Category Archives: Politics

Domestic (UK), Politics

Rupert Murdoch, Phone Hacking and Press Regulation

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Will Cookson has an interesting post on media regulation, where he argues against our current media ownership rules. He says;.

We need to look at the ownership rules of the media for our country. They are not like other goods and services. They can strike at the root of our democracy. If someone like Rupert Murdoch can summon senior politicians at short notice to the other side of the world because of his power then that is bad for democracy.

The media should only be allowed to be owned by UK citizens resident in this country. Political parties are no longer allowed to receive gifts from overseas residents and the same should apply to the media ownership.

Not that much for me to disagree with there, though drafting legislation in such a way that it cannot be challenged (especially under EU competition law) will be difficult. Plus all our main political parties and the City do not think that nationality of ownership is anything that we should worry about. Convincing them otherwise without voting for a UKIP or a Socialist Workers Party government at the next election will be difficult.

Where I tend to disagree with Will  is on his proposals for regulation, which I think have implications around freedom of the press, and freedom of speech in general. He says;

We must have an external independent ombudsman for the media whatever the media throw at the politicians (and be prepared for some very nasty stories about politicians with innuendo and smears in the early autumn).

Newspapers have always been the tools and playthings of the rich and powerful. Owners in the past like Lord Beaverbrook and the Rothermeres  (owners of the Daily Mail) have always used their publications to persuade, bribe (by granting or withholding support) and if necessary bully governments into doing their bidding. Whether Rupert Murdoch has a larger and more insidious influence is a moot point

I am sure that journalists on the past bought information and were on far too friendly terms with various police officers. They didn’t hack mobile phones (they didn’t exist), but probably had ways of tapping landlines if they thought that the story would be worth the risk. But the sins of the past do not excuse the sins of the present day.

Even phone hacking gets a bit tricky. I don’t want my mobile hacked. I don’t want Milly Dowler’s parents’ phones hacked. Neither do I want the phones and emails of relatives of service personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan hacked. But, say a newspaper has very tenuous evidence that a senior politician is accepting bribes to influence the placing of government contracts , would I worry if the newspaper hacked his or her phone as part of their investigation?

The hard question is what to do about it. It is without doubt that what happened at the News of the World was beyond the competency of the Press Complaints Commission as it is presently set up. The PCC does valuable arbitration and conciliation work and it needs to carry on doing it, but without increased powers it should drop the pretence that it is a regulator.

A truly effective regulator has to have the powers to stop a story being published in the first place. Our ridiculous libel laws (“super-injunctions”) are often used by celebrities to just that end. The publishing of a story , or putting a celebrity adulterer’s name to a twitter #hashtag. puts the information into the public domain. Taking it back is impossible. The regulator can do nothing other than deal with the complaints.

The idea of a state appointed “independent” press regulator worries me. Would a state appointed regulator have allowed the Daily Telegraph break the story of the MP’s expenses scandal? MP’s, and probably not just the guilty parties, would have complained to the regulator and asked for the suspension of the story. The Telegraph bought the information. The information, was probably stolen. I think that an independent regulator would have prevented the Telegraph publishing the story.

How far will the press regulators powers go? Will every story in every newspaper need submitting to him or her before publication? If not, what will be criteria that triggers the need for submission? If a newspaper (or other outlet like say a blog) publishes an unsuitable story what powers will the regulator have to correct them? Will the regulators powers only apply to newspapers, or will they extend to include all publications? If the regulators powers cover all publications, will I have to send my blog posts, will they come back with the spelling and grammar corrected and will the regulator reading my blog posts show up in my statistics? Do we want to regulate unsuitable stories or just unsuitable methods of journalism?
We must have these, and probably more questions satisfactorily before we head down this path.

I think that keeping press regulation voluntary, with the PCC having increased powers to demand retractions and insist on the positioning of the retractions within the newspaper, and possibly even suspending a publication in the worst cases might work. If, as is currently the case with the Express group newspapers, they refuse to be bound by the PCC rulings then OFCOM will take over their regulation. OFCOM has the powers to insist that the owners of a non compliant company sell their stakes in it (at a loss if necessary).

Oh, and applying the law, not just to “rogue” reporters, but extending culpability to those who employ them.The possibility of the Rupert and James Murdoch, Andy Coulson and Rebekah Wade, spending some time behind bars would really get the attention of the owners and editors of newspapers. I understand that the instances of phone hacking have dropped to round about zero since Glenn Mulcaire and Clive Goodman were jailed.
I am also sure that it is against the law for police officers to pass confidential information to third parties, with or without money changing hands. If the law needs clarifying then clarify it, but again applying the law will be more effective.

