Psycho Stapleton probably didn’t have a gun licence
Posted on Tuesday 3 January, 2012
Filed Under Society |
7 Comments
ANYONE who can calmly give his name as ‘Psycho’ when facing murder charges in a magistrates’ court is unlikely to be too diligent in his compliance with state stipulations for the possession of firearms.
So while this is pure guesswork on my part, it may well be that Kieran Stapleton did not have a licence for the weapon he allegedly used to kill Anuj Bidve on Boxing Day.
Gun control is currently in the headlines following the tragic events in Peterlee on New Year’s Day, which saw depressed taxi driver Michael Atherton slay his partner and two members of her family before shooting himself.
Atherton, of course, was lawfully able to keep six weapons, despite having his licence reviewed in 2008 after threatening to harm himself.
Political predictions for 2012: open thread
Posted on Sunday 1 January, 2012
Filed Under Blogging, Politics |
31 Comments
HAPPY New Year, readers. Rather then write anything substantial myself today – I am still feeling a tad delicate after somewhat exceeding government drink unit guidelines last night, to be honest – I will instead open the comments box for any reflections people may have on likely developments in the year ahead.
Here at home, tensions seem to be growing within the Coalition. How do you assess its stability? Meanwhile, Ed Miliband is coming in for increasing stick from Blairite irreconcilables. What are the chances of a leadership challenge in the coming 12 months? Is Scotland on an exit trajectory from the United Kingdom? I am about to read up on Northern Ireland, but I would be interested in observations from anybody who follows events there more closely than I do. And let’s not leave Wales out of the picture.
Turning away from Westminster, Holyrood, Stormont and the Senedd, what about the state of the class struggle? Are we on the brink of a serious fightback against austerity, or does the recent ’heads of agreement’ deal on pensions signal that the unions have thrown in the towel? What about other countries? Does the eurozone crisis carry within it the potential for major radicalisation in Greece or Italy? Or could it be that the right will benefit rather than the left?
Elsewhere, what do you think about the outlook for the Middle East? Can the Egyptian revolution be taken a step further, and what forces would come out on top? Will we see another year of stalemate on the Israel/Palestine question? Is Syria shaping up to be another Libya, or can Assad keep the lid on the situation? And what if Iran does make good on its threat to close off the Strait of Hormuz?
What about other flashpoints around the world? Can Putin pull off a return to the Russian presidency? Will the tensions between Muslims and Christians in Nigeria deteriorate further? Can Pakistan hold together? Should we fear a hard landing for the Chinese economy?
Your thoughts on these and any other topics that come to mind, ladies and gentlemen. Now, where did I put those sodding aspirins?
What exactly is London’s problem with Liverpool?
Posted on Friday 30 December, 2011
Filed Under Conservative Party, Politics |
36 Comments
LONDON has a Conservative mayor who famously accused Liverpool of displaying a ‘deeply unattractive psyche’, and even of ‘wallowing in its victim status’. But as a cockney myself, I reckon scousers can be forgiven for feeling that little bit chippy.
That Boris Johnson’s attitude is no novelty within his party is demonstrated by today’s revelation that back in 1981, top Tories Geoffrey Howe and Sir Keith Joseph advised Margaret Thatcher to abandon that beastly city altogether.
Howe actually employed the expression ‘managed decline’, before duplicitously warning everyone else against using such a scandalous locution in the public’s earshot. Thanks to the 30 year rule, the gaffe is now public. Be sure your sin will find you out.
Despite the reputation Liverpool picked up for radicalism after Militant secured control of the local authority in the year that followed Howe’s overly frank memo, until the 1950s it was just about the only working class conurbation in this country to return Conservative MPs to Westminster, thanks largely to religious sectarianism imported from the other side of the Irish Sea.
A tax on the drinking classes
Posted on Thursday 29 December, 2011
Filed Under Conservative Party, Politics |
24 Comments
I AM not a champagne socialist. But that is solely because I do not actually like the stuff. Otherwise, I fully endorse the maxim of the late Christopher Hitchens that cheap booze is a false economy. Give me Glenmorangie, or give me death.
It is a pretty fair bet that David Cameron thinks along the same lines as the Hitch. The assumption has to be that £4.15 Tesco’s red has not been the vino da tavola of choice among the Chipping Norton set this festive season. There is a reason why fancy schmancy wine from Bordeaux is called Cru Bourgeois and not Cru Prolétarienne.
Given that so few posh folk are on the old purple tin or sit on street corners swigging White Lightning poorly concealed in a brown paper bag , the policy of imposing a minimum price per unit of alcohol will hurt only the less affluent, while not having any impact whatsoever on those of us with more upmarket tastes.
It is almost as if the government wanted to send the message that it is perfectly OK to contract cirrhosis of the liver, so long as a chap has the decency to inflict the illness on himself with a decent single malt rather than supermarket own brand blended scotch.
Life on Labour?
