contribution by Chaminda Jayanetti
I’ve published a comprehensive database of cuts announced so far to the Connexions youth service.
Connexions provides universal information, advice and guidance to young people, and works with young people not in education, employment or training (NEETs) to help them back into education or work. The service is funded by local authorities with a grant from central government
But after the coalition government cut this grant by 24 percent in June, applied to this financial year (‘in-year’), councils across England have announced cutbacks to local Connexions services.
My blog A Thousand Cuts and Unison have now collated details of Connexions cuts from councils across England – the full database can be seen here.
The database covers all councils that administer Connexions services, with information sourced from council announcements, local press reports, Children and Young People Now, and local Unison branches.
While some councils have yet to announce the cuts they will make, the database shows that many Connexions services are facing severe cuts to funding and jobs. Many local authorities are planning to scale back the universal Connexions service into a targeted service – although Lewisham is reducing support for NEETs with mental health issues, while East Sussex is cutting back projects for school students with learning difficulties and disabilities.
The Connexions services which are under threat of outright closure are:
- Windsor & Maidenhead – council is terminating the contract with Connexions at the end of March 2011; the council has emphasised this is due to government funding cuts, not the service’s performance
- Brighton & Hove – Connexions service at risk of closure, with schools having to provide advice to teenagers on issues such as sexual health, careers, housing and healthy living
- Birmingham – closure of the Connexions service is one of three options presented to council bosses, which would leave the council unable to fulfil its statutory obligations
There are also local authorities scaling back universal services in favour of targeted programmes and some implementing large-scale job cuts to the Connexions services.
Many local authorities have yet to finalise the impact of the government’s in-year cuts – many councils expect to reach decisions this month, so the national picture is likely to get worse. Moreover, the government’s October spending review may lead to even more severe cuts to local government funding – so further cuts to Connexions in future years may be on the horizon.
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PPS – while this database has been compiled by A Thousand Cuts and Unison, no payment from Unison was ever requested, offered or received, and the entering of information and data into the database was completed entirely by A Thousand Cuts at our discretion
contribution by Owen Tudor
In less than three weeks, the UN will hold a review summit on the Millennium Development Goals (set in 2000, they are due to be achieved in 2015 so we ought to be two thirds of the way there – and we aren’t).
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and International Development Secretary of State Andrew Mitchell will be attending the event for the UK – and the TUC has joined with many NGOs to call on them to support a concrete plan of action to reach the MDGs.
One key issue is how to pay for the measures necessary to reach those goals, and financial transactions taxes (FTTs) would make a big difference.
But it won’t just be unions and NGOs calling for a Robin Hood Tax in New York. The Leading Group – 60 nations including the UK – are calling for a currency transaction levy (a compenent part of an FTT) at the UN summit.
French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner, Japanese foreign minister Katsuya Okada and Belgian international development minister Charles Michel are leading the charge.
The Green MP Caroline Lucas is planning to table an amendment to rewrite the referendum question on AV next year, so it includes a “wider range of voting systems”.
In an article for the New Statesman this week she says we will be offered the “choice” between “two flavours of vanilla” – FPTP or the Alternative Vote.
Real reform is not on the agenda, she adds.
That’s why, as MPs start the second reading of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill on 6 September, I am tabling an amendment that would rewrite the referendum question to allow people to choose from a wider range of voting systems, including properly proportional options such as the additional member system (used in elections for the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and Greater London Assembly) and the single transferable vote (used in Northern Ireland).
As the Labour leadership battle narrows in favour of the Miliband brothers, I challenge them, even at this late stage, to support my amendment, to demonstrate their commitment to both pluralism and democracy.
Lucas also calls on the party to move beyond narrow tribalism and embrace true pluralism.
At recent Compass conferences, I have discussed the need for a more progressive, pluralist politics, based not on Blair’s suffocating “big tent”, but on a campsite of different parties and movements, sharing common values but maintaining their own identities. Labour could play an important part in that progressive alliance, but only if it can leave behind its arrogant belief in its own exclusive role. Is there no candidate willing to lead the party in that direction?
We will soon find out.
More also by Guy Aitchison at OurKingdom
Both the Financial Times and the Independent go big on the fresh Andy Coulson / News of the World allegations today.
BBC coverage so far is still limited to a few lines on of their blogs. Director Mark Thompson however is defending himself from visiting Downing Street to discuss coverage of spending cuts. Apparently this is entirely impartial.
Meanwhile, well done to Tom Watson, Chris Bryant, Ed Miliband, John Prescott and others pushing on this story.
The Independent
Phone-hacking row returns to haunt Cameron’s chief spin doctor
The Independent understands that George Galloway, the former MP, has instructed his lawyers not to consider any out-of-court settlement in a claim for breach of privacy unless Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers, owners of the News of the World, are prepared to make full disclosure of the paper’s involvement in phone-hacking.
The mystery of how a hands-on editor could know so little
Assuming that bad news always comes in threes, Coulson must be asking himself after the Hague fiasco and the New York Times revelations, what next? The former tabloid editor is not universally loved in the middle ranks of government. Ministers resent his constant access to the Prime Minister, and complain that he is too exclusively interested in the Conservative tabloids, particularly the Daily Mail and The Sun. This is particularly exasperating for Liberal Democrat ministers, who need to communicate with their voters, who mostly do not read those two newspapers.
The Financial Times
Coulson affair escalates media war
Instead of suing News of the World, however, as at least eight of his colleagues intend to do, he has teamed up with Brian Paddick, the former Metropolitan Police chief, and Brendan Montague, a freelance journalist, to bring a suit against the police. John Prescott, the former Labour deputy leader, may join their suit.
Tory spin chief faces fresh hacking claims
Sean Hoare, a former rep orter at the NoW, told the US paper that he had played tape recordings of hacked messages for Mr Coulson while they both worked for The Sun. At the NoW, Mr Hoare said, Mr Coulson “actively encouraged me to do it”, according to the paper. It quoted another unnamed former NoW reporter as saying: “Everyone knew. The office cat knew.”
