Randomly Selected Article or Link

I've wrestled my conscience about getting involved in the recent discussion about Cardinal O'Brien's outburst about politicians supporting abortion. As a liberally minded Catholic I do think I can shed some light on the issue that has caused much consternation and not a little intemperate language amongst fellow party members. But I always hesitate to talk about abortion for, unlike His Eminence, I do think that it is unwise for a single man never likely to sire children, to pontificate on the issue.

But today's Observer ups the ante a little with this: MPs to fight for abortion on demand in which some want to remove the few remaining blocks that attempt to ensure that would be termination clients get what amounts to the most cursory advice and counseling about the potential consequences of abortion.

It quotes my neighbouring Lib Dem MP Evan Harris, who is reported as saying that "women should not face any greater hurdles to obtaining an abortion than for any other routine surgical procedure, such as having their appendix out."

Well now see, this is where I have a problem. A pregnancy is just not comparable to an illness that needs treatment and where if you ignore treatment you put your life in danger. In such an illness it is not really the patient who makes the decision either. The doctor recommends and the patient consents. You don't get people coming into hospital asking for an appendicectomy "on demand".

It may not be the position of the Secularist Society of which Evan is a member (and whose discussions and policies, just as those of Catholics do, presumably inform their members' thinking and decision making), but philosophically and objectively, pregnancy is at least the start of a potential new life (not to wish to aggravate the discussion by claiming, as I believe, that conception is the point of creation of a new and unique life). And in my experience, of a few friends who have had abortion, and a few male friends whose partners have had abortions, a termination seems often to result in later feelings of guilt, depression, sometimes of irreconcilable tension between partners and so on.

But I don't mean to have a go at Evan particularly, I merely want to use this new move on abortion to talk about the Cardinal's position. You see, even as a Catholic, and one who does believe that philosophically at least abortion is the termination of a unique new life, personally I could never vote absolutely against freedom of choice for the individual to procure a safe and legal abortion. But I say that on the grounds that the church also demands pluralism in civic society. Sure, they usually mean this to apply to Iran or China where Christians may be an oppressed minority, but they can't have it both ways - it applies just as much to others' right to exercise their beliefs in countries that have a primarily Christian religious heritage.

And far from being a secularist party, our Liberal history is one of defending the rights of individuals to practice whatever faith they believe in, or none. And given that there are differing opinions on when life begins and whether or not abortion amounts to legalized killing even amongst Christian groups, I could never vote to impose one minority faith view on everyone. That does not mean I "support" abortion, merely that I don't think the law of the land should be used to impose one group's moral opinion over another and that it should be up to the individual facing such a drastic choice not to be criminalized because of one faith's position.

But it is a difficult line to follow. We don't approve of murder do we? And we would never countenance a "right to choose" murder - perhaps for example in the case of "honour killings" in some faiths it is a debate that is not that unimaginable. So if you believe that abortion is intentional killing how can one ever vote in favour of people's right to choose to kill another being? I can only suggest that, unlike the Cardinal, I have no right to judge another's conscientious decision and that if there is a being with a big book listing everything we've done in our lives she will probably want to take into account all the good we may have done in our lives as well as the occasional mishap (often occasioned by mitigating circumstances not completely within our control).

I saw a program on teenaged sexual activity last night. One boy made the point that "we don't bother to prevent pregnancy any more, we have the morning after pill for contraception". While we have a group in society whose fecklessness seems to promote such a laissez-faire attitude to pregnancy itself, I believe that to remove all safeguards that attempt at least to counsel people on their choices would be a step too far.

Evan of course is at least consistent, in wanting good quality early start sex and relationships education. And the combination of knowing properly how your body works and how relationships work before landing yourself in the situation of having an unwanted pregnancy would probably do as much to reduce the number of abortions as any law restricting abortions themselves. But while we don't have that, and seem always to shy away even from debate on it, we should not be making abortion that default fall back for what sometimes amount to bad decisions about the when, where and how of sexual activity. That does not contribute to "safe, legal and rare".

Technorati Tags: cardinal o'brien, abortion

There's often talk about the "younger generation" who have only ever known Tony Blair in charge in their political memories. Well, in a way that applies to me too. Of course at forty, I have more political memories than that (including writing, at age 11, to someone called Williams who was in charge of schools at the time, or so I thought, to complain about the discipline regime at my private preparatory school!), but I only really got involved in party politics after the 1997 General Election.

