Double O Who?: the next James Bond and what came before

Image by raymondclarkimages. All images in this article are via Flickr.

It came as a surprise to me the other day when I found myself thinking about who the new James Bond would be. I generally regard the James Bond films as gung ho boy’s own silliness at best and tasteless romancing of Britain’s colonial past at worst. I seperate Daniel Craig’s first film, Casino Royale and Timothy Dalton’s second, Licence to Kill, from this as I felt there was more going on in those two. I know that OHMSS is meant to be the film buff’s fave but I haven’t seen it in years and can’t imagine when I’ll find the time to now.

And yet. I’m not immune to the Bond effect. My family had a CD of all the Bond themes that we used to listen to on the seven hour journey down to Cornwall from Sheffield on family holidays. I’m pretty sure I can name and sing every single one of them, in order, up to Goldeneye (Tina Turner – superbly nasal delivery of the eponymous tune).

And, in a similar way to professional wrestling, Bond movies provide a unique view into the popular culture of the time they were made. Often it’s a crass, offensive or confusing view – but it can still be valuable. Was Quarrel, Bond’s Cayman Islander sidekick in 1962’s Dr No, the first black sidekick character to be killed off in an action movie in order to present the actions of the white protagonist in a better light as the avenging hero? I’d be interested to know if anyone has an earlier example of this trope, which later became so common it passed into the realm of farcical stereotype.

Or look at Moonraker where the ludicrous lazer guns borrowed from the unusable props bin left over from Star Wars showed that even a franchise as British as James Bond wasn’t immune to the influence of the American sci-fi saga.

Or how about A View to A Kill, where the sex scene between Roger Moore and Grace Jones has to go down as one of the strangest ever committed to film. Is it meant to be funny? Erotic? Both? Either way, the collision of aged White ‘ding-dong’ style Englishness in Moore and the unapologetically powerful Blackness of Jones is certainly worthy of its moment in cinematic history.

The list goes on and on, but enough preamble. Here are the actors I would consider casting as the title role in the next Bond film:

David Oyelowo. The Selma actor, at 39, would represent a relatively seamless transition from Craig as a charismatic and intelligent actor on the cusp of middle age, who also has a body of serious character work behind him. Not only that, but he’s portrayed a member of MI5 before, on the BBC’s Spooks between 2002 and 2004. Oyelowo would allow the franchise to continue its half serious/half silly exploration of post-Snowden intelligence work and paranoia without a great deal of transition and is my continuation candidate.

John Boyega. The new Han Solo could offer a return to a more family-friendly Bond, having proven he’s capable of fronting a big, mainstream franchise with Star Wars. By becoming Bond, Boyega, who is 23, would have the strong back-up franchise that Indiana Jones was for Harrison Ford. He could also help develop a broader and more diverse audience than Craig – Boyega could be Bond’s ticket to real international box office gold – not just in the UK.

It would also provide an opportunity to refocus the series. Out with the sulky post-Cold War miserablism and in with a new cast of young, smart, sexy millennials. Like J.J Abrams already did with his Star Trek reboot basically. Boyega is my candidate to re-energise and refocus the franchise who has the best chance of bringing Bond to a larger and more diverse audience.

Jack O’Connell. My final pick is probably the least likely to land the role but is also the most interesting of the trio because I think O’Connell could take Bond to a very dark place. The same place that was occasionally hinted at by Craig in Casino Royale. Remember that Bond is, in reality, a state-sanctioned murderer. Which we’re apparently okay with provided he’s only murdering faceless goons and people who want to buy up the water supply of Bolivia (at least I think that’s what was going on in Quantum of Solace).

So picture this: as a young (O’Connell is 25) recently demobbed soldier suffering from PTSD, Corporal (I know Bond’s meant to be Navy and I don’t care geeks) James Bond is unable to fit back into the old life he knew. Following an explosion of shocking violence when an old girlfriend is being harassed by some thugs, a police manhunt turns into a deadly game of cat and mouse around a series of towers blocks (think an urban First Blood). O’Connell was superb in a similar scenario in ‘71 as a young British soldier being hunted by the IRA through a claustrophobic and rain-soaked Derry landscape.

After finally being caught, Bond is arrested and looking at a life behind bars unless he agrees to join the Government’s top secret ‘double O’ project. As a new agent, Bond is subjected to shock therapy that alters him fundamentally, turning him into a man capable of murdering anyone: any men, women or children that are believed to pose a threat to the Government. He is transformed into a shaved-headed, remorseless and utterly cold assassin who’s chillingly effective at killing people.

O’Connell’s Bond could be the cherubic and nightmarish assassin that causes us to consider both the depiction of violence in cinema and our complicity in the real world carnage which occurs in the name of our protection.

Note: Having a minor picture organisation fail today so captions are here instead of below photos. From top to bottom: Grace Jones, David Oyelowo, John Boyega, Jack O’Connell.

