Archive for December, 2010

Most Read Articles on SarahMcCulloch.com 2010

Monday, December 27th, 2010

SarahMcCulloch.com went live on January 5th, 2010 and since then I’ve been pumping out blogposts at a rate of a little over one a week and have published nearly seventy pages on the main website. As the year draws to a close, let’s look back at the most popular pages (excluding landing pages):


The Longest Word in the English Language

Easily the most popular page on my website, the full chemical name of the largest known protein, commonly known as Titin, is over 189,000 letters long. I originally uploaded it when I discovered that the only place on the Internet that hosted it has put the entire word on a single line. Although several websites have nicked it and published it since, SarahMcCulloch.com remains the number one world destination for all your excessive chemo-linguistic curiosity needs.

You can hear part of the longest word in the English Language read out by a sexy Englishwobot here:


SarahMcCulloch.com vs. Poland

Following the publication of my website on a Polish equivalent of Demotivator.com, 26,000 Polish geeks descended on my website in April and crashed it under the weight of their Slavic enthusiasm. In an attempt to capitalise on this, I wrote up the story as a blog entry and asked people for money to pay for hosting, which we had to double to deal with the traffic numbers. The article has since paid for the original costs involved and continues to make Poland the fourth most popular country for my website after the the US, UK and Canada.

4612813923 b306061e04 Most Read Articles on SarahMcCulloch.com 2010

My dashboard for the month Poland visited


Mephedrone 101: Common Questions and Answers

What does mephedrone do? How do you take it? Is it the same as MDMA? Why can’t I maintain an erection on mephedrone? Questions about mephedrone are one of my most popular search term clusters, and so I wrote this article to answer some of the more common and unusual ones.

4mmc Most Read Articles on SarahMcCulloch.com 2010

Impounded illegal mephedrone


Polyphasic Sleeping

A cluster of pages on how to maintain a sleeping pattern based on short naps around the clock rather than one deep sleep throughout the night. A perennial favourite for geeks and students alike, my polyphasic writing had to come to an end after a bout of depression meant I had to go back to sleeping “normally” (because who can stay miserable for 22 hours a day?). Stay posted for June, folks, when my job ends and I need to revise for my exams…

Uberman Most Read Articles on SarahMcCulloch.com 2010

The Uberman polyphasic sleeping schedule.


An Interview on Baha’i and Homosexuality

A three part interview with a lovely guy I met on the Internet (so many stories begin in this way…), numerous gay Baha’i groups and blogs have linked here, so evidently it touched a nerve. My work on the treatment of homosexuality in the Baha’i faith is certainly not especially cutting-edge, but it is certainly popular.

Incidentally, for anyone reading this who is LGBT and Baha’i, I would really like to write more on the topic. Contact me here.

Bahai Rainbow Star1 Most Read Articles on SarahMcCulloch.com 2010


Overcoming Kaam: Sikhism and Homosexuality

The gay Sikh community can’t be any smaller than the gay Baha’i community, but it appears to be much less vocal. Written by one of the founders of Sarbat, the LGBT Sikh organisation, this article gives a brief overview of SIkism’s understanding of homosexuality and how gay Sikhs should be received in their communities. It was win.

Again, for anyone reading this who is LGBT and Sikh, I only really scratched the surface with this article and would really like to write more on the topic. Contact me here.

lgbt sikhs e1284850333475 Most Read Articles on SarahMcCulloch.com 2010


Letter Regarding My Resignation from the Liberal Democrats

With the publishing of the Comprehensive Spending Review, the Liberal Democrat Party began to face an exodus of members. Unfortunately some of the more purist party animals decided people weren’t doing so from political principle, but a variety of other reasons that weren’t because the Liberal Democrat Party are a bunch of self-serving hypocrites who’ve sold their voters out for power. One jibe at the outgoing Chair of DELGA from another member of the Executive prompted me to write a spontaneous resignation letter and produced the most read article on my blog that month.

ScottishLiberalDemocratsNoEntry Stornoway Scotland 20100407 Most Read Articles on SarahMcCulloch.com 2010

Liberal Democrat polling is at its worst since 1990.


