BrianKaneOnline » British politics

Guess Who Else Wants Freedom From The British

Brian — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:34:32 +0000

The Scots, the Northern Irish, the Welsh, even the Cornish have all expressed a desire to have more autonomy from the United Kingdom in recent years. The announcement came this week that the Scottish referendum is now scheduled for the fall of 2014, but the Christian Science Monitor says that the latest group to be feeling its oats a bit is the English themselves. Public opinion in England proper is beginning to show a bit of resentment towards the other nations, particularly Scotland, for the amount of money the national government spends to support them, and a bit of old-fashioned John Bull-ism.

Calling His MacBluff

Brian — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 16:30:43 +0000

Back in November I posted about the efforts to stage a referendum on independence for Scotland. Now, Prime Minister David Cameron is calling Scottish Premier Alex Salmond’s bluff by agreeing to a referendum…as long as it is held “sooner than later” and as long as it is a straight up-or-down vote on complete independence. This analysis by Guy Lodge in the British political magazine “Prospect” considers the risks both sides run by going ahead with the referendum. Lodge argues that Salmond has more to lose and that Cameron has triangulated the situation well, but the national government could find itself having less room to negotiate in any future devolution agreements.

The third option, called “devo max”, gives Scotland full financial responsibility, while retaining the national structure for most political/governmental institutions. This Guardian op-ed by Simon Jenkins states with little ambiguity why “devo max” is probably the best solution for both sides, and takes Cameron to task for not embracing what Jenkins sees as a pragmatic solution to devolution.

Scotland Forever

Brian — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 16:34:52 +0000

Ever since the Scottish National Party became the majority in the Scottish Parliament several years ago, there’s been talk of holding a national referendum to vote on becoming fully independent from the United Kingdom, and this past May the government’s Secretary of State for Scotland said that the government would not block such a referendum, even though both the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrat Party that make up the current government officially oppose Scottish independence (Labour does too, for that matter). It was more a public admission that the national government could not stop the Scottish Parliament than any sign of support.

Polling suggests that independence is not a lock: not quite one-third of the population supports it, with just about as many supporting remaining within the U.K. if more autonomy were granted. This recent article from The Awl by British journalist Jennifer O’Mahony explains some of the issues that Scotland and the rest of the U.K. would face should they actually part ways. Not surprisingly, the biggest one is finances: the U.K. government spends more per capita on the people in Scotland than in England. The U.K. might like to save that money, while the new leaders in Edinburgh would have to find a way to generate the revenue needed to continue programs and services.

Oh, and yes, they do have oil. So don’t be surprised when OUR government decides that wearing a kilt is a sure sign of being a terrorist and that we will have to invade Scotland AT ONCE to preserve our freedom.

The Ghost Of Hitler Is Laughing

Brian — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 16:33:04 +0000

The resurgence of the neofascist right in Europe seems to be headed straight for the presidential palaces all across the continent:

The BBC reports that an early poll in the upcoming French presidential elections shows National Front leader Marine LePen beating sitting president Nicolas Sarkozy by a small margin. The same poll also puts her ahead of the likely Socialist candidate, Martine Aubry. LePen is the daughter of Jean-Marie LePen, the long-time leader of the National Front. She inherited the leadership of the far right party last year and currently serves as a member of the European Parliament. Under her leadership, the National Front has curtailed some of its anti-Semitic rhetoric in favor of rallying against the new bogeyman of the Western world: Muslims.

Meanwhile, a recent opinion poll in the U.K. indicates that almost half of the population would support an anti-immigrant far right party if it toned down the thuggish, violent behavior of the British National Party. The BNP were humiliated in last year’s elections, losing 26 out of 28 of the local council seats they controlled, so it’s particularly striking that such a large portion of the British public would support a far-right party.

This Project Syndicate op-ed piece by Bard College political scientist Ian Buruma looks at the new face of the hard right in European politics and their likely continued electoral success. He argues that as the right-wing parties find their way into coalition governments, they will of necessity have to tone down their harsher rhetoric, but the shift in public opinion appears to be willing to meet them at least part of the way. If no Hitler looks to rise out of their advance, perhaps things will not spiral out of control, but factors like the flailing economies of a number of European countries don’t bode well for a smooth integration of right-wing extremists into governments.

