One of Nadine Dorries’ most frequent lines in the debate around abortion has been that all religious people oppose abortion. This is clearly nonsense. The existence of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice gives the lie to that. It might just be possible to argue that the overwhelming preponderance of religious opinion is absolutely opposed to abortion and that those who are religious but allow for abortion are rare anomalies.

The ever-informative Prospect magazine, in its ‘News & Curiosities’ column, has this factoid, attributed to Between the Monster and the Saint by Richard Holloway:

Catholics believe that the soul comes into existence at the exact moment of conception. In Greek Orthodoxy, “ensoulment” happens at 21 days, in Islam at 40 days, and in Judaism at 80 days.

The creation or incarnation of the soul is one of the bases of religious objections. Although the picture is rather more complicated than this - see my post of [date] on - I’m just glad that something with a bigger readership than me has noticed that religions don’t conform to certain preconceptions!

I’m sorry to bang on about this. Actually, I’m not at all sorry. I just hope I don’t become tedious. I am increasingly convinced that, should the Conservative Party win the next general election, there will be restrictions placed on abortion. Much of Ms Dorries’ opposition is based on her telegraphic memory¹ and I fear the small-c conservative, religious movement may also seek to make retrograde steps elsewhere.

xD.

1 - she makes it up…

Luke Akehurst has tagged me in the ‘what were you doing when you heard about…’ meme. Here we go…

Princess Diana’s death - 31st August 1997
Summer holidays, waiting to go back to school. Dad woke me up and we watched things unfold on the television.

Margaret Thatcher’s Resignation - 22nd November 1990
I would have been at school. I don’t really remember a lot about it except that my parents were really happy. Funny thing, politics…

Attack on the twin towers - 11 September 2001
I was having a driving lesson when the first tower was attacked; by the time of the second attack, I was home and watching it on television.

England’s World Cup Semi Final against Germany - 4 July 1990
Honestly, I don’t spend all my life in front of the television. We were watching it on the telly, though. We had returned from Brazil the previous year and my brother, who was born out there, was upset because the country of his birth had been knocked out by Argentina earlier in the competition.

President Kennedy’s Assassination - 22 November 1963
I wasn’t event a twinkle in my parents’ eyes at the time.

I’m tagging Tiberius Gracchus, the Winchester Whisperer, Vino, Peter Kenyon and Chicken ‘Justin McKeating’ Yoghurt.

xD.

Everyone has been talking about how wonderful the Beijing Olympics, particularly the opening ceremonies, were. The implication is that London won’t do as well. Jacques Rogge has been fulsome - excessively, perhaps - in the achievements of China for the games.

Given the difference in spending and the facility with which the Chinese Communist Party ignores minor details like its citizens, it seems inevitable that the opening ceremonies at Beijing 2008 will be rather grander than London 2012. We may well be able to point out some of the issues with the recent ceremonies - making sure that children are sufficiently attractive, using CGI ‘just in case’ and dressing people up in costumes and passing them off as representing different ethnic groups. Hopefully, we’ll do better on those fronts.

Nevertheless, it probably won’t have the same spectacle. That doesn’t mean the spectacle won’t be wonderful; in any case, the sports are the thing. We should remember that the admittedly impressive achievements of BOCOG had a heavy price on the poor unfortunates who just happened to live in the wrong place.

xD.

The Government has responded on its new Number Ten website to the petition for locally employed Iraqis. It reads:

Thank you for your e-petition requesting that Locally Engaged (LE) staff in Iraq should be offered asylum in the UK.

In a written parliamentary Statement on 9 October 2007 , the Foreign Secretary acknowledged that LE Iraqi staff working for our Armed Forces and civilian missions in Iraq have made an invaluable contribution, in uniquely difficult circumstances, to the UK’s effort to support security, stability and development in Iraq. In recognition of this, the Government made the decision to offer these staff, on an ex gratia basis, assistance which goes above and beyond legal and contractual requirements.

Serving staff (defined for the scheme as those employed on or after 8 August 2007) who meet the criteria, are able to apply for one of three forms of assistance: a one-off package of financial assistance; leave to enter the UK, outside the immigration rules; or the opportunity of resettlement in the UK through the UK’s Gateway refugee resettlement programme. Former staff (defined as those whose employment ended before 8 August 2007), are able to apply for one of two forms of assistance: a one-off package of financial assistance; or the opportunity of resettlement in the UK through the UK’s Gateway refugee resettlement programme.

