Steer clear of the zealots

The EU is flexing its political muscles as D-day for the Lisbon Treaty approaches, with the Irish referendum scheduled for October 2. But the Times reports that Brussels is in a panic because the Czech government is planning to delay signing the treaty for up to six months even if Ireland approves it second time round.

The controversial Czech President Vaclav Klaus is apparently manouvering to upset the referendum, which will see fundamental changes in the way the EU operates, such as the introduction of increased powers for the European Parliament. The six-month Presidency rotation among member states would change to a two-and-a-half year period, allowing countries to more effectively stamp their authority on their time in charge.

Without doubt, the treaty is controversial. It smacks of arrogance - beaurocrats in Brussels dishing out laws with greater ease to an increasingly Europhobic popoulation whose disillusionment with the Union is increasing markedly. Lisbon also makes provisions for the position of EU Council President - a role Tony Blair is said to be tipped for, and a proposition the Liberal Democrats have rightly denounced for a multitude of reasons.

But there are differences when it comes to opposition of the EU.

The original rejection by Ireland of the treaty was the culmination of protests by a variety of organisations and political camps who viewed it as fundamentally undemocratic. This argument has foundations in a fear for the democratic rights of EU citizens whose involvment in EU decision-making is limited because members of some institutions such as the Commission are not elected.

The Czech opposition, however, is very different. President Klaus is a fervent climate change denier and has been embroiled in corruption scandals - indeed, his privatisation projects in his home country have been linked to a rapid spread of corruption. His opposition to the treaty is clearly influenced far more by a selfish opposition to its moderate proposals on tackling global warming than any genuine concern for the democratic rights of his people.

The problem with criticism of the Union in the member states is that it is dominated by nationalist zealots who generally make selfish proposals that serve only to fuel their own political agenda - UKIP is a prime example. There is undoubtably a need to address the democratic shortcomings of the EU, but groups aiming to do so must be wary of being led astray by the fanatics.

The education bloodbath

Published in Student Direct, 21st September 2009

The summer has been a sizzler for universities and their government cronies. As the burden of debt looms large over this year’s crop of freshers, the wheeling and dealing that has become the trademark of New Labour’s Higher Education policy has swung into motion.

Behind the scenes, vice-chancellors are salivating over the prospect of squeezing students to the tune of £20,000 a year in tuition fees – an astonishingly incompetent proposition that ignores the financial reality confronting students in the recession.

For prospective students, the financial outlook is bleak, with the impending review of tuition fees hanging like a black cloud over their studies. The recession has been shamelessly used by university vice-chancellors and politicians as an excuse for the latest round of fee increases. Last year saw sporadic demonstrations breaking out on campuses around the country as students reacted in horror to the lunacy of the government’s proposals.

Aside from ignoring the sheer financial implication of having to pay up to £60,000 for three years at university, the proposals reveal the increasingly bullish stance taken by the political establishment on the issue of higher education funding. The NUS president Wes Streeting has slammed the arrogance of vice-chancellors who are “fantasising about charging their students even higher fees.”

But this arrogance is nothing new. In 1997 Tony Blair boldly promised “Education, Education, Education.” Labour, he said, would uphold the interests of youngsters at school and university. Gone were the days of Conservative cuts in education funding. The party would right the wrongs of the previous 18 years and restore commitment to education as the lifeline to a successful career. But in reality, the government’s corrosive education policies have turned common sense on its head.

Instead of upholding its pledge to the electorate – and more importantly, to students – Blair and Brown have successively taken an axe to the equality of opportunity that should naturally give any young person wanting to go to university the chance to do so. An obsession with targets and performance saw Labour make the incredible suggestion that 50 per cent of school leavers should attend university shortly after it took power.

In its desperate attempt to be seen as the party of ‘equality’, Labour opened new universities and cobbled together new degree programmes at breakneck speed. Throwing caution to the wind, courses were set up simply for the sake of it, with minimal consideration to the financial implications that duly came in the form of crippling tuition fees, demanded by universities in order to fund these aptly named ‘Mickey mouse degrees’ – anyone for Surf Studies or Golf Management?

The government’s record reveals a staggering degree of incompetence and disregard for the views of the student population. In 2001, David Blunkett assured students that “there will be no levying of top-up fees in the next parliament if we win the next election.” Yet in 2004 they were introduced, and by 2006 universities were already pressuring the government into increasing fees, claiming they needed more money.

