The Government PR machine has failed quite spectacularly again. Yesterday after months of been bashed over the issue of EMA we have finally come up with a bursary scheme that is much fairer than Labour's Educational Maintenance Allowence.
The Government is doing the right thing, EMA was a classic example of Labour wasting money. Yes, there are students in real need and do need support to continue with their post GCSE education. But nine out of ten who receive EMA would have done A-Levels without it. My sister in law got EMA, she spent it on new clothes, a friend of mine called his EMA his "going out on the piss fund". These are not isolated examples. 45% of 16-18 students received EMA, an astonishing figure, do 45% of these students really need thirty quid a week from the tax payer?
So I fully support changing EMA (note I don't use the word scrap). The problem is that we should have had a scheme in place when the first announcements about EMA were made. Then we could have plausible denied we were scrapping it. The Government could also have said we were giving more money to those who needed it most. We could have called them EMA bursaries.
Instead the PR machine announced they were being scrapped so Labour could tell hundreds of thousands of parents and teenagers that the Lib Dems were evil and going back on promises. Rather than us telling the population we were saving money and helping the poorest. Slick!
Wednesday, 30 March 2011
Monday, 28 March 2011
Why our intervention in Libya is right
Ten days ago was the eight anniversary of the start of Iraq War. I was opposed to that war. I even joined the over a million others in marching against it - something I had never done before.
Now once again British planes are bombing an Islamic nations tanks, do I feel a sense of deja vu?
The simple truth is that I do not. I believe the actions of the coalition are essentially just. However this does not mean that I have changed my mind of the Iraq War. I still believe that was not morally justifiable.
There a 3 factors with regard to the Libyan conflict that were not evident in the Iraq conflict.
The first is the imminence of a humanitarian catastrophe. Had we not started bombing, Benghazi would have fallen and Gaddafi would have levelled the city. It is likely that the number of dead would dwarfed the death toll from the Japanese Tsunami. This was another Rwanda, another Srebrenicia, another Cambodia in the making. In Iraq the there was not the same immediate threat to vast numbers of civilians. I don't doubt Saddam was a terrible, evil dictator. But by 2003 he simply didn't have the capacity and ability to kill the amount people to qualify for a humanitarian catastrophe. Why is this concept important? quite simply war by it's very nature is horrific and will kill and cause damage that is greater most abuses of human rights. Only with an imminent humanitarian catastrophe can war prevent more damage than it will cause.
My second factor leads on from this point and that is the response is proportionate. We have essentially stopped Gaddafi from killing his subjects, but we haven't gone the whole hog and invaded or fired nuclear weapons, napalmed towns etc. So again we have limited the damage that war causes as far as possible to combatants. With Iraq, the response was not proportionate, the damage we caused; 700,000 dead (according to one report)years of civil war, the collapse of state infrastructure was not a proportionate response, as the good of removing Saddam was outweighed by cost of the action.
Finally the Libyan conflict has legal backing. Unlike Iraq, the UN has passed a resolution that sanctions hostilities. In Iraq there was no resolution, mainly because we had not reached the end of the diplomatic process, in Libya the diplomatic time frame was much shorter because of the imminent threat to Benghazi. In Iraq, weapons inspectors were still to report and then there could have been further movements towards forcing Saddam to comply with Human Rights law. Yet the invasion took place before legal backing had being obtained. Legality is important as the failure by the allies in Iraq to obey the will of the UN, undermined international law, potentially for generations. This assists those leaders who wish to break international law as they now have a powerful precedent and will argue if prosecuted that it is "victors (or western) justice" with some degree of justification.
In conclusion, this does not meant that the Libyan conflict will necesserley remain just, if we are causing more damage than we are stopping, or the UN decrees that we should stop then the conflict in my view would become unjust...time will tell.
Now once again British planes are bombing an Islamic nations tanks, do I feel a sense of deja vu?
The simple truth is that I do not. I believe the actions of the coalition are essentially just. However this does not mean that I have changed my mind of the Iraq War. I still believe that was not morally justifiable.
