The BNP deserves some sort of biscuit for this article on their website criticising secondary school trips to sites of the Holocaust in Poland. The BNP says this is "discriminatory and racist":
Further to elevate just one of the many atrocities Man has inflicted on Man is in itself discriminatory and racist. Emphasis on the lessons to be learned from the horrors of the 1940s concentrates one peoples’ suffering and implies that only Europeans can be guilty of such atrocities. It is racist because it minimises or completely omits from the school curriculum the lessons to be learned from the massacres of Christians in Armenia, the butchering of Serbs in Kosovo, the slaying of Christians (including many of our own forebears) at the hands of Islamic pirates as well as the ongoing ethnic conflicts in Rwanda, Sudan and Burma.
Crikey. It takes quite a peculiar mind to come up with that line of argument.
Thanks to Jonathan Wood for highlighting this.
Friday, October 5, 2007
Cameron's unscripted remarks - writer takes a bow
Kevin Maguire in the Daily Mirror is on the trail of the writer of Cameron's "unscripted" speech:
If David Cameron's audition to be a cable TV daytime host was unscripted, a line swallowed by many newspapers and broadcasters, can anyone explain why the "speech writer" was last night having his hand shaken by fellow Tories?
A lawyer acquaintance waiting in a Euston station taxi queue at about 7.45 watched as a well spoken man enjoyed the plaudits of fellow Cons fresh off the train from Blackpool.
Anyone know him? He looked in his 30s, fairish hair, dark suit. chequed shirt and a tie with an emblem or motif from a university or club.
Reading a London Evening Standard headline hailing "1 hour 10 mins without a script", he laughed and claimed he wrote the address before boasting "they believe he extemporised!" Another Tory laughed too then grabbed his hand before saying: "Seriously though, great speech. Congratulations."
That Cameron somehow made it up as he went along, apart from a few notes, is the best piece of spin for years.
Stripping down the Tories' married couples' tax proposal
Still being a bit baffled by what it is that the Tories are exactly proposing for married couples, I, at last, found a very sane analysis by Unity on the Ministry of Truth, summarised thus:
The policy here is all smoke and mirrors but when one wipes away the crap, one quickly discovers that all it actually amounts to is modest tax cut for the wealthy, and especially those with either no children or whose family has already effectively, if not actually, flown the nest.
The policy here is all smoke and mirrors but when one wipes away the crap, one quickly discovers that all it actually amounts to is modest tax cut for the wealthy, and especially those with either no children or whose family has already effectively, if not actually, flown the nest.
Thanks
Thanks to everyone who supported the International Bloggers' Day for Burma yesterday.
11325 bloggers and web surfers signed up to support the Day.
Google Blogsearch now has 6959 search hits for "Free Burma".
Abstaining from blogging for the day was quite refreshing.
I managed to get to 8.53pm without temptation. It was then that I saw the Guardian news about the polls. I got as far as pressing the "create" button, and then remembered those Monks.
I have a confession to make. I feel a bit guilty. In the early 1990s there was a LibDem conference emergency debate on Aung San Suu Kyi. I have to admit that I withdrew to the conference coffee bar for a chat. Sorry.
I have belatedly come to the "Free Burma" camp due to two things which have moved me:
1. This report, which I first read on Liberal Revolution:
They systematically ordered all the monks to line up, and banged and crushed each one's head against the brick wall of the monastery. One by one, the peaceful non-resisting monks fell to the ground screaming in pain.
2. The monks. It always takes a great deal to move religious men to get involved in politics. But when they do, you have to admire and be moved by their quiet dignity.
The Burma Campaign UK has an excellent website with loads of info here. There's a march for Burma in London on Saturday.
11325 bloggers and web surfers signed up to support the Day.
Google Blogsearch now has 6959 search hits for "Free Burma".
Abstaining from blogging for the day was quite refreshing.
I managed to get to 8.53pm without temptation. It was then that I saw the Guardian news about the polls. I got as far as pressing the "create" button, and then remembered those Monks.