A 10 Point Guide to House Searches by the Police, Or, What to do When your Flatmates Scab on You

Written just after I had my house searched by police and I had to deal with it alone, I have since removed the names of my flatmates from the article itself. In light of the fact that they nonetheless ignored five texts and seven phone-calls (and later told me the reason had been because they simply hadn’t checked their phones in two days – *raises eyebrow*), however, I think the title can stay.

I’d like to write up a follow up article one day that contains actual legal references. If anyone knows where I can actually find that kind of information, let me know.

2464007264 ba746160f4 Most Read Articles on SarahMcCulloch.com 2010


Pay your taxes! Vodafone shop shut down in Manchester town centre

I admit, when I wrote this report, I wasn’t expecting it to be quite so popular. I think the fact that this Vodafone protest was held in November and remains one of the most popular articles on my website for this year says something about the strength of feeling in this country. We are not all in this together.

5135385020 a75d13e453 Most Read Articles on SarahMcCulloch.com 2010

We like our tax bills to be paid, yes we do.


Why Prison Doesn’t Work: An Essay

Again, an essay I knocked out for a Howard League for Penal Reform competition that only really contains an overview of why prisons are a pretty rubbish solution to crime has been a surprising hit. Having now gotten into prison reform after my research for this essay, I expect to publish further articles later on next year.

544459833 0ba01d97d5 Most Read Articles on SarahMcCulloch.com 2010


Trans and Judaism

There’s a hell of a lot of writing on gay people and Judaism, less so on trans issues. An essay I wrote for my degree (and which I got a first for. :D) I’m glad that so many people have taken the time to looks up Jewish attitudes to trans people. Knowledge leads to understanding, understanding leads to acceptance, acceptance leads to observance…

Most Read Articles on SarahMcCulloch.com 2010

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Letter to a paedophile

Tuesday, December 21st, 2010

In October, I was contacted by an individual through my contact form who identified themselves as sexually interested in children, wanting to know what my views were on paedophilia. It has taken several months to strike a balance between my belief in freedom of the individual and the need to protect young people from harm. The below is my reply. Even just reading through it now, I anticipate probably having to write a follow-up post to clarify a few things, so please leave a comment if you wish to get a response.

Before I receive any enquiries, I have reported people to CEOPS with full name, address and chat logs in the past to no effect. This person used an encrypted email address and did not leave a name. I do not know their location, gender, nationality, or anything at all identifiable about them other than that they are in their twenties and are fluent in English – that narrows it down to about 85% of all internet users.

Due to the nature of this post, I have decided against any “appropriate” images, and have gone with pictures of Netherland Dwarf rabbits instead. I apologise in advance to any confused Google searchers.

Hello,

I did receive your email but given its nature I decided to wait until I could sit down and write you a proper reply.

As I am sure you can gather from my blog, I have a very open-minded attitude to considering “issues”. I do believe, very firmly, in taking an evidence-based approach to everything which is currently clouded by moral judgments and media hysteria. You categorised those opinions as extreme [the sender referred specifically to drug policy and prostitution], but I don’t think there is anything extreme about suggesting that the past thirty years of spending hundreds of billions of pounds a year to encourage people (who are harming no-one but themselves) towards substances which could harm more than they would want or intend, or to lock up, punish, and in some case execute dealers who are supplying a demand in the same way as any other business that sells products that are unhealthy, to almost no effect in terms of suppressing the industry, might be worth a rethink. Similarly, suggesting that trying to prevent people from selling sex, as if sex was somehow any different from any other service involving their own labour that people may want to offer, and that people need to be protected from “being exploited” in a profession many freely choose (but that those who are forced into it should be handed criminal records, as if this will solve any of their problems), seems to me to be the height of sensiblility. And likewise, to prosecute those engaging in consensual incest behind closed doors can only be described as a hangover from another era, as far as I am concerned.

Zwergkaninchen Magda 3 Letter to a paedophile

A Netherland dwarf rabbit called Magda.

