair and difficult to watch, unless Cameron decides to go easy on him to avoid looking too nasty. Even then the rest of the Tories will be howling like hyenas.

Those of us of a Blairite persuasion are just going to have to see what happens. We are truly cursed to live in interesting times.

Northern Ireland at the forefront of the free speech debate.

This post has been cross-posted at Harry's Place

The increasingly strange media and legal environment we have arrived at in the UK regarding free speech means expressing fundamentalist religious beliefs, making off colour jokes and inadvertently offending groups of people is now a crime and/or a career and potentially business threatening move. Three recent cases from that hotbed of PC politics and hand wringing liberalism Northern Ireland perhaps bring things into focus.

1. Far-Left comic Frankie Boyle (who thinks Israel is a terrorist state) faced protests when he recently played at the West Belfast Feile festival about sundry "offensive" jokes he's made in the past about eg Downs syndrome children.

Various groups including parents of disabled children protested about his invite and called for the gig to be cancelled. (In the end however it appears very few people were actually so bothered that they turned up at the gig to protest - perhaps it was raining even harder than usual that night).

It was interesting to hear on TV some of the protesters, one of whom said she would not be able to go out in public with her disabled son if Frankie Boyle played in Belfast. This kind of personalising of remote offence, the idea that if someone somewhere is saying something subjectively offensive to me, therefore I should feel very upset is surely bizarre in the extreme. The encouragement of this kind of nonsense by our idiotic media in the pursuit of "controversies" is a social and political disaster.

2. In the "you really couldn't make it up" category the airline Easyjet was a) forced to apologise for calling Orange parades "colourful" and "great to watch" in their inflight magazine then b) asked to apologise to Unionist politicians and Orangemen for apologising (aka "demonising the Orange Order").

Now hilarious as this nonsense is it just shows what hoops businesses and organisations now have to go through in order to keep up with the perpetually offended particularly those on either side of partisan conflicts.

3. Perhaps more to the heart of the problem we have the case of Evangelical Protestant Pastor James McConnell who last week appeared in court accused of  “sending, or causing to be sent, by means of a public electronic communications network, a message or other matter that was grossly offensive.” See here and here (where you can see the sermon) :

An evangelical pastor in Northern Ireland is under fire and will be prosecuted after calling Islam “satanic” and claiming that its doctrine was “spawned in hell”  during a controversial 2014 sermon that streamed over the Internet.

Now no doubt some of his words were offensive to Islam and Muslims but surely that is the point. Whenever fundamentalist religious dogmas come up against each other on basic points of doctrine about which is the right path there are bound to be clear incompatibilities and clashes. Fundamentalist Protestantism in its essence is of course antipathetic to other doctrines, not just Islam but also Catholicism. If you think unbelievers are going to hell for all eternity then you're not going to be happy until all those unbelievers are saved, which means you're going to very anti "false prophets" and other religions in general.

How far can a secular society go in allowing extremist preaching in the name of freedom of religion while ensuring the violence that can ensue does not fracture society ? The question of course has become far more important this century with the very real threat of Islamic terrorism whipped up by fundamentalist preachers but it could also be argued eg that Ian Paisley's anti-Catholic ranting in NI in the 1960's and 70's had very negative results.

Interestingly there has been an intervention in the McConnell case by a Muslim cleric from London Dr Al-Hussaini who claims he will go to jail with McConnell if he is found guilty :

"While those of us who hold clerical office as Christian pastors and priests, Jewish rabbis or Muslim imams, should rightly have due care and regard to the leadership role we exercise when we make public speeches, nevertheless our foremost duty remains to express theological ideas in good conscience before God.  

"For these reasons, I strongly uphold the moral right of Pastor McConnell and myself, as Christian and Muslim, to disagree about matters of doctrine and belief, and further I express my deep dismay that my fellow citizen is being subject to criminal proceedings, when at no time have any of the statements he has made incited to physical harm or hatred against anyone.  

"I therefore wish to place on the record my deep concern and opposition to the criminalising of theological disagreement, at a time when our society should in fact be fostering better quality disagreement and, in that spirit, I further undertake that if Pastor McConnell is convicted and sent to prison, I shall go to prison with him."

That's all very well but if the "theological idea" that is being expressed is a direct threat to eg gays or apostates is it OK to allow such free expression ?  And who clears up after extremist doctrinaires when their disciples have finished fighting each other ? There is a real free speech dilemma there I think but as for Pastor McConnell professing extreme opposition to Islam that is surely not something he should be in court for.