Forget the EU: what about the UK’s democratic deficit?

Flickr (Creative Commons)

A common argument being made at the moment against remaining in the EU is that it controls as much or more of the law-making power in the UK as the Government does. In turn, the argument goes, much of that power is held by unelected officials – the EU’s so-called democratic deficit.

Before dealing with the second point, let’s look at what fact-checking agency Full Fact says about the first. In their briefing on the key claims in the EU argument, it says that the EU ‘has an influence’ on 13% of law designated as UK-only. However, when you count all the laws that apply in the UK, that figure rises to above 60%.

So, there’s clearly a lot of room between those two statistics for the EU’s critics and supporters to differently interpret its level of control on British law, depending on the specific area they’re looking at. The Full Fact briefing points out that some key policy areas have significantly greater levels of EU influence – financial services and trade – compared to others which don’t such as defence and direct taxation.

What about the ‘democratic deficit’ then – how unelected is the EU? Well, the European Parliament is elected directly by the peoples of the EU, the European Council consists of the heads of its elected national governments, and the Council of Ministers is made up of other representatives from those governments depending on the policy issues at hand.

That leaves the European Commission, the executive branch of the EU, which is unelected. However, as Professor John McCormick of the University of Indianapolis points out here, the final decisions on the laws the Commission drafts and proposes are taken by the Council of Ministers and/or the European Parliament.

Nevertheless, the Commission is unelected and undeniably powerful and influential. But if the problem people are concerned with is power being held by an unelected body then it seems a little unfair to level so much criticism at the EU when the exercise of unelected power is an integral part of the the UK’s own political system.

The House of Lords, for example, is unelected and arguably has more power to dictate how people live in the UK than any instrument of the EU. It recently demonstrated that power by blocking the Chancellor’s tax credits reform – a flagship pledge of the new Government.

Tony Blair. Image via Flickr (Creative Commons)

Not only are peers not elected, but the Lords’ red benches have become bloated during the last 20 years as Governments crammed them full of newly appointed life peers in attempts to balance the Lords in their favour. Tony Blair created 357 peers, with Gordon Brown adding another 34. David Cameron appointed 236 peers during the last Government and will doubtless soon create more.

Reform of the Lords is a recurring political question, and the Strathcldye review may well attempt to curb their power in the future, but for now peers continue to exert huge power on how far the Government is able to enact its agenda. That power may well be displayed again when the Trade Union Bill reaches the Lords.

Then there is the power of unelected civil servants. The Government creates and dictates policy, but it is the job of Whitehall bureaucrats to interpret and implement it, as well as quietly veto policies seen as entirely unworkable.

Not only that, but the top levels of the civil service are in a unique position to exert influence on the decisions of the Prime Minister and the rest of Cabinet. A minor scandal erupted in 2012 when head of the civil service Sir Jeremy Heywood was rumoured to be rather too close to the proposed merger between defence giant BAE and European aviation firm EADS. The merger failed, but the gossip suggesting it had only come as far as it did because of Heywood’s influence did not die down quickly.

And next week, the City will likely find out who is to be Sir Nick Macpherson’s successor as Permanent Secretary of the Treasury. The capital’s financial elite will watch with interest, as whoever is elected will have no mandate and yet more say on how taxpayers’ money is spent during the next decade than all but the highest members of Government.

There is also the Court of Appeal, the High Court and the Supreme Court. All are capable of overruling the Government by declaring the laws it passes as illegal. Not one of the judges on these exalted bodies of law is elected by either a local or general election. They are chosen instead by an appointment committee.

Indeed, a friend whose father is a top QC tells me that promotion to these select legal bodies still often comes via a discreet tap on the shoulder followed by a whispered conversation and the precise suggestion of when and how to apply in the knowledge that acceptance will follow.

All the institutions I’ve mentioned have a profound influence on how taxpayer money is spent and what people in the UK are allowed to do or say and none of them – none – have ever been elected.

So, if people are worried that about the democratic mandate of the people who govern this country, then I can see their point – but they have far bigger problems than the EU to worry about.

Political rehab: the strange usefulness of Chris Grayling

 

Leader of the House Chris Grayling. Flickr (Creative Commons)

If you haven’t heard much about Chris Grayling before, you’re about to. As one of the top Eurosceptics in the Cabinet, you can expect to see him on every news and politics show going in the new few weeks after finally being let off the leash by David Cameron to campaign for the UK leaving the European Union.

His Cabinet position is Leader of the House. Sounds impressive, but without a policy brief such as say, defence or foreign affairs, his role in the day to day running of the country is a little nebulous and more to do with ordering parliamentary business than in any broader responsibility of Government.

In the last Government, Grayling was Justice Secretary and presided over a farcically draconian series of policy decision, including cuts to legal aid, a ban on sending books to prisoners and introducing a levy where anyone facing a criminal trial, no matter whether they were later found guilty or innocent, must pay a charge.

