Relaxing in a piping-hot spring, these wise monkeys take a break from the snow in this freezing mountain range.
The Japanese macaques come for a good warm soak in the 50C water every morning.
Photographer Dickie Duckett, 67, watched the snow monkeys in Japan for eight hours a day in temperatures of -5C.
Click on link to go to article
A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRAT: You have two cows. You keep one and give one to your neighbor.A SOCIALIST: You have two cows. The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor.
AN AMERICAN REPUBLICAN: You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. So what?
AN AMERICAN DEMOCRAT: You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. You feel guilty for being successful. You vote people into office who tax your cows, forcing you to sell one to raise money to pay the tax. The people you voted for then take the tax money and buy a cow and give it to your neighbor. You feel righteous.
A COMMUNIST: You have two cows. The government seizes both and provides you with milk.
A FASCIST: You have two cows. The government seizes both and sells you the milk. You join the underground and start a campaign of sabotage.
DEMOCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE: You have two cows. The government taxes you to the point you have to sell both to support a man in a foreign country who has only one cow, which was a gift from your government.
CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE: You have two cows. You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.
BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE: You have two cows. The government takes them both, shoots one, milks the other, pays you for the milk, then pours the milk down the drain.
AN AMERICAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised when the cow drops dead.
A FRENCH CORPORATION: You have two cows. You go on strike because you want three cows.
A JAPANESE CORPORATION: You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. You then create clever cow cartoon images called Cowkimon and market them World-Wide.
A GERMAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You reengineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.
A BRITISH CORPORATION: You have two cows. They are mad. They die. Pass the shepherd's pie, please.
AN ITALIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows, but you don't know where they are. You break for lunch.
A RUSSIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You count them and learn you have five cows. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. You count them again and learn you have 12 cows. You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.
A SWISS CORPORATION: You have 5000 cows, none of which belong to you. You charge others for storing them.
A BRAZILIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You enter into a partnership with an American corporation. Soon you have 1000 cows and the American corporation declares bankruptcy.
AN INDIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You worship both of them.
A CHINESE CORPORATION: You have two cows. You have 300 people milking them. You claim full employment, high bovine productivity, and arrest the newsman who reported on them.
AN ISRAELI CORPORATION: There are these two Jewish cows, right? They open a milk factory, an ice cream store, and then sell the movie rights. They send their calves to Harvard to become doctors. So, who needs people?
AN ARKANSAS CORPORATION: You have two cows. That one on the left is kinda cute.
Is there any variation in the UK?
It's no joke that some people in the Hexham constituency still haven't yet decided to vote for the Independent candidate Dr Steven Ford - don't miss the chance for a real change from the Parties that have screwed things up for decades.
Climate Scientists are agreed that global warming is a serious problem that must be addressed urgently. Polls show that only about 60% of ordinary people are convinced that global warming is man made.
This paper aims to present the essential case for action on global warming in a way that ordinary people can understand.
1. The Earth's Temperature
The temperature of Planet Earth is maintained by two sources, heat from the sun, and a tiny amount of heat from the Earth's core.2. The Greenhouse Effect
Without the atmosphere, Earth would be 33°C colder than it is because the sun's heat is retained by the gases in the atmosphere, which act as a kind of duvet.3. Life on Earth
Life is adapted to a narrow global temperature range, which we alter at our peril.4. System
The atmosphere is a system that is so complex that it can only be studied by computer models which can make the various factors interact. All these models show that we face serious problems.
Click on link to read the article.
low voter turnout - a threat to democracy in the uk?
The strength of enthusiasm for and engagement with the democratic process in Britain is vital to sustaining a healthy representative democracy. Voter turnout is measured by the percentage of eligible voters who actually cast their vote in elections for various levels of government.
The turnout at UK General Elections since 1945 is shown in the chart below
Turnout peaks at 82% in 1950 - but the long term trend in voter participation has been downwards. By 1983, turnout was doen to 72% - and despite an improvement in participation in both 1987 and 1992 (when the closeness of the battle prompted more voters to cast their vote) - the last two general elections has seen a sharp fall in turnout. 2001 may be seen in future years to have been a watershed. The overall level of turnout across the United Kingdom collapsed from 71% in 1997 to 59.3% in 2001.
