I have seen many country of origin information (COI) reports in my time, and I am generally a big fan of them, but the current UK Border Agency one on Sri Lanka is genuinely shocking.
[...]
The UK Border Agency are now relying on war criminals as a source of evidence. It gives a new meaning to the phrase blame the victim.
Thursday, 18 August 2011
'Britain's public snubbing of the court emboldens Moscow, Ankara and other governments who would prefer to ignore its rulings'
What Cameron and other government ministers before him who renounce the "perversion" of human rights really seem to object to is judges making decisions that the government dislikes. Witness the attacks on "unelected" British judges and the European court of human rights over rulings on torture, immigration, prisoner voting and a host of other political hot potatoes.
Strip away the high rhetoric from these attacks and they amount to a rejection of government being subject to the rule of law along with everyone else, and the fact that in a system with checks and balances the executive doesn't always get its way.
[...]
Scapegoating human rights, judges and the European court may be effective politics in the eyes of some in government, but it corrodes respect for human rights and the rule of law. That is surely not the outcome the prime minister wants.
What Cameron and other government ministers before him who renounce the "perversion" of human rights really seem to object to is judges making decisions that the government dislikes. Witness the attacks on "unelected" British judges and the European court of human rights over rulings on torture, immigration, prisoner voting and a host of other political hot potatoes.
Strip away the high rhetoric from these attacks and they amount to a rejection of government being subject to the rule of law along with everyone else, and the fact that in a system with checks and balances the executive doesn't always get its way.
[...]
Scapegoating human rights, judges and the European court may be effective politics in the eyes of some in government, but it corrodes respect for human rights and the rule of law. That is surely not the outcome the prime minister wants.
Tuesday, 16 August 2011
Sunday, 14 August 2011
Thursday, 11 August 2011
looting scum, send him down
A college student with no criminal record was jailed for six months on Thursday for stealing a £3.50 case of bottled water during a night of rioting.
Nicolas Robinson, 23, of Borough, south-east London, carried out the “opportunistic” theft at a Lidl supermarket in Brixton as he walked home from his girlfriend’s house.
Robinson threw away the water and ran when he was confronted by police but was arrested and quickly admitted what he had done.
His solicitor told Camberwell Magistrates’ Court [Robinson] had “got caught up in the moment” and was “incredibly ashamed”.
A college student with no criminal record was jailed for six months on Thursday for stealing a £3.50 case of bottled water during a night of rioting.
Nicolas Robinson, 23, of Borough, south-east London, carried out the “opportunistic” theft at a Lidl supermarket in Brixton as he walked home from his girlfriend’s house.
Robinson threw away the water and ran when he was confronted by police but was arrested and quickly admitted what he had done.
His solicitor told Camberwell Magistrates’ Court [Robinson] had “got caught up in the moment” and was “incredibly ashamed”.
Wednesday, 10 August 2011
above the door of the Walworth clinic on the Walworth Road in southeast London, a stone is inscribed with a Cicero quotation, The health of the people is the highest law.
this lets me inelegantly segue into observing that nurses, physiotherapists and foot doctors are being used by an increasingly cash-strapped NHS to screen general practitioner referrals back to those same GPs who had sent patients off for extra care in the first place, and no doubt there'll be more like this as funding cuts bite.
elsewhere, we have David Cameron responding to the looting and violence that has recently convulsed urban England (tragically, three young men died defending their neighbourhood in Birmingham, there has been at least one fatality amid the violence in London, and more Londoners made homeless, whilst jobs and livelihoods have been wrecked or affected in more than one city), by promising a fightback of ordinary Britain against the rioters and looters.
you can't blame Cameron for using the language of fightback, but it is a kick in the teeth for him to re-appropriate the term, given in recent months some in Britain's beleaguered public services sector were using it as a rallying point to argue against the Tory-led coalition government's small state hollowing out of the support struts for some of the country's poorest and most vulnerable quarters.
i think Mary Riddell (in the Telegraph, of all places) had a point recently when she wrote "nor, as Adam Smith recognised, can a well-ordered society ever develop when a sizeable number of its members are miserable and, as a consequence, dangerous. This is not a gospel of determinism, for poverty does not ordain lawlessness. Nor, however, is it sufficient to heap contempt on the rioters as if they are a pariah caste".
