On guns and murder

While the murder of Jo Cox is deeply shocking, our thoughts should be with her young family.  But we shouldn't forget that this is not a unique event.  Stephen Timms was seriously assaulted at an advice surgery in 2010 as was Cheltenham Lib Dem MP, Nigel Jones in 2000 - where his assistant Andy Pennington was killed.

Andy was also an elected representive - a local councillor for Hester's Way ward - which has somewhat been forgotten in all the outpouring of grief in the Westminster bubble. 

The Guardian provides a history of attacks on UK MPs and it is not as rare as some might think.

But we should be grateful in this country - that despite the occasional outrage - we are relatively free from the sort of mass slaughter that is routine in the USA.  In this sobering map the outline of the States can be recognised just from the dots of mass killings since 2013.  Mass killings are defined as four or more deaths in a single incident.  More details here.

Guardian opposes NHS, jobs and affordable homes...

...well it does if they are being promoted by Liberal Democrat run Watford Council.

The Guardian's John Harris - best known for his eulogies of britpop and Tony Blair - has taken to his keyboard in the idyllic Hay on Wye to write a piece attacking the Lib Dems for wanting to redevelop some less than idyllic derelict land by Watford General Hospital (along with some allotments) to expand the local hospital, provide much needed new homes - more than a third of which will be affordable - and provide new jobs. All the existing allotment holders will be relocated locally.

The most interesting contention made by Harris is that:

'The rest will be given over to development which seems to have little connection to health at all: houses, along with "business incubator and retail units"'.

Sadly for Harris he obviously hasn't read the rest of Friday's Guardian.  Because if he had he would have stumbled across an article by Sarah Hayward, Labour Leader of Camden Council titled 'How councils can take action to bridge the equality gap'.

In it Harris would have found the following:

'The report found that housing is an important issue because it impacts on the borough's social mix, community cohesion, health, educational attainment and employment.'

The left's sexism on Thatcher (and Friday favourite 103)

Politics in many Labour heartlands is a pretty brutal affair.  It's often signified by corruption, vote rigging nepotism and sexism.  Trades union and Labour clubs are often unwelcoming places for women and ethnic minorities.  So it's hardly surprising that a strong streak of sexism has (and continues to) run through the left's attitude towards Margaret Thatcher.  The success of the campaign to get 'Ding, dong the witch is dead' from the Wizard of Oz up the charts - no doubt organised by some twenty something trots whose only knowledge of Thatcher is gleaned from the pages of the Guardian or Socialist Worker - is just one example.

And if you don't think it is sexist - imagine juvenile right wingers doing the same on the death of Harriet Harman.  There would be outrage.

There's also a perverse jealousy that a reactionary party had a women leader and PM before the
supposedly progressive Labour party.  The sense of certainty that only the left can be progressive, fair and principled couldn't cope with the fact that the right had achieved something 'progressive' that to this day the left haven't.

Now I'm no fan of Margaret Thatcher.  She was essentially only destructive - she rightly broke the power of the union barons, but instead of using the sensible industrial conditions this created to create a modern, skilled manufacturing industry, she carried on ripping things up - destroying the physical and social infrastructure in much of the north of the UK.  There was no reason that places like Teeside or Clydeside couldn't have been like Germany's Ruhr valley - with a government committed to education and skills and adding value to production.  But instead we got a pile 'em high sell 'em cheap government that destroyed apprenticeships and industrial skills and used high unemployment to keep pay low.  And the rest is history.

Anyway if you are tempted to download a Thatcher tribute song I'd recommend the deeply ironic 'I'm in love with Margaret Thatcher', by Burnley's finest punks the Notsensibles.

 

Chris Huhne - choice of Polly Toynbee

A little publicised fact in the downfall of Chris Huhne.  In the 2007 Lib Dem leadership vote - he was the preferred candidate Polly Toynbee (apparently also a guest at his champagne parties).  In a gloriously patronising and ill-informed piece on the election, Toynbee wrote:

"Huhne is most likely to seize the political opportunity on Brown's exposed left flank. Above all, he is toughest on proportional representation, the party's one historic purpose - to reform British politics."

Review of the year 2012

It's the last day of the year, so it's time to look back on the events that have caught the attention of this blog over the past 12 months...

In January I suggested that Lib Dem Scottish secretary, Michael Moore should stop trying to impede Alex Salmond from holding a referendum of his choosing.

In February a group called Liberal Left was set up.  I wasn't impressed.

March saw the sad deaths of Lib Dem stalwarts Viv Bingham and David Walter along with former darts champion Jocky Wilson.

In April, former Liberal leader David Steel said some very foolish things about Lords' reform on national TV.

May saw the climax of the football season (or anti-climax if you are a Hibs fan) and the final implosion of Glasgow Rangers.  In politics a local by-election in North Richmond saw some very dodgy tactics by anti-Lib Dem elements.

In June Jeremy Hunt's ministerial career was on the line and the abstention by Lib Dem MPs on a crucial vote suggested to me that it was time to change the rules of government collective responsibility to better reflect the nature of coalition.

In July I highlighted the bizarre behaviour of Kingston's Tories who backed (and continue to back) benefit fraud probe councillor, Tim Dennen.