So when you write to me and ask me about my views on paedophilia, yes, I have an open-minded view on the subject. But if you are looking for encouragement regarding your sexual interest in children, you will not find it here. It is absolutely true that a lot of the public discourse around paedophilia is prompted by hysteria and a lack of evidence. One friend of mine demanded that all paedophiles should be locked up forever. I calculated that that would cost approximately £93 billion a year in the UK alone, which is hardly practical, not to mention cruel. It’s not, after all, the fault of anyone to be sexually interested in children; indeed that reason that figure is so high is because something like 5% of the adult male population has sexual thoughts about children from time to time.[1] But there is of course a difference between having a sexual thought about a child and seeking to have a sexual encounter with them.

Letter to a paedophile

A beige Netherland dwarf rabbit.

The argument that “these feelings are ok, as long as you don’t act on them”, is obviously something that I am aware was, and is, also used on people who have same-sex attractions. I acknowledge that people that say that stuff do think of people who are gay and people who are paedophiles to be in the exact same category. But, as I’m sure you will have guessed, the issue for me is one of consent. We know that most adults can consent to sex. But I am not convinced by any evidence that children have the capacity to make an informed decision about sex. You said in your email to me that “nobody has evidence that sex causes harm” – every rape case in history would immediately disprove that, though I know that’s not what you meant. But sex with children isn’t the gesture of love that NAMBLA makes out to be. I wouldn’t want my kids to take drugs, I don’t want them to be going off and having sex. That’s not because I view either activity as inherently despicable, but because children are developing human beings, and both drugs and sex have the capacity to warp them in ways that would not happen to (most) adults.

Netherland Dwarf On Brick Letter to a paedophile

A Netherland dwarf rabbit sitting on a brick.

Though that do I mean when I say “kids”? I think the age of consent is entirely meaningless as a concept. It was introduced in the Victorian era in Britain in order to protect child prostitutes (it was originally set at 13) and has since evolved to mean that a consenting fifteen year old, of whom I have known many, is supposed to abstain at risk of having their partner prosecuted for statutory rape. That’s ridiculous. All laws based on arbitrary cut-off ages are ridiculous. But the question then becomes, how does one legislate to protect the fifteen year old, the fourteen year old, the twelve year old, even, who knows exactly what, or whom, they are getting into and welcome it, and the thirteen year old who feels pressured into sex against their own judgement, but doesn’t have the maturity or the power to say no?

Black Dwarf Buny Letter to a paedophile

A black Netherland dwarf rabbit sitting on a window sill.

My preferred legal system is one where sex between consenting parties is legal but unequal power sexual relationships are not allowed. There are 12 year olds that can consent to sex, and there are many that can’t. A 12 year old who has a fumble with a 13 year old in the wendy house is an entirely different matter to an altar boy being coerced into sex by a priest. A 13 year old having consensual sex with her 20 year old sister seems to me to be no matter of state; a relationship between a father and his daughter seems abusive. We create laws that are fixed and rigid in an attempt to deal with such a grey issue as sexuality and consent, but when such laws become more harmful than helpful, they must be changed. How you can legislate for this, I really don’t know, but I recognise and acknowledge with you that the current system is inadequate.

Letter to a paedophile

A Netherland dwarf rabbit called Butterscotch.

However, I find your reference to the term “child-lover” rather worrying. In my experience people who use such terms intend them as a euphemism for things which cannot be described as loving. When I read about the man who spanked his daughter on request of another paedophile he met on the internet, in return for footage of that man’s son being abused, I cannot help but think that sometimes abstract intellectual musings are irrelevant in the face of such violence and exploitation. While I stand by all that I have written above, I must conclude that my position rather changes once someone shifts from fetishising children to seeking to hurt them, whether they believe they are “loving” them or not.

I have spent considerable time writing this reply, and I hope that it gives you the level of intellectual engagement that you were seeking; If you would like to email me back, I shall respond accordingly.

Yours faithfully,

Sarah McCulloch

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Letter to a paedophile

A Netherland dwarf rabbit called Chibi.

