Those Muslims. They’re a worry, aren’t they? We worry about them integrating. We worry about the books they read. We worry about the religious premises they attend. We worry about the library stock dedicated to their religion. We worry about offending them. We worry about how some of them talk in funny languages called “Arabic” and “Urdu”, whatever they are. We worry about what they’re thinking. We worry about whether some of them are AS WE SPEAK plotting our demise, brainwashing children, and writing poems about the joys of beheading infidels. We worry about whether the anti-terrorist legislation which is clearly targeted at “them” is tough enough; the home secretary doesn’t know how much longer the pre-charge detention limit should be, but she does know that it isn’t long enough.

To add to all of these existential problems and threats, the Sun today cheerfully informs us of another problem with Muslims. Apparently, the numbers of Muslims behind bars has risen by 120%. This undoubtedly means that BRITAIN’S jails risk becoming breeding grounds for Islamic extremists…

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Two pressure groups have won a High Court challenge on the legality of the decision to end investigations into BAE Systems’ dealings with Saudi Arabia.

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We have an opportunity to use the internet to involve a new generation of Britons to collaborate on campaigns as never before. That is the only way to stem the rising tide of political apathy and disillusionment, re-energise our base and seize the political initiative. The liberal-left has to think past single-issue campaigns and work together to push a progressive agenda for Britain. We need to do this, rather than simply hoping Brown will herald a new progressive age where Blair did not.

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For the people most threatened by the revolting masses talking back are those paid to opine from the tops of the mountain: the old school, mainstream media commentators and opinion journalists. If there are people out there who will do what you do, for free, for the sheer pleasure of it, and who are quite capable of dissecting and critiquing your piece, and who, in doing so, prove themselves equally impassioned, equally well-informed, then that is a threat. Mediocrity will suffer. Too damn bad.

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For teachers, pupils and parents at five successful schools across the length of England, the news that Gordon Brown was to single them out by name in his first major education speech was a welcome recognition of their dedication and hard work.

Local newspaper headlines on the morning of the speech last Wednesday suggested that the Prime Minister was to praise these institutions as beacons of excellence whose initiatives and ideas should be replicated across the education world.

But today The Times can reveal that Mr Brown never praised the schools in the speech and that at least five local communities may have been the victims of a sophisticated government spin operation.

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(via Political Betting)

King Abdullah’s crass intervention has also revealed a greater truth about the relationship between Britain and Saudi Arabia, often described in a lazy piece of diplomatic shorthand as a “partner in the war on terror”. If these two governments failed to co-operate in the months running up to 7 July 2005, then what exactly is the point of this relationship?

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How just 8,000 voters could have handed power to the Conservatives on November 1st

Research from the Electoral Reform Society has revealed just how few votes were required to swing the general election from Labour.

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(via Make My Vote Count)

Contrary to what that propagandist would have you believe, I do not obsess over Iain Dale.

I do, however, worry a great deal about the potential that’s being pissed away by Dale and others like him who declare themselves the masters of the blogosphere while rejecting everything that makes blogging valuable to the electorate.

I often heard Dale claim that the UK is/was “4-5 years behind the Americans” with regards to political blogging, when this simply wasn’t the case at the time. Unlike the Americans, a couple of short years ago we enjoyed cross-party dialogue that actually involved elected officials. Take-up was slow because of the challenges involved (tricky things like transparency and accountability) but we had something valuable that the Americans did not, and it was growing.

Then a whole bunch of carpet-baggers came charging in with Iain Dale and Paul Staines at the head of the pack. They mimicked the counter-productive shouty and tribal approach used in the US and declared themselves pioneers.

Suddenly, certain elected officials, activists and media controllers felt free to run faux-weblogs because accountability no longer appeared to be a defining or requisite factor. This turn of events also allowed certain other elected officials, activists and media controllers to refuse to engage on the basis that the blogging community had nothing valid to offer.

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A Labour peer has admitted taking money to introduce an arms company lobbyist to the government minister in charge of weapons purchases. The case of “cash for access” in the House of Lords is likely to ignite fresh concern about ethical standards in parliament.

The lobbyist, Michael Wood, who trades as Whitehall Advisers, agreed to pay Lord Hoyle an undisclosed sum in June 2005. MoD documents released to the Guardian show that Lord Hoyle then engineered a private meeting between Mr Wood and the newly appointed defence minister.

Mr Wood is a former RAF officer who works for BAE and other smaller arms companies to help get them contracts. He has free run of the palace of Westminster because he has a security pass as a “research assistant” to another MP. He operates his company from his nearby flat.

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Few outside politics can understand why accountability among the players and performers in Westminster and Whitehall has become a curiosity mentioned in constitutional textbooks, rather than being a realistic deterrent to misbehaviour. Nowadays there seem to be few champions of truth, willing to use the protection of parliamentary privilege and eager to name and shame the culpable for their sins. In their absence, there is a legacy of concealment, excuses and suspicion of dishonesty. Inevitably Westminster’s rot has spread and is infecting everyday life in Britain.

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The Home Secretary has admitted that there has not been one single case since 9/11 when police enquiries would have been aided by holding a terror suspect for more than 28 days.