Well And Truly Fucked

Brian — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 13:58:22 +0000

Line ‘em up, take their pictures, and then somebody PLEASE get rid of these motherfuckers, each and every one. Over the weekend, they all sat down and guaranteed that anyone who hadn’t been fleeced in the Bank Crisis of 2008 would get fleeced in the Double-Dip Recession of 2010…all except the bankers, of course, who continue to rob the industrialized world blind with the silent approval of these assholes (in return, I’m sure, for a few crumbs from the bankers’ tables). They all nodded their heads about reining in deficits by slashing desperately needed economic stimulus, even as the U.S. prepares to waste another $33 billion on Afghanistan.

At least they had the decency not to be photographed in silly costumes this time, The wall of black-suited men (pace Angela Merkel) is appropriately funerary for the death sentence they all signed off on.

A selection of news articles and op-eds:

Paul Krugman has already come up with a name for what is about to happen to us all: “The Third Depression”
Naomi Klein, writing in the Toronto Globe and Mail, reminds us how the original G7 came to be expanded into the G20 in the first place as brainchild of Larry Summers and Canadian finance minister Paul Martin while they were setting up the conditions that caused all this mess a decade ago
Economist Joseph Stiglitz, who was the guy who first sounded the alarm back in 2008, wrote this op-ed in the British newspaper The Independent over the weekend about the new Tory-LibDem government’s austerity budget and how it will devastate the weakest segments of British society.
Economist and member of Parliament Robert Skidelsky posted this article about Keynesian economic ideas and social democracy on the commentary site Project-Syndicate.org, which puts a little context on the current situation and also tries to separate traditional notions of Keynesian economics from the ideological blinders of the current debate.
Meanwhile, on the right…Tory cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith wants Britons to “move where the jobs are” (do you suppose he means China or India?), conservative blowhard George Will said that unemployment benefits are a subsidy for lazy bastards, and the international business editor of the London Telegraph opined that “The only plausible escape route for the West is a decade of fiscal austerity offset by helicopter drops of printed money, for as long as it takes.” You know, like Zimbabwe.

Michael Foot

Brian — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 18:26:43 +0000

The Labour Party of Britain was born in 1900 as the confederation of three labor-oriented political parties, and stood as the bastion of the establishment left in British politics for most of the 20th century. Though Labour led the government a number of times, the ascendancy of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives in the 1980s diminished the party’s political strength and popularity. The leader of Labour in the early 1980s was Michael Foot, who passed away this week at the age of 96. The disastrous election loss in 1983 shook up Labour, forced out Foot, and led to the rise of Tony Blair and what is called “New Labour” — a more centrist, if not outright conservative, platform that has held the government since the mid-1990s (although it is widely expected that the Conservatives are likely to return to power in the next general election).

In reading the several obituaries and blog posts I ran across, I was most impressed by this quote from Foot that reminded me very of why there was, and still is, a need for social democratic politics and political parties, not just in the U.K. but all over the world:

“We are not here in this world to find elegant solutions, pregnant with initiative, or to serve the ways and modes of profitable progress. No, we are here to provide for all those who are weaker and hungrier, more battered and crippled than ourselves. The is our only certain good and great purpose on earth, and if you ask me about those insoluble economic problems that may arise if the top is deprived of their initiative, I would answer, to hell with them. the top is greedy and mean and will always find a way to take care of themselves. They always do.”

British and American liberal politicians alike need to be shaken from their from their cozy alliances with “the top” and restored to their roots as the champions of the working man. The passing of Foot, like the passing of Ted Kennedy, reminds us that there are too few people like them left.

Soapbox Hero

Brian — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:21:39 +0000

The British singer-songwriter Billy Bragg is also a political activist in the U.K., and the Manchester Guardian has this video of him recently standing on a soapbox at Speaker’s Corner in London’s Hyde Park. His speech to the assorted people gathered is about his decision to withhold paying his income taxes in protest over the British government’s mishandling of bonus money being handed out to bankers in a situation not too different from the egregious bonus scandal in this country. What I liked about his speech, though, is how well he explains the importance of taxes to society in general. Teabaggers and similar idiots in this country live in a fantasyland when it comes to taxation, and they have too many people in this country convinced that taxes are EEEEEEEVIL and that somehow everything would be perfect if nobody had to pay them. Bragg makes plain the value of the social contract not just for the general welfare of the people, but also as a political force. American government, even moreso than other democratic governments, derives all of its power from the consent of the governed, contrary to what the Supreme Court would have us think, and taxation is a direct tool of that power. Eliminating taxation deprives citizens of a necessary means of political control, which he demonstrates by refusing to pay his taxes. Granted, the efforts of an individual will never be more than symbolic, but it’s the little lesson in “Why It’s Important” that I wanted to share with you.