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A response to a former student regarding student demonstrations

Wednesday, December 15th, 2010

I regularly get messages through the contact form on my website in reference to my blog posts. This morning, I got an email from someone who had read this article and decided that I was spending too much time drinking and not enough time studying on the basis that I had spent much of the 9th December demo coordinating Manchester activists from the Lord Moon at the Mall instead of being kettled. The below is my reply.

Dear whoever you are,

Thank you for your message. In response to your email suggesting that I would be better off studying than drinking or demonstrating; I do not drink. I was in that pub on the 9th December that I mentioned because it was the nearest place that had wireless internet access – I am employed part-time by the University of Manchester Students’ Union to help co-ordinate our cuts campaign and I figured before everything kicked off that it would be easier to try to make sure our students were safe from a warm building that served food that to be standing in the middle of a riot: which turned out to be true.

I find your cut-off point at 18 for free education quite interesting. Why does no-one deserve an education past 18, and not 16? Or 14? Or 11? Why do you consider universal free education compulsory at 9 but something that crippling debt must be incurred for at 19? If the purpose of education is to produce productive, useful citizens, why would we not want that to continue up to the acquisition of a useful skill? In my mind, we should be offering every school-leaver a free tertiary education qualification, be that a degree, an NVQ, a HND, or an apprenticeship. Given George Osborne magicked up £6 billion to give to Ireland, enough to give every student currently at university free education for two years, I do not consider this out of the realm of the impossible. Indeed, it would be of great benefit to society, economically and socially, to have such a well-educated workforce.

I assume you went to uni when you were only paying maintenence loans, because even working 16 hours a week during uni I would not be able to pay off the debts that I have built up in my time at uni at £6000 a year in fees and loans. I wonder, would you have been so happy to accept a marketised education if you were still paying off a debt of £36,000 for a reduced quality of education, with fewer classes, larger classes, fewer books and more university charges?

I’d go to more lectures, but due to the cuts in my education that were pushed through despite claims of further investment, I had about nine contact hours a week in my second year. I have a friend in third year who has four hours of lectures and tutorials a week. What do you propose we do in the meantime? Go to the library? But universities across the country are reducing the number of books they buy. Time to speak to lecturers is restricted, if you even have a lecturer and not a post-grad student – 20% of my entire degree has been taught by fellow students. Would you pay £9000 for me to teach you?

Maybe you got a decent education at a reasonable price and you spent your university days happily ensconced in a corner of your library learning. We aren’t getting that. The student movement isn’t just complaining for no reason, we’re objecting to the cuts in our education, the 80% funding cut in the teaching budget and the tripling of tuition fees for *the same* – the students who have to pay tuition fees and put themselves in debt for twenty years or more aren’t going to receive diamond pens or gold star feedback, they will be getting the same stressed lecturers under pressure to do research than teach, the same poor feedback systems (which have been reduced to a number in a box instead of any meaningful criticism for many of us), the same apparent expectation that we should just know how to write a good quality essay on the basis of a single practice assignment a module.

Perhaps you think that that is an acceptable price to pay for a piece of paper that says “degree” on it, but that isn’t why I am at university. I do not expect to get a good job with an arts degree, I love my subject with the same enthusiasm with which you enjoy berating people who were not as lucky as you to get a good education for free. I want to learn, all of us out on those streets want to learn – that’s why we are demonstrating! Nothing has ever changed in history because we put our heads down and hoped it would all be okay in the end. “I will try harder” (look, I’ve read a book!), gets no-one anywhere.

I’m not going to get free education, but I can stop the closure of my university departments (I have at least two friends whose entire departments were closed a year after starting their degree), I can stop the closure of my building’s study rooms, I can stop my support staff being fired. I can demonstrate on behalf of the tens of thousands of students who won’t be making it through sixth form, let alone to university, because of the removal of their Education Maintenance Allowance which pays for their bus to school. I think that is worth fighting for. I personally don’t like violence, but I think that everyone who dislikes violence should recognise just how far peaceful protest has gotten us so far and why people feel disenfranchised from the entire system.

