Pub Philosopher

Will your personal data be safe under a Tory government?

More comment on the Queen's Speech, this time from Edward Heathcoat-Amory.

[M]inisters never tire of telling us, we are facing a national emergency, and must all make sacrifices.

Most of us would rather those sacrifices involved slightly fewer laws protecting our personal data, or less rights to flexible working or paternity leave, than the sacrifice the Government currently has in mind, which is a massive increase in our tax burden.

Slightly fewer laws protecting our personal data? What the hell is he talking about? If anything, we need tougher laws.

He tries to link the burden of regulation on business to the massive increase in taxes we will soon have to pay. True, there is too much regulation of business and it is too complex but that is not what caused the massive leap in our national debt. If anything, it was the failure to regulate the banks properly that means we will now be paying for their bailouts for the next few years.

This is not the first time that Tory MPs or their allies in the media have hinted at repealing the Data Protection Act. Last year, the party's Economic Competitiveness Policy Group said:

Data Protection.

We recommend the repeal of this expensive bureaucracy, which fails to protect people’s data. The ever growing power of the internet and computers means we all end up on ever more lists, whether we want to or not.

But at least the DPA gives us some protection. Without it, we would have no comeback at all against companies and public bodies that misuse our data.

Why have some Tories got it in for the Data Protection Act? Is it because their friends in the corporate world could make a lot more money if they could do what they liked with our personal data?

Imagine what companies could do with biometric data or information leaked from the DNA database. The insurance industry would love it. They could screen out anyone at risk of disease, thus reducing their claims payouts and vastly increasing their profits.

There are still people in the Conservative Party whose main priority is helping their friends in big business to get richer. Despite all the anti-ID card rhetoric, they would happily remove what little protection people have against the abuse of their personal data, if it meant higher profits for their corporate backers.

A return to Old Old Labour?

Here's New Labour groupie Jackie Ashley on  government's legislative plan as laid out in today's Queen's Speech:

Conservative on social issues, radical on economics: that's the basic message of what may well be the last Queen's speech of the parliament. It's the philosophy of a government defined against its will by terror and recession.

It is also an inversion of the original New Labour platform, which sounded radical about society and the state – keen on new rights for gay people, keen on devolution, keen on human rights – but which was also fiercely pro-market and pro-City, "intensely relaxed" about people being "filthy rich". Now it's the other way around.

Sounds quite good doesn't it?

As usual, though, it's not that good. More visible punishments for criminals and stronger border controls are steps in the right direction, as is the clampdown on benefit fraud. The measures to bring the banks into line are not before time either.

But, despite what Jackie Ashley claims, there is no real reversal of the New Labour agenda. The equality legislation which has set up contradictory rights in the workplace and had police forces scurrying around dealing with 'hate-speech' crimes is not being repealed. The Religious Hatred Act and other restrictions on free speech will still be with us and many of the "filthy rich" got clean away with their ill gotten gains before the government closed the door.

The measures to restrict alcohol promotions will harm pubs while the binge drinkers will still be able to get tanked up on supermarket booze before they go out. The new offence of paying for sex with a trafficked or pimped woman will probably prove to be unenforceable.

But, that said, there are some aspects of the Queen's Speech that I have to admit I agree with. There are shades of what I call Old Old Labour; the Labour Party that was Old when the dribbling lefties who gained control of it in the 1980s were New.

The bits I like are almost certainly the bits that Jackie Ashley doesn't like. She is worried about the return of Old Old Labour:

[T]he contrast between social pessimism, plus anxiety about security on the one hand; and economic state activism on the other, is hard not to notice. Those of us of a certain age remember when the Labour party was crammed with MPs who thought exactly this way. They were far more scathing about "benefit cheats" than any Tory, nervous about immigration and super-keen on old fashioned schools with old fashioned discipline.

To paraphrase the great Gene Hunt, she makes that sound like a bad thing!

It's time to bully the banks

I have three friends whose politics I would describe as Tory Anarchist. They are all self-employed and, in their own ways, somewhat unconventional. They are broadly libertarian and anti-establishment while, at the same time, holding some quite traditional views.

I was with one of them a couple of weeks ago and, as we were discussing the financial crisis, he made this observation:

When people say we haven't got a command economy in this country, that's absolute rubbish. We've had a command economy for years. It's commanded by the banks.

