Google Gadgets and B4L - 2 comments

Google Gadgets are "simple HTML and JavaScript applications that can be embedded in webpages and other apps".

You can already add them to iGoogle, the "enhanced" Google homepage; all Blogger users will shortly be able to incorporate them into their pages (in fact, they can now if they log in using Blogger In Draft mode - I've seen it work); and they can, in due course, be used in OpenSocial sites such as Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING.

That being the case, I've created four open source widgets that use "live" B4L content. Here's what they look like in my iGoogle (full-size):



I can move them around, add or remove them, and (in due course) I'll be able to say: "show me the last ten posts, not the last three, and hide B4L's own awful blogging!"

So if you use iGoogle or equivalent, and want to have a look for real, here are the URLs for the current set of gadgets. Add any one(s) you like:

• http://b4l-gadgets.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/B4LBlogPostsGadget.xml
• http://b4l-gadgets.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/recentPostsGadget.xml
• http://b4l-gadgets.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/recommendationsGadget.xml
• http://b4l-gadgets.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/searchRecentPostsGadget.xml

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Here's their permanent home: http://code.google.com/p/b4l-gadgets/

Anyone so minded can connect to the Subversion repository here and download the four, for free (under the Apache License 2.0) and play around with them to their heart's content.

They certainly aren't "production quality", and I might well decide to change them extensively, but I intend them to live and thrive, and to be joined by new gadgets very soon.

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The first part of the plan is to allow the wider B4L network to use these components on their own sites. These gadgets use live data, so they're a hell of a lot smarter and more interesting than your plain old banners and tickers.

Another part of my plan is to turn the B4L site itself into a kind of repository for these widgets, so you can easily customise it for your own needs if you find yourself there.

A third part of the plan is to produce new gadgets on behalf of other Labour bloggers. Think to yourself: (a) where you saw the information you wanted, (b) where you'd like to see it appear, and (c) how you'd like it presented.

All ideas, suggestions, and offers of permanent work welcome!

Defending "secondary action" - 6 comments

Secondary action - "[...] strike action that is initiated by workers in one industry and supported by workers in a separate but related industry or profession. [...] the purpose of the strike is to support, and express sympathy for, the primary strikers." - is one of those issues that particularly polarises opinion. It's vitally important, say the bolder bloggers on the Labour left ("even" Roy Hattersley here); on the other hand, to those who believe themselves to be moderates, legalising secondary action exemplifies "a return to the 1970s": disaster would ensue.

I'd agree with those who say that to fight David Cameron on this territory would be insane: secondary action is still political death with the press the way it is. Still, it's an interesting issue, and perhaps - far from being a transitional demand - it's quite justifiable in a liberal-left framework, where other union-friendly policies are not.

Let's put it this way: in the UK, the right to join, and campaign within, a trade union (or any group) is a right due to all individuals. The rights of a trade union come through being a vessel for individuals to exercise their rights, providing the union acts democratically, and providing also that individuals who don't agree with their union's actions are not penalised - for example, by being coerced to support a strike that the majority have approved (unions must adhere to this latter provision, I'm less sure that members always feel bound by it.)

So the individual's right is to enjoy a relationship with a union, with individual secondary action simply an application of that existing right. Though they will be affected in practice by individuals' actions, employers are irrelevant to the question of individuals' rights, as are the employers of the friends and "comrades" the individual chooses to support for whatever reason. The union's secondary action rights are plainly an aggregation of the rights of their members, democratically expressed.

Critics might say: "where will it end, if unions can strike on the basis of sympathy with others, rather than distinct disputes?" This sounds very much like a "rights, but only so far" argument. Rights are there to be pushed as far as they will go. If they can't be pushed, they're worthless, and at the very same time, they cease to be rights.

Trade unionists must have the right to invoke secondary action - whether it may succeed is another matter altogether. Withholding the ability of a union to engage in secondary action is breaching the rights of the majority of members who invoked it.

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However, trade unionists do not own the right to achieve any particular outcome on behalf of their union, because other parties - employers, customers, the general public - are involved. "Rights" over other individuals cannot be bought without being paid for. Thus, once a strike begins, employers, customers, and the general public must have the same freedom to bypass ("break" if you insist) the action if they don't agree with it.

