A Scottish Broadcasting Corporation?

Tom Griffin (London, OK): Only days after the Scottish Government announced its plans for a local income tax, it seems another confontation with Westminster is looming. The Sunday Herald brings us news that the report of the Scottish Broadcasting Commission, due to be released on Monday, will call for a new terrestrial TV service:

The stand-alone Scottish digital television channel envisaged by the commission would be based in Scotland and could resemble the new publicly funded Gaelic broadcasting channel.

The commission's near year-long inquiry also involved bosses from the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 explaining how they could better cater for Scottish needs. The switchover to digital television is expected to be completed by 2012, so the new channel could be implemented within four years.

SDLP questions future of power-sharing

Tom Griffin (London, OK): For decades, the moderate nationalist SDLP has been the Northern Ireland party most associated with the principle of power-sharing. So it was a significant development when party leader Mark Durkan told the British-Irish Association on Friday that a strong bill of rights could remove the need for the institutionalised nationalist and unionist blocs put in place by the Good Friday Agreement a decade ago.

'I remember, at the time, saying that the system of designation was necessary because of what we were coming from, but should not be necessary where we were going,' he said. 'As we move towards a fully sealed and settled process we should be preparing to think about how and when to remove some of the ugly scaffolding needed during the construction of the new edifice.'

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Georgia-Russia: calling for a Machiavellian u-turn

Rein Müllerson, a professor of International Law, strips the Russian-Goergian war of obfuscating legalities. This is not a conflict about ``aggression, occupation, genocide, racial discrimination, territorial integrity, peace enforcement, humanitarian mission, sanctity of treaties'' or any such term of art used with "such self-righteous indignation, with such self-confidence by all sides". This is a war about the interests of global powers. The next steps to be taken by the US and Russia will be important in defining a future either of a great (nasty) conflictual game between US, Russia and China or of a concord of nations recognising mutual dependence in the face of global threats. The latter, better path requires all sides now to tone down rhetric, to u-turn without saying so.

Beyond Blairites and Brownites

Tom Griffin (London, OK): Charles Clarke may not have won much overt support for his attack on Gordon Brown this week, but his thesis that the future of the Labour Party cannot be understood in terms of Blairite and Brownite cliques seems to have won more general assent.

At Comment is Free, the Fabian Society's Sunder Katwala has pointed out that many of Clarke's own policy prescriptions don't fit the Blair/Brown New Labour template. In another piece on the Fabians' new Next Left blog (also at Liberal Conspiracy), Katwala suggests the same is true of many younger members of the Cabinet:

the generation of 40 and 30-somethings in the Labour Party have no interest at all in carrying the personal allegiances of 1997 around for the next twenty years. Which is lucky – as I doubt Ed Miliband wants to lead a rival army to take on his brother.

If there is one thing a ‘Next Left’ is about, it has to be about coming up with new answers, not thinking the work was done a generation ago.

 

Caroline Lucas elected Green Party's first ever leader

Rupert Read (Norwich, The Green Party): Last night, on September 5th, the Green Party made an historic decision.  We elected our first leader. This result, achieved after years of exhaustive internal debate, cannot be underestimated, for three reasons.

Firstly, as I've said previously here on OurKingdom, I believe our new leader Caroline Lucas MEP to be the most inspirational, intelligent, passionate and relevant politician in British politics today.  Faced with the looming triple crisis of the credit crunch, potential climate catastrophe and a peak in oil production that is causing energy prices to sky-rocket, the Greens are the only Party bold enough to take a stand and say what needs to be said, whether it be popular already or not. Caroline has embodied that spirit for over a decade, spearheading our Party in Europe and increasingly on the national stage.
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Brown backs fiscal powers for Scotland

Tom Griffin (London, OK): Gordon Brown has been coming around to the case for giving more tax powers to the Scottish Parliament for some time, as Brian Taylor notes, but last night's speech to the Scottish CBI puts fiscal devolution more firmly on the agenda.

"First of all," he told Scottish business leaders, "devolution has worked but I do see one problem. While there have been good reasons why this is so, the Scottish Parliament is wholly unaccountable for the budget it spends but not for the size of its budget. And that budget is not linked to the success of the Scottish economy. That is why we asked the commission to look carefully at the financial accountability of the Scottish Parliament and this is a critical part of Calman's remit."

