xD.

In terms of logistics, I would make three suggestions. Given the layout, it’s important that each table isn’t talking amongst itself thereby making so much noise that you can’t hear the speaker. Secondly, there are two breakout rooms. I would like to see the two used for an hour each for anyone to stand up a present an idea for five minutes. Thirdly, I’d like to see it recorded and ideally live streamed. Certainly, the plenary sessions could be on uStream or BlogTV.

—fold—

I start with some of the themes Sunny suggests, and add in some more. This is by no means exhaustive; just some things that interest me.

London

Firstly, I don’t think anyone who can’t beat Ken for the Labour nomination will be able to beat Boris. However, I’m not convinced that Boris will run again; it’s certainly not a foregone conclusion and it seems the main reason he would stay on is that there is no obvious heir apparent from the Conservative ranks, certainly not with with any significant profile. If the competition is between Ken and Oona, I would favour the former on the basis that he stands a better chance of building a broad coalition that goes beyond the Labour party. We will need to develop a narrative on the Conservative administration of City Hall, and I would suggest that it should focus on a lack of big ideas and not making the case for London in Whitehall and Westminster. Boris has also had a few bizarre flights of fancy – Boris Island Airport and the Boris Bus (especially its cost) – while scrapping ideas like Cross-River Tram that would have been beneficial to London.

When it comes to the Mayoralty, I have no idea who the LibDem candidate will be (although Susan Kramer is available). The choice of LibDem candidate may well indicate how London LibDems feel about the ménage à deux and whether they feel the Orange Book tendency has moved their party in a way with which they feel uncomfortable. We will have to determine whether attacking the LibDems for their coalition with the Tories is sensible, responsible and effective, and that may well depend on who the candidate is.

I am plotting an idea to set up a London political podcast. I will do a separate post on that as and when I have settled my ideas, but some of the ideas that have come out on that are important. We will need to look to the growth in Labour councillors and councils to be the starting point of a fightback against the Tories in the capital.

Wales and Scotland

We must avoid making this project too London-centric. Yes, it is being hosted in the capital and London has many millions, but we should look at the other devolved areas in Britain: Wales and Scotland. All three could learn from each other, but they may be particularly useful in working out a tack to take with regard to the LibDems. We also have to work out how we strengthen the progressive position at Holyrood and the Senedd, given that the former has extensive powers and it seems likely that the latter will be gaining similar powers. Alternate centres of power in Wales, Scotland and London may well be able to slow at least some of the damage I fear the current administration will bring.

The West Lothian Question

I think that progressives need to seriously consider the idea of English regions.

There is a lot of talk about devolution, giving power to the people and so on. We need to work out what that actually means. If we regionalised, we would see alternate centres of power. To give them meaning, they need powers substantial powers and we should consider the inclusion of policing, transport, housing, spatial planning and, potentially, health. I feel that counties are too small and too easily controlled by the centre to be able to effectively devise and implement policy.

Regions would mean the main parties would have to have some sort of meaningful regional structure. Much as I hope the regions would be able to stand up to Whitehall, I hope that meaningful regional structures within political parties would weaken the wearisome control from the centre to which so many people object.

I would hope that this would lead to the economic weight of the country shifting away from London and away from financial services and giving parts of England outside of London the opportunity to be something more than vassals.

We have spoken much about the sad state of local media. I merely raise the question as to whether regions would cause a re-alignment of newspapers, radio and television so that there could be meaningful coverage and scrutiny of politics and competition between outlets.

I reject the idea of and English Parliament as an answer to the West Lothian question out of hand (a Parliament for forty-eight million people isn’t much less unitary than one for sixty-one million).

We should emphasise that this would not create an extra layer of bureaucracy. There are already Government Offices for all the English regions along with Regional Development Agencies and Local Authorities Leaders’ Boards. This is about democratising those structures.

Ultimately, I think we have seen a flourishing of the London, Welsh and Scottish blogospheres that is indicative of better relations between citizen and state in those three areas and I want the same for the rest of England. This will mean addressing some of the mistakes and lack of ambition from the failed north-east referendum.

The LibDems

We should pursue a strategy of splitting the Social Democrats from the Liberals/Orange Book in the Lib Dems with a view to one side joining the Tories and the other Labour. We should make it clear that you cannot go into coalition with the Tories and call yourself progressive.

