“The president has demonstrated that he is a caring father, a considerate and tolerant president. We wish him good health in his everyday endeavours as he continues leading the country to
respecting human rights and to economic prosperity,”
How nicely the story of the two gay Malawian men who were sentenced to 14 years hard labour has wrapped itself up. After being pardoned by the “caring father” who is the President, and after turning out to be straight after all, the sensitivities of the national culture need not be offended any longer.
I feel very uncomfortable with the way that this issue is being brushed under the rug. Chimbalanga and Monjeza are only two people, but with absolute certainty, there are thousands more in Malawi, and millions across Africa who are just like them, and who have to face their daily existence being frustrated due to a combination of excessively conservative morality, and imported laws from 19th and 20th century European empires.
Lets hope that next time something like this happens, the outcome will show some actual progress for LGBT rights.
I’m not sure why this election didn’t inspire me to blog in the way that I did for the US presidential election. It should have, what with it being for my own country and all, but I just didn’t see any reason to break out the custom election day theme, and live-blog it all. Anyway, I thought I’d better salvage this blog’s reputation as a political blog, and write something about the “con dem nation” (entirely plagiarised from Twitter) that we seem to have pieced together.
First off, isn’t it a bit odd to see at least one member of the European Movement as a Secretary of State in a Tory dominated cabinet? Perhaps I’m just putting too much emphasis on the European side of things. Anyway, my initial reaction to the BBC News footage of Cameron was, “could’ve been worse”, followed by noting that he’d opted for a plain microphone with no lectern (call me cynical, but was this his first theatrical step as PM?).
Policy-wise though, all I can say is that this government will be bad for Britain, and bad for Europe. Like the Irish Green’s coalition with Fianna Fáil, I think the Lib Dems will end up tarnished by their senior partner, hurting their chances in future elections, and thus removing any chance for them to show that, contrary to all evidence, they have some back-bone. The proposals for a referendum on AV are pointless; AV is pointless as an alternative, because it doesn’t do what an alternative electoral system needs to do, which is make Parliament more representative of the citizens. So, well done to the Liberals for capitulating on the one thing I wanted Liberals in government to do.
More in my sphere of concern is the impact of the new government on Britain’s place in Europe, and the effect that a Eurosceptic government in one of the big states will have. The Conservative’s insistance on calling for powers to be repatriated in some areas, and trying to put a brake on other areas will probably not hurt the EU too much. It’s a big thing, and it can comfortably withstand an uncooperative government or two. It will however hurt Britain. Enough Europeans (by which I mean people involved in Euro-politics) already complain about our intransigence, and that ill will towards the UK will probably only increase. It’ll be interesting, though perhaps uncomfortable, to watch how this affects the real world.
Well I’m back sooner than I expected. I saw an article about social media on EurActiv this morning, and it did nothing but reinforce the feeling I have that nobody in politics really knows what to do with social media. The politicians try to reach the public with it, while the press talks about how that, inevitably, flops. If there is anything I have found from playing around with social media during election campaigns, and observing its use by the Obama campaign, it is that it is the perfect tool to mobilise your activists. Obama didn’t use tweets, Facebook, or MyBO (still a dreadful name) as a way to win voters directly; he used those tools to make his activists—who it seems are much more loosely attached to his campaign than we find in Europe—excited; he used the tools available to make sure that the people traipsing around with stacks of leaflets, spreading his hopeful magic, felt close to the campaign. At some point, we might perhaps realise that, on this side of the Atlantic; until then I guess we can just suffer through a few dozen more doomed attempts to convert people to vote Green with a Facebook page.
I thought I should take a quick moment to highlight a fairly new and brilliant blog by a group of Scottish Green Party members. Bright Green Scotland is well worth a read, even if you’re not into Scottish politics.
Gordon Brown might have everyone (by which I mean, electoral-system-obsessed-politics-geeks of the sort who will happily engage in a passionate discussion down the pub of the merits of different forms of PR—and I would include myself in there) talking about electoral reform in the UK right now, but in terms of actual impact on the machine of politics, I’d be willing to bet that Article 11, paragraph 4 of the Treaty on European Union will be bigger, more significant, and, if we can tear ourselves away from d’Hondt versus Sainte-Laguë for long enough, subject to more geek analysis.
I like Article 11, paragraph 4, but I’m annoyed with it as well. Why am I annoyed? I’m annoyed because I signed a petition calling for the EU to raise its carbon emissions reduction targets from 20% to 30%; while that’s all well and good (why not head on over to the petition yourself?), it could be so much better if I was signing the form of petition found in Article 11: a citizens’ initiative.
A bit of digging revealed that the European Commission has consulted on implementing the initiative, and will be drawing up a regulation this year, before actually unleashing this little bit of direct democracy in 2011. I know it takes time to make laws, and it isn’t a job to rush, but Lisbon has been around for ages, surely the fleshing out of the text of the article* could have happened sooner?
*4. Not less than one million citizens who are nationals of a significant number of Member States may take the initiative of inviting the European Commission, within the framework of its powers, to submit any appropriate proposal on matters where citizens consider that a legal act of the Union is required for the purpose of implementing the Treaties.
Why, oh why, is Gordon Brown trying to get a referendum on proportional representation? Is it perhaps because he wants to be seen to support a nice progressive constitutional change relating to Parliament, without any danger that he will have to implement it?
The problem with a referendum is that it doesn’t work unless the voters are accurately informed about what they are voting on. It works for issues such as devolution, where people are familiar with the question; it doesn’t work with arcane, indecipherable, and soporific matters like electoral reform.
Oh well, it was nice for a while to think we might get an ever so slightly better system.
“We’re making it clear that we are completely equidistant between Labour and the Conservatives”
Vince Cable, Liberal Democrat Treasury Spokesperson on ‘The World This Weekend’, BBC Radio 4, 20th of September
Seriously, what is the point of the Lib Dems? I know lots of people are asking the same question at the moment, driving it to become a cliché, but it’s a question I have to ask. I’m not basing this question on the assumption that British politics should be a two-party affair, but since it is, there seems to be no point at all in having the Lib Dems as they currently stand.
I should declare before I go on that I’m sympathetic to liberalism; it’s my political background and where I would be if environmentalism didn’t exist, so I want the Liberal Democrats to be a decent party at the UK level, and I’d love to have a proper liberal government (lets face it, the Greens aren’t going to be able to form a government in Britain for a long time, if ever*). So it pains me to hear statements from senior Lib Dems such as the one at the head of this post.
Just as I think Labour needs to rethink what it really is, so I think the Lib Dems need to forget about trying to maintain an equidistant position between the other parties, practicing the worst campaign tactics imaginable, and selling their souls for power at every opportunity, and come up with a proper sense of liberalism, domestically and internationally, that can be applied through a coherent set of policies to tackle the problems that we face, from climate change to the financial crisis and everything in between. Carrying on as they are now can only help the mediocrity of British politics.