Tag Archives: press review

Caron’s Sunday Selection: Must-read articles from the Sunday papers

sundaypapsHere’s my selection of articles to inform, infuriate and inspire from this week’s Sunday papers.

First up this week is a piece from the Observer by Barbara Ellen. Its headline “Like all rapists, Ched Evans will never be really free” got my hackles up, but the article itself is a bit more balanced than its headline suggests. It’s worth remembering, though, that most rapists go unpunished because the conviction rate is scarily low. Ellen says that Evans will never be able to leave this crime behind him, much more so than if he’d been convicted of a different sort of offence. Well, given that the man has shown not one tiny bit of remorse for what he did, or accepted that his victim, being as drunk as she was, was incapable of consenting to what he put her through, or apologised to her, I’m not sure that we can say with any confidence that he has been rehabilitated.  The speed with which he has been given a new high profile football job concerns me as does the way that the media often tries to make excuses for men who are violent to women. It’s not just Evans. Oscar Pistorius comes in for way more sympathy than he actually deserves. In September, a Texas man murdered his 3 young children and his wife before turning the gun on himself. Much of the media coverage around this mentioned the strain he must have been under, rather than the horros he put his family through. This article sums up why that approach is just wrong. 

Posted in Op-eds | 4 Comments

Caron’s Conference Selection: must-read stories from today’s press and online commentary

Here are my must-read stories from today’s press about Liberal Democrat Conference. You wouldn’t expect anything else from a Guardian editorial than to emphasise our shortcomings and the electoral challenges we face. And this one certainly does that. It notices with curiosity the results of yesterday’s survey which show that 80% of respondents to our survey support the Coalition. However, it recognises that we are unique in one respect and are needed on the political scene:

 In the Guardian’s view, British politics needs the Liberal Democrats for one thing above all. It needs them to provide the parliamentary nerve of outrage against an unreformed political system and against encroachments on civil liberties which is so often dulled in the other major parties.

It follows, especially in a week when the Tories have signalled more anti-terror powers and neutering the European human rights court, that the Lib Dems must make a virtue at every turn of their principled liberal view of justice and human rights. They may wish to claim to have done good work in government on pensions, school finance, bank reform and increasing personal allowances — and some bits, perhaps even all, of that may be true in some ways. But the party’s uniqueness remains its commitment to the rule of law, to human rights, to empowering the individual against an over-mighty state, to reforming and devolving politics and government, and to insistent internationalism. It matters that a party that stood up for proper press reform, against the snoopers’ charter and asked some of the questions others have feared to ask about the Edward Snowden revelations should survive.

Posted in News | Also tagged | 21 Comments

Caron’s Sunday Selection: Must-read articles from the Sunday papers

It’s almost September, and, let’s face it, now that the X Factor’s back, tithe countdown to Christmas has begun, so I should probably forget all these leisurely Sunday morning lie-ins and actually start having a look at what’s in the papers again.

sundaypaps

 

 

When terror threats are raised, for me the first question is not “Is something awful going to happen on our streets?” It’s “Which of our precious freedoms are the Government planning to take from us?” With Liberal Democrats in Government that anxiety is considerably less than it would be if there were none, but it is still there. Scotland on Sunday tells us how David Cameron and Nick Clegg are having talks today to finalise the Government’s response. The Observer reports that Paddy Ashdown warns against knee jerk reactions, which is a good sign. We’ll cover that separately.

In the Observer, Catherine Bennett cites the recent dire Better Together commercial and Austin Mitchell’s comments to argue that it really is time for All Women Shortlists:

Without Labour’s all-women lists, parliament would resound, indefinitely, to the grunts of its Mitchells, Soameses and Fabricants. Unrecorded in the YouGov poll are people who dislike all-women shortlists but dislike yet more the reason for their continued existence: the very culture that just created the execrable, the relentlessly mocked Woman Who Made up Her Mind.

Posted in Op-eds | 23 Comments
Advert



Recent Comments

  • Jenny Barnes
    It reminds me of the probably apocryphal story of a fairly new MP talking to an old-timer in the bar : " The trouble with this place is there are far too many @...
  • Roland
    @Mary, not to diminish the individual successes, but wolf in sheep’s clothing does come to mind, ie. The party wants to be electable, but doesn’t want to do...
  • Joseph Bourke
    Whatever the outcome of the US election, it is clear that US foreign policy will be increaaingly focused on protecting US interests in Asia and the middle-east...
  • Martin Gray
    @Cath...SMP - Businesses claim most of it back . Taking off one taxpayer to give to another .. And yes you're correct in regards to the last paragraph - I'm sur...
  • Catherine Crosland
    Martin Gray, "Women's issues"? Kemi Bradenoch recently implied that she thought rights to maternity pay and maternity leave had gone too far, although many mot...