Let us celebrate the CIA advances in infiltration, but don’t be confused by the headlines implying there was a bomb plot.

It has transpired that rather than there being a wide ranging bombing plan on airlines, the CIA agent

Persuaded “AQAP that he wanted to blow up himself and a US-bound aircraft.”

So the CIA entered the AQAP and proposed, and gained support for, a bombing plot on a plane. Yes AQAP are implicit in supporting and encouraging such proposals, but they did not initiate them.

It’s rather like the old joke, Blair knew Saddam had weapons of mass destruction because he sold them to him. The CIA know Al Queda is planning to bomb another plane because they suggested it.

This is the equivilant of joint enterprise or procurement of an offense.

All of this adds to demonisation of radical groups that creates and sustains racial and religious tensions across the world. The only benefit is to governments who are heralded as heros and allowed to infringe upon human rights by further erosion of civil liberties.

Of course we should be playing foreign affairs games, but at the same time the damage they cause should be recognised and prevented as much as possible.

House of Lords reform should not be an issue we should be debating. Reforming one entire third of the executive to be composed of democratically elected representatives is not a progressive idea.

To widen the perspective, let’s examine the military intervention Britain has become involved in in the last decade. Much of the justification for Britain and NATO involvement in a no-fly zone in Libya was to protect people’s rights and ensure the power of democracy. The invasion of Iraq was founded on the basis of bringing democracy to the people. And don’t forget Afghanistan, the establishment of a democratic state in the Middle East.

Here we have a coalition government proposing that we reform an entire third of the executive to introduce a larger democratic government. While other countries are bravely contemplating civil war in order to gain democratic representation, the press in this country considers that reform of the House of Lords is not of public interest. Or indeed in the public interest.

Will we also be forced to set ourselves on fire to demand democracy?

The arguments presented against reforming this chamber of government are spurious at best. Rather like the arguments presented against AV, they are at best arbitrarily dogmatic and at worst, rhetoric from the two major parties.

Money
This shouldn’t even be a consideration. Money should not be a barrier to democracy. But if you need an argument against spending money on reforming a major political institution for the better, let’s not forget the financial burden of corruption that the House of Lords currently represents.

During the expenses scandal of 2009, five peers were charged with fraud for misuse and appropriation of expenses. The cost, not only appointing them, but also of investigating, charging and subsequent incarceration can be counted as a hefty sum. On top of this, one peer charged claimed legal aid and, as there is no current solution in law to recall a member of the Houses of Parliament or House of Lords from office, during investigation and prosecution all peers are in fact still on salaried wage.

Then of course, you have to take into account the vast amount of money that people appointed to the House of Lords first paid political parties. The Conservatives may have detracted from their Number 10 Dining
Street scandal with some blather about baked goods, it should be noted
that many of whom dine with the Prime Minister have made
significant donations and have been granted peerages.

Maintaining the Status Quo
That age-old argument ” if it’s not broken, why fix it”.

But the very point is that it is broken. The current system is the House of Lords represents an archaic institution that once advised the king and was comprised of wealthy landowners. If we’ve moved on from such an antiquated system as feudalist society, why should the last remnants of a powerful nobility still exist, let alone without accountability?

Rather than representing a body of experts, its history seeks to define it, the House of Lords epitomise of all what is wrong with a capitalist society; people who pay to be there. If you have any doubts, examine Lord Alan Sugar.

Again, it is not a progressive idea to reform the House of Lords. It is not progressive to suggest that democratic representation is essential to society. It should be commonplace that such a system exists in an advanced Western country.

Political Persuasion
This should not even be in argument between major political parties. It shouldn’t matter whether you’re red, blue or yellow as to whether or not you support this idea. Ultimately, to not support this idea on a political bandwagon demonstrates further everything that is wrong with the democracy in the UK. It is in the interest of the people to have a fully elected democratic representatives governing their country. Every political party should support this.

And indeed, every political party did call for reform of the House of Lords in their manifestoes in 2010. Tony Blair made significant inroads on reforming the House of Lords. However, his work is unfinished. It is necessary for the left to push forward in changing things now, when the opportunity arises. Not waiting until a member of the public is forced to emoiliate themselves in Trafalgar Square.