New row over newspaper phone-hackers
Mr Bryant said: “It is extraordinary that all of the MPs whose names were uncovered in the initial investigation as potential victims of phone-hacking have not been contacted by the police.”
The Guardian
MP demands judicial inquiry into News of the World phone-hacking claims
The Labour MP Tom Watson has called for a full judicial inquiry into allegations of widespread illegal phone-hacking at the News of the World. Watson, a former minister, has written to No 10 asking David Cameron to set up a wide-ranging inquiry into the relationship between the Metropolitan Police and News International, which publishes the News of the World.
Met asked to reveal what it knew about NoW hacking of officers’ phones
Paddick is seeking a judicial review of the force’s alleged failure to tell him his name had been found in the list of public figures. Another name on the list was the former commissioner Sir Ian Blair. Also on the list was Michael Fuller, then a senior officer at the Met who later became the first ethnic minority chief constable, when he led the Kent force.
The New York Times now also has a handy time-line of events
I think it is an enormously encouraging sign that the so-called “heir to Blair”, “continuity New Labour” candidate for the Labour leadership believes in:
- an economic strategy which aims to halve unemployment
- a living wage
- doubling the bank levy
- a mansion tax on the wealthiest homeowners to reverse housing benefit cuts
- withdrawing charitable status from private schools to pay for an expansion of free school meals
- defending universal benefits
- marriage equality for same sex couples
- a comprehensive strategy to rid the world of nuclear weapons
- training 1,000 future leaders to campaign in their communities
- building more affordable homes and creating more green jobs as part of an industrial strategy to reduce Britain’s dependency on the City of London
*
There are all sorts of ways in which the Labour leadership contest could have turned into a total disaster for the party, but it has been good humoured and actually showed how much common ground there is within the Labour Party. Some disappointments – Andy Burnham has been hopeless on the health service, Ed Balls on immigration and Diane Abbott’s campaign has been a bit feeble. Both Ed Balls and Diane Abbott have a lot to contribute to the Labour Party in the future, but I don’t think either would be a very good leader.
The analysis of why Labour lost and how the party needs to change has had some odd outcomes. Ed Miliband’s argument is that Labour needs to appeal to more working class voters. Yet I think the people who will find him most appealing are more affluent, liberal-minded voters (like the people who form his activist base). In contrast, I can’t imagine David Miliband appealing much to the people who supported Tony Blair but don’t like Labour, but his Movement for Change is the best initiative of any of the campaigns at increasing the number of working class voters who will go and vote Labour.
I think Ed Miliband is going to win, and his team have run a very good campaign. With less money, less experience and a relatively unsympathetic media, he’s managed to articulate the values which most of the electorate share, and (with an assist from his brother’s more inept supporters) to portray his main opponent as an out of touch “right wing” candidate, despite the lack of policy differences. At the next election, Labour will face better funded, more experienced opponents who have most of the media backing them, so Ed Miliband’s skills in this regard are well worth noting.
But while I think Ed will be an excellent leader, I’m actually going to vote for David. I thought he was an excellent Cabinet Minister, in local government and in education, and I think he’s got the skills to be a very different kind of leader from Tony Blair or Gordon Brown – one who will use the talents of people from across the Labour Party rather than just a small clique. As mentioned above, the actual policies that he believes in are very different from those of Blairites such as, um, Tony Blair.
When he is elected leader, Ed Miliband will come under the most terrific pressure from the opposition, media and Blairites over his supposedly radical and left-wing policies. If David were elected leader, the main pressure which he would face would be to win over and enthuse the people who supported his brother or Ed Balls. To unite the Labour Party, Ed Miliband would need to appeal to the Right, David to the Left.
And therefore it is David, not Ed, who would have the best opportunity to change the Labour Party and achieve their and our shared goals – to build a grassroots movement to win the next election, end mass unemployment and close the gap between rich and poor.
Stephen Hawking says the Big Bang was the result of the inevitable laws of physics and did not need God to spark the creation of the Universe — reported in the Telegraph:
The scientist has claimed that no divine force was needed to explain why the Universe was formed.
In his latest book, The Grand Design, an extract of which is published in Eureka magazine in The Times, Hawking said: “Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist.”
He added: “It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going.”
In A Brief History of Time, Prof Hawking’s most famous work, he did not dismiss the possibility that God had a hand in the creation of the world.
He wrote in the 1988 book: “If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason — for then we should know the mind of God.”
In his new book he rejects Sir Isaac Newton’s theory that the Universe did not spontaneously begin to form but was set in motion by God…
[continues in the Telegraph]
Sunder and Left Futures do a good job of rebutting Blair’s claim that Labour lost the election because it was insufficiently New Labour.
But there’s something to add.
Despite what its left and right critics say, New Labour was not just a marketing ploy. It was also an intellectual project intended to put new life into social democracy. New Labour thought that top-down managerialist policies – such as tax credits, the minimum wage, increased spending on education – could achieve both economic efficiency and greater equality.
Labour’s problem is that this conception of social democracy has just run its course, just as post-war social democracy had in the 1970s. I mean this in five ways:
1. The banking crisis has shown us that top-down managerialism can fail catastrophically. Bosses do not – cannot – control large organizations. They are (in some/many cases) not the “courageous leaders” and “wealth creators” of New Labour fiction, but charlatans and plunderers.
2. New Labour’s promise of macroeconomic stability – which it hoped would stimulate investment and job creation – was a false one. Macroeconomic stability was mere good luck which has passed, not something which it is in the power of governments to create.
The challenge for an intelligent left is to ask: how can we protect the worst off from macroeconomic fluctuations, given that macro management is insufficient? This requires either more use of insurance markets, or a welfare state that puts a higher weight upon reducing risk than upon incentives.
3. New Labour’s redistributive policies were just about sufficient to offset the increased inequality generated by private sector forces. They were not enough to increase equality, and did nothing to rein in bosses’ rent-seeking.
