Randomly Selected Article or Link

Over at Antonia Bance's blog she's got a piece on what we can do to help prevent any more Rhys Jones type horrors. One thing stands out for me. She says:

I don’t believe that anyone is born a criminal (one of the reasons why I’m on the left)

I'm not sure that follows. The other day I was having a dicsussion on another forum with someone whose personal political hero was, he said, Peter Hichens. I don't think that people at that end of the spectrum would ever believe that people are born criminal either.

Where they would differ is in whether the chance of committing crimes was determined by one's socio-economic outlook and therefore whether spending money on particular groups of people helps prevent such a descent into crime or not.

What they would say is that the suggestion that because you're in a poor or deprived area or have few opportunities you are more likely to turn to crime is itself an unjust slight on the vast majority of people in poor or deprived circumstances who live without committing crimes.

They would say that the sort of language used by the late Victorian social reformers, such as in that Charles Booth map of east London poverty where whole areas were blocked out as being "vicious and semi-criminal" that, with a bit of outside assistance, could be lifted out of such a plight, was patronising middle class liberal rubbish that let people off the hook of taking personal responsibility for themselves. And that "the left" by adopting that prognosis perpetuate the problem.

Me - I don't know. I believe in the innate goodness of everyone. And that the free will with which we are all vested means that everyone, rich or poor, chooses to do right or wrong. But I also believe that many are diddled out of their natural birthright by the great monopolies that the anarchists, libertarians and liberals of that late nineteenth century idenitifed. And that pre-distributing that common birthright ought to be enough to give everyone sufficient opportunity to be able to make he choice not to commit crime. That we ought not to be deciding how to spend others' money so much as simply making sure that people have their common birthright in the first place and then leaving them to their own decisions.

Just one final thing on Rhys Jones and other teen murder victims before I shut up about it...

I spotted this comment on another blog :

"what is going on in this country, if children are not being abducted and killed, by adults, they are being killed by people of their own age, we need to stop this now"

...and to be sure, the reaction of some in the political and media sphere is encouraging this kind of hysteria, but, whatever the tragedy of each individual case, we ought to recall that these incidents are still very rare. There are over thirteen million under eighteens in this country and the vast, vast majority will make it to adulthood without these sort of traumas.

You know when you try and do something nice and someone just fucks it up.

A couple of weeks ago I bought a load of plants to put in a border at the front of my block in halls. It's a space that has been abused for several years now with people parking on and damaging the verge. Anyway, when I started digging I found the ground useless, so waited till today when I got some topsoil delivered.

And what did I find when I went to fetch the plants out from next to my back door - three of them had been nicked.

Bastards. If you're reading this and it was you - you can leave them outside my flat again and I'll not say anything. But I hope you're proud of your thieving - I couldn't even get the same ones again when I went back to the garden centre today to replace them. Oh and don't worry about the single gardening glove you must have also taken. I did manage to replace those.

Onanist bastard.

By the way - if anyone knows anything about fungi - are these pictures below just ordinary field mushrooms, and therefore pretty safe to eat?

I got a surprising message on Facebook tonight. It said that since I was in the short list for Lib Dem Blog of the Year at LDV would I like to have an opportunity, as they did last year, to interview the dear leader for my blog. It was the first I knew about it, such has been my head buried in Debian linux code trying to get the new version working some time soon state for the past couple of weeks. But I had a root around on LDV and there it is - I am indeed in the short list. So thank you to anyone who suggested me. I always think my readership stats alone preclude me from inclusion amongst the "big boys" - and my paltry Technorati scores testify as much.

Whilst it would be a wonderful experience I am sure to be there in person to see someone collect the award, as in previous years I cannot attend autumn Federal conference. This coming weekend is our arrivals weekend in halls and the main business of conference is in the hectic Freshers' week. And I'm still fighting with my New Big Server late into the night, almost ignoring the world going on around me. Even once I have the software up and running there will be further delay as I want to redesign the blog. Last year's went too far and it is confusing far too many so watch out for a bit more simplicity I hope!

So, just so you know, I had no idea that I might be in any shortlist, or I would have kept up blogging a bit more - there has been a lot to think about in the past few days and even some exciting stuff going on with Community Land Trusts that I would like to comment on, but for now it's back to trying to get Apache and co working properly.

Now, I don't subscribe to everything that appears on IndyMedia but it's often useful for local alerts about things going on around Oxford as they have an Oxford based group and server. So I was interested to see:

UK Indymedia - Cargo Plane with Hebrew markings at RAF Brize Norton:

Are our government, apparently wanting but not wanting a ceasefire, now routing weapons to Israel from the US or elsewhere via RAF bases?

I think we should be told.

It's that time when people try to get motions in through local parties for spring conference, and Oxford East Lib Dems have asked for some suggestions. So, following on from my "Abolish DCLG" petition, and acknowledging that you can't really have proper devolution and localization without freeing up areas like Health, Education and local Policing from central control, here is an expanded version in all its daft draft glory.

Local devolution, autonomy and innovation

A. Conference believes that:

i. a defining principle of a functioning democracy is that government is legitimate only with the consent of the people governed expressed through regular elections,

ii. that in the United Kingdom, the people give their mandate in respect of local governance issues to local councillors,

iii. competition between local government areas and the innovation this will foster is a significant catalyst for strengthening local democracy and improving the working and cost effectiveness of local government,

iv. since the early twentieth century governments at Westminster of all political parties have imposed increasingly more conditions on local government bodies and centralized increasingly more of their powers and functions,

v. in many respects local government now only functions on the sufferance of Whitehall and Westminster politicians, and as such is enslaved by conformity,

vi. but that notwithstanding v) above, Westminster tends to place the blame for problems in local government on the elected local representatives who have so little control over what they are able to do,

vii. that this fundamentally undermines public confidence in and respect for local government and elected local representatives and is an affront to democracy;

B. Conference notes that:

i. the Liberal Democrats have made a strong start in redressing the issues of inappropriate centralization and regulation with our policy of abolishing the Department of Trade and Industry and more recently our pledge to repeal much business and law and order related legislation,

ii. the Liberal Democrats aim to position ourselves as champions of localism and devolution and against overbearing regulation at whatever level of government;

C. Conference resolves that:

the party should extend its policies around freedom from excessive regulation, particularly in respect of functions that are included in the mandate given to local elected representatives, by adopting policy to

i. abolish the Department of Communities and Local Government

ii. slash the powers of the Department for Education and Skills in respect of primary and secondary education for which accountability lies with local government and local school governors,

iii. slash the powers of the Department of Health in respect of management of health facilities and services that need to respond to needs of local people rather than national targets,

iv. slash the powers of the Home Office in respect of management of police forces,

v. localize many social security benefits and pay policies that impose universal entitlements regardless of need and cost of living in different parts of the country

vi. (...insert further clauses for pet Whitehall functions that could be localized here...)

vii. and allow local elected representatives and their communities to devise their own constitutional arrangements, including but not limited to electoral systems and cycles, tax and finance raising powers and mechanisms, and governance structures, including further devolution to other local bodies and co-operation between local government bodies, to be enshrined in a renewal of their individual local government charters independently of Whitehall regulation and interference (and subject primarily to peer review through a strengthened Local Government Association).

Jock Coats, 30th November, 2006