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Defending a Tradition of Brutality

It sometimes seems that human violence knows no bounds. Recent reports of the brutal honour killings of five Pakistani women have shocked the world. And the reactions from the Pakistani parliament do not do much to ease that shock. When a terrible event occurs, the world looks for explanations in order to begin to deal with it. And even then the shock, horror and disgust will remain, for this is a crime we will never be able to understand.

Honour killings have been a concern to human rights groups for several years. All these deaths are disturbing but these had a particularly cruel twist, with the woman being buried alive. Such inhumanity and disregard for human life suggests that the perpetrators felt these women did something terrible to deserve this punishment.

Their crime? Doing what women all over the world do every day; choosing their own husband to marry through a civil court, away from the traditions of their tribe. The tribal elders then ordered the abduction and shooting of these three teenagers and their two female relatives, who were then sent alive to their graves. And while a female politician attempted to bring the case to the government's attention, another spoke up in defence of the tribal chiefs who ordered it.

The mind boggles and the heart sinks. How could this be defended? And who would expect that the words to justify and explain this would come from a member of parliament? Pakistani teenage girls have long known that choosing independence could cost them their lives. And now they face the knowledge that their killers may be spoken up for at the highest level. Their families will be rendered helpless.

But we must not lose heart. If politicians in Pakistan and other countries where honour killings are practiced, are forced by their own electorate and the west to stop explaining these away simply as ‘tradition', then these women can be given hope, and these shockingly brutal deaths will not have been in vain.

Palin is not the "Republican Obama"

Amidst the mountain of praise heaped on Sarah Palin's speech to the Republican National Convention yesterday, one assessment stuck out for me. According to NBC's political director Chuck Todd, in Palin, "conservatives have found their Obama".

What does this mean? Like Obama, Palin is young and in her 40s, a striking contrast to the wizened John McCain. Like Obama, Palin is a "Washington outsider", and even more so than the Democrat candidate. Alaska is about as far away as an American can grow up from Washington, where Obama is currently a senator. And like Obama, Palin brings a "breath of fresh air" to positions historically the reserve of white males.

But do these similarities mean that Palin will have the same impact on US politics as Obama has had? Decidedly not. As her speech in the Twin Cities has shown, Palin's role in this election is to exacerbate traditional political divisions and to debase the tenor of politics in the country.  Read the rest of this post...

What would a new Labour leader do differently?

Tom Griffin (London, OK): Over at the Independent's Open House blog, Steve Richards argues that unless they can spell out an alternative agenda, Charles Clarke and those who think like him will only make Labour's problems worse:

Those who want the removal of Brown have three obligations in the coming weeks. First, they must spell out in detail how they would deal with all the external factors that have derailed Brown’s leadership, in particular the credit crunch and the soaring price of oil and food. Second, they must spell out in more detail their policies for the future and how they connect with a party that is supposed to be on the centre left of British politics. Third, they must demonstrate that they can build a popular coalition of support that gives Labour a chance of winning the next election. Read the rest of this post...

A written constitution must not be a rock of ages

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): At the end of last month I wrote a post objecting to a phrase by A.C.Grayling. A written constitution should never  be described as "rock solid" and were it to be so it would be failing its democratic purpose. The slip was twofold, a written constitution can't be rock solid (academic point) but also we should not want it to be (political point).

Grayling did me the great compliment of responding swiftly and courteously on a subject that is a great issue. I then broke the First Law of Blogging NEVER POSTPONE A POST! Many apologies. I am engaged in a new project (more on which anon, I hope) that was intensely distracting at that moment and I wanted to gather my thoughts.

The problem with insisting on the argument is that it runs the risk of the narcissism of small differences, when two figures on the edge of a cliff with a landslide approaching and a storm brewing decide to have a punch up! One of the most striking things about British journalistic and political culture over the last twenty years, that I have become very aware of since campaigning for a written constitution as one of the key demands of Charter 88, has been this. For all the fine words and radicalism, and now even when Prime Ministers talk about the need for a new constitutional settlement, this obvious need is rarely addressed and then usually in passing. The media is part of the political class that benefits from the informal, unwritten order. The need for a proper constitution is passed over, drawn back from, or at best referred to as a gimmick. Read the rest of this post...