Furthermore, when the rights of non-strikers are curtailed by public-sector monopolies - passengers have no choice of London Underground train providers, for instance - Governments are obliged to intervene. All of this is potentially very problematic for unions: extending individuals' ability to retaliate (legal action?) against strike action could seriously blunt the strike weapon.

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I have changed my line somewhat from last August, when I expressed suspicion at calls for "trade union freedom", but I believe I've provided a robust, but "neutral" justification for the idea of trade union rights and freedom this time. Clearly that approach gives to unions with one hand, and take away with another. The reason I'm still suspicious of the campaign is that even if unions do justify secondary action on the basis of individual rights, I see no sign that supporters recognise the same rights within the general public, nor do they appear to have any concerns over the disproportionate power that unions would be able to wield by using secondary action within public-sector monopolies, especially when both the Government and the economy are relatively weak.

In practice, unions that demand - at Labour's lowest ebb - the return of long-lost rights, are pissing in the wind. However "energised" success might make them, their influence will end the moment the Conservatives win the next General Election, and how well they survive over the next five or ten years - under a Government for whom libertarianism works in only one direction, to their political friends - is an interesting, though unpalatable question.

Iain Dale's Top 100 UK Political Blogs - 12 comments

Iain Dale is compiling his annual list of the top UK political bloggers, and he wants you to submit your 'top blogs'.

You know what I'm going to say here, right? As Bob rightly says, quality counts, not popularity; and, as ever, I'd like to see the most thoughtful and challenging blogs given a boost, and the six-post-a-day rehashing-of-other-people's-posts-will-get-me-links-type blogs, the 'all my enemies are idiots'-type blogs, and anything produced by obvious egomaniacs, get a thumbs-down.

But, hey, I'm bored of saying it, and you're bored of hearing it. Plus it's my birthday in two days, and I'm a human being, not a machine, so: vote for Bloggers4Labour, your Bloggers4Labour, the People's friend, the Thin Red Line. Vote early, and vote often, and if I get in the 2008/9 book (and receive a complimentary hardback copy) I promise to publish a photo of myself with a ridiculous grin, pointing at the write-up.

Death to 'sovereignty' - 3 comments

Arab nations 'agree Sudan action', is BBC's upbeat message.

ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo has asked the court for a warrant for [Sudan President] Mr Bashir on suspicion of masterminding crimes against humanity in the troubled Darfur region.

Mr Moreno-Ocampo accused Mr Bashir of running a campaign of genocide that killed 35,000 people outright, at least another 100,000 through a "slow death" and forced 2.5 million to flee their homes in Darfur.

But here's the Arab League's response:

In a joint resolution issued at the end of the meeting, foreign ministers of the 22-nation Arab League said the ICC move was not acceptable and undermined Sudan's sovereignty.

"The council decides solidarity with the Republic of Sudan in confronting schemes that undermine its sovereignty, unity and stability and their non-acceptance of the unbalanced, not objective position of the prosecutor general of the Internal Criminal Court," the resolution said.

Screw solidarity, and screw sovereignty. What I look forward to is a world where the level of power one exerts over a population is proportionate to the level of punishment due to that person when the population suffers at their hand, or due to their neglect. A world where politicians (almost literally) live in fear of their people, not vice versa; and where sovereignty is invested in populations, not in greedy, corrupt, murderous, propaganda-wielding regimes.

I'm not condemning patriotism, or suggesting that 'national identity' is on the wane, just that the price people pay for their state operating a distinct set of political values, for politicians who look and sound like them, and for restrictions on their moving from one state to another, varies from the merely expensive at one end to impoverishing and brutalising at the other. State sovereignty is simply too high a price for people to pay, even if they did have a choice.

So I propose powerful international institutions that have precedence and authority over all national governments, that adhere to universal values, offer universal human rights, and which are prepared to use all means at their disposal - those of their member (ex-?) states, and the international corporations present within them - to overwhelm and subsume those states that defend their own rights over their people (a bit 'Things to Come', I know).

