Below, an extract from the opening paras of a leading story on GuardianUnlimited, by David Hencke - Westminster correspondent.
"...Hilary Benn, the international development secretary, promised to scrap trade union red tape through new laws. She also promised a regular dialogue to replace the current one-off Warwick agreement on change..."
A subbing error? Not good for Hilary or the Grauniad to think Benn's a gurlie. I wonder how often this happens to Mr. Benn?
Actually, I just wanted an excuse to post this picture...
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Monday, June 04, 2007
Hilary's dilemma
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Sound bitten
David Cameron is a consummate master of the sound bite. All the more so, because he can say, straight-faced, that he is not. “[New Labour’s] biggest mistake was to arrive in office with soundbites and slogans instead of serious policies for improving people’s lives.”
Indeed. Are the Tories making the same mistake?
“When say I want ‘zero tolerance of disruptive pupils’, it is not some sound-bite – it is a call to action backed by specific measures,” says Cameron in the Mail on Sunday. But what is a good sound-bite other than a glib “call to action” backed by measures, specific only in their specificity? Cameron promises to “shake up the system” and establish “motors of aspiration for the brightest kids from the poorest homes.” Apparently, the devil is in the detail.
Those things Cameron does elaborate on are classic Tory policies. The grammar school furore is not a divorce from traditional Conservative policies at all. If anything, it’s spinning them afresh.
Cameron advocates zero-tolerance for disruptive pupils. He plans to “shake-up” and “turn around” the failing system that deals with them. By getting rid of it. In its place, “social enterprises” such as the Amelia Farm Trust in Wales or the Lighthouse Group in Bradford will be able to “do the job properly” with state funding. This is all penned straight from a very familiar Conservative song sheet.
“When say I want ‘zero tolerance of disruptive pupils’, it is not some sound-bite – it is a call to action backed by specific measures,” says Cameron in the Mail on Sunday. But what is a good sound-bite other than a glib “call to action” backed by measures, specific only in their specificity? Cameron promises to “shake up the system” and establish “motors of aspiration for the brightest kids from the poorest homes.” Apparently, the devil is in the detail.
Those things Cameron does elaborate on are classic Tory policies. The grammar school furore is not a divorce from traditional Conservative policies at all. If anything, it’s spinning them afresh.
Cameron advocates zero-tolerance for disruptive pupils. He plans to “shake-up” and “turn around” the failing system that deals with them. By getting rid of it. In its place, “social enterprises” such as the Amelia Farm Trust in Wales or the Lighthouse Group in Bradford will be able to “do the job properly” with state funding. This is all penned straight from a very familiar Conservative song sheet.
The grammar school's debate is not the Tory's "clause IV moment" - as Cameron himself admits. Resignations and protests will only strenghten Cameron's hand, however, for they show that he is in command of a reformed and reforming party. While that frothy sense of change carries the media along, however, the substance stays the same.
What makes Cameron different is that rather than define his conservative principles in the cast-iron terms that Thatcher did, he is defining them by what they’re not and by the society he wants to exist around them. He’s painting a picture of the mould rather than the statue, and so far it seems to work. Rather than shout about what the state can’t do, Cameron’s shouting about what others can.
Killing off the safety-net of the state and fostering a creative “social enterprise” are, for Cameron, two sides of the same Tory coin. In place of the state, not Thatcher’s anti-society of families and individuals alone, but a flourishing polity of “voluntary organisations led by parents, charities, social enterprises, churches and private schools.”
This philanthropic Thatcherism is a clever ruse: It’s a deft parry against the tarnish of the ‘nasty party’ and recasts the agenda not as budget-cutting and safety-net slashing, but as civic pride and charitable enterprise. And it cuts to the core of New Labour’s failure as a target-setting behemoth.
The problem, of course, is that philanthropic Thatcherism is hardly the business of government. It’s stargazy madness to suggest that social enterprise and charity will flourish to replace the state. Taking away welfare safety nets is classic Thatcherism. It’s pure artifice and spin to suggest otherwise.
Who will regulate these outreach projects? Who will ensure parity of care from area to area? How could you possibly ensure fairness? These are questions which neither the electorate nor Cameron want or need to answer. For now, the sound-bites sound good, and until the Tory’s win power, there won’t be any need to test their substance.
What makes Cameron different is that rather than define his conservative principles in the cast-iron terms that Thatcher did, he is defining them by what they’re not and by the society he wants to exist around them. He’s painting a picture of the mould rather than the statue, and so far it seems to work. Rather than shout about what the state can’t do, Cameron’s shouting about what others can.
