New Jerusalem (old)

Moved

noreply@blogger.com (Al) — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 23:05:00 +0000

My new blog is here: http://sosialydd.wordpress.com/

Sweden: Left trails in exit polls... but not by much

noreply@blogger.com (Al) — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 18:24:00 +0000

One exit poll hath a Right lead of about 2pts, another about 4pts.

Rhode Island Primary

noreply@blogger.com (Al) — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 17:30:00 +0000

Rep. Jim Langevin has won the Democratic nod in RI-2 with about 61% of the vote, easily beating some liberal hack with the amusing surname "Lawless".
The only reason why Langevin (a Catholic) was challenged in the primary at all was because of his position on abortion... as far as almost all other issues go he's staunchly leftwing; he has an excellent record on Union issues, is pro-environment, voted against the war in Iraq, is a strong supporter of gun control, is in favour of some form of universal healthcare system and voted against Marilyn Musgrave's Same Sex Marriage Resolution. His life story (he was paralyzed in a firearms accident at the age of 16) should probably be mentioned as well.
Obviously I'm pleased that he won, and won so strongly.

In other news, liberal Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee beat off a conservative challenger by more than expected. But you know that already.

Another Labor landslide in Queensland

noreply@blogger.com (Al) — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 16:46:00 +0000

Results here

Some U.S House election polls...

noreply@blogger.com (Al) — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 17:59:00 +0000

Are over here

O/c they have to be taken with a pinch of salt or three, but some of the poll internals are very interesting.

So Blair will go at...

noreply@blogger.com (Al) — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 14:54:00 +0000

...any time between now and a year from now. I'd like it to be sooner, rather than later, but at least he's confirmed that his time at No.10 is drawing to a close.

I suspect that he'll try to struggle on until May, although he might end up going before then... depends how the next few weeks pan out really.

And just to point out something rather obvious that the London media has (as usual) failed to notice; the pressure on Blair to resign before the May elections isn't there because they are expected to be a "disaster" (if a nightmarish set of elections were expected it'd make sense to have him stay until after them, carry the can for the results, and resign). It's because they are so very uncertain; in Wales a few thousand votes could well make all the difference between Labour being forced into another coalition, winning back their majority or staying where they are now, while in Scotland it seems possible on the one hand that the status quo might continue, while on the other the prospect of the SNP as the largest party may be very real.
And nothing worries politicians more than uncertainty.

Time to go

noreply@blogger.com (Al) — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 14:16:00 +0000

The list of resignations now reads: Tom Watson, Khalid Mahmood, David Wright, Ian Lucas, Mark Tami, Chris Mole and Wayne David.
Solid Labour men all of them. Old Right Trade unionists, machine politicians, lifelong activists; the sort of people that are needed to hold together any Labour government, and the sort of people who are loyalists by their very nature.
When people like that are calling on the Dear Leader to retire sooner rather than later, maybe he should listen to them, instead of branding them:

Disloyal, Discourteous and Wrong

As Khalid Mahmood pointed out in his resignation letter:

The party and the Labour Government's work is more important than any individual.

While I'm not a fan of public infighting, Blair has brought this upon himself.

We won a game!

noreply@blogger.com (Al) — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 17:11:00 +0000

FINALLY!!!

Peter Wilby is an idiot

noreply@blogger.com (Al) — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 14:07:00 +0000

Sadly this doesn't appear to be a spoof

Selfish ****.

Anything you want Guv?

noreply@blogger.com (Al) — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 11:33:00 +0000

A new YouGov poll hath been released: Con 38%, Lab 31%, LDem 18%. Labour drops 2pts, the other two parties stay as in previous poll.
YouGov's Labour numbers have been quite stable for a while:

32%, 31%, 32%, 32%, 33%, 33%, 31%

Call it a third, give or take headlines.

Not much to worry about then.

I have a bad feeling about this...

noreply@blogger.com (Al) — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 08:21:00 +0000

Keane set to be Sunderland boss

Before anyone has a panic attack or anything...

noreply@blogger.com (Al) — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 12:51:00 +0000

Figures for all three serious parties from the last few ICM polls (including non ICM/Grauniad ones and the new one)...