This particular measure also affected the level of the justice the courts are able to provide because the fee was reduced if a defendant pleading guilty, thereby incentivising defendants to plead guilty if they couldn’t afford the payment. Many in the legal profession, incensed already by the legal aid cuts, were appalled by this undermining of justice – and its likely effect of needlessly filling up prison places with poor people instead of actual criminals.

Grayling also had a notoriously rocky relationship with Her Majesty’s (now former) Chief Inspector of Prisons Nick Hardwick, who submitted a series of damning reports about the prisons left in Grayling’s care.

Justice Secretary Michael Gove. Flickr (Creative Commons)

In the reshuffle after the Conservative election victory, Grayling was replaced with Michael Gove. The Surrey Heath MP has been a revelation as Justice Secretary and is now one of the most popular members of the Cabinet, not least among the legal profession who so despised Grayling.

Gove achieved this mainly by tenaciously reversing the measures his predecessor enacted (Buzzfeed have produced this handy step-by-step guide on Gove’s policy reversals). The Prime Minister seems to favour Gove’s approach and dedicated an important speech a couple of weeks ago to prison reform.

It’s almost impossible to imagine the media reaction to Gove’s announcement yesterday that he would support a Brexit in the EU referendum, which the majority saw as a major coup for the Out campaign, even a year ago. Last February he was still residing in political purgatory as Chief Whip after being sacked as Education Secretary following the impressive feat of uniting the entire nation’s teachers in their loathing of him.

Without the route back to popularity provided by reversing almost the entire course of his predecessor’s tenure at the Ministry of Justice, the Brexit campaign would probably now be lacking its most prominent Cabinet supporter – one wonders if the Prime Minister regrets not assigning a more biddable deputy to clean up after Grayling at the MoJ.

Grayling’s own support for Brexit seems most focused on his opposition to the 1998 Human Rights Act. His plan to scrap the Act, published in 2014, was shelved following widespread criticism, including from his own party – notably former Cabinet colleague Dominic Grieve – celebrities, and internationally, where the proposals were seen by many as a dangerous precedent to other Western democracies for watering down human rights.

Grieve intervened again earlier this month after David Cameron floated attempts to tempt Boris Johnson to join the In campaign with measures to reduce EU involvement in British law. The former Attorney General pointed out that under the way the EU works, such measures would be pointless as they would ultimately be overridden by the European Court of Justice. Hence, Grayling is campaigning for a Brexit.

Given his miserable recent record as a Government minister, it’s hard to see much of a future for Grayling unless the referendum does result in a victory for the Out campaign. Should that happen, despite Cameron’s insistence he would remain in Number 10, it seems that a leadership contest would inevitable with most of the usual suspects – Osborne, May, even Nicky Morgan – all tarred by ending up on the losing side.

In that case, who knows, maybe Grayling will have cleared the way for Prime Minister Gove? Or Priti Patel? Even if it’s Boris, he could always prove useful yet again by rehabilitating another disgraced In supporter, a la Gove, by the time of the 2020 election.

 

Undermined: the politics of fracking around with local democracy

Public opinion about fracking is bitterly divided. Critics contend it can cause earthquakes, contaminate water supplies and is holding up large-scale investment in renewable energy.

Its supporters decry their opponents as ignorant, conservative (but probably not Tory) NIMBY treehuggers who simply refuse to listen to any positive information about fracking. They also insist it’s impossible to come up with a credible strategy for future energy supply that does not include it.

A public appeal got started in Blackpool last week, with energy company Cuadrilla attempting to overturn a decision by Lancashire County Council denying them permission for new fracking operations in an area near Preston New Road. They would have been the first UK operations in four years. Environment journo Ruth Hayhurst has been covering the hearing since it began and I’d advise anyone interested in the case to follow her on Twitter for regular updates (@ruthhayhurst).

I’ve no intention of arguing the case for or against fracking in general one way or another. My point is that the elected Lancashire council rejected Cuadrilla’s application by a clear majority and there is no evidence that the vote was tampered with in any way.

The Government is free to criticise the council’s decision, ask them to reconsider, do separate investigative work to convince the council of the merits of fracking or offer the community incentives to get in line with their thinking on the issue.

Instead, a flat-out reversal of the will of the local democracy seems the most likely outcome. It now looks certain that the council will be overruled by Communities Secretary Greg Clark, who announced back in November that he would be making the final decision on whether to approve Cuadrilla’s application.

Communities Secretary Greg Clark. (Via gregclark.org)

Since their election victory last May, the Conservatives have made no secret of their view that fracking should be a key part of the UK’s energy strategy, with Energy Secretary Amber Rudd being a particularly vocal fan.  