(Kenan Malik is also worth reading.)
i hope Cameron heeds Riddell.
i'm not sure he will.
this lets me inelegantly segue into observing that nurses, physiotherapists and foot doctors are being used by an increasingly cash-strapped NHS to screen general practitioner referrals back to those same GPs who had sent patients off for extra care in the first place, and no doubt there'll be more like this as funding cuts bite.
elsewhere, we have David Cameron responding to the looting and violence that has recently convulsed urban England (tragically, three young men died defending their neighbourhood in Birmingham, there has been at least one fatality amid the violence in London, and more Londoners made homeless, whilst jobs and livelihoods have been wrecked or affected in more than one city), by promising a fightback of ordinary Britain against the rioters and looters.
you can't blame Cameron for using the language of fightback, but it is a kick in the teeth for him to re-appropriate the term, given in recent months some in Britain's beleaguered public services sector were using it as a rallying point to argue against the Tory-led coalition government's small state hollowing out of the support struts for some of the country's poorest and most vulnerable quarters.
i think Mary Riddell (in the Telegraph, of all places) had a point recently when she wrote "nor, as Adam Smith recognised, can a well-ordered society ever develop when a sizeable number of its members are miserable and, as a consequence, dangerous. This is not a gospel of determinism, for poverty does not ordain lawlessness. Nor, however, is it sufficient to heap contempt on the rioters as if they are a pariah caste".
(Kenan Malik is also worth reading.)
i hope Cameron heeds Riddell.
i'm not sure he will.
Tuesday, 9 August 2011
Friday, 5 August 2011
Thursday, 4 August 2011
In a sense, one might define the contemporary poor in the United States as those who, for reasons beyond their control, cannot help themselves. All the most decisive factors making for opportunity and advance are against them. They are born going downward, and most of them stay down. They are victims whose lives are endlessly blown round and round the other America.
- Michael Harrington, 1962
- Michael Harrington, 1962
Sunday, 31 July 2011
Thursday, 28 July 2011
Yes, we back Sure Start. It's a disgrace that Gordon Brown has been trying to frighten people about this.
- David Cameron, 5 May 2010.
it turns out funding for Sure Start centres (one of the crowning glories of the New Labour years, a programme of community outreach for childcare, early years learning and such) was not ring fenced - contrary to what Cameron implied would happen, whilst on record last year - and so twenty of them have closed across the country to date (with possibly more getting effectively mothballed), and overall government cuts in early years, youth and child services programmes will disproportionately affect poor areas to boot in "an act of reverse redistribution", as the below shows.
desperately sad.
- David Cameron, 5 May 2010.
it turns out funding for Sure Start centres (one of the crowning glories of the New Labour years, a programme of community outreach for childcare, early years learning and such) was not ring fenced - contrary to what Cameron implied would happen, whilst on record last year - and so twenty of them have closed across the country to date (with possibly more getting effectively mothballed), and overall government cuts in early years, youth and child services programmes will disproportionately affect poor areas to boot in "an act of reverse redistribution", as the below shows.
desperately sad.
Monday, 25 July 2011
By one means or another, what is being avoided here is that Anders Breivik's politics were shaped not by the fact of immigration, nor by jihadism, nor by any actually existing Muslims, but by ideas beginning in the mainstream right and radiating out to the far right.
correct.
here.
correct.
here.
Saturday, 23 July 2011
earlier this year the always exceptional Graeme made a couple of posts about the ideology of craft beer (part one here, two).
you should read both the posts in full, certainly if you've ever drank a beer and enjoyed it, or, if, like me and some of my mates, you know a bit about the stuff.
Graeme started to hit on some - you might say - peculiarities in the north American craft brewing scene (what the UK calls micro-breweries, or independent brewing, not the giant conglomerates pumping out the same carbonated lager that corners most of the global suds market).
if you've ever drank a few American (or Canadian) craft brews, you'll know a lot of their brewers often enjoy really hopping up their beers (for a rather bitter taste), and a lot of their brewers produce some powerfully knock-out stuff, with a very high alcohol content (by beer standards; which is i guess one in the eye against the Python-initiated joke that American beer is like making love in a canoe, fucking close to water).
Graeme's first post - writing from Montreal, though he has lived in the UK and knows his beer onions to say the very least (though i cannot vouch for terms and conditions at micro-breweries in the UK, but am interested in a discussion of the north American scene on its own merits) - discussed this, and more (it really is worth your while reading them), then he let fly in the second post even more widely
(sample end-quote: Things that I plan on looking at further in depth over the coming weeks, months, years:
-The way in which craft beer is percieved to be about more than just what's in the glass or bottle: when you drink craft beer you're making a political/ethical choice. I'm going to critically examine that notion.
[...]
