London debate on Pope's visit to Britain

Wednesday 1st September at 7pm
Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL
Nearest tube: Holborn
All welcome, free admission

Chaired by Polly Toynbee

Motion for debate: "The Papal Visit should not be a State Visit"

Speaking for the motion
Philosopher AC Grayling and human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell

Speaking against the motion
Catholic journalist Austen Ivereigh and Father Christopher Jamison of the BBC TV series, The Monastery

Speaking in advance of the debate, Peter Tatchell said:

"As democrats, we believe the Pope has every right to visit Britain and express his opinions. But we also have a right to protest against his often harsh, extreme views. We have a right to say that he is not welcome.

"The Protest the Pope campaign is calling on the British government to disassociate itself from the Pope's intolerant teachings on issues such as women's rights, contraception, gay equality and the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV. On these and many other issues, Benedict is out of step with the majority of British people, including most Catholics.

"It is hypocritical for him to attack Britain's equality laws, while happily accepting hospitality and funding from the British people and government.

"We also object that a large part of his visit is being funded by the taxpayer. Much of his itinerary involves religious events. It is not appropriate that these are paid for by the public. We don't fund visits by the Grand Mufti of Mecca or the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, so why should the Pope get privileged financial support?" queried Mr Tatchell.

Wednesday's debate is being organised by the Central London Humanist Group in partnership with the British Humanist Association and the South Place Ethical Society, as part of the Protest the Pope Campaign.

Alan Palmer, chair of the Central London Humanists said:

"Our criticism of this State visit is not an attack on Catholics or on the rights of people to follow their religion. We want to give people the opportunity to debate the issue. Clearly many of our supporters are very unhappy with some of the statements made by the Pope in the name of the Catholic Church. This adds to the dismay many feel at our government honouring a Pope whose pronouncements fly in the face of the human rights that we support. Of course there is also considerable disquiet about the way the Church and this Pope have handled the question of child abuse.

"Central London Humanists champion the idea of an open society and freedom of speech. We genuinely want also to hear the arguments in favour of the State visit. We welcome everyone whatever their political conviction or their religion or belief to explore the issues and participate in the debate," said Mr Palmer.

The debate will take place at Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL on Wednesday 1 September 2010 starting at 7pm. This is a free event and is open to the public and media.

Boris Johnson: let the poor pay, not the rich

Kick the poor in the teeth. Make it more expensive for them to go to work. But ask millionaires to contribute a bit more and it's like "Stalin's assault on the kulaks".

Shock. Boris Johnson thinks the 50p top rate of income tax will be a "disaster" for Britain.

Proof of that, he says, are the threats to leave the country made by a handul of millionaires such as artist Tracey Emin, former Formula One boss Eddie Jordan, and actor Michael Caine. Wow.

Suspiciously similar to the good old days when "the top talent" at RBS, Northern Rock et al routinely claimed they'd leave the country if bonuses were to be cut (if only they had).

So just picture what a national disaster it would be if Tracy Everyone-I-Have-Ever-Shagged Emin upped sticks and took Her Tent to France. Devastating, right? You can just imagine people up and down the country crying their eyes out.

Of course, instead, the Mayor of London thinks it's perfectly fair to impose fair rises of up to 20% upon ordinary citizens. They can be milked and kicked in the teeth at will.

They can have bus passes, tube fares and Oyster cards increased savagely year-on-year, because, even if they fancied the idea, they wouldn't be able to "do an Emin" and bugger off to France, would they? How could they, without the cash to shoot off and buy a villa outright on the Côte d'Azur.

Unfortunately for Boris Johnson and the Daily Express though, the majority of Britons are of the opinion that a 50p tax rate for high earners is a good idea.

And anyway, Boris, what are you moaning about? For all your wailing that the 50p tax is like "Stalin’s assault on the kulaks", that cosy payrise you gave yourself last year, from £137,579 to £143,911 (h/t Tory Troll), should cushion you nicely.

Hotel worker slavery exposed

Immigrant workers are paid half the minimum wage in some London hotels.

Last Thursday's Newsnight was a stunning piece of investigative journalism. Hotelcare, one of the leading agencies for hotel cleaners in the country, was caught red-handed with serious exploitation of foreign workers at some of London's top hotels.

To say that the revelations were a surprise would be on a par with feigning shock at the recent MPs' expenses scandal. The rumours that some London hotels are paying less than the minium wage had been circulating for a while. Indeed, back in 2005 hospitality website Caterersearch was already pointing the finger at Hotelcare's dubious employment practices but failed to cause the stir that it should have.

This time, the evidence against Hotelcare as uncovered by Newsnight is simply unbelievable - and it may be interesting to see how the greedy ones will wriggle out of it. They may have to do better than cliched press statements about "isolated cases".

Taking advantage of the foreign workers' poor grasp of English and the fact that they're often unaware of their rights, those workers are led to believe that they would only earn the minimum wage (£5-73 an hour) if they clean two and a half rooms per hour.

