Blair's Poll Tax? - 5 comments

I've heard a number of references to Blair's Poll Tax in recent days. The conventional theory is that ID cards will fill that role, though 30 seconds Googling reveals no fewer than eight issues which have been deemed to fit the bill - at one point or other - by some headline-seeking individual or organisation:

• "ID cards are Blair's Poll Tax"
• "... Iraq as Tony Blair's poll tax"
• GM Crops: Tony Blair's "Poll-Tax"?
• "... a member of the audience asked if the ban on foxhunting would turn out to be Blair's poll tax"
• "... top-up fees could be 'Tony Blair's poll tax'"
• "The Lib Dems say council tax has become Mr Blair's 'poll tax'"
• "...pensions could turn out to be Tony Blair's poll tax."
• Charges for social care could be Blair's Poll Tax

To cut a long story short, if you ever say "Blair's Poll Tax", we'll assume you're an idiot.

Update: Without wanting to entirely preempt Part 2 of this series, I intend to tackle the issue of why "Poll tax" (rather than "Black Wednesday") has become a synonym of "cataclysmic political event" and "rocky outcrop against which one's political dreams are dashed to pieces", despite the fact that ( 1997 - 1990) = circa 7 years, and hopefully finding time to connect this to the stranglehold the Tories were able to gain in Wandsworth and Westminster during the 1990s.

Privatising ID cards - 4 comments

It's not that I have an answer to the ID card problem - it may just not be doable in a country like ours, and with widespread concern over the government's attitudes to civil liberties - but here are a few points:

• Governments and the public sector have a relatively poor record in managing IT projects.
• People are worried about governments' ability to, and interest in, monitoring the data.
• Tens of millions of people across the world use (and have personal data and credit cards registered with) high-volume sites like Amazon and eBay.

Perhaps the solution is to run the ID system entirely within the private sector (I'm thinking: one huge software/integration company), within the bounds of the Data Protection Acts, albeit giving government officials special levels of access, plus special hardware and software.

Frankly I'd feel reassured about the use of the data, and I'm convinced that not only would the cost savings be great, but the capacity for costs to spiral would be lessened.

This begs the question: what's in it for the private sector? Paying them out of the public purse would hardly be a solution, as it would be far too great a temptation for both sides. The alternative is that the private company be able to run the system for profit (albeit capped and regulated). How, though? They could be restricted to making a profit on the sale of new/replacement ID cards, though this may make the things too expensive for ordinary people to afford. What other opportunities could they exploit, that would allow cards to be affordable to all? By showing targeted advertisements when people use their home card-readers to view and amend their details? One-click purchasing of the company's other online products?

I can imagine making myself unpopular with this line, but perhaps it could give us an ID system which was cheaper, reduced the risk of snooping, satisfied people about intrusion and tracking, and which opened up opportunities to ordinary cardholders that the current proposed system seems determined to deny them.

Search the Labour blogosphere - no comments

We have a new search page that'll let you search articles (from the past 48 hours) across all the pro-Labour blogs (well, those with working news feeds). Either way, that's 88 feeds and lots of articles to search across.

For example, here are all the references to this week's hot topic: ID cards. Pretty cool, huh?

I'll let you know how you can use this facility on your own site in the next few days. You'll need to register first.

ID cards - 2 comments

Tom Watson's running a rough Yes/No poll on attitudes to ID cards and it reads like a rollcall of the great and the good of the UK political blogging world (for what that's worth). Anyway, I've added my No vote.

To be honest there's not much 'new' evidence, we're just restating our positions. The cost estimates continue to fluctuate, though anyone with project management experience will know how incredibly difficult it is to put any price on such a scheme, especially as nobody can even be sure when (if ever) it will be put into practice.

No doubt a nuclear strike on London would throw the figures out a touch - would certainly bump up the "worst case scenario" figure.