There a 3 factors with regard to the Libyan conflict that were not evident in the Iraq conflict.
The first is the imminence of a humanitarian catastrophe. Had we not started bombing, Benghazi would have fallen and Gaddafi would have levelled the city. It is likely that the number of dead would dwarfed the death toll from the Japanese Tsunami. This was another Rwanda, another Srebrenicia, another Cambodia in the making. In Iraq the there was not the same immediate threat to vast numbers of civilians. I don't doubt Saddam was a terrible, evil dictator. But by 2003 he simply didn't have the capacity and ability to kill the amount people to qualify for a humanitarian catastrophe. Why is this concept important? quite simply war by it's very nature is horrific and will kill and cause damage that is greater most abuses of human rights. Only with an imminent humanitarian catastrophe can war prevent more damage than it will cause.
My second factor leads on from this point and that is the response is proportionate. We have essentially stopped Gaddafi from killing his subjects, but we haven't gone the whole hog and invaded or fired nuclear weapons, napalmed towns etc. So again we have limited the damage that war causes as far as possible to combatants. With Iraq, the response was not proportionate, the damage we caused; 700,000 dead (according to one report)years of civil war, the collapse of state infrastructure was not a proportionate response, as the good of removing Saddam was outweighed by cost of the action.
Finally the Libyan conflict has legal backing. Unlike Iraq, the UN has passed a resolution that sanctions hostilities. In Iraq there was no resolution, mainly because we had not reached the end of the diplomatic process, in Libya the diplomatic time frame was much shorter because of the imminent threat to Benghazi. In Iraq, weapons inspectors were still to report and then there could have been further movements towards forcing Saddam to comply with Human Rights law. Yet the invasion took place before legal backing had being obtained. Legality is important as the failure by the allies in Iraq to obey the will of the UN, undermined international law, potentially for generations. This assists those leaders who wish to break international law as they now have a powerful precedent and will argue if prosecuted that it is "victors (or western) justice" with some degree of justification.
In conclusion, this does not meant that the Libyan conflict will necesserley remain just, if we are causing more damage than we are stopping, or the UN decrees that we should stop then the conflict in my view would become unjust...time will tell.
Thursday, 24 March 2011
I'm £85.14 better off
Hooray, this is the second budget in a row I'm better off!
Under Labour I was always worse off because although low paid, i don't have kids or qualify for the myriad of benefits that Labour introduced. Labour wanted to buy off the middle class swing voters, so many low paid got shafted. The raising of the threshold is the fairest way to help those on low incomes and helping people into work. It's also cheap to introduce as it's simple, the only problem is that it doesn't bind voters to the Government in the way that Labour's tax credits did. It's better economics, morally better but politically Labour have the last laugh.
Under Labour I was always worse off because although low paid, i don't have kids or qualify for the myriad of benefits that Labour introduced. Labour wanted to buy off the middle class swing voters, so many low paid got shafted. The raising of the threshold is the fairest way to help those on low incomes and helping people into work. It's also cheap to introduce as it's simple, the only problem is that it doesn't bind voters to the Government in the way that Labour's tax credits did. It's better economics, morally better but politically Labour have the last laugh.
Monday, 21 March 2011
The shame of American justice: Patricia Spottedcrow
I've recently come across a case that actually shocked me to my core. A 25 year old mother of four has been sentenced to TEN years in prison for selling 31 dollars worth of weed. Apparently the (numbskull) judge who handed out this ludicrous sentence thought it was lenient!
There are a couple of points to be made here: Firstly, Patricia Spottedcrow had no previous convictions. Secondly she was the primary carer of four children under the age of nine (the youngest is only 12 months old). Thirdly it was a sting operation, she sold the drugs to an undercover cop. Fourth, this is the USA, although anyone reading this had probably realised that already!
So what has the idiot judge achieved:
1. Leaving four children without a mother, the children now have a 20-30% of going to prison later in life and likely to be far less successful in terms of education and employment than if their mother was on the outside. Psychologically it is much harder for children to grow up without a mother.
2. A huge cost to the tax payer, Oklahoma residents will pay for the food, board and lodge of this woman along with the help that will need to be provided to her children.
