Posts Tagged ‘politics’

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This Sceptic Isle 2: Electorate Bugaboo

In Rory MacKinnon on April 16, 2011 at 7:32 am

[First published in The Morning Star, 16/04/2011. For my previous piece on immigration and graduate unemployment, see here.]

David Cameron stoked the coals of election-month controversy this week with a brilliant tactic: a carefully crafted stump speech which seemingly blamed immigrants and beneficiaries for each others’ woes.

Yes, the quarterly unemployment rate was 7.8 percent – a drop of just 0.2% since last May, when Cameron took power with “the biggest, boldest, most comprehensive programme of getting Britain back to work any Government has ever introduced”.

And yes, there were still five people out of work for each job advertised — a figure only likely to rise as the public and voluntary sector cuts take effect.

But Cameron sidestepped the obvious explanation – that job creation has been practically nil – in favour of a neat bit of dogwhistle politics, combining fist-in-glove xenophobia with open contempt for unemployed Untouchables. Read the rest of this entry »

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Haw Fought The Law & The Law Won: The Crackdown On Activism

In Rory MacKinnon on April 4, 2011 at 4:42 am

Anti-war protester Brian Haw. Image by David Martyn Hunt, used under a Creative Commons License.

[First published in the Morning Star, 02/04/2011]

There was a strange scene at London’s Chatham House on Wednesday morning.

Israeli president Shimon Peres stood inside at a lectern, a man accused of war crimes for his role in Operation Cast Lead; the 2008 assault which saw missiles rain down for 22 days straight on a city about the size of Sheffield, killing between 1100 and 1400 Palestinian civilians and injuring countless more.

Police kept watch outside the building — but they weren’t there for President Peres.

They were there for the 30 or so members of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in the street outside, peacefully protesting and calling for his arrest.

The campaigners say they were kettled; the police deny it.

But in an odd twist of fate the conflict seemed to crystallise the twisted mentality behind the government’s policing bill being debated in the House of Commons a few streets away. Read the rest of this entry »

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London Underground: An Eyewitness Account Of March 26

In Rory MacKinnon on March 29, 2011 at 8:56 am

Hi all. It’s been two days since the anti-government rallies and the accompanying media coverage, and rather than the usual essay I’m just going to put my thoughts, actions and reactions in a tangled mess here. If that’s alright.

Much of the media coverage has drawn a distinction between peaceful protestors – those who stayed on the designated march route and toddled home after the speeches – and Violent Anarchists. The truth is much more complex.

There were certainly anarchists (and anarcho-communists). I was there when they marched from Malet St; I was there when they broke away from the official march and surged up towards Oxford. I spent much of the rest of the day chasing after them, arriving just too late to see what really happened at TopShop, HSBC, Santander and The Ritz.

But they were just one of many groups, and they had specific goals and tactics which go well beyond the media depiction of mindless violence. Read the rest of this entry »

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Where There’s Smoke: Tracing The UK Tobacco Lobby

In Rory MacKinnon on March 23, 2011 at 7:22 am

[First published in the Morning Star, 23/03/2011]

Last fortnight’s release of the Government’s tobacco control plan saw a flurry of press releases and talking heads; everyone from local shop owners to libertine smoking enthusiasts. But behind the headlines lies a carefully coordinated and well-funded network of lobbyists and public relations experts who all draw their paycheques, at least in part, from the same trio of multinational tobacco companies.

At present the tobacco control plan (available here) centres on two issues: a ban on point-of-sale displays from next year and potentially a ban on the colourful cartons themselves. But the Government has said it will first explore the “competition, trade and legal implications, and the likely impact on the illicit tobacco market” – and it’s here where the industry lobbyists hopes to win over public opinion.

Noone doubts that tobacco is big business in Britain: around 7 million packets are sold each day, generating nearly £13b a year. In the convenience store sector it outsells confectionary, soft drinks and newspapers combined. To put it another way, nearly one in three adults in the UK are regular smokers — and the market doesn’t look to be drying up anytime soon.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Live Report: Assange Makes Bail But Still In Jail

In Rory MacKinnon on December 15, 2010 at 3:17 pm

[UPDATE: The Swedish prosecution team has chosen to appeal Assange's release; Assange will remain in custody at Wandsworth Prison until a third hearing later this week.]

Confusion reigned outside a Westminster courtroom today as freedom of information campaigner Julian Assange was granted bail – but had to return to prison without speaking to supporters and the press.

Above: Documentarian and Justice For Assange spokesperson Sharon Warrd.

