Under the headline 'French admit they are racist', the Daily Telegraph claims: "One in seven French people admit to being racist and many have prejudicial views of immigrants, homosexuals, blacks, Arab and Jews, according to a survey released on Sunday." Maybe its about time that the Telegraph brought out a French edition to catch a few of those potential punters?
The Daily Flail trod a fine line in their story 'Police in race row over 'Polish rioters' training' between trying to imply censure of Cambridgeshire police's 'war games' in Peterborough between 'us' - Blue Force aka the good guys - and 'them' - the Red Force aka rioting football fans from the fictional Eastern European country Felacia (i.e. Poland) and angry mobs of economic migrants protesting at poor wages.
Liberty wondered why it was necessary for the hundred plus college students drafted in to play the rioters (usually it is other cops that do this but obviously they don't have the manpower nowadays, despite Operation Iceni - they do like their portentous names for these games - involving cops from Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Suffolk, Norfolk and Essex) "to pretend to be Eastern Europeans." According to the Flail, Chief Superintendent Nigel Sunman of Cambridgeshire Constabulary insisted "there were no racial overtones to the exercises." That's good to know then.
And whilst we are still in Cambridgeshire, it seems that the UK Border Agency are trying to keep Oakington IRC open until June 2013, despite on numerous past occasions saying that the intended to close the detention centre in the near future. Opened in 2000, the former RAF base was initially due to close in 2006, but the Home Office applied for an extension, planning to install new security. South Cambridgeshire District Council's planning committee refused permission as it objected to a new 5m high security fence but eventually gave in to government pressure. That permission runs out next month and UKBA had long claimed that they 'hoped' to close the centre by last December.
However, it looks like they intend to keep the size of the immigration detention estate as large as possible. Just last week it was announced that Harmondsworth detention centre at Heathrow airport is to double in size to 623 places with the building of a new wing, a move heavily criticised by the outgoing Chief Inspector of Prisons. In the meantime, if and when the new government eventually stop the detention of children, a few additional spaces will also be available. But no that many as it also appears that they will continue to detain the children's parents, possibly fostering them out or, as is more likely, locking them up in some other form of glorified prison. One of the spurious argument used in favour of the detention of children was that it helped prevent the trafficking of minors. How on earth could the separating of children from their parents possibly make them any safer or help prevent the sort of trauma they undergo following dawn raids?
Monday, 31 May 2010
Friday, 28 May 2010
Statement Against G4S Recruitment In Brighton & Hove Jobs Fair
G4S styles itself as "the world's leading international security solutions group", providing the outsourcing of governmental operations such as prison and detention centre management, the escort and transfer of prisoners and immigration detainees, and patrolling international borders; private security services to the oil and gas industry, private energy utilities, corporations; and even the Wimbledon Tennis tournament.
Their operations stretch around the globe from USA to New Zealand, via Canada, the UK, Europe and Australia. In 2009, the company had pre-tax profits of £219.2m, from a turnover of 7.01bn (up 7.4% on 2008 figure). The company's UK government security portfolio had a £1bn plus annual turnover, up 16%, and produced pre-tax profits of £97.3m (for UK and Ireland). Immigration is a key component of this sector and the profits it produces. The company runs 3 detention centres: Brook House and the Tinsley House children and families centre, both at Gatwick Airport, and the Oakington IRC near Cambridge which recently saw the recent death of a 40 years old detainee, Eliud Nyenze, from a heart attack after apparently being denied medical assistance by G4S staff.
The company's other immigration-related activity is the escorting of detainees between detention centres, to courts and tribunals and to deportation flights. In the former they were involved in the transfer of Sehar Shebaz and her 12 month old daughter Wania on both their 9 hour journey from Dungavel in Scotland to the notorious Yarl's Wood detention centre near Bedford on 21 May, and her deportation the following day back to her likely death at the hands of her violent ex-husband extended family in Pakistan.
The escorting of immigration detainees, handcuffed between 2 guards for the entire trip and often resisting because they know they could be going back to the threat of imprisonment, torture or even death, is just one of the jobs G4S Security are seeking to recruit additions to their 595,000 plus worldwide workforce for at the City Future jobs fair on Friday 4 June in the East Wing of the Brighton Centre. The fair is organised by Brighton & Hove Council, Job Centre Plus and is sponsored by the Evening Argus.