I continue to be mystified as to why, despite the possibilities for ID cards to empower people, giving them (at least) the ability to see the data stored about them, and eliminate vast numbers of duplicate cards, certificates, and mindless form-filling, the Government hasn't taken even a second to play up the potential positive aspects of ID cards, aside from those which relate to not being blown up.

Perhaps ID cards really are just an instrument of oppression. Perhaps the Government really does despise us...

Jerusalem's gay parade is go - no comments

No posts for ages (again), but I have been busy - job hunting, plus adding a search tool to this site (search across all 88 feeds instantly - more of this later).

Anyway, I know it's a bit cheap to post links to BBC articles seeing as everyone looks there already, but it seems that a court in Jerusalem has overturned a ban on a gay parade imposed by the city council, arguing that the mayor could not act with prejudice against a group of people because he disagreed with their views. Which is a good and encouraging step.

It's about this point that some bloggers/commenters would be questioning whether such a thing would be allowed in a city under Palestinian jurisdiction. I guess not, but I'm not going to push that point (Update: Several other bloggers have subsequently made exactly this point). In fact, religious leaders of the three 'major faiths' had earlier urged the banning of all such gay festivals (the weather forecast is for divine wrath). It's one in the eye for those people who see Israel as a militarised Crusader state, under the control of religious zealots, though of course it'll confirm the prejudices of those others who see it as an enclave of European permissiveness in a region that is 'rightfully' Arab.

Ah, what fun.

The feed you need - no comments

The more eagle-eyed readers will have noticed that in addition to the Atom/FeedBurner feed we provide for our own articles on this blog, we also provide a feed for all articles we've picked out from the last 24 hours - from all bloggers.

Got to be worth syndicating (it's in RSS 2.0 format). It's a pretty slow weekend, but there's still 19 articles from 10 blogs, including Harry, Jo, Stoa, Norm, Eric, Scribble, and your other chums. Also it updates every 5 minutes, so you won't miss anything...

Not that I want people to stop visiting the site, of course.

Here's the link:

Are we there yet? - no comments

Bangladesh beat Australia by 5 wickets in the 2nd match of the NatWest Series (cricket!) amid jubilant scenes (from Bangladeshi supporters and all neutrals) in Cardiff, with Mohammad Ashraful making a century in 101 balls.

Having lost to England by 10 wickets earlier in the week, pretty much everybody would have expected Australia to give them a similar thumping. But things are far from OK in the Australian camp, and this represents their third defeat of the tour. I'm not one of those people who believe the Australian team's recent (utter) dominance has made them arrogant, but at least they can be genuinely humble, for a while at least.

Again, this is good news for neutrals as much as for England fans, with England currently riding high and the Test series only, what, two or three weeks away.



Clearly Bangladesh "aren't quite there", but they're far from pushovers, and the "keep them out of Test cricket" brigade should be trying to decide which part of a hat they should try to swallow first, right about now.

Jesus Saves (on bus fare) - 3 comments

Thanks to Other Men's Flowers for finding this gem at Answers in Genesis ("Upholding the Authority of the Bible from the Very First Verse"). Coming soon to a City Academy near you (OK, that was cheap).



Jesus (blue eyes not quite visible) has undoubtedly picked the right way to "get about" in the late Jurassic period, 5 million years ago (or 2000 years: well it's still a big number, isn't it?), diplodoci often being up to 27 metres in length (or 10 feet: well it's still a big number, isn't it?), and being notably nimble on their feet (or hooves), especially on muddy terrain. Mind your head, Jesus, those pterosaurs are flying awfully low!

No doubt Britt Ekland is around the next corner in a furry bikini while certain late-sixties Z-list British actors in fake beards hurl spears at Tyrannosaurus rexes (or rather, reges). Wouldn't be a very intelligent way to go on for someone with the brain of a homo sapiens (or whatever Jesus is), but who cares if it's inconsistent?

Boris' band - no comments

Talk about "the Scandinavian model" ... here's a photo of Boris Johnson MP in his youth, when he came that close to being a Nordic dancehall legend.