UNITE backs Corbyn for Labour leader

This post has been cross-posted at Harry's Place

The news that UNITE have backed far Leftist Jeremy Corbyn for Labour leader may have come as a shock to those who assume UK unions have a sensible pragmatic views on politics, however should this kind of extreme Left advocacy really come as a shock to anyone ?

After all UNITE is the union that has Andrew Murray formerly of the STWC as its chief of staff, a man responsible for such madness as this :

The chief of staff of Britain’s largest trade union Unite has launched a group supporting pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine. 

Introduced as representing the Communist Party of Britain, rather than Unite, Mr Murray, 56, a former member of the TUC General Council, branded the Kiev government ‘fascist’.  

Mr Murray – whose union has given £28.9 million to Labour since it was formed in 2007 – also derided Prince Charles for comparing President Vladimir Putin to Hitler, adding that he rejected ‘this focus on Mr Putin, when our enemy is at home’.

The leadership of many UK unions has unfortunately been infiltrated by various far-Left types, this is just another variant of the old Militant style infiltration that caused such disasters for Labour in the 70's and 80's. This often happens because union members are more interested in who can get them the best deal in the workplace than the wider political stances of their leaders.

Now scarily it appears that even commentators such as Luke Akehurst think Corbyn might have a chance of becoming leader. What would happen then ? What would David Lammy do ? He's the man who only backed Corbyn to get him on the ballot as he had previously raised so little support in the PLP.

This is what Lammy said when he "backed" Corbyn :

I spoke to Jeremy Corbyn last night and am pleased to have this morning nominated him to be leader of the Labour Party. While there is enough that Jeremy and I disagree on to mean that I won’t be voting for him, I believe the choice of who becomes Labour’s next leader should be made by Labour members and supporters - not by MPs.

Given the electoral disaster that Corbyn would be for Labour, if the members elected him leader (despite his lack of support in the PLP) there would be absolute chaos in the party and God knows what the outcome would be.

Labour's SNP Disaster

This post has been cross-posted at Harry's Place

Yesterday's poll which showed the SNP on course to take every seat in Scotland is a frightening one and its not clear that politicians have woken up to the implications. If Labour was to go into some sort of confidence and supply arrangement with the SNP after next Thursday it could lead to an almighty nationalistic backlash in England, especially because on current projections this alliance would only have c37% of the vote over the UK (v eg c47% for the Tories + UKIP).

In spite of this we still see support for such an arrangement appearing in (where else) the Guardian along the lines of "well who cares, the SNP are to the Left of Labour so its a good thing". But as Eric Joyce points how here the SNP have been and will continue to be all things to all men, in fact in Scotland they have shown no signs of being more Left than Labour in their actual policies, see also James Bloodworth here. Alex Salmond even once said he didn't mind the economic side of Thatcherism - no Clause 4 man he. All they are doing now is pretending to be progressive to get Scottish Labour votes, and the kind of progressive politics they have in mind is more money for Scotland from blackmailing a Westminster administration. Its a win win situation for selfish nationalistic politics.

Now it might well be the case that the Tories (perhaps because of the above prospect) actually get in again to form a coalition with the Liberals. What will happen then ? If Labour moves back to the centre the Scots may well stay with the SNP, if they move to the Left and aim to ally more with the SNP then the English backlash will again come into play.

The SNP surge is potentially a life threatening problem for Labour. Any supporter of a centre-Left Labour party can only hope that the Scots in future come to their senses and reject the SNP's nationalistic opportunism. The majority of Scots do not want independence it appears but if they continue to vote SNP they will not only be playing games with the UK constitution they will potentially be stopping Labour from ever getting into power in the UK again.  

They sure do things different over there 

This post has been cross-posted at Harry's Place

Sometimes its just a real eye opener going to another country, even one that close by and realising how parochial so much of our politics in the UK is and how little knowledge we have of other countries customs, politics and norms.

On a recent trip to Germany it was a bit of a liberation after a long drive to realise the autobahn we were driving on had no speed limit. Yes driving at over 100 mph which is an offence you can lose your licence for in the UK is legal on large parts of German motorways. There has been much discussion concerning the safety aspects of this policy (see here) but it seems there is no definite conclusion that the lack of a speed limit on the autobahn causes a major increased road fatality rate compared to other European countries (note in all countries the % of fatalities that happen on motorways is low < 15%).