I have a confession to make. I feel a bit guilty. In the early 1990s there was a LibDem conference emergency debate on Aung San Suu Kyi. I have to admit that I withdrew to the conference coffee bar for a chat. Sorry.
I have belatedly come to the "Free Burma" camp due to two things which have moved me:
1. This report, which I first read on Liberal Revolution:
They systematically ordered all the monks to line up, and banged and crushed each one's head against the brick wall of the monastery. One by one, the peaceful non-resisting monks fell to the ground screaming in pain.
2. The monks. It always takes a great deal to move religious men to get involved in politics. But when they do, you have to admire and be moved by their quiet dignity.
The Burma Campaign UK has an excellent website with loads of info here. There's a march for Burma in London on Saturday.
Osbourne's package will disappoint
7.10am today. Woken up with an electric cattle prod ruthlessly applied to my cojones...also known as a GMTV appearance by Edwina Currie, my all-time lift breakdown companion from hell. Trite, over-simplistic, ridiculously partisan, smug, arrogant, pig-headed....the list is endless. I resorted to the old "Hey Jude" humming trick as wifey wanted to listen to her, for some reason. I thought La Currie had been safely buried at midnight on a FiveLive phone-in programme. How wrong I was.
Anyway, the reason for GMTV drafting in the Great Curried Egg was to comment on the current political situation.
The Tory bouncette is not because of the Cameron speech. It's too recent. It is because of the Osbourne speech on Monday. Little Georgie has had a good week. I have revised my view of him, especially after his Question Time appearance last night (Ming was also superb, mainly because he continues to shamelessly milk the applause for being old and an Olympian).
Politically in the short-term, the Monday Osbourne speech was a master-stroke. However, in the medium to long-term his little package of tax measures (the fiscal equivalent of scratching a pig's back when compared to our 16p standard rate of income tax - the three Osbourne measures equate to less than 0.5% of government spending) are a damp-squib waiting to go off. Never mind Labour warning of a "search and destroy" mission on them. No searching is required.
Take the inheritance tax proposal first. The LibDems already announced, with typical shyness, virtually the same measure two weeks ago. We proposed to increase the threshold to £500,000. In fact, that takes most of the affected people out of inheritance tax anyway. (The Evening Standard says that the average price of a house in the highest priced area in the country, London, is £338,950) The area from £500,000 to £1 Million is the much smaller tail of the distributive dragon, and, far from a "Robin Hood" measure when coupled with the non-doms proposal, represents what Polly Toynbee called promising "to steal from the outrageously, stratospherically rich and redistribut(ing) it to the already very-very rich."
The tax on non-domiciles seems very attractive until you think about it for more than two milliseconds. About 135,000 of the 150,000 non-doms which Osbourne factored into his maths either don't exist or wouldn't be able to afford staying here when the tax comes in. Most of the non-doms are nurses, low paid city workers etc, not Roman Abramovich. Osbourne says that the £25,000 tax will release the highly rich non-doms from further fiscal scrutiny under the Tories. That's a joke. £25,000 is like one penny to a billionaire. The measure would put at risk further measures on the non-doms (such as the constraints on capital gains tax avoidance proposed by Vince Cable two weeks ago - I know we are so boring with our policy announcements, aren't we?) and put at risk £4 billion of tax already collected from them each year.
The change in the stamp duty next. Brilliant - but how will it be paid for? We've just seen that the non-doms measure is a joke which would bring in about £1 billion less than Osbourne estimates. His other brainwave to pay for this little package is to clamp down on incapacity benefit claimants. Those naughty people with doctors' notes. Ah yes, the people Peter Lilley tried hard to squeeze as Secretary of State for Social Security from 1992 to 1997 - and failed.
Back to the politics of this. Although these measures seem snazzy in a Daily Express sort of way, they really have nothing to do with the vast majority of people. The bribe to be "given" to married couples maybe does, if anyone can work out who it applies to (and, anyway, it would be not paid for in the ways outlined above). The problem is that this is the Tory party returning to the old core Daily Express vote.