Except that, in Britain, the idea of linking the minimum wage to piecework, a replica of the old 'sweating system' of the 1800s, is against the law. The BBC discovered that hotel cleaners are routinely shortchanged. In some cases, they are paid almost half of what they should be entitled to, and £120 off an already meagre weekly wage of £250, especially in London, can seriously make a difference.

Hotelcare claims they employ 2000 staff nationwide. Imagine if they were up to the same trick with all of them: that would pocket them £240,000 a week on the back of vulnerable workers who carry out a very physical job on a daily basis. Last year, Hotelcare made £1.5m in profit and the three shareholders paid themselves a total of £1m on top of their annual £500,000 salary.

Following the BBC's revelations, Hotelcare issued a statement saying that they're "concerned and disappointed" and that "it is not Hotelcare's policy to pay staff less than the national minimum wage". And yet the evidence on the programme is embarrassingly obvious.

Similar practices are exposed by a Times investigation revealing that several migrant workers are often cajoled into making themselves self-employed, a situation that doesn't seem to bother Bob Cotton, chief executive of the British Hospitality Association. He said that: "if technically someone is self-employed and they wish to pay themselves £2 an hour - you might argue that that is their choice". Of course, Bob. Shall we ask some Romanian chambermaids if it is?

What is clear is that the government is not doing enough to monitor the situation. The murky world of temping staff, agency workers and outsourced services ensures that the culprits are very quick at passing the buck. For instance, while on Newsnight Hotelcare's area manager is seen blaming the dodgy timesheets on the hotel, the hotel itself later issued a statement feigning shock and oblivion.

In this manic quest to drive down costs and raking up more profits, the investigation also exposed dubious hygiene practices, including lack of proper cleaning equipment, a fact made more disturbing by Park Plaza's statement that they "recently had an unannounced visit by the AA Hotel Inspector [...] and received a four star rating" and by Hotelcare's website with its annoying collection of cliches about "quality service" and "ongoing training [to] provide the staff with excellent skills".

Like many times in the past, perhaps the best incentive can come from the customers. The same way many now judge an establishment or a product on the basis of information about customer service as well as ethical and environmental issues, hotel chains could also be pushed to regularly publish external reviews of their employment practices.

And those who appear fond of paying £2 an hour for an 8-hour working day will be quickly named, shamed and hopefully put out of business.

On the Tube strike

"I'm not getting a pay rise, so WHY SHOULD you?": the charming reactions to the RMT strike in London and the legacy of New Labour's Public-Private Partnership.

The degree of superficiality that met the RMT strike action in the last few days has been a true sight to behold.

Fed by the hysteria in the mainstream media, many in the general public have adopted a toxic stance, epitomised by these two comments to an article by RMT leader Bob Crow in the Guardian:

"How can anyone seriously be demanding a pay rise and 100% job security at the moment?" (link);

"I'm struggling to understand why you SHOULD get a pay rise. I didn't get a pay rise last year, I've been told I'm not getting one this year. These are hard times". (link)

One may guess this is what happens after twenty-five years of surgical hacking away at the concepts of workers' solidarity and unionism. Just look after number one and if things turn sour then you sink or swim. On your own.

My generation don't think that a successful industrial action may set a positive precedent and pave the way for everybody. After being brought up on a diet of agency jobs and perma-temping, all we can come up with is: "I'm not getting a pay rise so why should you get one" and "I've got an unsecure job -or none at all- so why should you be spared the risk of redundancy".

Particularly frustrating though, is the all-out ignorance of the background to the strike.

The papers may have deployed tons of ink on Gordon Brown's bitten fingernails, but god forbid if they ever explain something factual about his policy failures.

At the root of the strike, there's the dismal fiasco of the Blair and Brown-sponsored Public-Private Partnership for the London Underground, one of New Labour's flagship projects for privatising essential public services.

Does anyone remember when Ken Livingstone was being dubbed "too left-wing" for fighting against it? Do you remember when the warnings that it would cost the public billions were met by glazed-eyed Blairite psalms of "modernise modernise modernise"?

Well. If there was one thing the opponents of PPP got wrong, it was how quickly the whole scheme went pear-shaped. By 2007 Metronet, one of the two corporations operating in the scheme, was placed into administration and the UK taxpayer was left to foot the rest of the bill, estimated at £2bn.

Today up to 4,000 jobs are at risk as a desperate attempt to make up for the collapse of Metronet, meaning £2.4 billion worth of spending cuts. For Boris Johnson though, the Unions are just being "capricious".

The Soho bombing: 10 years on

On April 30, 1999 the Admiral Duncan pub was targeted by a fascist psychopath.

On two consecutive Saturdays ten years ago London was the theatre of unexplained explosions. The first injured fifty people on the corner of Electric Avenue in Brixton, while the second hit Brick Lane, a busy and picturesque district with a large Bangladeshi population.