Charles Clarke questions Trident replacement

Tom Griffin (London, OK): As much as Charles Clarke deprecates talk of 'Blairite plots' against the Prime Minister, his article in the New Statesman today will inevitably be seen in that light.

However it is worth noting some less predictable and more interesting elements, notably a significant departure from New Labour orthodoxy on foreign policy:

Liberal interventionism must be underpinned by military force, but its moral authority was undermined by the glacial progress in preventing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the ill-considered determination to renew Trident.

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'An eloquent lady in Edgbaston' - competition winner

Tom Griffin (London, OK):  Back in August, Borders and Immigration Minister Liam Byrne provided the theme for our summer limerick competition, when he recalled how "In my conversations around Britain, I met an especially eloquent lady in Edgbaston. She said, ‘We can learn to live together, if we only put our minds to it.’ I think she is right. And I think we should approach this task with an air of great confidence."

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¿Si se puede?

As John McCain and Barack Obama prepare to wage their foreign policy battles over the middle east, another much closer region remains a lacuna in the ongoing contest. Latin America has barely featured in the race, despite its historical and persisting centrality in US strategic thinking and despite the growing population of Latinos in the country. Obama will have to hope that his Latin American silence proves golden.

Latin America came up briefly during the primary season. In the November/December 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs, Hillary Clinton laid out her foreign policy blueprint for a Clinton presidency, declaring rather blandly that her stance was one of "vigorous engagement" with Latin America. The strategy behind this statement was twofold: first, to call attention to Bush's failed promise to build stronger relations throughout the continent (and perhaps to critique the administration's Cold War approach to the so-called "rogue" Latin American socialist states) and also to cater to her active and substantial Hispanic voter base.

Not to be outdone, Obama, the soon-to-be Democratic nominee, followed suit, also calling for more "vigorous engagement" with the continent, distinguishing himself from Clinton only in terms of his views on Cuba. Clinton's Foreign Affairs article was published several months after she promised to uphold the administration's draconian approach towards travel restrictions to Cuba, which Steve Clemons of the New America Foundation aptly described as "a policy in which people have to choose between attending their mother's funeral, or their father's." (The current policy allows Cuban-Americans to return to the island once every three years, and only after clearing a veritable Olympic course of bureaucratic hurdles). Smelling blood, at a Cuban Independence Day celebration in Miami in late May, Obama unveiled his own approach towards Cuba, emphasizing a greater leniency towards travel and a willingness to relax the 46-year trade embargo (a policy only a year younger than Obama himself).

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Salmond announces Council Tax Abolition Bill

Tom Griffin (London, OK): The Scottish Government revealed its legislative programme for the next year today. The centre-piece was Alex Salmond's announcement of "abolition of the oppressive council tax in favour of a fair local income tax, bringing much needed relief to household budgets."

Over at Conservativehome, Tory MSP Derek Brownlee raises a number of searching about the assumptions behind the SNP plan for a local income tax rate of 3p in the pound. Read the rest of this post...

Dealing with the past: postponed until further notice

Patrick Corrigan, (Amnesty Blogs: Belfast and Beyond): Looks like the Observer's Henry McDonald has been hearing the same rumours around Belfast as I have – namely, that the report by the Eames-Bradley Consultative Group on the Past is to be postponed (yet again) until the end of the year at least.

The Group concluded its investigation as long ago as January. When I last blogged this topic in late May (Northern Ireland: 'It must never happen again'), at the time of a high-profile speech by the Group's chairs Archbishop Robin Eames and Denis Bradley, I mentioned that the report was expected later in the summer. Then, it was said, it would be out in September. Then October. Now McDonald is reporting December, while I am hearing that we could be into next year before the Group's findings finally become public. Read the rest of this post...

Does the Caribbean exist?

As Jim Gabour seemed certain of all along, Hurricane Gustav spared New Orleans a return to the horrors and devastation of Katrina three years ago. Though eight people across the south of the United States died as a result of the storm's arrival, its impact has not been nearly as deadly as feared. The GOP now returns to the misfortune of staging a full convention that will pale in comparison to its Democratic counterpart. And national and international (particularly British) media will once again train their lenses on American political pageantry.

