Details of MPs’ expenses are for sale, alleges an indignant member. A terrible breach of privacy that may reveal all kinds of perfectly legal but very embarrassing purchases. Tabloid editors must be very tempted to enter a bidding war.
The embarrassment of Jacqui Smith is a good thing. It has exposed the system by which MPs are remunerated to ridicule and accelerated the process of reform. Parliament’s attempt to hide how much MPs are paid by allowing them to claim generous allowances has been exposed. It is a corrupt practice in itself – voters should be able to access transparent information on MPs’ pay – and encourages a corrupt culture whereby MPs are constantly looking to maximise their claim. That second home allowance needs to be spent by financial year end or it’s lost, so one might as well splash out on a £1,000 fireplace, £460 table and a new entertainment system.
There is a thriving market in personal data and with that comes a sad inevitability to the theft and sale of information that may embarrass MPs. The more information the state collects, the more common will be scandals like this.
As this summer’s European Elections approach, we may expect Conservative politicians to heed the likes of the Telegraph’s Christopher Booker and fight for the ‘right of workers to work more than 48 hours a week’.
Booker reckons we should all be outraged that limiting working hours will cost business £11.9bn each year. But in truth we should be outraged at the Tories’ desire to worsen working conditions for Britain’s hardest workers and set back the fight to eradicate poverty.
The great majority of people working long hours are not highflying entrepreneurs (who will do as they please in any case): the great majority of people working long hours do so because they are in rubbish jobs where the hourly rate is low and overtime is their only hope of a living wage.
The labour market is different to others in that the amount of labour supplied not price sensitive – the same number of people require jobs whether demand is high or low – but choking off the supply of labour will cause wages to rise. And that’s a good thing.
That £11.9bn Booker mentions is destined for the pockets of Britain’s hardest workers.
Together with the minimum wage, which Tories also opposed, limiting working hours is government’s most effective tool in the fight on poverty. It also gives many people a chance to enjoy a more fulfilling work-life balance.
The government may struggle to eradicate child poverty, but progress has been made: ‘In 1998/99, there were 3.4 million children (26%) living in poverty. By 2006/07 (the latest figures available) this had fallen by 600,000 children to 2.9 million children.’ To let the Conservatives throw that away would be a tragedy.
Let’s not rush to the bottom; cheap labour for business means poor pay and long hours for Britain’s hardest workers… and let David Cameron know how you feel.
Showing now and until 18 April 2009 at ‘Ealing’s flagship cultural venue’ is what claims to be the first major contemporary exhibition to explore the experiences of Irish immigrant artists in London: The Quiet Men.
The five artists represented include my uncle, Dermot Holland (pictured), Brian Whelan (curator), John Duffin, Bernard Canavan and the late Daniel Carmody. (It is a source of regret that the group could find no women to join them.)
One reason an exhibition of this nature has been such a long time coming – Dermot left Dublin aged 21 and has lived near London’s Finsbury Park for more than fifty years – may be that the art of these quiet men is relatively traditional with an emphasis on painting and long-established craft skills.
Proud to know his art history Dermot, for one, is dismissive of Brit Art and the loud contemporary scene, which he seems to regard as an aberration. So while Dermot Holland the Irish immigrant is not the outsider he was fifty years ago, Dermot Holland the artist who stands aside, stubbornly clinging to traditional forms, certainly is.
Another inevitable contrast with the now establishment YBAs is the Quiet Men’s ability to offer art that captures scenes – pubs, launderettes and orderly bus queues – from lives lived over some decades. And memories of an impoverished Ireland with no jobs and no benefits. Religion also figures prominently, with Dermot’s contribution including an updated crucifixion.
Often Dermot’s art seems most concerned with spectators. In his rock concert and pub scenes the apparent stars of the show are almost whitened out (under the gaze of too bright lights, perhaps) while we are drawn close to examine a crowd filled with individuals.
While the group does occasionally fall into the trap of offering us nostalgia for much harder times, Dermot has not been afraid to tackle tougher subject matter. His glue sniffer series is inspired by an incident in which he stumbled across solvent abusers at a party at a squat. Associated with punk, glue sniffing entered the popular imagination in the late 1970s when many everyday items, like correction fluid and highlighter pens, contained toxic chemicals and some kids would sniff anything in search of a high. Glue sniffers were said to reside in the council estate next to my primary school and we children imagined them as werewolf like creatures who would attempt to force you to inhale and so become one of them; destined to wander the estates of north London in a zombie like state. Anyway. By accident or design, Dermot seems to capture all this.
It goes without saying that The Quiet Men is well worth a trip out to west London. The Quiet Men, PM Gallery & Pitzhanger Manor, Walpole Park, Mattock Lane, Ealing, London, W5 5EQ; 11 March-18 April 2009; Tuesday-Friday 1-5pm; Saturday 11am-5pm; trains & tube to Ealing Broadway; admission free.