Domestic (UK), International, Politics

Debt Crises and Paying Your Taxes.

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The budgetary problems of Greece are again making the headlines. The country is in a mess, and because of it the Euro-zone is also potentially in a mess. If the Euro goes tits up, the banking crisis of 2008 will look like a bun-fight at the church fête. The question I want to explore is how did we get here?

There are two basic reasons why Greece got itself in to its current situation:

  • The previous government cooked the books
  • Paying your taxes is seen as a voluntary activity – especially by the rich

Philip Inman in exploring the possible outcomes of the crisis, states this as part of the most optimistic (and least likely) scenario:

Greece’s rich landowners, shipping magnates, doctors and dentists all agree to pay their taxes. As City credit analyst Jan Randolph of IHS says: “The Achilles heel of the Greek economy is tax evasion. If the rich paid their taxes there wouldn’t be a problem.”

Grecian doctors and dentists apparently use accountancy systems that British “cash-in-hand” builders might be advised to study. The mega-rich just avoid paying taxes at all.

Jason Rosehouse touches on this in the context of American politics

The power brokers in the Republican party are primarily Wall Street barons and other members of the super rich. On domestic policy they care almost exclusively about redistributing wealth upwards and in creating an entirely unregulated environment for corporations. The flip side is that anything that might benefit poor or middle class people they oppose. That is why they will fight tooth and nail to oppose the tiniest tax increase on millionaires, but will then turn around and accuse schoolteachers (!!) of being greedy. It is why they openly despise the public schools, and propose ludicrous, unworkable tax schemes that overwhelmingly benefit the super rich. It’s why they are so horrified by the idea that the health care system might be reformed to make it possible for millions of uninsured to obtain insurance. (It’s certainly not that they had a better idea for reforming the system. And notice that when they controlled both Congress and the Presidency from 2000-2006, they never even mentioned the health care crisis. As far as they are concerned, forty million people without health insurance simply isn’t a problem.)

This increasingly the situation throughout the western world. The rich basically want it all. They want the state to educate and train their workforce. Suitably trained they want our labour at the lowest possible price. They expect the state to protect their property, to make sure that the transport system and services work, and in the last resort to bail them out. But they are more and more reluctant to pay for any of it.

They demand lower corporation tax. They demand that the 50% income tax rate be removed. Multi-nationals declare their profits where ever it suits them, regardless of where those profits have been earned. Thus they deprive developing nations of large amounts of needed and legitimate revenue.

The middle classes in the west used to think that at least we had a share in all this corporate greed through our pension schemes, but even that is going. We are now too expensive to keep in our old age, and paying into a employee pension scheme damages corporate profitability. Besides the middle classes are no longer needed by the Masters of the Universe©. Someone on the other side of the globe can do (with a few exceptions) your job just as easily and for half, or less, the wage that you need to live on in the west.

When Bill Clinton left office in 2001 the American Federal Budget was in surplus, now it is in massive deficit, essentially because tax cuts for billionaires, one and a half unnecessary wars and allowing the banks to run amok. Many of the Republican candidates for the 2012 presidential elections are making noises about cutting taxes for the rich, and cutting corporation tax, “balancing” the budget by cutting environmental protection and programs such as Medicaid and Medicare. One of them Michelle Bachmann is proposing increasing the tax burden on the working classes to help offset this.

In this country the Tories haven’t gone that far yet. They would like to abolish the 50% income tax rate for high earners. They would like to cut corporation tax. But it is difficult to do so when you are trying to claim that the country is bankrupt. If you are lopping £20 billion of the NHS budget and closing Sure Start Centres, a give away to the rich just might be the trigger for either riots or the LibDems to develop a bit of backbone, neither of which is desirable from a Tory point of view.

Getting back to my original point; Government is a necessity in any community over about one hundred and fifty, and governments need to raise revenue. Graduated taxation of income is the fairest way to do it.
If the rich are not prepared to pay their share, which they did (up to a point) in the past, then all the west is heading in the same direction as Greece.

Politics, Voting Reform

It looks as if we’ve lost.

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I voted yes

I’m disappointed, but not surprised. The polls were indicating that this would be the result for quite some time now.

From the Guardian

7.40pm: It’s official. The no camp have won.