Another different attitude can be found concerning the ban on smoking in pubs. In the picturesque Rhineland villages we visited we found most of the the bars ("stubes")  allowed smoking inside (not a totally pleasant experience having been used to the changed UK situation). And even in Frankfurt there was a bar with a sign outside saying “RaucherLokal” (Smokers Local) right in the city centre. Being a bit surprised about this I looked up the situation and found that indeed different regions (Länder) in Germany have different rules (see here), basically it appears that small owner managed bars are exempt in certain regions. Probably this is due to a sensible reaction to the adverse effect that the no-smoking rules have had on the bar sector and look indeed on the effect the rules have had in the UK on the pub trade.

But imagine if it was suggested that in the UK certain non food serving locals should be exempt from the smoking ban. I imagine there would be an outcry in the media with various self-important heath and safety gurus all over the media bemoaning it. And perhaps it might lead to a rise in lung cancer as indeed of course the autobahn lack of speed limit might cause more road deaths. However as with anything else the health implications of a policy are not the only factor we need to take into account in making these decisions.

In the UK these kinds of health and safety issue are nearly always bound up with discussions re cost to the UK health service as we have a fully government funded and publicly run service. But other countries are different. In Germany the service is run by private non-profit funds and insurance companies under govt regulation and nearly everyone pays an insurance premium of some kind. From Wikipedia :

Compulsory insurance applies to those below a set income level and is provided through private non-profit "sickness funds" at common rates for all members, and is paid for with joint employer-employee contributions. Provider compensation rates are negotiated in complex corporatist social bargaining among specified autonomously organized interest groups (e.g. physicians' associations) at the level of federal states (Länder). The sickness funds are mandated to provide a wide range of coverages and cannot refuse membership or otherwise discriminate on an actuarial basis. Small numbers of persons are covered by tax-funded government employee insurance or social welfare insurance. Persons with incomes above the prescribed compulsory insurance level may opt into the sickness fund system, which a majority do, or purchase private insurance. Private supplementary insurance to the sickness funds of various sorts is available.

Who would have thought it eh, a system that heavily involves the private sector in a health service, how awful. Surely Germans are crying out for the implementation of the NHS ?

I imagine that the majority of UK citizens have no idea of how other health systems work even in our close neighbours and the fact that private companies (non-profit or profit making) are heavily involved. The level of political discourse is hopeless on this issue, generally coming down to the tired old "public good, private bad" arguments that Labour still can't properly rid itself of.

These differences are eye-opening in some ways, but interesting, and as they say travel broadens the mind. Its a pity that our politicians and general public don't learn some more about how the rest of the world do things, perhaps we would have a less dogmatic discourse in the political and media arena in this country if they did.

Some thoughts on the Immigration debate

This post has been cross-posted at Harry's Place

Immigration from the EU will be one of the main issues in the next election and interestingly there are signs of movement from the Liberal Left commentariat on the issue see eg John Harris here on CIF :

This year I visited Wisbech – where a third of the 30,000 population is now estimated to be from overseas – and what was happening there spoke loud truths about why free movement has become so politicised. For all that recently arrived families have started to settle, and their children are acquiring new, hybrid identities, there are still glaring problems. Young men from eastern Europe often live four or five to a room, and work impossibly long hours; with echoes of Europe’s macroeconomic asymmetries, the local labour market is divided between insufficient jobs that be can be done by people with families and mortgages, and a surfeit of opportunities for those who will work whenever they are required for a relative pittance.

This creates endless tension. There have also been inevitable problems surrounding how far schools and doctors’ surgeries have been stretched. Is anyone surprised? Moreover, even if such places represent socioeconomic extremes, similar problems surface whenever large-scale migration fuses with the more precarious parts of the economy. In modern Britain, this obviously happens often, and the under-reported consequences of austerity have hardly helped.

What passes for the modern left tends to be far too blase about all this. Perhaps those who reduce people’s worries and fears to mere bigotry should go back to first principles, and consider whether, in such laissez-faire conditions, free movement has been of most benefit to capital or labour. They might also think about the dread spectacle of people from upscale London postcodes passing judgment on people who experience large-scale migration as something real.