We call upon these organisations to refuse to support a company that profits so much from the misery of others; to withdraw their invitation to take part in the jobs fair and not to invite the company in any of its myriad forms to any future such events. We ask the Brighton and Hove public to support this call by contacting their local councillor and the Evening Argus to complain about their association with G4S Security.
Their operations stretch around the globe from USA to New Zealand, via Canada, the UK, Europe and Australia. In 2009, the company had pre-tax profits of £219.2m, from a turnover of 7.01bn (up 7.4% on 2008 figure). The company's UK government security portfolio had a £1bn plus annual turnover, up 16%, and produced pre-tax profits of £97.3m (for UK and Ireland). Immigration is a key component of this sector and the profits it produces. The company runs 3 detention centres: Brook House and the Tinsley House children and families centre, both at Gatwick Airport, and the Oakington IRC near Cambridge which recently saw the recent death of a 40 years old detainee, Eliud Nyenze, from a heart attack after apparently being denied medical assistance by G4S staff.
The company's other immigration-related activity is the escorting of detainees between detention centres, to courts and tribunals and to deportation flights. In the former they were involved in the transfer of Sehar Shebaz and her 12 month old daughter Wania on both their 9 hour journey from Dungavel in Scotland to the notorious Yarl's Wood detention centre near Bedford on 21 May, and her deportation the following day back to her likely death at the hands of her violent ex-husband extended family in Pakistan.
The escorting of immigration detainees, handcuffed between 2 guards for the entire trip and often resisting because they know they could be going back to the threat of imprisonment, torture or even death, is just one of the jobs G4S Security are seeking to recruit additions to their 595,000 plus worldwide workforce for at the City Future jobs fair on Friday 4 June in the East Wing of the Brighton Centre. The fair is organised by Brighton & Hove Council, Job Centre Plus and is sponsored by the Evening Argus.
We call upon these organisations to refuse to support a company that profits so much from the misery of others; to withdraw their invitation to take part in the jobs fair and not to invite the company in any of its myriad forms to any future such events. We ask the Brighton and Hove public to support this call by contacting their local councillor and the Evening Argus to complain about their association with G4S Security.
Wednesday, 26 May 2010
A Child's Eye View Of Life Inside Yarl's Wood
The Guardian has also published 14 year old Wells Botomani's retelling of his family's nightmare stay last year in Yarl's Wood Immigration Removal Centre:
A child's eye (sic) of life inside Yarl's Wood immigration removal centre.
A child's eye (sic) of life inside Yarl's Wood immigration removal centre.
An End To 'Zero-Notice' Deportations
According to the Guardian, a high court judge has ordered the Home Office to stop using a policy introduced in 2007 whereby foreign nationals can be detained and deported almost immediately, denying them any opportunity to challenge the order in the courts. In the example the papers quotes, "a seriously ill Cameroon national was arrested at 10.30pm scheduled to be put on board a charter flight leaving at 6.30am. A friend managed to call the man's solicitor, who in turn found a barrister to apply to a duty judge. The judge – roused from his bed – granted an injunction at 1.30am, calling the manner of the deportation "completely unconscionable"."
Medical Justice had challenged the so-called 'zero-notice' provision that circumvents UK Borders Agency regulations guaranteeing a minimum of 72-hour notice of the implementation of any deportation order. These exceptions applied to unattended minors, removing the chance of their absconding as they cannot be held in a detention centre prior to their removal. those at risk of self-harm or suicide, those have already agreed to be deported e.g. participants in voluntary repatriation schemes, and those believed to be likely to cause 'serious disruption' if held in a detention centre prior to their removal i.e. anybody.
Medical Justice had challenged the so-called 'zero-notice' provision that circumvents UK Borders Agency regulations guaranteeing a minimum of 72-hour notice of the implementation of any deportation order. These exceptions applied to unattended minors, removing the chance of their absconding as they cannot be held in a detention centre prior to their removal. those at risk of self-harm or suicide, those have already agreed to be deported e.g. participants in voluntary repatriation schemes, and those believed to be likely to cause 'serious disruption' if held in a detention centre prior to their removal i.e. anybody.