The Democracy Initiative explores the ability of people and civil society associations to apply and engage with power. This work has a specific focus on those who are perceived to have least power.
The main goals of the Initiative are to:
- Understand how power can be exercised and organised in order to strengthen democracy.
- Enhance the capabilities of civil society associations to effectively apply and engage with power.
- Explore how citizens can be more effective in influencing and exercising power on issues that impact on their lives.
Find out more about our work on power and influence
Civil society is on the cusp of remarkable change. In its report, Making good society, the independent Commission of Inquiry into the Future of Civil Society in the UK and Ireland states that it is impossible to imagine plausible responses to the greatest challenges of our time - including political distrust, economic crisis and climate change - without significant input from civil society.
The Commission articulates the importance of civil society in all spheres of life, and identifies four critical areas in which civil society activity is necessary to make good society. These key themes are set out below:
Click on link to read more and get Carnegie UK Trust report and resources
Whichever party wins control of the Commons at the election, we must expect that it will attempt to reinvigorate civil society, a concept that "for a century or more...has been pushed to the margins by commerce and the state", according to a report out this week [3.30MB PDF].
It is fairly common ground at Westminster that power-hungry government has invaded civic space and weakened the community bonds which are required for society to function well.
As the philosopher Francis Fukuyama put it more than a decade ago: "There was a period when social scientists assumed that modernization necessarily entailed the progressive replacement of informal coordination mechanisms with formal ones."
The notion that officialdom should, instead, step back and encourage people to shape their own lives and neighbourhoods has now become the consensus.
Click on link to read article
The EU rescue deal for Greece agreed at the bloc's summit last week has received a mixed response from markets.
Initially, German bunds fell and Greek bonds rose, narrowing the spread between them in a sign that confidence in Athens was returning.
Bunds saw their biggest weekly decline early Saturday since 5 March after EU leaders reached a Franco-German brokered deal that would see a mixed mechanism of International Monetary Fund and EU-member-state bilateral loans at market interest rates - but only as a last resort.
Markets reacted circumspectly to the Greek bail-out scheme (Photo: artemuestra)
Market commentators suggested that confidence was returning, but in early Singapore trading on Monday (29 March), gold fell 0.2 percent as uncertainty returned over speculation that Greece is not out of the woods.
Athens must head to market to borrow some €15.5 billion by the end of May, possibly triggering a fresh crisis over the country's debt.
Greece aims to borrow around €5 billion this week alone.
Separately, in a sign that some saw the "last-resort" conditionality hidden within the EU deal as evidence that nothing had changed, credit rating agency Standard & Poor's announced it would not alter its rating of Greek government debt.
In Germany meanwhile, Chancellor Angela Merkel has been hailed by newspapers and commentators as the "iron chancellor" for her hard bargaining at the EU level in forcing through acceptance of IMF bail-out monies rather than a Europe-only strategy.
Click on link to read the article
Geoff Hoon talks to an undercover reporter on Channel 4’s Dispatches
They say that after the expenses scandal, the reputation of MPs sunk lower than that of estate agents. It’s anybody’s guess, then, where their reputation stands after this week’s cash for influence affair. However, after falling so spectacularly for a simple undercover television sting, it is perhaps the intelligence of such politicians that is now more in question. Why did people who are supposed to possess the intelligence to run our country not have the intelligence to see through such a thin spoof?
I produced and directed the Dispatches programme Politicians for Hire, which revealed senior politicians, including former cabinet ministers Stephen Byers, Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt, offering their lobbying services in return for cash. Looking through the many hours of footage, the question that I asked myself continually was how people who helped run this country for many years could have even turned up for those interviews, let alone said what they did.
Stephen Byers was the first person to be interviewed in our sting, in which we set up a fictitious company called Anderson Perry, backed by a website full of management consultant jargon and fairly crass one liners.