If you managed to get through university with a resolve to just accept what you are handed by a government whose interests do not coincide with yours, I can only say that I see why you think free education is a waste of time: it was clearly wasted on you.

Yours faithfully,

Sarah McCulloch

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No Confidencing Aaron Porter

Tuesday, December 14th, 2010

Following the fun and games of the vote in the House of Commons on the proposed tripling of tuition fees on the 9th December, 2010, Sean Rillo Raczka has very kindly written a model motion to put through your union general meeting/council/executive to bring about a motion of no confidence in Aaron Porter, NUS President. The reasons for doing so are included in the motion below.

Talk about no confidencing Aaron has been bandied about since the 10th November protests when Aaron spent more time condemning his own side than talking about why ordinary students (and significantly, they were ordinary students) felt the need to destroy property in frustration at the futility of the political process. He’s been losing credibility ever since, and I think this has been regrettably demonstrated by the near total absence of the NUS from the recent protests.

Size of the NUS demo on the 9th December:

5260029613 f85fa66c69 No Confidencing Aaron Porter

Who's the minority of fringe protesters now?

I was in a pub on Whitehall when the vote on tuition fees passed by 21. As Aaron has rightly pointed out, we nearly achieved the impossible: nearly the entire backbench Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Party voted against, and two ministers resigned rather than vote for. Even more significantly, a Tory resigned and six voted against. That is a phenomenal lobbying achievement – and it still failed. Aaron Porter just wants us to try again. And people are surprised that the massed crowds waiting outside took their anger out on the Treasury’s windows?

Size of the Parliament Square demo on the 9th December:

And what did Aaron Porter do? Have a go at the protesters, again. Never mind that we have people in hospital. In fact, if you watch the video of the policeman who fell off his horse below, if you watch the people behind him holding each other, you will notice that just for standing there they were batoned and hauled off by eight policemen (one of whom falls over his own fallen colleague in his hurry to assault the protesters). Those people were from Manchester University and were detained for five hours before they were even allowed to see a doctor, despite having been batoned on the head and passing in and out of consciousness. Does Aaron give a crap about that?

So, below is the motion, and for those of you who hope he’ll just go away. it turns out that Aaron Porter wants another year in power anyway. You can pass this motion through any union decision making body, be it general meeting, council, exec or whatever – please encourage all your unions around you to vote on it as well. FE colleges are especially good for this. :)

“This is a suggestion for a model motion of No Confidence in Aaron Porter to put to your SU meetings or Council. You can change (add or subtract) it or write your own. Points 4, 4.1 and 4.2 MUST be included in any motion though, they are the important points. Have this motion sent to NUS (contact me if you need details) by your Sabbs asap once passed, and let me know too.

Basically if we get 25 Unions to pass this, we get to have an Extraordinary Conference where we can put the motion of no confidence and present the case. All Unions can send delegates to this conference; it does tend to be full of sabbatical officers, and therefore less likely to take action against the leadership.

If the motion passes at this conference the Deputy President (Shane Chowen, VP FE) would become President. However, the idea is to make sure the NUS centre/centre-right knows we won’t put up with their spineless leadership. We will be demanding a National Union that can live up to its member at this crucial time.

Any questions please ask.

Sean Rillo Raczka
Birckbeck SU and NUS NEC (pc!)
seanrillo@hotmail.com

Motion of No Confidence in Aaron Porter:

1 This Union Notes:
1.1 That on the 9/12/10 over 30,000 students marched from the University of London Union (ULU) to Parliament in a protest against fees and cuts on the day of the vote the raise tuition fees.
1.2 That the National Union of Students organised a candlelight vigil and rally in Victoria Embankment with under 1,000 attending.
1.3 That the NUS NEC, in a proposal made by NUS President Aaron Porter, voted NOT to back the march from ULU.
1.4 That Aaron Porter stated he was ‘not at all proud’ of the ULU protest.
1.5 That the co-ordinators of the NUS Rally at Victoria Embankment urged those in attendance to return home immediately afterwards and not to join the protest in Parliament Square.
1.6 That violent police tactics including kettling, horse charges and the use of batons were deployed by the Met, leaving over 43 protestors injured or hospitalised, including one life threatening injury.
1.7 That the NUS has not put out an official statement condemning the police violence towards students on the 9th of December, standing up for their right to protest and not be illegally kettled or charged by horses.
1.8 That Aaron Porter recently visited the UCL Occupation where he stated that the NUS would provide support for those in occupation, as well as calling a National Demonstration on the day of the fees vote.
1.9 That at the UCL Occupation meeting Aaron Porter admitted that the NUS had been ‘spineless’ and ‘dithering’ in response the student occupations.
1.10 That Aaron Porter has reneged on both promises mentioned above (1.8).

