Hidden expenses

Nick Robinson’s post yesterday afternoon on the continuing saga of MPs’ expenses mentioned that the Commons’ authorities had a change of mind following further legal advice. He had more to say later on the BBC Ten O’clock News. Although Nick Robinson’s report is not on the BBC website (but see Bid to block expenses questioned for the full story), probably as it delivered live to camera, he said that whereas it was unlikely that any MP would be found to have broken the law, some might feel they had no option but to go (whether at the next General Election or sooner he did not make clear) because they would be so embarrassed at the revelations about what they had spent our money on. Nick Robinson said he had been told this by a number of senior politicians.

Going back to the legal grounds for the appeal, these, according to Nick Robinson, are the security of MPs and their legitimate expectation that their information be kept secret. I rather like David Winnick’s comments at PMQs (which prompted the Speaker to intervene). According to the BBC, Winnick said if (the appeal) was just about publishing addresses “that would be perfectly understandable on grounds of security”, but if it was against the wider issue of publishing second home expenses, “it should be noted that some members, certainly myself, are very much opposed to the appeal being lodged”. He went on to say it was “unfortunate” MPs had not been given a vote on the matter. At this stage the Speaker intervened, saying the matter was sub judice (undoubtedly correct but why do I get the feeling that he was pleased about this?).

A Monty Python moment

An interesting historical take on Radio 3 Breakfast this morning when Rob Cowan introduced Beethoven’s Egmont Overture: apparently Egmont was fighting the Spanish Inquisition. Strange that, I had always thought that it was the treacherous Duke of Alba. But then nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

Gordon expects. . .

Has Gordon Brown done enough? An interesting post in Coffee House by Peter Hoskin

And so Gordon Brown has backed-down over the Embryology Bill.  Now he won’t be forcing Labour MPs to vote in favour of the Bill outright - instead, they’ll get a free vote on three of its particularly controversial parts. Andrew Porter gets it spot-on over at Three Line Whip - it’s a great shame that Brown ignored the wishes of so many in his party for so long, only to buckle as soon as it looked like there’d be a wholesale rebellion.  In this light, I doubt too many Labour MPs will be that grateful to Brown, even if the outcome was the one they wanted.  Once again, our Prime Minister has been damaged by his own dithering.

It is percentage politics, with a reckoning at the end.  And what does he expect? From the BBC News website (and hoping he has done his maths properly),

But the prime minister expects all Labour MPs to back the whole bill when it comes to the final Commons vote.

Bringing home the bacon

A postscript to my post yesterday on Balkan porkies. On the BBC News website this evening, a report about Hillary being pressed on her Bosnia claim, plus the video of her arriving in Bosnia. The camera never lies (unlike Clinton it seems)

Video shown on US TV network CBS shows the then First Lady walking calmly from her plane. Her campaign has said she “misspoke” about landing under fire. Aides to Barack Obama, her rival to be the party’s presidential nominee, argue she overstates her foreign experience.

What astonishes me is that she is prepared to go to the lengths she has, surely knowing that every statement will be subjected to the minutest scrutiny. And what exactly does “misspeak” mean? A facility for telling porkies clearly runs in the Clinton family.

Balkan porkies

An interesting post in The Full Feed from Huffingtonpost.com about Hillary Clinton and the danger she said she had found herself in in Bosnia. Well, it now appears that she “misspoke” about the immediate dangers she faced. A more accurate word might have been “lied”. Here goes,

An aide to Senator Hillary Clinton acknowledged on Monday that the New York Senator “misspoke” about the immediate dangers she faced when, as first lady, she visited war torn Bosnia. Howard Wolfson, Clinton’s chief spokesperson, said on a conference call that “it is possible in the most recent instance with which she discussed this that she misspoke, with regards to the leaving of the plane.” Later, he was more certain: “On one occasion, she misspoke.” But Wolfson insisted that the first lady’s visit was indeed perilous, as supported by “contemporaneous accounts” in the press.

In recent weeks, Senator Clinton has sought to bolster her national security and foreign policy credentials by highlighting the role she played in Bosnia. “We came in under sniper fire,” she recently told the press. “There was no greeting ceremony. We ran with our heads down, and were basically told to run to our cars.”

This is what Team Obama reported

Bosnia:

Senator Clinton has pointed to a March 1996 trip to Bosnia as proof that her foreign travel involved a life-risking mission into a war zone. She has described dodging sniper fire. While she did travel to Bosnia in March 1996, the visit was not a high-stakes mission to a war zone. On March 26, 1996, the New York Times reported that “Hillary Rodham Clinton charmed American troops at a U.S.O. show here, but it didn’t hurt that the singer Sheryl Crow and the comedian Sinbad were also on the stage.”

And Mary Ann Akers (aka the Sleuth) in the Washington Post had an equally telling post Sinbad unloads on Hillary Clinton in Washingtonpost.com. (this was before Howard Wolfson fessed up on the candidate’s behalf to the Balkan porkies). According to the actor, the “scariest” part of the trip was wondering where he’d eat next. “I think the only ‘red-phone’ moment was: ‘Do we eat here or at the next place.’” I would have thought wondering what Hillary would do or say next was probably a close second.

Tibet

An interesting article on FT.com from Geoff Dyer in Shanghai, which suggests that the EU is at least thinking about being brave about Tibet.

