Category Archives: Blog

Corruption is corruption is corruption

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When Saudi Hawk fightersI’ve talked before about corruption and the international arms trade – with the allegations around the Al Yamamah deal with Saudi Arabia particularly in mind – it’s not been uncommon to get feedback about these sorts of crimes being – well – ok really, because everyone is at it, aren’t they?

Well – that’s not my view! So I’ve done a piece, published earlier today on Liberal Democrat Voice which addresses the issue head on:

Imagine you’ve been burgled and (by a small miracle!) someone is up in court, charged with the burglary. How impressed would you be if the accused said, “OK, I did do it – but you have to understand. I’m a poor student at the local university and all the French and US students there steal things too, so it wouldn’t be fair if I was left out and had to make do without the proceeds of crime too?” Not very I think! But that’s pretty much the excuse so often rolled out to brush away corruption around international arms deals – everyone else gives out bribes you know, and it would be so unfair and unforgivable if we didn’t too.

You can read the rest of my case over on Liberal Democrat Voice.

Tragic death

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Yesterday – was phoned by journalists for comments on the poor 17 month old boy who died in a north London hospital having being horrifically wounded. It looks as if Haringey may be in the frame as the child was thought to be on the ‘at risk’ register and the police have arrested his mother and her boyfriend.

Of course, the first thing I (and everyone else) always think of when this sort of news hits the streets is Victoria Climbie. Having been a councillor at the time – and seen the catalogue of mistakes made by a number of agencies (not just Haringey Council) – I can’t help wondering whether this case is in any way a result of lessons not being learned. I was always horrified that no officer and no politician resigned or was sacked over Victoria – only the end of the chain social worker paid any price for that tragedy.

However, no information hard information as yet – so need to wait and see before forming any views or conclusions.

Water, water – not everywhere

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A water tapWater is all around us. We drink it – although most of us should probably drink more of it – I know I need to. We shower in it – at least I hope we all do. We swim in it – that is, if you are one of the lucky ones considering the British summer. We are even made up of water ourselves. And it’s a deadly serious area of international development policy.

Labour is dead keen on only helping to fix the water supply crisis in many developing countries by using public-private partnership type setups. Yet we know from our own public services just how controversial, expensive and ineffecient they can be.

So what should we be doing? Well you’ll have to read me latest article – this time for Liberal Democrat News to find out!

Five reasons to be serious during the silly season

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At the moment the papers are full of “silly season” stories (and blogs seem to be full of stories about how the media are full of silly season stories – we just need the TV to start covering how the blogs are covering … !), but just because J Prescott and G Brown go off on their summer holidays, it doesn’t mean the world stops turning.

So here are five serious (but I hope interesting!) stories that have just caught my eye in between the piece of Lego retrieved from the sea / remember to shake the sand out of your shoes before leaving the beach / etc stories:

a. Good news from the Amazon: the rate of deforestation has fallen by a quarter. Good news for our environment and for us all – which ever country we live in.

b. Sierra Leone has had pretty successful and free elections – and credit where credit’s due, this was one country where Labour’s much vaunted “ethical foreign policy” did seem to amount to something, with effective intervention to stop horrendous violence.

c. Big floods in China, affecting over 1.2 million people. Many stories of individual tragedy – and as with the Brazil story – possibly an interesting impact on us here in the UK too, because – will we see a run of major floods which the Chinese put down to climate change, and so hastens their own action on the global environment?

d. There looks to be a power struggle going on in Iran with the ministers for oil and mines and industry being sacked. With its nuclear potential, oil supplies and influence over Iraq and other countries the fallout could be a big story. Or it might be just a minor shuffling of names. Time will tell us…

e. Fears of the spread of bird flu may have subsided here recently, but it has just accounted for its first human victim on the island of Bali.

In fact – looking at that list again, I’m not sure that the news isn’t more interesting when the silly season arrives!

Someone doesn't like Gordon Brown

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Stomped around two parades of shops today in Alexandra ward (which runs east from the Fortis Green area through to the western edges of Wood Green).

Outside of parking – there was quite a tirade about the bureaucracy created for small businesses by our now Prime Minister G. Brown.

One chap said he hated him for what he had done. Using the example of his brother-in-law on £25k as a cab driver with a wife earning £5k as a school’s dinner lady – he went through the number of people now involved in the process of their tax return and claims (child tax credit etc). His argument was that there were now five people employed in one or other capacity by the Government to deal with the process. Before G. Brown – just one was required. Good point I thought!

YouTube poll: cast your vote

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I thought I’d follow up my previous blog posting about the call from some teachers for YouTube to be closed with an online poll!

The wording is from the motion that was passed at the recent teaching union conference, though any wording doesn’t quite capture the nuances of all possible views – so please do also use the comments if you want to add a “but…” to your yes/no vote.

http://www.libertyresearch.org.uk/rp/8

(If the voting buttons don’t appear it means you – or someone else using your computer! – has already voted).

My most popular blog postings of the last three months

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I’d normally expect late July and August to be a bit quieter on my website and blog, with more people on holiday and less politics in the news equalling fewer visitors. But – good news – traffic has been going up and up in the last couple of weeks – which has prompted me to look at what people have been looking at.

So from my web statistics here are the top ten blog postings of mine from the last three months in, drum roll please, reverse order (no peaking straight to the bottom of the list!):

10. Two entries tied for tenth – one on the same topic as number seven (see below), and the other was Which way for Islam? – based on my column for Asian Voice.

9. Parkland Walk – big local issue over its future and whether – amongst various suggestions – it should get concreted over to make for a fast cycle track.

8. Writing to a random peer – part of the campaign to stop Labour and Tory attempts to exempt MPs from the freedom of information rules. We won!

7. Pirate radio station update – the appearance of police adverts on an illegal radio station generated a flurry of interest (though there’s lots more to the story overall than just what’s in this post – e.g. the bigger issue around illegal radio stations and their impact on other stations). Another posting on this topic also came in at joint tenth.

6. Hearing the Highgate Choral Society – most surprising entry in the top ten list – guess that lots of members of the society may have come to read what I thought of them!

5. Should YouTube be closed? – is this a solution to bullying? Bit surprised that such a recent posting should appear so high in the list, but it’s picked up quite a lot of traffic from other sites by the looks of it.

4. Don’t vote for me! – no, I’m not running for London Mayor! (I see that Brian Paddick has overtaken me in the online poll since that posting though!).

3. London selection results – who is going to be standing for the Liberal Democrats at the next London Assembly elections? And what to make of the choices?

2. Highbury and Islington station is now on the Northern Line – what’s up with the signs at Finsbury Park? But it all ended happily with corrections made. Thank you Tfl!

1. Fortismere School update – perhaps not a surprise that an issue of such importance and passion as the future of a local school brings in the most traffic.

All in all, what do I think of the choices made by you, dear readers? It’s quite an interesting mix – some very local stories (which must mean lots of constituents reading this blog) along with wider political stories, and some not very political bits at all. So – quite a good balance I think!

You can now pontificate at length about what this all means for politics, blogging, liberal democracy and the price of fish!