Gay Rights In Danger Under Tories

 Politics  No Responses »
Apr 042010
 

Actually make that everyone’s rights is at risk under the Tories – once you start accepting that one segment of the population has less rights than others, it is a slippery slope to everyone losing their rights.

Apparently the Tory shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling has declared that bed and breakfast owners should be allowed to refuse entry to gay couples for being gay. However he does not feel that hotels should be allowed to do likewise ? I believe his argument is that bed and breakfasts are more “private” than hotels in that the owner frequently shares the accommodation with the guests, and so the personal beliefs of the owners should be taken into consideration.

Rancid rhino dung. If you run a bed and breakfast, you have effectively accepted that your home is no longer a private domain, and that you have to accept that society has certain standards and beliefs that you have to abide by.

But what amazes me is that a shadow minister is foolish enough to say such things. It would not take a genius to realise that such remarks would be pounced upon as evidence that the Tories have not changed that much since they introduced Section 28 back in the 1980s. Personally I do not believe that the important Tories are that backwards, although I dare say a few relics can be found lurking at the back of the Tory cupboard.

What is more worrying is that someone who may be part of a future government could be stupid enough to say such things – whether in public or private.

Prevent – Unfairly Targetting Muslims?

 Politics  1 Response »
Mar 302010
 

The UK government’s Prevent scheme has been accused of unfairly targeting the UK’s Muslim community. Except for the “unfair” bit, it is fair to say it does exactly that – and that is what it was setup to do. Specifically to counteract those on the fringes of the Muslim community who target young Muslims and attempt to “radicalise” them in the hopes that they can be recruited into terrorism.

Young people tend to be passionate about what they care about, and that includes politics. They often want to see change at a faster rate than is realistic, which makes them vulnerable to extremists who want to use violence to achieve their ends. Imagine if an initiative such as Prevent were underway at the beginnings of the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland  in the 1960s – would the terrorism have lasted as long as it did ? Well we obviously don’t know, but it is a shame that it wasn’t tried.

The fact is that young Muslims are more likely to end up as terrorists than any other particular group of young people. Radical Christians might end up bellowing out that we all sinners, but that is just irritating and bad manners. Young hedonists may end up making a mess on the pavement at peculiar times of the night; whilst we might disapprove, it hardly compares to a suicide load of explosives.

Now of course most young Muslims are not going to wind up blowing themselves and lots of innocent people up; they are not even going to take a trip to the kind of summer camp where you learn how an AK47 works. But some are at risk of becoming radicalised and becoming terrorists.

If we can target those who are at greater risk of becoming radicalised and somehow persuade them that it is a bad idea, we can both protect ourselves and those young people. Those who say this is unfairly targeting the Muslim community are ignoring the fact that this benefits the Muslim community as much as it benefits the rest of us.

Perhaps they should ask the parents of those young people who have been killed whether persuading their sons and daughters to take another path is unfair.

UK Election: Let’s Get This Farce Over With!

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Mar 282010
 

One of the tedious things about the UK election system is that we do not know when the election is coming, so before the date of the election is known we have a kind of “phoney election” where the politicians all go head to head being even more critical with each other than they usually are. And of course generating even more hot air than usual.

And then the election gets announced and all the tediousness goes into overdrive.

What for ?

Because of the election system in the UK, there are only a handful of seats (the “marginals”) where the result makes a bit of difference. If like most people you live in a parliamentary seat which is to a greater or lesser degree “safe”, your vote is effectively pointless and all the politicians making noise in your face about how bad the other politicians are, are just wasting of your time.

It seems that there are just 60 seats that are marginal enough to make a difference – 60 out of 646, roughly 9%. So only 9% of the population have a vote that counts! At least if we all vote more or less the way we usually do. Basically the political establishment counts on the majority of us acting like sheep.

The funny thing is that if politicians were honest and actually admitted that the voters in “safe” seats didn’t count, the normally safe seats would be up for grabs. So our electoral system accidentally rewards dishonesty! Kind of puts the expenses scandals into a new light doesn’t it ?

Of course even if you are one of the lucky few living in one of the 60 marginals, the election process takes far too long – who needs many weeks in order to make up their minds ? Most of us already know who we would vote for in the next election, so delaying it just allows the politicians to puff up their feathers.

Just remember we can always ignore the “big three” (Labour, Conservative, ad Liberal) and go for the independents and we might have a chance of getting some proper electoral reform rather than just a bit of tinkering around the edges.

Freebie Holidays for MPs ?

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Mar 222010
 

The BBC have tonight announced that numerous MPs have been accepting free trips for “research” (funny how the trips are always to fun sunny places though) and not declaring their interest. The MPs will undoubtedly claim that they need to make foreign trips to further their knowledge of far flung corners of the world.

Perhaps.

As someone who works in the public sector, if I were to get a free trip to say Barcelona on a jolly to look at some sort of IT trade fair paid for by an IT supplier, I would be very rightly likely to get sacked when discovered. Why should it be different for MPs ?

Being fair (although I’m not inclined to be fair to MPs at the moment), these MPs may well be genuine in accepting trips to learn more about places such as the Maldives, Cyprus, Gibraltar, and many other places. But it looks bad.

And not declaring the trip, and not declaring an interest when tabling a question has all the smell of rampant corruption.

Given the current climate of distrust in MPs, they should stop accepting these free trips.

Perhaps parliament should establish a yearly budget for research trips and allow MPs to fund trips out of this budget and when it is gone, no more trips to the sun. That at least will be much less likely to smell of corruption.

US Health Care Reform Passes – Good Or Bad News ?

 Politics  No Responses »
Mar 222010
 

So a short while ago the Democrats pushed through their health care reform package through.

Good or bad news ?

Well, it seems that the share prices of health care companies went up at the news. Now this could be a glitch or perhaps the market investors know something we do not. Does this indicate that the reforms are still going to allow companies to make excessive profits – or even that their profits will grow ?

Of course for the uninsured in the US, this will at least mean they get some form of decent health care which is definitely good news.

But if the US does not take any action on the costs of their health care system, they will sooner or later be faced with a bill they cannot pay. The US currently spends twice the amount in terms of GDP per capita that their competitors do. And I doubt that the reform bill is going to make a bit of difference to the cost of health care.

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