Commentariat

Blue Peter: is it time to let it die?

Telegraph Personal View — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 13:45:07 +0000

The BBC should realise that the reason Blue Peter’s ratings have collapsed is nobody wants to watch it.

Muslim parents should accept the law of the land

Telegraph Telegraph View — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 12:44:08 +0000

Telegraph View: Spurious charges of racism have forced out a “marvellous” head teacher

Labour’s last chance to save itself: Politics Decoded by Garbo

garbo — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 11:15:01 +0000

It ain’t over ’til the fat lady sings…
Yesterday I wrote about the decline of the New Labour project and what I consider to be the over-riding factor that has driven that decline. I also pointed out that, while I fear it might be over for Labour come the next election, the fat lady has [...]

Ben Goldacre / Jeni Barnett case made Start the Week on Radio 4: Latest

Matt Wardman — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 09:15:00 +0000

The Ben Goldacre / Jeni Barnett case about LBC's attempt to remove a recording of a phone-in from one of their shows from the Internet, after it has been subjected to criticism, rumbles on.

Yesterday - and I haven't seen anyone noting this - it was used as an example on a excellent "Start the Week" about free expression. Here is the snippet:

[audio:http://www.mattwardman.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/20090210-bbc-radio4-start-the-week-ben-goldacre-censorship.mp3]

Elsewhere, the TechnoLlama has the best legal analysis I have seen anywhere, making roughly the same points as I did more elegantly.

Steve Bell: Brown seeks Obama-style bonus cap for RBS

Steve Bell — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 02:23:28 +0000

Public outcry over bonuses at the Royal Bank of Scotland is tempered by Gordon Brown's attempt to cap RBS bonuses at £25

China in the Congo

FT.com - Editorial — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 02:00:00 +0000

Chinese officials like to describe burgeoning relations between Beijing and Africa as “win-win”. Africa wins from Chinese investment, infrastructure and loans. China…

End bonus culture, but keep bonuses

FT.com - Editorial — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 02:00:00 +0000

Bankers are more widely loathed than ever. They are blamed for the recession, yet their jobs have been saved by government intervention. There is now outrage that some…

Bonuses: cui bono?

FT.com - Editorial — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 02:00:00 +0000

Bankers are more widely loathed than ever. They are blamed for the recession, yet their jobs have been saved by government intervention. There is now outrage that some…

Israel’s elections

FT.com - Editorial — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 02:00:00 +0000

It was entirely predictable that Israel’s ferocious assault on Gaza in recent weeks would shift the country’s centre of political gravity sharply to the right ahead of…

Israel voters look set to move right

FT.com - Editorial — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 02:00:00 +0000

It was entirely predictable that Israel’s ferocious assault on Gaza in recent weeks would shift the country’s centre of political gravity sharply to the right ahead of…

Robert Fisk: I saw a mesmeric Islamic uprising turn to savagery

The Independent - Commentators RSS Feed — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:01:40 +0000

The fall of the Shah was an epic, a morality play or a Greek tragedy if he had been a truly great man rather than just another American satrap, complete with US fighter aircraft, a swamp of corrupt officials and a sadistic intelligence service. When one of my colleagues suggested that the Iranian revolution could be compared to the fall of the Bastille and of the Tsar – he quoted Charles Fox’s line about “how much the greatest event it is that ever happened in the world” – I thought his trust in Ayatollah Khomeini’s liberal intentions was born of wishful thinking.

Mr Bevan launches fierce attack

The Guardian newspaper: Editorials & reply | guardian.co.uk — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:01:00 +0000

From our parliamentary correspondent, Westminster, Monday.

Given Mr. Aneurin Bevan’s case on the National Health Service Act and the great advantage he had of opening to-day’s Commons debate, the rest followed inevitably - a brilliant performance which sent the Labour benches wild with delight.

He sat down at the end of it to one of those long, sustained cheers that parties in the House of Commons reserve for an unusual gladiatorial triumph. What could not be foreseen was whether Mr. Bevan was going to play from strength a conciliatory card. The House was not left in doubt - conciliation was decidedly not his line.

He had decided to attack the B.M.A. without mercy. They were a small body of raucous-voiced politically poisoned people who had misrepresented the medical profession as they had misrepresented the National Health Act. They were “organising sabotage” of an Act of Parliament.

They had always been reactionary. They resisted Lloyd George years ago. They had fallen foul of Mr. Ernest Brown and Mr. Willink just as much as they had of him (Mr. Bevan). The Labour benches cheered him furiously again and again as the invective mounted. Mr. R. A. Butler, who followed him, remarked that Mr. Bevan’s speech had done nothing to promote a settlement. That may be so. But (this) will largely depend on whether Mr. Bevan’s obvious tactic succeeds - that is, to discredit the B.M.A. in the eyes of the bulk of the doctors.

One concession Mr. Bevan made. He is to set up a legal committee to consider the effect of the Act on partnership agreements, and is prepared to introduce an amending bill. Mr. Butler also drew a noteworthy statement from Mr. Bevan on the basic salary. Mr. Butler put it that the doctors’ great stumbling-block is the fear that the basic salary will be extended to make it a whole-time State salaried service. He suggested that if the Minister could reassure the doctors on that point it would help enormously. Mr. Bevan obliged at once with the statement that there is no intention of introducing a full-time basic salary.

The temperature of the debate frequently ran high. Once [Mr Bevan] interrupted Mr. Butler to tell him that he was leaving “a trail of slime behind him”. Mr. Butler struggled manfully to cope with his adversary, but was not too happy about it.

Once he raised the Conservatives to great enthusiasm by retorting on Mr. Bevan that nobody knew more about fishing in the squalid waters of politics than the Minister did.

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Mr Bevan launches fierce attack

The Guardian newspaper: Editorials & reply | guardian.co.uk — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:01:00 +0000

From our parliamentary correspondent, Westminster, Monday.

Once he raised the Conservatives to great enthusiasm by retorting on Mr. Bevan that nobody knew more about fishing in the squalid waters of politics than the Minister did.

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Letters: Conflict of interests in public galleries

The Guardian newspaper: Editorials & reply | guardian.co.uk — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:01:00 +0000

I visited Tate Britain last week. Sadly, there was not a great deal of real painting to look at. The Constable room was being redecorated, and a large proportion of the Turners had gone into hibernation; but the main problem was that what seemed like two thirds of the rest of the Tate was taken up by Altermodern (Demolish a wall? No problem, G2, 3 February).

It’s a popular show, with lots of youngsters hanging out while older visitors walked about with dazed expressions - probably me too; for anyone over 50 it’s all been done before, and it wasn’t any good first time around. But I don’t want to critique it. In fact, I don’t want to bother with it at all. I want things to look at, and I want enough of them on show in concentrations that enable me to make meaningful comparisons. So has the time now come for literal, non-visual art to be given its own space somewhere else, and public museums and galleries returned to showing painting and sculpture? There is just too much of the other stuff, and it’s crowding out the things I want to see. Constable and Turner should be on show at Tate Britain all the time.

We could return to the days when visual art was not popular, and galleries were stuffed with good things to look at in relative peace and quiet, save for a bit of earnest debate. If one thing epitomises the whole sorry business of putting the literal alongside the visual, it is the hateful interruption of one’s contemplation of painting or sculpture by a bit of adjacent literal art making a bloody noise.
Robin Greenwood
Director, Poussin Gallery, London

“Family-friendly” should not have to be synonymous with “adult-unfriendly”, but it often is (Museum staff told: stop shushing, 5 February). Most museums I visit are now infested with gimmicky interactive displays aimed at children, at the expense of traditional exhibits. Unaccompanied adults in museums are a rare sight already, and this policy seems intended to render them extinct. What is wrong with the idea of a children’s area in a museum, or indeed specific museums aimed at children - and, alongside them, museums aimed at adults, where those with a genuine interest can indulge it undisturbed by animations, games, garish colours and shrieks. Anyone for setting up an Adults in Museums campaign?
Cath Brown
Birmingham

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Editorial: The numbers game surrounding parliamentary expenses

The Guardian newspaper: Editorials & reply | guardian.co.uk — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:01:00 +0000

Jacqui Smith found herself lectured yesterday by David Cameron over her questionable use of the parliamentary allowance for second homes. There are two ironies to this. The first is that Ms Smith (additional costs allowance in 2006-07, £22,110) was only £1,547 ahead of Mr Cameron (claim, £20,563). The second is that when the Commons voted last year on sensible reforms, which would have tightened up auditing and replaced the ACA with a better system, Ms Smith was one of 30 ministers who unexpectedly backed the status quo. It survived by a majority of 28. She is suffering the consequences of a rotten system she helped save.