He's right, of course. Bankers have been courted by politicians and allowed to do pretty much as they please for the last twenty five years. The result has been that they have called the economic and political tune.

They have got so used to being in command that, even as they go to the government to ask for money to bail out their debt ridden banks, they still think they can carry as they have always done.

In the past week, two of my friends who deal with a lot of senior bankers in the course of their work made similar comments; the banking industry, they said, is in denial. Bankers don't think they have done anything wrong, they don't see how their behaviors got us into this mess and they assume that things will return to normal eventually, at which point they will be able to start gambling with other people's money to make huge profits again. Above all, they don't think the government should tell them what to do or that they should forgo their massive bonuses. Even as they go cap in hand to the state for a bail-out, they somehow still think everything else will go on just as before.

Yet the current economic crisis is very much a banking crisis. The real economy is only suffering because the banks are calling in business loans or whacking up the interests rates because they are short of cash. Therefore, businesses collapse, workers are laid off, people stop spending and down goes the economy.

According to the Telegraph, Tory MP Michael Fallon is blaming the state bail out for the banks' unwillingness to lend. Because the government has taken large preferential shareholdings and has started telling the banks what to do, he argues, they have stopped lending because they are anxious to keep their cash.

The Government's liquidity and recapitalisation scheme – which injected £37bn into Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds TSB and HBOS and will see the taxpayer take major stakes in the banks – stipulated that banks lend at 2007 levels.

Mr Fallon said, however, that the expense of the Government money via preference shares, restrictions on dividends and remuneration, and the demand to maintain Tier One capital of at least 8pc means banks are more focused on conserving cash so they can repay the Government as quickly as possible.

"The package was put together in a rush over a weekend and some of the terms look counter-productive," he said. "They are making them do the wrong things – making them store up cash and then repay the Government – when what you want them to be doing is lending out to businesses because the whole credit market is shrinking.

"They have every incentive to accelerate repayments to the Government and the preference shares are, of course, very expensive. The Government money is distorting mainstream banking activity."

Now I'm no expert on banking but this is surely complete bollocks. The banks stopped lending way before they even asked for government help. They shut up shop because they had all lied about their bad loans, the extent to which they had over-borrowed to lend money in high risk markets and the amount of dodgy debt instruments they had. They all knew that all the other banks were covering up too, so no one was prepared to lend to anyone because they didn't know who was likely to go down next.

If anything, state bailouts make the banks less likely to fail and so make them a better risk.

But, at long last, there is some evidence that the government is getting tough with the banks. Now all that rhetoric about the benefits of light regulation and free markets in the banking sector has been shown up as the rubbish it always was, the state sponsored banks are being pressured to do what is good for the economy, rather than what is good for their executives.

It's still not enough though. The withdrawal of loans by the banks is threatening to send thousands of businesses into receivership and to destroy what is left of the UK's manufacturing sector.

Forget the tinkering with VAT and the yo-yo income tax rates announced in last week's budget. The best way to get the economy moving again is for banks to start lending and, more importantly, to stop calling in loans and hiking up interest rates for perfectly sound companies.

That won't happen unless the government plays hard-ball with those who run the banks. They have always worked primarily in their own interests, with even their shareholders coming a poor second. Alistair Darling needs to look across the table and explain to the bankers that, if they don't do as they are told, he will use emergency powers to nationalise their banks and all of them will be dismissed without compensation. Furthermore, he will the launch investigations into their personal roles in the bringing about the banking crash, with a view to confiscating some of their property as compensation for the taxpayers.

A couple of years ago this would have been unthinkable but the world has changed now. The public is in a vindictive mood and draconian measures against the banks would be popular with voters. Nationalising the banks would be a last resort and even a Labour government would be reluctant to do it. It should not be ruled out though. Now that they have been bailed out by the taxpayers, the bankers must be forced to act in the public interest.

For years, the bankers effectively ran the economy and assumed they could bully everyone else. Well now the balance of power in the playground has changed. It's time to take the bankers behind the bike sheds, give them a good kicking and steal their dinner money.

Creeping theocracy - in Ealing!

Another case of religious nutters imposing their will on everyone else.

Staff at two branches of Boots in Ealing refused to sell the morning-after contraceptive pill to Tiffany Berton, on religious grounds.

According to the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's code of ethics, staff can refuse to sell certain products if they have a religious objection to doing so but they should refer customers to another member of staff.