Far-fetched, perhaps, but is it any less plausible than the establishment of the alternative economic system that socialists look forward to?

So who's with me? Clearly not the Eurosceptics - that is to say, the bulk of the Conservative Party; not the kind of people who think democratising, say, Cuba is dangerous lest it become 'westernised' / a friend of the USA; and we can probably also exclude those who cite the 'homogeneity' of global capitalism. What would that leave: perhaps a couple of people out of a hundred?

Libel law: protecting bloggers - no comments

Ministry of Truth describes the sorry state of British libel law, and ends with this:

In short, Britain's political bloggers have decided that, whenever free speech is threatened, it is better to hang together than hang separately and, as the libel 'specialists', Schillings, found to their embarrassment when trying to shut down Craig Murray's blog, last year, if you're trying to kill a story then the very last thing you should do is start threatening bloggers with litigation. Few things, if any, offer more of a guarantee that bloggers will close ranks and spread a story as widely as possible, to the extent that it is now considered a matter of simple good manners that whenever a blogger is threatened in such a manner, others should do everything possible to spread the 'offending' statement to which the threat relates as widely as possible.

That's a good way of defending targeted bloggers - well, it's as much as most of us can do - but while I'm sure the help of all those bloggers who assist is greatly appreciated, perhaps there's a case for creating some kind of Union, or Committee, to which bloggers can sign up to as a sign of their commitment to the cause. As these situations are rarely party-political, the extent of the result blogging media-saturation the group could achieve could be very great.

The Union would presumably require a central blog/site to maintain it, plus a handful of plugged-in bloggers from across the political spectrum to watch out for attacks against others, to produce boilerplate posts for all member blogs, site badges, and so on. Going further, there could be a pool of legal resources, a centralised "defence fund", and so on.

I'm not sure if anything like this already exists, but it feels like a good idea.

Nudges: encouraging civic behaviour - 5 comments

I started Nudge, the 'latest' behavioural economics book, yesterday. It's full of examples of experiments where subtle changes in the choices that people are offered can greatly influence the decisions they make - potentially, decisions that will benefit them, or society, much more than others. This should interest all politicians. Here's an interesting example from p. 66 (my bold):

In the context of tax-compliance, a real-world experiment conducted by officials in Minnesota produced big changes in behaviour. Groups of taxpayers were given four kinds of information. Some were told that their taxes went to various good works, including education, police protection, and fire protection. Others were threatened with information about the risks of punishment for non-compliance. Others were given information [...] how to fill out their tax forms. Still others were just told that more than 90 per cent of Minnesotans already complied, in full, with their obligations under tax law.

Only one of these interventions had a significant effect on tax compliance, and it was the last. Apparently some taxpayers are more likely to violate the law because of a misperception [...] that the level of compliance was pretty low. When informed that the actual compliance level is high, they become less likely to cheat.

So, no carrot, no stick, just a gentle nudge - rely on peer-pressure and conformity to do the rest. I'm not particularly suggesting it as an alternative to closing tax 'loopholes', the general principle is much more interesting, and just imagine how similar techniques could solve other long-standing problems.

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Following directly on from that:

Note to political parties: If you would like to increase turnout, please do not lament the large numbers of people who fail to vote.

The argument here is that if the electorate believe that others are not bothering - for any of the myriad of good/explicable/plausible-sounding reasons that politicians have proposed - it's easier to justify not voting either; voting seems less and less like part of one's responsibility to society, and more like something exceptional - the action of a political activist, for example.

So if you believe that society is healthier if turnouts are very high (I'm sure I'd agree) then don't:

• Bleat about the electoral system or the nature of the political parties (which are not uniquely bad in the UK).
• Simply appeal to civic virtue, expecting people to look at their consciences.
  
• Punish non-voting.
• Devise strategies to make it 'cheaper and easier' to vote.

A better strategy would be for the Government and media to promote elections much better, and for the media to report on those who vote. Allow people to explain why they're voting, why the various issues, parties, or policies appeal to them, how things changed in their area from having voted in great numbers, etc:

• "So, people like me are voting."
• "Idiots like that are voting."
• "Explained like that, I'm definitely voting for/against X."
• "We organised a group and made the Council listen..."
  