Click on link to read this fascinating article
For all its faults and foibles, our democracy is a profound gift from previous generations. Yet most people don't know the name of their MP, nor their constituency, let alone what their MP does or says in their name.
We aim to help bridge this growing democratic disconnect, in the belief that there is little wrong with Parliament that a healthy mixture of transparency and public engagement won't fix.
Hence this website.
Gordon Brown’s election pledges include a promise that cabinet ministers will have to sign up to public, annual contracts outlining what they are expected to deliver. Their positions will be subject to delivery – “just as it would be in a business or any other organisation” Brown also said the head of the civil service, Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell, will be asked to “performance manage” departments’ top civil servants against their delivery of the pledges. (Note the new focus on delivery rather than the formulation of policy, which clearly now takes place elsewhere.)Whilst this makes a lot of sense in the light of Jackie Smith’s admission that she lacked the experience to be Home Secretary and needed better training, it does make one wonder if it might be possible for ministers to be appointed on merit rather than partisan affiliation. Although three out of five civil servants already work for government agencies headed by unelected chief executives, but Next Steps agencies like the prison service are ultimately part of the Home Office, headed by an elected minister, selected from the miniscule pool of talented and experienced MPs in the governing party.
Click on link to read the article by Keith Sutherland at OpenDemocracy
PledgeBank
screenshots of PledgeBank
PledgeBank lets people say, “I’ll do something, but only IF other people will too.”
PledgeBank lets people say, “I’ll give money every month to found a new campaign, but only if other people will too.” And the campaign becomes a real organisation.
PledgeBank lets people say, “I’ll knit some hats, but only if other people do too.” And the hats get knitted.
PledgeBank has been translated into over a dozen languages, by people making pledges to do the translations.
Our volunteer Tim looks after the everyday running of the site, as well as coordinating the team of translators.
PledgeBank is about you coming up with the perfect pledge, and changing a bit of the world.
Talk to us, and we’ll help you make the best pledge possible.
You want to know where we go from here? We need a new Magna Carta. Sunny Hundal of Liberal Conspiracy recently said he wanted “an insurgency to take our rights back from the state”. This now includes our right to honest government, though I think we always knew that. The emphasis needs to be on achieving this.
In February the Convention on Modern Liberty in London and across the UK showed a clear public concern with the threat of authoritarian power and a hunger to debate and confront it in an intelligent and democratic way. Guy Aitchison, Clare Coatman and Tom Ash are, from today, launching Magna Carta 2.0 with the aim of taking the spirit and intelligence of the day to the country.
They have a post setting out the idea here on OurKingdom. I’m joining them. We need you to as well if you have a moment – on your own terms and in your own way and whatever your political affiliations if you are a democrat concerned with how we’re governed.
Here are six problems they set out:
1. The corruption and suborning of parliament as a check on the executive, which accelerated after the Iraq invasion.
2. The rise of a surveillance society: from the blanket logging of all our electronic communications to CCTV to travel scrutiny
3. The sharing of personal information on official and commercial databases: the rise of the so-called database state.
4. Growing police autonomy, both nationally – the Association of Chief Police Officers, for example, is an independent corporate entity not a public body – and internationally, especially within the EU.
5. Exploitation of the threats of crime and terrorism to excessively enhance state power and undermine our fundamental rights often accompanied by encouraging populist fears and alarms
6. The exercise of arbitrary and unaccountable power by government agencies and quangos.
What is a marginal seat?
The UK uses the ‘first past the post’ system of electing its MPs.
This means that a general election is really 646 local elections,
all being held at the same time.
The UK is divided into 646 ‘seats,’ or ‘constituencies.’
Each of these elects one Member of Parliament,
the one who gets the highest number votes out of all the candidates
standing in that constituency.Most constituencies stay with the same party, election after election.
These are called ‘safe’ seats.
Most of the people living in a safe seat have similar views to each other.
They tend to vote the same way, decade after decade.Only a few seats tend to change hands in an election.
These are the ones with a more balanced mix of viewpoints among
the voters.
In some of these seats, it only takes a shift of a few dozen votes for
the seat to ‘fall’ – i.e. to change hands.