Dutch Cleaners' Strike Victory
Migrants of all kinds, legal as well as clandestine, have long been the main employees of almost all of the cleaning outsourcing firms, both in the UK and abroad. They work for the lowest wages the companies can get away with and the precarious nature of the document-less workers makes them doubly exploitable as they can be turned into the immigration authorities is they need to be gotten rid of for such transgressions as trying to unionise. Plus there's the extra added bonus of not needing to pay the wages the company owes them as they are already on their way out of the country with little or no chance of any form of legal recourse.
This has long been the mode of operation for companies such as ISS did with London Undergound and with SOAS cleaners recently or Amey at the National Physical Laboratory or the Lancaster Cleaning Services' sacking of Alberto Durango. In the Netherlands recently Dutch Railways cleaners also went on strike and they have just won a number of concessions inclucing "a 3.5% wage increase, benefits for union members, a bonus for strikers, better access to Dutch courses and job education and some other smaller gains (like not stopping your pay when you call in sick, before speaking to the company doctor, a day off when your brother-in-law dies)" according to Willem Dekker, an organizer with Bondgenoten the largest trade union in the Netherlands.
We reprint a piece he has written on the strike:
The cleaning sector has been fully privatized at the end of the nineties. Since then competition has been driving wages down and work pressure up. In the summer of 2009 cleaners, of whom most come from a migrant background, launched a campaign for higher wages, better working conditions and more respect from management. In times of austerity and a government drive for a wage freeze for public workers, this campaign raised the stakes of industrial conflict. If the cleaners could get a raise - why couldn't other workers? The campaign turned into a model for multicultural resistance against the cut-backs.
Let me take you back a month ago, somewhere in Amsterdam: It was crowded in the room, more than a hundred strikers from several Amsterdam office buildings sat together in their weekly meeting; it seemed chaotic, people going for coffee or a quick smoke, several different languages were being spoken at the same time, English, Turkish, Arabic and of course Dutch. But it wasn't chaotic, it was excitement, tension and translation.
Abdelilah, a young migrant on strike, had just told everybody that he had been fired for being on strike, the company letter went from hand to hand. Only recently arrived in the Netherlands, when asked to go on strike, he didn't hesitate, "in Morocco I used to do the same". Mohamed a strike leader from government agency UWV, stood up. He reminded everybody about this fact and about the resolution that had been passed by all cleaners on strike in the Netherlands. An injury to one, is an injury to all. "We made this agreement, now we must live up to it, we must all go to his workplace, and demand his reinstatement. It could be you next time". He said as he looked his fellow strikers in the eye. Turkish women applauded while Mohamed raised his hands. "In the past weeks we have grown our army of strikers from thirty to more than a hundred, we can make every building in this area of Amsterdam go on strike, so we for sure can save Abdelilah's job. We must contact our brothers and sisters in other cities about this as soon as possible." As a union organizer, that was the signal to take my phone and make the call.
So it happened, later that week five hundred strikers from all over the Netherlands, marched to the headquarters of right wing newspaper "De Telegraaf", Abdelilah's former workplace. As they had done a dozen times before during the strike, they occupied the lobby after train cleaners from Groningen broke through security lines to hold the doors open. Swarming the building, they demanded freedom of speech and organisation for cleaners, something a newspaper should value. The cleaners presented a front page for the next day to De Telegraaf spokesperson which said they should support the cleaners. The boss of the cleaning company was summoned to the office, as a delegation of cleaners was appointed to do the negotiation. Two hours later, Abdelilah had a new contract. The news of the victory spread amongst the strikers while they were already busy occupying another lobby. Hundreds of cleaners had just proven how precarity can be overcome. A valuable lesson for everyone, not least for the employer.
In the end it took the cleaners six months of actions and nine weeks of strike to win a new national labour contract, the longest strike in the Netherlands since 1933. They won a 3,5 percent wage increase, job education, Dutch lessons and benefits for union members. But above all, they fought for recognition and respect. "What do we want? Respect! When do we want it? Now" was and is their chant. Everybody in the Netherlands now acknowledges the cleaners; they gained massive public support and positive media coverage. They showed The Netherlands that when nobody takes responsibility people become numbers on a budget, creating dynamics that constantly put pressure on their already low working conditions; that is the cost of outsourcing.
In their strike many different backgrounds and ethnicities came together and held each other close. They occupied Utrecht Central Station for six days and nights, singing, dancing, demonstrating, eating and sleeping there. Taking the roof of one of the cleaning companies' headquarters, linking arms during a sit in at the airport defying security and police forces, presenting the drawings of their children to the queen. They overcame the employers' tactics of despair; their willingness to fight seemed endless.