2 The Union Further Notes:
2.1 That emails leaked to the Daily Telegraph show that the NUS had put models of alternative cuts to Ministers, outlining where cuts could be made to the Higher Education budget without raising tuition fees. These plans included cutting grants to the poorest students, and immediately charging a higher commercial rate on interest on student loans.
2.2 That the NUS response to this leak is to admit that they had ‘met with ministers and officials to discuss and model various potential impacts of cuts to Higher Education’

3. This Union Belives:
3.1 That the National Union of Students should not be in the business of modelling cuts for the ConDem Government or discussing possible ways of cutting grants from the poorest of student.
3.2 That the NUS National President should keep his promises.
3.3 That the NUS should organise another National Demo, and officially supporting and coordinating other demonstrations and protest.
3.4 That the NUS should give practical support to occupations and students affected by police violence.
3.5 That Aaron Porter, given his failure to assist students & occupation, and to coordinate or support further National Demonstrations against the cuts, and because of his helpful emails to the government, is incapable of leading the student movement.

4 This Union Resolves:
4.1 That we have no confidence in Aaron Porter as NUS President.
4.2 To call for an Extraordinary Conference to hear this vote of no confidence.

END

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/universityeducation/8190379/National-Union-of-Students-secretly-urged-Government-to-make-deep-cuts-in-student-grants.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/nov/28/student-leader-apologises-over-dithering

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpRCDmhhgrg”

We will not stand for cuts, or people who won’t stand with us!

Sean’s motion available here.

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In defence of Johann Hari: A Response to a Conservative

Tuesday, December 7th, 2010

Last week, I posted the video above to my Facebook, and in response had a lovely chap I can always rely on to disagree about everything denounce Johann Hari as a liar. A liar? Interesting. I asked for more. I got four articles in response (well, five, but the fifth was about an article Hari had written on Dubai which didn’t make much sense). They were:

* “I’ve Always Wanted to Fisk Johann Hari… ” by Iain Dale, noted Conservative Party blogger, in reference to an article by Hari entitled, “If you’re looking for class war, just read Cameron’s policies“.

* “Johann Hari’s error strewn attack on Hammersmith and Fulham Council” from ConservativeHome, a blog representing grassroots Conservative Party members, in reference to Hari’s article “Welcome to Cameron land“.

* The imaginatively named “Johann Hari is a liar” from the Devil’s Kitchen, a blog written by the leader of the UK’s Libertarian Party, about Hari’s article on wage slavery in China.

* And another, brief article from Devil’s Kitchen, “Oh look, it’s Johann Hari“, attacking an equally brief blogpost from Hari on Richard Littlejohn being racist.

The problem is, and I’m sure you will have guessed this already, these bloggers are all right-wing conservatives with axes to grind, agendas to push, and very little by way of scruples. So although most of Johann Hari’s “lies” are pretty easily verified immediately through a Google search, but that won’t stop people attacking him anyway.

Iain Dale

Iain Dale%2C March 2009 In defence of Johann Hari: A Response to a Conservative

Iain Dale, Conservative Party blogger

Take, for example, Iain Dale’s commentary:

(Hari’s comments in red, Dale’s in italics)

“He will give a £1.2bn inheritance tax cut to the richest 2 per cent in Britain – with most going to the 3,000 wealthiest estates (including his wife’s).
Wrong. In fact the cut means that ONLY millionaires will pay inheritance tax.”