These are called the ‘marginal seats.’The parties put most of their time, effort and money into these seats,
because these are the ones that can be easily won or lost.
Therefore, if you live in a marginal seat, politicians take much more notice
of your views.For example, Labour holds the seat of Crawley with a 37 vote majority
over Conservative.
Labour could lose this seat very easily at the next election.
Therefore, Labour politicians want to try very hard to please the people
In Crawley.
The Conservatives, too, want to woo these people, because only a few
of them would have to change their allegiance for the next Conservative
candidate to win the seat.This website has been designed to help voters everywhere work out
how marginal their constituency is, and which parties are most
hotly contesting it.The database that feeds the information to this site was designed by us
at justsolutions, from information obtained from the Electoral Commission.Use the links below to search the database and find out which seats are
most likely to fall in the next election, and who the likely winners and
losers will be.
Click on link to go to Ray Galvin's great site
They just don't get it do they?
'.....one of the Prime Minister’s advisers says. “The Tories should be 20 points ahead. There’s an overwhelming desire for change out there.”
IT'S YOU AND THE SYSTEM WE WANT CHANGED YOU STUPID PILLOCK!
I.E. ETHICAL MPs AND A SYSTEM THAT INCLUDES FAIR VOTING! (not AV)
Labour strategists can’t believe their luck. We’ve had the worst recession for more than 60 years. Gordon Brown has been accused of bullying his staff, former Cabinet ministers have been portrayed as “taxis for hire” and even some Labour MPs don’t appear to want five more years of their leader judging by the number of coups they have organised against him.
And yet the Conservative lead over Labour keeps narrowing. The ruling party is providing a case study in how not to win an election, but it’s the Opposition that seems to be paying the price. Downing Street staff joke that their boss goes up a couple of points every time there is a story about him whacking or shoving someone.
Cabinet ministers are mystified by the turnaround in the party’s fortunes. “If you’d told me six months ago that we’d be just two points behind in one poll I wouldn’t have believed you,” one of the Prime Minister’s advisers says. “The Tories should be 20 points ahead. There’s an overwhelming desire for change out there.”
What is clear is that the electorate has fallen out of love with Labour but it has still not found happiness with the Conservatives. This is not about policies or personalities. The problem won’t be solved by stopping the increase in national insurance or patting SamCam’s baby bump. It’s about something much harder to quantify, and to shift — people’s perception of the parties’ values.
Woe I never thought I would see the word 'values' in a UK politics article!
To read Rachel Sylvester's article click on link
Charter 2010’s proposals on how the constitutional issues surrounding a hung parliament should be approached have been given new emphasis and weight by the deliberations of the Justice Committee of the House of Commons, chaired by Sir Alan Beith. The committee’s excellent discussion of the main constitutional issues, on Wednesday 24 February 2010, is dealt with towards the end of this article.The principal feature of the evidence session was the presentation of the draft of a new Chapter of the Cabinet Manual ( 6: Elections and Government Formation). Several paragraphs in the draft Chapter deal with “hung parliaments”. The Cabinet Secretary sought opinions on the draft and we have submitted our suggested changes. A link to the final version of the Chapter will be placed on www.charter2010.co.uk as soon as it is released. This is expected to be before the election is called.
Further required reading for any sitting or prospective MP is a new pamphlet published by the Hansard Society and the Study of Parliament Group. Who governs? Forming a coalition or a minority government in the event of a hung parliament is an invaluable guide to what may happen in the event of an indecisive General Election result. No stone is unturned by the report, which emphasises that a hung parliament "need not be weak and unstable".
No-one denies that the constitutional issues surrounding a hung parliament are complex. It has to be stressed that Charter 2010’s proposals on how to deal with the situation where no one party has an overall majority (the formation of a multi-party supported government for a fixed period of four years) are directed only at the particular situation of a hung parliament occurring in 2010. We are motivated essentially by the urgent need to ensure that a stable and representative government emerges from any hung parliament in this year’s election, because of the especially grave financial and economic problems our country contemporarily faces. Our advocacy of this approach to a hung parliament in 2010 does not imply any assumption that it would necessarily be appropriate in total, or in parts, at another time - or in other circumstances.