For now the cleaners won a strike for a total workforce of the 150.000 cleaners with only 1500 active strikers, which shows how much more can be gained with further struggle and unionisation. What's most important however, is the influence of the strike on other sectors. Straight after the victory of the cleaners the garbage collectors of Utrecht and Amsterdam went on an indefinite strike, which ended after one and a half week in a pay rise of 1,5 percent for 200.000 municipality workers, breaking the wage freeze of the government. It proofs that you only stand a chance if you fight, an important lesson for the coming struggle over the massive cuts.
Pictures of the campaign:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fnvbondgenoten/collections/72157623129293821/
This has long been the mode of operation for companies such as ISS did with London Undergound and with SOAS cleaners recently or Amey at the National Physical Laboratory or the Lancaster Cleaning Services' sacking of Alberto Durango. In the Netherlands recently Dutch Railways cleaners also went on strike and they have just won a number of concessions inclucing "a 3.5% wage increase, benefits for union members, a bonus for strikers, better access to Dutch courses and job education and some other smaller gains (like not stopping your pay when you call in sick, before speaking to the company doctor, a day off when your brother-in-law dies)" according to Willem Dekker, an organizer with Bondgenoten the largest trade union in the Netherlands.
We reprint a piece he has written on the strike:
The cleaning sector has been fully privatized at the end of the nineties. Since then competition has been driving wages down and work pressure up. In the summer of 2009 cleaners, of whom most come from a migrant background, launched a campaign for higher wages, better working conditions and more respect from management. In times of austerity and a government drive for a wage freeze for public workers, this campaign raised the stakes of industrial conflict. If the cleaners could get a raise - why couldn't other workers? The campaign turned into a model for multicultural resistance against the cut-backs.
Let me take you back a month ago, somewhere in Amsterdam: It was crowded in the room, more than a hundred strikers from several Amsterdam office buildings sat together in their weekly meeting; it seemed chaotic, people going for coffee or a quick smoke, several different languages were being spoken at the same time, English, Turkish, Arabic and of course Dutch. But it wasn't chaotic, it was excitement, tension and translation.
Abdelilah, a young migrant on strike, had just told everybody that he had been fired for being on strike, the company letter went from hand to hand. Only recently arrived in the Netherlands, when asked to go on strike, he didn't hesitate, "in Morocco I used to do the same". Mohamed a strike leader from government agency UWV, stood up. He reminded everybody about this fact and about the resolution that had been passed by all cleaners on strike in the Netherlands. An injury to one, is an injury to all. "We made this agreement, now we must live up to it, we must all go to his workplace, and demand his reinstatement. It could be you next time". He said as he looked his fellow strikers in the eye. Turkish women applauded while Mohamed raised his hands. "In the past weeks we have grown our army of strikers from thirty to more than a hundred, we can make every building in this area of Amsterdam go on strike, so we for sure can save Abdelilah's job. We must contact our brothers and sisters in other cities about this as soon as possible." As a union organizer, that was the signal to take my phone and make the call.
So it happened, later that week five hundred strikers from all over the Netherlands, marched to the headquarters of right wing newspaper "De Telegraaf", Abdelilah's former workplace. As they had done a dozen times before during the strike, they occupied the lobby after train cleaners from Groningen broke through security lines to hold the doors open. Swarming the building, they demanded freedom of speech and organisation for cleaners, something a newspaper should value. The cleaners presented a front page for the next day to De Telegraaf spokesperson which said they should support the cleaners. The boss of the cleaning company was summoned to the office, as a delegation of cleaners was appointed to do the negotiation. Two hours later, Abdelilah had a new contract. The news of the victory spread amongst the strikers while they were already busy occupying another lobby. Hundreds of cleaners had just proven how precarity can be overcome. A valuable lesson for everyone, not least for the employer.
In the end it took the cleaners six months of actions and nine weeks of strike to win a new national labour contract, the longest strike in the Netherlands since 1933. They won a 3,5 percent wage increase, job education, Dutch lessons and benefits for union members. But above all, they fought for recognition and respect. "What do we want? Respect! When do we want it? Now" was and is their chant. Everybody in the Netherlands now acknowledges the cleaners; they gained massive public support and positive media coverage. They showed The Netherlands that when nobody takes responsibility people become numbers on a budget, creating dynamics that constantly put pressure on their already low working conditions; that is the cost of outsourcing.