And (surprisingly) Paul Mason here also seems to be saying something similar :

But the most striking thing about the Ukip voters polled was their educational background: 76% finished their education between the ages of 15 and 18. No other party comes close to being so heavily concentrated among voters who didn’t go to university. It has nothing to do with “intelligence” – a large percentage of people who vote Ukip simply took a non-academic route to their current place on the income scale.

If you combine this with the fact that Ukip votes spread across all income groups, you come up with the demographic whereby the 2015 election will be won or lost: people who’ve worked their entire adult lives have been shaped by unskilled and semi-skilled hard work. 

So what have such people lost from globalisation? Materially, wages. Whether east European migration really does place an extra downward pressure on low-skilled wages is disputed. What you can’t dispute is that those breaking away from the three main parties believe so from experience. On top of that, globalisation – combined with the info-tech revolution – exerts a downward pressure on incomes, “hollowing out” middle income jobs and making it harder to climb out of low pay. 

Nobody in power gets to live that experience: there is nobody in parliament, or our major media organisations, or the senior civil service or the boardroom, who has recently delivered homecare in 15-minute slots, or worked in an e-commerce fulfilment centre, or ground out the tachograph hours as a self-employed haulage contractor.

Some quick discussion points on this that may be of interest :

1. No one advocates free immigration from countries outside the EU so the issue is not one of a principle of totally free movement into the UK.

It seems to me there is a basic problem for defenders of the status quo here. If free immigration from poorer EU countries is good for the country then why is free immigration from eg South America not ? If I was Farage I would use this argument all day long in the run up to the next election.

2. The main economic issue is of immigration from less economically developed EU countries where wages are far lower. This is what causes the downward pressure on wages here. Also many of the EU immigrants are younger, more motivated and more likely to be able to live cheaply. How would this not cause a downward pressure on wages especially in relatively low skilled jobs ?

3. Immigration will put pressure on resources especially in health and education. The stock answer to that from the Left seems to be that govt should give more funding. But how is the government to plan for this when it cannot tell people where to settle ? In general the govt will only be able to solve such problems after the event and this will obviously cause problems.

4. The potential "Ghettoisation" problem - if a large number of one group of immigrants choose to go and live in a particular area the govt cannot realistically stop this. This means the locals to that area will find a lots of changes and a loss of community, and again this may well be more of a problem in poorer areas. How would this not be an issue ? It will obviously be disruptive to local populations. And what could the authorities possibly do to prevent it ?

The economic advantages of mass EU immigration are obvious for employers and it could be argued for the economy in general, but there are also losers who are now increasingly looking to UKIP and causing massive political disruption. The obvious problems of EU immigration that are now coming to the fore should have been apparent when the experiment was started, indeed they are basically the reason that free immigration is not contemplated from other areas.

Sad to say I think one of the reasons the obvious issues were swept under the carpet is that there has been a refusal to face up and discuss the cons of immigration because of a fear of being called "racist" or "xenophobic". Our political culture has become bizarrely skewed by group identity politics and a media that loves to pick on (because its so easy) anyone in the public eye who breaks social taboos on race and identity.

The appearance of the articles above in so far as they don't mention a supposed racist angle is really quite refreshing. Does this show that finally the Liberal-Left is starting to "get it" on this issue ?  

Guardian News and Media Final Results - Chief Executive gets £1.4m bonus while papers lose £30.6m

This post has been cross-posted at Harry's Place  
 
The Guardian's results for last year are out :

Guardian chief executive Andrew Miller saw his annual pay treble to nearly £2.2 million as the media group rewarded him for selling its stake in car website Auto Trader, even though the core newspaper business remained heavily loss-making.

Guardian News and Media, publisher of The Guardian and The Observer, lost £30.6 million in the year to March against a £33.8 million loss a year earlier.

However, turnover climbed 7% to £210.2 million, thanks to digital growing by a quarter to £69.5 million, while print revenues stayed “broadly flat”.

Parent company Guardian Media Group swung to a pre-tax profit of £549.2 million as it banked a huge windfall of £619 million from selling its 50% stake in Trader Media Group, owner of Auto Trader, to Apax Partners.

GMG paid only £1.4 million in corporation tax but Miller insisted the profits from Trader were not liable for tax under the Substantial Shareholdings Exemption rule.
He got a £1.4 million “long-term” bonus, on top of his salary of £696,000, plus benefits.

The GMG boss said he deserved the bonus, which was  “contractual”, because he has overseen Trader for 12 years, including as finance director, and “relinquished my equity” when he joined GMG in 2009. “That’s the bulk of my award,” he said.