A good summary of the 20th century experience of hung parliaments is contained in a recent House of Commons Library Note.
To read the full article click on the Charter 2010 link
There are quite a few organizations that you can support to help clean up UK politics. Here is a select list;
The Independent Network - http://www.independentnetwork.org.uk/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Network Electoral Reform Society and MakeMyVoteCount - http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/
ModernLiberty - http://www.modernliberty.net/#
*Charter2010 - http://www.charter2010.co.uk
Contact your Councillors, MP, MEPs, MSPs, or Northern Ireland, Welsh and London AMs for free - http://www.writetothem.com/
DemocracyClub - http://www.democracyclub.org.uk/aboutus/
Hear from your MP - http://www.hearfromyourmp.com/
JustSolutions - http://www.justsolutions.eu/marginals/startmarginals.html - find out which seats are marginal and by how many votes
ModernLiberty - http://www.modernliberty.net/what/who/videos#
Magna Carta 2.0 - http://www.modernliberty.net/2009/time-for-magna-carta-20
mySociety.org - http://www.mysociety.org/projects/
OpenUpNow - http://www.openupnow.org/about-us#
Our Kingdom (open democracy) - http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom
PollWatch - http://www.charter2010.co.uk/pollwatch#
Power2010 - http://www.power2010.org.uk
ResPublica - http://www.respublica.org.uk/articles/spend-investment
TheyWorkForYou - http://www.theyworkforyou.com/
Unlock Democracy - http://www.unlockdemocracy.org.uk/
WriteToThem - http://www.writetothem.com/
38degrees - http://38degrees.org.uk/campaigns
The Equality Trust - http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk
Good luck!
Check out the Equality Trust - http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk
Shameless David Cameron has raised more than £18million selling access to himself to investment bankers, hedge fund bosses and other super-rich financiers.
The huge “Cam-for-hire” cash bonanza comes from the Conservative chief’s “Leader’s Group”, a secretive cash-for-access club with a £50,000 membership fee.
A Sunday Mirror investigation has revealed the Conservatives have received more than 300 donations between £50,000 and £100,000 since 2006 – entitling the donor to enter Cameron’s exclusive club.
Many made their fortunes by gambling on the failure of British businesses and other nations’ economies.
Among them is hedge-fund boss David Harding whose company Winton Capital, according to yesterday’s Financial Times, has made a killing speculating on a collapse in the value of the pound.
Four months ago he gave the party £50,000, gaining him instant access to Cameron’s inner sanctum.
Members are guaranteed phone calls and face-to-face meetings with the Tory chief – often at secret dinners at the palatial homes of influential donors.
Dinners and drinks parties are said to have taken place at Blenheim Palace, a £50million Chelsea mansion, the dining rooms of City finance firms and even the Tory leader’s Notting Hill home.
The Sunday Mirror understands there are more than 100 active super-rich members.
Click on link to read the full article
Another week, another story to illustrate the toxic culture of suspicion which is corroding our society.
The Government's barmy announcement that more than 11million adults must undergo vetting and registration if they have contact with children, even if they are only providing transport to sports matches or afterschool activities, is the final straw.
Philip Pullman and Michael Morpurgo are just two much-loved authors who say they are now refusing to visit schools because of these checks.
Flashpoint: Anthony Seldon believes police behaviour at the G20 summit in London dented our confidence in officers and is an example of loss of trust in institutions
Children's Secretary Ed Balls has been forced by a public and media outcry to order a review, but the whole sad incident is nevertheless symptomatic of a culture in which, at all levels of society, we are increasingly losing trust.
The Government no longer trusts its citizens: the swathes of CCTV cameras, multiple databases and increased powers for police and councils to stop and search us or invade our privacy are testimony to that.
Equally, the people don't trust those in power because they are outraged by creeping government control and countless examples of utter ineptitude and rank dishonesty over several years, culminating in the scandal surrounding MPs' expenses.