Somewhere In East Germany, The Former Head Of The Stasi Weeps

Brian — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:04:44 +0000

Proving once again that there is nothing that can’t be turned into a way to make a buck (or, in this case, a pound), a British company called Internet Eyes wants to launch a service where ordinary people are given access to the literally millions of CCTV feeds from all around the U.K. so that they can spend their time looking for people doing illegal things. The money is made by charging the people who own the closed-circuit cameras for this “service”, and the viewers are incented by a monthly £1000 prize given to the person who spots the most actual crimes being committed.

The U.K. winds hands-down for the sheer number of CCTV cameras installed all around the country, with the largest concentration being in London. You see a lot of different numbers bandied about, since there is no real accounting of them, but the consensus is that there are about 4.2 million cameras nationwide, and about 1.5 million of those in London alone. However, it turns out that the cameras do virtually nothing to prevent crime: of those 1.5 million cameras, about 10,000 are official police cameras, but a 2007 report showed that the rate of unsolved crimes in London hovered around 80% and that the cameras were not utilized in either preventing crime or solving cases.

This article in the September issue of Washington Monthly takes an in-depth look at the issue of CCTV monitoring in Britain. The author, Jamie Malanowski, found that the police look at the cameras less as a crime-fighting tool and more as yet another form of security theater — people, they say, are put at ease by the thought of the cameras watching over them, and that is more important than actually, you know, catching criminals and stuff. I think Malanowski too readily dismisses the potential for significant abuse with the argument that there’s no centralization of all these surveillance systems at the moment, because along comes this company who demonstrates EXACTLY how they can all be linked up through their business model, and even offers to “crowdsource” the necessary manpower to create a much more active and coordinated surveillance. Further, the recent revelation that CCTV cameras are being installed inside the homes of people who have been tagged with ASBOs seem to indicate a greater willingness on the part of local governments to use the threat of surveillance as a tool for manipulating behavior.

Jumping back over to our side of the pond, it turns out that the American city with the largest installation of CCTV cameras is Chicago. The Chicago Police have 1500 cameras, which is a drop in the bucket compared to London, but the linked article cites a U of I professor who says that the overall network of cameras is more like 15,000, which puts Chicago just about on par with London. Unlike Scotland Yard, however, the Chicago Police have a much more active program called (quite ominously) Operation Virtual Shield, and they claim that the network has “aided in thousands of arrests” (quote from WSJ article attributed to an unnamed, but official, Chicago Police spokesperson).

You can see where this is going. If the Internet Eyes program is the least bit successful in Britain, how long will it take for some Web 2.0 entrepreneur with a wad of VC cash to launch a similar thing in this country? And how easy would it be for a cash-strapped municipality like Chicago to turn over their surveillance system to a private enterprise? Now imagine the next phase, where the startup decides that they can take this to the next level by offering bigger and bigger cash prizes, and maybe even launching some viral marketing to promote the idea. Maybe even, say, staging bogus crimes to demonstrate the “effectiveness” of the service. Now, let’s say that really catches on big, and a year down the line a television or cable network buys in and starts producing a TV show featuring how ordinary people sitting at home are winning big money and “solving crimes”. How long do you think it would take before there was a CCTV camera in every imaginable corner of the United States, each one being watched ALL DAY by some teabagger-type self-proclaimed “vigilante” ratting out anyone and everyone he doesn’t like?

I give it about two years before that’s exactly what starts happening, just in time for the Republicans to pick it up and run with it as a “law-and-order” issue in the 2012 elections. And President Palin will be ALL OVER that shit, you betcha.

Honest Politicians? Perish The Thought!

Brian — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 18:22:32 +0000

The American news media is too busy worrying about Jon and Kate Gosselin and Susan Boyle, but across the pond the Really Big News is that there’s a scandal taking down politicians all over the place. Two weeks ago, the Speaker of the House of Commons said he would step down from that post later this month over reports that he had improperly claimed personal expenses such as a duck pond at his home as parliamentary expenses. His resignation, which came after immense pressure from all the main political parties, is the first time a House Speaker has been forced out in three centuries.

But the “Expenses Scandal” isn’t going away. Today, the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, has also stepped down from her cabinet position as a result of her involvement and a bigger reshuffle of the cabinet is expected later in the week. Conservative and Labor MPs alike are dropping like flies, so it’s not exactly a one-party debacle.

So I found this piece at the British libertarian website Spiked! a little amusing because it has a terribly British take on the scandal. The argument, made by the editor, is that this whole expense scandal has come about through the posturing of the two biggest political parties over notions of transparency and honesty in government, and since Britain has done perfectly well without them all this time, it seems ludicrous to start asking for them now. He says “who cares” if a politician skims a little off the top of his expense account; if you insist on these people being squeaky clean, you’re going to force all the good ones right out of office and find yourself stuck with a Parliament full of Tony Blairs — clean-cut and bland, but politically useless.

