Unstoppable sex drive and charity shops

It is, of course, a serious story. An article in today's Guardian on a man (Mr Stephen Tame) whose life has been made a misery after injuries sustained when he fell from a gantry while working in a warehouse. Apparently his sex drive has become unstoppable (titter ye not) since the injury and he's been awarded £3.166m in damages for the damage the accident has done to his life. So far, so tabloid-y but, at the end of the article, it reports that Mr Tame still suffers from a range of disabilities:

...including tunnel vision, a difficulty in tolerating noise, weakness on his left side, slurred speech, fatigue and poor concentration and memory.

The next and concluding sentence of the article then says:

He helps at a charity shop three days a week.

For some reason I found this funny....thoughts which may be attributable to the wicked impulse which left me to consider the tough recruitment policy which must be in place for Mr Tame to be an asset to the charity organisation in question.

Hey Porter

In the Observer yesterday, Henry Porter outlined his 'radical manifesto to revitalise Britain'.

Porter is prompted to pen his manifesto by a body politic in which, "our political parties are ineffectual, boring us all by pointlessly fighting it out on the dull morass that is the middle ground." Porter says "It's time for some new ideas ..." and then proceeds, disappointingly, to offer very little in the way of fresh thinking.

He talks about offering sabbaticals to those who have worked 15 years or more, and discusses reform of the NHS, prisons, and media ownership law. On Parliament though his 'radical manifesto' is thin and unpersuasive, resting as it does on the idea that a reduction in the number of MPs will, by itself, radically improve Parliament and its scrutiny of the executive.

There may be an argument for reducing the number of MPs but Porter's case appears to rest on the fatuous point that at present that there is not enough room for all MPs to sit in the Chamber at once. This is a bogus reason to justify reform but it also fails to acknowledge that the Chamber was purposefully designed to be small to create a better atmosphere for discussions than would be possible in a larger chamber. To suggest that "Vanuatu is better organised" than the UK system because the House of Commons chamber is small is akin to suggesting that Busted are superior to Schubert because they at least managed to finish recording their album.

(Personally I am more likely to listen to Busted than Schubert but you know what I mean...)

Porter says that he wants more MPs to, "defy the party whipping system that is crushing the life out of Parliament and the spirit of MPs". There are good grounds for the reform of the whipping system but Porter parrots the lazy assumption that the Commons is currently inhabited by 'lobby fodder'. Porter fails to acknowledge that there has actually been an increase in the number of MPs defying the Whip. Phillip Cowley and Mark Stuart at Revolts published a paper recently for the 2005-6 Session of Parliament which recounted that, of Labour MPs, there had been 95 rebellions in total, involving 114 Labour MPs, in the last session and that there were more rebellions as a percentage of votes than in any other first session since the war. This suggests that more MPs are independently minded than they might be given the credit for by conventional wisdom.

Porter mentions that enhancing the power of Parliamentary committees might be one way to more effectively scrutinise the actions of 'an ambitious executive' but fails to expand on this point, believing that the reduction in MPs is the main reform to secure the goal of improved scrutiny. Porter offers his manifesto as a basis for further discussion rather than as a fully formed wish-list but his section on Parliament reads like it was written on the back of a cigarette packet - or the kind of thing you get on one of those god-awful blogs.

I'll try and spark up a nicotine habit at lunchtime so I can pen my own cigarette packet manifesto but the Select Committee on Modernisation of the House of Commons has recently embarked on an enquiry into 'strengthening the role of the backbencher' which might provide some suggestions for Porter to include in his next manifesto piece.

Political discussion in the 21st century

I thought I'd go for a weighty title to this post to cover the banality of the insight which follows....

Over at the BBF, Hamer outlines his take on the conduct of political discussion in the UK. Hamer refers to mass postcard campaigns and the tendency to characterise much of current political engagement (or not) as 'issue politics'. I wanted to leave a comment on his blog - but for some reason Blogger wasn't letting me log in and post one - so I thought I'd do a post of my own.

Hamer accurately describes what happens when a mass postcard campaign is launched and targeted at MPs. Constituents fill in their name and address on a pre-printed card (sometimes not even managing this onerous task) and then MPs respond with a letter which might include one or two original sentences of their own but usually tends to include the bulk of a PLP Resource Centre standard response.