Barely were Londoners beginning to make sense of those incidents that, in the evening of Friday, April 30, the crowded Admiral Duncan pub - at the heart of London's gay village- was blown up. The device turned out to be a nail bomb and the most lethal of the three explosions. From the wreckage, a pregnant mother and two friends were found dead while seventy-nine people where injured and some were to remain mutilated for the rest of their life.

Soho, until now a safe haven, was being targeted. No gay man was ever to feel safe from attack again.

However, that was the one episode when CCTV footage proved crucial. The images released prompted a man to alert the police with the news that one of his work colleagues resembled the person caught on camera. The suspect, David Copeland, a 24-year-old from Cove, Hampshire, admitted planting all three bombs as soon as the police paid him a visit.

Very quickly a grim picture came to light, that of a paranoid schizophrenic, a neo-Nazi obsessive on a one-man mission against the black, Asian and gay communities. Copeland claimed "he had been having sadistic dreams from the age of 12. He had thought about killing his classmates and had wanted to be reincarnated as an SS officer. In May 1997, he joined, who else, the British National Party and soon after the National Socialist Movement. In 1998, he was prescribed anti-depressants and told his GP he was 'losing his mind'.

At the trial, his counsel Michael Wolkind QC said that Copeland was suffering from "religious, grandiose, persecutory delusions", convinced that he had been "sent by God" to start a race war and pave the way for an extreme rightwing government. Copeland was sentenced to six life sentences with a High Court judge recommending that he serve a minimum of 50 years.

Ten years on, I remember how the whole affair left the country with a creeping sense of malaise. Some people said Copeland was the predictable, however involuntary, by-product of two decades of solid mainstream homophobia spurted out by successive Tory governments.

Mostly though, it was startling how one of the most vicious terrorist attacks ever to take place in central London was quickly turned into a footnote. After all, did any of the commemorations make the main news?

On the G20 march

Last Saturday's G20 march in London. Rachel Coleshill reports.

The march was a peaceful sort of affair organised jointly by a wide range of groups intent on airing their various grievances in advance of the G20 summit on Thursday. The group I am a member of is a collection of like-minded individuals sick of the way things are being run, a community of global citizens taking action on the major issues facing the world today.

Though we are still in our very early stages of development, we act for a more just and peaceful world and a globalisation with a human face.

However, the general philosophy is clear, it cannot continue to be business as usual. As a global community we need to find a more sustainable, community based way of living that will not lead to what we seem to have now, a wide gulf between the rich and poor, a global society ruled by centralised governments and large multi-national corporations and unregulated trading on the stockmarkets.

The demonstration itself was a great success. I met Avaaz members from France, Spain, Belgian as well as the English contingent and we all wore green hard hats to represent a new sustainable future. There were also representatives from all the major trade unions not just in the UK but Europe and even one from Africa. Amongst the more bizarre groups were "Bananas for Justice" and a group of very musical anarchists whose cyclist had a heath-robinsonesque speaker contraption attached to his bike and two guitarists either side of him. They had composed several songs opposing the Iraq war, the IMF, banking misdemeanours etc. I was impressed with the level of their creativity, the lyrics were clever and the songs had a good structure!

The march snaked round from Arundal Street on the North side of the Thames through to Whitehall, Pall Mall, then on to Piccadilly and finally ending with a rally in Hyde Park. The speakers in Hyde Park were introduced by Tony Robinson and consisted of the usual suspects. Brendan Barber, the TUC General Secretary, global justice author Susan George, environmentalist Tony Juniper as well as comedian and activist Mark Thomas.

In a nutshell the speakers were saying that our future depends on creating a new economy based on fair distribution of wealth, decent jobs for all and a low carbon future. At around 4pm I headed off home as it was getting rather chilly in the park but on the way out met a friendly group of Friends of the Earth members from North London so we all went and cooked chick peas and chatted about world issues into the evening. All in all it was a very positive day, the march was peaceful, the police remained friendly and kept their distance and I made some good friends who I'll probably see again at the next demo.

Denial?

Rusty kettles, unflushed turds and rip-off prices. Was Margaret Hodge so wrong with her suggestions that Britain's tourist facilities are not up to scratch?

You can't win, can you? This blog is hardly pro-New Labour, but there are times you can't help but feeling some sympathy. Especially if you see some of the stupidity they're up against. Gordon Brown & Co. are constantly accused of being "in denial". Which is to say that unless they admit that everything's bad and the nation is doomed, the Tories, the Express and the Daily Mail will blame their "inability" to own up to their mess.

But then when they do, they're accused of "talking the country down". Only a few days ago we commented on the Daily Mail's rabid rage at Alistair Darling's confessions of the "worst economic climate in sixty years". Now, the hacks have zeroed in on the new punchbag, Tourism Minister Margaret Hodge, accused of talking down hotels and holidaying facilities in England. Ms Hodge criticised expensive facilites and poor quality service. For the Daily Mail, that became "Tourism minister slams UK" whereas Tory MP Mike Penning called her comments "a stupid set of remarks".

