On a commercial break

Have taken a couple of days of from the hamster wheel of politicking, so as the weather has been splendid I have been taking pictures for the last couple of days.

Normal service will resume….tomorrow…Back to my usual politically incisive and analytical self with added general election bonus.

So here are some examples of weird reflections of an artistic nature on reflective sunglasses, flowers, ducks, swans, flowers, daffy dogs, reflections, ducks, ….and oh, did I say flowers.

More on my Flickr page if you are interested in seeing more…erm…flowers…

A swan’s opinion on the election

Randoms 3

The pictures were taken with my mobile phone

Canary Wharf

I took this picture as I was zooming up the escalator at Canary Wharf yesterday evening as I was making my way to the Orwell Shortlist. Canary Wharf the heart of corporate capitalism and a shopping destination. Must confess I liked the architectural structure of the modernist buildings, glass and metal facades. And as yesterday was a nice bright day, lighting was good quality and good for photography.

 

Madam Miaow makes Orwell Prize short-list

Well, I was at the Orwell Prize event to hear the shortlist for the bloggers. And was pleased to hear good mate and comrade Madam Miaow making the shortlist. Hurrah (and I told you MM that you would make the shortlist!!!) So missed most of the ‘debate’ between the 3 leaders and have been told that I didn’t miss that much.

Must admit the shortlist political debate sent me into slumber though was jolted me from my slumber was listening to some right-winger who Helena Kennedy described as ‘deeply irritating’… Absolutely.

So well done as well to Penny Red for making the short-list. And to Paul Lewis from The Guardian for making the journalism shortlist. Though commiserations to the excellent book, The Spirit Level which didn’t make the book shortlist.

The rumble in Manchester

Ooo… the anticipation. Ooo… the excitement. Ooo… I am all a-tinglin’ (note to myself: should see Dr about that). The three main parties will be slugging it out live like they have never slugged it out before. Will there be quick verbal jabs? A hook or uppercut that flounders the opponents? Lot’s of bobbing and weaving? Ooo..the tactics.

 And who will deliver the knock-out punch that leaves the opponents staggering and then collapsing in a big collective heap on the floor while their spin-doctors comes to the rescue with the bucket of water and sponge mopping their brows cajoling them back into the ring.

Let the gladiatorial fight begin (settle down with my popcorn, drink, feet up and watch these schmucks screw it up). It just doesn’t bode well, does it? It will be more lightweight than heavyweight.

Civil liberties? Wot civil liberties

PNAT Jan 2010

A total of 200,444 stops and searches were made in Great Britain under s44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 in the year ending 30 September 2009.

I attended the Hostile Reconnaissance meeting last night. As we know civil liberties have been under attack, stop and search powers used against journalists and photographers. With the anti-terrorism laws the environment has become hostile and antagonistic towards anyone who shows any kind of dissent. Press freedom and civil liberties are under constant attack. Surveillance used by the state against photographers and journalists. Lawyers have been trying to find out under Data Protection what information the police are holding on specific photographers. During the G20 protests we witnessed increased use of draconian laws combined with violent and brutal policing. Yet no accountability for their actions and behaviour.

Complaints have been made by NUJ members against the police. During the Tamil protests of last year, Tamils were involved in non-violent direct action….and how do they cops respond? By attacking them, one example was that they were using their handcuffs as a weapon to beat mainly women (please see, if you get the chance, Jason N Parkinson’s 9 minutes film on the civil liberties and police violence)

The police use a whole host of criminal legislation (and boy, is there lots of it) to restrict and censor individuals rights.

Section 14 of the Public Order Act 1986

to prevent serious public disorder, serious criminal damage or serious disruption to the life of the community.

This specific section was used against journos and photographers to disperse for ’30 minutes’ during the protest at Bank, 2nd April 2009,  regarding the death of Ian Tomlinson. If they refused they were threatened with arrest. This is a serious misuse of the legislation.

Section 44

Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 allows the home secretary to authorise police to make random searches in certain circumstances.

And the method in this madness is that the police don’t need grounds for suspicion! Fortunately, two people took their case regarding Section 44 to the European Court of Human Rights…. and won but that hasn’t made Alan Johnson re-consider this piece of legislation such as scrapping instead he wants to appeal the judgment. The way cops use the law to randomly stop people they don’t like or don’t like the activity they are involved in is wrong. Is this proportionate? Is this fair? Where is the accountability?

The state is purposefully criminalising activities, past-times and hobbies. People take their camera to take photographs of things what they think are interesting therefore how many people will start to think twice about taking their camera out with them as civil liberties are being curtailed along with the continued privatisation of space. Journalists and photographers have a duty to report what they see and in the line of their work shouldn’t be stopped by the agents of state. The abuse of police powers and use of violence against protesters at Kingsnorth was utterly evident along with the orgy of violence shown at the G20 protests. And of course the shadowy FIT (Forward Intelligence Teams) whose job it is to gather intelligence on people, their tactics are oppressive and aggressive with their use of surveillance. Them watching us. And what of the FIT databases?