So, enthusiasm for the Osbourne package will soon evaporate.
Anyway, the reason for GMTV drafting in the Great Curried Egg was to comment on the current political situation.
The Tory bouncette is not because of the Cameron speech. It's too recent. It is because of the Osbourne speech on Monday. Little Georgie has had a good week. I have revised my view of him, especially after his Question Time appearance last night (Ming was also superb, mainly because he continues to shamelessly milk the applause for being old and an Olympian).
Politically in the short-term, the Monday Osbourne speech was a master-stroke. However, in the medium to long-term his little package of tax measures (the fiscal equivalent of scratching a pig's back when compared to our 16p standard rate of income tax - the three Osbourne measures equate to less than 0.5% of government spending) are a damp-squib waiting to go off. Never mind Labour warning of a "search and destroy" mission on them. No searching is required.
Take the inheritance tax proposal first. The LibDems already announced, with typical shyness, virtually the same measure two weeks ago. We proposed to increase the threshold to £500,000. In fact, that takes most of the affected people out of inheritance tax anyway. (The Evening Standard says that the average price of a house in the highest priced area in the country, London, is £338,950) The area from £500,000 to £1 Million is the much smaller tail of the distributive dragon, and, far from a "Robin Hood" measure when coupled with the non-doms proposal, represents what Polly Toynbee called promising "to steal from the outrageously, stratospherically rich and redistribut(ing) it to the already very-very rich."
The tax on non-domiciles seems very attractive until you think about it for more than two milliseconds. About 135,000 of the 150,000 non-doms which Osbourne factored into his maths either don't exist or wouldn't be able to afford staying here when the tax comes in. Most of the non-doms are nurses, low paid city workers etc, not Roman Abramovich. Osbourne says that the £25,000 tax will release the highly rich non-doms from further fiscal scrutiny under the Tories. That's a joke. £25,000 is like one penny to a billionaire. The measure would put at risk further measures on the non-doms (such as the constraints on capital gains tax avoidance proposed by Vince Cable two weeks ago - I know we are so boring with our policy announcements, aren't we?) and put at risk £4 billion of tax already collected from them each year.
The change in the stamp duty next. Brilliant - but how will it be paid for? We've just seen that the non-doms measure is a joke which would bring in about £1 billion less than Osbourne estimates. His other brainwave to pay for this little package is to clamp down on incapacity benefit claimants. Those naughty people with doctors' notes. Ah yes, the people Peter Lilley tried hard to squeeze as Secretary of State for Social Security from 1992 to 1997 - and failed.
Back to the politics of this. Although these measures seem snazzy in a Daily Express sort of way, they really have nothing to do with the vast majority of people. The bribe to be "given" to married couples maybe does, if anyone can work out who it applies to (and, anyway, it would be not paid for in the ways outlined above). The problem is that this is the Tory party returning to the old core Daily Express vote.
So, enthusiasm for the Osbourne package will soon evaporate.
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
International Bloggers' Day for Burma tomorrow
This initiative has been devised by a couple of German bloggers in support of the Free Burma campaign. It's an International Bloggers' Day for Burma tomorrow, Thursday October 4th. Bloggers who wish to show their solidarity with the peaceful protest are being asked to publish only one post tomorrow. Please make the title "Free Burma!", link to http://www.free-burma.org/ and tag the post "Free Burma". Of course, feel free to add any additional text in the body of the post.
So far 3,510 bloggers have pledged to do this - there's a list of those bloggers here.
If you need any convincing to support this bloggers' initiative, please read this.
Thank you to Toby Philpott for highlighting this. There are banners and other ideas on the Free Burma site.
Please consider adding your blog to this initiative to show international solidarity with the people of Burma.
So far 3,510 bloggers have pledged to do this - there's a list of those bloggers here.
If you need any convincing to support this bloggers' initiative, please read this.
Thank you to Toby Philpott for highlighting this. There are banners and other ideas on the Free Burma site.
Please consider adding your blog to this initiative to show international solidarity with the people of Burma.
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