This policy of misinformation has not been limited to the Labour party, with the Conservatives readily jumping on the bandwagon. In 2003, then party leader Iain Duncan Smith said: “we will scrap university tuition fees – a tax on learning. The fees have penalised hard-working families who simply want their children to get on.”

In 2004, David Cameron assured his party that it would act as a bastion of opposition to the fees, and yet in 2006 bluntly announced a U-turn, claiming, “the money’s got to come from somewhere.” The repeated sell-out of students by the political establishment suggests that in terms of importance, young people are as usual bottom of the pile.

If the government would momentarily depart from its fantasies, it would realise that fewer student attending university is not necessarily a bad idea. Reduced numbers of students would reduce the need to charge students for the privilege of obtaining a degree. Whilst the higher education system creaks under the financial strain of Labour’s ludicrous targets, the skilled trades such as plumbing are crying out for recruits. Less students attending university would divert badly needed funds into apprenticeships and training schemes.

Meanwhile the crippling cost of education has meant that whilst more youngsters now choose to attend university, poorer students are increasingly discriminated against in the process. 20 years ago, a potential medic or barrister from a working class background could count on a reasonable grant to see them through the university process. Now, thanks to Labour’s education catastrophe, that same working class applicant may well decide that the cost of their training simply isn’t worth it – a trend that is seemingly confirmed by the House of Common’s spending watchdog report earlier this year that confirmed there was little to show for the whopping £329m spent on tempting poorer applicants to university.

The coming academic year promises to be a bloodbath. The evidence so far has shown the government’s blatant disregard for the student voice on the issue of fees. With the discontent growing, alternative plans are hastily being wheeled out: UCL Professor Malcolm Grant’s suggestion that fees should be replaced with a graduate tax, payable varying to students’ future earnings, at least suggests that some in the academic world are thinking on their feet.

But piecemeal opposition to Westminster’s bullying is futile – and the government knows it. Grant claimed in The Guardian that: “We have moved a long way from the ideological divide…but…people are increasingly nervous about debt because of the recession.” Yet the reality is that ideological division is essential if the student body is to take a stand against the profit-driven agenda of the political establishment. The NUS’ ill-fated decision to fight to keep the tuition fee cap rather than take a tougher stance and oppose tuition fees outright, gave the government the green light to push on with its plans. An entire rethink of the way higher education is managed and funded is badly overdue and is essential if the railroading through of education reform without student consultation is to be stopped.

Tinkering with the system is not sufficient. The government must realise that its attempts to boost the chances of bright young people have failed miserably. As students flock to university in ever-increasing numbers, the worth of a degree is eroded and downgraded. Gordon Brown’s increasingly dire poll ratings may prompt him to think about the future of Labour’s education policy. An abandonment of fanciful targets might just persuade the average student that Labour is indeed on their side, and not totally driven by targets and profits.

If Labour is to win the student vote at the next election, then change is desperately required. The political establishment must be held to account by students and prevented from exacerbating the financial misery that threatens to engulf higher education. Top of the agenda must be young people from the poorest backgrounds who have been failed by an education system that seeks primarily to maximise profit, seemingly at any cost.

“Education, Education, Education” is dead in the water. Now it’s time for “Reform, Reform, Reform.”

Labour's suicide

While the media and political pundits endlessly debate the spending cuts outlined by Gordon Brown at the TUC yesterday, the real catastrophe - the ongoing suicide of the Labour party - is being given less attention.

To be sure, job losses are bad news - and Brown's inability to satisfactorily articulate his plans for scaling back the nation's debt are giving the Tories and the Lib Dems all the ammunition they need as the next general election looms.

But the real problem with Brown is that he is simply not taken seriously by Labour voters - his own foot soldiers - whose desertion to other parties will hit the party hard at the next general election. These foot soldiers include low-income earners and trade unions associates - once the bedrock of Labour support and still a key financial lifeline to the party. When Labour announced it was scrapping the 10p tax rate last year, the party rightly faced a barrage of criticism for abandoning its core voters and, more importanty, its core values.

At the heart of Labour's decline is this abandonment of key bastions of support. Brown must surely acknowledge his political time is nearly up, with the Conservatives breathing down his neck in all polls and members of his government relentlessly plotting against him. But he displays a staggering inability to acknowledge the resentment felt by a large percentage of Labour voters at many of the policies he champions.