Labour: 35, 32, 34, 32, 35, 35, 31
Tories: 35, 34, 38, 37, 36, 39, 40
LDems: 21, 24, 20, 21, 18, 17, 22

The margin of error is around about 3% or maybe 4%.

Think for a minute.

Playing Politics with Terror

noreply@blogger.com (Al) — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 14:07:00 +0000

It's a sad reflection of politics these days that whenever there's a terrorist attack or an attempted terrorist attack, certain politicians and certain organisations are quick to seize the oppertunity to either further their agenda, or to score cheap political points.

The Association of Chief Police Officers is currently lobbying the Government to grant them new powers of summary justice, alledgedly to deal with people committing acts of petty crime and so on. For reasons that should be obvious, I don't think they would be calling for this in such a public way, if there had not been a terror alert a few days ago.
Essentially they want the ability to punish low level criminals without having to go through the legal system; this seems to me to be clearly wrong, as we all know the police are certainly not infallable and we also all know that certain police officers are not above abusing the powers they have already.
While political reality means that, sadly, the Police probably will get some of what ACPO is asking for, I'm hopeful that it will stop at "some".

Meanwhile, David Cameron has won himself the dubious honour of being the first senior politician to blatently play the recent failed terrorist attacks for political points. This is what he said:

"I do not believe that our government is doing enough to fight Islamist extremists at home or to protect our security."

Does this man have no decency, does this man have no shame? Does he even have any honesty?
As a rather unpleasant terrorist atrocity which could have killed up to 5,000 people has just been stopped, largely due to the efforts of a government which he accuses of not doing enough to protect us, I think the answer to that question is a rather firm NO!

Not that that is at all suprising; what I find interesting is how a highly authoritarian agenda is hidden behind what he says is a "hard nosed defense of liberty"... Cameron throws a few crumbs to the liberal sections of the establishment by saying that he opposes ID cards and 90-day-detentions, while arguing for the use of phone-tap and etc evidence in court.
Let's think about this for a minute; while concerns over ID cards are certainly legitimate (especially over the costs) the idea that they constitute a serious threat to "liberty" is absurd, and while I have stronger concerns over 90-day-detentions, it is very unlikely that they would ever effect more than a handful of people.
The use of phone tap evidence in court, on the other hand, is something that would move us far, far further towards becoming Airstrip One than just about anything that any senior politician has seriously suggested for decades. The use of phone tap evidence collected legitimately is bad enough (and for reasons that should be fairly obvious), but the potential for abuse is just monstrous.
And finally, I couldn't help noticing this rather disturbing little thing he said as well:

"And why has so little been done to use the existing law to deal with the radicalisation that is rife within our shores?"

The blatent fear-mongering here is bad enough (and is the first thing I noticed), but his assertion that somehow the law should be used to "deal with" with radical Islamism seems a little worrying; is he suggesting banning ideologies now? (and if so, what exactly makes radical/reactionary Islam any worse than Nazism, Stalinism or Maoism? And if we, as a society, ban such ideologies, how much of the moral high ground have we lost?). Is he suggesting arresting anyone suspected of teaching/believing in such ideas?
It's possible, and probably quite likely, that he just wants to sound "Tough On Terror" and that the above from him was just a load of meaningless drivel, but I still can't help but find the assertion that someone the best way to prevent people from going into extremist politics is to use the long, crude, arm of the Law.

CT Primary

noreply@blogger.com (Al) — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 14:39:00 +0000

I won't bother posting about who won (Lamont) or why or the implications and so on... there's enough of that elsewhere.

More interesting, to me anyway, was the obvious pattern of class voting; Lieberman did best in working class townships (with his best being East Haven; a blue collar suburb of New Haven), while Lamont polled very strongly in affluent and outright rich areas (his best township was Cornwall; a small, well off, town in the northwest of the state, and he polled close to 70% in ultra-rich Greenwich). Most of the bigger cities closely reflected the statewide results, with the exception of Bridgeport which voted for Lieberman.