The home secretary, it was reported at the weekend, declares a rented room in her sister’s London home as her main residence in order to claim the costs of her family house in Redditch as a second home. The parliamentary green book of rules is helpfully uncertain about what should count as a “main” home, which allows Ms Smith to say she broke no rules. But even on the kindest interpretation, she has tested them to the limit.

Few MPs are actively dishonest, but many, Ms Smith among them, maximise their financial opportunities within the rules - just as bankers do with their bonuses. Playing the numbers round in parliamentary Countdown, MPs add up their bills to get as close as they can to the target set by the ACA. Calculations by Bloomberg News show that the home secretary was one of 184 MPs who claimed the full £22,110 in 2006-07; half the House of Commons came within £900 of this and fewer than 30 eligible MPs claimed nothing. As such, the ACA - offered to all but 26 London MPs to cover the costs of a second home - has become less a variable expense payment than a fixed entitlement.

MPs have spent the last few years mishandling their money. Afraid of being seen to pay themselves too much, they have kept official salaries low, boosting them informally through (untaxed) expenses. Periods of openness (and scrutiny) have been followed by attempts at secrecy - the most recent being Harriet Harman’s unsuccessful attempt to exempt parliament from freedom of information laws. Covering things up helps keep a bad system out of the news - parliament has still to publish clear expense claims for 2007-08, for instance. But it leaves MPs behaving like creative accountants behind the scenes.

A better system would accept that most MPs need a second home, and pay them accordingly so they can keep one. Raising the salary, and reducing allowances, would be simpler and more transparent. It would also lead to a different crop of challenging headlines - which is the reason it is unlikely to happen.

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Editorial: Israeli elections

The Guardian newspaper: Editorials & reply | guardian.co.uk — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:01:00 +0000

Even by the standards set by previous attempts to form governments in Israel, the political calculations involved in today’s election will be unusually complex and labyrinthine. The two contenders for the premiership are both tarnished figures - Bibi Netanyahu, the rightwing leader of Likud and now head of the opposition who has already had one go at the job, and Tzipi Livni, the leader of a centrist Kadima party after a close contest last year, who is thought to lack experience. By law, the president, Shimon Peres, invites one member of the new Knesset to form a government. By tradition, that person is the leader of the largest party who can also muster the largest block of votes in parliament. But in a dead heat, the two may not be synonymous. It is the smaller parties who become king or queen makers.

After today that role might well be played by a former nightclub bouncer from Moldova who, only weeks ago, was no more than the head of a minority party of Russian immigrants. Back then, Ms Livni had just shot herself in the foot by refusing to do a deal with the ultra-religious party, Shas. She maintained her image as Ms Clean but lost the obvious opportunity she had as the head of the ruling party to form a new government. In Israel, you do not do that. Nothing could stop Mr Netanyahu from claiming the mantle of the right. But then came the war in Gaza, and with it the scenes of Arab members of the Knesset standing up to condemn the actions of Israel’s army in the conflict. In the far right’s eyes, this was tantamount to treason. Avigdor Lieberman, the Russian-speaking young immigrant turned politician, grabbed his chance. Making his campaign slogan “No citizenship without loyalty”, he challenged the entire community of Israeli Arabs - that is 20% of the population of Israel - to swear loyalty to the Jewish state or lose their citizenship. The idea, which sent tremors through the already disaffected Arab villages of northern Gallilee, was an instant hit with young Israelis. Mr Lieberman’s party, Israel Our Home, went from a party representing a narrow, sectional interest to a movement with a broad, populist appeal. Mr Lieberman gained the equivalent of six seats in the opinion polls, draining support from Likud. He could get more seats than Labour, which has only been in opposition for two periods in the entire history of the state, 1977-84 and 1996-99.

None of which provides President Obama’s administration with the best platform with which to work on the peace process. It is a cliche of Israeli politics that the left provides the best defence ministers and the right furnishes the leaders who make the greatest territorial concessions. But in these times, just to have a leader worthy of the name would be a start. This contest reflects the fear and insecurity of a nation which derives ever less confidence from the wars it fights. Being the strongest kid on the block is not in itself enough to guarantee security in this neighbourhood. The army prided itself in re-establishing its deterrence over Hamas, laying the ghosts of Lebanon in 2006. But if the price of the return of Gilad Shalit, the soldier Hamas captured two and a half years ago, is the release of hundreds of Hamas prisoners, if the result of a total military victory in Gaza is the reopening of the border crossings, with Hamas still in charge of Gaza, then what in Israeli eyes, or indeed anyone else’s, was the war about?

If the alternatives are a government led by Ms Livni or one headed by Mr Netanyahu, American, Arab and European leaders should all be rooting privately and without much enthusiasm for the head of Kadima, despite the grievous loss of civilian life in Gaza. Given a choice between a leader who has invested all her political capital in negotiating with Palestinian leaders and a man like Mr Netanyahu, who still nurtures a belief in Greater Israel, there can be little hesitation.

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Response: In our constipated care culture, thank heavens for the rule benders

The Guardian newspaper: Editorials & reply | guardian.co.uk — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:01:00 +0000

Jenni Russell highlighted a hidden but horrific consequence of the fear about engaging with others (Fear and suspicion are no way to build a good society, 4 February).

She described how a teacher was stopped from showing concern for a pupil who had attempted suicide because it could be misinterpreted; and she wrote of a council care worker who was criticised by her employers for helping to arrange a holiday for a disabled man. Arranging the holiday apparently was within the responsibilities of an overworked social worker. As Russell wrote: “The message was: no initiative will go unpunished.”

What is this beast which we have created, which is stopping teachers, care and health workers engaging with compassion with those with whom they work?

It was not always like this. As a social worker in the 1970s it was OK for me, when visiting a frail and older lady, to fill up her coal bucket and get her fire lighted. And as a team manager, three brothers living nearby, who sometimes bounced into care for short times, used to turn up at my house, and would play with my two little children.

Russell notes that, today, “insistence on systems rather than humanity is becoming the norm all over the public sector”, and that “everywhere there are examples of people retreating from engaging with others because official restrictions discourage it”.

Yet there are still those who take the risk of going beyond the job description and engaging person-to-person. I sometimes undertake inquiries after a tragedy, and still come across workers who at a weekend help to furnish a young person’s new flat, or take food to a family whose social security has run out that week. But they usually keep quiet about it. And if it becomes known, I have heard managers express their disapproval and instigate disciplinary action. Russell explains that other European countries haven’t chosen this path of suspicion and ends by saying: “Why have we?” Here are four reasons.

First, litigation. Organisations and individuals are afraid of being sued. An accident happens, an allegation is made, and the lawyers and courts come hurtling over the horizon.

Second, whenever a tragedy or mishap occurs, someone’s responsible. We have created a blame-and-inquiry culture, championed by the media, which promotes defensive practice.

Third, politicians and managers who do not have the professional and personal experience, assurance and confidence to take and tolerate risks, relay this message - developing policies and procedures that constipate organisations and intimidate workers.

And fourth, the focus on economy and efficiency has led to the 15-minute visit by a home carer to an older person, just time to toilet and give the tablets; or the requirement for the community occupational therapist to visit 12 people in a day, sorting out what kit they might need to “keep them independent”, but no time to talk or to listen.

Thank heavens there are still a lot of rule benders and breakers who remember what it was that brought them in to the work. The rest of us just need to stop beating them up.

