Taking Out The Trash

They also serve

Chris of the Green Bristol Blog rightly reminds me that my summary of some of the key Bristol bloggers holding the city council to account would not be complete without the The Bristol Blogger.

The latest post on how the sale of council land contravened the authorities own green spaces policy is a good example of TBB's quality output.

Chris also highlights the work of Ian Liddell-Grainger, the Bridgwater Tory MP.

I've been following Ian's complaints about Somerset County Council's deal with IBM for a while. He has used his website to set out in full (and in pretty ripe language for an MP) his concerns.

It's not a blog as traditionally thought and I personally find the design off-putting. But it's effective and I am surprised the concerns he has raised haven't surfaced at a wider level.

Deaths in custody

A few years back I wrote a piece for The Big Issue in the North on a film about deaths in custody called Injustice.

The film achieved most of its publicity not because of the shocking facts in it (that hundreds of people have died in custody and no-one has ever been successfully prosecuted) but that the Police Federation's heavy handed lawyers tried to get it banned (thus breaking rule 1 in the PR handbook).

Today there will be a march to Downing Street to remember the 2,533 people known to have died in custody since 1969. There will also be a press conference involving the TUC and United Friends and Families Campaign.

Road campaigners usually say that if all the deaths on our roads took place on one day then people would really sit up and take notice and do something about it.

That figure of 2,533 is only a couple hundred short of the number of people killed in the 9/11 attacks. Meanwhile there are 1,600 names on the UK police memorial to officers killed in the line of duty and they go back to 1680.

It's not a case that some people are less deserving of remembrance or that a police officer killed stopping a robbery is of more value than a person who chose September 11 to visit the Twin Towers.

But neither should it be true that just because you end up in custody  (wether in a police station, prison or mental institution) you forfeit any rights to life.

Just as we should rightfully honour those police officers and the people killed in 9/11 and bring to book the people responsible - so we should do the same for those in the state's custody. It is the most vulnerable who require the greatest care but who make up a significant proportion of those 2,533.

The fact that 2,533 people can die and barely anything is said about it, no-one is accountable and we're not even sure if that is the final total is, frankly, shameful.

The dog that does not bark

I posted the following on the Total Politics local government blog:

Is some critical mass needed before a community gets a decent online watchdog?

Recently I've started travelling into Bristol a couple of times a week for work. Though just 20 minutes away it's like another country.

You can see that by looking online. I've been checking out Evening Post Watch, Green Bristol Blog, Charlie Bolton's Southville blog and, of course, the daddy - Bristol Indymedia.

They're just coming from a broadly left/green perspective, there are plenty of other political Bristol bloggers out there. They share a delight in poring over what the council (and other civic institutions) are up to.

Just ten minutes down the road and Bath is home to a number of media companies as well as many national reporters who have fled London.

Yet a year ago the local paper went from a daily to a weekly and barely a handful of the city's blogging community takes any forensic interest in what the council is up to. (The Bath Bomb is giving it a go with limited success).

And then on my doorstep in Wiltshire you can see the virtual tumbleweeds blowing across your computer screen.

The local authorities in the county are going through their biggest change in 30 years with millions of pounds at stake in the unitary process. With issues from acadamies, to major regeneration schemes, the changing relationship with the military and serious environmental concerns there is no lack of meat.

Who blogs the most about this? The county council's chief executive and the council leader.

A buyer for Tribune?

There was a flurry of interest in whether the radical magazine Tribune was going under a few weeks back...then nothing.

So put a call in and I understand that there is a preferred buyer, the union owners are in negotiation with him and the deal is "80% certain" of going through.

There's plenty of split twixt cup and lip but that sounds promising.

So who might the "he" be?

Yasmin does Benn

Off to hear Yasmin Alibhai-Brown give the 2008 Benn Lecture tonight in the Arnolfini in Bristol.

The talk is titled: Not One Of Us: Columnists, Independence, Distance & Integrity which is easily applicable to many bloggers I would have thought.