And, last month, a leaked letter from Clark, Rudd and Environment Secretary Liz Truss to George Osborne revealed that the decision to press ahead with fracking has effectively already been taken, reducing the public appeal in Blackpool to little more than a costly sideshow.

The letter, obtained by Friends of the Earth, also revealed future plans to designate proposed fracking sites as part of Nationally Significant Infrastructure Planning (NDIP) which would remove planning permission from their councils and hand it to the Communities Secretary.

How can the Government credibly argue it is proceeding with regional devolution and committed to creating a country no longer so entirely focused on the South East, when it is actively ignoring the democratic decision of a Northern council on such an important, public and divisive issue?

As some commentators have pointed out, with upcoming changes to short money and likely reductions to Labour’s party funding via the Trade Union Bill, the Government is in danger of revealing an authoritarian streak.

Choosing to permit a costly public appeal to go ahead and then, regardless of the outcome, announce a decision made in Westminster last year, betrays a lack of respect for local democracy that verges on contempt. It can also only add to the building narrative that this Government is intent on getting its way, regardless of opposition from Labour, elected councils, or anyone else.  

Meanwhile, last week Clark announced £300m would be allocated from the Treasury to councils in order to ease the pain of spending cuts to adult social care. Analysis of the councils due to receive the money quickly revealed it is overwhelmingly headed to Tory-controlled areas. So it appears it may not only to be the authority of Northern councils that the Government holds in contempt, but their finances as well.

No access: how it could soon be almost impossible to rent in London without a British passport

On the first day of this month, the Government extended a scheme for landlords called ‘Right to Rent’ nationwide. The scheme, which was trialled in the West Midlands prior to going national, essentially privatises the checking process for tenants prior to being rented a property – specifically the checks on their immigration status and whether they are legally allowed to rent.

Not a huge deal you might think, after all, does it really matter who checks the immigration status of tenants prior to rental as long as the testing is thorough and fair? Well yes, it does –  because it suddenly places a new burden on landlords and letting agents to conduct a series of checks which they haven’t been trained to perform and which complicate the essential purpose of their job – to get as many tenants into as many properties as quickly as possible while keeping ‘void’ time between tenancies, where properties stand empty, to a minimum.

In London, where the private rental market is already subject to huge pressure, time, say landlords, is the key element in any letting. Anything which slows down a tenant being accepted for a property is bad for business – especially when the delay can be completely avoided by simply renting to someone with a British passport instead.

What commercial incentive is there for landlords to bother analysing documents more complicated to understand than a passport, or wait around for documents that take a few days to produce, when there is a ready supply of passport-holders wanting to rent in the capital?

The potential for discrimination, particularly against BME migrants and British citizens without documents, has been pointed out by the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, who have been monitoring the effects of the changes in the five authorities in the West Midlands where ‘Right to Rent, has been trialled since December 2014.

The JCWI found evidence that landlords began racially profiling prospective tenants during the trial, with 42% of landlords saying the changes have made them less likely to consider someone without a British passport for a tenancy, and 27% saying they are now more reluctant to engage with someone with a foreign accent or name.

Around 17.5% of British citizens don’t hold a passport – nearly one in five of us. The population of London is expected to increase by around 100,000 every year until 2030. Housing is by far the most prominent issue in this year’s mayoral election and most people who live in London know how hard it is to find an affordable place to live even if you do have the most simple and available documents to hand.

It’s not hard to imagine these changes leading, in a few years, to a situation where it is functionally, if not legally, impossible to rent a property in London without a British passport.

Even if the Government tries to ensure landlords treat prospective tenants more equally, doing so will make it objectively harder for landlords to fill properties quickly, which, in London’s hyper competitive housing industry, will be more than enough of a reason to find a way around the rules.

JCWI Policy Officer Charlotte Peel told me that the greatest risk of discrimination is likely to come from smaller-scale landlords rather than bigger ones, as these appear to be both the least informed about the changes and the most likely to misunderstand the new system.

The charity is calling for much more awareness to be drawn to the changes, noting that there has been ‘next-to-no’ publicity targeted at tenants. Charlotte says tenants should make sure they are prepared before applying for a tenancy, ensure they know their rights under the 2010 Equality Act – and be encouraged to come forward if they believe they have been discriminated against.

The JWCI is also calling for greater sanctions to be placed against landlords and agents who are found to have engaged in discrimination and for the Government to make it easier for tenants to take landlords to court when they have been found to have taken part in illegal discrimination.

Dead cat or dead wrong: why every Government gaffe should not be celebrated as political genius

Chancellor George Osborne. Image via Flickr (Creative Commons)

Popular opinion seems to have decided that David Cameron’s use of the phrase ‘bunch of migrants’ to describe the thousands of refugees presently clustered in filthy camps in Calais was the latest brilliant example of the Lynton Crosby ‘dead cat’ trick.