Regardless of the fulminations of the Daily Mail, not that many people actually pay inheritance tax – 12,000 households were eligible under the old system. Under the intended new system, only the 3000 richest households will be eligible, or Iain Dale’s millionaires. But because they are the richest that means that they get the maximum benefit of lifting of the threshold. So a family with a family house worth £345,000 now won’t have to pay inheritance tax at all and therefore benefits by £45,000 – but David Cameron, who is worth £30 million, is now exempted right up to the threshold, and his family will now benefit by £700,000.

So, like Johann Hari said, the richest estates will benefit most from the rise in inheritance tax.

“Then he promises to end the 50p top rate of tax, giving another £2.4bn to the richest 1 per cent.
No, he has never promised to do this. He said it would be an aspiration at some point in the future.”

The difference between “I promise” meaning “I will” and “I will in the future” is pure semantics that cannot be considered lying. I would also venture to suggest that the likelihood of David Cameron repealing the 50p tax-band, a symbol of the Labour/Brown era which penalises the rich most and derided as “socialism” by the Tories, is considerably closer to 1 than Mr. Dale would like you to believe.

“Then he has pledged to cut taxes on the pensions of the richest, handing another £3.2bn to the same 1 per cent.
Has he? This is a new one on me. Source please.”

1.6 second Google search later: “ConDems – granting tax £25,000 tax relief to those earning £150,000 a year – the same as the benefit cap”

“Then his marriage tax relief policies will give 13 times more to the rich than the poor.
No they won’t. The tax relief is targeted at only those with an income of less than £44k. Are people on £44k rich?”

Um, yes, yes they are: in the top 15% of earners in the country in fact. The average wage in this country is £23,000 – that means that half the country are earning well under that, and most people in the country will never earn £44k, or indeed even aspire to it. That Iain Dale thinks this is a low income says much about the bubble he lives in.

“To pay for this, he will slash programmes for the middle and the skint, like the Child Trust Fund, SureStart and state schools.
Wrong. The CTF will indeed be abolished, but SureStart will not.”

Johann Hari states that SureStart will be slashed, not abolished, and he is right: “Sure Start funding frozen for four years”

ConservativeHome:

tories to reverse fox hunt ban 692975 In defence of Johann Hari: A Response to a Conservative

Polo might not be necessarily upper-class, but the fact you have to own your own horse does make it one of the more expensive sports to play on an estate.

This post was in response to an article by Hari pointing out that Hammersmith and Fulham Council had, among other things, started to charge disabled people on benefits £12.50/h for home care, sold most of the homeless shelters in the borough and changed the housing rules to require people to actively prove they had nowhere else to go, and rented the use of the local park to the World Polo Association, ripping out the running track to allow for polo games once a year. ConservativeHome felt that pointing out these things was “a regurgitation of dishonest Labour press releases”. I am no Labour apologist, but it’s not Labour being dishonest here:

“If Hari feels that Hammersmith and Fulham Home Care charges are wickedly “Thatcherite” what does he feel about the Labour councils which routinely have higher charges?”

I was a bit taken aback by this one. Was ConservativeHome honestly trying to tell me that in an article which starts off by explaining that Hammersmith and Fulham has sold off 12 homeless shelters, and denied a pregnant victim of domestic violence emergency shelter so she had to sleep in a park, their concern is that Johann Hari isn’t making a point of attacking Labour councils who also try to charge the sick and disabled for home care? Call me gullible, but I am quite sure that Hari is happy to attack anyone who tries to make the poor pay charges they can’t afford to. Just the Tories do it more…

“Council Tax hits the poor harder the rich. So contrary to Hari’s claims reducing it helps the poorest the most. His claim that they “disproportionately benefit the wealthy” shows the most staggering ignorance.”

Rich people live in higher band houses than poor people, and consequently pay more of it. Reducing council tax by 3% saves the rich more money, and charging (predominantly poor, working class) people £121 a year more for childcare as a way for paying for that cut is simply robbing the poor to pay the rich.