So what happened in Ealing?

Either the entire staff in both stores are followers of religions that object to contraception or the people that Miss Berton dealt with had just taken a decision to impose their religious views on her without reference to anyone else.

This chain of events, as told by Miss Berton, seems to imply that, at least at the second store, refusal to sell the pill is management policy:

I went to the Boots store next to Ealing Broadway station, but was told they did not stock it on religious grounds and was sent to the other Boots shop in Ealing Broadway.

When I got there I was made to fill out a form, then the assistant showed it to the pharmacist, before coming back and telling me I could not have the pill.

Here we have an entire branch of a national retailer taken over by religious people who then impose their own view of the world on their customers. The article in the Ealing Times does not mention the specific religion of the staff who objected to selling the pill, but I might take a walk down to both branches of Boots later today and make an educated guess.

Tiffany Berton is planning to mount a campaign to stop pharmacists being able to refuse treatments on religious and moral grounds. She's onto a loser, of course. There is little Boots or any other employer can do when faced with trenchant opposition from religious refuseniks. The Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003 and the Equality Act 2006 contain catch-all religious harassment clauses. Any attempt by an employer to challenge a refusal to carry out tasks on religious grounds could lead to a harassment claim. When such conflicts come to court, the case law is not encouraging.

It may be unfair for religious people to impose their beliefs on others but, increasingly,  they have the law on their side.

Hat Tip: Laban Tall

Could India collapse?

Yesterday, I had one of my regular meetings with my accountant. Originally from India, he is a very well read and well informed chap. We usually spend twenty minutes talking about business and the next forty discussing politics and world affairs.

After we had discussed the Chancellor's budget, about which he was unimpressed, we got onto the subject of the rise of India and how soon it will assume its place as an economic and military superpower. Far from being optimistic about the prospects for the country of his birth, he fears for its future stability and, in the worst case, its fragmentation into warring regions.

His rationale goes something like this.

Both Pakistan and Bangladesh are close to collapse. Climate change, leading to rising sea levels and the faster melting of snow in the Himalayas, leaves Bangladesh vulnerable to flooding. Millions of people could be displaced in a country which is already one of the most densely populated in the world. Where would they go? To India, of course. They speak the same language as their neighbours in West Bengal and there are already large Muslim populations in many Indian cities. The collapse of Bangladesh could see tens of millions of people migrating to India and there would be little the Indian government could do to stop it.

Pakistan, too, is in danger of collapse albeit for different reasons. Islamist insurgency in the ungovernable western provinces is spreading to the rest of the country. Combined with the economic crisis and the failure of its political structures, this could be enough to tip Pakistan over the edge. As with Bangladesh, the most obvious refuge for people displaced from Pakistan would be India.

Pakistan, with its 165 million people, and Bangladesh, with 150 million, are both high up on the league table of failing states, above even Ethiopia and Haiti. A combination of economic, political, environmental and social factors could well destabilise either or both of them in the near future.

Should that happen, it is almost certain that millions of displaced people will flood over the borders into India, adding to the already volatile mix of competing religions, castes and ethnic groups. India's centrifugal tendencies are strong. In 1947, it was by no means certain that the provinces that now make up India would become independent as a single entity and many of those regional tensions still remain. The addition of tens of millions of poverty stricken Muslims would not make governing India any easier.

In this way, the probable destabilisation of Pakistan and Bangladesh could also seriously weaken India. The path towards superpower status, which many see as inevitable, could be threatened by the colossal task of controlling an increasingly violent country.

This was my Indian money-man's take on the prospects for the land of his birth and, as I sat discussing it with him, I found it a persuasive argument. All of this was before either of us knew about the wave of terrorist attacks in Mumbai last night. Islamist violence is becoming more common in India as the terrorists become more sophisticated. The arrival of refugees from Pakistan and Bangladesh would provide a new source of recruits and add to the simmering ethnic tensions.

Conventional wisdom may predict a bright future for India but not everyone is convinced. Economic prosperity could easily stall in the face of political fragmentation and social breakdown. A fear of total collapse may be overly pessimistic but India could well be in for some difficult times over the next decade or so.

Budget Juke Box

I'm too busy getting my own accounts in order to comment on the budget but economic collapse, rocketing levels of debt and high taxes have a strangely nostalgic feel.