For the uninitiated, the dead cat trick is an ingenious if crude method of misdirection for use when a politician is trapped in a bad position over a particularly thorny issue. To execute the manoeuvre, you simply do or say something so shocking or offensive (metaphorically throwing a dead cat on the table) that everyone is too distracted and busy talking about it to remember what was going on before.

In this case, the difficulty lay with George Osborne, who announced early in the week that HMRC had agreed a deal with Google to settle unpaid taxes during the last ten years by paying around $140m to the Treasury. The news was more or less universally terribly received, with commentators and politicians alike criticising the agreed amount of back taxes the media giant had agreed to pay as much too low.

With the Chancellor under rare united pressure from the press as well as the Opposition, Cameron, so the story goes, came to his rescue by tossing his ‘bunch of migrants’ dead cat on the table of the Commons on Wednesday at PMQs.

One problem with this analysis of events is that it risks applauding every faux pas and gaffe the Government makes as a master stroke of political manoeuvring. In its own way, this news could depress Labour supporters, if the Government is appearing so confident and unchallenged that even its mistakes are praised as cunning Realpolitik.

But the other problem, and the one which should concern Cameron, is that if this was an attempt at throwing a dead cat over the Google issue, then it hasn’t worked.

On the contrary, the poor return for the taxpayer from the Google deal seems to have done that rare thing and captured the public imagination. It appeals to the common modern sense of anti-establishment thinking by suggesting the Government and big business are routinely concocting secret deals which screw the majority of the population out of their cash, while slashing the benefits of the poorest/opening the country’s doors to mass immigration (delete according to political preference).

Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell

This morning, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell (who pulled off a reverse dead cat by throwing Mao’s Red Book on the table of the Commons last year) correctly read the public mood and published his tax return. He has pledged to do so annually. It’s a simple and smart piece of visual politics which has the advantage of being a potent symbolic action that is relatively without risk for Labour but leaves Osborne facing a potentially very embarrassing Catch 22.

If the Chancellor refuses to publish his own return then McDonnell can cheerfully speculate on the riches of his opposite number while painting him and the similarly loaded Googles executives as peas in a pod, exempt from the tax laws of mere mortals. Whereas, if Osborne does make his return public, then at the very least his considerable personal wealth will be again placed squarely in the public eye.

The dilemma was made even trickier for the Chancellor by the Sunday Times report this morning that the UK’s six biggest firms paid no tax in 2014, further reinforcing the sense that the Government is letting big business out of paying its fair share.

Meanwhile, this week Osborne also postponed the Spring sale of the Government’s shares in Lloyd’s bank. The indefinite delay of the sale, which the Tory 2015 manifesto promised would be held within a year of the election, is, as Nils Pratley pointed out in the Guardian, another sign the Chancellor’s reputation for economic competence is under strain.

Should the furore over Google continue to refuse to die down, it could represent Labour’s first big win on the economy since the tax credits defeat by the Lords. And, should that happen, it will come from an entirely unforced error by the Government – and one laid directly at the door of the Chancellor.

Undecided: what does Labour’s official report into its election loss actually say?

Margaret Beckett’s report on why Labour lost the May 7 election was published a week ago yesterday. Bluntly, the report says the Tories triumphed because they were able to connect with voters in marginal seats better than Labour did on a handful of important issues.

After its release, following a leak the previous week, the report was quickly co-opted by commentators from both the left and right of the party. Stephen Bush’s post on the New Statesman’s Staggers blog well articulated the confusion.

The right suggested it was proof of their chorus, sounded by David Miliband and others from May 8, that the party lost because it had moved so far to the left under his brother Ed that it lost touch with the electorate.

The left, on the other hand, pointed to the report’s support for some of Labour’s more left wing policies, notably the energy price freeze, the mansion tax and bringing the railways back into some form of public ownership. These, suggested Beckett, appeared to have been among the most popular individual policies proposed by either Labour or the Tories among the public. So left-wing policies, in of themselves, do not appear to have been the problem either.

Some, notably Gordon Brown’s ex chief pollster Deborah Mattinson, rubbished the report’s findings in their entirety, and claimed Beckett significantly played down how both the extent of Labour’s lack of economic credibility and Ed Miliband’s personal lack of ‘prime ministerial’ qualities were central to the defeat. Others continued banging on about the Ed Stone, as they will presumably until long after we, and it, have been reduced to so much dust.

Former Labour Leader Ed Miliband. Image from Flickr (Creative Commons)

I found the most interesting view on the report came in comparison with the perspective of Lynton Crosby, the Tories’ election guru, on why Labour lost. He was quoted by Sam Delaney in the Guardian last Thursday, in an excerpt from a new book looking at how the tools of advertising have been incorporated into politics. Crosby’s verdict on Labour’s defeat is, given his own position, both remarkably non-politically partisan, and brutally damning:

‘They never said sorry for their mishaps, they never really did an honest review of their policies, they never had a story about the future for the British people. They just did not do the work. They were intellectually lazy and thought themselves intellectually superior.’