4. New Labour’s belief that education and upskilling were necessary to get people into work might have made sense in good economic times, when the labour market faced supply constraints. But this less the case now. The labour market problem is more a demand-side one than a supply-side one.
5. The inefficiencies in the public sector generated by top-down management might have been tolerable when no-one worried about government borrowing. However, even though concern about the deficit is grotesquely overblown, this is not the world we’ll live in in the foreseeable future. Governments will have to pay more attention to value for money. This requires that public sector workers be empowered, as they know best where inefficiencies really lie. But New Labour’s managerialism prevented it from seeing this.
My point here is simple. New Labour – whatever merits it might have had in the 90s and 00s – is in no position to tackle the challenges we face now.
But do its leadership candidates sufficiently appreciate this? I fear not, as they all seem still in thrall to the New Labour myth that “leadership” is enough. As Paul so rightly says:
I’ve not seen anything conversational in any of the candidates. I've not seen any pretense that the party itself may have more brains or experience as a whole than any of these Sonnenkind can draw upon from within their small circle of temporary allies… We need the concept of leadership – as it is currently understood – to be contested and defeated.
Reading Tony Blair’s analysis about why Labour lost the election, I was reminded of a piece of post-election analysis done by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research:
They asked, amongst other things, the following question:
I’d like to rate your feelings toward some people and organisations, with one hundred meaning a VERY WARM, FAVOURABLE feeling; zero meaning a VERY COLD, UNFAVOURABLE feeling; and fifty meaning not particularly warm or cold.
You can use any number from zero to one hundred, the higher the number the more favourable your feelings are toward that person or organisation. If you have no opinion or never heard of that person or organisation, please say so.
The Labour Party got an average score of 44.8, with 38% positive and 47% negative.
Gordon Brown got an average score of 39.3, 33% positive, 55% negative.
David Miliband got 41.9, 21% positive, 37% negative.
Ed Miliband 39.9, 15% positive, 36% negative.
Ed Balls 35.6, 14% positive, 43% negative.
The European Union scored 41.4, immigration to Britain scored 37.5, Israel scored 38.7, and the Palestinians scored 45.6.
Tony Blair scored 36.2, with 25% positive and 60% negative.
So more people who voted in the 2010 election had negative views of Tony Blair than of Gordon Brown, either Miliband brother, Ed Balls, the European Union, the Labour Party, immigration, Israel or Palestine.
The lunatic who took hostages at Discovery Channel’s headquarters was killed by police. He did have a point about their crappy programming, let’s admit. From the New York Times:
Police officers shot and killed a gunman with a history of protesting against the Discovery Channel, the authorities said, ending a nearly four-hour ordeal on Wednesday at the company’s headquarters in Silver Spring, Md. The gunman, apparently wearing explosives, had taken two employees and a security guard hostage, officials said.
The company had identified the gunman…as James J. Lee. A Web site run by Mr. Lee, SaveThePlanetProtest.com, was established in January 2008. The Web site complains that the Discovery Channel produces programs about the environment for profit, not for humanitarian reasons.
contribution by Carl Miller
On Sunday, Demos released a report, The Power of Unreason. We looked at the role conspiracy theories play in extremism, violence, and terrorism.
Extremist groups use conspiracy theories to recruit, to justify violent acts and to maintain an ideology that sees violence as the answer to the world they find themselves within.
Conspiracy theories can therefore be dangerous.
They have an important functional value for extremist groups and they play into the social dynamics of radicalization. They create ‘the other’ that the group defines itself against. They inspire something we call a ‘self-aggrandizing siege mentality’: where the group sees itself as a tiny colony of true believers pitted against an entirely hostile world.
Overall, they divide and isolate, and it is in these conditions of alienation that extremism and violence find fertile soil. Outside of extremist groups they also drive a powerful wedge of distrust between communities and their elected governments.
This kind of disengagement is not just a problem; it is a danger. Today.
One of the big culprits for the spread of conspiracy theories is the internet. Of course, conspiracy theories like JFK and the moon landings long pre-date the digital age, but the recent explosion of conspiracy theories does coincide with widespread internet use, especially the latest revolution of social media.
Conspiracy theories live in these lawless arenas where peer-review, journalistic standards, and source attribution are largely absent. They are the creatures of youtube, chat rooms and discussion groups.
What to do? Any kind of censorship, or information campaign is wrong and will not work. We can’t and shouldn’t restrict the information that people encounter. It’s a given that we all will be daily bombarded with thousands of pieces of ‘counter-knowledge’, misinformation packaged to look like fact.
But, although we can’t tell people what to think, we can teach people how to think better for themselves.
One of the most important ways to increase our resilience to conspiracy theories is to equip young people with the skills to tell the different between credible claims, and their many imposters. Education must move into this vacuum: what are their sources?
What is the evidence, and how can we tell good evidence from bad? What evidence is being missed out? These are questions every young person must be educated to habitually ask. If people really want to get to the truth, bypassing the basic standards of journalism and open argument is not a good route.
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Carl Miller is co-author of the Demos report: The Power of Unreason
It was always obvious that Tony Blair hated the left. His recently published book said nothing new on that front.
What’s staggering is how easily he dismisses even close Labour colleagues and ministers.
Jon Cruddas
Jon made quite a name for himself. It was clever political positioning. To his overall political analysis – New Labour had deserted the working class and thus our base – he added a programme for the party. It was clothed in some modernist language, but was ultimately an attempt to build a left coalition out of Guardian intellectuals and trade union activists. However beguiling – and he was smart enough to make it beguiling – it was, in effect, reheated and updated Bennism from the 1980s.
Douglas Alexander
Douglas was and is a very clever guy indeed. I had tried to wean him off membership of Gordon’s inner circle; but to no avail. It was a real shame … But the Gordon curse was to make these people co-conspirators, not free-range thinkers. He and Ed Balls and others were like I had been back in the 1980s, until slowly the scales fell from my eyes and I realised ir was more like a cult than a kirk.