I’m not at the count, so I don’t know whether the anti-AV campaigners threw their hands in the air and shouted: “Yes.” I’d love to think they did.

• The no camp have now officially won the AV referendum campaign. They have passed the 50% threshold. They’ve now got more than 9.8m votes.

7.33pm: According to the BBC, the no camp need to get more than 9.8m votes to clinch victory. They’re almost there. Here are the latest figures, with results in from 342 out of the 440 areas.

Yes: 4,216,527 – 31.7%

No: 9,098,846 – 68.3%

I’m not quite sure where we go from here, if we can’t persuade the electorate to back what was a small first step on the way to electoral reform, I’m don’t know how we convince them to back proportional representation. Not that we are likely to get the opportunity for quite a while.

It also means that the original raison d’être for this blog has gone, although that would have been the case even if we had won. I am going to keep the blog going though, essentially because I enjoy writing it. Anyway the Giro d’Italia starts tomorrow, I’m still riding my bike, painting, cooking and eating, so there is plenty to blog about, and there will always be  other political subjects to get hot under the collar about.

Domestic (UK), Politics, Voting Reform

I’m Voting Yes to AV

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Why I am voting yes on the 5th of May

  1. The Alternative Vote is not perfect but it is more democratic than the system we currently use.
  2. It ensures that our elected representative has the approval (except under fairly unlikely circumstances) of at least 50% of the people who could be bothered to vote.
  3. If we don’t vote for this small improvement in out electoral system, any hope of the major change that is required will be lost for a generation.
  4. Voting for AV will seriously upset the Tories and John Reid – got to be a good thing.
  5. I don’t like kittens 😉

This is much important for our democracy than some people think. Resist the urge, those of you who support Labour to stick one to Nick Clegg, he’ll get his just desserts soon enough.

Just vote tomorrow, and vote ‘Yes’ .

Domestic (UK), Politics, Voting Reform

Best Argument yet for AV

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You know AV makes sense.

The arguments just needed to be put in a way that even a man can understand.

Let's AV a beer

Vote yes next Thursday – unfortunately we can’t promise free beer. 😦

Domestic (UK), Politics, Voting Reform

AV is the Only Game in Town.

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Jonathan Freedland in today’s Guardian tells us why we need to vote yes to the Alternative Vote on May the 5th. Most people in favour of a proportional system of electing our government will fully acknowledge that it is in Nick Clegg’s words a ‘Baby step on the way to Electoral Reform’. But it is a crucial step, it is the first step on the way to meaningful reform and if we do not take it, there will be no more steps for a long time.

We can argue the merits of Single Transferable Vote over the Additional Member System ’till we are blue, red, yellow or green in the face. We can agree that either would be infinitely superior to AV, but what we can’t do is refuse to vote for AV because it doesn’t give us everything we want.

Jonathan Freedland concludes with this lesson from Australia:

Of course AV is miles from perfect, even if it does allow voters to express more fully their true preferences; most reformers would prefer PR. But it’s naive to think that defeat next week would keep progressives’ powder dry, allowing for a future push for full-blooded electoral reform. That’s rarely how politics works. It’s success, not failure, that breeds success.

That lesson was taught in 1999, when Australia held a referendum on whether to remove the Queen as head of state. The alternative on offer was another “miserable little compromise” – with MPs, not the people, electing a new head of state – and some republicans preferred to let it fail and wait for something better. They’re still waiting – and Elizabeth II is still Queen of Australia.

Let’s not let the perfect be the enemy of the good

Politics, Voting Reform

The No to AV campaing claims AV will cause spoilt Ballot Papers

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The Evening Standard published a story on 7th April claiming that adopting the Alternative Vote (AV) will lead to more ballot papers being spoiled

Adopting the Alternative Vote (AV) for Westminster elections is likely to lead to more spoilt ballot papers and lower turnout, campaigners against reform claimed today.

No to AV published research highlighting the “damaging” effects of the relative complexity of AV compared with the existing first-past-the-post system.

It suggested that elections in which AV was used had higher rates of accidentally spoilt papers and fewer people taking part.

Completing the AV ballot paper is I must admit slightly more complex than completing a First Past The Post ballot paper. It does require that you can count up to, probably about twelve at a maximum  and recognise the numbers and write the appropriate numbers. Now most five-year old kids can manage to count and write the numbers up to ten, so hopefully by the time they get to voting age they will have added to their repertoire.