Killing off the safety-net of the state and fostering a creative “social enterprise” are, for Cameron, two sides of the same Tory coin. In place of the state, not Thatcher’s anti-society of families and individuals alone, but a flourishing polity of “voluntary organisations led by parents, charities, social enterprises, churches and private schools.”
This philanthropic Thatcherism is a clever ruse: It’s a deft parry against the tarnish of the ‘nasty party’ and recasts the agenda not as budget-cutting and safety-net slashing, but as civic pride and charitable enterprise. And it cuts to the core of New Labour’s failure as a target-setting behemoth.
The problem, of course, is that philanthropic Thatcherism is hardly the business of government. It’s stargazy madness to suggest that social enterprise and charity will flourish to replace the state. Taking away welfare safety nets is classic Thatcherism. It’s pure artifice and spin to suggest otherwise.
Who will regulate these outreach projects? Who will ensure parity of care from area to area? How could you possibly ensure fairness? These are questions which neither the electorate nor Cameron want or need to answer. For now, the sound-bites sound good, and until the Tory’s win power, there won’t be any need to test their substance.
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Barking mad
Yesterday the BNP delivered some flowers to Margaret Hodge.
A fitting thank you, perhaps, since as cllr. Barnbrook (BNP) says, Hodge's comments in the Observer last week were "an absolute gift for us".
It has been an absolute PR coup for the far-right nationalists, the video above testament to this. Hodge overstepped the mark and the fact that she continues to defend her poor judgement is risable. I don't think she's been racist - as some of her colleagues in the party are insinuating - but she is pandering to racists.
Friday, May 25, 2007
Through a glass, darkly
What has happened overnight? The government seems to have decided that the citizens of Great Britain should wake up on this sunny May morning to a smeary cavalcade of shit. John Reid, now with added inhumanity, is too idiotic to be true. Derogate from the ECHR? I don't think even the Daily Mail has ever gone that far. (Well ok, maybe they have) Add to this the fact that Goldsmith is considering ditching contempt laws and it's all a bit grim.
How could any government possibly be proud of all this rubbish? They really do seem to be just chasing the headlines. They make a huge mess of control orders, three people run off, and the response is to declare a national state of emergency and suspend the peoples' right to liberty. It does seem just a little bit disproportionate.
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Neo Culpa?
The Neo-Cons have it right – the war in
Iraq was corrupt, profiteering and immoral.
Like Ba’athists from a collapsing regime, America’s neo-con glitterati are turning their backs on the Bush presidency – once their own - faster than Nancy Pelosi can say subpoena.
This December, David Rose will publish his exclusive interviews with leading neo-cons in Vanity Fair – already a cause of controversy; the Neo-Cons have bitten back with a hastily cobbled together riposte in today’s National Review after quotes were released by Rose yesterday.
Hasty and heated the Neo-Cons retorts may be, but disavowals of their comments they are not. Richard Perle, prince of darkness, and Neo-Conservative ideologue par excellence, indeed, left little ambiguity in his criticism of the war:
Like Ba’athists from a collapsing regime, America’s neo-con glitterati are turning their backs on the Bush presidency – once their own - faster than Nancy Pelosi can say subpoena.
This December, David Rose will publish his exclusive interviews with leading neo-cons in Vanity Fair – already a cause of controversy; the Neo-Cons have bitten back with a hastily cobbled together riposte in today’s National Review after quotes were released by Rose yesterday.
Hasty and heated the Neo-Cons retorts may be, but disavowals of their comments they are not. Richard Perle, prince of darkness, and Neo-Conservative ideologue par excellence, indeed, left little ambiguity in his criticism of the war:
“Huge mistakes were made, and I want to be very clear on this: They were not
made by Neo-Conservatives, who had almost no voice in what happened, and
certainly almost no voice in what happened after the downfall of the regime in
Baghdad.”
Perle’s comments seem to be the Neo-Con thinking du jour. David Frum, the speechwriter who invented the “axis of evil” for the President’s 2002 State of the Union address, tells Rose that the Iraqi disaster lies with “failure at the centre.”
If Frum is equivocal, Perle is not. “At the end of the day, you have to hold the President responsible.” Fellow Neo-Con and co-conspirator in the Centre for Security cabal, Kenneth Adelman – who supposed in 2002 that the liberation of Iraq would be “a cakewalk” – shares Perle’s sentiments.
“The most dispiriting and awful moment of the whole administration was that Bush
gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to [former CIA director] George Tenet,
General Tommy Franks and [former Coalition Provisional Authority Chief] Paul
Bremer – three of the most incompetent people who’ve ever served in such key
spots….those three are directly responsible for the disaster in Iraq.”
It is what, Paul Krugman in his New York Times this week termed, ‘the FEMAfication of the federal government’ – executive departments stacked, like the Federal Emergency Management Agency on the eve of Katrina, with ill-suited and under qualified lackeys.