The infamous WikiLeaks editor was jailed by a UK court last week, pending an extradition hearing that could see him transported to Sweden for questioning in a bizarre sex crimes investigation. Read the rest of this entry »

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Objectively Wrong: Fun Facts With Lindsay Perigo

In Rory MacKinnon on August 30, 2010 at 7:33 pm

There is a thing in ideological debates called the “No True Scotsman” fallacy. It usually shows up when something embarrassing happens which undermines one person’s argument; and it goes like this:

“Look at these Sassenach louts drinking and fighting and mugging old ladies! No Scotsman would do such a thing. Well, no true Scotsman.”

I mention this because a funny thing happened today on the way to the blogosphere. Matt McCarten in the Herald On Sunday:

ACT was founded on the odious principle that human greed is the driving force of human progress and is to be celebrated as some sort of religion. The cultists worship at the altar of their prophet, Ayn Rand, and delude themselves if everyone only focuses on getting what they want, then somehow this is good for everyone. Read the rest of this entry »

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Inside The Sensible Sentencing Conference

In Rory MacKinnon on August 26, 2010 at 7:20 pm

So many; I had not thought death had undone so many.
-T.S. Eliot

It’s my first time at a Sensible Sentencing conference, but there’s a distinct sense of deja vu as I wind my way across the Beehive’s banquet hall to my seat. I put it down to all the familiar faces; faces I’ve seen a hundred times before with a slight phosphor blur outside dozens of High Courts.

Eva the publicist has assured us we’re welcome, but a greying man in Sensible Sentencing merchandise – cap and khaki polo shirt – eyes me warily. The family of Karen Jacobs, killed by a partner with mental illness in 1997, are sitting directly across from the press table but avoid eye contact altogether. We are, after all, the Liberal Media. But I’m here today – just like the politicians and police and judges and defense lawyers – to hear Sensible Sentencing’s supporters firsthand and find out what they want from our justice system. If only it were that easy. Read the rest of this entry »

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OIAs & NZ’s “Assistance” In Afghanistan

In Rory MacKinnon on August 20, 2010 at 5:47 pm

The reports on New Zealand’s connection to a notorious Afghanistan prison all came and went in the space of a day, but it’s been on my mind a lot this week. Not the war itself, mind you, or the moral dilemmas of detainment – but the Government’s assurances back in February that it would be more candid about New Zealand’s operations in Afghanistan; assurances which six months on are hard to see as anything but a broken promise.

That infamous photo of SAS corporal Willie Apiata in February supposedly sparked a seachange in the Government’s PR policy. It is a fact, Prime Minister John Key told us, that “New Zealanders deserve to know what our forces are doing overseas on location”.

Yet the response from both the Prime Minister and the New Zealand Defence Force on the issue of arrests has revealed a continued and deliberate campaign of obfuscation and omission. Read the rest of this entry »

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Curia & Curiouser: Farrar, Bhatnagar and Big Baccy

In Rory MacKinnon on July 13, 2010 at 4:49 pm

http://web.me.com/aaronbhatnagar/sandvox/_Media/aaron_judges_bay.jpeg

[UPDATE - David responds]

The NZ Association of Convenience Stores (another pro-tobacco lobby group helmed by Glenn Inwood) put out a press release this morning claiming that 60% of retailers opposed a display ban on cigarettes.

Leaving aside the little tidbit that nearly a third of the association’s constituents actually want the ban, Lyndon here at the Scoop offices Stephen Judd noticed something odd about the PDF of polling data supporting this. Read the rest of this entry »

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Forget Free Tibet: What About Free New Zealand?

In Rory MacKinnon on June 21, 2010 at 8:39 pm

http://img.scoop.co.nz/stories/images/1004/8587c7ec70f3e612dec0.jpegIf a week is a long time in politics, two years is practically geological. Following on from last week’s turnaround on foreshore and seabed legislation, it seems we have a new foreign policy on Tibet – and freedom of speech for that matter.

The last time Tibet came up in New Zealand politics was when Key declined to meet the Dalai Lama when he visited New Zealand last year. At the time reporters called Key out on a promise he’d made on the 2008 campaign trail that he’d do so, but Key replied that he simply “wouldn’t get a lot out of that particular meeting”.

That may be so – and it’s not like his predecessor was any less evasive – but Key’s apology is not just a backpedal on the issue of Tibetan annexation. It is also the latest in a string of diplomatic handwaving over clashes between Chinese officialdom and freedom of speech in New Zealand. Read the rest of this entry »

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