Ed Balls
…He has guts and he can take decisions. But he suffers from the bane of all left-leaning intellectuals. As I have remarked elsewhere, these guys never ‘get’ aspiration … He added a truly muddled and ultimately very damaging party critique. This was the view – I fear tutored by Gordon’s inclination in dealing with the party – that I deliberately chose confrontations with the party in order to demonstrate my independent credentials with the public.
John Prescott
At Cabinet, he would occassionally sit like a grumbling volcano ready to erupt at any moment. The proximate cause of the eruption would more often than not be one of the women intervening. Patricia Hewitt was certain to get him moving … John would make some slightly off-colour remark if he was in a sour mood. I would then bring her back in again, just for the sheer entertainment of watching him finally explode … He genuinely made me laugh. It was a bit like ‘How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?’ In The Sound of Music, though the similarlity ends there…
Perhaps his most alarming trait was his habit of starting a conversation in the middle – no beginning, no context, no explanation of what the problem was. I remember a time when it looking as if I was going to bring the LibDems into the cabinet … In storms John. ‘Where’s fookin’ Menzies?’ he begins. It wasn’t a promising start…
John Smith
Of course, I had no knoweldge that John would die prematurely. Except that, in a strange way, I began to think he might… I said to (Cherie): ‘If John dies, I will be leader, not Gordon. And somehow, I think this will happen. I just think it will.’ Is that a premonition? Not in a strict sense; but it was strange all the same. On Saturday afternoon we went to see Schindler’s List…
* * * * *
WTF was the last one about?
And then there’ his dismissal of…
recalcitrant union leaders, bolshie MPs, lefty activists and assorted intellectuals whose main contribution was to explain why nothing should change in the name of being real radicals
What does it say about Tony Blair’s loyalty to the party and the movement? What does it say about his committment to pluralism within the party?
Even the Spectator Coffeehouse blog admits (which reproduced the quotes) that Tony Blair did “not like the Labour Party one bit”.
I don’t agree with Ed Balls on everything, but he’s by far the best leader of the Labour party we’ve got on offer.
He’s also the best leader the Labour party has got to offer its more leftwing membership.
This is a bold claim, I recognise. Certainly, it’s not one I expected to be making when the campaign started in June, and it needs justification.
First and foremost, Ed Balls is an economist by training and trade, and understands better than any of the other candidates that at the heart of proper leftwing politics lies the question of the reordering of economic relations between the those with money, and those without.
2010, when Ed Balls seeks the leadership, is not 1994, when Tony Blair sought and won it.
In 1994, the economy was nearing its best point in the capitalist economic business cycle, and over the next few years new Labour had the luxury of, effectively, not having to worry about the economy as I went about its business.
Thus, we ended up with a Prime Minister who simply didn’t understand economics, and whose basic instruction to his new chancellor Gordon Brown was not to start tinkering with the current economic relationships between capital and labour, but just pass the readies over when they were needed.
Under Blair, income inequality and poverty became technical issues, not political issues. The establishment of the Social Exclusion Unit in 1997, with its 17 different ‘Policy Action Teams’ made up of a host of experts on housing, drugs, education etc., reflected this move to a technocracy operating within and never questioning the economic basics.
2010 is not 1994. Now there is a huge threat to the working class, but there is also an opportunity to put the economic relations between capital and labour back at the very heart of the Labour party.
To do this, we need to be clear right now about deficit spending, in the way that Ed Balls has become increasingly clear in recent weeks, culminating in this statement in the my interview with him:
I’m not sure that a deficit goal is the right goal. I think that maintaining confidence for servicing debt makes much more sense. The right way to do that is to have a strong and growing economy. That’s why I don’t think there’s a problem with deficit financing at this stage in the economic cycle.
We need to be even clearer.
Deficit spending is a supremely political act of democracy, because it shows that it is the democratically elected body of the state which directs – through its judicious manipulation of the money supply – the overall use of resources.
In taking this role away from capital – who have managed it so badly to date – there is a clear statement of who is in control. The economic becomes the political.
Of all the candidates, only Ed Balls understands this relation between the political and the economic (although I suspect he is still grappling with the consequences). It is only Ed Balls, therefore, who can be an effective opposition leader in the terms the Left wants opposition to happen – a serious challenge to the existing economic status quo.
And just as Brown was powerless to change the economic status quo (even had he wanted to) under the fundamentally conservative instructions of his political master Blair, so will Balls be powerless under the same kind of politics-without-the-basics leadership of either of the Milibands.
2010 is not 1994, and in some ways we are better for that, because the choice is clearer: we need someone who understands the politics of economics in the top job, not acting as a lackey to someone who doesn’t.
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A longer version of this article is at Though Cowards Flinch
The explosive New York Times story is mostly about the News of the World and its practices.
But it is also, perhaps more significantly, about Scotland Yard and how it conducted investigations during the episode. Here is what it has written about Scotland Yard (quoted from the paper, emphasis mine).
#1 Scotland Yard collected evidence indicating that reporters at News of the World might have hacked the phone messages of hundreds of celebrities, government officials, soccer stars — anyone whose personal secrets could be tabloid fodder. Only now, more than four years later, are most of them beginning to find out.
#2 Additional cases are being prepared, including one seeking a judicial review of Scotland Yard’s handling of the investigation. The litigation is beginning to expose just how far the hacking went, something that Scotland Yard did not do.
#3 In fact, an examination based on police records, court documents and interviews with investigators and reporters shows that Britain’s revered police agency failed to pursue leads suggesting that one of the country’s most powerful newspapers was routinely listening in on its citizens.
#4 Scotland Yard even had a recording of Mulcaire walking one journalist — who may have worked at yet another tabloid — step by step through the hacking of a soccer official’s voice mail, according to a copy of the tape. But Scotland Yard focused almost exclusively on the royals case, which culminated with the imprisonment of Mulcaire and Goodman.