• Ray Jones is professor of social work at Kingston University and St Georges, University of London, and was previously director of social services for Wiltshire r.jones@sgul.kingston.ac.uk

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Editorial: In praise of … musical exports

The Guardian newspaper: Editorials & reply | guardian.co.uk — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:01:00 +0000

The English gave up on industry in favour of banks that are now reduced to rubble. This damning verdict, handed down by President Sarkozy, would be dismissed as Gaullist bombast in happier times, but right now it amplifies Anglo-Saxon angst about whether UK plc produces anything the world really wants. Sunday’s Grammys in Los Angeles assuaged such worries, as a string of Brits picked up the record industry’s top awards. In a tribute to a mighty previous wave of musical export, Coldplay turned up in Sgt Pepper outfits to pick up their prizes - including one for best song, for Viva La Vida. Success has made their sound ubiquitous and enticed irritating imitators, with fatal results for their standing among those critics who see obscurity as proof of cultish cool. But, as our own Alexis Petridis asked in reviewing their last album: do you actually need to be cool if you can write songs that carry listeners along despite their reservations? If Coldplay can write songs, then another British winner on Sunday - the “heartbroken soul” artist, Adele - can sing them in smouldering style. Radiohead, Duffy and Peter Gabriel grabbed further British Grammys, but the most audacious victor was veteran Zeppelin rocker Robert Plant, who grabbed five trophies for his harmonising with the US bluegrass star Alison Krauss. The Hawaiian guitars only underline the brazen nature of Plant’s raid on American turf. Banks and factories may be going for a song these days, but around the world British melodies linger on.

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Country diary: Mornington Peninsula

John Vallins — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:01:00 +0000

Ships sailing in from the Bass Strait to Melbourne or Geelong must first negotiate “the rip” at the entrance to Port Phillip Bay, between Point Lonsdale to the west and Point Nepean to the east, where a notorious patch of turbulent white water threatens. The finger of land that reaches out to Point Nepean at the end of the Mornington Peninsula was ancestral territory of the Boonwurrung people, according to whose lore, dismissed by early European settlers, the bay had once been a wide plain where the rivers Yarra and Maribyrnong joined to flow out to a waterfall below the place where the rip now disturbs the surface.

Modern study tends to support the indigenous people’s tradition, suggesting that some 18,000 years ago the sea level here was about 100 metres lower than it is today and the mainland was joined to what is now Tasmania. The seaward side of the peninsula faces out into the Bass Strait with ocean beaches, towering breakers and magnificent surf. The sheltered side has gently shelving beaches reaching out into the calm of the bay. There are elegant resorts and marinas with a flavour of the Cote d’Azur, but the tip of the peninsula is wilder country which, between 1850 and 1988, was closed to the public, first as a quarantine station for immigrants, and then as a fortified defence against invasion. Now you can roam this special landscape. We took a path through a dense patch of coast tea trees and low scrub, weird to the European eye, with fibrous tree trunks twisted into fantastic shapes, some charred black and others bleached white, with new green growth above. A square clearing bordered by a white picket fence is the cemetery where victims of disease or shipwreck lie buried. Some perished in the wreck of the Cheviot, sailing from Sydney to Melbourne in 1887, and others were among the 250 typhus victims on board the Ticonderoga when she sailed in from England in 1852.

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Corrections and clarifications

Corrections editor — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:01:00 +0000

Liam Byrne is minister for the Cabinet Office, not cabinet secretary. That post is held by Gus O’Donnell (Millions for charities hit by recession, 9 February, page 1).

We referred to the Coventry and Ipswich Museum Service in an article headlined So you want to work in museums and galleries (7 February, page 11, Work). That should have been the Colchester and Ipswich Museum Service.

Tim Howard is goalkeeper for Everton, not Bolton, as we said in a Man of the Match panel that accompanied a report of Saturday’s match between the two teams (9 February, page 4, Sport).

We said in a column that the character Jack Crabb in the film Little Big Man was the sole survivor of the Battle of Little Big Horn. In fact there was more than one, in both fact and fiction. Crabb says in the film’s opening that he is the battle’s sole white survivor (The record for Greatest Age Span Portrayed by a Movie Actor etc, 6 February, page 2, Film & Music).

The “early blooms” that we described in a picture caption as belying the winter chill were not early, but a variety of viburnum that flowers in the winter (In the pink, 31 January, page 10).

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Letters: Jurassic lark

The Guardian newspaper: Editorials & reply | guardian.co.uk — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:01:00 +0000

Lord Woolf and his colleagues were right to point out that the recent erosions of civil liberties are “one of the most significant changes in the life of the nation since the end of the second world war” (Report, 6 February). We already have the largest DNA database in the world and, under the terms of the Prum treaty, more and more personal data can be shared with other EU member states.

It is vital that we weigh up whether we are sacrificing too many of our hard-won freedoms in our quest to tackle crime.
Dr Syed Kamall MEP
Con, London

I am a tall, white, Oxford-educated male - formerly head of a university with 35,000 students, 3,000 employees and an annual expenditure of £150m. Yet I was told recently by a headhunter that I could only be considered for a non-executive directorship of a company as a “diversity” candidate. Polly Toynbee’s call (Comment, 7 February) for a wider range of non-exec directors of banks to end the “culture of greed” may take some time to be answered.
Professor Sir Roderick Floud
London

Would David Spiers’s racially illustrated jam jars have been going to Zimbabwe, South Africa or possibly to white enclaves elsewhere in Africa by any chance (Letters, 6 February)?
Jon Fanning
York

In your Story of Dinosaurs booklet (7 February), you say that in the late Jurassic epoch, “The northern continent was known as Laurasia, and the southern continent Gondwana.” By whom?
David Gibson
Leeds

On Sunday afternoon, I saw a family carrying gleaned branches of deadwood from trees. I haven’t seen this sort of thing happening since the 1940s, when there were severe fuel shortages. Is it another sign of how deep the recession is biting?
Ted Prangnell
Ashford, Kent

As the cost of the Guardian approaches the dreaded figure of £1, could we please be spared the endless pictures of men holding guitars.
David R Wilman
St Austell, Cornwall

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Letter: Oatcake history

The Guardian newspaper: Editorials & reply | guardian.co.uk — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:01:00 +0000

The oatcake (In praise of ..., 7 February) has a far longer local history than any Staffordshire Regiment's tour of India; it is certainly traceable in the 17th century and more than likely much earlier, as a forthcoming book by North Staffordshire Historians' Guild associate Dr Pamela Sambrook will show.
Paul Anderton
Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire

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Letters: MPs’ claims legal, but not legitimate

The Guardian newspaper: Editorials & reply | guardian.co.uk — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:01:00 +0000

I have no doubt that Jacqui Smith’s accommodation claims (Home secretary in expenses row, 9 February) will be found to accord with the letter of parliamentary regulations, as did those of the Cooper-Balls family last year. To mere mortals, however, one’s main home is the family home, and the family home is the place where the children live and grow and go to school. To designate other premises as such, coincidentally maximising expenses entitlement, may be legal but it is not legitimate - it is shameful.

So there we have it: principles - no; philosophy - no; social ambition - forget it. The letter of the law allows such claims, so let’s forget the spirit and intent behind them. Politics is a job like any other, after all, so family “duty” surely demands that one maximises returns for as long as it lasts - doesn’t it? This last sentiment may seem savage, but what other conclusion can reasonably be drawn from the actions and arguments of those who hold or aspire to public office?