So far as I am aware my family had always voted Liberal. They were part of that Scottish cohort who were not in the Kirk (Tory party at prayer) and were not Catholic (who it was always said were instructed by their bishops to vote Labour), but Gospel Hall Brethren and so in that non-conformist set that gravitated in Scotland to the Liberals.

But, at public school, self interest put me off ever wanting to vote Labour (who would, we were all told, close down private schools) and, whilst my early career in the City was unashamedly inspired by the Thatcherite loads-a-money era, I could not stomach voting for a party that treated me as a gay man as inferior (don't argue with me here, they did, and as recent opinion polling amongst their members shows still do at heart). I had the great misfortune, at my second voting General Election, to live in the constituency of that odious woman woman Jill, now Baroness, Knight, author of the hated Section 28.

Despite all the promise of equality from Labour, I actually contacted Millbank during the 1997 campaign, the first in which I had gone so far as to actually read party manifestos, to ask whether Labour party policy of repeal of section 28 and equalisation of the age of consent were specific first term promises and was told they were not. So that settled me on joining the Lib Dems. And for a year and a half I was just that, a "sleeping" member, paying my dues (albeit at the rate of the minimum annual subscription per month in order to salve my conscience at not actually doing anything active!).

Whilst there was a certain feeling of relief that Labour had routed what had become a moribund and corrupt government, and some smiles at the "New Labour, New Britain" agenda, little did I know that the reign of Tony Blair would lead me to a deep loathing of national politics, the notion of the nation state even and crucially the role of an individual claiming to "lead" and "speak for" an entire nation of sixty million different opinions. The size of that first, and indeed second, majority, silenced real political debate as surely as a one party state would have done. Only the House of Lords, which I loathe as an institution, seemed willing and capable of opposing anything, and their days were numbered.

I am hard pressed to name anything I think Blair has done in his ten years that was done voluntarily and with good grace and for the better. Age of Consent and Section 28 were both changed in the end, but reluctantly, after European Court intervention in the case of the former and after unnecessary delay in the case of the latter. Devolution for Scotland and Wales was good, but in reality all but predated Blair in the form of the Scottish Constitutional Convention. Wealth inequality has been up and down, the Big Brother state has moved on apace, there feels like there has been just as much massaging of figures, and certainly more spin than ever before, and little if any feeling of a real ideology behind it all. I've never felt before that politics was merely a cynical exercise in winning elections to perpetuate one's own power at almost any cost.

At the same time I have flirted with Trots, and then "seen the cat", respectively looking for the small government option - either anarchist in the former case or "geo-libertarian" once I had had my eyes opened, precisely because, like nobody else before him, the smarmy, spinning, unassailable man at number ten had put me off government entirely. Two books that kicked off that search for a personal ideology are "An Intelligent Person's Guide to Liberalism (Intelligent Person's Guide Series)" (Conrad Russell) and "The Grip of Death: A Study of Modern Money, Debt Slavery and Destructive Economics" (Michael Rowbotham). And now not even the Lib Dems can adequately express my radicalism for economic and constitutional reform, to end protectionist monopoly and elected dictatorship respectively.

So it's good bye and good riddance Mr Blair. I'd rather you didn't take any international man of mystery jobs that would mean me continuing to see your smarmy git face on my television or newspapers ever again. In fact, maybe you'd consider going to Mars for a while. Thank goodness nothing, not even conversion to Rome, can bring you a plenary indulgence any more, and there remains a chance that you will be brought before some authority you might recognize at some point in your future, to answer for your actions.

Technorati Tags: political obituary, tony blair

I had a go at the Guardian Friday politics quiz today. It said I got nine out of ten, and that the one I got wrong was a question about how many Prime Ministers had had a State Funeral since the turn of the nineteenth century. I reckoned four (Wellington, Palmerston, Gladstone and Churchill), they claim three. Who is correct? Or have I missed something?

I'm very busy at the moment trying to get a web database up for my old school former pupils' society, but I noticed today a lot of discussion about Tesco and its market dominance.

Personally, I patronize the Co-op and local shops as much as possible and am in some ways fortunate to be able to do so, and I abhor monopoly and monopsony, and it is clear that Tesco, ASDA and others are getting pretty close to such a position if they haven't already. But there's a simple little step that could at a stroke force Tesco and others to account properly for some of the externalities of out of town shopping...