August saw the spotlight on the future of Nick Clegg and his political strategy with the departure of his so-called strategist Richard Reeves.  Polling evidence contradicted them both.

In September, David Laws returned to government, the Lib Dems caved into ludicrous security demands for their annual conference and Nick Clegg's conference speech began to unravel in the blogosphere.

In October I gave some advice to the Guardian that might have dealt with some of their financial woes.  But there seemed to nothing that could deal with the self inflicted financial crisis at Edinburgh's second football team - Hearts.

November was a month for elections with the re-election of President Obama and the first votes for police and crime commissioners in the UK.  And it also saw a welcome - if belated - development with the Lib Dems reversing their support for more internet snooping powers.

And this brings us to December - and the news that income inequality had fallen under the coaltion in contrast to the rises under Labour.

So that's it for another year - and I wish you all a happy 2013.

Chump Trump takes hump over Scots champ

The news that Michael Forbes - long suffering neighbour of Donald Trump's vandals and bullies at his Aberdeenshire golf course - has won the Glenfiddich Scot of the Year award has been almost universally  welcomed.

But not in Trump Towers needless to say.  Forbes's well deserved recognition has led to Trump to 'lose the heid' as his long lost Scottish grandmother might have once said. 

According to the Guardian Trump has attacked Glennfiddich's owner William Grant and removed all their brands from his hotels and resorts, claiming the award was an 'insult to Scotland' and that Grant's were jealous of his own single malt whisky brand.

Given Trump is seeking a planning application for a second golf course one can only wonder whether this latest unhinged outburst might actually make the councillors of Aberdeenshire see sense and send him packing.  Sadly, given their supine craving to him so far - supported by First Minister and local MSP Alex Salmond - I suspect he will once again get what he wants. 

Save the Guardian - sack Toynbee

An interesting article from this week's Press Gazette.  In it the Guardian NUJ chapel calls for massive pay cuts for senior execs and marquee journalists instead of axing 70 odd editorial staff.

The Guardian is in trouble - losing more than £44 million last year.  Yet it pays editor, Alan Rushbridger £400,000 per year.

It also employs patronising, hand-wringing, state aggrandising, poverty crocodile tear crying, socialist atrocity denying, Lib Dem flip flopping, top rate tax cut benefitting, lip quivering, septic - Polly Toynbee.  She admits to be paid more than £100,000 per year by the Graun - and no doubt thousands more from her contracts with other media outlets such as the BBC.

Her wrongheadedness can no better be expressed by this article from 2004 entitled 'Why isn't New Labour proud to be the nation's nanny?'

In it she boasts:

"The nanny state is the good state. A nanny is what every well-off family hires if it can afford it. So why do the nanny-employing Tories use the word as an insult? In the Commons and in their press, they bray like a bunch of prep-school bullies calling anyone a cissy if they do what nanny says."

What La Toynbee forgets (or probably never knew in the first place) - as the ever excellent Eaten by Missionaries reminded me at party conference - is that nannies are for children.

So here's a thought - by getting rid of the awful Toynbee the Graun could save itself a large sum of cash - enough to employ several young hungry journos and possibly increase its sliding sales figures by seeing the return of the many Lib Dems who have stopped buying the paper due to its kneejerk antipathy to the party since 2010.

Ed Miliband praises holocaust apologist

The Grauniad reports... the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, led tributes to the Marxist historian and academic Eric Hobsbawm, who died on Monday , calling him "an extraordinary historian, a man passionate about his politics and a great friend of my family".

Liberal England carries more details of Hobsbawm's support for Soviet mass murder including this most egregious exchange with Michael Ignatieff:

Ignatieff: What that comes down to is saying that had the radiant tomorrow actually been created, the loss of fifteen, twenty million people might have been justified? 

Hobsbawm: Yes.

If nazi non-historian David Irving had said similar (and he probably has) he would have rightly been attacked.  But the left always gets away with it - witness the fawning tributes to him on tonight's Newsnight.

Media vultures start to circle Clegg

It is clear Nick Clegg is in trouble.  His poll ratings are dire and show no sign of improvement.  Even the mainly loyal readership of Lib Dem Voice are split down the middle on whether he should continue as leader.  And his advisers seem to be floundering about looking for anything that might turn things around.  Or at least that can only be the reason for Clegg's sudden conversion to taxing the rich, having voted to do the opposite in this year's budget.

Now the Guardian's Martin Kettle has waded into the debate with a thoughtful piece which makes the case for change at the top of the party.

The dangers of creationism...

The Grauniad reports that Education Secretary, Michael Gove, has given the go ahead for three new free schools with a fundamentalist Christian ethos - including the teaching of creationism.  But not apparently part of the science curriculum, so that's OK then.

It is clear from Gove's recent axing of proposals for a much needed new community secondary in north Kingston, that he has gone free school mad - to the exclusion of any other model. 

And allowing dangerously deluded educational theories - such as creationism and so called 'Accelerated Christian Education' - outlined in this excellent blog - a foothold in UK schools is dangerous to the children involved.

Gove needs to reign back his enthusiasm for free schools.  Instead he and his department should focus on ensuring all schools provide quality education for their students - free from extremist dogma - of whatever persuasion.  He wouldn't allow a fundamentalist muslim jihadist school - so why does he allow its Christian equivalent?