The Tory campaign chief doesn’t gloat and say Labour could never have won because of their personnel, or that they shouldn’t have won because Labour’s policies are simply always wrong. Instead, he says they lost for believing that a vague austerity-lite narrative and general anti-Tory antipathy would be enough to win them the election, and, critically, that the public would inevitably see through the false Tory line on the economy.

Delaney points out that one of Crosby’s first moves after being employed by the Tories in 2013 was to ‘scrape the barnacles off the boat’ – ditching all policies but a core few, and then ensuring ruthless parrot-like repetition of simple key messages:

• Labour destroyed the economy
• Ed Miliband is weak, and also untrustworthy
• Labour wants the whole population to claim benefits
• Labour will let every immigrant into the country.

It was in these few messages, particularly the first two, that Labour lost the election, according to Beckett. So, where does that leave the Opposition? More than anything else, in the next election Labour must be clear about what it represents and its vision for the future. Vagueness, lazy communication and lazy thinking will be its worst enemies. If another defeat like 2015 is to be avoided, they need to be completely eradicated from the party’s culture.

 

Splatter: the new depths of online abuse towards female journalists

Image from Flickr. (Creative Commons licence)

Anyone who writes either for a living or for pleasure and then publishes their work gets used to being disagreed with, often splenetically, myself being no exception. Still, it’s unlikely anyone will ever send me a image of myself splattered with semen in reaction to anything I’ve written. But that’s exactly what happened to tech journo Holly Brockwell last week.

The crime Holly committed for this punishment was to publish an interview on Gadgette, the tech website she founded, with the creator of an app, Stolen, which allows people to ‘steal’ the Twitter profile of their peers – it’s designed to be a harmless bit of fun and no control over the profile is actually granted. Nonetheless, Holly pointed out that some of the connotations of having a personal profile ‘stolen’ were troubling, especially if it was a man stealing a woman’s account.

The app went into decline shortly afterward and then social media users began to abuse her for criticising it, culminating in the image being sent to her of her face, on a tablet, covered in someone’s semen.

I’m aware of Gamergate and the unrelenting and horrific abuse many female journalists experience on social media merely for writing about subjects their tormentors deem to be male-only areas. Tech or gaming journalism isn’t my professional field or my personal interest area but I thought I had a relatively good grasp from an outsider’s perspective of its tropes and patterns. But to be honest, this particular case really shocked me.

Someone ejaculating on Holly’s Twitter picture might be seen, out of context, as the action of a desperately unhappy, impotent person who may even be mentally unwell. But taken within the frame of abuse of which it is a clearly a part, it’s an unambiguous attempt to intimidate her with a sexual threat.

It tries to forcefully pull the journalist, or a representation of her, out of the internet and into the physical environment of the image’s creator and then abuse that representation, exerting sexual power over it in a disturbingly intimate and deliberately symbolic way.

It’s easy enough to repeat, as I usually do in my head when seeing the latest awful messages daubed, or splattered, on the walls of social media, the legend: ‘Don’t Feed The Trolls’. But the level of abuse Holly and her colleagues experience simply for publishing their work is something to which I will likely never be fully subjected to, due to my gender. And for this, I feel guilty, and somehow complicit in the attempts to intimidate her.

I can only say I salute her and people like her wholeheartedly, and that my respect and admiration for them in the face of such calculated and creepy bile, is absolute.

Left News Digest – week beginning January 11

 

The House of Commons. Image via Flickr (Creative Commons)

EVEL

There aren’t many firsts in Westminster, a place steeped in many bizarre traditions, but one came this Tuesday as a select group of MPs elected to the House of Commons were banned from voting on a Bill for the first time due to the location of the lands they represent. It was the first use of the amusingly titled EVEL (English Votes for English Laws) rules, which despite the name, do not necessarily disqualify Welsh MPs from voting.

They do, however, ban all MPs from Scotland from voting on any measures deemed to affect only England and Wales, effectively prohibiting the Commons’ third largest party in the SNP, from participating. The vote in question was regarding the Housing bill, specifically an amendment which, as Political Scrapbook noted, would have established a standard of fitness that residential landlords would be required to ensure properties meet before a tenancy is agreed, and ensure remains met throughout the contracted period.

The PS piece also points out that, of the English and Welsh MPs who voted against the amendment to ensure that rental properties are fit to live in, 72 have registered interests in rented accommodation, according to parliament’s transparency register.

That list, which contains high-profile Cabinet members Sajid Javid, Theresa Villiers and John Whittingdale, may prove embarrassing to the Conservative candidate for Mayor of London Zac Goldsmith in May, with the lack of affordable, decent housing still probably the biggest issue in the that election. Labour candidate Sadiq Khan would be wise to remind Londoners in the spring on what issue the Government first chose to exercise its EVEL powers.