They currently don't pay uniform business rates on their massive free parking areas at out of town developments - a massive subsidy from town centre retailers to the big sheds. With Site Value Rating (Land Value Tax levied at a local level), with which the Lib Dems propose to replace the Uniform Business Rate, such land would be properly valued and taxed.

As a hall warden, I usually only get to know students during their first year when they are residents in my hall. Not being teaching staff there isn't a lot of scope for following people right through their courses here. But having a bar on site means that sometimes a few stay around the place as student staff at the bar. Last night the bar manager threw a party to celebrate his big three-oh and invited as many of the students that have worked for him in his eight years here as he could contact.

Many old faces, much excited squealing as people met those they hadn't seen for years, sharing fond or not so fond memories of Saturday nights crammed in behind a sweltering bar together pandering to the seemingly unquenchable alcohol dependency of their fellow students. But one in particular was an inspiring story of dedication and vocation. I like to think I got on well with this chap - he was quite a "lad" throughout the four (or maybe five) years he studied and worked here. An all round good egg.

He's now teaching in a large Oxford secondary school of which I was once a governor. He'd spent some time at another, in a more prosperous area of town and didn't really like it by the sound of it - the challenge of nurturing, shall we say, less disadvantaged kids had not been there. He had tried a spell at a Buckinghamshire grammar school and had hated the pushiness of kids of pushy ambitious parents.

So he had jumped at the chance of a permanent job at a school that has many more challenges - the highest ethnic mix in Oxfordshire, most kids from parts of Oxford that score highly (if that's the right word) in Indices of Multiple Deprivation, a school with a challenging, almost schizophrenic history of its own as a grant aided former boys school (T E Lawrence's Alma Mater) suddenly pushed into threefold expansion when the county changed from a two tier to three tier system a few years back.

And, by the sounds of it, he's absolutely loving it. Maybe it's just youth in the first flush of career satisfaction as yet untainted with cynicism, but he doesn't want to be a manager. He doesn't want to be head of a subject area, just in order to be able to progress onto a decent living wage. He wants to nurture kids. He's absolutely dedicated to bringing out the potential of pupils whose backgrounds make it all the harder for them to break out. He relishes the pastoral side and drawing out young successes. You wouldn't have him down as one of these fabled "right on" hippy dude educationalists on a mission to indoctrinate.

He'd love to stay there. He, and I, think that his particular school has massive potential to improve thee lives of those who pass through its doors and a positive contribution to a slightly down at heel part of this world-class educational city. But he can't. He can't afford to. After four years of scrimping his way through university and a couple of years now, I think, of starting salary, he's got little or no hope of being able to afford to make a real home for himself in Oxford. He's still flitting between shorthold tenancies like so many young professional people here. Even the government welched on its deal to pay off the student loans they imposed on him for agreeing to teach maths.

If he ends up having to take time out to earn some decent money elsewhere I hope he'll come back - it'll certainly be a big loss to those kids he's made it his entire ambition to serve if he doesn't. What I really hope actually is that I can get Oxfordshire Community Land Trusts off the ground quickly enough to keep him here and give people like him some real security if they choose to enhance this city with their skills and dedication.

What happened to the era (maybe it's only a nostalgic fiction) where school teachers were amongst the most valued members of the community, not perhaps big earners, but looked after by the communities that hired them to give their young a good chance in life? Those figures like Jude Fawley's Mr Phillotson. It reminded me of some words of Michael Moore:

Teachers, thank you so much for devoting your life to my child. Is there ANYTHING I can do to help you? Is there ANYTHING you need? I am here for you. Why? Because you are helping my child - MY BABY - learn and grow. Not only will you be largely responsible for her ability to make a living, but your influence will greatly affect how she views the world, what she knows about other people in this world, and how she will feel about herself. I want her to believe she can attempt anything - that no doors are closed and no dreams are too distant. I am entrusting the most valuable person in my life to you for seven hours each day. You are, thus, one of the most important people in my life! Thank you. ("Stupid White Men", Regan Books, HarperCollins New York, 2001)

And it made me want to take an interest again as a governor...and maybe do a bit better at it this time round.

And it was probably the first time in ten years I've managed to stagger out of a bar into the six am blinding daylight - I hope the Hinksey Park campaigners will forgive my self-indulgence!

Technorati Tags: affordable housing, education, oxford, Oxford Brookes University