UK politics

Your Happening World (23)

GLBT rights, Linky Linky, Sleaze, UK politics
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The ‘charging threshold’, ridiculous as it may sound, was to try those who had 20 or more UK Uncut leaflets on them at the time of arrest. I guess we will never know if this was a deliberate manipulation of the evidence, or just incompetence – neither of which reflect very well. It being clear that I was 4 leaflets shy of what the prosecution deem as guilty – they had to let me go. Well lucky me, but the remaining defendants are still there. Those 4 flimsy leaflets are what stand between me and my friends who are still on trial.

How the police decide who to prosecutefor the occupation of Fortnum & Mason last year during the anti-cuts demonstrations in London.

The power network behind the Murdoch phone hackings.

Christ, what kind of douchenozzle worries about his icecream being pro-ay marriage?

As a healthy antidote to the last link’s idiocity, have an oral history of The Brixton Fairies and the South London Gay Community Centre, Brixton 1974-6, courtesy of Urban75.

Your Happening World (22)

Activism, Linky Linky, Race, Sleaze
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What happens in Austin, Texas when you babysit your black grandchild as a white grandfather. Hint: not a happy story.

NHS “reform: “Cameron’s put his political credibility on the line, not for ideological or populaist reasons, but to ensure McKinely’s bottom line”. Do read the linked Daily Mail article to show how even a reliable rightwing newspaper is opposed to this tomfoolery.

Why is birth control the Catholic Church’s last stand?

“That no anarchist ever taught us to play Smear the Queer is entirely besides the point.”

“The actual circumstances of the raid on the Sun’s hacks may be up for debate. I think they’re pretty standard for today’s exciting world of high profile send a message coppering, but that may be because I’m a bit too used to living in the kind of authoritarian pro-business society that the Sun has always campaigned for. This is also why I’m a bit baffled by the people who seem to think that we’ll ‘lose something’ when it goes. ‘What will remain’ is the problem.

London’s killer app

Funny, Life under Capitalism, UK politics
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In the comments at Blood & Treasure, Dsquared explains why banks threatening to leave London don’t have to be taken too seriously:

In actual fact, the thing that keeps everyone bolted down to the UK with little hope of escape, is that amazingly important national intangible asset called “the commercial common law of England & Wales”. Any time anything goes wrong, or when you’re drawing up documentation to make sure it doesn’t, it’s amazingly useful to be able to make use of all those hundreds of years of precedent. It’s the difference between a well-designed high level programming language, and having to write all your own functions from scratch.

A lot of the reason for not shifting out to the suburbs (for trading at least) is simply telecoms infrastructure. A hell of a lot of the IT talent that’s gone into the City over the last twenty years has gone into the building of what amounts to a very fast, very very reliable specialised telecom system (to replace SWIFT, the previously existing very fast, very very reliable specialised telegram and telex system).

Toughness

New Labour, UK politics
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Chris Bertram is annoyed with Ed ‘N Ed:

In an attempt to demonstrate their credentials as the takers of “tough decisions”, British Labour leader Ed Miliband (whom I backed as leader) and his shadow Chancellor Ed Balls have been telling the world that a future Labour government can’t guarantee to reverse Tory public expenditure cuts, and favour a public sector pay freeze, and even pay cuts for public sector workers (to save jobs, apparently). Well it is a funny world where a sign of your toughness is your willingness to pander to the right-wing commentariat.

Toughness in political jargon has always been about how much you are willing to screw the defenceless and poor, how much ship you’re willing to heap up on those at the bottom of society. It’s never about taking on multibillionaire newspaper owners, or forcing harsh new taxes on banks that threaten to move out of the City if their directors have to pay so much as a parking fine or anything else that actually takes guts. Instead we get this whole charade in which a supposedly leftwing politician has to regretfully acknowledge that it’s no longer realistic to expect that…, that the current economic climate makes it imperative to rethink…, that the challenges facing the country leave him no choice but… all to appear realistic and tough to an audience that, as Chris dryly notes, is not his friend in the first place.

It’s easy to see what the rightwing wurlitzer gets out of it; the pre-emptive nobbling of a rival to their champion; while for “impartial” journalists it’s at least a man bites dog story even if this particular man has bitten more often than even the most aggresive rottweiler has managed in its lifetime, but why does an Ed Balls or Milliband join in?

Obviously because they’re not as leftist as their supporters would like them to be and this provides good covering for them to move rightwards; it’s not that they want to move, it’s that they’re forced to. Whether or not anyone believes them is unimportant: it’s the appearance that counts, the willingness to participate in this theatre.

Welfare “reform” kills

Health, Life under Capitalism, Poverty, Tories, UK politics
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Just some of the people who committed suicide after their (disability) benefits were stopped:

Richard Sanderson, 44, an unemployed helicopter pilot of Southfields in London, who stabbed himself twice in the heart in May. He had been informed that his family faced a £30 a week cut in housing benefit and he feared this would leave his family homeless

Paul Willcoxson, 33, of Corby, Northants, was according to the suicide note he left behind, worried about benefit cuts when he hung himself in April.

[…]

Elaine Christian, 57, of Hull, was worried, according to reports of an inquest in July, about a meeting to assess her disability benefits. She was found drowned in a drain with ten self-inflicted cuts to her wrist and she had taken painkillers.

Now imagine you’re on long term disability benefits, unable to work or even find an employer willing to take you on, knowing that the “reforms” will mean you will lose what little money and assistance is getting you by at the moment. Sign the petition against this “reform” that will end up killing more people.