For an excellent map of the results go HERE

Reg Keys can't count

noreply@blogger.com (Al) — Sat, 05 Aug 2006 12:46:00 +0000

During the launch of his new self-important fringe party, Keys apparently claimed that he took "nearly 5,000 votes" in Sedgefield.

For the record, the results of the 2005 General Election in Sedgefield were:

Blair 24,421
Tory 5,972
LDem 4,935
Keys 4,252
Nutter 646
Nutter 253
Nutter 218
Nutter 209
Loony 157
Nutter 103
Nutter 97
Nutter 82
Nutter 68
Nutter 45
Nutter 17

To put these figures in context, let's look at how much each candidate who polled over 1,000 spent during the campaign:

Blair £8,172.98p
Tory £3,467.94p
LDem £854.79p
Keys £11,354.94p

No Comment

Today is a good day for Alan's everywhere

noreply@blogger.com (Al) — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 21:49:00 +0000

President Alan Garcia of Peru (sworn in today).

I Have Returned

noreply@blogger.com (Al) — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 22:07:00 +0000

I had a pretty good week; did a decent amount of both walking and thinking. Did me good.
Ah well.

Away

noreply@blogger.com (Al) — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 23:26:00 +0000

I'll be away for a week

Dodgy but Legal?

noreply@blogger.com (Al) — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 12:04:00 +0000

The reports of what went on in the (private) meeting between the police and M.P's are quite interesting; three things in particular.

1. The police don't seem at all certain whether or not there will be prosecutions, or even if the law (which is "somewhat" archaic) was actually broken.

2. More Tories have been questioned than any other group.

3. I think I'll just quote Tony Wright here: "And finally, the police said whatever the outcome of this investigation they'd be very happy to share the lessons of it with us and to do that in public evidence session".

===

The selling of peerages (or more accurately; giving peerages in the understanding that a donation will be made, or giving a donation in the understanding that a peerage will be granted) has been going on for longer than anyone reading this blog has been alive, and is something that all mainstream political parties have been involved in. No one who supports a mainstream political party has any right to go off on a gloating high-horse about any of this (and those that support fringe parties should watch it as well. After all the SNP take rather a lot of money from a wife beating racist who lives in a tax haven. Not mentioning any names of course).

By most standards it's not really corruption (sure, it's shady/dodgy/sleazy etc, but compared with what goes on in the U.S, in France, in Germany, even in Ireland (let's not mention Italy here), it's pretty minor. Petty even) except, perhaps, in a moral sense, but this doesn't mean that it isn't, and has always been, a problem and that it is probably time to clean the system up. And the only way that this can be done is to put strict limits on the amount of money the Parties can spend (and not just at election time) and go for a root-and-branch reform of the House of Lords.

...pending further enquiries...

noreply@blogger.com (Al) — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 16:45:00 +0000

...Levy is out on bail now.

Not that I really care; while I dislike the man and what he stands for (ie; the increased power of individual donations from rich people in politics), the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act is a bit of a joke.

RIP Alan Senitt

noreply@blogger.com (Al) — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 12:57:00 +0000

Jewish Campaigner knifed to death in U.S

Not a lot to say; dreadful news. RIP.

One Year Later

noreply@blogger.com (Al) — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 14:51:00 +0000

I think you all know what happend a year ago and I think you all know what I think of it (ie; the same as all other sane people). So this isn't a post about what happend a year ago, but rather a post about things that happend because of it. And why some of these things have both affected me personally and made me very angry.

The first thing to note is that this does not really involve the majority of the population; something that is to their eternal credit and is another reason why I'm glad that I live in this country. Most people's reactions to the terrorist atrocities of last year was about as close to being faultless as it is possible for a great number of people to be.

I Blame...