In 1997 it was a pleasure to vote in a government which seemed to believe in something. But in recent years a new breed of career-centric cynics have arrived in ministries and the cabinet, seemingly ambitious for office for its own sake rather than to accomplish social change.
Mike McCarthy
Oxford

We are told the home secretary pays market rates to stay at her sister’s home in London. I didn’t realise there were market rates for putting up a relative. I’d like to know what these are so the next time my sister-in-law comes to stay I can make sure we’re not being short-changed by the bottle of wine she usually brings.
Dick Graham
London

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Letters: Thought for the day: there are positive definitions of atheism

The Guardian newspaper: Editorials & reply | guardian.co.uk — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:01:00 +0000

Giles Fraser insists (Comment, 7 February) that “atheists” are defined by what they are against, and should therefore be barred from contributing to the BBC’s Thought for the Day. This is absurd. I might as well call him an anti-rationalist, and insist that he is defined by his opposition to reason, science and evidence. Humanists may privately sympathise with Richard Dawkins’s views, but we are not all determined to “attack the beliefs of others”. As a humanist minister, I am scrupulous about including those with religious beliefs in the funerals, weddings and baby namings I conduct. I am also proud to be celebrating what humankind can achieve, the standards to which we can aspire, and the value of human life - without any need for divine intervention. If you believe in God, good luck to you. I respect Giles Fraser’s beliefs; I’m sorry he seems not to respect those of humanists. Or is he afraid of them?
Rupert Morris
London

Atheism is not merely “defined by what it’s against”. Richard Dawkins is an atheist; he is not atheism’s pope. Because there is no doctrine of atheism I can only speak for myself. As an atheist, I feel drunk with wonder and intellectual delight at the complexities and simplicities of this universe, which outstretch our human comprehension yet whose existence energise inquiry. Scientific inquiry, certainly, but for me particularly ethical enquiry, because we as a species are alone responsible for formulating morality out of our evolutionary heritage and rational brains. To that extent, I was disappointed by the atheist buses’ message: for me the heart of atheism is not enjoyment but responsibility. I cannot be against god for there is no god to be against. I am for life - and for acceptance of death - for those are all we have. They are enough.
Deborah Padfield
Cambridge

Giles Fraser seems to think that a contented absence of religious belief is “parasitic” on the belief itself. Does he think that absences in general are parasitic on what is absent?
Professor Simon Blackburn
Department of philosophy, University of Cambridge

I fully agree with Claire Rayner but, if the BBC’s religious unit can’t bear to allow non religious folk to present TftD then it would be more honest to retitle the slot Religious Thought for the Day. Far more dishonest is BBC1’s Sunday evening programme Songs of Praise. Basically it doesn’t do what it purports to, as religions other than Christianity are very rarely, if ever, featured. Either this programme should feature a range of faiths together with other songs of praise that secularists and humanists can relate to, or, if this is too much for the Beeb’s religious unit to stomach, the programme should be renamed honestly - as Songs of Christian Praise.
Carole Underwood
Kendal, Cumbria

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Letters: Shedding light on tax evasion

The Guardian newspaper: Editorials & reply | guardian.co.uk — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:01:00 +0000

As a Manxman, the expression “pot calling the kettle black” came to mind while reading the article on tax (From the high street to a tax haven, 9 February). At a recent meeting in the Isle of Man - addressed by John Christensen of the Tax Justice Network and Malcolm Couch, assessor of income tax for the Manx government - both speakers agreed that the money-laundering centre cum tax haven of international choice is the City of London. There was general agreement that coordinated international action would be needed to do anything effective about tax evasion.

Whatever shenanigans may be going on in the Isle of Man, some of the points made by those attacking it at present are not justified. For instance, the statement in your report that “Manx islanders pay only a token contribution towards defence” is a bit rich in view of the fact that the contribution made by Manx people to the British forces in the two world wars was disproportionate to the island’s population. It says a lot that the monies paid by the Isle of Man for “defence” were called “the imperial contribution” until recently. We’re only just shaking off our colonial status. My fear is that the Isle of Man might be unjustly punished for any real or imagined sins in a token gesture against tax evasion.
Dr Brian Stowell
Douglas, Isle of Man

So a source for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs says that fewer than 100 inspectors are tackling tax avoidance, compared with thousands of professionals advising companies on how to do it. And while HMRC is in the process of making 25,000 jobs cuts, Roger Jenkins earns more than £40m heading the Barclays tax team (The top poacher and the gamekeeper, 6 February).

However, your laudable coverage on this issue underestimates the gap between what companies might be expected to pay in tax and what they actually pay as between £3bn to almost £14bn. Tax experts, adding together revenue lost in evasion, avoidance and uncollected tax, put the figure at a staggering £100bn. And developing countries lose an estimated £250bn a year as a direct result of corporate tax dodges.

If Brown really wants to make poverty history, he should act now to end this corporate tax scandal.
Simon McRae
Senior campaigns officer, War on Want

I have just returned from a visit to four independent Commonwealth states in the Caribbean, and there is some resentment there at perceived UK hypocrisy over tax havens. Companies, using UK-dependent territories, may or may not be avoiding UK tax on a large scale. But the independent states have done much to clean up fraud and improve transparency. Some six years ago, for example, the regulator in Grenada closed down 20 bogus banks in a month.

With the loss of preference for sugar and bananas, Caribbean states were encouraged to move into financial services to provide jobs. When the OECD complained of unfair competition, the Commonwealth Secretariat and the World Bank, with a taskforce led by the then prime minister of Barbados, met legitimate concerns while challenging misunderstandings and the big stick.

If the UK wants to cut down on tax avoidance, it should set an example where it has direct responsibility.
Richard Bourne
Senior research fellow, Institute of Commonwealth Studies

As Polly Toynbee pointed out (Comment, 31 January), many of the companies covered in your series on the Tax Gap claim to be “leaders” in corporate social responsibility. Indeed AstraZeneca, Diageo and GlaxoSmithKline have all featured in recent years in the list of the top 10 CSR companies produced by Ethical Investment Research Services.

Companies that go to considerable lengths to find legal ways of avoiding paying their workers the minimum wage should not be considered socially responsible. It is high time that the operational definition of CSR was extended to include responsibility for sharing in the tax burden. This would then make the CSR reports of these companies much more interesting reading.
Professor Rhys Jenkins
School of development studies, University of East Anglia

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Lal Wickrematunge: Lasantha’s brutal murder has shamed Sri Lanka

The Guardian newspaper: Comment & debate | guardian.co.uk — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:01:00 +0000

Each time I am confronted by the large billboards on the busy streets of Colombo advertising Sri Lanka as a tourist destination, I wonder if they have another relevance. “A land like no other” is the tagline used by the national tourist board. Wracked by a separatist war, this nation has been unfortunate on more than one front for the last 30 years or more.

After Mahinda Rajapaksa was elected president of Sri Lanka in 2005, there was only a brief respite before the Liberation Tigers of the Tamil Eelam (LTTE) provoked him into prosecuting an all-out war. His predecessor, the architect of a ceasefire who was considering devolving power, was defeated largely because of the Tiger-enforced boycott of the Tamil electorate in the north. Now the irony is that the terrorist outfit is on the receiving end as never before.

The Sri Lankan army, with its superior firepower, has pushed the Tigers into a small area. The LTTE have taken more than 150,000 civilians with them as a human shield - and the danger is that large numbers of these people could now be in peril.

But the government and the army have not taken kindly to any form of comment that would “demoralise the heroic troops” in their quest to annihilate the LTTE. There has been a systematic approach since the start of the campaign to bolster the people’s respect towards the Sri Lankan soldier. The government has admitted that since 2006 nine journalists have been killed and 27 abducted or assaulted. To date, none of these crimes has been solved by the police.

My brother Lasantha, the Sunday Leader editor, was brutally killed at 10.31am on 8 January, as he drove along a public highway on his way to work; he was shot dead by eight men riding motorbikes and dressed in black, with their faces hidden by helmets. The Sri Lankan air force camp is a mere 500 metres away from the point of attack, but the perpetrators got away and so far there have been no clues.

Two days before this killing, a television station was attacked and its main control room bombed. Senior government officials on national TV had accused this station of being biased towards the LTTE on many previous occasions. One staff member was accused of being a “terrorist” by Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, the defence secretary - and the president’s brother - and had to leave the country in terror.

Prior to this Keith Noyahr, the associate editor of the Nation newspaper (since purchased by a relative of President Rajapaksa), had been abducted, and assaulted. He was released a day later. Noyahr - perhaps out of the fear of knowing who the perpetrators were - did not make a complaint to the police. Those who have carried out these attacks have never been found and are roaming the streets of the city.

Such systematic attacks by goons, backed by hate speech from high ranking officials in the army and defence establishment, have spread a psychosis of fear across the entire media. More than a dozen journalists, activists and officials in the Free Media Movement have left the island. Out of fear, no one speaks - and self-censorship is adhered to in the strictest form. The government-owned media, print, electronic and radio, are mere mouthpieces of the regime. Dissent is not tolerated.

