Links today – reach your own conclusions. I spared you from a photo of Alastair Campbell.
Secret memo shows key role for Blairites in Labour’s election team (Alan Milburn started the privatization of the NHS under Blair)
conflicts with David and Ed Miliband turn leadership race into verdict on New Labour
Iain Duncan Smith’s catalogue of waste and poverty
Mandela: never forget how the free world’s leaders learned to change their tune
Commentary and analysis of recent UK politics news.
I found Cameron’s joke quite amusing: “It’s fair to say he’s no longer a follower of Marx, he’s loving Engels instead.”
The business secretary, Vince Cable, defended the government’s valuation of Royal Mail on Wednesday after solid results from the newly privatised group sent its shares even higher.
Royal Mail was privatised last month when the government sold 60% of its stake to investors in an initial public offering (IPO).
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Royal Mail shares were up 5% by mid-morning on Wednesday to 559.5p – 70% higher than the flotation price of 330p. Its market value has increased by £2.3bn since the flotation, which valued Royal Mail at £3.3bn.
Operating profit for the six months ended 29 September was £283m, up from £144m a year earlier.
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His name is Isa Muazu. He is wasting away.
Locked in a cell just outside Heathrow, out of sight from the holidaymakers and business visitors, he can no longer get up off his mattress. He has not eaten in over 90 days. He can no longer stand or see. He struggles to talk.
On Friday, at 8:00 am, he will be forcibly put on board a flight and sent to Lagos, where he says he will be targeted by Islamic terror group Boko Haram. He was due to be deported tonight, but the Home Office has ordered new removal directions. Needless to say, he will be even weaker on Friday.
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In a decision which has no legal, medical or moral consistency given the ‘end of life’ plan, a Home Office doctor has branded Muazu ‘fit to fly’. Yesterday morning, independent doctors visited him as he lay on the mattress in the detention centre and decided the precise opposite. There is a strong chance this man will die when he is deported.
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The ConDem coalition government has published the HS2 bill. At 49,910 pages long it evades democracy by preventing representations. 891 pages would need to be read every day to simply read it in the 8 weeks for representations. It presents a wonderful opportunity for protestors although it will waste a lot of paper and ink. No MPs were seen under the bill in parliament as it was passed almost unanimously last night.
A source close to the government said “That was a good wheeze – it was one of Lansley’s again. Drowning the NHS in bureaucracy, castrating 38degrees, charities and the unions with the lobbying bill and now this. We’ve decided to ruthlessly pursue our narrow class interests now that it’s accepted that we have no chance to win the general election. HS2 should sustain us for a decade or two if we take it easy on the port.”
The Guardian asks what it would take to regain Labour voters. The comments are clearly calling for nationalisation of utilities and trains and to abandon Neo-Liberalism. No chance of that with this ‘Labour’ party.
I must confess that even I was taken in by Miliband pretending to be a Socialist at the conference this year. It only lasted about two days. It’s very clear what the Labour party needs to do to attract voters. I’m effectively disenfranchised without a choice between the three main Neo-Liberal parties. It’s clear that there are many that feel exactly the same.
Shadow Home Office Minister Diana Johnson makes a valid point about Theresa May supporting migrant domestic slavery by tying their visas to one employer.
Unfortunately she also accepts uncritically the current case of “invisible handcuffs” slavery saying “The Labour party would deal with this case proportionately. We would try the ‘invisible handcuffs’ factional splitter Maoist squatters case in the special Court of Make-believe and convict to ten years in the pretend prison at the back of the wardrobe.”
No mention of Cameron’s plans for web censorship. Let’s hope it’s quietly forgotten.
Commentary and analysis of recent UK (and US today) politics news.
Socialist and former Occupy activist Kshama Sawant has been elected to Seattle council. It’s a big issue for a Socialist to be elected in the States.
Miliband Accuses PM Of ‘Reaching A New Low’ over the Paul Flowers / Co-op issue. He’s only one man after all. The view from the bottom of the triange is that those at the peak are parasitic, don’t do much and have loads of advisors making reports and recommendations. Titular like. [later edit: I’m talking generally not specifically here.]
There are now seven inquiries into the Co-op. That’s OTT.
Ed Miliband was on Desert Island Discs today: Unchanged choices include “Take on Me” by A-Ha, which Mr Miliband admitted was “cheese”, as well as “Angels” by Robbie Williams which he dedicated to his wife, Justine.
Update: Far too many Inquiries into the Co-op
■ The Co-op commissioned the Kelly review of its financial woes in July and it is due to report in May 2014.
■ After the Flowers allegations emerged, the Co-op announced a separate “root and branch” probe of its governance.
■ The Treasury has ordered an independent inquiry into the Co-op Bank dating back at least to 2008.
■ The Prudential Regulatory Authority and Financial Conduct Authority, which took over the FSA’s powers this year, are each considering separate inquiries into the bank’s affairs.
■ The Treasury select committee is looking into Lloyds’s botched attempt to sell a batch of branches, which collapsed when the Co-op pulled out.
■ The police are investigating Flowers in connection with the supply of drugs and have bailed the 63-year-old.
■ The Financial Reporting Council accounting watchdog is examining the Co-op’s financial reports and could mount a formal probe.
David Cameron spoke on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour at 4p.m. today. I didn’t listen to it although it will be on iplayer later. I’m commenting on this article instead.
Cameron’s comments are more nuanced e.g. not confusing Tor’s “dark net” and peer-to-peer, and have advanced from earlier this week. While the original announcements on Monday were about preventing access to illegal, child pornography Cameron is now talking of preventing children “stumbling across hardcore legal pornography”. So which is it? Wasn’t it 100,000 “unambiguous” search terms which lead to illegal content? Now it’s about children happening across legal hardcore porn? It’s not the same.
Cameron disagreed with the former head of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop), Jim Gamble who said this would not have a big impact as paedophiles did not use search websites to find these images, but instead go to the “dark corners of the internet on peer-to-peer websites”.
This part is alarming: Mr Cameron said GCHQ were helping the National Crime Agency (NCA) to find people who use the “dark net” – stand-alone networks that sit separate to the web but are accessible to those that run the right software.
The problem is that it’s not illegal to use Tor and it has legitimate uses for political activists and dissidents and to evade censorship in oppressive regimes (as Cameron is intending for UK?). I use Tor and – as I have said before – I run a Tor relay.
Being a Tor user is most definitely not the same as being a paedophile accessing child pornography – so why target Tor users? I personally don’t use it as much as I used to – what does it matter if Cameron, Clegg, Miliband et al have half an hour’s notice of what to expect? This blog is pretty predictable unless I’ve got an exclusive. I’ll use it if I’m researching something sensitive or to access Pirate Bay which is blocked by court order in UK. The majority of internet traffic is peer-to-peer, probably sharing copyrighted material. So what?
“One of the things that came out of the meeting that gave me hope was that actually when people talk about these sites on the dark web where people are sharing revolting images, one of the experts said it’s not totally dissimilar to people downloading movies and music.”
I think that Cameron is responding to my criticism that Tor is not peer-to-peer. It is exactly like downloading movies and movie clips from a normal webserver. The only practical difference is that it takes longer.
“I’ve talked to parents who’ve had very direct experience of this happening, where the children were looking for something totally legitimate but ended up with, you know, some pretty horrible things in front of them …” I honestly don’t think that this happens.
Cameron is welcome to check things with me first … I won’t charge much. I’m sure that he knows many people that have my email address …