The Government has taken into account the need to ensure that any assistance scheme, in particular in respect of admission to or resettlement in the UK, is practical, realistic and preserves the integrity of wider immigration and asylum policy. For these reasons, the Government has sought to ensure that admission to the UK is managed as far as possible in line with existing processes and programmes. The UK Border Agency has worked closely with Employing Departments to develop a transparent process to assist eligible LE Iraqi staff in accessing the scheme.

Further details of the scheme of assistance were published in a written Ministerial Statement on 30 October 2007.

Since the scheme of assistance the UK is offering to Locally Engaged Iraqi staff was announced, staff across government have assessed just over 500 people as being eligible for assistance. Their cases are being taken forward as quickly as possible. To date, about 60% of those eligible, who have so far informed us of their preferred form of assistance, have opted for financial assistance.

The first individuals who chose to come to the UK with Indefinite Leave to Enter outside the Immigration Rules, arrived in April 2008 and July 2008. The first groups of former staff who have been accepted for resettlement to the UK under Gateway arrived in the UK in July and August 2008. Arrangements are being made to welcome others to the UK over the coming weeks and months.

We continue to fully recognise the efforts of LE Iraqi staff and remain committed to demonstrating our debt of gratitude to them.

I will be posting more later.

xD.

China is on the up.

All, however, is not rosy. China faces a few problems; these are my impressions.

Tibet and Xinjiang both have groups that seek more autonomy or even independence. They are in the interior of the Asian continent and a long way from the rich cities of the coast. With disparate geography, I do wonder how Beijing will keep control of those provinces. I don’t think it’s a question of ‘if’, at least in the medium term, but what China must do to maintain its control and the resulting unforeseen consequences.

There is a growing middle class, it would seem, in China as the economy has taken off. Something in the back of my mind tells me, from my course on democracy and democratisation at LSE, that middle classes are good for democracy. However, China’s growth will not go on forever; the sheer size of its population means that there will be a crunch as people either can’t achieve the bourgeois lifestyle they want or find themselves slipping downwards. The PRC will also, I feel, reap the rewards of its one child policy; a demographically top-heavy population with lots of retirees to support from a relatively small number of workers.

The internet, mobile phones and other communications technologies mean both that it is harder for the Chinese Communist Party to keep tabs on everybody and that it is easier for people to organise themselves anonymously and/or spontaneously; viz., the ‘Anonymous‘ protests against Scientology and flash-mobbing. In and of themselves, they’re not hugely important (yet) but they do show a means to an end. This doesn’t mean anything unless there is something to protest about; in China, though, there is plenty. The corruption and incompetence of local officials, AIDS and environmental degradation seem to be issues that the CCP recognises it has to do something about and which protesting does not necessarily imply a rejection of the CCP.

Indeed, the Olympics may have been given to China at an inopportune time. Certainly, if the reactions I’ve seen on the television news are anything to go by (and I don’t put it past the CCP to have made sure that only people who towed the party line happened to be near any cameras), Tibet is precisely the wrong thing for the West to use as a leitmotif for its opposition to the rule of the CCP. It comes across as an attack on the Chinese nation when it is strong; the Olympics, through Billig’s process of banal nationalism, strengthen it. Looking to engage economically - making the comparison with Russia’s kleptocratic rule - might work rather better.

A final thought; there are lots of Chinese people overseas. As China grows and people look at returning home to make the most of the burgeoning economy, they may, as during Africa’s ‘Wind of Change’, take distinctly Western ideas with them; perhaps economic at first, but requiring good governance at all levels and, as a corollary, participation of the people in a more meaningful way.

I only mention all this because Mikhail Gorbachev’s recent comments in the media over the Russian-Georgian conflict reminded me that an awful lot of Kremlinologists were surprised to find that the USSR had suddenly gone. There are huge differences between the USSR and China, but the unexpected is not the impossible.

xD.

London needs greater media diversity.

I’m going to explain the situation, why it’s bad and then propose a solution.

The Evening Standard has something close to a monopolistic position on London news. It is, as we know, the only paid-for London newspaper. Metro, London Lite and thelondonpaper are meant to be read on the way to or from work and are entertainment – hence the huge amount of celebrity gossip – rather than news. Some local papers – the Camden New Journal, for instance – are pretty good, but some areas don’t have any decent, local paper.

I would also say that the Evening Standard focuses (if I may pinch Ken Livingstone’s phrase) on the area around the wine bars and brothels of Westminster and, now, City Hall; it deals with trivia and minutiae. My objections to the Evening Standard’s position are not because it is right-wing, obsessed with Ken or a bit tabloid. Rather, it is that they are unchallenged in their position. My objection to the newspaper market in London is that it leaves great swathes of GLA and borough politics untouched.

