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Archive for November, 2007
Hot Issue of the Week: Labour’s Donation Scandal
Money, Money, Money…
This week’s hot issue has been Labour’s problems with donations received through third parties, which has dominated the headlines quite substantially. The problem is that David Abrahams has donated more than £600,000 to the party under other people’s names. This is illegal, and Gordon Brown has acknowledged, and announced that the money will be returned. This has already cost Peter Watt, the Labour general secretary, his job, and may cost Jon Mendelsohn, Brown’s chief fundraiser and general election director, his job as well.
But the problems go deeper. Harriet Harman, the deputy leader, party chairman, and Leader of the House of Commons, accepted £5,000 from Abrahams through one of his third-party donors, although she claims that she and her campaign team “acted at all times within both the letter and the spirit of the law.”
What has now happened is that the Electoral Commission has called in the police. This is yet another scandal for Labour at the moment, allowed the “sleaze” tag to be attached to them, and for Brown’s leadership to be viciously attacked by David Cameron and compared to Mr Bean by Vince Cable at PMQs.
And it continues even this morning with Harriet Harman effectively telling Gordon Brown “if I’m going down, I’m taking you with me”. Since this story seems to be continuing apace, at this rate it may even be next weeks Hot Issue as well!
What’s been said?
There has been a hell of a lot of comment in the blogosphere on this topic over the last week. Unfortunately I haven’t had time to keep or create a list of these posts… So if you want to read them – and there are some great ones out there – I suggest you go searching! If you have written any good posts on the issue, feel free to mention them in the comments!
Analysis
This has been yet another bad week for Labour and Gordon Brown. This is yet another nail in the coffin of Gordon Brown’s leadership, and allows the difficult-to-shift labels of “sleaze” and “scandal” to be attached to the entire party. Especially following on so soon after cash-for-honours, it certainly doesn’t help the general view of political parties and donations to them.
In a way, you can’t help but feel sorry for Gordon Brown over this issue. After all, its certainly not all his fault, and since his leadership campaign turned down a donation from one of Abrahams intermediaries, he can’t be attacked for personally having taken crooked donations [unlike his deputy]. However as he is the leader, it is in the end his responsibility to deal with.
Since the police have been called in, it looks very bad for Labour. This, especially right on the heels of their other problems and that the polls are consistently really quite bad for them, really doesn’t make Brown’s Labour government look very good at all.
Article Series - Hot Issue
- Hot Issue of the Week: Labour’s Donation Scandal
Sensible proposals on Party Funding Reform from Polly
In the Polly column today, a couple of sensible ideas:
Go hell-for-leather for a fair party funding bill. Let no one donate more than £1,000 or so a year. Let the state put in around £30m more - peanuts for getting dangerous donors out of politics. Use Unlock Democracy’s proposal for matched funding, forcing parties to seek new members. Trade unions will have to mail their members aicnnually to confirm individually that they wish to stay Labour party members: a small price to pay for rescuing politics. Britain is virtually the last country in the west not to clean up funding. It won’t stop all scandals, but it will purge the worst.
That’s only the start. Parties are dying on their feet, contempt for politics is alarming and only radical change will jump-start its motors. When the Lords reform white paper appears in January, dash to implement a 100% elected small second chamber. At the same time, go for a referendum on proportional representation right now, so the next election doesn’t turn on just 8,000 indifferent votes, but makes every vote count. If necessary go for a simple multimember model, where in a matter of weeks constituencies can be bunched together, no MPs lose their seats and defy the Tories to oppose a fairer system. It would be a hard battle, but at least Labour would lead something worth fighting for.
If we leave out the government funding of politics (the Parties need an incentive to engage with the public), and the “dash for reform” of the Lords, which would give us another New Labour constitutional dog’s breakfast, there’s some potential here.
It needs to pick up the idea of enfranchising non-Labour supporting Trade Unionists to support their own parties through their Union, but it would be a couple of steps in the right direction.
Even Timmy the Expat is a bit quieter than usual on Polly today.
[tags]polly tynbee, labour crisis, party funding[/tags]
Ding, Dong, Bell …
A Jesus and Mo cartoon I came across, while looking for ones for next week.
Tags: cartoon, jesus and mo, politics uk, humour in islam
[tags]cartoon, jesus and mo, politics uk, humour in islam[/tags]
Rowan William’s Interview: The 98% that wasn’t about the USA
David Keen is a new guest poster on the Wardman Wire. He will initially be writing a weekend column in the Advent run up to Christmas, and occasional pieces such as this one. He blogs at St Aidan to Abbey Manor.
The Archbishop of Canterbury’s interview with a Muslim magazine (note: link to pdf file) put me in mind of Paul standing before the Athenian council in the book of Acts, preaching the message he had always preached, but using completely different vocabulary to his normal Jewish audiences, because the Athenians had different cultural reference points.
Williams tries to use neutral language, rather than Christian house vocabulary, to communicate with his audience.
There is a lot of fascinating stuff in the interview, for example:
Beyond the tensions of international disputes, we discuss the more fundamental conflict between religion and modernity.“There is an essential clash somewhere. It is to do with the functional view of human beings. What are humans for? The Muslim, the Christian, the Hindu, the Sikh, would say that we are for the glory of God; so that God’s light may be reflected and God’s love diffused. It is never just about how we fit into the cogs of society, or about economic production. The more our education system is dominated by functionalism, skills, productivity, and the more our whole society is determined by that kind of mythology, the harder it is for the religious voice to be heard. There is a real abrasion between lots of the forms of modernity and religion.”