#5 “There was simply no enthusiasm among Scotland Yard to go beyond the cases involving Mulcaire and Goodman,” said John Whittingdale, the chairman of a parliamentary committee that has twice investigated the phone hacking. “To start exposing widespread tawdry practices in that newsroom was a heavy stone that they didn’t want to try to lift.” Several investigators said in interviews that Scotland Yard was reluctant to conduct a wider inquiry in part because of its close relationship with News of the World.
#6 Scotland Yard’s narrow focus has allowed News of the World and its parent company, News International, to continue to assert that the hacking was limited to one reporter.
#7 Scotland Yard had chosen to notify only a fraction of the hundreds of people whose messages may have been illegally accessed — effectively shielding News of the World from a barrage of civil lawsuits.
#8 Scotland Yard also had a symbiotic relationship with News of the World. The police sometimes built high-profile cases out of the paper’s exclusives, and News of the World reciprocated with fawning stories of arrests.
#9 That fall, Andy Hayman, the head of the counterterrorism branch, was in his office when a senior investigator brought him 8 to 10 pages of a single-spaced “target list” of names and mobile phone numbers taken from Mulcaire’s home…. The prosecutor was stunned to discover later that the police had not shared everything.
[Note: Andy Hayman has since written on several occasions for the Times]
#10 Scotland Yard officials ultimately decided the inquiry would stop with Mulcaire and Goodman. “We were not going to set off on a cleanup of the British media,” a senior investigator said. In fact, investigators never questioned any other reporters or editors at News of the World about the hacking, interviews and records show.
#11 The woman and other potential hacking victims said that by sitting on the evidence for so long, the police have made it impossible to get information from phone companies, which do not permanently keep records. “It was disingenuous, to say the least, for Scotland Yard to say that,” the woman said.
#12 Three plaintiffs are jointly seeking a judicial inquiry into Scotland Yard’s handling of the hacking case.
West Bromwich East MP Tom Watson yesterday declared that his second preference would go to Ed Miliband.
Tom Watson has been a key ally and supporter of Ed Balls from the start of his campaign.
He tweeted yesterday:
I want a society where Freedom of Information Act is just the start. Thought long and hard. Am backing @Ed_miliband with 2nd preference.
He later added:
It’s a tough call but he’s open minded, good with people and proved his strength.
The mention of FOI is likely to have been about Tony Blair (who implicitly endorsed David Miliband yesterday) declaring that he regretted the FOI Act.
YouGov’s daily tracker of the Coalition’s approval rating yesterday dove sharply to -4% (approve 38%, disapprove 42%).
Voting intentions were at: Con 43%, Lab 37%, LD 12%
It’s the first time that the Coalition’s negative rating has fallen beyond the 3% margin of error.
And yet not a single media outlet or right-winger is asking whether the Coalition has over-reached itself and is turning of independent voters. Bizarre, they seem to do that quickly for their political opposition.
Conservative voters have broadly remained loyal to the government’s ideological agenda.
It’s the Libdems who keep bleeding support. Which begs another question: at what point do they accept something needs to be done to rescue their own electoral position?
In case there weren’t enough social networks, Apple’s Ping is the network for music, not friends. From NY Times:
On Thursday morning, Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, showed off a new social network for music called Ping. It runs inside the newest version of Apple’s iTunes software. Ping also works on the latest software for iPhones and iPod Touches. (Apple hasn’t made it available for iPad this time around.)
Ping, Mr. Jobs said onstage at the announcement event in San Francisco, lets its users answer three burning questions: “What are my friends listening to? What are my favorite artists up to? What concerts are my friends going to?” And, he said, it resolves the driving need, “I’ve got to share this with my friends!” (It also answers the question: “Can I buy that song right now?”)
How does Ping work? Mr. Jobs describes it as “sort of like Facebook and Twitter meet iTunes. It’s a social network all about music.” Just as you may follow friends on Facebook, you can follow other Ping users. It may be the kid next door, or it may be Lady GaGa, who provided Jobs with a pre-recorded video clip for his stage show. Ping will let you know what music the people you follow are listening to, downloading, or just talking about.
Continues at NY Times …
The New York Times has published a long investigative piece into the News of the World and Andy Coulson’s phone-hacking scandal.
The scandal was first unearthed by the Guardian earlier this year.
Today the NYT has published an extensive 7 page story into the ‘Tabloid Hack Attack‘.
It mentions early on the reluctance of the police to take any action:
“There was simply no enthusiasm among Scotland Yard to go beyond the cases involving Mulcaire and Goodman,” said John Whittingdale, the chairman of a parliamentary committee that has twice investigated the phone hacking. “To start exposing widespread tawdry practices in that newsroom was a heavy stone that they didn’t want to try to lift.”
Several investigators said in interviews that Scotland Yard was reluctant to conduct a wider inquiry in part because of its close relationship with News of the World.
Then on page 3 of the report it states:
Sean Hoare, a former reporter and onetime close friend of Coulson’s, also recalled discussing hacking. The two men first worked together at The Sun, where, Hoare said, he played tape recordings of hacked messages for Coulson. At News of the World, Hoare said he continued to inform Coulson of his pursuits. Coulson “actively encouraged me to do it,” Hoare said.
Hoare said he was fired during a period when he was struggling with drugs and alcohol. He said he was now revealing his own use of the dark arts — which included breaking into the messages of celebrities like David and Victoria Beckham — because it was unfair for the paper to pin the blame solely on Goodman. Coulson declined to comment for this article but has maintained that he was unaware of the hacking.
The Guardian has already leapt on the story tonight as evidence that its original investigation was justified and needed to go further.
Divers investigating a 200 year-old shipwreck in the Baltic Sea found what is thought to be the world’s oldest champagne. And it’s sill drinkable! From New Tang Dynasty Television:
Last week one of the rarest and more horrifying weather phenomena occurred in Brazil: a “fire tornado.” Created by extreme drought conditions, the whirling tower of flames raged outside of the city of Aracatuba, scorching dry earth and bringing traffic to a halt, before disappearing.