This post was originally published on Huffington Post

Nick Clegg has recently been criticised for opening up opportunities for women to work. Apparently,as Jonathan Calder comments, there are people out there he believes mothers shouldn’t work.

The debate at this has stirred is fascinating, as one comment observes;

“both are true: whatever mothers do, they are criticised. Stay-at-home mothers are sponging off their husbands/the state, working mothers are neglecting their children, mothers who work part-time lack commitment. Dividing mothers against themselves seems to be a favourite pastime of the media, setting up artificial “debates” on the topic.”

As I then added

Kelly-Marie Blundell said…
rmc28 is correct, there is a disjointed approach to womens’ role in society once they have children.

Women’s magazines, female “friendly” parts of newspapers that feature fashion etc and mainstream media place an unbelievable amount of pressure on women with children. The amount of spurious research that implies a mother must remain at home at least until her child is five to ensure the child reaches their full potential is ridiculous. (I say spurious as most of it is small scale, localised studies which are not longitudinal, fail to take into account primary care givers of other genders or positions in the family and often only apply to British families).

Alongside the “damage” a woman inflicts upon her child if she cannot breastfeed, the battle of mothers and work is one of the great unresolved feminist issues in the UK today.
23 April, 2012 14:59

It is not a new debate. One of the first articles I posted in 2009 on my old blog, Disconcerted Discursives, observes;

[Working Mothers children unfit] Studies into this kind of childrearing debate never discuss whether a child with a saty at home DAD is healthier. Or whether children in nurseries and young education programmes are healthier. The onus is on the woman to fulfil her projected role as a care giver and home maker.

That we are still having this debate in 2012 is really despicable. Women have been battling for equality since the 1960s. We can now vote, choose whom and whether we marry, choose if and whether we have children, what we wear and where we work. Without some still clinging today to (small c) conservative ideologies from the 1950s, it might be possible for people to reclaim the word ‘feminist’ and stand up for it is the right and entitlement in Western society.

What does being a feminist mean?

Say it with pride: I am a feminist

I’ve recently devoured Caitlin Moran’s How to Be a Woman, which I am now wholeheartedly pressing upon any woman I’ve ever met who doesn’t agree with me about being a strident feminist. It’s a delight of laughing memoir combines with impetuous and logical deductions about not only the role of women in society, but also the role of women in society alongside men.

To coin a new phrase, Moran’s approach to feminism is to ask

Are the men doing it? Are the men worrying about this as well? Is this is taking up the men’s time?

That’s a brilliant approach to take. Once you query whether the men are indeed doing, worrying or wasting time on “it”, you see the striking difference between the sexes in our current society.

Moran uses the example of the Burkha to illustrate her point. Personally I’m liberal enough to believe that you should be able to wear whatever you want and not be criticised for it. Men are not criticised for what they wear, whether in a religious or social context. The issue was wearing a Burkha is not that men aren’t doing it, but that men are not being criticised for doing it.

Knickers
However, Moran appears to be less inconsistent when applying this rule. For example she waxes lyrical over the joys of women’s underwear, as long as it’s not uncomfortable. However, I would argue that if the men are not worrying about wearing sexy underwear for their day, if the men are not worrying about purchasing the right type, material, or fit of underwear, then why should women? Ultimately, the only person it should matter to is yourself, and potentially if you’re in a relationship, to your relationship with that person.

I don’t ask my spouse to prance around in the cheese wire thong, nor is it expected of him to wear one in order that he should not get that terrible “VPL” that so ruins the lines of his trousers. Nor does he require the same of me. The pressure applied to women around underwear, and it isn’t just knickers, is ludicrous. Not only are they implicitly criticised for being incorrect, they have to straddle the fine boundaries between trashy and sexy, obvious and subtle, intentionally and unintentionally visible. Essentially, when it comes to underwear, it seems that women are damnedest they deal in band if they don’t. No one ever apply the same logic to a man and whether he chose to wear jersey boxer shorts or jockey shorts.