Unfortunately, no record royalties are listed in his Member's Interests - what a shame it didn't work out for him.

Is that Rolf Harris, or perhaps Patrick Marber, with him? And Mike Myers? And Gary Barlow, before he made it slightly bigger with Take That?

"Left-wingers with a sentimental attachment" / Scruton - 2 comments

Would you spend £1,022 on a magnum of Armagnac bottled in 1982, and valued at a mere £33? How long it had spent in the cask, we're not told, but it can't be great, can it?

It seems that the "complicated" tax arrangements of Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, son of the "controversial" former Socialist President, François, have forced him to sell off papa's furniture and wine collection, according to BBC News. The booze alone raised over £10,000.

According to David Dessaigne, a wine collector from south-west France, "The buyers are mainly left-wingers with a sentimental attachment." Sentimental for what, exactly?

I assume he means the wine. Perhaps Roger Scruton, New Statesman wine correspondent would have approved.

Interestingly, he's also made an appearance (see how I dovetailed the three sections there) in "A Matter of Principle : Humanitarian Arguments for War in Iraq", a new book that also contains an article from the pen of our beloved Norm, and which Gene and David T give more details about at Harry's Place.

It's tough being in the Centre Left nowadays - you find yourself with the strangest bedfellows whom you never would have believed were your type before you set out. I have to say, though, that Roger Scruton - for me - is one of those "this far and no further" types: it all starts well as the Montrachet begins to flow, but then you find yourself pinned down on the subject of Hobbes and Locke, and before the end of the night you're wondering if it didn't all start to go downhill for Britain round about the time of the Battle of Blenheim [1704], why we ever stopped hunting poor people in the Royal Forests, and why we ever changed cricket bats from curved to straight in the first place...

Just right for the NS then.

Books meme - 4 comments

Thanks to Jo for letting me join the "meme crew". OK, let's see how it goes:

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1) Total number of books I've owned

Currently, just one 7-foot bookcase full, plus a few boxes I haven't unpacked since moving in nearly 3 years ago. Not that many then, just a few hundred in my own right. There's a very good reason for this!

2) The last book I bought

The Luck of the Bodkins by P.G. Wodehouse [1935]. I've become quite obsessive about PGW and his characters: from Psmith (the old Etonian with his own practical version of socialism), to Jeeves and Wooster, the Blandings Castle brigade, Monty Bodkin, Ukridge, and many others. Easy, laugh-out-loud reading, and highly influential.

3) The last book I read

Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences by John Allen Paulos. If you're already sick of the sight of bogus health statistics on the BBC News site, you probably don't need this. If you won't let your children play in the garden because of the electricity pylon at the bottom of it, or because of sinister strangers, then you definitely do. Perhaps you know people who play games of chance for profit rather than fun? Buy them the book.

4) Five books that mean a lot to me

a) The Manual (How to Have a Number One Hit the Easy Way) by Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond [1988] - the book that most influenced me to get involved in the music business. Forget all your illusions about 'creativity', 'talent', 'Golden Eras', and the allure of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll, it teaches the Golden Rules, the power of Top of the Pops, and the power of Bruno Brookes and his ilk. If you're in a band, quit now.

b) A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller [1959] - a highly intelligent blend of science fiction, satire, history, monasticism, technology, politics, and Catholicism. Is mankind doomed to destruction? Is all the suffering worthwhile?

c) The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury [1952] - a magnificent collection of fantasy short stories from the science fiction master. Standouts for me are The Veld; The City - where an alien city enacts its revenge on visiting Earth astronauts, millennia after its population was destroyed by their ancestors; and The Playground, a terrifying look at the petty savagery of children and their tormented victims. Compulsory reading for any tabloid headline writer (who can read).