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Hey, I guess if you’re one of the last of your kind, you must try to propagate the species by any means possible. Too bad that this zoologist’s head looks like one of this bird’s kind. From the BBC program Last Chance to See:
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine head to the ends of the earth in search of animals on the edge of extinction. In New Zealand the travellers make their way through one of the most dramatic landscapes in the world. They are on a journey to find the last remaining kakapo, a fat, flightless parrot which, when threatened with attack, adopts a strategy of standing very still indeed.
Is this the future in a world where we socialize online rather than in person? Daisuke Wakabayashi reports for the Wall Street Journal:
ATAMI, Japan—This resort town, once popular with honeymooners, is turning to a new breed of romance seekers—virtual sweethearts.
Since the marriage rate among Japan’s shrinking population is falling and with many of the country’s remaining lovebirds heading for Hawaii or Australia’s Gold Coast, Atami had to do something. It is trying to attract single men—and their handheld devices.
In the first month of the city’s promotional campaign launched July 10, more than 1,500 male fans of the Japanese dating-simulation game LovePlus+ have flocked to Atami for a romantic date with their videogame character girlfriends.
The men are real. The girls are cartoon characters on a screen. The trips are actual, can be expensive and aim to re-create the virtual weekend outing featured in the game, a product of Konami Corp. played on Nintendo Co.’s DS videogame system.
“Atami has always been a romantic place, but it is now a romantic place for a modern generation,” says Sakae Saito, Atami’s mayor.
Love Plus+ re-creates the experience of an adolescent romance. The goal isn’t just to get the girl but to maintain a relationship with her.
After choosing one of three female characters—goodie-goodie Manaka, sassy Rinko or big-sister type Nene—to be a steady girlfriend, the player taps a stylus on the DS touch-screen in order to walk hand-in-hand to school, exchange flirtatious text messages and even meet in the school courtyard for a little afternoon kiss. Using the device’s built-in microphone, the player can carry on sweet, albeit mundane, conversations…
[continues in the Wall Street Journal]
It’s certainly quite a sea change in media coverage of climate change issues in the UK! From the Daily Express:
The world’s leading climate change body has been accused of losing credibility after a damning report into its research practices.
A high-level inquiry into the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found there was “little evidence” for its claims about global warming.
It also said the panel had emphasised the negative impacts of climate change and made “substantive findings” based on little proof.
The review by the InterAcademy Council (IAC) was launched after the IPCC’s hugely embarrassing 2007 benchmark climate change report, which contained exaggerated and false claims that Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035.
The panel was forced to admit its key claim in support of global warming was lifted from a 1999 magazine article. The report was based on an interview with a little-known Indian scientist who has since said his views were “speculation” and not backed by research.
Independent climate scientist Peter Taylor said last night: “The IPCC’s credibility has been deeply dented and something has to be done. It can’t just be a matter of adjusting the practices. They have got to look at what are the consequences of having got it wrong in terms of what the public think is going on. Admitting that it needs to reform means something has gone wrong and they really do need to look at the science.”
Climate change sceptic David Holland, who challenged leading climate change scientists at the University of East Anglia to disclose their research, said: “The panel is definitely not fit for purpose. What the IAC has said is substantial changes need to be made.”
The IAC, which comprises the world’s top science academies including the UK’s Royal Society, made recommendations to the IPCC to “enhance its credibility and independence” after the Himalayan glaciers report, which severely damaged the reputation of climate science.
It condemned the panel – set up by the UN to ensure world leaders had the best scientific advice on climate change – for its “slow and inadequate response” after the damaging errors emerged.
Among the blunders in the 2007 report were claims that 55 per cent of the Netherlands was below sea level when the figure is 26 per cent.
It also claimed that water supplies for between 75 million and 250 million people in Africa will be at risk by 2020 due to climate change, but the real range is between 90 and 220 million.
The claim that glaciers would melt by 2035 was also rejected…
[continues in the Daily Express]
contribution by Bensix
As Tony Blair lines up against the ranks of hard-nosed critics, John Rentoul attempts to throw an early sucker punch…
What people believe is not that Blair lied, but that he was so desperate to keep in with the Americans that he exaggerated the threat from Saddam Hussein. That has the advantage of fitting with what was the conventional view, that the British interest is best served by a close alliance with the US, but overlooks the more obvious reason for assuming the worst of Saddam, namely his previous history of concealment.
Imagine that a bank’s been robbed in full view of CCTV.
Messrs Tom and Dick are witnessed threatening accountants before making off with sacks of loot. “Ah,” says one grizzled detective, “But this overlooks the fact that Mr Harry is more of a bank robber than Tom and Dick”. “Yes, perhaps,” you grant, “But there’s footage of them doing it”.
“Hrm,” he muses blithely, “I don’t think they’d rob the place in daylight”. “But the vide…” “Oh, and there’s no way they’d leave the vaults untouched. I think Harry is our man.” In this case you’d think the copper, reeling off a priori surmises even as the facts are broadcast right before him, was a dunce.
Here, it’s plain that Saddam’s threat was hugely overblown: the facts are there and handily accessible for all. Yet, somehow, as Rentoul casts aside the evidence and offers empty, flaccid guesswork, he adopts a pose of scepticism.
Rentoul feels that notions of malign intent or action in or by the government are “conspiracy theories” and for a depressing number these “conspiracy theories” are so foolish one can shed one’s objectivity and standards of analysis.
Well, such attitudes are wrong. And damned unimaginative.
Blasting off mountaintops to reach coal in Appalachia or churning out millions of tons of carbon dioxide to extract oil from sand in Alberta are among environmentalists’ biggest industrial irritants. But they are also legal and lucrative.
For a growing number of banks, however, that does not seem to matter.