I don’t believe you can pick and choose your arguments with feminism. I think the “are the boys doing it?” is a genius way of addressing misogyny in society, but you can’t pick your arguments when you choose. Part and parcel of the “doing it” is the “being criticised for it”, and people should be entitled, whether male or female, to act within liberal boundaries of society (not breaking any laws) without being criticised, pressurised or unduly influenced.

That is not to say that liberalism is without morality.

In spite of my pedantry, I genuinely found Moran’s book enjoyable, passionate and vociferous on a lot of issues I strongly agree with. With rapidly increasing grassroots feminist groups apparently sprouting out of social media, a backlash against one-dimensional reality TV stars, glamour models and indeed social constructions of glamour, this is just the sort of thing we need to be hitting bookshelves. I will be buying a copy for my 12 year old sister tomorrow.

It’s reasonably typical in an economic downturn, especially in economic downturn that is so manipulated by political houses to demonstrate who is right and who is wrong, but the issue of tax avoidance is never far from the news nowadays.

In line with this, the work by the Coalition, comprised of the centre-left Liberal Democrat presence and the centre-right Conservative presence is always presented in two lights to the media; and as a result nobody wins.

Today’s issue in question is that of those wealthy individuals that make large-scale donations to charity so that they can write this off as non-taxable income. Donations to charity which can gain such relief will now be capped at £50,000 or 25%. Spare change to many people, but certainly not spare change to charities.

From the left perspective, this is surely fantastic? All of the protests against the rich can now cease because we are tackling one way that they are avoiding paying tax and therefore gaining more income to repay the deficit and reduce pressure on the individual. Or so you would think.

With campaigns like Occupy still going strong in various guises, alongside apparent civilly disobedient, but often just bored teenage UKUncut, one would think that such proposals by the Chancellor would be met with pleasure.

But no. Already, the left-wing press is calling it an attack on philanthropists, an attack on charities who may not receive as much money and not good enough.

However, far from causing a philanthropic crisis with charities dropping like flies, we should look at the statistics before denouncing the move. According to the Charity Commission, just 21.9% of charities earn over £250,000 on an annual basis. Or five major donor donations. Out of the 6% of charities that earn over £1 million, it is highly unlikely that, as insinuated by Number 10, people are setting up charities for non-charitable pursuits as a way of avoiding tax, or certainly not in the UK. So the hyperbole being stirred by the left-wing press is highly unlikely to cause charities come crashing to the ground.

In direct comparison, the right-wing press are accusing the government of picking on those poor millionaires, misrepresenting them all as tax avoiding, tax dodging, malevolent spendrifts. Ironically, where as the those of right wing internation tend to believe in capital and all-encompassing punishment, their press now state that we should be using the carrots not sticks to encourage tax donation. We should be throwing parties for every millionaire that pays tax. Not quite what the Coalition had in mind.

If the cap on donations to charities prevents a percentage of people from avoiding tax deliberately on minimal parts of their income (Bear in mind that the average house price for a three-bedroom home in Kent is £242,000 and hardly what one would consider to be a millionaire’s salary), then that’s fantastic. It stops the wealthy from exploiting another tax loophole in the future.

When taken in line with the coalition policy to tax offshore bank accounts introduced in the summer last year, as a key part of the Liberal Democrat manifesto, it’s clear that there is a significant crackdown on tax avoidance, and evasion, going on. Take into account the raising of Capital Gains tax which was one of the first moves by the Coalition in 2010, there seems to be little way that these (nefarious) millionaires can escape their duty as British citizens.

However, it is worth noting that a full-on crackdown on those of us who find tax avoidance morally repugnant would like to see is unlikely to happen just yet.

The report that George Osborne has recently conducted into anonymised miscreant millionaires identified the key ways in which wealthy individuals avoid paying tax. Outside of capital gains in offshore bank accounts, and other way was through charitable donations.

However, there does not yet seem to be a plan in place, for tackling the largest area of tax avoidance; offsetting business losses.

Of course, if the Coalition, that perpetual battle between left and right, were to start denouncing businesses and preventing offsetting business losses, then the Conservatives would find themselves severely criticised.