Preparing for Opposition - 3 comments

It's very strange to read things like this: "The strange death of Labour Britain", full of statements like:

[...] To which one dissident mordantly replies: "there is no element of risk to keeping Gordon, the outcome is certain. It is disaster".

Who are these people? An MBE for the first political journalist who, the day before their retirement, scans and uploads their little black book, naming every source, dissident, 'still ambitious cabinet minister', 'One Labour MP', and so on.

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The idea that the Labour Government believes itself to be already defeated is a bizarre one: if MPs and Cabinet Ministers don't believe they can challenge Cameron and the Tories, they had better believe that Labour activists and supporters are more confident.

The key thing, though, is that within two years an Election Manifesto needs to be drawn up, in which the political side of the Labour movement makes its case to the electorate. While there might still be those who believe Labour can 'flop' over the line in 2009/10 on their current record, that's hardly an edifying prospect at the best of times, and offers nothing for the 5 years of opposition if Labour do lose. Governments have to be truly appalling for Oppositions to be able to play on their prior record (e.g. Labour, 1979-1981?): a fresh slate is usually required. And given the muddle the Government currently seems to be in, now seems to be the ideal time to wipe that slate, write that document, and then relaunch. There's no shame in that. It would also focus media interest.

It won't be easy. When you have factions that take the view: "You were wrong, therefore we must have been right" (not A therefore Q), the process of coming to terms with what went wrong, what was learned, what can be changed, etc. is undermined by those who believe the solution is to reject policies utterly, in favour of their black-for-white opposites. It requires people with open minds. Surely better, also, that the ideological debate happens now, so at least something decent can be produced in time for the next General Election, than we have a fruitless appeal to 'loyalty' that forces us to take the 'one last flop' approach, and renders a Labour opposition irrelevant up until the next mid-term.

Conservative Foreign Policy - no comments

Nick Cohen on Tory attitudes to Europe and the rest of the world:

[...] Anti-conservatism may no longer stir the left, but opposition to Europe burns as brightly as ever on the right. The Tories are committed to pulling out of the European political bloc which includes Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy's centre-right parties, ordinarily Cameron's natural allies, and heading off with the chauvinist parties of Russia and eastern Europe.

Far from standing up to Putin, the Conservatives tried to help a Putin stooge take over the Council of Europe, which oversees the European Court of Human Rights, of all things. Mainstream European conservatives were as loud in their condemnations of Cameron as mainstream socialists. Caroline Jackson, one of the few Conservative members of the European Parliament who wants to work with Britain's allies, wrote in the Financial Times that her Tory colleagues 'now have a bad reputation [rapidly getting worse] for crass and offensive behaviour'

[...]

A Cameron government will tear up the complex web of alliances and understandings through which Britain exercises her influence. It is about time journalists asked him what he intends to put in their place.

Rather depressing: (a) because Labour's foreign policy, internationalism, record of involvement with developing countries, and of condemning human rights abuses, since 1997, has been a good one - certainly a proud one by British standards; (b) a failure (perhaps) to sell that to the electorate, coupled with our national insularity and hypocrisy, means the Tory Party's stance is unlikely to cost them any votes. Far from it.

Socialist 'Ten Commandments' - 3 comments

I'm told the following was used in Socialist Sunday Schools (a little thin on the ground, nowadays) around 1900, to be committed to memory by the children.

1. Love your school companions, who will be your co-workers in life.
2. Love learning, which is the food of the mind, be as grateful to your teachers as to your parents.
3. Make every day holy by good and useful deeds, and kindly actions.
4. Honour good men and women, be courteous to all; and bow down to none.
5. Do not hate or speak evil of anyone; do not be revengeful, but stand up for your rights and resist oppression.
6. Do not be cowardly. Be a friend to the weak, and love justice.
7. Remember that all good things of the earth are produced by labour. Whoever enjoys them without working for them is stealing the bread of the workers.
8. Observe and think in order to discover the truth. Do not believe what is contrary to reason, and never deceive yourself or others.
9. Do not think that they who love their own country must hate and despise other nations, or wish for war, which is a remnant of barbarism.
10. Look forward to the day when all men and women will be free citizens of one community, and live together as equals in peace and righteousness.