Update: A low turnout but a good talk from Yasmin. I've never been a huge fan but she spoke well on the importance of columnists needing to remain outsiders and the present disgraceful treatment of asylumn seekers by the press.

Interestingly, she said that the shift to the centre-right in politics and journalism could be seen, for instance, in the choice of panellists on Question Time. Left-wingers are very very rare panellists (and simply being a member of the Labour Party of the Government does not earn you that title). I've asked the BBC for a list of panellists to see if it is true.

Paying the piper part II

So, following my post of a few days ago about the MEP Roger Helmer offering a free DVD which puts right what he says are misconceptions about climate change, I asked Mr Helmer how he funded this.
Are MEPs allowed to spend their allowances on such things?
The following is his (fair to say) prompt and open reply.

Dear Phil,

 

Not a bit of it.  As a non-inscrit MEP, I have a parliamentary "Information Fund" budget of around €40,000 a year which I can use to inform the public about my work.  A couple of years back, I produced 10,000 copies of a DVD on my day-to-day work in my region (I still have some and can send you a copy if you want).

 

I am now a member of the parliament's Temporary Committee on Climate Change, so it is entirely proper that I should share my views on this matter with the general public.  This seems to me like a good way to do so.

 

I can also use this budget for leaflets, advertisements, free pens and paper-weights, and for meetings and conferences on topics related to my work.

 

Best regards.

 

ROGER HELMER MEP

www.rogerhelmer.com

 

"While the US Constitution is chiefly about the rights of the individual, the EU Constitution is chiefly about the power of the state."

I also got a copy of said DVD in the post today. Nice picture of polar bears on the front. Let's see what it's got to say.......

update: and Mr Helmer said an addendum a few days later which I've just got round to adding below

Another point I should have made.  Some parliamentary allowances are made on a flat-rate basis and allow the Member some discretion on the spending.  In the case of Information Funding, on the other hand, individual invoices are submitted for reimbursement along with samples of any material produced, and the parliamentary administration goes through each application with a fine-tooth comb to ensure conformity with parliamentary rules.  So you need have no worries on that score!

 

Cheers.  R.

Porter's a liberty taker

Another Sunday, another column from Henry Porter in The Observer about how we're about to become a fascist dictatorship (it's not me that reduces the debate to a Young Ones sketch).

Porter writes: "...while there are many other serious calls on our attention these days we should pay attention to Ms Smith [the Home Secretary] who towers over our democracy like some comic-strip super-villain dominatrix. She is wrong, corrosive and arrogant. As Molière said: 'A woman always has her revenge ready.' ..."

It's funny but the only woman he quotes in the piece gets cast as a dominatrix - her gender is highlighted and used against her - while all the men are simply quoted and any criticism is not gender specific.

Meanwhile quotes from government ministers are treated with scepticism (fair enough) Porter quotes Phil Booth from NO2ID saying: "The government is proposing to record - for life - the details of everyone you call or write to and what websites you visit." - that's an opinion not a fact. Why not treat it the same as ministerial statements?

And finally, following on from Booth's quote, Porter writes: "Keith Vaz, chair of the Home Affairs select committee, Lord Carlisle, the government's independent reviewer of terror laws and the left-wing backbencher John McDonnell - none of them in the front rank of civil libertarians - all expressed grave alarm at this idea."

Vaz and Carlisle, fair enough, but I'll take John McDonnell's contribution to civic life in this country over Porter's any day. Anyhow, McDonnell has generally been against ID cards according to his Parliamentary voting record.

But when Porter writes about being in the "front rank" perhaps what he means is having the freedom to churn out the same article week in week out for a national newspaper and be paid thousands of pounds for the privilege.

Do adjust your set

The following is why trade unions matter - because they raise issues that otherwise get ignored or overlooked by middle class opinion formers.

The TUC will challenge the media to stop discriminating against people on low incomes by portraying them as 'scroungers' and 'benefits cheats', at the TUC's annual poverty conference in London today (Friday).

The conference Challenging Povertyism - held on World Poverty Day - will tackle the negative way people on lower incomes are stereotyped by the media, and challenge how the Government communicates with people living in poverty.