If we move away from the print media, the situation is not good. ITV London News has nothing of the politics of the capital, but only stories of interest. BBC News is, I feel, slightly better but still pretty woeful. Channel Four News and Sky News don’t cover the capital other than in passing. Moving to the online world, I want to weep. The ES’s main website is thisislondon.co.uk, an entertainment guide, where showbiz comes above news. Its news site, standard.co.uk or thisislondon.co.uk/standard, is very much a second-string site; do a search for Evening Standard and you’ll see that only thisislondon.co.uk is anywhere to be seen. BBC London News just doesn’t have many stories.
In particular, I wonder how many people could name, say, three members of the Assembly. I wonder how many people know what the GLA does and doesn’t do.

I do want to flag three blogs in particular – Dave Hill’s London: Mayor and More; the Tory Troll; and Boris Watch – for their good coverage. While much of their content is great, it is not enough; I hope my reasons why will become clear later on.

All this together effectively gives the Evening Standard a bully-pulpit. While Teddy Roosevelt meant ‘bully’ in the positive, now-arcane sense, I fear that the Evening Standard does not quite match the idea of “a terrific platform from which to persuasively advocate an agenda”. (C-Span Congressional Glossary).

There has been at least one attempt at direct competition with the ES in the past; Bob Maxwell’s London Daily News. Suffice to say, it failed. By resurrecting the Evening News and slashing prices to 5p, Associated were able to stop the London Daily News. The situation now is different; for one, the freesheet model has matured. I’d add that with the initials ‘LDN’, a London Daily News might fare better after Lily Allen’s song.

Equally, I don’t think everyone wants all celebrity news, all the time; I do not want a ‘Lite’ newspaper. The World, Stephen Glover’s proposed, new compact picks up on that idea; see the Wikipedia article for more information.

There is room and need for competition for the broader (rather than just middle market tabloid) London news market. Despite its attempts to move upmarket, ES’s news coverage is pretty poor. It doesn’t cover borough politics and only lightly covers the Mayor and GLA.

However, the ES retains several advantages. One is brand recognition; another is its distribution network. As an aside, I wonder what effect all those anti-Ken placards had in the run-up to the election; at any rate, those placards and the orange vans are a lot of advertising around the city. I don’t think it’s too much to say that the ES and its sellers are part of the street-scape of London; I would say, though, that the distinctive yellows and purples of London Lite and thelondonpaper, together with the muted annoyance at being attacked with freesheets at every station in zone one, have become part of the street-scape, too.

This leads me onto an area where I think the ES has singularly failed to capitalise; the online realm.
If I can take the issue of brand recognition first, ES, largely because of its decision to run as thisislondon.co.uk online, doesn’t have the on- or off- line, perceived web presence of some other outlets. Much as I like it, neither does Londonist – which isn’t really a news site – or thelondondailynews.com (no relation, I believe, to Cap’n Bob’s paper of the same name).

The other devolved administrations – Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, with respectively three, one-and-three-quarter and five million inhabitants - have their own competitive newspaper markets and, I am given to understand, the national papers have regional editions for the nations. London (eight million), effectively the fifth home nation and the economic, cultural and political centre of our country, does not have that and suffers as a result.

I believe that better news coverage and debate about London – effectively the fifth home nation – would be a good thing. The question is how.

In keeping with Guardian America and Guardian Weekly as successful sub-sets of the Guardian brand, I’d like to propose Guardian London.

Its primary issues could be City Hall, including the Mayor, Assembly and executive arms; London beyond zones one and two; transport; the boroughs; the City; and informing people about the reality of London today. Over an eight-week cycle, there could be information on the council politics of the different boroughs, grouped as four at a time. To begin with, there could be a guide – one a week – to each of the boroughs. It should also look at what might be called the civil society of each borough.

The arrival of Crossrail is one particular issue that deserves attention that the existing media offer singularly fails to address. To take just one station as an example: Tottenham Court Road. Crossrail allows for the development of a better, larger, more accessible station but the Astoria and Sin will go and the Paolozzi murals on the platforms need to be maintained. I’m sure there are similar issues at just about every station on the Crossrail line and will be in future on the Crossrail 2/Chelney line. All we will get will be a glitzy, CGI, double-page spread when it’s far too late to do anything about the changes as the station is about to open. Instead of the newspapers giving us news and comment to allow us to form opinions, they’re giving us re-cycled press releases.

