Quick response to my post coming under the knife…

Dave of Though Cowards Flinch disagrees with my thoughts on Sikh knives being allowed in schools.

I appreciate the need to try to respect pluralism and to accommodate the individual beliefs and cultural attachments of pupils. As a vegetarian I appreciated not being forced to eat meat at lunchtime and having the veggie option available. I’m aware that my dietary choice was ‘eccentric’ when compared to the majority and that I personally benefited from a certain flexibility in school rules and administration. 

I’m not sure, however, that I’m comfortable with Dave’s line that everyone should be allowed to wear their own symbols as long as they don’t harm others. Would swastikas be tolerated in Dave’s classroom? [EH-ERRR. Yes I know, the sound of Godwin's law being broken!] On the face of it, a swastika is less harmful and intimidating than a knife.

Also: I don’t really see why Dave has come up with this:

“Thinking secularists would surely defend the right of anyone to do anything, provided that it was unlikely to result in harm or the coercion of any individual.”

That seems more like a summary of liberalism or libertarianism to me than secularism. Dave then gets in a huff about my concern that religions are being granted exceptional status in the law and seems to suggest that this shouldn’t be relevant to secularists. He writes:

“…You could exclude non-Sikhs from wearing the kirpan on the same basis as excluding someone who claimed a shotgun was part of their worldview; blatant opportunism, rather than serious conviction.”

It is an odd sort of secularism that gives religious affiliation a priviliged position; when religious people are allowed to engage in behaviour clearly outside mainstream norms simply because they are religious. 

As I say, I understand that Dave as a teacher presumably presiding over a classroom of diverse individuals wants to maintain some sort of happy compromise, but I can’t see how Dave the secularist can be satisfield with rewarding those with ”serious conviction” with behavioural exemptions.

Sunny over at Pickled Politics also disagrees with me, thinks schools should be allowed to let Sikh kids carry kirpans if they want to, and has a bit of a go at nasty militant atheists for being rude about religion.

Sunny posits leftie atheists criticising religion damage the left. I accept that sometimes this can happen. I myself try not to be too crude. Even when I do, I think I manage to get along fine with my religious friends and comrades. I would perhaps suggest to Sunny that endorsing a form of multiculturalism that grants all sorts of benefits and priviliges to those who shout loudest about their cultural identity and distracts from materialist interests has been more damaging to the left - but that’s a blog post for another day. 

Some of Sunny’s readers think it is bigoted and intolerant to describe the religious obligation to carry a knife around with you as “eccentric”. Such ridiculously sensitive souls.  

I like this article by Hardeep Singh Kohli in the Guardian. Well, not all of it, but this makes sense to me:

“Sir Mota believes that it is wrong to stop schoolkids wearing the secreted, ceremonial dagger into school and believe that it is an infringement of a child’s right to practise their religion. Let me repeat that: he thinks it’s OK for kids to take knives to class. Flippant though this may sound, while going to school in Barnet may be challenging, it’s not the Punjab in 1708. Sir Mota notes that there has been no case of any Sikh child using the kirpan in a violent way. But I’m simply not comfortable with knives being allowed into school. What if the kirpan were forcibly removed and used? The practicality of baptised Sikhs carrying kirpans is not a new issue. That is why small, symbolic kirpans are attached to combs that Sikhs keep in their hair. Similarly, small kirpan-shaped pendants are worn around the neck, again fulfilling the criterion of the faith that the dagger be ever-present…

…We must do all we can to protect the rights of people to enjoy the way of life they choose. But there are more important battles to fight with regard to religious intolerance than whether Sikh kids can wear kirpans to school. Perhaps I’m being too literal, but all religions could do with taking a step back from symbols and icons and explore a little more deeply the philosophical content of what their belief system hopes to offer the world.”

Embarassed by Austin Mitchell.

Well, that was another entertaining and insightful episode of ‘Tower Block of Commons’. I would be quite happy to see a law passed requiring all MPs to participate in similar schemes (living for a week with some of the most deprived people in the country for those who don’t watch as much telly as I do) before being allowed to take their seats in the Commons.

This week Nadine Dorries appeared as the replacement for IDS. Funny how Ms Dorries’ started to regain her ‘ooo I’m joost a working class lass froom Liverpoool’ accent almost as soon as she met her hosts. Keeping £50 notes in her bra was a dirty form of cheating. Tch tch. If you can’t survive on these benefits then why should you expect other people to?

