I woke up this morning to hear news that Brenda Namigadde, who came to Britain in 2002, in fear of her life from homophobic attacks, is to be returned to Uganda (where homophobia seems to be institutionalised and threaded through large parts of society), placing her in great risk of danger.

It keeps on happening, and every time it does, it is disgraceful, deeply inhumane, and an insult to all LGBT people. I attended a demonstration in London, in 2008, against the deportation to Iran, of Mehdi Kazemi, and the eventual success in his application for asylum in the UK gave me reason to hope that Britain would no longer knowingly send people back to life-threatening situations: clearly I got my hopes up too soon.

For a country which professes to uphold modern ideas and ideals of human rights, Britain is committing hideous hypocrisy every time it does this.

I first remember listening to the BBC World Service when I was about twelve or thirteen, tuning in on a little shortwave set I inherited from my grand-dad, with a frequency chart for Southern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean, trying to find the perfect spot between the crackle and whizz of the static, and the exotic sounds of French and German international stations. Ten years on, I’m listening on a Wi-Fi radio, freed from static (and straight into the parallel nightmare of buffering and reduced quality streams for non-UK listeners), but the station is almost the same, and I love it just as much. I know that lots of others love the World Service too; it’s the only broadcast station—radio or television—which people will, quite unprompted, lavish praise upon if broadcasting comes up in conversation. It carries an image of British broadcasting which shows it to be amongst the best in the world.

By all accounts, the present British Government should love it dearly as well. In a world in which soft diplomacy counts increasingly, the power of a station spreading—from the shores of the Pacific, to the heart of the Sahel—such a positive image of Britain, cannot be underestimated. This makes it so perplexing that a government which has been acknowledged as having a certain amount of foreign policy nous*, should neglect the immeasurable value which the World Service brings to the country and the world, in its decision to transfer the funding of the station from the Foreign & Commonwealth Office to the BBC itself, and to demand budget cuts.

The World Service has already been through a down-sizing, when large parts of the station’s cultural output were lopped off in favour of a more news-focussed schedule a few years ago, but despite that, it has somehow managed to retain its greatness as a radio station. Geographically castrating the service will do nothing to help this, and I can only hope that the ingenuity of the staff will keep the unique character of station alive, even if it loses the estimated 30 million listeners as a result of the cuts.

*Not that, as this post should attest, I agree with this Government on much, including foreign policy.

Humour me for a moment, and go to the iTunes Store, Amazon MP3, or Spotify. I’m sure you will agree that the experience of buying music from these stores in the comfort of your own home is far more pleasant than the noisy and uncouth atmosphere of the average branch of HMV. Now, using the search box, try to find the song ‘Loca’ by Shakira. If you’re in the UK, then this toe-tapping number will probably not show up, or if it does, it will be on an obscure compilation album released by Sony Music Entertainment Austria.

(more…)

And so, another year has passed. I can’t really say that 2010 was “an honest, argumentative, real, and better year”. Indeed, in the British politics-sphere, much of the political debate which occurred amounted to little more than contrasting statements of “I’m right, and you’re stupid because you disagree with me”. Nevertheless, the introduction of the first Green MP to the House of Commons was one big step towards my hope. The response to the total failure of the Copenhagen climate talks was also encouraging, and the relative successes achieved at Cancún are testament to the gradual realisation that we have to grow up, and think of how we’ll cope in the future.

I’m sometimes drawn to ask whether political leaders are capable of coping with more than one thing at once. Extreme poverty, conflict, environmental crisis, the end of cheap energy; these are all floating around us, demanding solutions. Yet the biggest political efforts, and the largest investments, are made in the propping up of a financial system which is proven to be catastrophically flawed. I’m not naive, the financial system is an integral part of our way of life, and its reformation into the totally green ideal that is envisaged in the various iterations of the Green New Deal will take time; short term action to keep the whole lot going was largely justified and required, but the air of crisis which is hanging around it all is leading political leaders to think that their excessive and overblown measures to ‘stop the ship from sinking’ are just that. Such delusions keep political energies and capital from the other problems where such things are badly needed.

2011 is the year when action is needed. Action on climate change, with a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol as an essential outcome of the talks in South Africa in December; action on making the economic system we are saddled with into a green and sustainable one, which will work for people well into the coming decades; action on generating sustainable energy to replace the old fashioned fossil fuels we rely on now; and action on cutting the gap between the richest and poorest, and removing the barriers to development for the poorest countries.

So, when my 2012 New Year’s post arrives, lets hope the vast chasms in development and quality of life, reported last year on this blog, will have narrowed to some degree, and that what honest debate 2010 gave rise to has translated into strong and worthwhile action.

Happy New Year, may 2011 be good to you.