GMG also gave Miller a short-term bonus of £226,000, which would have taken his package to £2.4 million, but he deferred it until next year. He acknowledged his pay was high but pointed out he has waived nearly £500,000 in past bonuses. Editor Alan Rusbridger’s pay was flat at £491,000.

Do the phrases "corporate greed", "fat cats" and "growing inequality" mean anything to the hypocrites that run this paper ? 

I really wonder how the dwindling readership (down c3% in the last year) stomach the paradox between the simplistic unreconstructed "soak the rich" economics they read on a daily basis and the way the paper is run.

As for the fact GMG paid so little tax on its windfall from the Trader Media group, there's no doubt its all above board but in the past the paper has had the temerity to question other companies such as Barclays that also use such allowances (see here).

Why is it that the most influential Left of Centre paper in the UK is such a hive of hypocrisy ?

Stalinist Far Left still a disgrace at London May Day

This post has been cross-posted at Harry's Place

James Bloodworth has tweeted today about the Stalinist and Maoist banners that are still allowed to feature at the London May Day parade. These are the same or similar to the ones I blogged about at Harrys Place 5 years ago.

To allow Stalinists and Maoists to march with others of the mainstream Left including trade unionists is revolting. I just wonder on the mentality of the other marchers and such speakers as eg John Hendy from the Campaign for Trade Union Freedom (see flyer here). How can they march with people carrying posters of Stalin. Its almost mind boggling.

I'm very glad James Bloodworth has picked up on this. Its great to see a journalist of mainstream Left views taking this up and I hope others do too. Extreme outliers of the Left have been given a free pass for far too long by the rest of the Left. 

Nick says "We are all Sun journalists now." Err - what ?

This post has been cross-posted at Harry's Place

Nick Cohen had a strange article in last Sunday's Observer, complaining that the British press is now under terrible pressure:

Rhodri Phillips was the 21st journalist arrested as part of the Elveden bribes enquiry. If it had happened in Russia, Iran or an African dictatorship, readers of the Observer would know what to expect. Amnesty International and Index on Censorship would scream their heads off about the need for a free press to scrutinise power. Intellectuals would send a round robin to the liberal press. There would be questions in Parliament, perhaps a Radio 4 documentary.

Hold on. Just because journalists are being arrested does not mean those arrests are not justified, indeed today we have found 8 out of 13 NI journos in the Glenn Mulcaire case have been charged with a variety of phone hacking charges. Also, arresting people for hacking celebrities phones where there is no public interest defence is very unlike arresting them for threatening political or corporate vested interests, which is what proper investigative journalists should be doing.

Nick also complains :

Detectives are not now targeting phone-hackers, whom even liberal countries would arrest. They are punishing journalists for doing what they have always done – talking to cops, standing a round, pumping officials for information.

Is that really what is being targeted ? Yesterday we had more info from Sue Akers about what is being alleged in another case involving the Mirror and Express as well as NI :

Two officers at high-security prisons allegedly took illegal payments from Mirror, Express and News International journalists, a senior police officer has told the Leveson Inquiry.

Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers said one officer had allegedly received £35,000.

But she said stories possibly linked to the payments revealed "very limited material of genuine public interest".

Trinity Mirror said it was co-operating with the police on the matter.

This is the kind of thing that is being investigated at long last, and as is continually being repeated at Leveson it is tabloid practices and crimes with no public interest defence that is the area that requires inquiry and that the police are targeting.

Nick I'm sure understandably has a lot of fellow felling for tabloid journos who he sees as colleagues, however surely it is time that the quality press started realising that the contemptible prurient and intrusive practices of the tabloids are not something that any journalist should be proud of and that the public really has had enough of it.

We haven't heard much about this in the papers

This post has been cross-posted at Harry's Place

Operation Motorman was an inquiry in 2003 when the UK information Commissioner looked into breaches of the Data Protection Act by the British Press.

An piece from the Indy here gives some of the details :

Operation Motorman was set up by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) to look into widespread breaches of data protection laws by the media. In a signed witness statement given to The Independent, Motorman's original lead investigator, a retired police inspector with 30 years' experience, accuses the authorities of serious failings, and of being too "frightened" to question journalists.

"I feel the investigation should have been conducted a lot more vigorously, a lot more thoroughly and it may have revealed a lot more information," he said. "I was disappointed and somewhat disillusioned with the senior management because I felt as though they were burying their heads in the sand. It was like being on an ostrich farm."