But once again the politician who came across the worst, IMO, was the Labourite Austin Mitchell. He had no idea about the price of everyday items like milk and bread. Worse; he thought it wasn’t important for politicians to keep themselves informed of things like this. Plus he made numerous chauvinistic remarks throughout the programme. Not clever, not funny.

So disappointing. Maybe time for another Labour MP to bow out at the next election? His wife was also very irritating with her talk of taking one of the council estates residents around “London’s top dinner parties”. CRINGE!

Next week looks even more exciting with Nadine Dorries dressing up in a hijab, Tim Loughton recording a rap, and Mark Oaten witnessing a police raid. Excellent stuff!

Thank Waheguru, Onkar, Rama and Purushah that this bloke is retired.

Sikh judge Sir Mota Singh criticises banning of Kirpan.

Please note Sir Mota saying: “The fact that I’m a Sikh matters more to me than anything else”.

Insisting that Sikhs should have the right to walk around with their ceremonial daggers – even in schools – certainly suggests the man is possessed by a religious arrogance of such massive proportions that there isn’t room for any other considerations.

Pity the BBC Asian Network didn’t bother finding an opposing point of view. I’m sure there’s a sensible Sikh out there willing to say that some of the more eccentric teachings of their faith should not be given privilege over the law of the land (and of course basic common sense).

Failing this, a secularist organisation would have been happy to point out that allowing children to take knives to school is ridiculous.

Less than 3 months to go.

This weekend I attended some Labour campaign training. The best bit about it was hearing a comrade who works in the party’s Election Strategy Unit link our local efforts to the bigger picture.

Apparently the last few months have seen a sudden increase in the number of people not only joining the party but also going out knocking on doors for Labour up and down the country. This fella then highlighted all the quantitative evidence demonstrating that people are much more likely to vote for the party whose activists make face-to-face contact with them in the months before an election.

This is especially true amongst working-class voters, and Mr Election Strategy did not hesitate in saying that a lot of the party’s energy is going to have to be focused on motivating these people and making sure they get to the polls on May 6th.

He sounded very confident in declaring that the Conservatives are not going to break above 40%; that voter turnout is going to increase in this election; that Lord Ashcroft’s money isn’t a substitute for having enthused and committed activists going out canvassing; and that setting clear dividing lines between Labour and the Tory policy will rally more people to the red flag, so to speak (not his words but my interpretation!).

It all sounded very determined and it made me think that even if the prospects of Labour victory still seem very remote at least the party can put up a good fight and minimise any Tory majority in the Commons - if they’re lucky enough to get one at all!

However, I’m still concerned that:

a) This Election Strategy bloke working at Labour HQ had to admit that it was only an assumption that the general election would be held on May 6th. The Prime Minister could still make the slightly *CRAZY* decision to hold it on another date. Gordon’s decision-making has not always been great.

b) It seems that whilst election strategists working for Labour may recognise the importance of having some clear red water between us and the Tories, certain members of the Cabinet do not do a very good job of emphasising great distinctions between the parties. I’m thinking of people who are apparently horrified by the mooted ’Labour investment versus Tory cuts’ strategy. Policy fudges and surrendering too much ground to the Tories on deficit reduction will make it difficult to present a clear message to our supporters.

Odd choice of talking head.

Revolutionary agitator and football analyst?

I’m not sure if I hallucinated it. I was watching a report on BBC London news about John Terry no longer being England Captain when a beardy bloke called John Rees was suddenly asked to comment on the matter.

John Rees is, of course, one of the foremost Trotskyists in the country. He’s a former Socialist Workers Party bigwig and parliamentary candidate for the Respect coalition. One solution = Revolution and similar nonsense.

Apparently, however, he is a ’social commentator’ and therefore a legitimate choice of person for the reporter to interview. I don’t have a problem with far-left weirdos being allowed on the telly, but I was surprised that anyone would consider Rees to be an authority on football. Perhaps the reporter was very, very desperate to find someone to talk to?

I can’t seem to find any reference to the report on the BBC website which is just making me more concerned that the entire thing is a construct of my hyperactive imagination.

Tale of two benefits cheats.