Strike

Also on Tuesday, away from Westminster, doctors in the NHS went out on strike for the first time in around 40 years, over proposed changes to working hours as the Government attempts to bring in so-called seven-day NHS services. Respected NHS commentator Roy Lilley provided the most practical and useful summation of the stand-off between junior doctors and Government.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt. Image via Flickr (Creative Commons)

Lilley recaps the beginnings of the dispute by highlighting the grave political error made by Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt (or the Tinkerman as Lilley calls him) in 2012 when he first threatened to impose a new contract on doctors if an agreement couldn’t be reached.

This seems to have led to a complete breakdown of trust with the BMA (the union that represents doctors) who have since become yet more jittery in response to the Tory election pledge to introduce the seven-day NHS within the existing financial structure, rather than through a substantially new arrangement on hours, wages and out-of-hours pay.

As a result, it appears there’s a near-total lack of good faith on both sides, meaning that neither is likely to blink, as was the case at the end of the week when Thursday and Friday’s Acas conciliation talks ended without any resolution. Hunt clearly believes he has a democratic mandate to impose his contract changes following the Tory election victory, while the BMA seem equally certain Hunt has no sincere desire to compromise, leaving them with no option but to strike and appeal for public support. They have that support for now – after a strike also involving emergency care, who knows?

It’s useful to remember that calling the medics involved ‘junior’ doctors is a bit of a misnomer – while some of those striking will be just-qualified, the juniors classification applies to all doctors below consultant level who are also not GPs. Considering that its unusual for a person to reach consultant level before their mid-thirties, and that many will take a while longer than that, the image of a gang of young, entitled and barely-qualified doctors facing off with the Government, as painted in a few of the tabloids, is a false one.

Crisis

Two of the Guardian’s top financial commentators added their voices this week to the growing chorus predicting another financial crisis to match the worst of 2008-9, coming as soon as this year. William Keegan noted in the Observer the distinct contrast between the Chancellor’s confident to-the-point-of-complacency Autumn Statement speech and his first prominent speech of the new year, warning of a fairly vague ‘dangerous cocktail’ to the UK’s economy.

The most deadly ingredient in said cocktail likely being the imminent implosion of China’s stock market. Economics Editor Larry Elliot grimly observed on Tuesday how analysts at RBS are advising investors to sell, and sell quickly, ahead of a coming wave of deflation. The bank’s ominous note to its clients read: ‘This is about return of capital, not return on capital. In a crowded hall, exit doors are small.’

Elliot quotes much of a gloomy recent speech by respected City analyst Albert Edwards which laments the failure of central bankers to learn the harsh lessons of the last crisis. Edwards closes by predicting that, as the collapse of Lehman Brothers triggered the crash of 2008, so China’s implosion may well prove the catalyst for a 2016 meltdown.

(…)

Digested digest.

i. Mike Sivier on voxpoliticalonline.com. Wednesday, January 13
ii. No byline, Political Scrapbook. Tuesday, January 12
iii. Roy Lilley, NHSManagers.net. Tuesday, January 12
iv. William Keegan, The Observer. Sunday, January 10
v. Larry Elliot, The Guardian. Tuesday, January 12

Also worth reading:

http://leftfootforward.org/2016/01/spending-on-government-staff-is-rising-at-an-alarming-rate/ Government’s bumper spending on temps and consultants.

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/jan/14/why-are-brits-so-obsessed-with-buying-their-own-homes Agnes Poirier on the British obsession with homeownership.

Left news digest – week beginning January 4

Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. Image from http://www.freenimr.org

Execution

The year began with the fallout from the execution of Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr by Saudi Arabia. Exactly how the Middle Eastern state, which is controlled absolutely by its Sunni royal family, killed al-Nimr, along with 46 others is apparently unknown.

Perhaps he was beheaded in the notorious Deera Square in Riyadh where at least 157 people were executed last year. Known to locals as ‘Chop Chop Square’, the most unfortunate of those deemed criminals by Saudi Arabia are dragged here to be decapitated publicly, then have their heads sewn back onto their bodies and are carried away. The blood drains away through special grates built into the floor.

Ian Dunt noted on politics.co.uk that one of the many impacts of al-Nimr’s death was to unite (albeit briefly) the fractious British Parliamentary Labour Party, and on a foreign policy issue of all things. Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn issued a stern condemnation of the killing, while Jeremy Corbyn’s antipathy to how Saudi Arabia operates is well documented. His vocal opposition to a prison deal between the UK and the Saudis last year was key in pushing David Cameron and Justice Secretary Michael Gove to kill the contract.

Dunt quotes a piece co-written by former Left Foot Forward blogger James Bloodworth that was later published on labourinternationalist.org.uk which criticises Corbyn’s ‘Stop the War shaped’ pacifism – and it’s true that pacifism for pacifism’s sake, if that’s what you believe Corbyn represents, is at best a short-sighted approach to international relations.