I keep thinking of power cuts, geometric patterned brown wallpaper, tank-tops, platform shoes and flares the size of the national debt.

So here, in lieu of a proper post, is a special Pub Juke Box.

Ealing has more hardcore street gangsters than BNP members

People keep saying that they want politics to be more interesting. Well the BNP certainly creates some excitement. Every time there is a news story about the party the number of internet searches shoots up. Even our local rag is not immune to this morbid fascination. Its most popular online story last week was the news that there are twenty-five BNP members living in Ealing.

To put this in perspective, the same edition reported that there are 180 gang members in Ealing. Of those, thirty-six are in the Met's 'red band' of seriously dangerous street criminals. That's still more than the entire membership of the BNP's Ealing branch.

Are the police and schools really going to devote resources to rooting out and sacking BNP officers and teachers? Haven't they got more important things to do, like stopping kids from joining street gangs?

The BNP - disappointingly ordinary

Andrew Gilligan's article in yesterday's Evening Standard has a slightly snobbish tone but his main point, that the establishment has over-reacted to the BNP, is well made.

Now that the statisticians have picked over the leaked BNP list, they have discovered what many of us suspected all along. The BNP members are actually a pretty ordinary bunch. The typical member is a bloke called John, David or Paul living in the North Midlands, Lancashire or Yorkshire.

Journalists have been scratching around trying to find celebrities on the list but have succeeded only in coming up with people that few of us have heard of. They haven't even found any major villains.

There was a similar sense of disappointment when the Guardian's nine-month undercover operation revealed only the membership of a vaguely famous ballet dancer. Despite becoming a BNP official, Ian Cobain found nothing else of any interest. No torch-lit Nazi rallies, no secret arms caches, no plans to foment unrest by firebombing mosques, no swastika arm-bands, no Luger-packing Himmler wannabes. It was all run of the mill political activism with a bit more paranoia about security than usual. A paranoia which turns out to have been justified.

The leaked lists show the BNP to be barely more than half the size National Front was in its late 1970s heyday, although, thanks to cleverer tactics, it has had much more electoral success.

As I've said before, despite its relatively small membership, the BNP seems to have an almost hypnotic effect on lefties. Whenever it is mentioned, many of their usual political principles seem to fly out of the window.

Lefties usually argue against all forms of physical punishment. They justify the actions of criminals and even terrorists by reference to poverty, abuse and the terrible environments in which people grow up. Criminals aren't born evil, they argue, they become that way because of what happens to them in life. Education, persuasion and winning hearts and minds, they say, are the ways to stop crime. Excessive punishment never works.

That is until you mention the BNP. Then, suddenly, they are telling you how these people are evil, vile scum who should have their heads kicked in and must be forcibly driven from the streets. All that stuff about persuasion and the immorality and ineffectiveness of draconian punishment is conveniently forgotten.

Workers rights get short shrift too as the left demands the summary dismissal of all BNP members.

When discussing the BNP, lefties start to sound like Daily Mail readers. I've never actually heard them call for BNP members to be castrated but it wouldn't surprise me if they did.

The wider political establishment has been drawn into this hysterical over-reaction. For example, the police are specifically banned from being members of the BNP but, curiously, are allowed to be members of Hizb-ut-Tahrir, Al-Mujaharoun and Sinn Fein.

It always makes me laugh when the major parties talk about uniting against the BNP. Do the Labour and Conservative Parties, each with more than a quarter of a million members and huge funding, really need to combine against a party with 10-12,000 members? If they do, it's a pretty poor show.

Perhaps now that the membership list has been published, the BNP will lose some of its mystique. It is a small-ish political party underpinned by a crazy ideology but which has policies that strike a chord with a lot of people. Most of its members are ordinary pissed-off British people. While its founders were neo-Nazis, almost certainly most of its members are not. It raises political issues that are embarrassing to most other parties but which are of concern to many voters. It should have the right to be heard along with other parties and its members should enjoy the same protection in the workplace as anyone else.

For its own reasons, the left will continue to react hysterically to the BNP. That doesn't mean that the rest of us have to follow suit. We can still disagree with them and dislike them without endowing them with a greater level of power and evil than terrorist groups. Hopefully, the information in thatleaked membership will help us to put the BNP in perspective.

Is it legal to sack people for BNP membership?