d) The Anatomy of Thatcherism by Shirley Robin Letwin [1992] - this pushes the idea of Thatcherism as a moral agenda (promoting "the vigorous virtues"), rather than an economic doctrine or a political theory. The book attempts to drive a stake through the Centre Left, arguing that Thatcherism, not content with sweeping up the intellectual deadbeats of the 1970s, 80s and early 1990s, would spread Ownership, Choice, and Britishness throughout the polity, overwhelming the Welfare State, the Trade Union movement, and the European social model entirely. It would make highly unpleasant reading even for a Blairite, but confirms my view that a combination of social conservatism and economic liberalism represents the only consistent territory for the 'new' Conservative Party, and that anyone who wants to save the NHS and the unions from destruction should be working on their arguments now, before it is too late.

e) Picking the Bones: Reclaiming the Past from the Politicians by Geoffrey Regan [2004] - my Dad's final published work, in other words. It deals with the use (or rather, abuse) of history by politicians of this age and others, the building of myths, and the use of propaganda. To be honest I couldn't finish it, but if you like your reading experiences intense as well as controversial, this could be right up your street.

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So, who to tag now? It gets harder to tell who's already been 'got', but I'll select (erm...) thimble, Andrew Brown, Skuds, Cloud, and Jonathan.

Guest Post #1: Jo Salmon - 3 comments

A little while ago we called for guest posters/editors to offer their own take on issues, or evaluate the differing sides of a debate, etc. Well, episode 1 is here, courtesy of Jo Salmon.

I ought to point out that Jo wrote the article nearly a week and a half ago but it got "lost in the post" on its way to us (the virtual Postie is probably reading it in his tea break, having already picked the tenner out of the envelope), but while the media furore has mercifully past, the issues are still relevant...

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Everybody is talking about... teenage pregnancy

Ever since sisters Jemma, Natasha and Jade Williams were "exposed" by the tabloids, issues relating to teenage pregnancy have been hitting everyone's radar. Papers like the Mirror have done their best to ignore the real issues and have instead focused on demonising the sisters:

Jemma Williams, who conceived at 12, Jade, pregnant at 14 and Natasha, expecting at 16, live with jobless mum Julie Atkins and the family rakes in £31,000 of benefits a year. The family pays no rent or council tax on their three-bedroom semi in Derby. However, Julie wants a bigger one while Natasha is waiting to be given a home of her own. The sisters, like their mother, rely on state handouts. The family receives £19,240 a year in benefit payments. Unemployed Julie gets £250 a week, made up of £57 income support, £51 family allowance and the rest in family tax credit. She also picks up child benefit for Jade, Jemma and her grandchildren. Natasha, who does not work either, receives £120 a week in family credit. But the fact they do not pay for their home brings the total value of their welfare payments to about £31,000 a year. Julie claimed: "We do struggle to survive on benefits.

But unlike the tabloids, the government seems to be taking the issues seriously. Beverley Hughes, the new children and families minister, has been honest enough to admit that the government is failing to make enough progress to meet its target of halving teenage conceptions by 201 - though let's not forget that the under-18 conception rate for England declined by 9.8% between 1998 and 2003, and the 2002 figures for the under-16 conception rate show an 11.2% reduction since the start of the government campaign.

In the face of unrelenting criticism and pressure from the right-wing papers and so-called family groups, the government could have caved in and dealt with it through abstinence-only schemes. But let's be grateful that they are a Labour government and not tory.

Ms Hughes said that parents had to take the initiative by putting aside any embarrassment and starting a dialogue about sex with their children... Ms Hughes said that she thought parents were "absolutely critical to this agenda" and could make a difference. She added: "The move to put parents at the heart of the teenage pregnancy strategy was not an effective admission that the government had lost control of teenage pregnancy."

So what have bloggers been saying?

As you might expect, those on the right have been scathing - but without suggesting anything helpful.