I don’t have the actual figures of how many photographers stopped under Sec. 44 or any other piece of legislation but anecdotally it seems very high. Where photographers both professional and amateur have been intimidated, threatened, physically attacked, kit damaged, images wiped and all in the line of their work. And has any of these stops and searches led to any photographer being charged with any terrorist offence? A big fat NO!

But then any protester, dissenter, is labelled as a ‘domestic extremist’ on a ‘hostile reconnaissance’. And the language, the instrument of power, that creates fear, mistrust and paranoia and suspicion based on what? Where is the threat? The increase in legislation, it is said that NL has created 3,500 crimes since 1997, more than 1,200 of them through full-scale primary parliamentary legislation.

While our civil liberties are being encroached upon, public space becoming ‘state space’…where a right to privacy is being intruded upon, surveillance cameras invading our lives, every single detail of who we are inputted in some database somewhere yet we are unaware of what the hell is being said about us. We are being micromanaged by the state. And of course these databases are usually contracted out to some private company (who will probably lose the memory stick or laptop on a train somewhere) this continuation of privatisation means that billions are spent on ID Cards, millions on other vetting databases. The Criminal Records Bureau has designated, wrongly, around 1500 people with criminal records.

I think as one of the speakers said last night, what we are experiencing with these blatant attacks on freedoms and civil liberties is a new Enclosure Act. We desperately need a public debate and a Constitution. With the War on Terror not abating the new piece of anti-terror legislation usually in the political pipeline, more hysteria, mistrust and fears whipped up leading to knee jerk reactions and further shrinking of civil liberties. Legislation written in a elasticated language that is stretched beyond reality and meaning leaving only ambiguities. As all the three political parties will continue with a slash and burn cuts agenda and with the continuation of neoliberalism, fears and anxieties will increase, erosion of civil liberties, social tensions will increase therefore police violence and brutality will increase. Bonfire of the liberties….along with us sleepwalking to a police state.

Labour Party Manifesto: a fair kicking for the poor

Skim reading the Labour Party manifesto didn’t grab me nor tempt me into thinking ‘Gordon you’ve got it’… But no, that’s more to do with my indolent utopian day-dreaming where Brown delivers a manifesto fit for a socialist society. Reality check … society fit for neoliberalism.

Sunny Hundal in his post on Lib Con argues why the left shouldn’t abandon New Labour. Firstly, on that sentiment I agree there have been successive grouping claiming to be the next workers’ party, the alternative to Labour but they flounder at the first level or later on when the idea of pluralism is lost on one of the groups who wants supremacy. But what concerned me of the name ‘New Labour’ is precisely that… New Labour. What is New Labour synonymous with? Neoliberalism, corporate capitalism, housing bubbles, warmongering, public sector cuts, bail-outs of banks. New Labour was a Frankenstein creation architects including Gordon Brown and his predecessor, Tony Blair. New Labour is the escaping alien from the stomach of its host, Labour Party.

Twenty five years ago I joined the LP at a critical time as the Miners Strike was over and where the Labour leadership, along with the TUC leadership,  had played a traitorous role selling out the miners (and secondly, missing from Sunny’s post is any analysis of the trade union movement and their contradictory relationship to Labour). Fast forward 25 years later and see just how right-wing the LP has shifted. The Kinnock and Hattersley times were a warm up session for worse things to come, the pre-dawn of a neoliberal era.

What do we do? Just to reiterate I do have sympathy with Sunny’s post but I think you have to analyse the nature of the Labour Party, its roots in the labour movement and to the working class. Given the structure and evolution of the LP and its relationship to British politics there is an obvious distortion and contradiction. There’s an expression of political pressures from the TU movement though the bureaucracy will blunt these demands.New labour wants to mix neo-liberalism and to placate the demands of the working class, though these are basic little crumbs thrown at the working class they are not even basic social democratic policies. And this is what you see with the Labour Party Manifesto 2010.

For example, A National Minimum wage rising at least in line with average earnings… Great on the surface but the trend of average earnings is not good. Average earnings are not going up in line with inflation. Again, another example, 200,000 jobs through the Future Jobs Fund, with a job or training place for young people out of work for six months…. Where are these jobs coming from? Workfare by another name? And the next section is about further penalisation and vilification of the unemployed (‘We are determined that no-one should be scarred for life by joblessness).