3. She will now be far less likely to be able to get a job in future and therefore is more likely to commit a further crime, making Oklahoma's streets more dangerous than less dangerous.
4. The judge has robbed a human of ten years of her life for committing what can in reality be only called a minor crime - no one was hurt, the person buying the weed was doing it as part of their free will and the quantity was tiny.
The point I am trying to make is that sentencing cannot just be about punishment, we cannot take the social consequences out of this type of decision. Of course having children shouldn't mean you should get away with murder but this type of punishment has no benefits to society - so why bother?
I think cannabis should be legalised, I accept the health implications, but taxing and educating people about a drug is much more effective than banning (see alcohol in the prohibition era - as that was obviously a resounding success!) but even the staunchest defender of criminalization of drugs cannot really agree with this sentence.
I hope people in the USA will write to the Governor of Oklahoma to ask for him to pardon Miss Spottedcrow, but I wouldn't hold my breath, America doesn't have a great record of correcting injustice.
There are a couple of points to be made here: Firstly, Patricia Spottedcrow had no previous convictions. Secondly she was the primary carer of four children under the age of nine (the youngest is only 12 months old). Thirdly it was a sting operation, she sold the drugs to an undercover cop. Fourth, this is the USA, although anyone reading this had probably realised that already!
So what has the idiot judge achieved:
1. Leaving four children without a mother, the children now have a 20-30% of going to prison later in life and likely to be far less successful in terms of education and employment than if their mother was on the outside. Psychologically it is much harder for children to grow up without a mother.
2. A huge cost to the tax payer, Oklahoma residents will pay for the food, board and lodge of this woman along with the help that will need to be provided to her children.
3. She will now be far less likely to be able to get a job in future and therefore is more likely to commit a further crime, making Oklahoma's streets more dangerous than less dangerous.
4. The judge has robbed a human of ten years of her life for committing what can in reality be only called a minor crime - no one was hurt, the person buying the weed was doing it as part of their free will and the quantity was tiny.
The point I am trying to make is that sentencing cannot just be about punishment, we cannot take the social consequences out of this type of decision. Of course having children shouldn't mean you should get away with murder but this type of punishment has no benefits to society - so why bother?
I think cannabis should be legalised, I accept the health implications, but taxing and educating people about a drug is much more effective than banning (see alcohol in the prohibition era - as that was obviously a resounding success!) but even the staunchest defender of criminalization of drugs cannot really agree with this sentence.
I hope people in the USA will write to the Governor of Oklahoma to ask for him to pardon Miss Spottedcrow, but I wouldn't hold my breath, America doesn't have a great record of correcting injustice.
Wednesday, 23 February 2011
NO to AV's 250 million pound lie
The NO campaign have surged into a seven point lead and I think much of this is down to a significant killer argument they are now deploying - that AV will cost 250 million quid to introduce, with most undecided and everyone tightening their belts, this will certainly swing the undecideds the way of the No campaign.
£250 million isn't a lot of money in terms of what the Government spends, but tell people a figure in millions and it gets them thinking.
The problem is that it is complete rubbish, they base their figures on spending 130 million on counting machines, that won't be bought (because AV can be counted by hand) and an education programme based on the Scottish Parliamentary example. The education programme will be substantially less as a) AV is much simpler than STV, b) we've had a referendum on it, so people should be much more aware of how it works (the referendum acts an educational tool as well) c) We don't need educate people about the new powers of a parliament as we did in Scotland. d) we should use the BBC to educate people as that would be free.
But the YES campaign must respond and respond quickly, first it needs to work out how much it would cost - I'm guessing around £30 million. then display this as a real percentage of people's income and divide this figure over 4 years (the length of time until the next election.) In other words AV is going to cost you 12 and a half pence. Once they have a significantly cheap amount, they need to say that the NO campaign are lying (the machines are dream machines! etc) and that it just part of the corruption of the old system. But they need to do this fast, a media blitz is needed, without it they will lose.
£250 million isn't a lot of money in terms of what the Government spends, but tell people a figure in millions and it gets them thinking.