After years of legal entanglements arising from environmental messes and increased scrutiny of banks that finance the dirtiest industries, several large commercial lenders are taking a stand on industry practices that they regard as risky to their reputations and bottom lines.
In the most recent example, the banking giant Wells Fargo noted last month what it called “considerable attention and controversy” surrounding mountaintop removal mining, and said that its involvement with companies engaged in it was “limited and declining.”
But the policy shift by Wells Fargo follows others over the last two years, including moves by Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citibank, to increase scrutiny of lending to companies involved in mountaintop removal — or to end the lending altogether.
HSBC, which is based in London, has curtailed its relationships with some producers of palm oil, which is often linked to deforestation in developing countries.
A growing number of people in the UK are also taking action against banking groups such as RBS over similar concerns.
If you’re in the Atlanta area over Labor Day weekend, come and meet Graham Hancock at Dragon*Con 2010 and Eyedrum Atlanta. If you can’t make it, Graham will be touring North America this fall in support of his new book Entangled: The Eater of Souls. More info is available at www.chronotrack.org and www.eyedrum.org.
Here’s the complete schedule of events, please RSVP on Facebook if you can make it. Hope to see you there!
EYEDRUM ATLANTA More info at www.eyedrum.org.
Date: Friday 9/3 Time: 8 PM
Graham Hancock, bestselling author of Fingerprints of the Gods and Supernatural, will be appearing at Eyedrum on Friday, September 3 in support of his new book, Entangled. Randall Carlson from Sacred Geometry Atlanta will be the opening speaker. Admission is $5.
If you can invite fifty over more people in Atlanta over Facebook to this event over Facebook your admission is free. Please contact programs [at] disinfo.com for more info..
FOUR DRAGON*CON 2010 EVENTS !!! Full schedule at www.DragonCon.org
Panel: Hollywood vs. History History doesn’t always translate well to the silver screen — or does it? Participants discuss films in a fast-paced, round-robin format. Panelists: K. Hinds, E. Flint, S. M. Stirling, A. J. Hartley, G. D. Falksen, G. Hancock Date/Time: Friday, 9/3 5:30 PM Location: International C – Westin
Panel: Far Be It From Me… A rousing debate on revisionist vs. ‘traditional’ history and the evolution of historical presentation.. Panelists: B. Linaweaver, E. Flint, S. M. Stirling, A. J. Hartley, G. Hancock Date/Time: Saturday, 9/4 4:00 PM Location: International C – Westin
Panel: 2012 Theories and myths surrounding 2012 from various cultures. Is there hope? Is it real? Are we doomed? Panelists: E. Donald, E. Dunin, M. B. Weston, G. Hancock, K. Brewer, G. Baddeley, R. Carlson Date/Time: Sunday, 9/5 4:00 PM Location: L508 – Marriott
Presentation: Aliens, Angels and Ayahuasca Graham Hancock will take you on a mind-trip through history showing evidence that alien encounters & UFO’s are nothing new… ? Location: International C – Westin
We will be listing more events here on disinfo.com and Facebook and look for Entangled: The Eater of Souls this fall in a book near you.
The first extracts of Tony Blair’s memoir “A Journey” have been published on the publisher’s website, and are the major story in Wednesday’s newspapers.
The Guardian has a print interview with Martin Kettle, which focuses on Blair’s comments about Gordon Brown, and how not being New Labour cost the party the 2010 election.
Blair writes in the book that “”Labour won when it was New Labour. It lost because it stopped being New Labour”.
“Had he pursued New Labour policy the personal issue would still have made victory tough, but it wouldn’t have been impossible. Departing from New Labour made it so. Just as the 2005 election was one we were never going to lose, 2010 was one we were never going to win — once the fateful strategic decision was taken to abandon the New Labour position.”
“The problem, I would say error, was in buying a package which combined deficit spending, heavy regulation, identifying banks as the malfeasants and jettisoning the reinvention of government in favour of the rehabilitation of government. The public understands the difference between the state being forced to intervene to stabilise the market and government back in fashion as a major actor in the economy.”
But can that argument be sustained? I think it is very difficult to stand up.
Firstly, this argument is much more plausible if it makes the difference between Blair and Brown one of personality – so that the critique is of Gordon Brown’s performance, his ability to communicate through the media. Yet Blair is clear he is not arguing this – he insists “that the argument is not about personalities”, as Kettle writes.
Yet, for all of the internal arguments between Blair and Brown, the story of New Labour from 1997-2007 was one of Blair-Brownism, which delivered rather more than the personal relationships might suggest, particularly in the first term. After a first, rather dysfunctional year of the Brown premiership, Brown chose to steadied the ship, essentially seeking to replicate the old winning formula, creating a new Brown-Mandelson axis which dominated the 2008-10 government and the strategy for Labour’s 2010 election bid.
Secondly, it is very difficult to find substantive evidence of a significant policy shift from New Labour under the Brown administration after 2007 – still less one which would be electorally crucial.
This was a large part of Gordon Brown’s problem. Having run on change, he failed to define it. The only broken New Labour mantras was the adoption of the 50p rate on earnings over £150,000, presented as a reluctant response to circumstances. I very much doubt this was a significant electoral problem for Labour: the 68% support for the policy was reflected in the Tories’ unwillingness to actively oppose it. (It was also one of the few comprehensible policies which Labour had in 2010).
The most significant broader policy development was the more interventionist approach to political economy, overseen by Peter Mandelson at the Business Department.
And Blair’s own comments are rather imprecise when it comes to the response to the financial crisis. My reading of “the public understands the difference” is that he supports the significant policy decisions – such as the bank bailout – yet worries about the “narrative” which went with them. It is not particularly clear how much of substance hangs on this. Moreover, Alastair Darling’s sober reluctance to engage in banker-bashing largely reflected similar instincts to those set out by Blair.