Posted on Tuesday 27 December, 2011
Filed Under Labour Left, Labour Party |
30 Comments
DESPITE the failure of Russia’s latest space probe, scientists are rightly determined to continue their search for life on Mars. The way things are going right now, it looks like that quest will reach fruition long before anyone ever discovers signs of life in the Labour Party.
It’s not that I saw the defeat of New Labour at the ballot box last year as a prelude to a rerun of the Bennite years. Apart from anything else, the weight of the left both inside and outside Labour is insufficient to permit stuff like that. To revamp a period slogan, it’s never again for “never again”.
But as a Labour Party member myself, my expectation was that some sort of internal discussion over the way Labour governed for 13 years would open up. Perhaps some leading figures would finally give voice some of the criticisms they had been bottling up while the Thought Police held sway throughout Oceania.
Even the re-emergence of a distinctly social democratic current would mark a step forward of sorts, especially if it were open to dialogue with Marxism. But more than 18 months after the return of the ConDems, nobody on the left has even properly attempted a balance sheet of the 1997-2010 experience and asked what lessons should have been learned.
Read the rest here.
Thatcher’s funeral: you mourn if you want to
Posted on Friday 23 December, 2011
Filed Under Conservative Party |
56 Comments
PERHAPS the most inane remark ever uttered by any leading New Labour figure - invidious though it is to select just one, of course – is Peter Mandelson’s vapid contention that ‘we are all Thatcherites now’. Some of us never were, and never will be.
Such abject ideological capitulation to the ideas Labour was created to stand against demonstates a certain arrogant incomprehension on the political right, a category into which Mandelson clearly falls. Admiration for Margaret Thatcher is far from universal.
The former prime minister, whose life is celebrated in an impending biopic, is now in frail health, and plans are already underway to mark her passing.
The announcement of her death, whenever it comes, will no doubt provoke endless days of media coverage celebrating her ‘greatness’, a quality that ‘even her opponents came to recognise’, or so we shall be told. For those of us who were involved in the labour movement in 1980s, such a conclusion will not readily be conceded.
Tabloids don’t have to be dumb
Posted on Thursday 22 December, 2011
Filed Under Politics |
8 Comments
IT’S week six of the Leveson inquiry, and I for one have stopped following the details. The precise circumstances in which Piers Morgan got to hear recordings of conversations between Heather Mills and Paul McCartney is a topic that will fascinate few of us.
Yet my guess would be that the proceedings will so far have added little lustre to the image of the trade I call my own.
The very expression ‘tabloid journalism’ conjures up mental images of shamelessly unscrupulous quote-fabricating, foot in the door merchant reporters who will stop at nothing to get the skinny on celebrity nookie or murder most foul.
Christopher Hitchens and his critics
Posted on Wednesday 21 December, 2011
Filed Under Obituaries |
52 Comments
OBITUARIES that openly exult in the death of their subject remain something of a rarity. Ask not for whom the bell tolls, and all that.
That hasn’t stopped all the wrong guys from cheering the passing of Christopher Hitchens. The Hitch was, according to a prominent contributor to Britain’s widely-read socialist blog, a ‘grubby apologist for empire’ who exemplified the ‘moral depravity’ of liberalism.
Elsewhere, a former backbench MP who knows a thing or two about moral depravity himself blasted the late essayist as a slug, a toff and an apostate in the service of the devils. Perhaps George Galloway can spell out what he regards as the proper penalty for apostasy?
The froideur of the Morning Star was palpable, with a three paragraph acknowledgement of the story relegated to the number two slot in the NIBs column, behind the triumphant success of Alassane Ouattara in the Ivorian elections.
North Korea: once and future Kim
Posted on Monday 19 December, 2011
Filed Under International |
34 Comments
THE Democratic People’s Republic of Korea certainly isn’t democratic. It doesn’t give a hang about the wellbeing of the bulk of its people, and it is a hereditary monarchy in all but name. Still, it is on the Korean peninsula, and by the standards of accuracy that prevail in the state media, one out of four ain’t bad.
The country is in the headlines today following the death of the Dear Leader Kim Jong-il. Scenes of grief in Pyongyang may not reflect the real mood of the country; the privilege of living in the capital is restricted to the so-called ‘core class’ who have demonstrated their loyalty to the regime, and enjoy comfortable jobs and access to western luxuries in return.
During the famine of 1995-97, in which a million people died, residents of Pyongyang stayed fed. The mourners on the television screens are not so much singing for their supper as crying for it.
Iraq and the Arab Spring: a thought experiment
Posted on Thursday 15 December, 2011
Filed Under International |
51 Comments
VERY few things about the political state of Iraq can accurately be described as clear. But now that the flag has been cased and the last 4,000 US troops are on the way home, some sort of preliminary balance sheet is finally possible.
As president Obama told the troops at the military base in Fort Bragg this week, the country the US military leaves behind almost nine years after the invasion is ‘not a perfect place’. If reports of continuing sectarian violence are anything to go by, that is a considerable understatement.
Obama’s principal argument was that intervention brought about a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government elected by its people. For those who supported the war, this will be seen as its ultimate justification.