Without wishing to take all my blogging inspiration from last night’s TV show, I have been thinking more about Tower Block of Commons and specifically the bit when Tim Loughton was being harranged outside a cornershop in Birmingham.

The harranger was expressing to the Tory Shadow Minister his disgust with MPs and their expenses fiddling. He was of the view that politicians were on a different, more privileged legal level and could get away with things that most people couldn’t.

Tim Loughton tried to insist that this was false; that everyone is equal under the law etc. Of course this is true in principle but in practice…?

MPs recently agreed to withhold Harry Cohen’s resettlement grant when he retires after the Labour MP was exposed as yet another expenses cheat. Mr Cohen failed to notice he had accumulated £60,000 of public funds to which he was not entitled. Whilst acknowledging that this was a serious breach of the rules, MPs noted that Cohen had apologised and that his wife’s illness may have been a mitigating factor.

Then there is another benefits-fraud scandal that has been discussed in the Commons. Natascha Engel yesterday brought attention to the plight of one Zoey Smith:

Natascha Engel (North-East Derbyshire) (Lab):

My hon. Friend the Minister is aware of the case of Zoey Smith, who, when she was pregnant, worked as a volunteer in a welfare rights office. She wrongly had her benefits stopped, and as a result gave birth two months prematurely. She could not cope, and she has disappeared off the face of the earth. The child has gone into care and the whole sorry story has been a disaster from beginning to end. Does my hon. Friend agree that the benefits regime for pregnant women is incompatible with meeting our child poverty targets?

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Helen Goodman):

I am aware of the unhappy experience of my hon. Friend’s constituent, which in essence came down to poor administration in her local benefit office.

The only other mention I can find of the case is in the newsletter of Derbyshire Unemployed Workers’ Centres.

Zoey Smith’s life appears to have been utterly devastated because she was mistakenly thought to be a benefits cheat. MPs like Harry Cohen – as humiliated as they will be and as difficult as it may be for them to find post-parliamentary employment – will probably not suffer so much. Simple juxtapositions like this make it easy to see why people are turned off politics and have so much contempt for their democratic representatives.

Tower Block of Commons.

 

Very watchable. I thought it was slightly unfair for Channel 4 to suggest that all MPs are equally out-of-touch about life on Britain’s housing estates, but the featured MPs did indeed come across as fairly clueless.

I was disappointed with the Labour representative, Austin Mitchell. He was the only participant who cheated by insisting that he stay in accommodation with his wife instead of living for 8 days with a real-life council house resident. They were supposed to be shadowing the lifestyle of a recovering heroin addict, but this seems to have not really been to the Mitchells’ tastes. Mrs Mitchell brought a laptop to amuse them in the flat and they travelled out  of the estate to attend a dinner party at a friend’s house.

Couldn’t Channel 4 have found a Labour MP who was willing to take the experience more seriously? Oh well, perhaps Mitchell will get more in the spirit of things in next week’s episode.

Respect to Lib Dem Mark Oaten for persevering in the face of adversity. Having groups of hoodies recognise you as the MP exposed by the News of the World for your dabbling with rentboys can’t be nice. Also: Tory Tim Loughton did well on the Birmingham dance floor.

Nadine Dorries is supposed to be featuring next week. Can’t wait.

Mixture of friends.

The contrast between the types of things different Facebook ‘friends” include in their status updates is often amusing.

Friend A is just back from a 4 hour canvassing session with Emily Thornberry MP.

Friend B Anyone in Preston GOt green?!?! Lemme know

Playing the ‘International Bastards League’ game.

Dave Osler has devised a new political parlour game.

IMAGINE a scale that runs from one to ten and measures every independent polity in the world in terms of niceness and nastiness.

At one we have Sweden and Norway, because they are permanently cuddly and welfare statey and social democratic, even when the centre-right gets in.

Singapore occupies the half way point with a score of five, because it is authoritarian while desperately trying to pretend to be a semi-democracy. Trade unionism isn’t exactly encouraged, for instance. But trade union activists are not routinely executed, either.

At ten I have placed Saudi Arabia and Burma, both utterly execrable totalitarian regimes with manifold sins that need no reiteration here.

This scale is not designed as a yardstick of democracy as such, but rather an indefinable property that might be described as a ‘bastardness quotient’. You must know what I mean.