The fact that we have been electing the Mayor of London using AV for the past three Mayoral elections without too much drama does not appear to have occurred to the writer, but never mind don’t let the facts get in the way of a story.

The custom of putting an ‘X’ in the box alongside the name of our favoured  candidate is presumably two-fold, to ensure that the illiterate were not disenfranchised*, and  to reduce the possibility of the voter being identified**.  However working on the theory that complete illiteracy is less common than in the 1880’s I hope that the vast majority of the electorate can count up to twenty, even if the ‘No to AV campaign’ have to take their shoes and socks of to do it.

It should also be pointed out that there is no need to use your Alternative Vote, if you only want to acknowledge the Tory candidate put your 1 in his or her box and leave the others blank. In fact if only one candidate was being ranked , I’m fairly sure that the returning officer would accept an ‘X’ in that box as being a valid vote.

* How they knew who they were voting for I don’t know.

** If the powers that be want to know how you voted, believe me they can find out – those numbers on your ballot paper aren’t just to help them count how many have been used.

Politics, Voting Reform

A new poster for the No to AV Campaign

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I think this sums up most of the arguments of the No to AV mob.

Vote no or the kitten gets it

The Alternative Vote system is not perfect, but it does ensure that the winning candidate has the approval to a greater or lesser extent of at least 50% of the electorate. The current system allows a candidate to be elected with the approval of as little as 30% of their constituents.

Politics, Voting Reform

Voting Reform – Party Lists

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Party lists in theory should give almost perfect proportionality in the result of any election. The theory behind the system goes something like this:

  • Almost everyone votes for the party they support rather than the individual candidate
  • Instead of having individual constituencies why not just have a regional (or national) poll in which you cast your vote for your party of choice.
  • Add all the votes up and allocate the number of seats to each party based on the percentage of the vote obtained.
  • The parties then allocate the seats to MPs based on a list they have drawn up, normally with the party leader as the first person selected.

This is about as pure a form of proportional representation as you could wish for. If Labour get 30% of the vote they get 30% of the MPs. If the Green Party get 8% of the vote they get 8% of the MPs and so on. However there is one big snag with Party Lists – we don’t get to choose the people who represent us, the parties choose the people who represent us. The system can be made fairly transparent, but it still boils down to voting for a party and getting the representatives they choose in the order that they want them selected (presumably starting with the party leader).

The system is used in a modified form for the Scottish Assembly where it is known as the Additional Member System. There the majority of the members are elected by a First Past The Post system in individual constituencies. The electorate then has a second vote on a regional basis. The total number of seats in the Parliament are allocated to parties proportionally to the number of votes received in the second vote of the ballot using the d’Hondt method. For example, to determine who is awarded the first list seat, the number of list votes cast for each party is divided by one plus the number of seats the party won in the region (at this point just constituency seats). The party with the highest quotient is awarded the seat, which is then added to its constituency seats in allocating the second seat. This is repeated iteratively until all available list seats are allocated.

This is not as you may have gathered a method of electing our representatives that I like. The two main reasons for my dislike of the system are:

  • It breaks the link between the representative and the represented. We would no longer cast our vote either directly or indirectly for a person. Our vote goes to the party.
  • The MP’s loyalty needs to be toward his or her party, because it is the party that now decides whether they as individuals will be elected, not the voters. This is because the higher you are on your party’s list the greater you chances of being elected.

There is an argument for using this system as a top up to either FPP or AV (sometimes known as AV+) but I feel that this produces a two tier parliament, with some MPs directly elected and a rump beholden to their party bosses for their seats.

Politics

Earth Hour 2011

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Earth Hour is on Saturday 26 March  from 20:30 to 21:30.  It is one of those things that can easily be dismissed as futile gesture politics. After all, what earthly difference is switching all your lights off for an hour going to make?

Well, hopefully the commitment you make by turning your lights (and televisions and computers) off for an hour will help to solidify in you the knowledge that you can make a difference to the world, and that the choices you make will have an effect on this world. Turning your lights off, or leaving every light in the house on, is your choice to make. Just as most other things in life are your choice to make. It is your choice as to whether you walk to the shops to buy a loaf of bread, or get the car out for a two-minute journey. You can make choices every day that will affect the future of the planet for good or ill.

Turning your lights off for an hour is an easy choice to make, but hopefully it will help you when the more difficult choices come along.

And if we all turn all our lights off, including the street lights, we might even get to see the stars.