But before going apeshit and doing a voodoo on poor Ms Hodge, hand on heart: was she so wrong? Would any sane-minded human being disagree for example with the Minister's statement that that the London Underground is "dreadful" at rush-hour? And ask any "continental" friend, if you've got any: isn't Britain astonishingly expensive???

Let's just imagine a couple of French tourists deciding to spend a week's holiday in England. Hotel prices are at a rip-off level, including the dingiest vermin-infested shithole in London.

I remember forking out 60 quid ("cash only") at a hotel near Victoria Station for a mini single room that was dirtier than the filthiest pit imaginable. "All rooms have tea and coffee facilities", it boasted. But as no kettle or cups were in sight, I had to ask for them. What I was given was the rustiest kettle you've ever seen; a relic that, if used, no doubt would have given me diahorrea for the next nine months. In protest, I decided to piss in it. Another time, having headed off to the capital to watch Morrissey live, I found a fairly cheap hotel in Earls Court. Checking in I was saluted by an unflushed turd that wouldn't go down which meant I had to ask to switch rooms. It made me wonder if rooms had been cleaned at all.

Back to our French couple. What if they decided to take the bus or the tube for a trip around London? With the single fare at £4, and a one-day travel card (off-peak only) ranging between £6-80 and £15-00 (way higher than other European big cities) how can Ms Hodge be criticised for daring to say England's too expensive for tourists? And what if the two visitors decided to hop on a train and visit other cities such as Birmingham and Manchester? Not having booked well in advance, it could cost them in excess of £120 a piece. How's that for talks of "denial"?

Margaret Hodge was actually being quite balanced. She also praised the country's heritage and the good value-for-money of pub food. But she wouldn't be doing her job is she didn't argue, like she did, that "tourists need to be offered good deals and we have to make attractions better." "Denial" would be anything other than that.

Don't vote for a joke, vote for London

There's a lot at stake in today's London elections

In the country of apathy the easy way out is to tar them all with the same brush: "they're all bad, all liars, all corrupt; just all the same". Ducking is generally uncomplicated and easier on the brain. It's no surprise that the London mayoral contest has been lined by non-descript press coverage lazily referring to "the unenviable choice", along with profound analyses stretching as far as "I wish the options weren’t these two". The London elections are on today and "these two", of course, are Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson. One voice that sticks out is that of Johann Hari in The Independent, consistently highlighting the true colours of the Tories' 21century 'lite' version in what he calls our "attention deficit democracy". Hidden between a joke, a crack and a ruffling of his barnet, Boris Johnson has actively endorsed fairly nasty (read: Thatcherite) ideas for the best part of his political career. Indeed it's a blessing that he's been kept on a firm leash throughout the mayoral campaign, otherwise his cheeky chappy credentials may have offered him a leg up in the race to snaffle the oblivious. Because when it comes down to policies, Boris simply hasn’t got a clue. Unless, that is, you consider populistic right-wing policies the clue.

Many have noted how weary Ken Livingstone has looked throughout the campaign. At times there's almost the impression that the old bruiser who took on Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair at the height of their power isn’t even that bothered any more. And yet Ken is obviously aware that he's not simply battling against a resurgent right-wing that is sweeping across Europe, but also in contrast to the burden of his own party. With Brown earning a reputation as the epitome of an ignorant establishment cut off from the real world and Labour nosediving by the minute, Livingstone is desperate to avoid the correlation.

"Livingstone as the establishment" is a formula that simply doesn’t work. His political fortunes have always stemmed from his maverick, anti-status quo credentials. Indeed, one of the most underrated political moments of the last 10 years was itself Livingstone's election in 2000. Remember this was the pinnacle of Blairism. To date, Livingstone remains the only person who dared to openly stand up to Tony the Tsar and his formidable machine. In pure Soviet style, Ken got kicked out of the Labour Party and still managed to pull out a stunning victory. Entirely on his own and against Labour's official candidate, a Tory contender and a Lib-Dem one. But this is the thing: he won hands down precisely because he ran as the voice of dissent. In particular, against Blair the control freak and his New Labourite machine. He offered hope to the millions of people who were repulsed by Blairism but wouldn't be cajoled into the hands of the Tories. The rest is history. Livingstone was let back into Labour in 2004 and London restored as part of Blair's empire. Perhaps Livingstone could have done with keeping out of the Labour Party after all. The word "Labour" is less popular than "Ken". No wonder Boris Johnson has been referring to Ken as "Labour's candidate for mayor".

To listen to the Tories today, London's problems are all Ken Livingstone's creation. The same Evening Standard who sat quietly in front of the most revolting political scandals has been spectacularly out in force to frame the Mayor. You name it. Anti-semitic Ken, pigeon-hating Ken, crooked Ken, communist Ken, cronyist Ken. Crime too, of course, is all his own fault. Never mind shootings and stabbings have plagued Britain regardless of the local councils' political colour. In London, crime seems to be Ken's baby. And remember all the patriotic fuss as London snatched the Olympics? Nah, suddenly, the Olympics are bad, an extra-burden to the vexed taxpayer. Another one of Ken's evil ploys. Exactly like immigration. To listen to Boris the Toff, they're all headed for London.