The game is this: commenters are invited to place Cuba, Iran, Israel, Britain and the US at points of their choosing along this continuum, giving reasons for doing so.

Dave’s blog attracts a lot of leftier-than-thou leftists who – apparently seriously – give Cuba scores of ‘1′ , Israel scores of ‘9′, etc. Of course, it’s all fun and games, and everyone is interpreting ‘bastardness’ in different ways,  but it’s surprising to see so much socialist adoration of the Cuban monarchy.

It’s also ironic that revolutionary ultra-leftists have a much easier time in democratic, multi-party Israel than dictatorial, single-party Cuba where the Castro regime has periodically locked up or expelled its critics on the left.  

Anyway, here is my contribution:

• Cuba – 7 – Oppressive, censoring, one-party state must be a real pain. Combine that with a rubbish economy and no wonder everyone wants to leave the country. On the plus side, the weather is better than over here and the dictatorial government isn’t quite as bad as it could be (North Korea, I’m looking at you)
• Iran – 7 – There seems to be more potential for positive political change in Iran at the moment, which stands in its favour, but all the religion truly does my head in. The fact that the country is still presided over by a Holocaust-denying loon does not bode well.
• Israel – 5 – I’d love to visit Israel one day. When it comes to democracy and human rights, Israel is the best thing going in the region. But at the same time, there are many obnoxious defenders of the illegal settlements. Plus more religious mumbo jumbo.
• The US – 3 – Negatives = Anti-communist hysteria in 20th century leading to unhealthy domestic politics and overzealous intervention across the world; love of free-market capitalism; gross social inequalities. Positives = Has maintained system of elected government for hundreds of years; crucial role played in defeating fascism during WW2; gave us The Simpsons, the West Wing, Bob Dylan, and all that other great stuff. If there has to be a single power acting as global policeman I’d still take the US over, say, China anyday.
• The UK – 2 – Cos I’m patriotic, innit.

Thoughts?

Tory inconsistency.

Yesterday a topical debate took place in the House of Commons to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.

MPs from all parties were – quite rightly – speaking of the importance of remembering the Holocaust and other acts of genocide and of never being complacent about the possibility of such events taking place again.

Tory MP Bob Neill, a Shadow Minister, talked about his visit to Auschwitz. He said that he returned from the visit (organised by the Holocaust Educational Trust) on the same day that Nick Griffin, the filthy fash leader of the BNP, was appearing on the ‘Question Time’ panel.

Neill thought this ”particularly obscene juxtaposition” demonstrated how vital it was to be vigilant against Nazi-like extremists who want to spread racial hatred and undermine our democratic, tolerant society.

Labour MP David Winnick then asked:

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that although immigration is a perfectly legitimate subject for debate-no one is suggesting otherwise, certainly not myself-there should be particular care in the coming general election about how the debate is conducted? It must be very far from the BNP. If we are talking about discrimination and the persecution of Jews, we must bear in mind that as we saw in Stoke last Saturday, there are also other groups in this country who are subject to racist thugs who will use any sort of lie against the Muslim community.

To which Bob Neill sensibly replied:

The hon. Gentleman is right. That is why it is important first that the mainstream democratic parties are not afraid to address these issues, but also that we set a lead in the tone and responsibility with which we do so. That is hugely important.

So that’s all well and good. Mainstream politicians recognise the dangers of irresponsible, rabble-rousing politicking and therefore promise to avoid doing anything that could encourage things like racism and persecution of minority groups. We’re all agreed on that then.

Except that only a few hours later Tory MP David Davies was getting pretty high scores on the irresponsibility-metre.

Davies speculated as to whether one individual rapist could have acted in the appalling way that he did because of his immigrant culture and the backward views towards women held amongst his community.

Idiot. Whilst it would be nice to see David Davies devote more time to improving women’s rights, there could hardly be a more perfect example of a mainstream democratic politician setting a low tone and using irresponsible arguments. BNPers would have surely nodded their heads enthusiastically upon hearing Davies’ thoughts on the matter.

Next time a white taxi driver gets banged up for similarly horrible crimes will Davies go on radio and start discussing the problem with the white taxi driver culture that leads them to commit rape?

Somehow I can’t imagine that happening. All this Tory inconsistency is truly nauseating.