In their strike many different backgrounds and ethnicities came together and held each other close. They occupied Utrecht Central Station for six days and nights, singing, dancing, demonstrating, eating and sleeping there. Taking the roof of one of the cleaning companies' headquarters, linking arms during a sit in at the airport defying security and police forces, presenting the drawings of their children to the queen. They overcame the employers' tactics of despair; their willingness to fight seemed endless.
For now the cleaners won a strike for a total workforce of the 150.000 cleaners with only 1500 active strikers, which shows how much more can be gained with further struggle and unionisation. What's most important however, is the influence of the strike on other sectors. Straight after the victory of the cleaners the garbage collectors of Utrecht and Amsterdam went on an indefinite strike, which ended after one and a half week in a pay rise of 1,5 percent for 200.000 municipality workers, breaking the wage freeze of the government. It proofs that you only stand a chance if you fight, an important lesson for the coming struggle over the massive cuts.
Pictures of the campaign:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fnvbondgenoten/collections/72157623129293821/
Monday, 24 May 2010
Labour’s Own Form Of Fertility Treatment
[with apologies to the Lamb family, but the metaphor was too good to pass up]
Nu Labour (or whatever it will now be rebranding itself as in order to make itself re-electable) is currently undergoing a modest bout of soul searching, catharsis-lite if you like, in the form of an emergency bout of fertility treatment, which has thrown up its own set of sextuplets. And a very rum bunch they are. The four ex-party researchers and policy wonks [1] are more or less to be expected - the identical quadruplets of the bunch; but then there are the two odd mutants - the runts of the litter, a regressive recessive cross that has thrown up Old Labour genes.[2]
However, this is not destined to be a normal full-term pregnancy, this is some Alien version with a fast-track gestation lasting only four months; where only one bright shiny new leader will be revealed to the doting parents come the party conference, for the new leader will have devoured the other five siblings in a fight to the (political) death – no doubt the announcement of the death of some of the candidates will prove premature and they will potentially fight to live another day, even if they do so in the zombie-like state that Brown was left in after he failed to beat off first Blair and then, much later, Dave™.
So who do we have to thank for this strange litter? Blair and Mandelson [3] certainly: they are mainly responsible for introducing Alien DNA into the Labour gene pool to try and breed some new super ‘fit’ Party capable of occupying the middle ground in politics and usher in their own version of the Thousand Year Reich. Yet it is the Dave™ and Nick™ show that is the real initiator [4] of this pregnancy, that and the fact that the family patriarch left home and thus a quick course of artificial insemination was the only option available to birth a new party leader.
And just as the new Tory-Whig coalition, this Lib-Con chimera, is largely responsible for Nu Labour being ‘up the duff’, when the new Labour leader springs Athena-like fully formed from the head of the National Executive Committee-organised election,[5] he will arrive with his own massive Oedipal complex already in place, ready to take on the Dynamic Duo in political combat. Unfortunately, this Oedipal complex could also result in some very nasty consequences for us all.
To further labour our metaphors - we already know the genotype of the potential new leader, the possible political genes that will make up him (or, very unlikely, her). What we don’t know however is how those genes will combine and interact with the political environment to produce the new leadership phenotype. Already, the foetal monitors have been picking up the sounds of electoral recriminations and potential future posturing: over the Iraq war; over not ‘listening’ to the voters; over ‘civil liberties’; over Nu Labour reconnecting with Old Labour’s ‘core values’ (whatever they were).
Thus, we have had the less than enlightening sight of the two Mr Eds talking about the ‘lack of trust’ in Nu Labour over the Iraq war, bemoaning how spin was used to take the country to war. Whatever next? Promising to abandon spin altogether just like Dave™ and Nick™ had promised to but singularly failed to do so since being joined in politically expedient bliss. We have also had Ed Miliband bizarrely talking about getting back to the essence of Beveridge and (slightly paraphrasing him) reintroducing a contribution-based welfare system where the middle classes could receive state aid without the need for those nasty discriminatory means tests. Hasn’t he heard? The country is sort of on its uppers and there’s ‘no money left’. It has also long since reneged on the ideal of universal benefits, with even a means-tested benefit such as the state pension (which pre-dates Beveridge) having long since lost its linkage to average earnings in order to save money (a Thatcher legacy). So how he intends to roll out benefits to everyone in the face or the proposed swingeing deficit-induced cutbacks, short of cutting back even more of the meagre welfare provision still available to the poorest in society, is anyone’s guess (shades of Blond’s inane ‘big society’ non-idea?).