Furthermore, in the crime and immigration section there’s ‘intervene earlier to prevent crime, with no-nonsense action to tackle the problems caused by 50,000 dysfunctional families’…

What? Have NL gone around counting up the dysfunctional families? Based on what criteria… Daily Mail populism playing to the lowest denominator? Less about changing radically the conditions that create crime more no-nonsense regime of ‘one-to-one support with tough sanctions for non-compliance’.. Again, it is vilifying and attacking the poor? Nothing about sanctions when it comes to tax havens. Also, NL want to continue the short, sharp, shock by expending the hideous ‘Community Payback’… though I doubt that includes tax fraudsters!

On immigration…. ‘requiring newcomers to earn citizenship and the entitlements it brings’… but making people ‘earn’ citizenship (‘through the citizenship pledge and ceremony, and by strengthening the test of British values and traditions’). It is just a load of reactionary tosh! How about politicians pledging they won’t enter unjust wars!! Talking of wars nothing about scrapping Trident or unjust wars…

Have a look (if you can stomach it) at the manifesto but the philosophy between these Parties is similar, more about the race to the bottom and who can be the more reactionary. The NL faced a choice. Would it stay true to form and try to out right-wing the Tories or would the Labour Party unshackle itself from the neoliberalism and warmongering of NL? Well, I don’t have to explain the decision it is there for everyone to see…..

….and don’t get me started on the bloody cartoon either…

Tweedledum Dave and Tweedledee Nick

Is it just me or does Nick Clegg and David Cameron look remarkably like twins separated at birth? Both the same age (though Cameron born in ’66 and Clegg ’67….still….), both v. smarmy, both look like former public school head boys. And both have similar politics. Very similar and if it comes to a hung parliament Clegg can’t wait to form an alliance with the Tories.

And there’s this interview with Clegg in today’s Observer where he states that the streets of Britain will be hit by ‘Greek style unrest’ if Tory or a Labour government win by a slim majority and straight away slash the public sector and jobs…. Interesting as Clegg supports slashing and burning the public sector. But ….what Clegg really means these cuts wouldn’t work without the legitimacy of the Lib Dems because they want to be part of the party. Actually, this all reminds me of that dreaded scenario of school games where everyone else has been picked to play sports and the two captains are left with one to pick….and this case they are left with Nick Clegg. And Nick desperately wants to be in Cameron’s team (“Oh pick me David ‘call me Dave’…please”). That’s what the Lib Dems really represent…an anachronism.. Tory lite.

And let’s look at Clegg’s doppelgänger… Cameron trying to make amends on LGBT rights though unsurprisingly he entered an alliance with reactionary bigots in Poland… again doesn’t this expose just how unprincipled, contradictory, and cynical along with their entrenched reactionary ideology? Tax breaks for married couples and civil partnerships, a snappy policy and a bribe to win people over but it still has the stench of the 1950s traditional Stepford Wife institution of marriage but can the Tories afford it ? The right-wing populist, ‘three strikes’ policy to crack down on benefit fraud is utterly draconian.

Those who commit benefit fraud once will lose their out-of-work benefits for three months, a second offence will attract a benefit sanction of six months, and if someone commits fraud three times they face losing their out-of-work benefits for up to three years. This is a big increase in the penalty, from the current situation where fraudulent claimants lose a maximum of 13 weeks benefit entitlement.

This will lead to further stigmatisation and vilification of benefit claimants, it is also misleading, vicious and unnecessary, why precisely is their a need for a nasty draconian policy like this? So that the Tories can be seen to be doing something about fraudsters? Well what about these tax fraudsters?

The BBC has found out just how little that this would actually safe. Just the usual Tory trick of blaming the poor so that that the rich can have their big Inheritance Tax break while some the (married) middle class can have £150.00 in an Income Tax break just as they get chucked on the dole/have a pay cut/have their pension cut/need to find a lot of money to pay for things that the NHS currently funds.

Finally, think Paul is spot-on here regarding key differences in Tory election announcements when it comes to intervening in the way people live their lives and conformity while big business can do what they please and exactly how they choose!!

When it comes to a woman’s right to choose David Cameron wants to see a ‘modest reduction’ in the time limits to 22 or 20 weeks. I won’t go into the arguments (here’s a post I wrote earlier) but I do foresee a battle ahead about defending the current time limits and for a woman’s right to choose.

Defend the welfare state and public services

I marched with thousands of other protesters about defending the welfare state and public services.

• The state pension is totally inadequate, leaving at least 1 in 4 older people to live in poverty
• 7m households have a child living in poverty and existing benefits provide a very limited safety net
• Unemployment now stands at over 2m and workfare offers no solution
• 10m adults are disabled and face huge barriers to escaping financial hardship
• The NHS is slowly being privatised behind a smokescreen of choice and competition, and patients are suffering as a result
• Our public services are now facing massive cuts and further privatisation.

And all of the political parties are desperate to slash public services though silent on £70 billion a year is lost to tax evasion.

As one of the chants on the demo went, ‘bankers are bailed out, people are sold-out’….