Then there's the issue of Livingstone fighting to make 50 per cent of new homes affordable. Of course there's little a Mayor can do against house prices, property speculations and mortgage policies. However, Ken is promising that building licences will only be granted with the proviso that 50% of new structures are to be made affordable. Lazily, Johnson dismisses that as "nanny state" policies. Of course he would, wouldn't he? Where he comes from, being priced out of the property market isn't the priority.

Last but not least there's the congestion charge. Livingstone pressed ahead in spite of being literally ripped apart by the press and not just the Tory one. I still recall phone-in radio programmes where people would literally demand his head. Then it soon transpired that daily traffic into London had gone down by 70,000 a day and within months the experiment attracted imitators around the world. Similarly, today Ken is announcing a £25 a day charge for gas-guzzling vehicles entering the congestion charge zone. Clarksonites got into fits of rage at the news and that alone should warrant the Mayor plenty of votes. You know Jeremy Clarkson wouldn't vote for Ken. Don't be like him, vote for Ken.

Not the breast one to trust

Trust The Sun to chip in with some in-depth analyses. WHO'S THE BREAST MAYOR? is their contribution to the London elections debate. A headline that must have taken them ages. Not to mention the byline, "page 3 babes tell you who their favourite man-ifesto is". Don't you love those old British values...

Staying with the London elections, you can also get the whiff of Rupert Murdoch's new direction. Headlines like "Ken to give asylum seekers cut price bus travel" and worn-out talks of the Mayor's alleged "motorists bashing exercise" aren't designed to go down well with Sun readers. For sure, they set off nicely the Sun's coverage of Boris, or rather "Beau-ris", "the ladies' choice", in their own words. If that was the case, free NHS glasses to London ladies should be a no.1 priority. Listen out, Ken.

Peter Tatchell: "Boris Johnson? A big mistake"

Speaking to Hagley Road to Ladywood, human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell has his say on the London elections, Ken Livingstone vs Boris Johnson, celebrity culture, and George Galloway's recent nonsense. Interview by Claude Carpentieri

Gordon Brown may have said that he’s "losing patience" with Robert Mugabe, but if only the world had been listening in due time. For years, Peter Tatchell and a number of fellow human rights activists were amongst the very few who tried to open the world’s eyes on Mugabe’s genocidal policies. In 1999, Tatchell ambushed Mugabe’s car during an official state visit in London and performed a citizen’s arrest. But when the police were called, the one who was let free to go was Mugabe ("sorry-for-any-inconvenience") while the human rights activists were jailed.

Now 56, Peter Tatchell is possibly the most unrelenting human rights campaigner in the UK. If Britain finally managed to turn over a new leaf and left Soviet-style anti-gay policies behind, part of the credit goes to him. From the 1990 "Kiss-in" at Piccadilly Circus to protest against arrests of gay men for kissing in public, to the stoical campaigning against Section 28 (one of the most shameful pieces of legislation in the history of Britain), Peter Tatchell has been at the forefront of the fight against religious fundamentalism and bigotry.

Tatchell never gave a shit about trends and media popularity. He may have recently been praised as a "national treasure" or "a hero of our time", but when for decades he risked his own skin and got himself arrested or beaten to stand for human rights in Britain as well as the Eastern bloc, Zimbabwe or the Middle East, most of the left opted for blinkers instead. I must say I couldn’t believe my luck when I was offered the chance to speak to him. Amongst the topics we discussed, the fact that London may be at danger of capitulating to a bigot.

The debate on the London elections is heating up. Do you find it disturbing that the media can spend so much time on the fact that "Ken Livingstone has five children by three different women"? How on earth does that affect Londoners and their daily lives???

PT: Ken’s personal life is totally irrelevant. It’s no one else’s business. The same goes for Boris Johnson’s extra-marital affairs and Brian Paddick’s same-sex partner. Judge the candidates on their integrity and their policies.

As a critic of Ken Livingstone over his courting of al-Qaradawi, do you actually support him in the mayoral election?

PT: I will give my first preference to Sian Berry, the Green Party candidate. She is the most progressive, with the best policies on housing, transport, jobs, crime, equal opportunities and the environment. Moreover, she is not sectarian. Sian is open, inclusive, fair, honest, accessible and democratic. In addition, it would be brilliant to have a woman Mayor - and someone young to lead what is a youthful city.

My second preference will go to Ken Livingstone. Boris Johnson would be a big mistake. He is clownish, disorganised, not well informed, has little grasp of policy detail and is on record as saying some very bigoted things about various minority communities.