“Hari’s claim that holding polo in Hurlingham Park has been at the expense of facilities there is the opposite of the truth. The deal with the World Polo Association is bringing in £170,000 in revenue to the Council over three years plus projects to improve the park and the opportunity for children from local primary schools to have free tickets to the tournament and attend sessions to learn polo themselves.”

The polo association may well bring in investment, but I believe the point was that local people now don’t have access to their park for a month of the year or a running track at all, which was one of the few professional running tracks in the country. Given polo requires you to rent or own a horse and running costs nothing, I wonder which sport was benefiting poor kids more….

“The reduction in the number of homeless hostels reflects an achievement in reducing the numbers in temporary accommodation.”

The point regarding homeless shelters is evidently drivel by the fact that homelessness has risen everywhere in the wake of the recession. Reducing the numbers of people in temporary accommodation by making it harder for people to access it is not an “achievement”, its a disgrace.

Basically, this entire article is absolute rubbish.

The Devil’s Kitchen:

Chris Mouncey, leader of the 500 strong Libertarian Party, does not like to mince his words. Indeed, he opens his article with “Just look at this fat, lying little turd. Don’t tell me that you don’t want to punch that face till it bleeds because I simply won’t believe you.” His article is less interested in calling Johann Hari a liar so much as a “posh, cocktail-drinking, Islington-living, Independent-writing shit”. Mouncey seems to be upset, more than anything, about Johann Hari claiming that 35 hour days and 35c/h salaries is an unacceptable way to treat workers. Something which even MSNBC had a problem with:

Devil’s Kitchen definitely prefers flying insults to fact-checking. However, the author does ask for the proof that “After slavery was abolished, GDP fell by 10%”, as Johann Hari asserts here.

I will admit, this is the only fact alleged by Johann Hari that I have not been able to track down a source for. From what I have read, it seems likely that Hari was referring to Gross National Product, rather than Gross Domestic Product, but I have no idea how to check this.

Finally, “Oh look, it’s Johann Hari” contains no factual assertions whatsoever, so I ultimately cannot comment. The point of the article appears to be that the author is upset that Hari points out that 600,000 Chinese workers are worked to death every year – which is true.

All in all, I am not Johann Hari’s biggest fan, but I do respect his work and ability to make arguments on the basis of facts rather than sleight of hand, which is more than I can say for the British right’s luminaries.

Johannhari In defence of Johann Hari: A Response to a Conservative

Yay, Johann Hari!

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Response from the Arndale centre re Vodafone

Thursday, December 2nd, 2010

5135385020 a75d13e453 Response from the Arndale centre re Vodafone

We like our tax bills to be paid, yes we do.

As you may remember, the Vodafone protest on the 30th October went well except for the security guard who was incredibly rude and unprofessional to myself and a colleague. When we emailed the Arndale centre, the General Manager gave us a prompt reply saying he would investigate the matter. Four weeks, one reminder email and one vaguely threatening one, we have received a reply:

“Dear Sarah

Thank you for your reminder note last evening. I apologise for taking a while to return to you but as this related to the conduct of an employee you will understand that we wished to undertake a full and proper detailed investigation into this matter.

The protest were, as you will appreciate, a very unusual occurrence for us and there are certainly aspects of how we managed it that we could have done better. These are being addressed and we will communicate lessons learned to all our members of staff. I appreciate the feedback which you have given in this regard.

We have spoken to the member of staff concerned and now consider the matter closed. However, I note from your further comments re a proposed blog entry, particularly the reference to a photo. She is ordinarily a hard-working and conscientious persons and I am sure you would not want her to be distressed by publication this way. I hope that you will reconsider your proposal.

Finally, may I thank you for making me aware of your democratic protest this weekend.

Yours sincerely

Glen Barkworth
General Manager”

This is obviously not much of a reply, but as over 300 people have now read about this incident since it was published, I think the point has been made.

The demonstration originally happened to protest against the disparity between cutting public services at the same time as allowing international corporations to evade their tax responsibilities to the tune of billions. It was very successful, and there is now a follow-up day of action if you would like to attend.

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