There has been an influx of foreign journalists into Sri Lanka since Lasantha’s death, due also to the LTTE holding civilians hostage under intense mortar fire. Most local news services do not want to talk to the foreign media; if they do, it is off the record. And the foreign journalists are also apprehensive and edgy. They have no access to the area where the war is raging, other than organised junkets. Only news that emanates from the media centre for defence is disseminated by the government.

Once the war is over, hope should spring up in the breasts of the media in Sri Lanka. But will that be a reality? Could an establishment toasting the successful muzzling of dissent be willing to do an about-turn, to be liberal and value democratic norms enshrined in the constitution? Or would it be politically expedient to continue in the same vein in order to stay in power? Will there be light at the end of the tunnel for Sri Lanka? Or would that light be another train coming the other way? Only the murdered Lasantha Wickrematunge, gazing at this island from beyond, might know what future there is for democracy and freedom of speech here.

The tremendous wave of worldwide emotion that has been created by his death has embarrassed this nation. Whether his death will bring the liberty enjoyed elsewhere to this island, or whether it will slip further into repression, is yet to be seen. If the dream of freedom does not reach Sri Lanka now, Lasantha will have died in vain.

• Lal Wickrematunge is the managing editor of the Sunday Leader, the newspaper founded by his brother
editor@thesundayleader.lk

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Polly Toynbee: The Taxpayers’ Alliance is behind campaign against public sector

Polly Toynbee — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:01:00 +0000

Drip, drip, drip. Day after day an insidious poison is fed into the nation’s veins, spreading anger and cynicism about everything in the public sector. Nothing works, billions are wasted, public servants of every kind are pointless jobsworths feathering their nests and twiddling their thumbs.

Behind this campaign is the Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA), which claims an average of 13 hits a day in the national media. Its press releases go virtually verbatim into full-page stories in the rightwing press. More surprising is the BBC’s lazy, unquestioning use of these propagandists as if they were neutral analysts, without saying who they are.

The TPA is a rightwing lobby whose finances are opaque, but which was founded, and is staffed, by former Conservative party councillors and researchers. Its advisory council consists of luminaries of the free-market right: Ruth Lea, who was head of policy at the Institute of Directors; Madsen Pirie, of the Adam Smith Institute; and Professors Minogue and Minford, leading lights in Margaret Thatcher’s economic firmament. With a full-time staff of 10, it digs and delves to produce “facts” and “figures” designed to undermine trust in everything in the public sector.

It is a phenomenally successful lobby, of the greatest use to the Conservatives. David Cameron can disown any particular connection, so while he sweet-talks the value of community, health visitors, teachers and the like, these rottweilers rubbish everything on his behalf, softening up the electorate to believe that what the public sector really needs is pruning, squeezing and cutting.

Take two recent reports that hit the big time. One said that people working in the public sector are now paid far more than in the private sector. The other said that public pensions are much better than private pensions - and the real shocker was a claim that a quarter of all council taxes are now spent on public-sector pensions. This was a double whammy, as the reason why public pensions were traditionally more generous was because public servants were worse paid. “Public-private salary divide gets 50% wider” blasted the Daily Mail. At a time when thousands are losing their jobs, homes are repossessed, pensions have lost a third of their value and savings pay virtually no interest, it’s easy to stir fury at cosseted civil servants protected from all turmoil.

The Mail reported: “State workers now earn an average £62 a week more than their private sector counterparts.” Francis Maude, the Tory Cabinet Office spokesman, said: “This data flies in the face of all Labour’s cheap rhetoric about making efficiency savings and cutbacks.” The Taxpayers’ Alliance said: “We cannot pay these enormous bills for people who are not creating wealth.”

Except it’s not true. The facts are accurate, but the context makes it a statistical cheat. Their figures are arrived at by adding up all public sector pay, and all private sector pay, regardless of jobs, and dividing them by the number of employees in each sector. The net result is a meaningless porridge. The private sector now has most of the unskilled work: most cleaners, carers, caterers, security guards, dinner ladies, porters and labourers. They once worked in the public sector, but are now outsourced - and so there are now five times more “elementary” jobs in the private sector. Those remaining as public employees are heavily weighted towards the most highly skilled and super-qualified.

The Office for National Statistics reveals in its labour force survey that 8.6% of private employees are graded as professionals, whereas these form 24.5% of public employees. So if you stupidly average up all jobs, regardless of qualification, of course the public-sector figure is higher. An example: one in five in the public sector is a teacher.

Managers, professionals and skilled trades are paid an average of 70p more an hour in the private sector. However, the few remaining unskilled public workers are paid an average of 90p an hour more than their equivalents in the private sector. Quite right too, since the minimum wage is below what a family can live on. What’s more, the taxpayer probably loses little since that extra for the lowest paid will be deducted from their tax credit entitlements.

Now what about the shocking revelation that pensions take up a quarter of council taxes? The figure may be correct - but it’s not as terrifying as it sounds. It is not 25% of council expenditure, because council tax only accounts for 24%, the rest coming from central government and business rates. The actual figure is a quarter of that 24% - or 6% - which is much the same as the private sector. True, the private sector is closing pensions - and the divide between the two will grow. But the answer is to beef up private pensions, as Labour’s new system is attempting to do.

Other attacks on the public sector focus on the names of jobs - anything with “outreach” in it is a favourite. Idle and politically motivated journalists choose not to inquire what the jobs actually entail. The TPA made much fun of Moray Council’s advertisement for a “street football coordinator” (salary £19,887), expostulating: “This is unbelievable … All you need is a few jumpers for goalposts and a ball.”

The Sunday Herald investigated and hit back. The paper discovered that the real salary was half that, as it was part-time - and the council only paid £3,000 of it, with the police, fire brigade and local businesses paying the rest. Over 70 young people attend the games, with “a marked reduction in instances of antisocial behaviour, vandalism, teenage alcohol abuse and graffiti”. Most of the public sector jobs the TPA pillories reveal a different truth.

Does public money get wasted? Of course it does, from failed IT schemes, to wasteful ID cards to ever-escalating Olympic costs. When £500bn is spent a year, some schemes will fail, and some managers will empire-build. Eternal vigilance is needed. But at least the spending is pretty transparent, audited and scrutinised, whereas very little can be gleaned from public companies’ minimal accounts on their wastages.

One thing we do know: the TPA is selective with its figures. It has also refused to attack the tax avoidance the Guardian’s Tax Gap investigation has revealed, which defrauds us all. Instead it posts: “How tax havens can make us all better off.” Turn instead to an excellent alternative - The Other Taxpayers’ Alliance, at TaxpayersAlliance.org - for “fair taxes not lower taxes”.

polly.toynbee@guardian.co.uk

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Paul Kingsnorth: A line in the green sand

Paul Kingsnorth — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:01:00 +0000

Last week the government published a shortlist of five schemes for harnessing the tidal power of the river Severn, to provide renewable electricity. It is no secret which is favoured in Whitehall - the biggest one, as ever: a 10-mile mega-barrage that would cost £14bn, and could generate 5% of Britain’s power.

This may sound the kind of thing environmentalists ought to be unanimously keen on. Yet many say that the damage done by this mammoth piece of technology - destroying mudflats and bird habitats, and weakening the famous tidal wave known as the Severn bore - would outweigh the benefits. A battle is being joined over the fate of Britain’s longest river, and it is highlighting an uncomfortable truth which environmentalists don’t much like dwelling on: some green technologies can have distinctly un-green impacts.

Britain is a small, overcrowded and overdeveloped country in which wild places are at a premium. On moors and glens, on tidal rivers and empty beaches, humanity’s impact can be escaped, at least for a time. A mountain is an example of what the American poet Robinson Jeffers called “the transhuman magnificence”: a place that rises above the detritus of civilisation, where we may go to experience the reality of nature and the reality of ourselves. I have had such experiences on mountains, and they helped lead me to become an environmentalist.

When I climb a mountain, then, and find that the detritus of civilisation has followed me, in the form of giant wind turbines, my reaction is not to jump for joy because it is zero-carbon detritus. My reaction is to wonder how anyone could miss the point so spectacularly. And when I hear other environmentalists responding to my concerns with aggressive dismissal - particularly if they have never visited the mountain in question - I get really quite depressed.