Based on existing polls, Ken is the only candidate who can stop Boris. In any case, Ken's policies as Mayor have been mostly positive and benefited Londoners. All in all, he has been a good Mayor. He should be judged in the round. Despite his flaws and policy misjudgements (such his fondness for high-rise office blocks, closeness to big business, promotion of bendy buses etc), he is way better than Boris.

I don't hold personal grudges. I would never base my voting intentions on what bad things Ken may have done to me personally (he unjustly denounced me as an Islamophobe in 2004 because I criticised the fundamentalist cleric, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi). The interests of all Londoners must come first.

I do, however, hope that Ken will listen to the valid criticisms that I and other friends and allies have made and, if he is re-elected, that he will reform his administration to end the favouritism, personal vendettas, sectarianism, control freakery and unsavory alliances that have sometimes characterised City Hall.

Opinion polls suggest Boris Johnson's ahead. Is this the official signal for the country's swing to the right that many analysts have forecast? Given that in terms of policies, instead, polls suggest a majority of pro-Ken views, how can someone become Mayor of London purely for the jokes they tell?

PT: A victory for Boris would be a big boost for the Tories. It might give them momentum to win the next general election. Mind you, although I don’t want the Conservatives back in power, Labour doesn’t deserve to win either. Gordon Brown is pursuing Tony Blair’s disastrous policies and piling on disasters of his own: the Iraq war, abolition of the 10p rate of tax for low earners, ID cards, expanded nuclear power, post office closures, the renewal of Trident nuclear missiles and plans to extend the detention of terror suspects to 42 days. These are reactionary policies. That’s why I no longer support Labour. I am backing the Greens and standing as their parliamentary candidate for Oxford East at the next general election.

Heat magazine is officially more popular than The Independent. How do you view Britain's so-called celebrity culture?

PT: Celebrity culture is the bane of modern Britain. It epitomises the greedy, me-first, fame-driven, consumerist lifestyle that is promoted by, and pandered to, by the media. True achievement comes through talent and hard work. They are no easy routes to doing things that are truly individually rewarding and socially valuable.

Why should an 18-year-old guy take an interest in politics today? They were anti-Iraq war en-masse and it happened anyway. They were against tuition fees yet Blair still ploughed ahead and now fees are here to stay. What do you answer to the "what's the point" argument?

PT: If young people walk away from politics, the careerists and self-servers win. Decisions taken by politicians determine our future. That’s why politics matters. The ramifications of politics are too important to be left to the professional political elite.

For a short while some of the press timidly focussed on the scandal of 'non-doms' paying virtually no tax in Britain. Yet most people are still unaware of it, or totally resigned that nothing will ever change. Will it ever?

PT: We, the people, can change Britain and the world for the better. But only if we are determined to see change and get organised. All of us who care need to work together, across generations and politics, around issues like civil liberties, economic justice, fair voting, equality for all, de-militarisation, animal rights, international solidarity, environmental protection and many other big local, national and global issues. The poll tax protests, especially the millions who refused to pay the poll tax or delayed their payments, showed that ordinary people can force governments to abandon crazy policies.

Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama?

PT: Obama is better than Clinton. But I would not vote for either of them. The Green anti-corporate candidate Ralph Nader would be my choice. He’s far more radical, and has concrete, practical solutions too.

The recent killing of 20-year-old Sophie Lancaster, brutally murdered only because she was a "goth", reminded us of the level of brutality in Britain. A petition to extend the definition of "hate crime" to include offences against people based on their appearance was recently submitted to the Government. As a long-time campaigner for the inclusion of homophobia within the definition of "Hate Crime", do you back the idea?

PT: Yes, hate crime legislation should be all-inclusive.

Last month George Galloway said: "All the (British) papers seem to imply that you get executed in Iran for being gay. That's not true" [Watch his dismal performance on The Wright Stuff by clicking here].
An act of political calculation or does he honestly believe what he's saying (that's crap either way, I say)?

PT: I don’t know why George said that nonsense. Whatever his rationale, he is wrong. It looked a bit like he was pushing the Iranian government’s propaganda. He works for Press TV, which is funded by the Iranian regime. Perhaps he’s putting his mouth where his money comes from? I don’t know. All the Iranian and international human rights groups agree that gay people in Iran are arrested, jailed, flogged, tortured and sometimes executed.

I presume you had a look at "What's Left?", the book written last year by Nick Cohen of The Observer and that Hagley Road to Ladywood reviewed. Cohen's argument was largely based on so-called straw-man logic. However, when you watch performances like Galloway's on The Wright Stuff, it does make you think. Why is there still such a chunk of the left that would turn a blind eye or two towards mysoginy, anti-semitism and homophobia? How on earth are you an "Islamophobe" if you simply frown upon gay men being flogged to death in Iran or Saudi Arabia?

PT: Sadly, large chunks of the left have either capitulated to Blairism and Brownism, or they have descended into the crude simplicity of anti-Americanism, which sometimes leads them to back anti-US movements and regimes like Iran and Hezbollah. It is absurd to condemn as anti-Muslim those people, like myself, who defend Muslim women and gays against fundamentalist fanatics.