TheRightIdea says:

Our schools are generating teenage girls whose under-age pregnancy figures are the worst in Europe. Is this the government who targeted a 50% reduction by 2010 and who saw yet another increase this year? Can this be the education system whose legions of "special advisors" send by the education establishment to combat this matter (another example of where our tax funded increases in education actually goes) has found that those areas with the greatest amount spent on special advisors had the greatest INCREASE in teenage pregnancy? Is this the year that three sisters aged 12, 14 and 16 all had babies? Did our "special advisor" who is paid for by our taxes say in response; "The age is not what is relevant, it's the quality of the parenting and the support given to enable them to be effective parents."

Are we Alice? Are we in Wonderland? Can I have my taxes back please.

The ConservativeHome.com blog believes that whilst:

[Tony Blair's] condom compassionate government has thrown more and more resources into safe-sex education, the latest data show that teen pregnancies are actually up. The proliferation of safe sex education and contraception has also done nothing to stop the explosion of sexually-transmitted disease. But this does nothing to stop New Labour ... from recommending even more of the same at an earlier and earlier age. Why don't these people ever ask if the sexualisation of children - encouraged by ever more sex education - is part of the problem, rather than the solution?

A despairing Labour government has now asked parents to get involved... But this is the same government that last year agreed that parents should not necessarily know if their underage daughter is having an abortion. Government policy can't easily diss parents and then demand their co-operation. Whatever happened to joined-up government?

On the other hand, those on the left are supportive of young women like the Williams sisters - and offer suggestions about how to change the situation whilst refraining from throwing teenage parents onto the scrapheap.

Antonia Bance has blogged several times on the subject (you can read her posts here, here, here and here.)

90% of teenage mums aged 16-17 are on benefits (as you would expect, as continuing a pregnancy as a teenager is overwhelmingly something that happens to young women from deprived or disadvantaged areas), but young mums aged 16-17 are entitled to between £10 and £22 less per week than older mums on benefits. Anecdotally, young mums experience real discrimination at school, with many being informally excluded, despite government guidance that says that pregnancy isn't grounds for exclusion. They also get it in the neck from healthcare professionals - one young mum that I've met had the midwife's hand held over her mouth through her labour to "stop her making so much noise" - and from the general public, who think they have a perfect right to comment on them and disapprove of them.

Fair enough, parents do need to do far more. But, given that you can't legislate to make them talk to their kids and given that you know that teenage mums are more likely to have no qualifications and a lower-paying job in later life, are you just going to give up, Bev? Are you sure you're doing everything you can? How about making sex and relationships education compulsory in every school - no opt-outs for governors or parents? How about opening a sexual health clinic in every secondary school in every hotspot area? And how about sending a clear message to schools that they have a role to play in preventing teenage pregnancy - because the girls most likely to get pregnant are those who are disaffected from school, not achieving, maybe not attending - and effective schools are about more than A-C at GCSE.

Volsunga takes on the Daily Mail:

Abstinence-only is a pathetically unrealistic approach; it is natural, normal and acceptable to want to have sex as a teenager. Pretty much everyone is going to have sex at some point in their lives (I would say everyone, but you never know...) and this kind of "education" leaves you ridiculously unprepared for a time when you're going to have to take responsibility for your own reproductive choices.

I have problems with abstinence being taught as a positive choice even along a comprehensive education about contraception and protection from STDs. Bel Mooney today asks in the Mail "Why Can't We Teach Kids to Just Say No?"; she proposes that a campaign to make abstinence "cool" would reduce the teen pregnancy rate. This chills me; promoting abstinence as a cure-all choice for everyone stigmatises teens who make a positive and informed choice to have sex. Sex isn't evil, it isn't the enemy, immoral or, for the most part, hurting our children; it is bad choices that hurt teenagers. We don't need an American-style system that values young women for their virginity and "purity". We need to start being honest with children, and with ourselves.