I think we should advocate that the cuts are being implemented too soon; that if they are going to do a zero-budget process, it has to be zero-budget across everything¹; that these cuts are also the political desire of the Orange Book and Tories; ensure efficiency where they are made; oppose the most egregiously unfair cuts; maintain support for industry.

That having been said, we need to work out how we can use social democratically-minded LibDems to control the excesses of the coalition.

Others

• Low pay. We must continue to support the living wage, consider the benefits of a citizen’s wage and ensure that the minimum wage is increased appropriately.
• Europe. As people will know, I am pretty pro-European. However, we should explicitly say that there should be no further integration for a couple of Parliaments to give the Lisbon changes and expansion time to bed down. We could expand to the relatively small countries of the Balkans when the time is right, but we will need to be in an economically strong position to welcome Turkey to the EU when the time is right. It should be made clear that member state of the EU have the right to nationalise, municipalise and deprivatise and that the principles of the free market should not prevent this (although I would retain the state aid prohibitions as they are).
• Co-ops. It strikes me that this is a movement to which we should reach out; surprisingly large, but often very local and potentially powerful for community organising.
• The BNP. We need to consider what’s going to happen next with the BNP and their fellow-travellers. I welcome their thorough trouncing at the recent election and I look forward to Richard Barnbrook being invited to pursue interests of his own choosing by the good people of Barking and Dagenham. However, I have three concerns. One is that we will become complacent about the BNP et al. and that they will be able to regroup. We must keep the pressure on them. A second is that the BNP’s problems may lead to more support for the EDL; while they are clearly not going to get anywhere electorally, they are violent. Thirdly, we need to explicitly oppose and combat the rising populist nationalism that we see in UKIP, sections of the Conservative party, sections of the media and, frankly, amongst people who should know better.
• Women’s rights. We must defend the right to abortion. I feel the likelihood of an attempt at restricting it in this Parliament is high and I feel there is a good chance it could be successful. I feel that we should also be looking at Norwegian-style rules for gender-balance in the boardroom. We should discuss the sex industry and the objectification of women.
• Iraq and Afghanistan. I don’t want to belabour these subjects. For the moment, I want to set aside whether they were a good idea or not, and just look at the conduct of the campaigns. It is clear that there were mistakes and shortcomings. We should look at what they were, how they happened and how we stop them happening again. In order to do it properly, we must be able to do it without always going back to the morality of the conflicts. I’m not saying we shouldn’t consider the morality of the conflicts; I’m saying it’s not the only issue.

I’ll probably do something on electoral reform in the coming days.

xD.

1 – Including the NHS and Trident. I am prepared to at least consider that (for instance) industrial promotion is currently more important than (for instance) fertility treatment. I am not saying that is the case, but that we should be prepared to consider it.

Saturday, anti-immigration Tea Parties were held in cities across the country to protest the upcoming comprehensive immigration reform bill. In Minnesota, Tea Partiers were punked by one speaker who got the crowd cheering about evicting European immigrants who “stole” this country.

Robert Erickson (reportedly an alias) used language similar to that of nativists, starting his speech by saying:

In Minneapolis where I’m from, we have a huge immigrant population that has been causing a number of problems. With the economy in recession and so many people laid off and unable to find work, immigrants should not be competing for the few jobs that are open. It’s just not fair to the folks who have a claim to this country and have a right to be here.

The crowd cheered as Erickson went on to demand that America “protect the sovereignty” of this nation by “sending these European immigrants back where they came from,” saying several times in his speech that European immigrants “stole this land through genocide and ethnic cleansing.”

He ended his speech by chanting, “Columbus go home! Columbus go home!”

Do watch the clip to the end.

xD.

Imagine the scene when an aspirant British citizen knocks on a door to canvass for their party of choice. Not only will they be associating themselves with politics, they will be opening up their motives to criticism. “You’re only doing this to get a passport”.

Phil Woolas wants a points-based system for awarding passports, with points available, inter alia, for canvassing for political parties. That would only add to the scepticism over the motives of those involved in politics.

If we say that Britishness is behaving like people in Britain, the problem is that being a member of a political party, let alone door-knocking for one, is an increasingly un-British thing to do.