Let's remain on the Middle East. I don't know if you ever got a chance to get to know Tony Blair. Why do you think he ploughed ahead the way he did with Iraq? Messianic conviction or what?

PT: Blair was always a pro-American Atlanticist. He could never conceive of Britain having an independent foreign policy, or Europe being a bulwark against US hegemony. So he threw his lot with Clinton and Bush. Turning the UK into Washington’s poodle was a huge and very insulting error of judgement. The Iraq debacle destroyed Blair’s credibility and reputation forever.

I wrote my dissertation on Section 28. Even 10 years ago it was unthinkable it would ever be scrapped. And it was 1999 when a nail bomb blew up the Admiral Duncan in Soho. Is Britain really less homophobic today?

PT: Public attitudes are much more accepting and understanding. We really have become a more liberal, tolerant society. There are still backwaters of racism, misogyny and homophobia but they are a minority and getting smaller.

Peter Tatchell will be the Green Party's parliamentary candidate for the Oxford East constituency at the next general elections.

[You can read about Peter Tatchell's work on his website http://www.petertatchell.net/]

Claude Carpentieri

This week's news round-up

Johnny Taronja reassesses this week's news

Italy, a country long-known for its fragmented political system, is
hours away from yet another set of general elections. Drawing an interesting comparison with England's own buffoon, Boris Johnson, Today's Independent, with an article by Peter Popham, analyses the phenomenon Berlusconi, a regular feature of the Italian landscape since 1993. But if you're trying to spot any coherent set of policies in his coalition, populism is the only one that spring to mind. And an appetite for power.

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We don't quite know how to salute the news that Gordon Brown will not attend the Olympics opening ceremony this summer. As soon as I sat down to praise his balls as an admirable stand against China's dubious human rights record, his office decided to clarify that in no way is that to be seen as "politically" motivated, that "he never really intended to go in the first place" and that he will attend the closing ceremony in Beijing. Lib-Dems' Nick Clegg summed it up alright: "an odd way to go about things". But the most effective was from David Cameron: when he said: "If dithering was an Olympic sport [Brown] would have a gold medal". Doesn't it get worrying when you have to positively quote a Tory? Those who were looking for a firm vision to follow from Tony Blair's footsteps are advised a quick trip to Specsavers.

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Our British readers will already be aware of the arrest of Shannon Matthews' mother. Shannon went missing in Dewsbury on February 19. She was found in the base of a bed at an address one mile from her home after a police search that lasted 24 days. Shannon's uncle was arrested. Then it was her stepdad and now, her mum. Understandably, the police are keeping quiet about their findings. But amonst the allegations, there are fears that a tragedy like that of a young girl going missing may have been staged for rather sordid ends.

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Though I admit I've been sensitive to rumours of a 9/11 conspiracy, the videos of the Walthamstow suspects confirmed that you don't need shady CIA-run plots to cause mayhem and destruction. Some nutters out there really think that blowing up a plane is gonna do some good. But before I say anything, take a look at the transcript of those "martyrdom" videos as they were played in court. One thing for sure, their constant, vile, reference to "non-believers" is an extra string to the bow of Bush, Blair, Betrayeus and the likes.

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Will you leave Ken Livingstone alone??? Five children from three different women seems to have become the most important concern for Londoners. The Pro-Tory press are playing dirty. As low as they can. However, right when opinion polls were starting to look a bit worrying, the best gift to Ken came from the far-right. The British National party called on its supporters to give their second-preference votes in the London mayoral election to the Conservative candidate, Boris Johnson. If that isn't enough to put you off the Tory toff, then please look at the picture above. Hopefully that'll do the trick.

Repressed but remarkably dressed.

Week 1 in London. And I can see why Londoners queue up to purchase that coveted retreat in the countryside.

I had been to the capital hundreds of times before, and -granted- its chaos and frazzled pace are undoubtedly part of the charme. But to get used to the DAILY scrum catching the tube at rush-hour is an entirely different story. D-e-a-r g-o-d! Wherever it is you're going between 8 and 9am (or 5 and 7pm), by the time you reach work/home you are absolutely worn out. And scenes from Shaun of the Dead echo round your head.

Still I maintain, there is something about London that keeps it head and shoulders ahead of the rest of the country. Maybe love is blind, and well, it is.

Populistic morphine and the tragedy of 7/7

The psychopathic attacks on London on 7 July 2005 are proving even more depressing as they offered the tragic background for yet another veil of political propaganda. I understand a sacrosanct need to boost morale and show that the country is hanging on, yet the people are being already injected with populistic morphine so that they don’t question much why some creepy psychos are planting bombs under their feet. And –I say this loud and clear- questioning your Prime Minister’s lies doesn’t mean ONE bit harbouring any sympathy for those cowardly freaks who plant indiscriminate bombs on London public transport. Nothing, no cause, no religion, no abstract notion of virgins in heaven can even begin to explain or justify such deliberate atrocities.