There must be a way around people offsetting business losses as the huge form of tax avoidance without penalising all businesses unfairly. To do so without such guidance would result in stalling growth, impacting on jobs and businesses across the country and on our import/export market. A significantly detrimental move for any country in an economic downturn.

In the meantime, we should be rejoicing significant inroads into tax avoidance and evasion through measures already implemented by the coalition, not whingeing about non-existent statistics that will apparently bring the charity industry to its knees.

Just how public is social media?

In a recent meeting at work a Social Media Policy was proposed. This maintains the privacy of individuals but makes the following observations;

• in despite of privacy settings on social media sites anything that you “share” can be copied and shared beyond yourself
• it is necessary to avoid blurring the lines between employment and social activities

It’s an interesting principle that no matter what you put on the vast variety of social media, it can be copied and observed.

One way you can look at it is in the following satirical manner, like this.

However, realistically, anything you put on a social networking site where it is directly linked to your own name should be and it is public.

I’ve had discussions with other people, ironically on Twitter, regarding the recent story in the US where employers are looking at people’s Facebooks.

I’m not condoning employers asking for employees Facebook logins to monitor their engagement and interaction on social media sites. However, the truth is, that if you put a picture on Facebook, whether it is of your wedding, a review drunk and being sick in the gutter, you have to appreciate that that content is open and available and can be shared.

Many people that have semipublic lives, or are in positions where they represent organisations, either completely exclude themselves on social media report from work public facing issues or maintain separate psuedonym accounts through which they can communicate honestly with a limited number of people.

However, it should be noted, that privacy settings on Facebook only go so far.

I choose not to disclose my e-mail address. However, people can search for me using my e-mail address. This is in spite of having my settings set so that people can only see me if they are a friend of a friend. For example were I looking for a job, a recruitment consultant with my main e-mail address would be able to locate me through social media sites without ever having a “friend” in common. As a result, I use a dummy e-mail addresses that have POP3 forwarding built-in.

I have my settings so the you can only see me in the event you have a friend in common with me. And you can only add me as a friend on that basis. However, I regularly advertised people to “add” to my friends list with whom I have no friends in common. On this premise, I must also be advertised to other people with whom I have no friends in common.

The moment you list yourself on the Internet, in any capacity, you’re opening yourself up to information about you being shared. it is reasonably easy to find out who I am, as the writer of this blog. However, I keep an awful lot of information very close to me.

As we are shifting to a society where the majority of my friends under the age of 25 have no problem with openly sharing their photographs, their e-mail addresses or their mobile numbers on their Facebook profiles let alone on Twitter, we need to move to managing information more sensibly. It is not enough to simply asserts that because you have privacy settings on the social media site you are therefore protected.

As the explanation of social media joke goes, it is incredibly easy to utilise social media for a variety of areas in your life. a pun on this;

a Stalker’s guide to Social Media
• Facebook: this is where I found you eating doughnuts
• YouTube: this is where I watch you eating doughnuts
• Twitter: this is where I see you talking about liking doughnuts
• LinkedIn: this is how I trace your movements eating doughnuts
• Foursquare: this is how I stalk you eating doughnuts

The dangers of social media are not know nor fully explored. The dangers of having a society incredibly open about sharing information without taking any responsibility for the sharing of information could have incredibly dangerous consequences. Not just the ease of stalking, but the vulnerability of the individual to being defrauded by a variety of means.

Even now there is no way to find out how many companies hold information on you following the sharing of information and sale of your data through social media sites. When you can easily be prosecuted for the sharing of information, how more blurred the lines have to become?

I always used to wonder* if Ebay and other online auction sites had impacted on the economy by changing the flow-of-money rules. People could suddenly move money around from sale to purchase and barely see the cash in their pockets. As a result, such money doesn’t increase labour therefore simply enters a vacuum of the internet and is rarely taxed, let alone spent on high streets. All this means is it effectively dissappears.

But Ebay et al must be small fry compared to a far bigger vacuum: political and politicised monies.

All of a sudden we realise vast transactions are moving through the Conservative party all the time. Instead of 99p for your old top, the idea of £250,000 here, there and everywhere, sucking life out of spending power, jobs and trade is quite frightening.

And we know this sort of money is like water between newspapers and the police. Amounts of money that are up to ten times the annual average salary.