When he promises to "cut costs, cut inefficiencies, cut unnecessary programmes and cut lower priority budgets", there is a collective wince among Labour troops, becuause they know, instinctively, that these "cuts" refer to underhand economic tactics which punish those at the bottom of the pile and do little to restrict the obscene salaries raked in by those at the top. When Brown was looking to shore up middle class support last year, it was the 10p tax band that aided lower income people that was first up for the guillotine.

But Labour is apparently unwilling to confront this reality. The uneasy "coalition" of New Labour that was elected in 1997 was skewed decidedly in favour of "Middle England". If yesterday's speech is anything to go by, it is Middle England that still holds Brown enthralled. He is afraid of a backlash - but if he does not pay attention to his rank and file, he may find Labour's meltdown and bitter division at the next election more devastating that any poll can predict.

Unhealthy intimidation

The lunacy of the American Right appears to have reached new heights with last weekend's protest in Washington against Obama's healthcare package. The Guardian reports that protesters deemed it necessary to compare the President to Hitler and portray him as a terrorist.

The report notes:

"The organisers of the march represent a ragbag coalition of disparate groups, joined at the hip by their hatred of Obama's perceived radicalism. They include right-wing thinktanks such as the Heartland Institute, small government campaigns like Americans for Tax Reform and Tea Party Patriots, and internet-based protest networks such as ResistNet."

The debate over healthcare reform has drawn out some unsavoury remarks from Republican ranks in recent months, with a concerted effort to portray Obama as a "socialist" - a threat to the American way of life.

But the real threat comes from the political establishment. The Democrats, as usual the wet blanket party of American politics, have allowed themselves to be intimidated by both the Republican party and the fringe fanatics who bang the rightwing drum. Already the plans are being watered down as a result of threats from fiscally conservative "Blue Dog Democrats" that they will withold support for reform if Obama's plans are seen as too "radical."

The Guardian notes:

"Democratic commentators were quick to dismiss the protest as the ranting of an intensely motivated but electorally marginal rightwing alliance. The Obama administration is intent on pressing ahead with selling health reform to the US public, despite all the rightwing noise."

But Obama must realise that his own ranks may prove far more dangerous than this rabble in the long run.

The nuclear reality

From Student Direct, 9th March 2009

Iran’s latest announcement regarding its nuclear ambitions has caused a fresh wave of panic to break out among Western leaders. The recent revelation that the country plans to install 50,000 centrifuges to enrich uranium over the next five years, with Russian help, has produced the predictable sabre-rattling that is now sadly associated with the West’s spectacular mishandling of the Iranian nuclear “crisis”.

Let’s be frank: Iran is not going to go away. While George Bush and Tony Blair made every effort to isolate and threaten the regime with sanctions, the country’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was cleverly winning the dangerous mind games played out in the Middle East under the spectre of nuclear weapons. If Western intelligence is to be believed – questionable, after Iraq – then Ahmadinejad’s government is closing in on the ultimate prize, which could be the lethal spark in a catastrophic regional war.

But the West’s portrayal of Iran is over-simplistic. The widely held US view of a despotic dictatorship relentlessly plotting Israel’s demise is a fantasy cooked up by the foreign policy hawks in Washington and Tel Aviv. It is not in Iran’s interest to develop a nuclear weapon, which would further antagonise relations with archenemy Israel and cause greater instability. Nor is it advisable for Ahmadinejad to pursue a nuclear bomb at a time when his best chance for establishing diplomatic relations with the US is over the next four or eight years under President Barack Obama. But the fact that Iran is actively pursuing a bomb is a direct consequence of the fatally flawed Western foreign policy that has developed in recent years.

The mangled wreckage of George W. Bush’s presidency saw America renew its unwavering support of Israel. The Middle East peace process stalled, save for a farcical attempt at achieving a settlement at the Annapolis summit in November 2007, which constituted no real agenda for achieving a peace that Palestinians could accept. While the war in Gaza raged at the end of last year, Bush sat back and gave a green light for Israel to continue the massacre, as did EU leaders. It is this unwavering support of Israel and the appalling lack of judgement on the part of Western leaders that has been the ammunition for Ahmadinejad’s nuclear ambitions.

Across the Middle East, Arab fury at the West’s lack of action on the Middle East peace process has seen support surge for Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Ordinary Arab citizens have been increasingly drawn to a more radical agenda, often associated with the intolerant Sharia law and the consequent ultra-conservative policies that suppress human rights in Muslim states across the region.