Blair’s “legacy” instinct before 2007 was mostly to worry about “the pace of public service reform”. The idea that Brown ditched this reflects media perceptions, not policy, where a lot of emphasis was placed on extending GP opening hours, for example, perhaps over-selling this as a flagship policy. The condition of public services matters a lot to voters, and the policy debate about how to improve them matters. To some extent, New Labour in its second term, over-emphasised the extent as to how far reforms like Foundation Hospital status were central to driving the quality of public services.
Thirdly, the 2010 campaign was New Labour to its fingertips
The Brown-Mandelson axis put together New Labour’s fourth term bid, with all of Blair’s old allies reunited for a final push. Brown’s was a continuity premiership in large part because Brown was schooled in and had been central to shaping New Labour’s winning electoral formula. Whatever he might have imagined he would do while waiting to succeed between 2003 and 2007, he proved unable to find a viable alternative. Like Blair, Brown’s politics turned out to be shaped primarily by the experience of the 1992 election defeat. (Brown largely rejected advice – from people like me, arguing that New Labour, having begun to shift the Tories at last, would not maintain its own electoral coalition if it relied almost exclusively on a “keep the Tories out” argument).
I spoke to Patrick Diamond, who worked for Blair and Brown in Downing Street, when writing about the election debate. Diamond says “we very quickly reverted to a New Labour formula”. Despite an awareness that Labour had to contest the argument on “change versus change”, the argument became about the risk of the Tories.
Others who worked in number ten and on the campaign talk about how the most significant arguments over the manifesto often reflected not only policy debates, but also New Labour instincts. Peter Mandelson’s support for Heathrow’s third runway, and resistance to extending maternity and paternity leave was not only about Business Department policy. It was rooted in the electoral rules of the New Labour playbook: being on the wrong side of business, whatever the cause, would repel crucial swing voters, not just the CBI. (Mandelson prevailed in most of these policy arguments, though they were significant in shaping Ed Miliband’s belief that New Labour was too wedded to outdated mantras because, on these issues, as on ID cards, the centre-ground was no longer where New Labour imagined it to be).
Finally, Blair risks being too complacent in suggesting that New Labour ran into trouble only after 2007. It means he ends, perhaps inevitably having been at the helm for a decade, as rather more of a “consolidator” than a moderniser.
Blair’s comments again reflect, as I set out for the New Statesman, how the current 2010 inquest divides most sharply over what the 2005 election meant – whether this should be seen as simply the third triumph, or an important warning of just how much Labour’s electoral coalition had fractured.
The party won brilliantly in building a broad nationwide appeal in 1997. It was a major achievement to repeat the landslide in 2001, if on much reduced turnout, and against weak opposition. But New Labour was in quite a lot of trouble by the time it was returned with a solid majority in 2005 – but with 35% of the vote, just 3% ahead of an opposition led by Michael Howard. Those who conducted focus groups for the party talk about how Labour retained (somewhat grudging) respect for its strong economic record, but how the unelectability of Michael Howard was an absolutely Godsend when it came
Tony Blair had enormous success as Labour’s most successful election leader. Four of the five million voters who left Labour between 1997 and 2010 did so by 2005. Labour’s strategy for winning elections can not be to hope that Norman Lamont can be drafted into a Michael Howard role as a future Tory leader.
On issues like immigration, crime and welfare, which were difficult for Labour in the election, it is difficult to show that Labour’s arguments in 2010 were particularly different than in 2005. The tightening of immigration policy, through the points system, replicated the desire to close down immigration and asylum as issues in 2005.
This evening, President Obama will announce the end of the combat mission in Iraq as well as the reduction of the number of troops in Middle East during a primetime news conference. Hulu will begin streaming live coverage of the news conference tonight at 8:00 p.m. EST.
The live stream will run approximately 60 minutes, ending at approximately 9:00 p.m. EST.
The recent rally led by Glenn Beck brought together an interesting assortment of characters. The New Left Media recorded various interviews with some of the attendees. More interesting than the claims they make, most had wrong or speculated information, yet not a single person cited a source from where their information was coming from. Of course except the one women who receives her immigration “facts” from her sister.
Like so many household supplies, cough suppressants have found their way into the drug culture. The FDA is now looking into how to restrict the access to dextromethorphan, the “euphoric” ingredient, especially to the targeted “robotripping” group of adolescents. LA Times reports:
Federal health regulators are weighing restrictions on Robitussin, NyQuil and other cough suppressants to curb cases of abuse that send thousands of people to the hospital each year.
The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday posted its review of dextromethorphan, an ingredient found in more than 100 over-the-counter medications that is sometimes abused for its euphoric effects. The practice, dubbed “robotripping,” involves taking more than 25 times the recommended dose of a cold medicine and is mainly associated with teenagers.
At high doses the drug causes increased blood pressure, heart rate and fever. Abusers can also suffer side effects from other ingredients mixed in cough medicines, such as acetaminophen, which can cause liver damage.
“Because of the drug’s perceived safety, ease of availability, and desired psychoactive effects, it is sought after by those seeking to alter their mental state,” states the FDA review.According to the FDA, inappropriate use of the ingredient was linked to nearly 8,000 emergency room visits in 2008. That was up more than 70 percent from reports in 2004.
Continues at LA Times …
TIME reports on a findings that contradict what we’ve been taught our entire lives regarding the perils of alcoholism: it turns out that people who are heavy drinkers live longer than people who have always been nondrinkers. (And that’s after controlling for nearly all the variables one could think up.) Do teetotalers die early because they miss out on the release from stress that alcohol provides so well?
a new paper in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research suggests that — for reasons that aren’t entirely clear — abstaining from alcohol does actually tend to increase one’s risk of dying even when you exclude former drinkers. The most shocking part? Abstainers’ mortality rates are higher than those of heavy drinkers.
Even after controlling for nearly all imaginable variables — socioeconomic status, level of physical activity, number of close friends, quality of social support and so on — the researchers (a six-member team led by psychologist Charles Holahan of the University of Texas at Austin) found that over a 20-year period, mortality rates were highest for those who had never been drinkers, second-highest for heavy drinkers and lowest for moderate drinkers.