Author Archives: Joe Otten

It is difficult to understand how somebody who expresses such hatred and contempt for his fellow human beings as we have seen from Jared O’Mara, could wish to undertake or be a suitable choice for the noble calling of public service in politics.

I do accept that is possible for an angry young man to reform over the years and become an upstanding public figure. The problem is that there is no sign that this has happened.

O’Mara first sought election – to the city council – in 2004, the same year he was writing the hate speech against women, fat people …

Blogging is so naughties isn’t it? Has anything happened on a blog since 2010? Well maybe.

Leave HQ Editor Peter North has produced quite the most extraordinary piece of blogging I have seen for some time.

Wow. I want to quote the “wow” bits, but I risk quoting it all.

In the first year or so we are going to lose a lot of manufacturing. Virtually all JIT export manufacturing will fold inside a year. Initially we will see food prices plummet but this won’t last. Domestic agriculture won’t be able to compete and we’ll see a gradual decline of UK production.

…

With the Liberal Democrat Federal Conference approaching (16-19 September), and less than a week away from the deadline for amendments (4 September), this is my highly partisan tirade on the agenda, here to provoke you into sending your views, either to us at Liberal Democrat Voice or to the good people at the Federal Conference Committee.

The first party conference after a General Election is an opportunity for the party to reflect on the results, good and bad. While it is good to move forward, many of us expected more progress in the face of such a gulf in the centre. It is as if Corbyn and May fed off each other’s weakness, and we did not have the strength to stand out as an alternative.

Our conference, as usual, will make policy to demonstrate our values and soft virtues, to the neglect of other qualities: the toughness required to govern in coalition while under siege from all sides, and the fierce dedication to our communities that we show in local government.

Trigger warning for child abuse.

There are kind of rules – good rules that are there for good reasons – governing how we talk about racial issues, when we must. Properly contextualise. Look for similarities rather than differences. Don’t make or appear to make generalisations about groups of people.

When I was at school we had leaflets thrown over the school fence with the faces of white people who had been killed by black people. The object of the leaflet was to encourage racially motivated violence to “even up the score” using crimes that, if they happened at all, probably weren’t racially …

Hardly a day goes by on my social media feeds without some form of the following conversation:

Commentator/political has been: What we really need is a new moderate centre party in the UK, standing up for all the internationalist, tolerant liberal values that Corbyn and May have abandoned.

Liberal Democrats: Helloooooo!!!!!

Every time somebody calls for a new centre party, a puppy dies, goes the tweet.

It is always more an observation than a plan. Starting from 0% and 0 MPs and councillors is always going to be harder than starting where we are. But I don’t think the commentators and has beens are being obtuse. There are reasons they are not all saying we should join the Liberal Democrats, and I’d like to reflect on those reasons and what we can do about them. Do please all submit further articles expanding this theme.

One of the strangest things about this last election was how little the economy featured. Philip Hammond, the Chancellor, was unseen. The Conservatives didn’t bother to cost their manifesto. Nobody wanted to talk about the Brexit black hole – not even the Liberal Democrats much, I mean couldn’t we have promised to fund £60bn of spending by not leaving the EU? It would have made the point.

Why? Theresa May and her advisers never really understood the economy, only that it was something that the Conservatives generally get the credit for being sounder on with the larger part of the electorate, and that if you say nothing, you have more freedom of action after you have won your big majority.

There’s an insightful piece by Tony Blair in the Guardian yesterday on how Theresa May has framed this election in terms of the Brexit negotiations. While aimed at Labour readers, we have the same need understand what it is we are facing.

Blair observes that

Essentially, the Tories … have hit on a way of getting votes by presenting the election as about “strengthening the prime minister’s hand in the Brexit negotiation”, ie, they have turned a partisan Tory vote into an act of national interest.

Of course, all parties run for election on the basis that a government formed by them is in the national interest. But in this Brexit context, the Tories have hit on what seems a plausible objective claim that they actually need a big majority to represent the country adequately in what is without question a really tough negotiation.

This argument has real cut-through. This is why ignoring the Brexit issue or trying to play it down as one issue out of many just won’t work.

My thoughts so far:

1. The timing is reasonably good before Brexit negotiations start in earnest. We are likely to lose a few weeks, and Article 50 day would have been a better choice on this count.

2. The PM is going on about the strength of her position, and how important this is in negotiations. There’s a certain amount of bluster here. A successful election reinforces her position in the House of Commons – it does nothing to induce EU governments to give us what we want.

3. The Tories are complaining about opposition existing and opposing. This must mean the SNP …

A ruling from the Charity Commission yesterday, has determined that Jediism, the worship of the mythology of Star Wars, is not a religion. This marks the release of the latest Star Wars film, episode 3.5, Rogue One, which in deference to the Charity Commission’s ruling does not feature (spoilers?) a single proper Jedi Knight, though there is a blind kind-of-Jedi monk, with whom is the force, and who seems to do as much damage with a stick as a proper Jedi does with a light sabre.

I’ll confess I was ignorant that the Charities Commission’s powers and competence extended to determining the validity or frivolity of theological doctrines, and I now look forward to many more theological disputes being settled by the same good people.

There is an ongoing heated debate over how much if anything of her intentions Theresa May will reveal before triggering Article 50. Does she want to stay in the single market? Does she want UK citizens to have any rights (short of complete freedom?) to travel and work in the EU? Does she want to maintain the reciprocal arrangement on health care? Does she want all the policing co-operation to continue (we think so)? Does she want us to stay in the scientific research programmes? Etc. Etc.

This is all in our interests: does a sovereign nation that has taken back control have the right to enter agreements that are in its interests? Yes it does. That’s how we got in to the EU.

Presumably we want out of the Common Fisheries Policy, but some sort of agreement on fisheries will be desirable, to prevent overfishing. (Yes, I know that’s what the CFP is.) And do we want to expropriate the fishing quotas that have been sold by British fishermen to Spaniards? I wouldn’t think so – that’s not how the UK behaves – but in that case, what respite is there for British fishermen?