The publication of the BNP's membership lists on a website has led to statements from a number of organisations threatening to sack anyone who turns out to a member of the party.

Already, Talksport radio has fired DJ Rod Lucas and a Merseyside police officer is facing disciplinary action.  Many newspapers report that BNP members, especially those in the public sector, fear for their jobs.

But employers considering dismissing people for membership of the BNP should tread carefully. In 2006, the government implemented the Equality Act, which changed the definition of discrimination on the grounds of belief. The Act amends the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003 in the following way:

1) For regulation 2(1) of the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003 (S.I. 2003/1660) (definition of “religion or belief”) substitute—

“(1) In these Regulations—

(a) “religion” means any religion,

(b) “belief” means any religious or philosophical belief....

In other words, it is just as illegal to discriminate against someone on the grounds of philosophical belief as it is to discriminate against them on the grounds of religion.

The 2003 Regulations clearly covers employees but also apply to contract workers (see section 8).

(1) It is unlawful for a principal, in relation to contract work at an establishment in Great Britain, to discriminate against a contract worker - 

(a) in the terms on which he allows him to do that work;

(b) by not allowing him to do it or continue to do it;

Presumably, that includes freelancers like DJs.

The Regulations also specifically mention the police (see section 11):

(1) For the purposes of this Part, the holding of the office of constable shall be treated as employment..

And it's now illegal to discriminate against employees on the grounds of philosophical belief.

So is the 2005 ban on BNP membership by police forces still legal?

No doubt Rod Lucas won't be the last person to be sacked or disciplined for BNP membership over the next few weeks. When these cases come to court, as inevitably some of them will, the employers could be on very dodgy ground.

Labour councils, especially, will be desperate to fire any BNP members they find on their payrolls but they may find themselves paying out large claims if they do. Remember, there is no cap on the level of compensation for illegal discrimination.

It is ironic that an act brought in by New Labour to give rights to religious minorities, and which was backed by Muslim organisations, could end up preventing employers from sacking BNP members. Watching the impotent fury of Labour politicians, prevented by their own legislation from bashing the BNP, will be most amusing.

Bank tax contributions are dwarfed by their bailouts

Remember how we were told that we were lucky to have such a vibrant financial centre in London and how it contributed so much to the economy?

The figures in the banks' annual reports make interesting reading.

Royal Bank of Scotland brags:

Our £3bn tax contribution would pay for 265 million NHS prescriptions and over 160,000 staff nurses.

Well, yes it would have but the government now has to give RBS £20 bn. At a rough guess, that will cancel out the last seven years of tax receipts.

HBOS claims to have given the exchequer £1.656 bn last year. That would be great if it didn't now want £11.5 bn back as a bailout, around six times last year's tax contribution.

Not that any of this worries the bankers of course. They still seem to think we are lucky to have them in our midst and seem to regard their taxpayer-funded bailouts as a matter of right. So much so that the aforementioned banks think there is nothing wrong with splashing out on posh parties for the select few. Seemingly oblivious to the public's anger, they plan to pay bonuses as usual this year.

Whatever the banks may have contributed to the economy during the boom, they are now getting back to save them from the bust they dragged the rest of us into. And they are spending that money keeping themselves in the manner to which they have become accustomed.

£4 million a week to sort out Lehman mess

PwC are charging a mere £4 million a week to sort out the chaos at Lehman Brothers. An army of accountants is expensive to maintain. The partner in charge,  judging by the time the firm spent dealing with the Enron mess,  reckons they might be there for the next seven years. The Torygraph calculates that PwC's total fees could be as much as £1.4 billion!

As the old saying goes, it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good.

Torture porn

In today's Times, Janice Turner reflects on the pornography of child violence:

I was rounding the bread aisle in Sainsbury when I came across three young women in mid-conversation. “He ripped off his fingernails,” said the first. “And nearly pulled off his ear,” added a second. “Who could do such a thing?” said the third, and they all shook their heads in what's-the-world-coming-to despair. But their eyes were lit by other emotions: excitement, titillation, glee.

But it's not just violence against children that people love reading about. I remember when John Peters and John Nichol were shot down and captured during the First Gulf War, one of the tabloids, I think it was the Sun, published a piece, "Twenty ways the Iraqis might torture the airmen."

Torture, it seems, sells newspapers.