It would do well to do profiles of the main people in London politics; the Mayor, various deputy Mayors, GLA members, people who run and are on the boards of the MPA, TfL, LDA, LFEPA and any future authorities for waste, recycling, education, skills, the environment and planning.
Initially, it could operate a purely online outfit. Journalists need not be retained but could be remunerated on the same basis as CiF. If successful, it could perhaps grow to a weekly supplement to the print edition in London, and perhaps the south-east, on Saturdays.

If we look at the blogosphere and social media, the combination of individual blogs, group blogs, media blogs like Comment is Free and Coffee House, Facebook and so on, we see a potentially powerful combination for attracting people’s attention and engaging them in the London polis.

The trick would be to attract people to local goings-on - whether campaigns over a particular issue, calls for involvement, bouncing around ideas or just keeping people in the loop - by cross-pollinating from the main Guardian. There are all manner of local campaigns, organised on the internet, that act on different facets of the same issue that should be given greater, public exposure. An example might be the Better 172 Now campaign to improve the 172 bus route; I’m sure there are similar issues that ‘citizen journalists’ could report that would be of interest to people who don’t live on the Brockley-St Paul’s route. At the moment, they are too fragmented.

Local papers often suffer from a lack of critical mass; the use of the Guardian’s existing online community and brand could help increase the traffic, as (dare I say it) could its more user-friendly website.

Because people move from one part of the city to another on a regular basis, they are going to be interested in what’s going on away from where they live, whether it’s because they go there for work, socialising or recreation. Equally, many ‘local’ issues become London-wide, in no small part because of the re-institution of strategic, City-wide governance. There is the need and the potential for a new entrant to London news.

xD.

UPDATE: An edited version of this post appeared on Liberal Conspiracy.

I wrote on the first of April of this year about provisions in the Counter-Terrorism Bill for restricting the openness of inquests. It seems that it wasn’t just me who was concerned about some of the proposals; the Guardian reports that section 64 is under fire¹:

A cross-party committee of peers, including a former lord chief justice and two former attorney-generals, has told the government that any decision to hold an inquest without a jury must be taken by a judge and not a minister.

I cannot help but think that this would be a good thing. The bill is not necessary - as I said on the original post, things can be heard in camera if necessary - and, while I don’t think the Government would abuse the powers, this is handing a power to obfuscate government actions resulting in deaths to every future government. I don’t trust future governments, their members as yet unborn, sight unseen.

xD.

1 - the article says 63, but I think they mean 64.

From the Guardian:

The French anti-immigrant party, the National Front – campaign slogan: Keep France for the French – is selling its prestigious Paris headquarters to a Chinese university, it was reported today.

xD.

Strangely, I’d never been to the Campaign for Real Ale’s Great British Beer Festival before Saturday; suffice to say, I’ll definitely go again. While there were a couple of somewhat tasteless, somewhat annoying groups that looked like stag parties, everything was good-natured. I met up with a few friends but the main thing, of course, is the beer. Just about every beer under the sun (except, sadly, much stout) was represented there.

Given that this was an event to celebrate beer in all its many and varied forms, there was remarkably little drunkenness. Scrap that; there was drunkenness, but nothing Chaucerian. I maintain my two, key arguments in favour of drinking real ale; that it’s hard to drink as much ale as cheap lager of the Foster’s variety; and that, having done so, the most antisocial thing you want to do is smoke a pipe, grow a beard and talk knowingly about hops and malt.

On that note, I’d just mention that the demographic of the Festival was very varied - lots of young people, for instance, and hardly any beards, despite my best efforts.

CAMRA is, amongst other things, a campaigning group and two of its campaigns in particular caught my eye. One is ‘take it to the top‘, seeking to make sure that every pint of beer is just that - a pint of beer. Evidently, one in four pints has too much of a head, which is mostly air. The campaign seeks a change in the law and promotes the use of lined glasses, which have a mark for a pint and a bit of glass above that for the head. You can sign a petition in support of the campaign here.

The other is on tax. Beer tax in the UK is high; indeed, it is the highest in the EU. I don’t entirely support the campaign, as I’d like to see differential rates of tax to support small breweries and maintenance of the current rates of tax on alcopops and so on. The rates of tax on beer are so high that they do push people to the supermarkets and to smuggled beer. That, altogether, is part of the reason for the trend towards urban drinking-barns and their ensuing problems. There’s a Facebook group to join.

Beer of the festival for me was Graal Gember, a Belgian, ginger-spiced, blond beer.

xD.

That memo from Tony Blair lambasting Gordon Brown, I mean. Let me check the files. Ah, yes, here it is, under ‘Z’ for ‘Zinoviev.

xD.