The best thing to come out of a morally defensible scandal is a push for reform. However, unlike the MPs Expenses, we should not allow the reform of political funding to be pushed in the long grass or smothered by irrelevant news items. in addition to this, we must also address just why such a scandal is morally reprehensible, and the wider implications for our political houses.

Social Divide
A Dinner Date with Cameron as a scandal has raised two major issues. The first is the reappearance of the “cash for peerage” scandals of the Labour Administration and they indication of just how much of a plutocracy we really live in.

This issue is largely a scandal because it identifies the inextricable link between politics and wealth that has largely become an elephant in the room. People realise that to be a politician requires money, otherwise politicians would not be mainly made up of wealthy individuals. Campaigning, communications, public relations and networking take a great deal of time and money that most people can’t afford to spend.

As a result, people who can afford to spend, but don’t necessarily want to be in politics, choose the power option of influencing politics. As a result, the reason that a largely pejorative view of the Conservative Party has developed is because it is for the upper middle classes who share their wealth and influence politics to benefit only the upper and upper middle classes.

It doesn’t matter how many times David Cameron talks about hugging hoodies, being a more open and socially acceptable party that values the poor as well as the rich; the short truth is that politics in the UK is a classist system and all the time the Conservatives are funded by major donors and organisations, they will be unduly biased towards benefiting those in the event they are in power.

One of the biggest conflicts within the coalition has been that the Liberal Democrats have always taken a strong approach to reducing social divide and addressing a far more socialist agenda that removes class from the equation. This puts them in direct conflict with the Conservatives, despite all of the compromises made between both sides.

Therefore the Liberal Democrats find it morally offensive, even more so than the regular man, but such vast amounts of money should be used to influence policy or simply have dinner with someone when there are so many people in need across the country.

Rather than taking massive donations from people who want to be Lords, the Conservative Party should be focusing, like the Liberal Democrats, on using money like this to get the economy going, get people spending and bring back jobs.

Yes we need to reform political funding. Yes there is an active championing to reform political funding by the Liberal Democrats. Yes this has been blocked on every occasion by Labour and the Conservatives. But the sooner we champion this, clarified with a good scandal, the better.

Cash for Peerages
Interestingly, two of the major donors to the Conservative Party are Lords. The Cash for Honours scandal of the Labour Administration nearly bought the House of Lords to its knees.

All of this indicates the desperate need for the House of Lords to be changed completely to an elected system.

It is unfathomable in this day and age that we allow such negligible kleptocracy to take place under our noses. It is with sheer audacity that the leading political parties willingly place members of their administration, often through party donations, into the upper house of the UK Parliament.

Yes those members are therefore liable to be lobbied, yes those members are therefore liable to be whipped and to vote in a certain way; but those members are in no way in that position democratically.

The huge amounts of money that passed between the hands of the wealthy and the political classes not only morally offends “Mondeo man” on his £25,000 a year living in suburbia, but they offend anyone with any decent understanding of democratic principles, political sciences or social sciences.

There are three things that come out of the Number 10 Dining Street fiasco. We should not allow any of them to fail to be addressed within the next three years of Parliament. We need a democratic, transparent and accountable political funding system, we need a democratic transparent and accountable House of Lords and we need democratic, transparent and accountable members of Parliament.

*I don’t profess to have a qualification in economics. This is largely from stray Sociology and Economics degree texts that have strayed into my bored time

The political meeting of two countries leaders, Cameron and Obama, has been in the news this week. The pomp and ceremony has been compared from all angles, as well as the deliberating of the benefits of such diplomatic liaison.

There has been much debate from a feminist angle about the presence of the clothing Michelle and Samantha have demonstrated. To anyone with a feminist focus, such debate is both trivial and agitating.

Michelle Obama is an accomplished woman, a previously practicing lawyer. Samantha Cameron is not just a Debrett belle, she is also a consultant and former director.

Yet the apparatchik on the Weekly Political Review yesterday revealed an awful political truth.