Historians regard this as the worst moment for Parliament in living memory.
Worse, we have also lost our faith in many of the other institutions that we rely on for our day-to-day security and well-being.
At the G20 summit in London earlier this year, the police were caught on camera battering members of the public, and the cover-up after the death of an innocent bystander, Ian Tomlinson, further dented confidence in the police to tell the truth and to protect us.
Our bankers have been reckless and avaricious. Their behaviour has resulted in suffering for millions during this recession, and yet now, after taxpayer bailouts for the banks, they seem to be returning brazenly to their old high bonus ways with no remorse.
Health and social services staff work hard, but have often been mired in scandals about trustworthiness, whether over Baby P or cleanliness in hospitals.
The British love their sport, but can we trust our sportsmen any more? Recent episodes on the rugby field with 'Bloodgate' and deliberate crashing in Formula 1 are corroding our trust in sport. Worst of all, we've even lost trust in one another as human beings.
Many people have written about trust and its loss over the years. The philosopher Onora O'Neill gave a series of BBC Reith Lectures on the subject back in 2002. But neither she nor anyone else has much to say about what we can do to stop the rot and learn to trust one another again.
That is what I am seeking to achieve in writing my book, Trust. We have reached a genuine tipping point - we cannot carry on like this any longer.
Click on link to read the Daily Mail article
Not interested in politics? - then you are a member of the Apathy Party. You won't be lonely there's 18 million of you - 40% of adults.
Meanwhile the crooks in the system are stealing more of our wealth and ruining our country more every day.
Wake up! Get wise.
In Hexham you are luckier than most of the UK - you have an outstanding Independent candidate.
Be-Independent-Vote-Dr-Steven-Ford-for Hexham-Constituency
You could stay in the Apathy Party - but don't blame those who bothered to vote if things get decidedly worse.
Former Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton has had his sports car impounded for reckless driving in Australia.
Lewis was pulled over by cops after the racing driver pulled a ‘doughnut’ – where drivers do burnouts that result in their car doing circles - in his 2010 silver Mercedes car IN FRONT OF a police van.
The 30-year-old’s car was towed away by police and will be held for 48 hours under anti-hoon laws.
After 4,500 submissions and more than 100,000 votes - this is your manifesto for fixing our broken politics. But to put these words into action we need your help - sign up to show your support.The POWER Pledge:
1. Introduce a proportional voting system.
2. Scrap ID cards and roll back the database state.
3. Replace the House of Lords with an elected chamber.
4. Allow only English MPs to vote on English laws.
5. Draw up a written constitution.To sign the POWER Pledge you don't have to agree with all five reforms. All you have to do is back a majority of the ideas - and then join our call for a reforming Parliament that will act on them. Let's fix it, not fiddle it.
To say that prospective parliamentary candidates are traditionally not very candid is a huge understatement. For decades, they have relied on the “if you stick a big party rosette on a donkey it’ll get elected” rule of the old politics. Too often, a bit of biographical blurb listing how many school governorships the candidate has amassed, is the best you get.
But, post expenses scandal, and now with more revelations about overseas jaunts and cash for influence, public acceptance of the traditional political game is wearing thin (another understatement).
This won’t be new to OurKingdom regulars, but what is new about this election is that it has been billed as the “e-election” where the internet takes charge.
Of course, readers will have different takes on the e-election claim. But, combined with the implosion of the Westminster (mainly) boys club, there does seem to be an opportunity to use the internet to get parliamentary hopefuls to be more open about policy and, as a result, achieve greater accountability.
Though there are some good examples of this emerging, the Democracy Club being one, and fantastic campaign “pledging” pressure going on, which is different altogether, there seems to be room for much more of this kind of thing.
Hence a new non-party web initiative – DEMREF 2010: Candidates for the General Election tell us where they stand on democratic reform.
The idea of DEMREF 2010 is to create a web-based platform where voters can scrutinise and compare the views of their candidates in order to help make an informed choice on polling day. It is a very simple constituency-by-constituency listing with each candidate as a separate pdf document that can be easily downloaded.