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said: 'All too often we see tabloid headlines slating people living in poverty as 'benefits cheats'.

'Popular television programmes like 'Shameless' and 'Wife Swap' portray people on low incomes as 'scroungers' and second class citizens, worthy of ridicule.

'But poverty is not a laughing matter. Nearly four million children in the UK - one in three children - are growing up in poverty, and we have one of the worst child poverty records in the industrialised world.

'Contrary to media stereotypes, people on low incomes are not all cheating the benefits system. More than half of children living in poverty have parents in work, but many are caught up in a cycle of low paid insecure jobs.

'The majority of people on low incomes want decent work but are struggling, particularly in the current economic climate.

'The UK has one of the lowest levels of social mobility in the developed world. Negative portrayals of people on low incomes in the media as lazy, feckless, scrounging on the dole and somehow worth less than the rest of society do nothing to help social cohesion.'

You can read the rest here.

The only time you see poor people on TV is as victims, perpetrators of crime or passive consumers. They're briefly interviewed on some news programme because of a crime or they've made it on to a game show or talent contest. They're lucky to get one dimensional treatment and when the BBC does a series on the white working class it makes it all about race.

And Mike Leigh films such as Life is Sweet aren't much better. Stick to Shane Meadows instead.

Sorry, rant over (and good on yer, TUC)

Who pays the piper?

Richard Roger Helmer MEP has not troubled my universe before but I'm intrigued by a posting of his on the ConservativeHome website.

In it Mr Helmer advances the view that climate change is nothing to fear as it's all part of long term cycle and therefore nothing to do with human intervention.

So far, so normal for the sceptics. There may not be many of them but they make a lot of noise and that's what happens in a democracy.

At the end Mr Helmer says:
"Roger Helmer has just published a DVD entitled "Straight Talking on Climate Change".... The DVD is available free of charge from his UK office"

And all I wondered was who produced this? I mean, that's some effort and expense to go on this issue. He's obviously serious about this as his blog talks about him chairing and hosting (theirs a difference?) a Counter Consensual Cimate Conference in Brussels last month. (Gotta love that alliteration).

It's just an idle thought but I wondered where the money for this came from? And how many of the 4.1 million East Midlands residents he represents support his view?

Mr Helmer's CV on his blog says that he got a BA in maths (and an MA as well it looks like, but it is unclear from the wording) and has worked in "marketing and general management" for all sorts of different firms. In other words it seems he's got little expertise in the science pertaining to climate change but is pretty confident he knows better than people who spend their life studying this stuff and have to prove their theories to their peers rather than spout off randomly.

Mr Helmer is honoury chairman of the Freedom Association which has a long history of championing freedom provided that freedom is for businesses to do as they wish, for trade unions to be legislated into oblivion and for people who hold left wing views to be smeared and traduced.

Hat tip: LabourHome

Update: corrected my sloppy error in the intro thanks to Mr Helmer's reply which is in the comments section but thought I should highlight for sake of balance

He wrote: "I'd like to know who this Richard Helmer is [I deserved that. ed].  The DVD was paid for from my parliamentary allowances.  And I don't "Know better" than the scientists.  But I have listened to scientists from both sides of the debate, and have uded [sic] that the alarmist hypothesis is mistaken."

Gotta credit the MEP for his swift response. Still not sure about paying for such stuff out of your allowances (just seems odd) and have asked for an explanation.

It's blog action day

...and the theme is poverty.
Living in a rural community where there nice cars and well-dressed people are very visible, the impression is that poverty happens somewhere else.
We've got a very nice and very expensive hotel on our doorstep and one can safely assume that the people who make the beds, deliver the meals and muck out the stables are not earning much above the minimum wage.
What has been conspicuous by its absence is any complaints from the Countryside Alliance and their various lackeys about rural poverty.
I know some farmers have it hard but try renting a house when you're earning £7 a hour for some rural work (you've got to pay for your transport to get there as well).
There's been a real failure to address this issue from all sides because of party prejudices and the antics of those who presume to 'speak for the countryside' only make this worse.