The Green Fields of France

In the week that we paid tribute to the last soldiers of the Great War, and to their comrades long dead, one song comes to mind for today's Pub Juke Box.

The Green Fields of France was written by Eric Bogle and has been covered by everyone from the Corries to Skrewdriver. My favourite is the version by the Men They Couldn't Hang but there isn't a decent video of it on YouTube or anywhere else.

It's such a good song that it doesn't really matter who is singing it. They all use slightly different words too. That doesn't matter either. Whatever small changes they make, the lyrics are still some of the most powerful I've ever heard.

This version is by Canadian singer John McDermott.

     

British people are throwing fewer sickies

The Office for National Statistics released a report on sickness absence earlier this week. It shows that sickness rates have fallen since 2001. In a typical week, 2.5% of people are off work compared to 3.3% in 2001.

Call centre workers, with an absence rate of 4.8%, top the sickness table and are getting some stick from the newspapers. I sympathise with them. Who'd want to sit wired up to a phone and a computer taking abuse all day?

There is some other interesting stuff in the report. As you might expect, those working for smaller companies have less time off sick and the public sector absence rates are higher than those in the private sector.

As far as I can tell, the newspapers haven't picked up on the ethnic breakdown either.

Asians top the table with the least sickness, followed by the Chinese. The figure for whites is 2.5% - the same as the average. Black people, at 3.8%, have the highest levels of absence.

The report does not break the data down any further. I wonder whether the absence rates for white people would be higher were it not for the Poles who, according to stereotype, probably don't take any time off work at all.

Surprisingly, there is little variation by region or between full-time and part-time workers. Wales might have a large number of people on long-term sickness benefits but it seems that those Welsh people in work are no more likely to take time off than the rest of us.

Perhaps the coming recession will see absence levels drop even further. When people are worried about losing their jobs, they are more likely to drag themselves off to work. Duvet days may become a thing of the past for all except the lucky few in recession proof jobs.

Salutes and applause for the last heroes of WW1

Yesterday's ceremony at the Cenotaph will almost certainly be the last commemoration of the First World War to feature the men who fought in it. Henry Allingham, Harry Patch and Bill Stone struggled valiantly to lay wreaths for their fallen comrades, willed on by the crowd, but old age got the better of them and their poppies were eventually placed by the heroes of today's wars.

When I went to the ceremony to mark the start of the war, in August 2004, Bill Stone was still walking and Henry Allingham was able to get out of his wheelchair and place his own poppies. How the years condemn.

There was a good crowd at both ends of Whitehall and the three men were applauded as they arrived and again as they left.

I met up with Esmerelda there. She has a report and some pictures at the New English Review. There are also articles, photographs and videos at the BBC, the Guardian, the Telegraph, the Times and the Daily Mail.

As I stood singing the hymns and watching the old soldiers salute their fallen comrades, it felt as though we were saying goodbye to a whole generation. Many from that generation were already dead by 11 November 1918 and all but a handful of those who came back have now gone too. It is unlikely that the three veterans we paid tribute to yesterday will be seen together at so public an occasion again.

I hope that, as the Great War passes beyond living memory, we will continue to mark Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday as a tribute both to the people who fought in that terrible conflict and to those who have made the ultimate sacrifice since.

We should never forget those who, even if they came out of conflicts physically unscathed, gave the best years of their lives to protect the rest of us.

 

From sad shires

Last year, I wrote about my grandfather's brother Hugh, who was killed in the First World War. When I was a kid, in the 1970s, I remember Hugh's picture having pride of place on the wall of my grandfather's rarely used front room.

My sister's daughter has been doing a school project on the First World War so I rooted out the copies of Grandad's and Hugh's letters from the front. Among them was my great-grandmother's letter telling Grandad his brother had been killed, only six weeks before the end of the war.

It conveys deep sadness but there is a matter-of-fact tone about the note too. At the end of it, she tells my grandfather to "be brave and keep a good heart for all of us."

No counselling or therapy back then. There was a war to be won and a country to rebuild afterwards. 

That grief and sense of loss that gripped every family in the land still echos down through the generations. None of my grandfather's children were born when Hughie was killed, yet they all talk about him. The next generation, my cousins, my sister and I, do so too.

I will be thinking of him and my grandfather when I'm at the Cenotaph tomorrow.

Calm down, Jonathan

As a longtime Americanophile, Jonathan Freedland has not had an easy time over the past eight years.