I'm unsettled by the media's total lack of interest in the reality of the storm. The story of Gustav was simply New Orleans. Of course, the city suffered dearly during Katrina. Journalists should investigate how well its refurbished defenses coped. But major media outlets paid disproportionate attention to New Orleans while ignoring the storm's real toll. The deaths of nearly one hundred people throughout the Caribbean passed without mention, or at best as a footnote. See, for instance, this distasteful article in The Telegraph which notes right at the end, as a one-line after-thought not worth dwelling upon, that "Gustav has already killed at least 94 people in the Caribbean".

Some reports claim that the death toll in the Caribbean has exceeded one hundred. Gustav killed at least 77 people in Haiti, while battering Jamaica, parts of Cuba, the Caymans and other islands. For more on the devastation of the storm read Global Voices Online's round-up of the Caribbean blogosphere.

The numbers are not that important; Gustav, after all, is certainly not the deadliest hurricane to sweep through the region. Rather, what is troubling is the absence of the Caribbean in the broadcasts and reports that build international consciousness. Over the weekend in the UK, Sky News transmitted live Mayor Ray Nagin's press conference from New Orleans. I wonder if the mayor knew that a British audience absorbed his dry traffic updates and announcements of road closures to Mississippi. We should never reject this immersion in a distant local experience - particularly one as brimming with human loss and endurance as New Orleans - but it is difficult to accept when its price is the elision of others. From the perspective of western TV, print and internet coverage, all roads lead to New Orleans; the Caribbean was but a path for the storm before it made its real landfall on our sense of what matters.

All Wales Convention meets

Tom Griffin (London, OK): The All Wales Convention holds its third meeting in Cardiff Bay today. As the Western Mail's Martin Shipton notes, it's been a slow start for the body that is meant to consider the case for more powers for the Welsh Assembly. Read the rest of this post...

The Wisdom of Crowds

Keith Sutherland (Exeter, Imprint Academic): The most remarkable thing about the Chancellor’s Guardian interview wasn’t his unusual candour about the parlous state of the economy (“arguably the worst in 60 years”) but his admission that a year ago he had no idea of what was in store. In fairness to Mr. Darling – an intelligent and likeable man – he was in good company, for most economists and senior bankers hadn’t the faintest inkling of the financial crisis about to unfold: “No one did. No one had any idea”.

However it was pretty damn obvious to everybody else (other than practitioners of the ‘dismal science’) that the nation was gorging on an unsustainable debt and asset price bubble and that the whole pack of cards was about to fall down. Why is it that expert political judgment is so out of line with what has been called the ‘wisdom of crowds’? Read the rest of this post...

Palin's challenge to Obama

John McCain had a hard act to follow after the thunder of the Democratic National Convention. In the Rockies, Obama scaled the heights of political spectacle, delivering one of the surest and strongest speeches of the campaign year. What could the much more restricted McCain possibly muster in response?

We've now had a few days to dwell on the answer. The choice of Sarah Palin as the presumptive Republican vice presidential candidate breathes new life into a contest that was flagging in the late months of the summer. In selecting Palin as his running mate, McCain anointed a woman he has met only once before; a woman whose anti-choice views are unlikely to win over disgruntled Hillaryites; a woman whose short tenure as the governor of remote Alaska may undermine the edifice of "experience" that surrounds his presidential bid. Yet Palin also adds that element of surprise and adventure altogether absent from the McCain campaign.

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Donate to No2ID and Rowntree will double your money

Guy Aitchison (London, OK): Lib Dem blogger Steph Ashley has news of a generous offer from the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust in support of No2ID. Any new donations received by No2ID will be doubled by Rowntree. Steph has the details:

From 1st September 2008, the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust Ltd has generously agreed to match, pound for pound, any *new* income that NO2ID receives. Which means that for every pound you give from 1st September NO2ID will receive TWO pounds to spend campaigning against the ID scheme and database state.

Please send your donation by cheque to our office (please mark your envelope 'JRRT'):

The NO2ID Campaign
Box 412
19-21 Crawford Street
London W1H 1PJ

Or you can donate by credit card or via PayPal using the 'Donate' button on our website, http://www.no2id.net (left hand column)

Double your money offers like this don't come along very often so please, dig deep - encourage your friends, family and colleagues to make a donation. With your help we can stop this.

While you're at it, why not join the campaign, join a local group and take the NO2ID Pledge?

This is a direct repost (with permission) from the journal of superactivist "diffrentcolours"

Hat-tip Lib Con.