Craft beer and labour. Craft beer hearkens back to an earlier time before the advent of megabreweries, but completely overlooks the role that trade unionism and labour radicalism had in the brewing industry. We're looking at a neutered version of history, and one that in particular benefits the bosses. What sort of political/ethical choice are we making by drinking craft beer when the workers at those breweries are making far less (ie close to half as much) as workers at the unionised megabreweries?
-Whatever else comes to mind. I'm sure there will be plenty to write and think about.)
i hope he carries on.
this is a particularly pointless vanity post (so like any post here) as i have nothing to add to what Graeme is saying in general (his typically thoughtful points are starting to say it all as he teases out what he means), except i really just wanted to blurt about the hopping in some American brews (i've drank plenty of Canadian craft down the years, but have spent far more time in the USA, so i will restrict my necessarily generalising remarks to the States), and the strength, so, more a 'me too' just on the styles of the beer itself, as opposed to all the extra structural issues.
now, we all know that the USA is one of the great beer nations, Bell's Brewery near Kalamazoo, Michigan, is for instance (just to restrict myself to one example) in my view one of the greatest breweries on earth.
one could go on.
Portland, Oregon is up there with Munich in terms of breweries per head of population, if not more (if you like food, coffee, the outdoors, or beer, you'd like Portland), and the Pacific Northwest in general is very good for beer, Denver has a reputation, the Bay Area's steam beer (the only original indigenous American beer style AFAIK) has its fans, Delaware's Dogfish Head brewery is very fashionable among ale drinkers in the UK these days, my British mates that drink beer all know i'm a huge fan of Chicago's Goose Island brewery, and so on, these all illustrate its strength in beery depth.
Graeme already mentioned it once, but whilst American craft brewers have been very strong on high alcohol by volume brews such as imperial stouts, or India Pale Ales, down the years, they haven't gone in for session beers so much (as understood in the UK, lower strength, usually bitter ales, though often not very 'bitter' in taste, certainly not compared to some of the scoops you get across the pond).
presumably this may be because the relatively low-strength lagers that are the mainstay of every American street-corner local bar, your Millers and Old Styles and Buds and what have you, are the true working man's session beer (anyone who's drank in a blue collar bar in the States will marvel at the keg Guinness and the cheap pitcher deals, and the fact that in some places, a bit like in Irish villages where the pub of yore can double as a general store, you get a bar stuck in the middle of a pharmaceutical shop or what have you), and perhaps US craft brewers wanted to set out to do their own thing and just experiment all the way up to 11.
(interestingly, as in the UK, beer drinkers in the USA of history were at first ale people, New York two centuries ago for example was an ale town, but over the decades for various reasons that i won't go into, lager came to predominate, as it did in the UK from certainly around the 1970s onwards - my middle aged father is uncompromisingly a lager drinker only, for instance, my elderly grandfather a bitter drinker, and because my brother and i had the good fortune to grow up in an era when micro-breweries are fashionable in the UK and enjoying a renaissance, my little brother and i are bitter drinkers. well, i'll drink anything, including lager, but you get my drift.)
but the amount of times i've sank overly hoppy, strong brews (an abundance of hops means a beer will inevitably taste bitter) in the USA is too many to mention, and the amount of times i've just wanted a mildly hopped, more balanced (a beer is not just hops, malted barley is all-important too) lower strength ale of some sort instead, the same.
i appreciate everything that goes in to a high-quality American craft beer (the Old Rasputin Imperial Stout from California's North Coast Brewery is a fine, fine drink, for example), but trying for a broader range of styles and strengths would be a welcome development for American craft brewers (who may be doing this these days for all i know, it's been years since i paid attention to that area).
certainly Goose Island's pub, not far from downtown Chicago, was showcasing more diverse styles and strengths of beers the last time i was in there (as well as continuing to knock out strong, classy bottled products, such as the Belgian-style Pere Jacques).
you should read both the posts in full, certainly if you've ever drank a beer and enjoyed it, or, if, like me and some of my mates, you know a bit about the stuff.
Graeme started to hit on some - you might say - peculiarities in the north American craft brewing scene (what the UK calls micro-breweries, or independent brewing, not the giant conglomerates pumping out the same carbonated lager that corners most of the global suds market).
if you've ever drank a few American (or Canadian) craft brews, you'll know a lot of their brewers often enjoy really hopping up their beers (for a rather bitter taste), and a lot of their brewers produce some powerfully knock-out stuff, with a very high alcohol content (by beer standards; which is i guess one in the eye against the Python-initiated joke that American beer is like making love in a canoe, fucking close to water).
