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Friday, December 24, 2004

Festive greetings

There will now be a short intermission for Xmas and the New Year - unless I feel so moved by the festive season that I escape to the computer!

Happy Christmas and New Year to all my readers - even the stroppy ones!

Bloggers of the world unite in festive cheer!

Thursday, December 16, 2004

Responses

David Blunket.

Well David did go. So some of you got your wish fulfilled.

Personally I am sorry. British politics has an ever decreasing number of people from backgrounds like David's and frankly we need more of them.

It is interesting that a majority of you thought he should go, yet on the doorstep there is great support for him in our traditional working class areas. I think there is a class aspect to this. David certainly offended many middle class liberals and I understand why. I am not dismissing such arguments. They are important. But David talked the language of those who live in the high crime areas and they respond to him.

Family Courts.

The responses on family courts are useful but I would prefer it if you could send the longer articles to me at the House of Commons. I can't respond on this site in detail and as I've indicated before I have to give priority to constituents and then do what I can to respond,often quite briefly, to other comments.

If the longer articles are sent to me I have a better chance of reading them properly. Short comments are fine to read on this site and they are also easier to respond to.

Iraq.

To Andrew Price I would ask what is the real aim of calling for a body count in Iraq? Of course it would be good if there was a functioning police and court system but there isn't and you can't distinguish who is killed by who. I think it is mainly a point scoring exercise to continue the argument about the legitimacy of the invasion.

If we want to argue whether or not it was successful then you have to focus on the real failure which was the lack of post conflict planning. There are very strong arguments there and I touch on them in my Fabian paper.

If you were to make a true comparison on body count you would have to count those who were killed under Saddam.The real question which I always return to is how do we deal with these brutal dictators? Unless we can find an answer to that we will continue to be faced with these tragedies.

Hansard. PQ on the UN

Mr. Clive Soley (Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush) (Lab): The Secretary of State will know that I am a very strong supporter of the UN High-level Panel and his efforts to publicise it, but can we make absolutely clear the importance of this debate to the future of the world? We need to understand that the United Nations has been and will remain in danger of becoming a second league of nations unless it can act more effectively against tyrannies in failing states, and in reforming the Security Council to make it more relevant to today's needs. This issue is of vital importance.

Mr. Straw: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend, and I commend his work and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd). She had an important input into our thinking and consequently into the UN's, and the result is some of the report's recommendations, not least those in chapter VII. The key point about the report is that it emphasises the way in which the world has significantly changed since the charter was developed almost 60 years ago. The threats then were primarily from sovereign functioning states; today, they are primarily from failing states, terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.

Saturday, December 04, 2004

David Blunkett

On the evidence available now I think David Blunkett should stay. Do you agree?

UN Report

The UN High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Changes has published its report.

It is an extremely important Report. I hope to write a more detailed article soon and will publish it here as well.

http://www.un.org

Responses

There are so many comments I'm afraid this will have to be brief!

Foxhunting. Welcome to Charlotte it's good to see young people participating in this debate. I don't agree with you however!

I think Roger Evans draws attention to a difficult issue about slaughter houses and killing animals without stunning for the Jewish and Muslim market. But I still think the key argument against hunting is that it is essentially a sport which involves unnecessary cruelty.

The quote from Peter Bradley MP is out of context. He actually wrote an excellent article in the Sunday Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk Sunday Telegraph) on the 21st November. The paper put a spin on the story but did publish his correcting letter the following week.

Dan. I would love to attend a meeting in India. I have been to a number there and I found the views much more varied then you suggest. You still haven't answered the point about population. Britain had a population of 31 million in the mid 19th century. You can't hold down an empire of at least 500 million unless there is a degree of consent even allowing for the technological advantage that we enjoyed. Indian troops often fought for the British and they didn't have to.

India has always managed to absorb invaders not least because it is a very civilized and sophisticated society.You must read William Dalrympal's book The White Mughals. Indians and British intermarried and intermingled much more then the racists would like you to know about.

Ingrid. You can read the International Development Select Committee minutes on line. http://www.parliament.uk (I hope these links work - I usually do something wrong!)

Andrew Price. Napalm has not been used in Fallujah.

Family Courts. There is some more useful information here and I welcome that. I certainly don't want to go back to the guilty party concept and suspect we do need to move away from total secrecy in these courts. I have got all the papers and indeed many others that have been sent to me.

There has been a desire to look at this area again and reform is also referred to in the Queens speech. It is not new.

Graeme says that the courts get in the way of parents agreeing. I accept that we need to try and avoid a court based settlement but I simply observe that the parents do have to take some responsibility for the need to go to court. If they could agree the courts would not get involved. The problem is that some people can't resolve the dispute without outside help and the question is how best to deliver that help.

I think the enforcement question is very important and if we could get this right some of the angry men on this blog might feel they are getting something closer to justice.

I recall a very difficult case years ago when I was a probation officer and a nine year old child refused to see her mother. I spent a lot of time trying to find a way through but the child was very determined. I was not prepared to enforce a visit but you are always torn between respecting the child's rights and yet trying to get the shared parenting everyone wants. There are no easy answers and no perfect systems.

A final point on this issue of the women's movement. Putting right imbalances of power was and is important but it doesn't mean that men don't have disadvantages or needs that are being ignored.See my chapter on family policy on the side bar of this blog.

I haven't looked at the figures for a few years now but the last time I looked there was one woman in prison for every ten men and one man having psychiatric treatment for every ten women. It is dangerous to jump to easy conclusions about these figures but I suspect it reflects the fact that women tend to internalize their problems and men tend to externalize theirs. If so it says a lot about our respective roles in society.

Just a bedtime thought to keep you awake at night!