Ed Miliband also had a bit of a rant about the need to get away from Nu Labour ‘orthodoxies’, just as they did from Old Labour ones. Really? Then why are he and his fellow apparatchiks still banging on about the ‘need to be tough on immigration and tough on the means of immigration’ [but note, not tough on the causes of (im)migration]? Andy Burnham, for example, seems to be labouring under the delusion that immigration, which he claims was “the biggest issue at the election”, wasn’t being talked about by the Labour Party at all, leading “some people (to feel that) we were either in denial or just didn’t want to talk about it." Obviously he didn’t watch any of the TV debates where immigration was the only issue broached in all three (but it certainly won him plaudits in the Daily Mail, which was no doubt the sort of the demographic he was targeting anyway).
Burnham is right in one thing however and that is that immigration will be the key defining issue dictating which direction the new Induced Labour Party takes (and, given that it involved sextuplets, that probably should be Premature Labour). The big danger remains that Labour’s Oedipal complex will result in them not moving to the Left in order to redefine themselves as separate and distinct from the new homogeneous politics of the Dave™ and Nick™ Show, but rather the party trying to regain the middle ground from the Right by turning Blair’s mantra of 'education, education, education' into one of 'immigration, immigration, immigration'.
[1] As John Harris aptly put it in the Guardian “four ex-wonks with limited life experience (who) may not be the best people to divine what exactly it is that the fabled white working class is after.”
[2] And this was always likely to happen when one lets mad political ‘scientists’ like Mandelson meddle with the Labour Party gene pool.
[3] The Mengele and Goebbels of Nu Labour?
[4] It is difficult to tell whether they are acting as fertility doctors, midwives or mere sperm donors in this enterprise.
[5] Or should that be the chest?
Nu Labour (or whatever it will now be rebranding itself as in order to make itself re-electable) is currently undergoing a modest bout of soul searching, catharsis-lite if you like, in the form of an emergency bout of fertility treatment, which has thrown up its own set of sextuplets. And a very rum bunch they are. The four ex-party researchers and policy wonks [1] are more or less to be expected - the identical quadruplets of the bunch; but then there are the two odd mutants - the runts of the litter, a regressive recessive cross that has thrown up Old Labour genes.[2]
However, this is not destined to be a normal full-term pregnancy, this is some Alien version with a fast-track gestation lasting only four months; where only one bright shiny new leader will be revealed to the doting parents come the party conference, for the new leader will have devoured the other five siblings in a fight to the (political) death – no doubt the announcement of the death of some of the candidates will prove premature and they will potentially fight to live another day, even if they do so in the zombie-like state that Brown was left in after he failed to beat off first Blair and then, much later, Dave™.
So who do we have to thank for this strange litter? Blair and Mandelson [3] certainly: they are mainly responsible for introducing Alien DNA into the Labour gene pool to try and breed some new super ‘fit’ Party capable of occupying the middle ground in politics and usher in their own version of the Thousand Year Reich. Yet it is the Dave™ and Nick™ show that is the real initiator [4] of this pregnancy, that and the fact that the family patriarch left home and thus a quick course of artificial insemination was the only option available to birth a new party leader.
And just as the new Tory-Whig coalition, this Lib-Con chimera, is largely responsible for Nu Labour being ‘up the duff’, when the new Labour leader springs Athena-like fully formed from the head of the National Executive Committee-organised election,[5] he will arrive with his own massive Oedipal complex already in place, ready to take on the Dynamic Duo in political combat. Unfortunately, this Oedipal complex could also result in some very nasty consequences for us all.
To further labour our metaphors - we already know the genotype of the potential new leader, the possible political genes that will make up him (or, very unlikely, her). What we don’t know however is how those genes will combine and interact with the political environment to produce the new leadership phenotype. Already, the foetal monitors have been picking up the sounds of electoral recriminations and potential future posturing: over the Iraq war; over not ‘listening’ to the voters; over ‘civil liberties’; over Nu Labour reconnecting with Old Labour’s ‘core values’ (whatever they were).