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In proposing that temporary and agency workers should benefit from the same pay and basic conditions as their fully accredited counterparts, [MP Paul] Farrelly’s [temporary and agency workers (prevention of less favourable treatment)] bill drills into an issue that barely intrudes on the political mainstream: the casualisation of thousands of workplaces, and the alleged slow death of the Real Job. Around 1.4 million people currently work in the temporary and agency sector, millions more feel its downward pull on their working lives - and at its current rate of growth, millions more soon will do. Unfortunately, the involvement of the trade unions serves to confirm that the issue lies as far from middle England as can be, and you thus arrive at yet another illustration of how contorted Westminster politics has become: the political class blithely yakking about “rising aspirations”, while millions of people’s hopes are plummeting at speed.

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And so the natural supporters of traditional BBC values look glumly on, too battered by 30 years of Murdochian assaults on excellence (”elitism”) in the sacred cause of mass-market mediocrity (”accessibility”) to do more than whinge, as I am doing today, as the last truly great entity in British life is denuded and devalued, its wrists cut and its lifeblood ready to begin slowly seeping away.

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Total insist that their presence in Burma has helped to make the place more liberal, because they’ve engaged in “constructive engagement” with the regime. That’s how to deal with murderers: never mind stopping them, constructively engage with them by helping them out. If only Maxine Carr had thought of this. She could have said, “Instead of whining from the outside about Ian Huntley I decided to constructively engage with him,” and by now she’d be in the House of Lords.

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Blackwater security contractors in Iraq have been involved in at least 195 “escalation of force” incidents since early 2005, including several previously unreported killings of Iraqi civilians, according to a new congressional account of State Department and company documents.

In one of the killings, according to a State Department document, Blackwater personnel tried to cover up what had occurred and provided a false report. In another case, involving a Blackwater convoy’s collision with 18 civilian vehicles, the firm accused its own personnel of lying about the event.

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Nearly two million Iraqis have become refugees in their own land in the past year, redrawing the ethnic and sectarian map of Baghdad and other cities, a report by the Iraqi Red Crescent said yesterday.

In Baghdad alone, nearly a million people have fled their homes.

Last month saw the sharpest rise so far in the numbers of Iraqis forced to abandon their homes - 71.1%.

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The database, which goes live next year, is to contain details of every one of the 11 million children in the country, listing their name, address and gender, as well as contact details for their GP, school and parents and other carers. The record will also include contacts with hospital consultants and other professionals, and could show whether the child has been the subject of a formal assessment on whether he or she needs extra help.

It will be available to an estimated 330,000 vetted users. Some of those allowed to check records, such as head teachers, doctors, youth offender and social workers, are uncontroversial, but critics have questioned why other potential users, such as fire and rescue staff, will have access to the database.

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(via Tim W.)

Update: And then there’s this:

Concerns have been intensified by the admission that, while every child under 18 in England will have a record, ministers have allowed some children to be given extra protection. The “shielding” mechanism will mean that information on the offspring of some politicians and celebrities could be left off the main database.

Over 500,000 names on the DNA database are false, misspelt or incorrect, the Government has admitted.

Ministers have disclosed that one in seven of the genetic profiles on the controversial database is a “replicate”, raising alarming questions about the integrity and accuracy of the entire system.

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(Via Philip)

The number of taxpayer-paid private contractors in Iraq, the number of bullets fired for each insurgent killed, the percentage of amputations performed on U.S. war-wounded: a compilation of numbers puts Iraq into perspective.

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The disclosure has triggered accusations that the relationship between the MoD and BAE is too close and allows the arms company to exert too much political influence over the government. The MoD is refusing to disclose the names of the BAE employees with the official passes, or why they were given them, saying the information would breach their privacy and security. However, it is known that one has been held by BAE’s chief lobbyist, Julian Scopes. The pass gave him access to the top levels of the ministry, enabling him to lobby ministers and senior officials and promote BAE’s commercial interests.

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Armed police will use anti-terrorism powers to “deal robustly” with climate change protesters at Heathrow next week, as confrontations threaten to bring major delays to the already overstretched airport.

Up to 1,800 extra officers will be drafted in to prevent an estimated 1,500 people disrupting the airport over the period of the camp for climate change, which is due to begin on Tuesday. The police have been told to use stop and search powers against the protesters, who have pledged to take direct action on August 18 and 19 but not to endanger life.

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Today marks another milestone in delivery of the National Identity Scheme with the start of the procurement process.

For the first time in the UK there will be a single safe, trusted way for individuals, business, and the State to prove identity securely, conveniently and efficiently. Through the Scheme, identity will be protected from people who might want to misuse or steal it. There will be independent oversight of the system and public accountability for how it is run.

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Refugee workers call it the “pull factor” — camps with conditions comfortable enough to attract people in a country where an average of 60,000 Iraqis a month are driven from their homes by sectarian violence.

So the challenge for aid workers is to provide safe havens that do not invite permanence. The Qawala camp on the outskirts of Sulaimaniya in northern Kurdistan, a haven of stability in a treacherous country, fits the bill.

Conditions are unlikely to pull in all but the most desperate.

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[W]hy do the Saudis need military aid at all? Their favourite weapon seems to be the stone. I suppose now if a woman commits adultery or speaks out of turn she’ll be battered to death with a bloody great ruby instead.

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Everyone will have their own preferences from across the spectrum of science, politics, law, charity, finance, religion, sport, soldiering, the arts and entertainment. But I do not believe there is another human being over the age of 30 in Britain today who, with the entire populace as potential dinner companions, would plump, as Tony Blair did, for Vernon Kay.

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