Appalling, quite appalling:

A Tory councillor has claimed that there should be compulsory sterilisation for parents on benefits … Mr Ward, who has sat on Medway Council in Kent for eight years … said, “I think there is an increasingly strong case for compulsory sterilisation of all those who have had a second (or third, or whatever) child while living off state handouts.”

The Daily Mail has the full story on their website.

Here’s one example of what that would mean – suppose you have a happily married couple, hardworking for years and then one of the suffers a horrible accident at work and is invalided out. They decide they want to have a family, and rather than bring up an only child would rather go for having two children. Knowing full well the financial implications, and being willing to bear them, they decide that the partner of the injured one will also stop work for a couple of years to help bring up their new family as it arrives.

Only not in the world of John Ward – he would have them ordered off to compulsory sterilisation.

As I said – appalling, quite appalling. He seems to have in mind some caricature of everyone who is on benefits as being irresponsible and feckless – what a wrong, out of touch and insulting view. And that’s without getting on to the appallingly extreme and inhumane nature of the solution he wants – compulsory sterilisation.

UPDATE (26 March): John Ward has now quit as a councillor.

I see Liberal Democrat Voice has now got an online poll on the question of the medical research proposals in the bill – so go and vote!

No surprise that this Bill took up a good chunk of the time when I appeared on The Westminster Hour yesterday – but, as ever, the discussion was largely about process. Should it be a free vote or not?

Focusing in on the question simply of whether or not there should be a free vote on the bill (or on parts of it) misses two main points.

First – this political process story is presenting it as if the only way that Labour MPs will get to vote with their conscience is if there is a free vote. That’s wrong – a vote being whipped doesn’t suddenly mean all choice is taken away from you. Sure – it’s harder to vote ‘the other way’ if there’s a three line whip in place, but we shouldn’t be so blinded by the Parliamentary whipping system as to think that if a whip is in place you have all your freedom of choice removed.

Second – the question of some Labour MPs being able to vote with their conscience and in line with their personal moral beliefs has so dominated discussion that we’re in danger of losing the larger moral picture. How can I look in the eye of a constituent who is suffering from a disease such as Alzheimer’s and say, “I am going to oppose giving scientists the best possible chance to cure your disease?”

When it comes to health care there are many difficult issues – too many opportunities, and not enough money to pay for them all (regardless of which party is setting spending levels). But when we have opportunities that resources do allow – how can I turn my back on people and say, “No, I don’t want the best research carried out into healing you?”

For me, the only moral, conscionable choice is to say – “yes, we’re going to do our best to give scientists a chance of curing your disease”.

I appreciate some people will disagree with that – but for me too, this is a moral choice.

An interesting verdict from The Independent’s Readers’ Editor:

Bloggers. Dontcha hate ’em? You can just imagine them out there – in some grungy internet café, consumed with bile, prejudice and misinformation, drinking from a scummy coffee cup. One thing they won’t be drinking from is any kind of fount of wisdom. And as for the ‘Oxford English Dictionary’, doubt if they’ve ever heard of it. Citizen journalists? Pah! How dare they compare themselves with pukka representatives of the Fourth Estate, with their years of training, unswerving devotion to the truth, total lack of bias, and staunch regard for journalistic codes of ethics?

At least, that’s the view of many mainstream journalists still, despite the fact that the media landscape has changed almost totally in the past two decades. As a readers’ editor who consumes blogs for a living, you’d expect me to take the opposite view – and I do. No longer are blogs merely – as one former editor of ‘The Independent’ once put it – “the din of small voices”. The best of them now rival Fleet Street’s finest. So here are half-a-dozen reasons for all you bloggers to be cheerful…
(Read the full piece here)