The Quiet Men will travel to Spain, Philadelphia and Chicago between 2009 and 2011.
‘Does an ID card restrict your right to live your life as you choose? No. Does it restrict your right to freedom of speech and association? No. Does it restrict your right to work or to enjoy your spare time in the way you want to? No. Nor does it restrict your right to go to school, seek hospital treatment, claim a pension or access public services.’
– Labour Students’ Mike Joslin
Reading Mike Joslin’s, chair of Manchester Labour Students, defence of ID Cards it is very hard to not to suppress a sigh: the ‘if-you’ve-done-nothing-wrong…’ line has always been ultra-naive.
ID cards will restrict freedom of speech and association. Many people will be dissuaded from engaging in peaceful protest because ID cards will make it easier for police to store their personal details on criminal databases.
That the Metropolitan Police already keeps private information and photos of protesters for seven years, (people who have not been convicted or accused of any crime), comes of no surprise to those of us in the habit of refusing to share our names and addresses with police officers. The police routinely abuse the powers they already have; I’ve been in a minibus pulled over for a ‘random roadworthiness test’, photographed and asked for a name and address.
The police defence that those who engage in lawful protest may go on to break the law is contemptible. It assumes those who dissent have a tendency towards criminality.
ID cards not only threaten liberty, they are a risk to the person, as they will require a monumental and exceptionally valuable database to which a large number of people will have access.
Mike Joslin’s argument that ID cards will help track down bail absconders, reduce identity fraud and help fight terrorism is unproven and there is no evidence that ID cards have helped fight these evils in countries that have them already.
Meanwhile, Joslin argues that ID cards will make student life easier as the kids will find it so much simpler to prove their age, but there are already a number of proof of age schemes around.
Should the use of ID cards prove widespread, many people will feel that not having one will restrict their right to live their lives as they choose, to work and to spend their spare time in the way they want to. They may find that not having an ID card makes accessing public services a hassle.
People may feel compelled to take an ID card – to surrender a little of their liberty and expose themselves to risk – for an easier life.
That Mullah Abdullah Zakir, a former inmate at Guantanamo Bay, is now a Taliban commander is a huge propaganda coup for those who believe we need to give up some of our freedom if we are to defeat those who would take our freedom away.
No legal system is perfect. There will always be miscarriages of justice and there will always be instances where the guilty get off. In agreeing the principles or our approach, we need to consider which is worse; to lock up a greater proportion of the guilty in the knowledge that some innocents will be imprisoned alongside them or to minimise the risk of imprisoning innocents in the knowledge some guilty will escape justice.
Those who support Guantanamo Bay (and so presumably accept the Pentagon’s statistics), appear to believe that a justice system in which 89 per cent of inmates are not guilty is okay.
Not only is that figure is too high for me, it is almost certainly too high for those susceptible to radicalisation. It exposes Western, and particularly US, justice and the rule of law as a myth. Having exposed the rule of law as a myth, it provides justification to those who wish to wage war.
Congratulations to LabourList for publishing Leila Deen’s cringing attempt at a feminist defence of her gunging Lord Mandelson. Leila Deen (who claims to be attractive – check her out, but don’t bitch), peddles a silly line that if the women ruled the world everything would be different, climate change being ‘a problem created by patriarchy’.
I guess it’s natural to have an ‘if we ruled the world’ fantasy that evokes some kind of utopia and it’s probably unfair to cite Thatcher, but it isn’t unfair to point out that women have traditionally been more likely to vote Tory. An important study that provides evidence that this is changing also suggests that women are less likely to consider the impact any given policy has on Britain as a whole and more likely to prioritise the interests of their family. This implies that women are actually less likely to be concerned for the environment than men. Leila might counter that women are more nurturing, but if that’s true isn’t that only because the prevailing patriarchy has allocated the nurturing role to women and it’s very difficult to walk away from that?
I reckon these gender differences are greatly exaggerated. They make good newspaper copy if, like Leila Deen, you don’t mind indulging sexist claptrap, but that’s about all.
The chance to catch Eddie Izzard playing to an audience of just few hundred, as opposed to many thousands, and for the half the price of his Manchester Evening News Arena shows was not to be missed last Friday.
Izzard was on great form with a set that pokes fun at creationists, the Ten Commandments, Noah’s Ark and which is best: PC or Mac. So, with the exception of that last item, all was safe and uncontroversial.
The hour (maybe hour and a half, I wasn’t paying attention) sped by at a pace just short of manic, slowed only by the odd strange heckle (‘daddy… daddy… I want you to be my daddy’) which enhanced the evening in way those who sit at the back MEN are unlikely to experience (this what makes an intimate gig, I guess).
The only downside was sitting with some occasionally fidgety students, on whom the late start seemed to take a toll. Kids today just don’t have any stamina.
Anyway. If you get a chance to see him later this year, take it.
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