Question Time fun

October 23, 2009 Leave a comment

I was one of the many people last night slumped over my laptop, trying to debate with my flatmates, drinking some beer, whilst trying desparately to tweet, retweet, stop myself from laughing/shouting/crying, and watch Question Time. I was very cautious not to give it all away for myself by reading certain other members of the twitterati inform their followers of the events taking place outside and in. Though I did catch mention of the UAF protesters who had broken in, or engaged in scuffles with the police, followed by the twitter tag #thisisnothelpful, or something to that effect.

Everyone I had spoken to about it during this time had a favourite bit (mine was when Jack Straw, as Secretary of State for Justice, invited a wriggly, smirking Griffin to tell us the details of his change of heart on matters such as the holocaust, replying in an instant to Griffin that he’d sort the French and German’s out if they kicked up a fuss). And I should imagine a lot of naysayers changed their tune. Jon Snow on the news at 7 mentioned the many people who will boycott the event, but I really felt it wasn’t worth the trouble for them. There were fears that it could mirror Le Pen’s mainstream genesis, but Le Pen seemed to hold the audience hostage by making them give a minutes silence, a real showcase. Griffin is too uncomfotable with his disavowal, and that really came across last night, he was tripping all over himself, and often the real side slipped out, the KKK are non-violent, Europe holds my tongue but when asked to clarify squirms and rolls into a ball etc etc.

The first thing I did when I woke up at 7 this morning was watch it all again with my girlfriend, who couldn’t watch it the first time around. By this time I was able to point out before it happened ‘oh watch this bit, he says David Duke is a non-violent person’ and so on. On the tube to work I shared a nod and a raised eyebrow with a fellow commuter when we both realised we were looking at the same article in the free morning newspaper. And now at work the conversation has not entered anything else (apart from work matters, obviously). I’m even speaking to a colleague of mine who is on his day off over google. Now I’m taking 10 to write a brief entry on it. I’m consumed by the happenings of last night. Because it went so dreadfully wrong. Never have I ever felt so bad, about not feeling bad, about watching someone die on their arse, in front of his friends, family and followers. It was very backfoot telly.

A number of articles have been passed my way as well today, in particular the one of by David Cohen, that elaborated on Griffin’s claim that him and Greer got on fabulously. He’s nutty as a fruitcake. He tried to “beg pals” with her, I think I saw him pat her on the back, the constant faux laughing and uncomfort should normally evoke bum-clenching upon me, but it didn’t, I loved it, I wanted more, 1 hour was not enough and it seemed to go too fast. Watching the debate, and engaging with my own on a Thursday night normally sets me in the right frame for instant sleep, but last night was different.

Against all odds, thank goodness UAF failed to barricade the centre in White city, because that would only benefit Griffin and his claim to victimhood, thank goodness he wasn’t able to answer usual questions of the weeks events like the postal strike, potentially bringing him in agreement with other panellists and getting an unwarranted ish-clap. Thank goodness the audience asked hard questions without booing (too much, or over his pathetic answers), and thank goodness that the only new recruits that that performance will earn are pity recruits.

Lastly, if, as I had wished, an hour had been added, I would have wanted asked the following:

– why were a group of non-white people turned away from a meeting by Barnbrook the murder fabricator, on the day that the BNP were told to allow non-white members?

– why don’t you think global warming is man-made?

– why did Griffin [once] describ[e] British RAF pilots as war criminals and murderers. He wrote an article in The Rune, the antisemitic journal he edited, praising the “courage and sacrifices” of the Waffen-SS soldiers while claiming in another piece that “the Waffen-SS were undoubtedly no worse than the troops of other nations … ” including Britain!

– What is Mark Collett if not the Director of Publicity for the Party, like it says on wikipedia – the source of ALL knowledge!!

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Do we really want Mandy as the face of the party?

August 27, 2009 Leave a comment

To repeat that oft used phrase it is not often I agree with Letters from a Tory today reading his letter to Peter Mandelson made me smile in agreement.