He claimed that had investigators been allowed to interview journalists at the time, the phone-hacking scandal and other serious breaches of privacy by the media may have been uncovered years earlier. "The biggest question that needed answering was, why did the reporters want all these numbers and what were they doing with them?" His comments reflect badly on the ICO, and the Press Complaints Commission, which was given early notification of the evidence in the Motorman files. "We weren't allowed to talk to journalists," he said. "It was fear – they were frightened."

The PCC said last night that it had never been given sight of the Motorman evidence but had strengthened its code and issued industry guidelines which had led to an improvement in standards. All the information has been in the hands of the authorities since 2003, when a team from the ICO seized the material from the home of private detective Stephen Whittamore. Whittamore and three other members of his private investigation network were given conditional discharges when Motorman came to court in 2005. No journalists were charged, although the files contain prima facie evidence of thousands of criminal offences. Thousands of victims disclosed in the paperwork have never even been told they were targeted.

Now the Leveson inquiry has seen all the files from Operator Motorman, but as detailed here on the Hacked off campaign site they have not been made public. Today however there has been an application to make them public :

Lord Justice Leveson has recognised a request from the Hacked Off campaign for the Operation Motorman database to be published.

The judge said David Sherborne, barrister for the core participant victims, was welcome to formally submit the request if he thought it would highlight the culture and practice of the press rather than “who did what to whom”

A lot of journos would appear to have been in the frame after the Whittamore inquiry, see here :

The ICO later obtained search warrants for the Hampshire office of a private detective Steve Whittamore.^[5] A huge cache of documents revealed, in precise detail, a network of police and public employees illegally selling personal information obtained from government computer systems. The personal information that Whittamore obtained from his network was passed on to journalists working for various newspapers including the News of the World, the Sunday Times, the Observer, the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror.^[5] At least 305 different reporters have been identified as customers of the network.^[6]

Mmm - I wonder if the cops are going to start going after the 305 journalists named in this investigation ? And if they don't what will that mean to the trials (if they ever happen) of the journos who are presently in the frame ?

Why don't we deport Abu Qatada to Belgium ?

This post has been cross-posted at Harry's Place

The Abu Qatada case rumbles on interminably. One of the odd aspects I've read is the fact that he is apparently wanted on a warrant from other countries such as the US, Germany and Belgium. Now, it seems the problem with deporting him to Jordan is that he may be up against a trial with witnesses against him that MAY have been tortured.

But if there is a warrant against him from Belgium why don't we just send him there ? I presume the ECHR doesn't think they torture witnesses. I've looked on the web for the possible reasons for this but apart from conspiracy theorists types saying that a trial there as opposed to one in the UK would bring out stuff that our security services might not like, can't find anything to solve the mystery.

I am not a lawyer, so this is mystifying me quite a lot, is there any one out there with more knowledge who can shed light on this issue ?

Was the Milly Dowler voicemail deletion story dodgy ?

This post has been cross-posted at Harry's Place

Oops - looks like the Guardian might have got rather an important story a bit wrong, see here from the Leveson enquiry today :

3.17pm: Garnham says it does not know how the Guardian came to report in July that "Met officers have approached Surrey police and taken formal statements from some of those involved in the original inquiry, who were concerned about how News of the World journalists intercepted – and deleted – the voicemail messages of Milly Dowler".

3.06pm: Neil Garnham QC, for the Metropolitan police, is now reading a statement about the latest evidence concerning the hacking of Milly Dowler's phone.

 So the police have basically denied most of the story that started this whole media frenzy.

Meanwhile Nick Davies has got in his mea culpa (sort of) here. But the Telegraph has a different view on that :

 But it emerged at the weekend that Surrey Police now believe that Glenn Mulcaire, the private detective used by the tabloid, could not have deleted the messages as he was only commissioned later.
The new disclosure was reported in The Guardian on Saturday and online late on Friday evening.

But the headline and opening paragraph made no mention of the climb-down.
It reported instead that “fresh details” had emerged and confirmed that the voicemail was hacked.

The fact that the deletion which gave the family false hope – and ultimately caused a national scandal – might not have been the fault of the News of the World did not appear until the third paragraph.

Critics accused The Guardian of burying the story.

Oh dear. I bet Nick Davies won't be getting many Christmas cards from NI folk this year.