Fifteen or so years ago, as an excitable young road protester, I tried to prevent the destruction of beautiful places. To me, building a motorway through ancient downland, or a bypass through a watermeadow, was a desecration. To me today, a windfarm on a mountain is a similar desecration. A tidal barrage that turns a great river into a glorified mill stream is a desecration. Carpeting the Sahara with giant solar panels would be a desecration. The motivation may be different, but the destruction of the wild and the wonderful is the same.

It is de rigueur among greens to respond to such heresy by explaining that we have less than 100 months to get to grips with global warming; a few turbines on the odd hillside is a small price for preventing the apocalypse that would result from our failure.

Well, maybe. But while renewable energy is a good thing in principle, if schemes end up, like their conventional forbears, as centralised mega-projects that override local feeling and destroy wild landscapes, then they become precisely the kind of projects that people like me cut their teeth trying to stop.

If you don’t understand what makes Helvellyn awe-inspiring, or the Severn bore magnificent, or the Lewis peat moors evocative, in some deep - and possibly inexplicable - sense, then you will have no idea what I’m talking about. These places will seem not to be places at all, but “resources”, ripe for exploitation; and your response to them will be about not breathing space or spiritual nourishment, but kilowatt hours and energy security.

Environmentalism is surely inspired by a sense of wonder at the richness of the natural world. Without that inspiration, it becomes the kind of bleached, technocratic, office-bound variety so common today, which pushes for the taming of rivers, mountains and wildlands in the name of making the ever-expanding human economy more “sustainable”. Desperate to seem grown up, serious and economically literate, many greens seem to have become terrified of talking about the things that motivated them in the first place. Beauty. Wildness. A connection to the non-human, the remote, the untamed.

Human impact on the world is now so enormous that the civilisation we have built is feeling the shudders. If the world’s governments, with the collusion of some environmentalists, want to pretend that the need to question that civilisation’s values can be staved off with wave machines and wind turbines, it is up to them. But we should understand that, whether we dig up coal or carpet the wildlands with barrages and turbines, we are making a statement: this is our world, and we will exploit every inch of it. We want - no, need - more energy for our TVs, cars and planes. It is our right. There is no alternative.

There is only one place this attitude can lead: to a collision between civilisation and the biosphere. I don’t see any number of barrages doing much to prevent that. And I would put a lot of money on the winner.

• Paul Kingsnorth is author of Real England: The Battle Against the Bland paulkingsnorth.net

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Jack Ashley: Thalidomide victims need justice and support

The Guardian newspaper: Comment & debate | guardian.co.uk — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:01:00 +0000

Justice is not time limited. It is an absolute. When a grievous wrong is done, those who have suffered need respect and help throughout their lives, not just while the rest of us can be bothered to pay attention. Yet most forget too easily, and so one wrong is followed by another.

This is what has happened to the victims of thalidomide, a drug whose devastating side-effects were discovered after its prescribed use for the prevention of morning sickness in the 60s and 70s: nearly 500 babies were born without arms or legs, or were deaf, blind or suffering from autism.

It took a decade of legal wrangling before they were given any compensation. Now, as the thalidomide generation enter their 40s and 50s, cases are emerging of women whose deformities are causing increasing pain and difficulties with advancing age.

They face a host of new problems as their bodies suffer from the wear and tear that the overuse of certain muscles has caused. The money that seemed adequate in the 70s is simply no longer enough. But again, the demand for adequate compensation is being resisted.

Has the shock of seeing pictures of deformed and stunted limbs worn off? Or do people somehow feel the matter is closed? Both would seem understandable. In the 70s, the public were inundated with shocking pictures and stories in the press. Some of Britain’s best journalists, led by the Sunday Times’s brilliant Harold Evans, and a few politicians and campaigners set out to imprint the horror of thalidomide into the national mind. For it was the fact that this man-made disaster was hidden away for years that made its continuation possible.

Even then, with journalists, politicians and the involvement of some of the parents, like David Mason, the father of a thalidomide child, the response was slow and halting. Gradually the campaign became more emotional. As I said in a parliamentary debate at the time: “Adolescence is a time for living and laughing, for learning and loving. But what kind of adolescence will a 10-year-old boy have when he has no arms, no legs, one eye, no pelvic girdle and is only 2ft tall?”

The first campaign resulted in a great victory: the compensation offer made by the manufacturer was increased tenfold. But it failed to take full account of any future problems arising directly from thalidomide, which we are now witnessing. Newspapers have recently reported cases of women whose deformities are causing increasing pain and difficulties with advancing age.

The awards that seemed enough three decades ago can no longer be regarded as being so, as movements become more restricted and the costs of mobility mount. The proper way to assess requirements is by making comparisons with an unaffected person’s life; even when allowance is made for the payments to cover extra costs such as special housing and adapted vehicles, there remains the daily struggle to cope. It isn’t easy to evaluate these issues, but they must be taken into account.

Alan Johnson, the health secretary, has been quoted as saying he is “not persuaded of the case” for financial assistance. We have heard that before. Diageo, which has taken over from the drug’s original manufacturer Distillers, has increased contributions to the Thalidomide Trust, but the amount victims receive remains small compared with current compensation rates.

The best solution is for state help. This would solve all the problems at a stroke. It’s hard to believe that, more than 30 years on, we have to fight again to win justice for these totally innocent victims. In parliament, and in the media, the campaign must begin again.

• Lord Ashley was Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent South from 1966 to 1992

comment@guardian.co.uk

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Tanya Gold: We’re just not that into you

Tanya Gold — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:01:00 +0000

Hollywood has run out of novels. It is now making films out of self-harm books. He’s Just Not That Into You opened at the weekend. It is probably a prequel to Men Are From Mars, Women are from Primark or Think Yourself Anorexic. It is here to maim us.

The co-author of the book, Greg Behrendt, who once wrote for Sex and the City, explains in 238 pages of hate that there is only one thing you need to know when dating. It is that your lover doesn’t want you. He is trying to escape from you but he doesn’t want to hurt you or confront you, so he doesn’t tell you. But if you read the runes (and Greg will tell you how) you will soon realise that he’s just not that into you! And then you will be free! To commit suicide!

He’s Just Not That Into You is a more offensive version of The Rules, the self-help book that advises women to pretend to be dead in order to get married. The Rules are: never telephone a man; never be in when he calls; never speak to him; wear matching underwear. This was also going to be made into a film, but there was no rating bloody enough for it.

So what does Greg say? You should never ask a man out, he tells us, like an exhumed corpse from 1812. Why not? “Because we don’t like it,” he says. Men like to chase. You should never telephone a man and, if he gives you his number, you mustn’t call. Because he is trying to trick you into asking him out. So he can reject you. Because - he’s just not that into you! Greg can’t stop saying, “He’s just not that into you!” He says it at least five times a page. He has a kind of misogyny-themed Tourette syndrome, and reading his book is like being repeatedly slapped round the face by Hugh Grant.

Men are never scared of commitment, in Greg’s mind. Fear of intimacy is an urban myth. “The only thing he’s scared of,” writes Greg, “and I say this with a lot of love,” - although I think he’s lying - “is how not attracted to you he is.”

If a man is not trying to undress you, he’s not into you. If he doesn’t want to marry you in the next 10 minutes, he’s just not that into you. If your lover is impotent, distant, tired, anxious, busy, brusque, depressed - anything that proclaims him to be a human being, not a Disney hero with cartoon flowers, nice teeth and a 24/7 erection - he’s just not that into you.

So you should instantly dump him, ideally without telling him. To do that, of course, would be a waste of your time, because you should be moving on to the next man who’s just not that into you.

This is dating for little girls. Anything less than the childish fantasy of the perfect ever-loving father should be shunned and, because we are indeed those little girls, Greg sets us some homework. “Write down five reasons you have a good reason to call him … Now put your dialling finger away,” he says. And never be cross when it’s over. “Always be classy, never be crazy,” says Greg. He really means - never be angry. Because angry isn’t hot.