For the last eight years, it's been hard to keep the flame alive. Those of us who have admired America since childhood - seeing it as endlessly fascinating, brimming with energy and founded on the deeply radical ideal of self-government - felt increasingly beleaguered after 2001.

I have some sympathy with him. I'm not an anything-o-phile but, as someone who, on the whole, has a positive view of America, I sometimes found it difficult to make the America-is-OK-really argument during a period when the President had clearly lost the plot.

But, in all the excitement, Jonathan got a bit carried away.

But it's not just the result of the US election that is inspiring. The election itself revealed America to be among the most politically engaged nations on earth. For two years, the electorate paid close attention to a sustained argument about their future. The party conventions, like the 90-minute debates, drew bigger audiences than the Olympics and the Oscars. Blogs and cable TV shows that obsessed over the tiniest detail of the campaign built loyal followings. Those of us outside the US, living in societies bedevilled by apathy and low turnout, can only look on in envy.

Really?

For the moment, thanks to America's ramshackle electoral machinery, we still don't know what the actual turnout was but Curtis Gans, director of American University’s Center for the Study of the American Electorate, estimates it at somewhere between 60.7% and 61.7%.

Even if we assume the higher number is right, that's 0.3% higher than the last UK election and a whole 2.3% higher than 2001, the UK's lowest turnout since 1918, when there was much breast-beating from the British political establishment about voter apathy.

Historically, our bad turnouts are not much worse than America's good ones. Jonathan Freedland needs to sober up and recheck his sums.

Is Obama's victory a false dawn for American liberals?

Here's one in the eye for anyone who thinks that Barack Obama's victory signals some kind of liberal dawn.

On the same day that sixty percent of Californians backed Obama, many of the same people, at the same time and in the same polling stations, also voted for a ban on gay marriage.

Proposition 8, the constitutional amendment overturning California's legalisation of gay marriage, was the subject of a bitterly fought campaign, Between them, both sides raised around $60 million, with some of California's most famous companies, like Levi-Strauss and Google, giving large donations to the opposition.

According to the Washington Post, black and Latino voters were crucial to the success of Proposition 8.

Seven in 10 African Americans who went to the polls voted yes on Proposition 8.

Fifty-three percent of Latinos also backed Proposition 8, overcoming the bare majority of white Californians who voted to let the court ruling stand.

California's gay activists are furious. For years they have equated their campaign for legal equality with the struggle for black civil rights. They had assumed that the Democratic coalition would automatically deliver the votes of non-white minorities.

This is naive. History is full of examples of oppressed groups who, as soon as they get the chance, become enthusiastic oppressors too.

And if anyone accuses people from non-white groups of bigotry, they can always use the "our culture" defence:

"I think it's mainly because of the way we were brought up in the church; we don't agree with it," said Jasmine Jones, 25, who is black. "I'm not really the type that I wanted to stop people's rights. But I still have my beliefs, and if I can vote my beliefs that's what I'm going to do."

"It's our tradition," said Flor Guardado, 38, who voted yes. "In Latino Central American culture, the gays aren't accepted."

The Nation's Richard Kim thinks that Proposition 8 might also mark a turning point for the Christian-right.

For years, the California Christian-right apparatus, long hampered by nativism and racism, had been unable to make inroads into the state's brown, yellow and black populations--a demographic gold mine in a state that is more than 50 percent minority and growing. Prop 8 may prove to be their gold rush. From the beginning they bought up ad space in Chinese, black, Spanish and Korean media; they hosted massive rallies for ethnic Christians. The Sunday before election day, I went to Los Angeles City Hall for the most celebratory, most diverse rally I have ever attended; it was organized by Yes on 8 Chinese advocates.

I'm surprised it took the Christian-right so long to work this out. Getting brown, yellow and black people on board effectively neutralises one of the liberals' rhetorical weapons. White people can be called homophobic bigots but it is much more difficult to dismiss the cultural norms of non-white groups which must, of course, be respected.  

This attempt to connect with ethnic minorities shows just how far the Christian-right has come. As a political movement, its origins lie in the South and Midwest and, in the early years, even white catholics would have been considered beyond the pale. Now, it is reaching out to Latino and Asian catholics as well as black evangelicals.