Click on link to read whole of Tony's article
Labour has promised a crackdown on lobbying by ex-ministers after several of its senior MPs were filmed apparently offering their services for cash.
The party rushed forward a manifesto pledge for tighter regulation and monitoring as it emerged politicians had claimed to be able to influence policy.
Ex-Cabinet minister Stephen Byers was among retiring MPs interviewed by a fictitious US lobbying firm as part of a secret filming operation for a television documentary. He told an undercover reporter he had secured secret deals with ministers, could get confidential information from Number 10 and was able to help firms involved in price fixing get around the law.
The political author Anthony Seldon, pictured on the Wellington campus Photo: GRAHAM JEPSONWho do you trust – really? Chances are that the list will not take too long to compile: close family and friends, the odd neighbour or work colleague, your GP perhaps.
And institutions? The BBC still does well in polls — despite the Jonathan Ross, Russell Brand furore and the bloated salaries of its too-numerous executives — as well as the National Health Service, despite a never-ending stream of stories about its limitations.
My own list of what's needed to cure or corrupt political system is here - http://reform-uk-politics-now.blogspot.com/
Of course it would help if we had some more MPs who had a moral compass.
On the day the US Congress passed legislation providing health coverage to 32 million Americans without insurance, Political Scrapbook can reveal the Conservatives’ Cash Gordon campaign was developed by an anti-healthcare lobbyist described as “Karl Rove 2.0″.
Writing on the Blue Blog yesterday, the affable Sam Coates claimed that Conservatives’ campaign site against Labour/Unite links was “built in just a few days”. What he doesn’t tell you is that the system has been purchased off-the-shelf from Republican strategists David All Group and was originally developed to galvanise opposition to Barack Obama’s healthcare reforms.
Cash Gordon is based on Operation Waiting Game, which leverages social media against reforms which, it is claimed, “will have the same devastating effects in the United States as it has in Canada and in nations across Europe: longer wait times and lower quality care”.
In an embarrassment for CCHQ, the party’s flagship campaign is currently hosted alongside those attempting to ”rescue America from government-run health care”, including NotSoSure.org and Hands Off. Another site rails against homosexuals in the armed forces, stating the military “should not be used as a tool to advance the goals of gay activist groups”.
click on link to read story
I've started a video discussion;
Add your pennyworth in writing or by video at seismic.com
Charter 2010 takes no view as to the desirability or otherwise of a hung parliament. We simply want the politicians to plan for the possibility; and, if it materialises, to accept the voters’ verdict and negotiate responsibly for a multi-party supported government - not try to wangle their way into sole power if that is clearly what the electors have NOT voted for.A remarkable ICM poll for The Guardian gives us some strong indications as to the voters’ preferences at the upcoming election.
ICM asked: "In the General Election, it is possible that no party will win an overall majority of seats in the House of Commons. Putting aside your own party preference, do you think it would be better for Britain if..?
Overall, nearly half of those polled (44 per cent) said they preferred a hung parliament; fewer than one in five (18 per cent) preferred a Labour majority and just over a quarter (29 per cent) the Conservatives to win.
# The Labour Party got a strong majority on its own# The Conservative Party got a strong majority on its own
# There was a hung parliament, with the government having to work with smaller parties such as the Liberal Democrats
The strongest support for a hung parliament came from those married and with children (50 per cent), living in the North (48 per cent), women (47 per cent) and the under 65s (45-50 per cent).
So far as voting intention was concerned, not surprisingly, three quarters (74 per cent) of Liberal Democrat voters preferred a hung parliament. But an astonishing four in ten of Labour supporters preferred a hung parliament; as did over a quarter (26 per cent) of those who said they intended to vote Conservative.
On these figures, if the "Hung Parliament Party" were running in the election under our first-past-the-post system it would almost certainly win!
More seriously, the widely held assumptions of some politicians and journalists that Britain is by nature a country that prefers one-party rule and eschews coalitions are blown out of the water by this poll. Not for the first time, the people are ahead of the Westminster village.