There is also, apparently, no limitation to which parties, present or future, are allowed. maybe taking part in our civic life does include campaigning for the Official Monster Raving Looney Party or the Church of the Militant Elvis, but I don’t think that’s what Woolas had in mind. I might set up the ‘immigrants campaigning to get rid of this stupid immigration points system, but only in a thoroughly British way’ party.

It’s not obvious what British values means, either. I would rather not have a hereditary monarchy. Were I an aspirant citizen, would that be sufficiently un-British? Would campaigning for Scottish independence be un-British? Are Sinn Fein kosher?

There will be also be points for going to live in areas of depopulation. Yes, you too can be British by living where the British don’t.

Of course, Woolas might be trying to make immigrants be model Brits, in which case I would advise him to look at the plank in his own eye before the speck in his brother’s. I know plenty of non-citizens resident in the UK who are model citizens, fully engaged with community and civic life. I just don’t want their motives to be quesioned.

Posted by Wordmobi

As we know, Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, the president of Iran, has said that he does not believe there are homosexuals in that country and he seems determined to make that the case by exterminating LGBT people there.

It is not often I agree with Simon Hughes, the Lib Dem MP for North Southwark & Bermondsey who has spearheaded the campaign to let Kazemi stay in the UK, but in this instance I wholeheartedly agree with his sentiments:

“As I have argued over the last 18 months, the Home Office should not send gay and lesbian people back to countries where they will be at risk of persecution, torture or death.”

To have this sword of Damocles hanging over your head does no credit to the UK, particularly where there is such an obvious and serious risk of death. It is worth quoting a piece from the BBC News report on Kazemi:

“Iranian human rights campaigners believe more than 4,000 gay men and lesbians have been executed since 1979.”

and from a speech given by Peter Tatchell on IDAHO, the International Day Against Homophobia.

“At least two gay Iranian asylum seekers have committed suicide in UK in the last five years, after being ordered by the Home Office to return to Iran. Israfil Shiri, aged 29, burned himself alive. Hussein Nasseri shot himself in the head. Both chose suicide rather than suffer deportation and probable execution by Iran’s ayatollahs.”

I hope that this precedent is observed in future and that similar situations are resolved without such delays.

xD.

There is a question about how one can know that any entry in a dictionary is valid if we know one to be wrong. The answer is that the dictionary is not completely accurate but that it is put together in good faith, with due care and attention, that it will rectify mistakes and so, for the most part, it is reliable. The same question applies to newspapers; indeed, it is repeated on a daily basis. The two newspapers in question have been printing rot for months, but only carry the apology for a day. Even as they apologise for libelling the McCanns, they are publishing stories around the inquests being conducted by Lord Justice Scott Baker where stories that have all the consistency of will o’ the wisp being reported as fact.

The same attitude extends to immigration, with economic immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers being treated as having the same standing in law. If nothing else, it makes it very hard to have a reasoned, public debate around immigration.

The implications extend beyond the political aspects of the UK. One of my favourite writers, Michael Billig, introduced the concept of banality into the academic study of nationalism, building on the notion of print capitalism established by Benedict Anderson. In both these ideas, newspapers have key roles in defining, shaping and spreading national sentiment through the creation and reproduction of agreed, accepted norms. The Star and the Express, which more particularly drapes itself in the Union flag, would, I contend, seem to be promoting a bastardised, mendacious nationalism that titters and gossips and sees rumour and supposition as of worth and of interest. That bodes ill for our polity.

xD.

A CHILD sex monster is being deported to Britain – even though he has lived Down Under for 40 YEARS.

The nature of his crime is somewhat irrelevant to the case, though. I don’t mean to sound heartless and I have the greatest sympathy for his victims. Horne is given as 61 with a 43 year history of sexual crimes against minors in Australia; he’s been in Australia for a long time and certainly since his youth.

Learco Chindamo murdered headteacher Philip Lawrence; on his release, he will not be deported to Italy, as reported by the BBC. I wrote about it at the time, as did the Ministry of Truth. The case has similarities, although I think there is greater culpability in Horne’s case as he was not a minor. Throwing a criminal out because they happen to have been born overseas is not necessarily the right action. For one thing, it comes close to an arbitrary deprivation of citizenship and results, with different penalties, in all not being equal before the law. Secondly, a crime does not necessarily obviate the ability to acquire citizenship. As I have said before, citizenship cannot have multiple categories and cannot be dependent on good behaviour or we would see a return to exile as a punishment; from a strictly utilitarian point of view, this is a bad idea.