As a fellow Labour bag-carrier this all rings true but I wanted to add a few remarks of my own on this.

Mass campaigns do often suggest that an easy fix is available. Campaigns can, by implying there is a simple 'yes/no' response to an issue, contribute to a what might be described as a 'binary' opinion of the politician (i.e. good/bad, usually depending on the MP's response to the campaign in question) rather than acknowledging that the issue may be complex and that any response may need to be equally complex.

Postcard campaigns and similar may hint that a simple solution is all that is required rather than impress that any progress probably requires messy compromise and dull negotiation. However, it has to be acknowledged that a mass campaign needs to have a simple message to be successful. It would hardly empower people to action if the campaign was "SAY 'NO TO POVERTY; ONCE WE SUCCESSFULLY NEGOTIATE WITH THE WTO, EU, US AND EMERGING ECONOMIES, AND DEVELOP A HIGHER STAGE OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT BEYOND CAPITALISM".

I would imagine that many people who send in these postcards do realise the limits of these campaigns but know that MPs might be inclined to take notice of at least the subject area - if not necessarily agreeing with the thrust of the whole campaign - if they get a heavy mailbag or two on it. For example, the reason Cameron got interested in green politics is that there is some political capital to be made out of appealing to environmental concerns. This suggests that campaigns, such as Big Ask, might be effective in prompting a debate on what is to be done in a particular policy area. Of course, the charities/NGOs will have their own agenda to peddle but the campaign could serve to open up a wider debate on policy options rather than just being a narrow monologue between Government and the NGO/charity in question.

While the campaigns may be simplistic, FoE and Greenpeace policy bods, for example, wouldn't claim there were simple solutions to, for example, climate change no matter what their broader campaigning indicates. I would imagine that they see their campaigns as useful in trying to shift the terms of debate and giving them the political weight to go to elected representatives with some mandate to speak on the issue.

Also, these campaigns do get people interested (beyond just copying a standard letter) in policy areas which might be a good starting point for further discussion and engagement with the political process. Characterising this 'issue politics' as mass political engagement might be wide-of-the-mark. However, and Hamer didn't argue contrary to this, in an age when there is less to separate the political parties than in earlier times, it is understandable that issue politics might have a greater attraction than traditional political channels.

But, at the end of all that, I do agree with Hamer's fundamental point which appears to be that politics is complex and that there needs to be an acknowledgement that there are no simple answers, that we need to engage on this basis, and that we should not berate politicians for trying to find an answer to these questions.

Not a controversial thesis but one which could definitely improve our political discourse and not just Question Time.

Windy stories

...are dominating the news agenda today.

First up is the Kensal Rise tornado story (with rolling coverage ad nauseum on BBC News 24).

And then there's the 'Flatulence leads US jet to divert' story where a woman apparently lit matches to conceal the odour of her flatulence.

Surprised that they allow matches on the plane?

The article says that the TSA - Transport Security Authority- allows matches in carry-on luggage. It then helpfully adds that "The matches are not allowed to be struck, however".

NYC

Got back from NYC on Monday night.

What a city! Fantastic.

Did the usual tourist spots; 5th Avenue, Central Park, Greenwich Village, Brooklyn Bridge, Empire State Building, Staten Island ferry (and Statute of Liberty), Wall St, SoHo et al. A truly amazing city and some great places to eat in the Village.

Looking for sterotypes to be confirmed as only the tourist does, I yearned to hear a New Yorker utter the words 'furga-geddit-abaht-it', 'courrfeee', or 'whacked' - possibly in the same sentence - and was a little disappointed that my dreams were not realised. There is a Starbucks on every corner - and a Japanese film crew - but even when asking for a coffee New Yorkers refused to do so in the exaggerated way of my imagination. The killjoys. (We did overhear someone say 'douchebag', which amused me far more than it should, but that was pretty much the limit of it).

So farewell then New York, but not goodbye. We're going to go back and stay in Brooklyn next time. Until then I'm going to get my fill at the ICA...Manhattan is on there until December 30.