The president of the European Parliament has said that European countries should consider a boycott of the Olympics in Beijing if the Chinese government continues to take a hardline attitude to unrest in Tibet. Hans-Gert Poettering joined a growing list of western politicians calling on China to open talks with the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, whom Chinese officials blame for inciting a wave of protests and riots over the last two weeks.

It does not seem that the western politicians include Gordon Brown. He has said that he will meet the Dalai Lama, but that is not really enough. It seems that he has not been able to bring himself to criticize what is happening. His silence will only encourage the Chinese. There is realpolitik, and there is moral cowardice.

Human rights, human dignity and human life

I am not sure which I find more disturbing, the Embryology Bill or the behaviour of Gordon Brown, in indicating that he is prepared to allow his MPs almost (but not quite) a free vote, but only if the mathematics show that the government will win (see the report on BBC News).

“The prime minister is prepared to allow Labour MPs who oppose a controversial embryo bill to vote against pieces of the legislation, the BBC has learned. The votes would be permitted only if they did not threaten the passage of the bill, a government official said.”

The government’s response to the warning from leading Labour MPs that a rebellion is on the cards, is a self-serving mixture of good old-fashioned Stalinism, control-freakery and sucking up to vested interests. I suppose we should expect nothing less of a man who writes about courage but who so clearly lacks it: obsessed by power and its exercise, and convinced that he and his acolytes alone know what is best for us. The arguments paraded are designed to make those who oppose the bill appear as enemies of progress, and unconcerned about our health and welfare. Thus Ben Bradshaw (fast becoming the acceptable face of the Brownite camp):

“This is about using pre-embryonic cells to do research that has the potential to ease the suffering of millions of people in this country. The government has taken a view that this is a good thing.”

We should all, therefore, be reassured? Or should we? For a different view, see Nadine Dorries’ post in Coffee House, The Embryology Bill, cui bono? And the opposition cuts across party lines. In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph this morning, Labour MP Stephen Byers - a former cabinet minister under Tony Blair - said the public would “look on in disbelief” if Mr Brown did not offer a free vote, and (BBC News again) “Welsh Secretary Paul Murphy is reportedly prepared to quit the cabinet rather than vote for the bill.”

Who’s watching you?

Philip Pulman doesn’t like ID cards. In an aside in an interview in The Spectator this week,

Later, the conversation roams unsparingly through officialdom and encroaching regulation (especially in the national curriculum), crass sloganeering and political unspeak (‘Tony Blair was a great bullshitter’), and ID cards: ‘I’d go to jail rather than have an identity card.’

And so say most of us. For a short but excellent take on ID cards, read Grayling’s question in October’s Prospect, Are ID cards either philosophically or pragmatically justifiable? His answer,

Emphatically no. A requirement for every citizen to carry a device that enables the authorities to demand immediate information about them dramatically changes the relationship of individuals to the state, from being private citizens to being numbered conscripts. An ID card or device (technology will rapidly supplant plastic cards because the latter are too easily lost or stolen) is a surveillance instrument, a tracking device, like a car number plate or the kind of tag punched into a cow’s ear.

And to make the point,

The main pushers of an identity surveillance system—the biometric data companies who stand to gain billions—tell us that the iris and fingerprint details that will link you to the computer that stores your address, medical records and so on can be stored on a chip the size of a full stop. This can be implanted in your earlobe, ostensibly to protect against loss or theft, and read by a device similar to a barcode reader. I asked David Miliband what the difference is between this and a number branded on your arm. His furious response was proof that I cut close to a nerve.

Mind the gap?

Yesterday evening at the Business Leaders Forum at Exeter University, and an interesting take on Generation Y by Richard Wyatt-Haines (you can find more on Mind the gap: managing and retaining your graduate entrants on his website). Our table (and it seems much of the audience) was not entirely persuaded. Is Generation Y so very different to the previous one, or the one before that (see my post on Graduate Divas)? My next door neighbour and I (both the same generation) decided that it was not Generation Y that was so different: we thought they were quite like our generation, but the one in between. What is different is the context, how life appears to be, although is what is happening in Tibet as I write so very different to what happened in Hungary in 1956 (I was four) and what happened in Czechoslovakia in 1968 (when I was 16)?

Tibet

More disturbing news from Tibet. An interesting post by James Forsyth in Coffee House, suggesting it may be time (and notwithstanding realpolitik) to think about whether we should boycott Beijing 2008. He links to Vaclav Havel’s letter in Comment is free on Guardian.co.uk, which is headed “Asking China to exercise restraint in Tibet is not enough: the international community must use its influence to halt human rights abuses”, and finishes

“Merely urging the Chinese government to exercise the “utmost restraint” in dealing with the Tibetan people, as governments around the world are doing, is far too weak a response. The international community, beginning with the United Nations and followed by the European Union, Asean, and other international organisations, as well as individual countries, should use every means possible to step up pressure on the Chinese government to allow foreign media, as well as international fact-finding missions, into Tibet and adjoining provinces in order to enable objective investigations of what has been happening; release all those who only peacefully exercised their internationally guaranteed human rights, and guarantee that no one is subjected to torture and unfair trials; enter into a meaningful dialogue with the representatives of the Tibetan people.

Unless these conditions are fulfilled, the International Olympic Committee should seriously reconsider whether holding this summer’s Olympic games in a country that includes a peaceful graveyard remains a good idea.”

For a less reverent comment, see Robert Shrimsley in today’s FT, Carrying a torch for China in Tibet. This imagines all you need to know about our lords and masters (?) in Europe.