The problem is that it is complete rubbish, they base their figures on spending 130 million on counting machines, that won't be bought (because AV can be counted by hand) and an education programme based on the Scottish Parliamentary example. The education programme will be substantially less as a) AV is much simpler than STV, b) we've had a referendum on it, so people should be much more aware of how it works (the referendum acts an educational tool as well) c) We don't need educate people about the new powers of a parliament as we did in Scotland. d) we should use the BBC to educate people as that would be free.
But the YES campaign must respond and respond quickly, first it needs to work out how much it would cost - I'm guessing around £30 million. then display this as a real percentage of people's income and divide this figure over 4 years (the length of time until the next election.) In other words AV is going to cost you 12 and a half pence. Once they have a significantly cheap amount, they need to say that the NO campaign are lying (the machines are dream machines! etc) and that it just part of the corruption of the old system. But they need to do this fast, a media blitz is needed, without it they will lose.
Monday, 21 February 2011
Nick Clegg launches AV campaign
Last week I was involved in helping to organise the Nick Clegg visit to Leeds to launch the AV campaign. The event was a success bar a couple of nutters, sorry Socialist Workers Party activists trying and failing to hijack the event.
Nick Clegg was right to say (before the election) thaty AV is a measly little compromise - STV would be far superior but that is not the choice, so why should I back AV?
Well basically it's a bit better than first past the post, it's a bit more proportional, making it harder for idiots such as Stewart Bell MP (for Middlesborough), who does bugger all for his constituents, to get re-elected. Basically it will bring into play well over 50 more seats that use to be considered "safe" leaving under half the commons in safe seats, for the first time since the khaki election.
But the best reason to vote to vote for AV is that it gives voters more choice, many people would like to express their votes in different ways, for example , many UKIP voters want the Tories to run the county, but want to express their opinion about Europe by voting for UKIP, under AV they could vote UKIP as number 1 and the Conservatives as number 2. Likewise many Lib Dems who vote Tory or Labour because of fear of the one of the big 2, can now vote Lib Dem 1 st knowing that they will not be contributing to victory for either Labour or the Tories.
AV isn't perfect but is better than FTTP, and it less likely to deliver a freak result. A couple of opinions polls before the last election put us ahead of both the other two parties, if that had been the reult, we probably would have still finished third in terms of seats, that surely is wrong.
Nick Clegg was right to say (before the election) thaty AV is a measly little compromise - STV would be far superior but that is not the choice, so why should I back AV?
Well basically it's a bit better than first past the post, it's a bit more proportional, making it harder for idiots such as Stewart Bell MP (for Middlesborough), who does bugger all for his constituents, to get re-elected. Basically it will bring into play well over 50 more seats that use to be considered "safe" leaving under half the commons in safe seats, for the first time since the khaki election.
But the best reason to vote to vote for AV is that it gives voters more choice, many people would like to express their votes in different ways, for example , many UKIP voters want the Tories to run the county, but want to express their opinion about Europe by voting for UKIP, under AV they could vote UKIP as number 1 and the Conservatives as number 2. Likewise many Lib Dems who vote Tory or Labour because of fear of the one of the big 2, can now vote Lib Dem 1 st knowing that they will not be contributing to victory for either Labour or the Tories.
AV isn't perfect but is better than FTTP, and it less likely to deliver a freak result. A couple of opinions polls before the last election put us ahead of both the other two parties, if that had been the reult, we probably would have still finished third in terms of seats, that surely is wrong.
Thursday, 17 February 2011
Moaning about the media
Reading Tony Blair's book i was struck by the number of times he said that the tabloid press would treat the Labour Government less fairly than a Conservative Government. I'm sure David Cameron would say that the BBC would treat him and the Conservatives less fairly.
The truth is that both are correct the Tories get shafted by the Beeb and Labour do get shafted by the right win Press.
We Lib Dems get shafted by everyone!
The truth is that both are correct the Tories get shafted by the Beeb and Labour do get shafted by the right win Press.
We Lib Dems get shafted by everyone!
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