Good advice for boys and girls of any age.

Via Laban, via Paul Stott.

Hypocrisy over Haltemprice - 5 comments

I think this is a fairly typical response from Labour bloggers to David Davis's by-election victory:

The man, David Davis, is a complete nutter, having put his constituents of Haltemprice and Howden through a phoney by-election for the sake of his own super ego. The man who thought 42 days to question terrorist suspects was too much and violated the principles of Magna Carta was nevetheless happy to support 28 days. This nutter wasted money on a phoney election merely to satisfy his personal ego. This by-election proved nothing except confirm its status as a safe Tory seat.

As such it's a thoroughly unreasonable collection of speculative personal attacks and irrelevant or unsubstantiated claims, that dodges the issues in order to gain some measly political advantage.

You'd almost think Labour bloggers supported the 42-day detention proposal. If I had to sum up the reaction from last month, I can't remember more than one or two favourable responses from bloggers who weren't Councillors or MPs.

The point I tried to make last month was that (aside from Davis's character being irrelevant to the issue at hand) that this was an opportunity for us all to combat the illiberal attitudes of the general public, that some of us believe were the real driver of the 42-day proposal, and others in a similar vein. If Davis did succeed in changing attitudes, at least in Haltemprice and Howden, then good - liberal attitudes are in all of our best interests, whatever party we associate with.The idea that you can temporarily breach your own deeply-held values for political advantage is not one I want to be associated with.

Willful waste - 1 comment

'Stop wasting food', urges Brown. It's a shame people have concentrated on what this means for Britain - supposedly £8 of food being thrown away per week by the average household - rather than on this somewhat more damning statistic:

[...] up to 40% of food harvested in developing countries can be lost before it is consumed, due to the inadequacies of processing, storage and transport.

Not being able to sell their products affects the livelihoods of far more people, who have far less to live on.

It is a little ridiculous for Brown to have to ask people to change their own behaviour in order to save themselves some money. However correct the cause, Governments have to allow individuals to make their own mistakes (to remind them is embarrassing for all concerned), and to address those mistakes themselves by buying less food if the £8 is indeed worth their while saving. Besides, this wastage of food probably helps rather than hinders poor food producers, so I must declare myself neutral on this aspect (read: blind alley) of the global food debate.

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One thing that immediately struck me when reading the piece, though, was: would the Government have been brave enough to suggest that people might save money by using less petrol, or that by borrowing less they might insulate themselves from rising interest rates? People inevitably realise this and adapt accordingly, but the reaction to a politician stating it would be furious.

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Returning to food, the Conservatives miss the point as usual:

Shadow environment secretary Peter Ainsworth said government departments should set a better example.

[...] But while the government is telling households to reduce food waste it has no idea how much food it is throwing away itself. This is yet again a clear case of the government saying 'do as we say not as we do'.

Feeble. Meanwhile, Lib Dem environment spokesman, Steve Webb, blames supermarkets:

Supermarkets make it harder for householders to avoid food waste, while throwing away large quantities of edible food through poor stock management. [...]

In this era of long-life food, fridges, and freezers, and with food generally being non-addictive, the only justification for not eating food before the use-by date is either greed, or (in my case) laziness. Please credit the people with some intelligence. As for stock management, supermarkets already pay a penalty for poor decisions, by being unable to sell food they've paid for, and by having to pay for its disposal, something shoppers would otherwise have done. These feel like big enough incentives already.

Bloggers4Labour Social VI ? - 6 comments

It's been a while since we last met up, but I think a Summer social event would be a good idea. No canapés in the Guardian offices for us, just a drink and a chat in the pub: what could be finer?

As usual, it'll be open to each and every Labour blogger, as well as not-necessarily-Labour friends of this site.

Venue: we've 'done' London a few times now, and Brighton and Manchester once each. How about this: given that I also need a holiday, if you'd like to suggest an alternative UK venue that you reckon will bring in a few B4L-ers, please suggest it in the comments.

Possibilities include: Birmingham, Oxford (still?), somewhere in Yorkshire, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Cardiff.