That cleared, let’s get to the point.
First off, yes, of course Londoners showed great dignity, resolve and resilience (with the rescue services deserving particular praise). That’s the formula that press and politicians alike are now routinely using when they talk about those bombs. They repeatedly mention The-British-Determination and The-Spirit-of-the-Blitz so that they don’t have to dig one inch further beneath the surface to examine the situation. Erm…didn’t the citizens of New York also react with great determination? The Madrid ones? Wouldn’t they all? Doesn’t human nature prove its altruistic and helpful side in such tragic situations whether it’s America, Europe or Indonesia? So I scratch my head and humbly ask....What exactly would entail reacting to those bombs without dignity and resolve?

I’ve come to the sorry conclusion that in spite of the fanfare surrounding The-Spirit-of the-Blitz and Our-English-Bravery and no-one-would-react-as-well-as-we-did and We-Brits-are-Hard-to-Scare, England really has an incredibly supine attitude to those who really pull the strings.

Because if really there was some serious resolve Prime Minister Tony Blair would be sent home with a resounding kick up his arse and he would be so now.
Since 2002 he’s used the set phrase that “we are going to war in Iraq to increase our national security” amidst millions of people warning him that instead he would bring war scenes into our own home soil. The UK very own intelligence services issued a warning that the threat of terrorism would increase significantly. Nevertheless, the brave English people voted Blair in to push them around for a third term even though the virtual reality he’d created to justify the (multi-billion taxpayers-funded) carnage called Iraq war has long since been unmasked as a shameless pack of lies (WMDs, etc).
With a few, notable exceptions (facing public hanging, like George Galloway), only in the UK a charlatan like Home Secretary Charles Clarke could get away with declaring on Newsnight that the Madrid bombing had no connection with the war in Iraq! Unbelievable. Such a patent manipulation of reality was told on live television, as he spluttered that Spain had not really taken part in the war! And Jeremy Paxman there nodding, no journalist there to point out to Clarke that loads of Spaniards had indeed lost their lives fighting in Iraq and that the motives behind the horrendous Madrid bombings were clear. That didn’t matter, let’s talk about the The-Spirit-of-the-Blitz instead, the ideological glue that needs evoking when it’s most convenient.

Tony Blair outdid them all by insisting that again, the London bombs would have happened anyway irrespective of Iraq, a mantra that he will have to repeat from now on to save his backside. His line of thinking could have come straight from a Kafka novel. Instead it was aired on the Today programme where Blair said (you guessed it, unchallenged) that even Russia, a country which opposed the war, suffers at the hand of Islamic terrorism, omitting to say one little detail, Russia gets terrorist attacks in connection with something totally different, namely its internal politics with Chechnya. Blair obviously knows that he is creating his own virtual reality once again. How can he get away with such bullshit? Well, he got away with it for three consecutive elections. The British people seem placid enough not to mind being repeatedly told drivel. Now in every other democracy such ruling classes would have been pilloried for lying yet AGAIN to the populace coming up with that type of deliberate porkies. They’d seriously have to face up to their own inept lies. In Spain, after the Madrid bombing, their Prime Minister was sent packing with very little ceremony. He’d lied in the face of a bloody tragedy, he’d treated the population as a bunch of idiots and off he goes with the sack…

No, in the UK, the patriotic rhetoric and cheap populism comes first, whether it’s the Queen, Diana’s funeral, the 1966 World Cup, the Olympics-we-do-them-better-then-them-frogs or bombs planted in the heart of London. Don’t question. Don’t ask why. Just mention the broken record of The-Spirit-of the-Blitz and it’ll all go away. No-one (very very few) to say “ok, granted, those terrorists really are a bunch of nutters (and I hope they agonise very soon), but…hold on a second…besides that, didn’t Blair promise us safety?”
No-one saying that never mind it’s four years since September the 11th, our Prime Minister hasn’t got the SLIGHTEST CLUE where the threat is coming from. Are they “homegrown”? Are they not? Are they suicide bombers? Not? How many of them? Will they strike again? Nothing. Not the hint of a clue. The police, bless them, talk about keeping all options open, the translation for “we haven’t got a clue”. Four years ago Blair declared “war against terrorism” and he proceeded to waste a zillion pounds on Iraq, we still don’t quite know why… (because Saddam was a dictator? Sure, and how about Saudi Arabia, Burma, Thailand, Pakistan, North Korea, Zimbabwe, and list goes on ad infinitum?). And in any case, it’s not as if Iraq turned out to be a success for Blair. It is still a big mess where random bombs explode on a daily basis like they did in London on Thursday except that our media have grown accustomed to it.
But that is trivial, isn’t it? Don’t you dare mention that in times like these or they’ll tell you in grandiose biblical terms that “you’re dripping your tongue into a pool of blood”. Go on, British-resolve, now it’s time to seriously show up.