“The Downing Street people …had a journalist from Grazia magazine…. because David Cameron needs to win more women voters in the next election”
David Rennie

Not satisfied with objectifying women in the media, we find that our so-called political leader of the United Kingdom is not only condoning such behaviour, he is actively encouraging it. As a Public Relations stunt.

It’s a bitter reality that in order to win women’s votes, Cameron is chosing to focus not on the issues that matter to women, like ability to embrace flexible working (a key Lib Dem push), better child care (another Lib Dem win in the coalition) or better paternity leave (again)?

No, instead, we are seeing the major partner in the coalition who clearly feels that women are only worth the clothes they are wearing. And that those clothes can be influenced by effectively touting his wife as a reality tv star. Now we get a better idea why people were less shocked by John Bercow’s wife posing in a sheet.

It’s not like we didn’t know Cameron was a demagogue, but he could be more subtle about it.

He can’t score many column inches, but with the trite that comes out of Ed Miliband’s mouth, it’s no wonder more of his members are leaving the foray.

The tiny snippet (although arguably he may be trying to keep a low profile for Ken, who’s presence is notably also absent) in the Evening Standard is a bizarre v sign at those in the Guardian who have demonised internships and genuine work experience by tainting it as slave labour.

Apparently Miliband would offer work to those unemployed for a year, but he’s stop benefits for those who refused.

It reads like a focus-group generated policy, which, as usual, lacks any coherent strategic thinking or economic value. Miliband’s network of Guardian readers have indicated unpaid is bad. But refusal is also bad.

It should be observed his miniscule piece at a Labour youth conference (the Lib Dems get more column inches when there is no conference) fails to state what pay or what work he would offer.

Labour have cursed a generation of youngsters by encouraging over qualified kidults with no experience to have delusions of grandeur. I am still seeing flocks of CVs with intimidating backgrounds at amazing universities but no evidence of ever actually working.

Suzanne Moore, who I have disagreed with in the past, did a great piece on job snobbery. I’m no job snob, when out of work I cheerfully worked in a news agents to fund interview travel. But there is a genuine stigma created in a generation that got education on the basis of a loan and yet learned nothing.

Rather than delivering less social divide, we are presented with collectives of graduates who feel entitled to management positions, fast tracks to seniority and all the trappings of the bourgeosis.

I’m more impressed with a CV with a solid work history, evidence of self improvement and initiative than I am with qualifications.

One of the best things the Lib Dems have done in coalition is to increase the tax threshold to £10,000. This will make it more sensible for people on benefits to work, as they’ll earn more. Then perhaps we can end some of this job snobbery. Better a few weeks in Poundland for minimum wage if you’re not taxed than sitting around watching Loose Women for just £50 a month.

Sexism is a symptom of our society. But is feminism on the rise again?

A piece in The Independent reflects that Toy Story 3 is “carelessly sexist”. Rachel Shields and Susie Mesure are correct. The film is sexist. It is based around detrimental stereotypes of women, alongside detrimental stereotypes of pretty much every “type” that people can expect to encounter in the 21st century.

However, evidence of misogyny in this way tends to be a symptom of the society focus on gender right ways, equipment and merchandise across the western world.

The delight of sweatshop-style-labour in the East has provided us with multiple versions of smart-price genderisation; from dolls with unrealistic statures dating back to the 1950s through to think through drivers and other so-called “manly” goods.

Alongside campaigns such as Pink Stinks and a whole host of nouveau feminist blogs, outcries against the excessive stereotyping of gender are slowly building an underground momentum. The power of social media is allowing campaigns to build up with alacity; from UK Feminista’s Muff March through to an increasing number of columnists developing what can only be described as an ‘assertive-not-aggressive’ approach to feminism.

It seems that all is not lost within a consumerist and capitalist culture that seems to be obsessed with the pornification of women for financial gain. However, we need to tackle the carelessly sexist approach that we are teaching our children head on, rather than making spurious assertions instead of active steps to change things.

The downside to a saturation of an Internet market with feminist based intelligence and rhetoric is a lack of cohesive development. For want of a better expression, where do I sign up? How do we ensure that this is coherent?

One thing is for sure, such a saturation is likely to bring the feminist agenda back to the foreground, and if we look at the last century, these do seem to come around every 30 years.