Regarding the release of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, LFaT points out that

You [Peter Mandelson] apparently spoke briefly about the case with Saif al-Islam Gaddafi while on holiday in Corfu, yet your spokesman had the nerve to suggest that the subsequent reports of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi’s possible release from jail were “entirely coincidental”.

My own support for the Labour party was not informed by a love of coincidental meetings, but this and the letters containing the words lets keep this whole ordeal away from the media, it is sleaze politics and it doesn’t excite me. Lets not get carried away, the conspiracies that this was all to do with business deals is all without foundation at the moment, but when enough of a gap is left open, enough to see that much is to be hidden, then this raises the voters eyebrows and it is at the expense of the party.

What was that other coincidental meeting Mandelson attended the other day

You are proposing cutting the broadband connection from users who swap copyrighted content, which has outraged internet providers who said that it would breach fundamental rights and would not work.  Even though this proposal was rejected by Lord Carter, the former Digital Britain minister and Downing Street special adviser, a matter of months ago, you have mysteriously changed your mind.

Now simple decorum would have done nicely here, namely, do not change your mind from something reasonable (like a reasonable crack down on illegal internet activities) to something potentially illegal (like cutting off a music downloader’s internet connection altogether) after meeting for dinner with David Geffen, the billionaire producer, then allowinng officials to claim that the topic of internet piracy did not come up.

Now the trouble with all this is, as sleazy as it may seem, as slim as it may look, the case that these examples were mere coincidence is plausible. It is damaging, but it may be unfounded. So what is there to be concerned about Mandy for, from the perspective of a Labour supporter?

Despite appeals from Mandelson that he will never become leader through choice, one or two aspects seem to show that his being head honcho through other means goes a way into undermining the leadership, and this doesn’t include the speculation that he was leader of the country via blackberry during his holiday.

Peter Mandelson’s part in the undermining of Brown when he announced, unknown by anyone else, particularly Brown himself, that Brown would engage in a live television debate – though I think everybody knows Brown would be up to it – was if not rude then rather up front of Mandelson. For someone who has no apparent desire to be leader one day, he has a way of making sure his powerful presence is known.

With Jack Straw’s new move to qurantine peers for 5 years who want to sit as MPs has caused speculation that it is a personal swipe at his foe Mandelson. But Straw has flatly denied this, and indeed the rule does apply to all sitting peers. But where are the explicit efforts to curb Mandy’s power inside the party?

The further speculation that Mandelson will resign from the Lords in order to save the party from despair and obscurity will obviously have some high end supporters. But is his really the face we want fronting the party? He who holidays with the shadow Chancellor and a Rothschild, he who changes his mind on policy over dinner dates, he who seeks not to challenge business as much as see it untie its regulation under his watch, he who mysteriously pays off fat mortgages, and he who has become the most important member of the Labour party without ever having been elected to do so? Is he really the face of the Labour party?

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Too late

July 7, 2009 Leave a comment

Jack Straw now proposes new powers to prosecute war criminals in Britain. So now its not hypocritical to keep Ronnie Biggs in prison and be the Home Secretary to let a Pinochet trial slip. Only, Pinochet is dead now…

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No Bigg(s) Straw man

July 4, 2009 Leave a comment

As I found out last night over drinks with some politically minded chums, Jack Straw’s hypocritical version of justice is a hot topic of conversation. At best its a radically insane change of mind, in the very worst case scenrio its sick.

In March 2000 Straw informed an unhappy audience (which included many people over the world) that it would be impossible to take General Augusto Pinochet to trial for his dictatorial crimes in his 17 year reign of Chile (practising by the gun, exactly the ruthless free-market tyranny Maggie Thatcher had imposed on Britain).

Thatcher at the time celebrated the decision, saying;

“Senator Pinochet was a staunch friend of Britain throughout the Falklands war,” she said, reading a statement outside her London office.

“His reward from this Government was to be held prisoner for 16 months.”