The Christian-right is also specifically targeting Democrat voters. In that sense, perhaps the term 'Christian-right' is something of a misnomer. Many of the people who voted against gay marriage on Tuesday were probably also in favour of higher welfare provision, increased Medicare benefits and affirmative action.

Instead, this might be the beginning of a broad-based religious and socially conservative movement that transcends party lines. The logical next step would be to embrace conservative Muslims who share many of the Christian-right's views issues like on abortion and homosexuality. As Jerusalem's religious groups discovered two years ago, there's nothing like a bit of queer-bashing for bringing former enemies together and creating a spirit of ecumenical co-operation. For now, that might be a step too far for America's Christian conservatives but who's to say what might happen over the next ten years.

All of which assumes that Richard Kim is right to interpret this as a shift in strategy. It may simply be that the targetting of black and Latino voters was a tactical move to get this particular proposition through, after which Christian groups will retreat back to their traditional base of support.

Even so, there is a warning for white middle-class liberals in America and elsewhere. The election of a black Democrat as President may be a defeat for the Republicans but it does not necessarily mark a setback for social conservatism. Those, mostly outside America, who are dancing on the grave of the religious right and hailing last Tuesday as a victory for liberalism may yet have cause to eat their words.

Getting po-faced about Halloween

I meant to write about this earlier in the week but, what with one thing and another, I forgot.

James was irritated last week when his church held an alternative Halloween party.

Okay, so they organised an "alternative" Hallowe'en party at the church because some parents are "concerned" about the pagan and satanic implications of Halloween.

So, presumably, the church won't be having a Christmas tree this year, nor any holly, ivy or mistletoe. Come to think of it, all that green stuff you stick on the end of the pews is a bit suspect. That will have to go.

And while they are at it, Easter will need a bit of a re-think too. Should children be bringing Easter eggs into church? Come to think of it, the very word Easter is pagan. Perhaps, henceforth, they should call it a Paschal celebration or something.

Will James's church, or any of the others that have banned Halloween, do any of this?

Will they bollocks!

The church is full of pagan symbolism and has been since it arrived on these shores. The fuss over Halloween is more about the holier-than-thou killjoy tendency that seems to be infecting the country's middle-classes and especially those in any position of authority. Anything that might be a bit horrid has to be erased, especially where there are children around.

It is, of course, pointless. Take away their toy guns and the kids will just shoot avatars on computer games. Stop them making swords out of sticks and they will sit glued to videos of Lord of the Rings, or get into Medieval Total War instead.

Sanitise their Halloween parties and there are plenty of horrific things they can find on the internet to make up for it.

I wrote about this three years ago (Jeez, have  really been blogging that long?) when the Bishop of Bolton decided to re-brand Halloween as 'Nite-Lite'. This was what I said:

This is a dark time of year,  we have just put the clocks back and we are all bracing ourselves for winter.  Festivals like Halloween and Bonfire Night give us a chance to celebrate the darkness and to poke fun at our secret fears,  the dark,  the spirit world and death.  Why do-gooders in the church,  the schools and local authorities want to sanitise everything and make it sugary and nice is beyond me.  Dressing up as witches and ghosts will not turn children into occultists.  Even the goths only pretend to be satanists for a laugh.  It's a joke,  Bishop,  a bit of fun,  a way of laughing at the dark.  Come on, "Nite-Lite",  for God's sake!  Where is the excitement in that?  If I was a kid today I would say "bugger Nite-Lite,  I'm dressing up as a ghost to go trick-or-treating."

You need to have the dark so that you can appreciate the light.  Halloween is a great way of celebrating the night-time of the year.  It's one of our traditions. Leave it alone.

I wish all the goody-goodies would find a sense of humour from somewhere and recognise Halloween for what it is - a bit of harmless fun.

Friday Juke Box - Dark Techno

Happy hardcore represents the light summery side of techno but the genre has a darker side too.

Yesterday was the mid-point between the Autumn Equinox and the Winter Solstice so some more wintry music seems appropriate.

I couldn't choose between them so here are three from SvenVath's Harthouse label.

Eternal Basement's Taking Place In You, Pulse's Soul Hunter, which uses chimes like those on Colonel Mortimer's watch, and Metal Master's Spectrum.

This atmospheric music is a great accompaniment for staring out across bare winter landscapes as the light fails, or driving round the M25 in the small hours of the morning.

It may not be everybody's' cup of tea but give it a go and see what you think.