The reaction of a wide range of people of a somewhat radical-left-libral point of view, was to ignore the attacks themselves, and move on as quickly as possible to blaming people other than the terrorists; I suppose you could call this the "Blair's Bombs" approach. And it is as intellectually disgraceful and childish as it/was is entirely predictable.
I would actually go so far as to call it cowardly.
Related to this viewpoint were the attempts to focus more attention on the unfortunate killing of a Brazillian electrician than all those killed by the terrorists, and so on and so forth. This viewpoint is as dull as it is predictable, and is generally much less disturbing (largely for those reasons) than the reactions of the other minority...

Islamophobia

The rise and rise of genuine Islamophobia in the West is not something I would especially like to write too much about at the moment, but the specific growth of it amongst the educated classes following the 7/7 attacks needs addressing, although as it has (quite absurdly; I'm not a Muslim) personally affected me, I won't try to write much on it either, for fear of this post turning into a very ugly rant.

Put bluntly, I had expected racist idiots to attack Mosques. I had expected the BNP to exploit the attacks for all they were worth.
What I did not expect was the growth of a bigotry which increasingly reminds me of genuine anti-semitism, amoungst so many people who should know better, and should know their history.

For the attitudes towards Muslims that have become almost mainstream within the middle classes, have more disturbing parallels with the sort of casual anti-semitism that was equally common amoung the same class of people (hah yes; perhaps I should have seen it coming...) in the early part of the 20th century. It hasn't reached the ugly pitch it has in many other European countries (notably the Netherlands) and, happily, it's not caught on amoung the bulk of the population, but it still exists. And it is still a problem.
At the core of these ugly views is the idea of a sort of "enemy within"; compare much of what was written (often by self-styled "liberals") in the months after the attacks (sorry; delete the bit about "months after the attacks". Have a look at how a certain newspaper reported a certain poll recently) with what was written during the early part of the past century about Jewish immigrants, especially in the press.

I have.

Which brings me to a final point; the terrorists of last year were not in any way typical of the wider Islamic community. The three Pakistanis were all Punjabis, generally from middle class backgrounds and well educated, and the fourth bomber was a black convert.
The roots of the day-to-day problems faced by the majority of British Muslims are economic and were sowed decades ago (especially as far as residential segregation goes).
This not the case with the tiny minority of Muslims that are extremists.

As a society we have to try to solve both problems, while fighting off the rising tide of genuine Islamophobia.
Or to put it another way; to bring greater equality to our society, while fighting against the forces of bigotry and extremism that stand in the way. Not a bad goal for a Socialist to advocate.

And as the reaction of the vast majority of people (both Muslims and the rest of us) to 7/7 showed, this is certainly possible.

Frankwell is still Frankwell

noreply@blogger.com (Al) — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 17:23:00 +0000

It's not often that my home town get's into the news, and when it does it's not usually because of a brutal double murder in a brothel.

While it's obviously a terrible crime, I couldn't help finding some of the reaction to it published in the local rag to be a little odd; something that a lot of people seem to have been saying (more or less), is that "this isn't the sort of thing you'd expect to see in Frankwell".

This struck me as a very strange thing to say in light of Frankwell's history; the district used to be a river port (largely one dependent on the wool trade) and was a rough area, and then some. Actually it was often more than merely rough; the traditional housing pattern of Franwell is one of tenements grouped around courtyards, and these quickly developed into some genuinely appalling slums. The Little Borough was like this for generation after generation.

Some places can never really be changed; no matter how much they may have superficially changed, no matter how much they gentrify, underneath they remain as they have always been, and they still have a certain strange, sinister feel to them.

Frankwell is one of these places.

Now what I meant to say was...

noreply@blogger.com (Al) — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 14:34:00 +0000

Instead of "F*** off and never come back" I actually intended to say... er... um... well... anyway... "clearly I am less than happy about the outcome of this match and feel that, in some small way, a rather grey (but very randy) Swede and some random troll from Merseyside, were largely to blame for this tragic state of affairs". Or words to that effect.

On a more serious level, I have found a genuine positive from this mess; Eriksson's reign of terror is over.

Back to politics now I think... and on that basis, I would like France to win so as to make Le Pen cry.

A message to Messrs. Eriksson and Rooney

noreply@blogger.com (Al) — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 17:50:00 +0000

F*** off and never come back