From the point of view of protection of people (which is not the same as victims’ rights by a long sight), the UK authorities are familiar with Chindamo in a way that the Italians authorities are not and the Australian authorities with Horne in a way that the British are not. Deporting Chindamo to a country where he could not speak the language would not help inclusion and so prevent recidivism, but make it more likely that alienation would lead to violence. Equally, all of Horne’s old tricks would become new again on removal to the UK, increasing the risk to people in the UK. The Sun seems to agree with that much as it vents its (copious) spleen in the same piece:

Even his own doctor has said the move will put UK kids at risk.

The questions are about risk – whether the risk is greater in the UK or Australia – and whether an Australian child is worth as much as a British child. Petty nationalism has no more place here than it did in the Chindamo case.

Via Bloggerheads.

xD.

But critics said the move would ANGER low paid workers, place more STRAIN on Britain’s dwindling housing stock and ENCOURAGE foreigners to come to the UK

which doesn’t make sense.

Presumably, it would anger low paid workers because they would be undercut. If, however, they were regularised, they would have to receive the minimum wage, thus reducing their ability to undercut domestic workers. With regard to placing strain, they would have to pay taxes. This would allow, if a fourth option on council housing were available, this strain to be avoided. Equally, immigration is hardly the straw that breaks the camel’s back: today’s Guardian reports that 72% of new households to 2026 will have one person. This is the more significant demographic change; there are, according to the Home Office, a maximum total of 570,000 non-registered immigrants in the UK.

As to encouraging foreigners: why is this a bad thing? After all, Mr Murdoch is a foreigner.

xD.

Explain to me, someone, why we need 24-hour surveillance at airports. There are no flights between about midnight and six o’clock at major airports. I would risk saying that there is bugger all point guarding Heathrow against immigration at those times of day when, unless immigrants are performing Icarean feats and crashing to earth in the western reaches of London, no-one is going to arrive when there are no planes landing.

Moving onto sea ports. If you look at a map of Spain, you will see that the southernmost point is a promontory pointing at Africa, southwest of Gibraltar, with a town called Tarifa on it. The actual southernmost point and supposed location of the northern pillar of Hercules is called Punta Paloma, or Dove Point. One of the most pathetic (by which I mean deserving of pathos) sights it has been my misfortune to witness was on a bus full of kids from the summer camp I was working on travelling to the beach at Punta Paloma. The car in front of us stopped as a man had walked up from the beach and collapsed onto the edge of the road and the people in that car were rendering him assistance while waiting for an ambulance. We found out later that he had just arrived from the northern coast of Africa. He had crossed the treacherous Straits of Gibraltar in a patera – little more than a rubber dinghy – and had collapsed from exposure and exhaustion. After being released from hospital, he was deported.

My point is this: people don’t arrive en masse in roros. If people come to Britain (or anywhere else) by trying to slip past border controls unnoticed, they do so in small groups to small ports. Having 24 hour security at Southampton won’t make any difference to illegal immigration. For starters, most people who are illegal immigrants are people overstaying tourist visas or temporary work permits (principally Antipodeans). There are very few arriving in a manner that would be stopped by more border controls. The difference it would make, I suspect, is in the public’s view, as we would be Tough On Immigration, And Certainly Tougher Than The Other Lot.

Now, I think all this talk about immigration is poisonous. Apart from the fact that I want more immigration, it deeply worries me that the Tories are talking about immigration in such a patently uninformed way. Maybe I was being terribly naive and so on, but I was holding out hope that the Tories actually had looked into it and took a position that I just disagreed with. This really does seem like little more than base prejudice.

Thinking about it, that poor sod who collapsed on the road was not the most pathetic sight I have seen. If you saw Michael Palin’s Sahara, it ended with a shot of a broken wooden fishing boat at Punta Paloma (it has been there for years – I have photos to prove it) with Palin’s voiceover talking about pateras and illegal immigration across the Straits. All along that stretch of coast are similar looking vessels. The prize, I think, goes to one I saw that I thought was an truck tyre inner tube to begin with but was actually, it would seem, what someone entrusted their life and hope to.

xD.