The Neo-Cons are, of course, right. The war in Iraq, nay - the Bush administration writ large, is corrupt, nepotistic and rotten to its core.
In Iraq, the facts are already well known.
Witness: Dick Cheyney’s former company, Halliburton has to date been awarded $600 million in non-competitive reconstruction contracts (of which just 90% has been spent on oil infrastructure and American military needs), while the Halliburton subsidiary Kellog, Brown and Root, has been given all but monopoly control over Iraq’s oil – an operation worth $7 billion to the company, again awarded in non-competative contracts.
Bechtel, another corporate giant, has around $100 billion of Iraqi contracts (all non-competative) in the proverbial pipeline. Between 1999 and the start of the Iraq war, Bechtel donated over $1.3 million dollars to the republican campaign chest. Meanwhile, Bechtel has former board members, former and current VPs and Presidents, the current CEO, and “friends” with seats in the President’s Export Council, the Defense Policy Board, Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, USAID, Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the Export-Import Bank, the CIA, OSHA, and the Department of Energy Evaluation Board. Most notably, Paul Bremer, the former Coalition Provisional Authority Chief, was a Bechtel director.
Meanwhile, the UN now reports that 1 in 5 Iraq’s live in chronic poverty. From the story of the Bechtel ‘rebuilt’ school overflowing with raw sewage and in ruins, to the Iraqi Halliburton employees receiving just a tenth of their allotted wages, the reports of mismanagement and corruption are rife.
Even a dyed in the wool republican like John Warner, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, admits the US must consider a “change of course” (translation, run fast, run swift). So while Bush was last week “pleased with the progress we’re making”, his Neo-Con friends, aren’t seeing things quite so rosily.
By their own yardstick, the Neo-Conservative war in Iraq has failed. “A tough foreign policy on behalf of morality”, to crib Kenneth Adelman, Iraq is not.
However, morality, conservative or otherwise, has little to do with the bungled postwar situation. The fault does not just lie, as Adelman, Perle et al would like to suggest, with all the President’s men but with the war itself.
For all their high handed words on staying the course, flying true red, Neo-Con straight and dropping justice and Freedom on Iraq like a beautiful dollar green smart bomb, Bush’s new neo-con critics got what they asked for. Diligently and with singular vision did the reconstructors of Iraq apply their Neo-Con principles: Pre-emptive military action to secure Iraq as a democratic state, an economic free market whose trade and capital would wash over the Islamic world like a wonderful cosmetic ablution and the demise of an anti-American, brutal regime to boot. American economic assets secured, American jobs created, oil pumped and the threat of Islamism in a world heading slowly, inexorably, progressively to liberal bliss, reduced.
The problems in Iraq; the chaos and the bloodshed, are not the byproducts of a venal and incompetent few, but actually the necessary effects of a war conjured to do one thing: To advance an agenda only ever strictly American – an agenda based on a perversion of ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ bent to fit the rule of economic liberalization and curbing of Islamism and anti-American ideologies in the region. It is a policy breathtaking in its historical naivety and political arrogance and it is Neo-Conservative to the core.
The Neo-Con deserters have got one thing wrong; they’re just as culpable for the war in Iraq’s failure as the Bush administration. Their venture into Iraq didn’t go wrong, it was wrong from the start, the Bush administration has just made it worse.
Read More......
For all their high handed words on staying the course, flying true red, Neo-Con straight and dropping justice and Freedom on Iraq like a beautiful dollar green smart bomb, Bush’s new neo-con critics got what they asked for. Diligently and with singular vision did the reconstructors of Iraq apply their Neo-Con principles: Pre-emptive military action to secure Iraq as a democratic state, an economic free market whose trade and capital would wash over the Islamic world like a wonderful cosmetic ablution and the demise of an anti-American, brutal regime to boot. American economic assets secured, American jobs created, oil pumped and the threat of Islamism in a world heading slowly, inexorably, progressively to liberal bliss, reduced.
The problems in Iraq; the chaos and the bloodshed, are not the byproducts of a venal and incompetent few, but actually the necessary effects of a war conjured to do one thing: To advance an agenda only ever strictly American – an agenda based on a perversion of ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ bent to fit the rule of economic liberalization and curbing of Islamism and anti-American ideologies in the region. It is a policy breathtaking in its historical naivety and political arrogance and it is Neo-Conservative to the core.
The Neo-Con deserters have got one thing wrong; they’re just as culpable for the war in Iraq’s failure as the Bush administration. Their venture into Iraq didn’t go wrong, it was wrong from the start, the Bush administration has just made it worse.
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