Finally, Dan Paskins talks about the reality of living on benefits:

It's hard to know where to begin with drivel like this (Does he really think that their children should starve because they have no money? Does he realise what a pathetic and sad thing it is for him to use his national newspaper column to pick on three girls?), but perhaps the quickest way to cut through the rank hypocrisy of this is as follows. This £31,000 of benefits is going to support seven people, by my reckoning - the three new mothers, their children and their own mother. That works out at just under £4,500 per person. How long do you think that millionaire journalist Tony Parsons, or any of the other people who have been whingeing about handouts to young mothers, would be able to survive on that much money? It is probably considerably less than he got paid for his newspaper column, come to think of it, and having read both his newspaper column and his books, I don't think he'd be able to claim that his 'work' is more worthwhile than that of being a parent.

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Thanks to Jo for that. Who fancies doing next week's?

More recent bloggers... - no comments

Feeling a bit guilty at the moment, seeing as many of you feel the need to apologise for going two days without posting, and there we are taking an entire week off.

It is a bit difficult, of course, posting things as an organisation (even if it is just a name) rather than an individual, which is why you won't see anything about cricket, pubs, TV, or attempts to analyse and interpret a dream in which you were being chased through a set of underground tunnels by 70s 'sexpot' actress, Judy Geeson (Britain's answer to Goldie Hawn). What a lot you're missing out on. Still, we can't have entire wings of The Party upping and leaving because of some chance remark.

Anyway, it's ages since we last updated the world on the additions to our Labour-supporting clan, so here's a list of our new chums:

• Spirit of 1976 - An over-opinionated twentysomething student nurse, blogging from Cardiff.
• Me and Ophelia - the personal blog of Ingrid J Jones.
• Stephen Pollard - "Never knowingly understated".
• Eric Lee - Web design and Internet consulting for the trade union movement.
• Never Trust a Hippy - Rationalist, Libertarian Socialist, Republican, Pro-democracy. The weblog that supports Nottingham Forest.
• Paul Nowak's blog- Unions, politics and more.
• Panchromatica - People, places and what makes them interesting (and anything else that catches my eye).
• wongaBlog - shiny cascade wordplay.
• Rodney McAree Forever! - Crawley, Fulham, politics and any assorted gunk that fills my head.
• DM Andy's Bits and Pieces
• lyevalleylabour - Blog of news and views from Labour councillor Dan Paskins in Lye Valley ward in Oxford.
• Julie Morgan MP - The MP for Cardiff North's Weblog.
• Andy Travers: Laboured
• Rob Newman - "People who are uglier than you and I / They take what they need, and just leave".
• Dirty Leftie - A Labour supporting student and his left wing outlook on life.

"Liberalism is not a death wish" - no comments

Eric posts an article by Tamar Meisels, entitled "How Terrorism Upsets Liberty", which tries to argue the liberal case for firm government action against terrorism, perhaps including detention without trial and ID cards. Some key points from the conclusion:

However paradoxical, those who fear government the most must guarantee it sufficient power to effectively protect its citizenry. After all, if it cannot discharge this minimal obligation, why endure its burdens at all?
...
Any potential curtailment of liberty can be justified only if it is reasonably estimated to be both necessary for and effective in enhancing public safety.

I have to say that I'm very dubious about this argument. However, I'll give it some thought (it's too late tonight) and come up with something later. In the meantime, have a look at the extracts yourself, or get down to your local University library and look for the latest copy of Political Studies for the full text.

Who's linking to whom? - no comments

Here's a new page that lists the most popular sites/domains, judged by the number of links found in Bloggers4Labour posts.

So, at the time of writing, the most linked-to site is the English-language Wikipedia (13 links), with the most popular blog being normblog (10 links), as you might expect.

For all the moaning, we're still a bunch of BBC/Guardian loyalists (21 links in total).

http://www.bloggers4labour.org/links2.jsp

Isn't that interesting? Anything else you'd like to see?

Conservative policies - 3 comments

Could it be time for the Tories to trade in their old policies for some new ones? Something not full of holes, or that comes with a matching handbag.



At the very least they should keep the receipt in case it starts to unravel before our very eyes.