However, as Dunt says, to think for a moment that the foreign policy of the Government, with its uncritical support for Riyadh and the headsmen of Chop Chop Square, represents a more moral option is ridiculous. Moreover, the execution, designed as it transparently was to provoke Shia Iran following the tentative progress towards better relations with the West made during the last year, was not unlike the barbaric murders routinely carried out by ISIS. Sensational, gruesome and with a clear political intent to provoke conflict.

On The Intercept blog, Lee Fang and Zaid Jilani put together a brief but illuminating critical analysis of the US media reaction to al-Nimr’s death, with particular regard to the paucity of sources used that didn’t favour the Saudi Government. In Politico’s piece on the killing for example, Fang and Jilani note the report’s author quoted only three sources: the State Department; the Saudi Government; and Fahad Nazer – a ‘political analyst’ who turns out to be not only a former official of the Saudi embassy in Washington but also a non-resident fellow of a think-tank entirely funded by the embassy and the UAE.

Revenge

What to call Corbyn’s reshuffle then, if you can call one sacking, one switch, one new appointment and three resignations a reshuffle? Revenge, or leader’s prerogative? The only non self-inflicted casualty of the reshuffle, former Shadow Culture Secretary Michael Dugher, was apparently sacked for coining the ‘revenge reshuffle’ term in this slightly bizarre Star Wars-referencing article for the New Statesman last week. He was likely only putting into pleasingly odd words what many of his colleagues were thinking.

Associate Editor of the Daily Mirror Kevin Maguire – one of the more traditional left wing voices in the media and often a supporter of Corbyn – tweeted following Dugher’s sacking that the shower of praise from his former colleagues on the Labour front bench was hardly a surprise and praised him as a ‘shrewd, able, popular Northern street fighter’ and noted Corbyn may regret the decision.

Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn. Image via Flickr (Creative Commons)

On LabourList, Maya Goodfellow was wondering what all the fuss was about. She points out that Corbyn faced a classic political Catch 22 over Hilary Benn. If he keeps Benn, he’s weak, naïve, not a leader or statesman – if he sacks him he’s an autocrat, what about the ‘new politics’ etc. So the eventual fudge of Benn remaining but apparently under orders not to give many more speeches against his leader could be seen as the kind of compromise a good leader needs to make. Or a prolonged and messy way to manage a few fairly simple transitions – depending on your perspective.

Bias

A minor storm in a Beeb-emblazoned teacup occurred on Thursday when it emerged that Shadow Cabinet member Stephen Doughty’s on-air resignation on the BBC’s Daily Politics moments before Wednesday’s PMQs was pre-arranged with the show’s bosses. The reveal came via the Beeb’s own College of Journalism blog, which was picked up on by Political Scrapbook, among others.

The story goes that Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg had heard from Doughty that he was considering resigning, then always-up-for-a-scandal presenter Andrew Neil suggested they do it live on the show, which is eventually what happened, following a little persuasion from Kuenssberg. Cue outrage.

It’s easy to see why some people consider this yet more evidence of a vast media conspiracy to slime Labour. But never in the CoJ blog is it suggested Kuenssberg or Neil put pressure on Doughty to resign. On the contrary he appears to have brought up the matter himself in a pre-show chat. The most the BBC can be accused of is manipulating the timing of the event, once they had been informed it was occurring, for dramatic effect and commercial value, which is, well, journalism.

If a pro-European Cabinet Minister had resigned on-air before PMQs in response to David Cameron’s decision to give his front bench a free vote on the EU referendum, would that have been a biased decision by the Daily Politics producers? Only if the bias was in favour of interesting coverage.

It’s true that swathes of journos from predictable quarters have laid in to Corbyn with undisguised glee since his election to the leadership – but suggesting that this occasion was anything more than an informal chat, a hopeful suggestion and some fortunate timing is getting a little ridiculous.

Seeing as how the BBC is accused daily of carrying both outrageous left-wing and right-wing bias, I doubt Kuenssberg and her colleagues will be too worried about this affair. Still, she was uncharacteristically quiet on Twitter as the week ended.

(…)

Digested digest:

1. Ian Dunt on www.politics.co.uk. Monday, January 4

2. James Bloodworth, Martyn Hudson, Alan Johnson on labourinternationalist.org.uk. Monday, January 4

3. Lee Fang, Zaid Jilani for the The Intercept. Monday January 4

4. Michael Dugher for the New Statesman. Wednesday December 30

5. Maya Goodfellow for LabourList. Wednesday January 6

6. No byline, Political Scrapbook. Thursday January 7

Tweets:

Kevin Maguire: Associate Editor of the Daily Mirror. @Kevin_Maguire

Laura Kuenssberg: Political Editor of the BBC. @bbclaurak