Dates: tbc, but within the next month.

Let me know what you think, below.

P.S. If you ever fancy hosting your own event under the B4L banner, wherever you are, let me know and I'll try to help you organise it.

Minimum Income Standard - 8 comments

I might have a bit of a track record on minimum-income proposals, but this one sounds just great (via).

I complained a couple of weeks ago about the Government's targeting of the official '60%' poverty line, and the lack of criticism of that target by bloggers and commentators. Don Paskini mentioned in the comments that the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (et al.) had something in the pipeline, and here it is.

A single person in Britain needs to earn at least £13,400 a year for a minimum standard of living, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) has claimed. [...]

According to the report, which took two years to put together, the spending power needed to pay for a basic but socially acceptable standard of living was higher than the official government calculated poverty line. [...]

"It is about having what you need in order to have the opportunities and choices necessary to participate in society," it said. [...]

Jonathan Bradshaw, professor of social policy at the University of York and co-author of the report, said that this was the first time the question of how much income was enough had been addressed.

Just suppose the Government committed to guaranteeing the relevant minimum income to each single person, lone parent with child, pensioner couple, etc. so that nobody could/need fall below, remodelling the tax and benefit system as necessary. Isn't that a strategy socialists ought to be supporting?

For me, the minimum wage - while useful on its own - doesn't carry one-tenth of the moral weight that a minimum income does, not least because it benefits the poorly-paid, not the poor. If I took an evening job that would normally have paid £4.00/hour, at the legal/going rate of £6.00/hour, then I'd (a) be earning a wage premium I didn't personally need; and (b) deny that premium to someone poorer. I'd also observe that if the wage rate was reduced to, say, £3.00/hour, two vacancies could be opened, not one.

It's all very well to call that an 'obscene' wage. It would seem so to me if those who took the two jobs could not then hope to earn the minimum acceptable level of income the JRF have identified. I wouldn't be so concerned if one applicant was a middle-class student with a comfortable family income, while the other was somebody topping up their income with a second job. They're down our list of priorities, surely.

This is why a minimum income is much more important than a minimum wage. Incomes (I'm excluding the effects of benefits, dividends, etc.) are the basis of a human being's existence. The battle against low wages is only a rough approximation of the real battle, and distract us from those for whom even minimum wages are insufficient, and those for whom minimum wages pay an undeserved benefit.

Once people have the imperishable safety-net of a minimum income, there's no longer any need to control wages. People will be able to take the jobs at the price employers are prepared to pay, or else tell them to get stuffed. Sure, there are 'dependency' issues here, but while they might decrease employment, uncontrolled wages ought to increase it. Nevertheless, those on the lowest incomes have bargaining power they didn't have before.

And just think what we could do to the benefits system, and tax rates...

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I really think the Labour Party should seize the opportunity to champion the Minimum Income Standard campaign. It won't do for the Department for Work and Pensions to say:

"This government is committed to a fairer, more inclusive society, providing opportunity for all. We have lifted 600,000 children and nearly a million pensioners out of poverty. [...]"

when - on that definition of poverty - those children and pensioners could slip back just because of a change in the nation's median income, and when the benefits of the Government's anti-poverty strategy are buried within those figures.

This looks like an opportunity to enact some really radical change: to reject the conservatism of those politically to our immediate left and right, to simplify the tax and benefit system, and to provide the kind of safety-net that our 'Welfare State' has patently never really provided.

Myers-Briggs Types - 1 comment

My employer has had the bright idea of organising a "card game" for everyone in the office, this Thursday evening. Intelligence reaches me that this is almost certainly boils down to a Myers-Briggs test, which is covered here at the Skepdic's Dictionary. See also this drivel.

I'm sure I speak for all B4L readers when I state that I'd really rather not undergo a pseudo-scientific test (if that's quite the right term) of this nature, and so I ask "How do I get out of this?" or, more realistically, "How can I render any results I produce unusable?". Presumably the worst possible situation would be to produce a 'clear' result (insofar as these results can be clear) that wasn't even 'me'.

If anyone has any suggestions or experience, please post them here, as I'm sure it's in the public interest that such testing is challenged.