Thus, we have had the less than enlightening sight of the two Mr Eds talking about the ‘lack of trust’ in Nu Labour over the Iraq war, bemoaning how spin was used to take the country to war. Whatever next? Promising to abandon spin altogether just like Dave™ and Nick™ had promised to but singularly failed to do so since being joined in politically expedient bliss. We have also had Ed Miliband bizarrely talking about getting back to the essence of Beveridge and (slightly paraphrasing him) reintroducing a contribution-based welfare system where the middle classes could receive state aid without the need for those nasty discriminatory means tests. Hasn’t he heard? The country is sort of on its uppers and there’s ‘no money left’. It has also long since reneged on the ideal of universal benefits, with even a means-tested benefit such as the state pension (which pre-dates Beveridge) having long since lost its linkage to average earnings in order to save money (a Thatcher legacy). So how he intends to roll out benefits to everyone in the face or the proposed swingeing deficit-induced cutbacks, short of cutting back even more of the meagre welfare provision still available to the poorest in society, is anyone’s guess (shades of Blond’s inane ‘big society’ non-idea?).
Ed Miliband also had a bit of a rant about the need to get away from Nu Labour ‘orthodoxies’, just as they did from Old Labour ones. Really? Then why are he and his fellow apparatchiks still banging on about the ‘need to be tough on immigration and tough on the means of immigration’ [but note, not tough on the causes of (im)migration]? Andy Burnham, for example, seems to be labouring under the delusion that immigration, which he claims was “the biggest issue at the election”, wasn’t being talked about by the Labour Party at all, leading “some people (to feel that) we were either in denial or just didn’t want to talk about it." Obviously he didn’t watch any of the TV debates where immigration was the only issue broached in all three (but it certainly won him plaudits in the Daily Mail, which was no doubt the sort of the demographic he was targeting anyway).
Burnham is right in one thing however and that is that immigration will be the key defining issue dictating which direction the new Induced Labour Party takes (and, given that it involved sextuplets, that probably should be Premature Labour). The big danger remains that Labour’s Oedipal complex will result in them not moving to the Left in order to redefine themselves as separate and distinct from the new homogeneous politics of the Dave™ and Nick™ Show, but rather the party trying to regain the middle ground from the Right by turning Blair’s mantra of 'education, education, education' into one of 'immigration, immigration, immigration'.
[1] As John Harris aptly put it in the Guardian “four ex-wonks with limited life experience (who) may not be the best people to divine what exactly it is that the fabled white working class is after.”
[2] And this was always likely to happen when one lets mad political ‘scientists’ like Mandelson meddle with the Labour Party gene pool.
[3] The Mengele and Goebbels of Nu Labour?
[4] It is difficult to tell whether they are acting as fertility doctors, midwives or mere sperm donors in this enterprise.
[5] Or should that be the chest?
Sehar & Wania Deported
On Saturday evening Sehar Shebaz and her year-old daughter Wania were deported back to Pakistan. This happened despite a last minute plea to grant them compassionate leave to remain made to the immigration minister Damien Green by Ann McKechin MP, backed up by copies of police reports, letters of support from Blackburn Women's Aid supporting her claims of domestic violence and information about her forced transfer to new accommodation after her husband had found her at her address in Glasgow.
Having been transferred from Dungavel to Yarl's Wood, Sehar and Wania were isolated from the other families prior to her removal and she went on hunger strike in response, joining the 5 families (of the 12 families that had written to Nick Clegg) already on hunger strike there. She was eventually removed at the weekend on Pakistani Airlines flight PK758, back to the imminent threat of being maimed or killed in a so-called 'honour' attack.
We just wonder, now that Damien Green has gotten his hands on the reins of power in the immigration department and he has been able to make his first decision to deport someone back to what is obviously a potentially life-threatening situation, did it feel as good wielding such power as he imagined it would do?
Having been transferred from Dungavel to Yarl's Wood, Sehar and Wania were isolated from the other families prior to her removal and she went on hunger strike in response, joining the 5 families (of the 12 families that had written to Nick Clegg) already on hunger strike there. She was eventually removed at the weekend on Pakistani Airlines flight PK758, back to the imminent threat of being maimed or killed in a so-called 'honour' attack.
We just wonder, now that Damien Green has gotten his hands on the reins of power in the immigration department and he has been able to make his first decision to deport someone back to what is obviously a potentially life-threatening situation, did it feel as good wielding such power as he imagined it would do?
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