Full details of the ICM poll can be found here.
Shouldn't this process arise from on-going dialogue between the MP and her/his constituents? - as a continuous process, not just when elections come around?
William Hague faced calls to quit yesterday after "lying" about Tory donor Lord Ashcroft's tax status.
Damning documents show the Party leader would have known 10 years ago that the billionaire peer had no intention of paying full tax in the UK.
The new evidence contradicts his claim he first heard Lord Ashcroft was a "non dom" - someone who keeps their foreign wealth out of the hands of the Inland Revenue - a few months ago.
The papers also reveal how the Conservatives conned the Lords appointments committee into believing he would become a permanent resident.
In his plea to Tony Blair in 1999 to make the tycoon a peer, Mr Hague wrote: "He is committed to becoming resident by the next financial year in order properly to fulfil his responsibilities in the House of Lords.
"This decision will cost him tens of millions a year in tax."
The Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy was so moved by David Beckham's devastating injury she immediately put pen to paper. Carol Ann, who writes a regular column for the Mirror, has given us her poem to publish exclusively below.
Achilles (for David Beckham)
Myth's river- where his mother dipped him, fished him, a slippery golden boyflowed on, his name on its lips. Without him, it was prophesised,
they would not take Troy.Women hid him, concealed him in girls' sarongs; days of sweetmeats, spices, silver songs...
but when Odysseus came,with an athlete's build, a sword and a shield, he followed him to the battlefield, the crowd's roar,
and it was sport, not war,
Click on link to read the poem
Do voters know who the real enemies are?
Plans to axe the House of Lords and replace it with a wholly elected upper chamber are being rushed through by the Government.
Justice Secretary Jack Straw is aiming to drive out the appointed and hereditary peers and set up a 300-seat "Senate" by making a pregeneral election announcement that will put the Tories on the spot.
David Cameron would then have to decide to back the proposal - or his cronies, such as Lord Ashcroft.
The blueprint would see all members directly elected, ending traditional party patronage.
A proportional representation system would be used for selection, with voting at the same time as elections.
So Fair Voting is good for this, but not for general elections? Many perhaps most of the current House of lords do a great job - including tempering the excesses of the Govt. Wouldn't a collegiate system be better? If they were Independent and held responsible to a constituency OK - but what then is the difference to the Commons? We need the wisest heads, the best servants of the people proven through dedicated service - not another bunch of professional politicians.
Click on link to read the article.
There are ten reasons to be worried about what is happening, and they need to be taken together.
1. Increase in stop and search
2. Increase in the powers of search and arrest
3. Increase in surveillance and intrusion by officials
4. Increase in CCTV
5. Massive increase in phone tapping
6. The retention of the illegal DNA database
7. The push for ID cards
8. Militarisation of the police
9. Development of Control Orders
10.Complicity in torture
Those who don't vote can't blame those who did if things get worse - be Independent get your friends to vote. I'm for - http://www.stevenford.co.uk/hexham.html
Click on link to get the full story.
The proper way to bail out a Euro member would be to amend the Treaty to allow a formal system of loans and grants to Euro members who get into trouble. The Treaty could provide for suitable controls over the member state’s conduct in return for seeking and being granted aid. I would favour that approach, as I think the Euro area needs a better system of transfers.
As a non Euro member it would give the UK a good opportunity to bow out of more of the needless EU government that we do not want, and would give us the opportunity to have a refererendum on the Treaty as modified. Clearly the UK should not be party to the bails outs or the rules imposed on Euro members. The EU would doubtless need to give us substantial powers back to make a new Treaty palatable to the UK public.
A single currency scheme either needs a single government which can make the calls on how much to borrow, how much to print, and how much to spend, or it needs a set of rules over how much each of the individual memebrs can spend, borrow and print. If I were a German taxpayer I would not wish to bail out Greece. I would not be satisfied they have done enough to cut their spending. I would be worried in case Portugal, Spain and others were in the queue for my support as well.
Back to my old problem - I agree with parts of all of the major parties.
The only thing that would help would be many more Independents + Fair Voting.