This is a crucial insight to hold onto - since the Industrial Revolution, the economic point of view has increasingly held sway over any other in terms of our understanding of people:
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The UK education system is explicitly geared to creating a well trained workforce for the economy.
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Immigration policy is organised around economics, so is international policy.
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We are defined as ‘consumers’ - there was that symbolic tipping point many years ago when British Rail changed from speaking of ‘passengers’ to speaking of ‘customers’.
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There was a lot of annoyance at the time - we just don’t like being defined economically, but over the years we’ve got used to it.
Search Result of the Day: Sion Simon MP and Dill the Dog.
Sometimes life delivers blogger strawberries on my morning cornflakes without my having to ask.
One this week was to discover that my “triple trouble” post from way back in April comparing Sion Simon MP to Jonathon Ross and Dill the Dog from The Herbs is now number 12 in the search results on Google for “Sion Simon“.
Heh. It makes it worthwhile, and shows the value of simple longevity and regular posting.
It’s also on the front page for Google UK for the same search, at number 9.
Here’s a (long) snippet. I’ve missed out the photo of Sion Simon MP in Recess Monkey’s evening dress.
Dead Ringers
It was a toss-up between Jonathon Ross and Dill the Dog as a ringer for Sion Simon MP. I couldn’t decide. In the first row he is being serious.
While in this row Mr Simon is being a fool on television.
I’m not going to be forgiven for this by the Liberal Democrats, but Sion Simon’s television demeanour and wavey hairstyle do rather remind me of Ed Davey when he was in his early teens. Ed Davey, though, is now a serious politician.
Dill’s Song
Dill has a famous song (below), which catches something of the way Sion rushes around appearing on televison.
I’m Dill the Dog,
I’m a Dog called Dill,
though my tail I’d love to get,
I’ve never caught it yet.
Sion, of course, has his famous video. Here it is for those who must play it again.
Dill Picture and Song Credits: Dave the Wave .
Tags: Lookalike, Humour, Humourous, Double Trouble, Lookalike, Sion Simon MP, Dill the Dog, The Herbs, Friendly Lion Called Parsley, Michael Bond, Humour, Start the Day, Triple Trouble Jonathon Ross, Jonathan Ross
[tags]Lookalike, Humour, Humourous, Double Trouble, Lookalike, Sion Simon MP, Dill the Dog, The Herbs, Friendly Lion Called Parsley, Michael Bond, Humour, Start the Day[/tags]
Technical Bug : Announcement
You may have noticed that some “column images” (e.g., of Garbo) have moved to the centre rather than aligning right.
This is a symptom of the recent design tweaks - which I’ll sort out in due course.
No need for you to worry.
Prayer Bear Bunch: Muslim support for criticism of Sudan Government
As a follow-up to my article emphasizing that Muslims are as solidly against the actions taken by the Khartoum Government as the rest of us, let me quote from an article by Osama Saeed - who has a prayer bear called Adam. I don’t know my Islam well enough to determine his rank, but Adam is a pretty important prophet in Islam - the first in the Quranic List.
Osama also makes the charge against the Sudanese Government about Darfur that I can best summarise using a Gospel quote
“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?”
I’m quoting this post in it’s entirety, and I hope Osama doesn’t mind:
Meet Adam the Prayer Bear. He happens to share the name of a Prophet. This toy is owned by hundreds of Muslims up and down the country. If this is a crime, then there are a lot of Muslims guilty of it.
He’s called a ‘prayer bear’ because he recites various lines when any of his limbs are pressed. As I was putting him away after taking his photo, I accidentally pressed down on one of his paws. He said “In the name of Allah, the most Merciful, the most Kind”. Appropriate.
Crime must be low in Sudan. In this country traffic police get a hard time for ignoring “real crimes” like muggings and rapes. Except we do know that a certain place called Darfur in Sudan has seen thousands upon thousands of murders, rapes and incidents of torture over the last few years.
There has been no justice for the victims, but the Sudanese justice system apparently has time to worry about the names of teddy bears. Many of these war criminals may even be called Muhammad. There are enough ignoble people we know sharing the name of the Prophet, peace be upon him e.g. Mssrs Siddique Khan and Atta.
Muslims in this country don’t have a problem standing with Gillian Gibbons on these ridiculous charges. Predictably though, sections of the media have been quick to exploit their own agendas. Right-thinking people can easily see though that this is the usual case of Liberalism vs Authoritarianism, and clearly everyone in this country is on the side of the former in this case. It’s not another chance to pit Muslim vs non-Muslim.
Osama is right on the button in my opinion.
What we now need is to make sure that no one is using this case to stick labels on any other Muslims. There are occasions when a vigorous critique of Islam is called for - this is not one of them. We need rather to critique the fools responsible for pursuing this case. It’s a pity this needs to be said, and the story to be written - but it does.
I can’t help wondering how the Sudanese Authorities would have reacted if the “blasphemous” bear called Muhammed had started reciting the Shahadah when taken into custody by the Government’s finest. I can see them reacting as did Mr Curry to Paddington. Perhaps the bear would have got the lashes. (*)
For completeness, these are the Arabic versions of Adam’s phrases. Not being an Arabic speaker, I only recognise about half of those:
01 Allah-o-Akbar
02 La-illaha ilallah Mohammad ar rasulullah
03 Asalam-o-alaikumwa rahmatullah
04 Al-humdullilah
05 Bismillah ar Rahman nirahim
06 Subhanallah
(*) I know it is serious, but they Sudan Govt does deserve to be lampooned in this case.
Tags: osama saeed, islam, gillian gibbons, sudanese government, sudan, muslims
[tags]osama saeed, islam, gillian gibbons, sudanese government, sudan, muslims[/tags]