It appeared that Straw had extended his heart strings – not to a dictator with the blood of many Chilean disappeared and those who were imprisoned in the National Stadium used as a concentration camp – but to a dying old man. Yet, Straw has said that the great train robber – who, though not justified in his crimes, killed or tortured nobody – Ronnie Biggs will die in prison for the reason that he is unrepetant.

Rightly people have been pointing out that Pinochet, too, was unrepentant, but Straw did not probe any further to the decision that a Pinochet trial was impossible.

Justice is a dirty business, but history will not be fitted with a rose-tint for Mr. Straw after evidence of his hypocrisy.

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Royal Mail pension deficit: where and why?

July 2, 2009 Leave a comment

Ken Livingstone, on a separate matter, but with usual aplomb, today wrote;

“Time and again, we have seen the nationalisation of losses and the privatisation of profits. It’s also the latest demonstration that it is a fairy tale that privatisation means the private sector takes the risk as well as taking its profit. In truth, every time a privatisation of a vital public service fails, the public sector picks up the tab. This culture of parts of the private sector fleecing the taxpayer has to stop.”

And, of course, though the original piece referred to the National Express Group, this is rather an apt sentiment across the whole spectrum of privatisation, including the 30% stake of Royal Mail, which until yesterday, was being waved around waiting for private money.

Well these are not the market conditions to do such a thing, so says Lord Mandelson.

Since the Tories foam at the mouth over privatising Royal Mail, they never did condemn Mandelson’s original proposals, but – within the frame of parliamentary contrarianism – they have not vindicated him for his U-turn either. Instead voices have emerged – not least of all from BBC’s Nick Robinson – saying that the move has demonstrated a ‘loss of authority’ – which Jack Straw rightly rejected.

This, indeed, was not why the plans were ‘shelved’. I do buy into the notion that certain market conditions forced a re-think, but also a concerted effort by unions, think-tanks, Labour MP’s and the worry of further disruptions spelt out the necessaries for calling off the issue.

What is continually embarrassing for the Labour Party – rather than the so-called ‘loss of authority’ – is the continual destruction – facilitated by New Labour – of the heart and soul of the party and its values. To suggest this turn is anything other than victorious for the true nature of the party, is to suggest that Peter Mandelson represents what is solid about the party and its history. And I for one will not accept such a statement.

Whether or not, as Mr. Straw has stated, the changes over the past few days mean that the party is ‘listening’, it certainly means that Labour has to listen, and this itself is no U-turn whatsoever (in the historical sense of the Labour party).

The problem is still focused upon the pension scheme, though. As Ian Pollock puts it – in a dazzlingly simple manner – “The deficit in the scheme – the difference between the value of the assets it needs to pay pensions, and the value of the assets it actually has – is shooting up.”

But, as it becomes clear, certain previous measures – not to mention nonchalance in the economic equilibrium years –  made deficit inevitable. As Pollock continues (to quote at large);

“For 13 years, from 1990 onwards, the Royal Mail – in common with other large organisations – made no contributions at all to the old pre-1987 section of its scheme, in a grand contribution “holiday”.

It should have been paying in money at a rate of 9% of salaries per year.

Ostensibly this was to avoid running up a very large surplus, which was a very common phenomenon in final salary pension schemes in the early 1990s.

But the saving of £1.5bn over that time – when staff were still paying in 6% a year – rather neatly covered the £1.3bn that the Royal Mail paid back to the Treasury during that time in an annual dividend.

If that money had been steadily invested over the past 19 years, there is little doubt that the scheme’s deficit would be far smaller now.

If the £1.5bn of annual payments had been invested in shares and bonds over those years, and had grown at an average annual rate of 6%, including dividends and interest, then the fund would now have an additional £3.1bn.”

Well what a surprise; Thatcher government, holding back on the suspicious pre-text that it was running on a surplus.

Whatever the outcome, and even if Mandy returns to this when the time is right, as he promised he will, it would do us well not to forget which system of governence tried to make private finances an inevitability in the public sector, and which style of governance should do all it can in order not to emulate the former in any way possible.

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