Whether Iran develops a nuclear bomb or not, the West must accept that it is at least partially to blame for the current situation. It must stop the intimidation. It must stop the reckless military plotting that saw Israel carry out a full-scale mock attack on the country over the Mediterranean last June. It is precisely this sabre-rattling that so rightly infuriates Arab public opinion and throws the doors open to further violence.

The chances of a resolution to the Iranian problem are at present desperately slim. While Obama himself has signalled that he will negotiate with Iran at some stage, the presence of such right-wing foreign policy juggernauts as Hillary Clinton – who last year threatened to “obliterate” the country – in his administration, make his ambitions seem rather fanciful.

While there are positive signs of EU frustration over the lack of progress, and bold moves by some Arab states such as Turkey, which offered to mediate relations between the Iranian regime and the White House during Bush’s presidency, a fundamental rethink of strategy is required if Iran is to be tamed. An even handed approach to the issue by the West, with a real attempt at establishing diplomatic relations with Ahmadinejad’s regime, might just be the catalyst for a more positive relationship with the Arab states though this has, for so long, appeared desperately remote.

The Lame Blame Game
From Student Direct, April 24th 2009

CRUNCH! THAT’S the sound of HMS New Labour crashing spectacularly into one of the many icebergs currently plaguing the waters of the financial world. The jaw-dropping revelation that former Royal Bank of Scotland boss Sir Fred Goodwin is set to receive a whopping £650,000 pension has sparked a furious debate in political circles, with allegations of greed and corruption flying left, right and centre.

In a desperate effort to recover lost ground after its supposedly successful management of the economic crisis, Labour set all guns ablazing and boldly announced it would attempt to claw back some of Goodwin’s extortionate pay packet.

So far, so good. But the Goodwin episode is not as simple as it might at first appear. In a shameless effort to grab public attention and plant Labour firmly on the side of the poor, the Government has tried to play up a farcical conflict between itself and the banking industry that has made so much money out of this economic catastrophe. Aware of the impending electoral disaster were it not to intervene, Labour sent in Harriet Harman, Minister for Women and Equality, announcing that Goodwin’s pension was not acceptable in the “court of public opinion” and that she – saviour of the poor – was to right this wrong.

This is shameless hypocrisy, plain and simple. Just two months ago Harman herself proposed a parliamentary order that aimed to exempt MP’s expenses from being subject to the Freedom of Information Act. The result was thousands letters and emails of objection from the public and pressure groups alike. The fact that the Labour ministers’ breathtaking double standards – attempting to hide their own criminally exorbitant pay packets while hitting out at others’ – are now common knowledge has been a key catalyst in the party’s desperate attempts to “help the poor” and backtrack on a decade of economic policy. The reason Goodwin’s pension is so exorbitant is affected less by his personal greed – no doubt a factor – but far more by New Labour’s philistine economic agenda that has seen the gap between rich and poor skyrocket since their first election win in 1997, which was preceded by Peter Mandelson’s infamous announcement that his party was “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich”.

If Tony Blair was Thatcher’s child, then she must be at the front of the queue to adopt Gordon Brown. Blair did open the dam to the contaminated floodwaters of privatisation and neoliberal economics flowing into the education and healthcare system, forcing already hard-up voters to settle for second-class services unless they had plenty of money stashed in the bank. But Brown went one step further and cut out the 10p tax band upon which so many poorer families relied in order to scrape by on already criminally low wages. This, he assured sceptics, would help keep “middle England” aboard the dangerously floundering New Labour ship. The truth is that in Labour’s attempt to shape itself as a “Third Way” party, representing everyone’s interests, the poor are the ones made to walk the plank.

If the economic crisis has proved a point, it is that the main political parties in Britain are being held hostage to a perverse economic agenda in which the rich, such as Fred Goodwin, benefit as the worst off sections of society are pauperised still further.

Labour’s tentative announcement that it will raise the top income tax band to 45% for those earning over £150,000 if it wins the next election is a promising sign – but it is too little too late. Having prioritised the interests of the well off with massive tax breaks and profligate spending on military projects such as renewing the Trident nuclear submarine system, Brown is now realising that the very voters Labour is supposed to represent are turning to other parties in droves. Shaming Frank Goodwin is the decent thing to do, but Labour will sooner or later have to accept that in doing so it is only shaming its own decade of economic irresponsibility.

Welcome

A warm welcome to my brand new blog, mainly covering political and social issues. I'll be updating regularly with daily commentary on stories from Britain and around the world. Above are a couple of articles from Student Direct, the paper I write for, to give you a taste of what's in store.