And he has a point, because that is EXACTLY what happened in the United States. Contrary to our woefully underfed knowledge of our own history, American government, especially at the national level, was long the province of scoundrels and scalliwags, intent on enriching themselves and their supplicants at the public trough. But the politics of the late 1960s and early 1970s took the tack of both sides trying to out-goody-two-shoes one another, fueled in no small part by Watergate, resulting in the current crop of boneheads and shysters who fill the halls of Congress today, the empty suit in the White House, and the non-stop media torrent of scandalmongering, fear-baiting, and outright foolishness that has totally replaced any sort of real discussion about serious issues.

So, let the Right Honorable Member from Puddlington-On-Marsh claim his girlfriend’s Botox treatments as “legitimate expenses” as long as he does a good job. And let’s bring back people like former Illinois congressman Dan Rostenkowski, who stole stamps from the Congressional Post Office and did time in prison for it, but was a helluva legislator and knew how to get things done in Washington. The Republicans can even have back some of their scoundrels if they’ll promise to stop being such immense doo-doo heads.

No Sex, Please, We’re British

Brian — Wed, 13 May 2009 16:27:59 +0000

The libertarian magazine Reason has a guest column from Brendan O’Neill, who is one of the editors of the British political commentary website Spiked, wherein O’Neill talks about a current news story in the U.K. about a woman who was issued an “ASBO” (anti-social behavior order) because her neighbors complained that she made too much noise when having sex. She was recently arrested for violating the ASBO for, well, you can guess.

Giggle and titter about that as you will, O’Neill uses this case to illustrate the extent to which the U.K. has gone far beyond the “Nanny State” and descended into an Orwellian nightmare of a police state so intent on imposing social order that it has resorted to arresting people for loud sex. (You can see how this criticism would be very popular with libertarians, I trust). The British, after all, are the most surveilled people on Earth, with literally millions of closed-circuit television cameras situated in every imginable nook and cranny to constantly monitor public spaces. The ASBO, introduced in the mid-1990s was introduced as an effort to rein in street gangs and other hooliganism that run rampant in British cities, but has become a readily-abused law that can be applied to just about anything anyone doesn’t like and has created situations like people being arrested for wearing “threatening” hats or hoodie sweatshirts. And last week, you may recall, I linked to a story about London police similarly abusing an anti-terrorism law to randomly stop and search 170,000 people in 2008 without prosecuting a single terrorist.

O’Neill thus paints a picture of today’s average British citizen as something akin to the residents of the former East Germany — cowering in fear of the police and of neighbors who might rat them out to the authorities at any time, for any reason (including revenge or spite), encouraged to spy on one another. Recently BoingBoing featured some brilliantly scathing send-ups of the “see something, say something” poster campaign going on in the U.K. right now.

But this isn’t simply the ranting of a libertarian critic. A post at Slashdot yesterday links to a new report commissioned by a cybersecurity firm called Cryptohippie that ranks the nations of the world with regard to “police state” conditions based on a meta-analysis of criteria collected by a range of international privacy and civil rights interest groups such as EFF, EPIC, and Freedom House. The Cyberhippie report (available here as a PDF) concludes that the U.K. is Number Five in the world for police state restrictions and incursions on personal liberty. (Number One is China).

Why should we Americans care? We’re Number Six.

What I found particularly intriguing and disturbing about O’Neill’s article is the pull quote from George Orwell’s “1984″ that he uses to introduce the article:

“Unlike Winston, [Julia] had grasped the inner meaning of the Party’s sexual puritanism. It was not merely that the sex instinct created a world of its own which was outside the Party’s control and which therefore had to be destroyed if possible. What was more important was that sexual privation induced hysteria, which was desirable because it could be transformed into war-fever and leader-worship.”

In this country, the idea of the “nanny state” is often used to represent a collection of ideas and opinions that blame “political correctness” on liberals, but in truth the imposition of rigid social order and overbearing morality is a traditional behavior of the right, and the American Right’s crusades to oppose gay marriage and civil rights, to roll back affirmative action, to ban abortion, and a host of other social issues are part and parcel of the traditional right’s activities. A book called “The Conservative Nanny State” considers the real agenda behind “nanny state” and/or “police state” behavior and tries to pull back the curtain of deception to show how the creeping spectre of an American police state is the doing of the conservative movement.