And when you’ve finally realised that every man you’ve ever loved didn’t want you, you’ll feel better because you are now in control. Greg has another mantra for this. This one is: “Don’t waste the pretty!”

And what is terrifying - more terrifying than Greg’s worldview - is that it is women who will pay to see this movie. Misogynists won’t waste their money. Can we please scream we’ve had enough of the self-help rom-com that maims? We are not child women. We do not need dating homework and pop culture self-hatred. We do not need to hear that Greg’s just not that into us. Because if he was, who’d care?

tanyagold2002@yahoo.co.uk

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George Monbiot: Just what exactly do you stand for, Hazel Blears - except election?

George Monbiot — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:01:00 +0000

An open letter to Hazel Blears MP, secretary of state for communities and local government.

Last week you used an article in the Guardian to attack my “cynical and corrosive commentary”. You asserted your political courage, maintaining that “you don’t get very far in politics without guts, and certainly not as far as the cabinet table”. By contrast, you suggested, I contribute “to the very cynicism and disengagement from politics” that I make my living writing about. You accused me of making claims without supporting evidence and of “wielding great influence without accountability”. “We need more people standing for office and serving their communities,” you wrote, “more people debating, engaging and voting; not more people waving placards on the sidelines.”

Quite so. But being the placard-waving sort, I have a cynical and corrosive tendency to mistrust the claims ministers make about themselves. Like you, I believe opinions should be based on evidence. So I have decided to test your statements against the record.

Courage in politics is measured by the consistent application of principles. The website TheyWorkForYou.com records votes on key issues since 2001. It reveals that you voted “very strongly for the Iraq war”, “very strongly against an investigation into the Iraq war” and “very strongly for replacing Trident” (”very strongly” means an unbroken record). You have voted in favour of detaining terror suspects without charge for 42 days, in favour of identity cards and in favour of a long series of bills curtailing the freedom to protest. There’s certainly consistency here, though it is not clear what principles you are defending.

Other threads are harder to follow. In 2003, for instance, you voted against a fully elected House of Lords and in favour of a chamber of appointed peers. In 2007, you voted for a fully elected House of Lords. You have served without public complaint in a government which has introduced the minimum wage but blocked employment rights for temporary and agency workers; which talked of fiscal prudence but deregulated the financial markets; which passed the Climate Change Act but approved the construction of a third runway at Heathrow; which spoke of an ethical foreign policy but launched an illegal war in which perhaps a million people have died. Either your principles, by some remarkable twists of fate, happen to have pre-empted every contradictory decision this government has taken, or you don’t possess any.

You remained silent while the government endorsed the kidnap and the torture of innocent people; blocked a ceasefire in Lebanon and backed a dictator in Uzbekistan who boils his prisoners to death. You voiced no public concern while it instructed the Serious Fraud Office to drop the corruption case against BAE, announced a policy of pre-emptive nuclear war, signed a one-sided extradition treaty with the United States and left our citizens to languish in Guantánamo Bay. You remained loyal while it oversaw the stealthy privatisation of our public services and the collapse of Britain’s social housing programme, closed hundreds of post offices and shifted taxation from the rich to the poor. What exactly do you stand for Hazel, except election?

The only consistent political principle I can deduce from these positions is slavish obedience to your masters. TheyWorkForYou sums up your political record thus: “Never rebels against their party in this parliament.” Yours, Hazel, is the courage of the sycophant, the courage to say yes.

Let me remind you just how far your political “guts” have carried you. You are temporarily protected by the fact that the United Kingdom, unlike other states, has not yet incorporated the Nuremberg principles into national law. If a future government does so, you and all those who remained in the cabinet on 20 March 2003 will be at risk of prosecution for what the Nuremberg tribunal called “the supreme international crime”. This is defined as the “planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression”. Robin Cook, a man of genuine political courage, put his conscience ahead of his career and resigned. What did you do?

It seems to me that someone of your principles would fit comfortably into almost any government. All regimes require people like you, who seem to be prepared to obey orders without question. Unwavering obedience guarantees success in any administration. It also guarantees collaboration in every atrocity in which a government might engage. The greatest thing we have to fear in politics is the cowardice of politicians.

You demanded evidence that consultations and citizens’ juries have been rigged. You’ve got it. In 2007, the high court ruled that the government’s first consultation on nuclear power was “seriously flawed” and “unlawful”. It also ruled that the government must commission an opinion poll. The poll the government launched was reviewed by the Market Research Standards Board. It found that “information was inaccurately or misleadingly presented, or was imbalanced, which gave rise to a material risk of respondents being led towards a particular answer”.

As freedom of information requests made by Greenpeace reveal, the consultation over the third runway at Heathrow used faked noise and pollution figures. It was repeatedly pre-empted by ministers announcing that the runway would be built. Nor did the government leave anything to chance when it wanted to set up giant health centres, or polyclinics, run by GPs. As Dr Tony Stanton of the Londonwide Local Medical Committees has pointed out, “a week before a £1m consultation on polyclinics and hospitals by NHS London closed, London’s 31 primary care trusts were issued with instructions on setting up polyclinic pilots and GP-led health centres”. Consultations elsewhere claimed that there was no need to discuss whether or not new health centres were required, as the principle had already been established through “extensive national level consultation exercises”. But no such exercises had taken place; just a handful of citizens’ juries engaging a total of a thousand selected people and steered by government ministers. Those who weren’t chosen had no say.

Fixes like this might give you some clues about why more people are not taking part in politics. I believe there is a vast public appetite for re-engagement, but your government, aware of the electoral consequences, has shut us out. It has reneged on its promise to hold a referendum on electoral reform. It has blocked a referendum on the European treaty, ditched the regional assemblies, used Scottish MPs to swing English votes, sustained an unelected House of Lords, eliminated almost all the differences between itself and the opposition. You create an impenetrable political monoculture, then moan that people don’t engage in politics.

It is precisely because I can picture something better that I have become such a cynical old git. William Hazlitt remarked that: “Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.” You, Hazel, have helped to reduce our political choices to a single question: whether to laugh through our tears or weep through our laughter.

monbiot.com

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Hugh Muir’s diary

Hugh Muir — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:01:00 +0000

So well done everyone at the Baftas. Slumdog cleared up again. Kate didn’t gabble on and didn’t cry. Jonathan Ross didn’t upset anyone. A good night all round. And if you are wondering why it is that the mainstream films always get the gongs, consider the experience of the Rio cinema in Dalston, east London, a much-loved establishment with a discerning customer base. So discerning, in fact, that when Mamma Mia! did the rounds, the clientele didn’t want it. To fill the seats, managers had to stop screening it - the replacement being Summer Hours, a French dinner-party movie with subtitles. But was there cause and effect? A week after the decision to take off Mamma Mia!, key officials encountered great difficulty in talking to the powers that be about future “product”. Worse, they found it difficult to view new releases on offer at preview screenings in London. To save the cinema from any possibility of resulting harm, the unpaid chairman of the board of directors was quickly drafted in to handle negotiations while others observed something akin to a period of penance. This is how things work, many fear, and funnily enough, things seemed much the same in The Godfather. Now that was a good film.

Yes, a good time was had by all at the Baftas, even Brad and Angelina, and they didn’t win anything. Jeremy Hunt, the Tory shadow culture secretary, was at the Royal Opera House - a bit of work, a bit of star-gazing; and the only low point came when he was refused a drink, an effort by the organisers to get the non-celebrities into their seats. He took it in good humour, and should he ever come to power he won’t hold it against them. Oh no.

And on the subject of celluloid, the cinema’s depiction of the Frost/Nixon encounter has renewed our interest in the art of the great interview. Only a few people can do it these days: Richard and Judy, Paul O’Grady, and Paxman - continually cranky and combative, as evidenced by his appearance in yesterday’s G2. For all that, others aspire, and to this group we should add staff at FourFourTwo, a football magazine, whose representative shared the following exchange with former England star Teddy Sheringham. FourFourTwo: “How long do you reckon the Queen has got left in the tank?” Teddy: “Oh - she’ll go on forever, I reckon. I’ve met her and she was a lovely lady.” FourFourTwo: “Do you not feel a bit sorry for Prince Charles?” Teddy: “He’s not that bothered, is he?” Later, Teddy confessed that he can’t grow sideburns. Heat and light. A classic.