Graeme's first post - writing from Montreal, though he has lived in the UK and knows his beer onions to say the very least (though i cannot vouch for terms and conditions at micro-breweries in the UK, but am interested in a discussion of the north American scene on its own merits) - discussed this, and more (it really is worth your while reading them), then he let fly in the second post even more widely
(sample end-quote: Things that I plan on looking at further in depth over the coming weeks, months, years:
-The way in which craft beer is percieved to be about more than just what's in the glass or bottle: when you drink craft beer you're making a political/ethical choice. I'm going to critically examine that notion.
[...]
Craft beer and labour. Craft beer hearkens back to an earlier time before the advent of megabreweries, but completely overlooks the role that trade unionism and labour radicalism had in the brewing industry. We're looking at a neutered version of history, and one that in particular benefits the bosses. What sort of political/ethical choice are we making by drinking craft beer when the workers at those breweries are making far less (ie close to half as much) as workers at the unionised megabreweries?
-Whatever else comes to mind. I'm sure there will be plenty to write and think about.)
i hope he carries on.
this is a particularly pointless vanity post (so like any post here) as i have nothing to add to what Graeme is saying in general (his typically thoughtful points are starting to say it all as he teases out what he means), except i really just wanted to blurt about the hopping in some American brews (i've drank plenty of Canadian craft down the years, but have spent far more time in the USA, so i will restrict my necessarily generalising remarks to the States), and the strength, so, more a 'me too' just on the styles of the beer itself, as opposed to all the extra structural issues.
now, we all know that the USA is one of the great beer nations, Bell's Brewery near Kalamazoo, Michigan, is for instance (just to restrict myself to one example) in my view one of the greatest breweries on earth.
one could go on.
Portland, Oregon is up there with Munich in terms of breweries per head of population, if not more (if you like food, coffee, the outdoors, or beer, you'd like Portland), and the Pacific Northwest in general is very good for beer, Denver has a reputation, the Bay Area's steam beer (the only original indigenous American beer style AFAIK) has its fans, Delaware's Dogfish Head brewery is very fashionable among ale drinkers in the UK these days, my British mates that drink beer all know i'm a huge fan of Chicago's Goose Island brewery, and so on, these all illustrate its strength in beery depth.
Graeme already mentioned it once, but whilst American craft brewers have been very strong on high alcohol by volume brews such as imperial stouts, or India Pale Ales, down the years, they haven't gone in for session beers so much (as understood in the UK, lower strength, usually bitter ales, though often not very 'bitter' in taste, certainly not compared to some of the scoops you get across the pond).
presumably this may be because the relatively low-strength lagers that are the mainstay of every American street-corner local bar, your Millers and Old Styles and Buds and what have you, are the true working man's session beer (anyone who's drank in a blue collar bar in the States will marvel at the keg Guinness and the cheap pitcher deals, and the fact that in some places, a bit like in Irish villages where the pub of yore can double as a general store, you get a bar stuck in the middle of a pharmaceutical shop or what have you), and perhaps US craft brewers wanted to set out to do their own thing and just experiment all the way up to 11.
(interestingly, as in the UK, beer drinkers in the USA of history were at first ale people, New York two centuries ago for example was an ale town, but over the decades for various reasons that i won't go into, lager came to predominate, as it did in the UK from certainly around the 1970s onwards - my middle aged father is uncompromisingly a lager drinker only, for instance, my elderly grandfather a bitter drinker, and because my brother and i had the good fortune to grow up in an era when micro-breweries are fashionable in the UK and enjoying a renaissance, my little brother and i are bitter drinkers. well, i'll drink anything, including lager, but you get my drift.)
but the amount of times i've sank overly hoppy, strong brews (an abundance of hops means a beer will inevitably taste bitter) in the USA is too many to mention, and the amount of times i've just wanted a mildly hopped, more balanced (a beer is not just hops, malted barley is all-important too) lower strength ale of some sort instead, the same.
i appreciate everything that goes in to a high-quality American craft beer (the Old Rasputin Imperial Stout from California's North Coast Brewery is a fine, fine drink, for example), but trying for a broader range of styles and strengths would be a welcome development for American craft brewers (who may be doing this these days for all i know, it's been years since i paid attention to that area).
certainly Goose Island's pub, not far from downtown Chicago, was showcasing more diverse styles and strengths of beers the last time i was in there (as well as continuing to knock out strong, classy bottled products, such as the Belgian-style Pere Jacques).
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