Stop press: “Government ‘has twisted’ the report on Standard Life,” thundered the Telegraph on Friday. Under a story all about Equitable Life. So which Life is it, anyway?

A topsy turvy period for the SNP after the brouhaha over the budget. Once they stood on the precipice, as a notable once said. Now they have moved forward. One hopes the new tranquillity will not be spoiled by the growing row over the Scottish government’s selection of Jacobs Engineering to build a second Forth bridge. The party’s 2007 election manifesto promised “peace with prosperity” to build a nation “free to remove nuclear weapons from Scotland’s shores”. All 47 of its MSPs voted against Trident renewal in 2007. But when it is not supervising bridge construction, what does Jacobs make? Bombs. Just before Christmas it purchased the UK government’s one-third stake in the Aldermaston weapons establishment, maker of Trident warheads. What can we do, we just want a new bridge, the party says. And if they ever need someone to blow it up again …

And finally, news from the dark side of PR where Christine Hamilton has changed her name to Mrs British Battleaxe, the better to explain the intricacies of taking a new identity by deed poll. It’s all for a firm that does these things and sounds like a nice little earner. Good luck to her. Neil has kept his name, but letters marked “cash for questions sleazebag” will nevertheless get to him. You need a stamp, but that’s all.

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Leading article: These bankers must explain their disastrous decisions

The Independent - Leading Articles RSS Feed — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:00:01 +0000

The wheels of accountability seem to turn rather slower here in Britain than elsewhere. It is a full three months since Dick Fuld, the former head of the American investment bank Lehman Brothers, was called to appear before a Congressional committee to explain why his bank failed so spectacularly.

Leading article: A gulf of understanding

The Independent - Leading Articles RSS Feed — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:00:01 +0000

Thirty years ago Iran shook the world by unseating its pro-Western monarch and installing a religious regime headed by Ayatollah Khomeini. It was a shock to an international community still wedded to the easy assumption that revolutions could only come from the secular left and not the religious right. But it was also a shock to the Iranians themselves, who had dearly sought change from an authoritarian and corrupt royalist regime, but who little expected the clerical rule that would replace it.

Leading article: Hair today…

The Independent - Leading Articles RSS Feed — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:00:01 +0000

These have been a triumphant few days for two stalwarts of the entertainment business. Robert Plant, winner of five Grammys, and Mickey Rourke, named best actor at the Baftas, both inhabit different corners of the showbusiness universe. But there is a pleasing symmetry about the lives of these two veteran performers.

Steve Richards: Politicians vilify the bankers – but they don’t dare to act

The Independent - Commentators RSS Feed — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:00:01 +0000

The unpopularity of the bankers is without precedent. In the late 1970s, reckless trade union leaders could always count on support from parts of the Labour Party and the media. Now, the bankers face universal vilification. Political leaders are in a contest to shout the loudest in their condemnation of big bonuses. Powerful newspapers fume at their immoral behaviour. As the shadow Chancellor, George Osborne, declared: "The party's over."

Simon Carr: Jacqui plagued by both her houses

The Independent - Commentators RSS Feed — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:00:01 +0000

Home Office questions. There was one question that had to be answered before we could start. Would Jacqui Smith declare it her principal Home Office questions or her secondary home office questions? A balance has to be struck. She might take advice but it is she who decides, she told us.

Alistair Darling: The banks are to blame for this crisis

The Independent - Commentators RSS Feed — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:00:01 +0000

The challenge for us here and in every country around the world is to deal with today's problems, but also to prepare for economic recovery. And everything we do will be all the more effective if it is matched by action from others.

Mary Dejevsky: Positive signals from Iran - but only if you listen carefully

The Independent - Commentators RSS Feed — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:00:01 +0000

Of all the challenges that Barack Obama has thrown out to the world since he entered the Oval Office, the most daring is his overture to Iran. It featured in his inaugural address as a general invitation to adversaries. It was addressed specifically to Iran in his television interview with al-Arabiya. And this weekend it was voiced even more insistently by his Vice-President, Joe Biden.

Dominic Lawson: Bonuses are a political issue, not a moral one

The Independent - Commentators RSS Feed — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:00:01 +0000

It is bonus time for the members of the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee. I am not referring to any money they may be receiving through the increasingly discredited parliamentary allowances system. No, this is the big one: today they have as their captive witnesses some of the former chairmen and chief executives of the banks which have cost taxpayers billions.

Daniel Howden: Love child scandal hits Zuma’s stand-in

The Independent - Commentators RSS Feed — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:00:01 +0000

Finding a suitable supporting actor can be a hard task for a powerful politician, as South Africa's Jacob Zuma has found. Unable to take up the President's job immediately, having finally seen off his rival Thabo Mbeki, the African National Congress's former intelligence chief picked the loyal, apparently unambitious apparatchik Kgalema Motlanthe as his presidential seat-warmer – until the election expected in April that may finally give Mr Zuma, 63, the top office.

Keith Ward: Biologists are too dogmatic about God… they are not philosophers

The Independent - Commentators RSS Feed — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:00:01 +0000

It is surely embarrassing for science to be defended on the grounds that it is founded on an absolute prior commitment to a highly disputed and deeply problematic philosophical view. If ever there was a dogmatic faith that zooms well past the evidence, this is it.

Tom Sutcliffe: Confused? You will be in this drugs debate…

The Independent - Columnists RSS Feed — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:00:01 +0000

I’m planning to tinker with my brain chemistry next week. The method I’ll be adopting is a relatively recent addition to the long list of mood-altering activities that cascades down the centuries and it isn’t, the statistics confirm, entirely without risk. But I’ve found it takes me out of myself – as the saying goes– and I’m inclined to think that the high I get weighs up reasonably well against the potential downside.

John Walsh: When the Playboy mansion crumbles

The Independent - Columnists RSS Feed — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:00:01 +0000

Many British people who know nothing of the social or corporate practices of New York’s Madison Avenue in the 1960s will avidly tune in tonight for the second series of Mad Men. This award-winning (three Golden Globes and six Emmys) cable show has stolen a lot of hearts, for its pin-sharp depiction of life in pre-Kennedy, pre-Woodstock, three-martini America, before the modern world kicked in: when the only black faces in work environments were working the lifts, when creative directors offered guests Jack Daniels at 11am, when business wives dressed like Stepford clones and fretted about wrapping paper, when sharp-suited executives with Brylcreemed hair assumed they could sleep with the typing pool as a kind of droit du copywriter and everyone in the office – everyone in restaurant, cinema, car, bed and doctor’s consulting-room – smoked like laboratory beagles.

John Walsh: ‘February isn’t the ideal time to visit Sligo’s drizzly fields, but I had high hopes’

The Independent - Columnists RSS Feed — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:00:01 +0000

A week ago, I wrote about snow as a visitation from paradise, a transforming, elemental, alchemical process that turns both the landscape and men’s hearts into things of loveliness and decency. This week, I return to the subject from a slightly different angle.

Israel voters look set to move right

FT.com - Editorial — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 20:01:55 +0000

Security for Israelis and justice for Palestinians is attainable – but only if the US comes to realise that it is no part of its or Israel’s national interest to enable Israel to colonise Arab land

China in the Congo

FT.com - Editorial — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 19:57:17 +0000

In the short term Congo’s finances are in desperate shape, and it must curry favour from western donors. Yet China’s alternative development financing looks a more ambitious long-term bet

End bonus culture, but keep bonuses

FT.com - Editorial — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 19:45:54 +0000

Rather than chips in a casino where someone else settles the bill, bonuses could be made into rewards for genuine innovation without encouraging excessive risk

High hopes for Barack Obama administration policy change on Afghanistan

Telegraph Telegraph View — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 19:45:27 +0000

Telegraph View: Encouraging signs are emerging from Washington that President Barack Obama’s administration may be about to change America’s policy stance on Afghanistan.

Blossom Dearie

Telegraph Obituaries — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 19:45:02 +0000

Singer and pianist whose wispy voice became a trademark in witty performances from the jazz canon