“My Song Is Love Unknown”, hymn by Samuel Crossman (1664), tune by John Ireland (1879-1962).
Performed here to great effect by the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge.
Month: February 2014
Cityscapes – 7 February, 2014
Chancery Lane, London.
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Where Are The Women In British Politics?
The conventional wisdom holds that Ed Miliband managed to land a serious blow on David Cameron at this week’s Prime Minister’s Questions, exposing the Tory leader and his party for their chronic shortage of women in leadership positions and the key offices of state. Miliband makes a good point – an abysmal 4 out of 22 cabinet ministers in the coalition government are women, and only one of those, Theresa May at the Home Office, occupies a position that really matters (Culture, Northern Ireland and International Development, the other ministries headed by women, are either irrelevant or decidedly junior-league). That simply is not good enough, and David Cameron has just cause to feel ashamed.
The Guardian makes the case:
[David Cameron] was taunted about the Conservatives’ “women problem” by Ed Miliband in the same week it emerged several prominent women have recently been sacked from government jobs and Anne McIntosh, a high-profile female Tory MP, was deselected by her local association.
The Labour leader also claimed a prominent businesswoman, who is the wife of a Tory donor, had been greeted by Cameron with the remark: “Where’s your husband?”
He then accused the coalition of failing women across the UK by allowing the pay gap between men and women to widen for the first time in five years.
“You promised to modernise your party, but you are going backwards. You run your government like the old boys’ network – that’s why you are failing women across your party and across the country,” Miliband said.
And the initial exchange between the two leaders at Prime Minister’s Question Time can be seen here:
Less reported is the fact that the Labour Party has a record on promoting women every bit as appalling as do the Conservatives, as Dan Hodges correctly observes in his Telegraph column:
Women still aren’t allowed to hold senior positions in the Labour party. The three major political briefs are Prime Minister/Leader, Chancellor and Foreign Secretary. Apart from a short period during the fag end of Tony Blair’s administration when Margaret Beckett was placed in charge of the Foreign Office, and 14 weeks when Yvette Cooper oversaw the shadow post under Ed Miliband, none of those offices have been held by women. The Labour party has been in existence for 114 years. And during that time – under Labour – a woman has held or shadowed one of three major offices of state for a period of 14 months.
Fourteen months. And yet you would not think that Labour was sitting on such a poor record when Ed Miliband stood preening at the dispatch box in the Commons on Wednesday. One could have been forgiven for thinking that women made up a statistically and politically perfect 51% of Labour seats in Parliament and in the shadow cabinet, particularly given the rather unusual concentration of the Labour Party’s female talent on the front bench alongside their leader:
When PMQs started, several people commented on the fact that a number of Labour’s women shadow cabinet members were artificially concertinaed together close to Miliband. The reason they did that was because if they hadn’t done that they wouldn’t have been in camera shot. And that’s because there’s a convention that people sit alongside their leader based on seniority.
If something about the picture below strikes you as odd – don’t worry. There is indeed something different about the Labour front bench at PMQs this week – namely, a lot more women clustered on either side of Eds Miliband and Balls than is usually the case. It is hard to determine which is worse – Ed Miliband’s disingenuous photo opportunity, or the willingness of a number of female Labour MPs to go along with it by essentially allowing themselves to be used as props by their leadership.
A less-reported fact amid the furore is that all four women cabinet ministers in the coalition government are Conservative MPs, which rather begs the question of how the Liberal Democrats have managed to fly under the radar and avoid being called out for their own shameful inability to recognise and promote female talent within their own ranks. But somehow the party of Lord Rennard seems to be scoring a free pass on their own institutional sexism for the time being – at least as far as Ed Miliband’s focus is concerned.
The lack of women in senior positions in all political parties is a real problem, one which Miliband does little to debate or address by trading barbs with the Prime Minister. Some advocate all-woman shortlists as a solution to the problem, and of course the Labour Party has adopted this particular approach. This blog disagrees with it – firstly on the grounds that it robs local constituencies of the opportunity to select from the widest possible pool of talent when choosing who they want to represent them in Parliament, and secondly because if we must tolerate reverse discrimination as a necessary evil to help put right historic wrongs (and I’m far from convinced that we should), it should be done at the earliest stage possible and certainly not at the point of parliamentary candidate selection.
But while we may condemn Miliband’s posturing on the subject and question his methods, we must also acknowledge that at least the Labour Party under Ed Miliband is engaged in a bona fide effort to increase the number of women in their parliamentary party. There is a lot of rueful head-shaking from the Conservatives at the conspicuous lack of women in theirs, but not much action of any kind at all.
Four women out of twenty-two cabinet members in the British government, in the year 2014. This is a national scandal, far more serious than localised spats about the deselection or resignation of individual constituency MPs, or accusations of politicising quango appointments. This is about the integrity of our democracy and our desire to be a more practically and visibly meritocratic country.
The Conservatives, the party of Margaret Thatcher, should be leading the charge on anything to do with meritocracy. The fact that they are not currently doing so is alarming.
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The Winter Olympics Begin
As the countdown to the opening ceremony for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi nears its conclusion, Google marks the commencement of the Games:
A timely reminder of the Olympic values, at a time when the host country conspicuously fails to practice them when it comes to respecting and upholding the rights of its own citizens.
I was never in favour of the Olympics being awarded to Russia, especially at a time when that country’s tentative moves toward real democracy were being so rapidly undone and an authoritarian one-party government consolidated its power. Indeed, today’s Russia exhibits almost all of the characteristics that you would not want to see in a country hosting a major international event – corruption on a massive scale, dangerous levels of internal unrest, displacement of local people, oppression of minorities, lack of a free press, suppression of political dissent and the strangulation of democracy in every way.
But in mitigation, it should be remembered that in some very pertinent aspects, we are not so much more “advanced” or enlightened than the Russian state. Andrew Sullivan makes the excellent point that many people from the United Kingdom and United States who are so aghast at Russia’s controversial laws prohibiting “homosexual propaganda” overlook the fact that until quite recently, things were not so different back home:
At the same time, it seems to me we need to be careful not to misread the specific cultural context here. There’s a worrying tendency for some gay activists to assume that because a foreign country is not identical to the US on the question of gay rights, it’s an outrage that must be immediately confronted and changed. But America, only a decade ago, was not identical to the US today. Many states still have in their very constitutions the relegation of gay people to second class status. The last president of the US, George W Bush, wanted to enshrine the inferiority of gay couples in the federal constitution. It’s been only a few years since gays were able to serve openly in the US military. To turn around and then be shocked and appalled that homophobia is still very much alive and well in the Russian rural heartland is more than a little obtuse.
A fair point well made. Indeed, there are a number of British and American pundits and politicians, strident in their opposition to equal rights for gay people, who openly admire and praise the actions of the Russian government. And so I should reiterate that my antipathy is toward the authoritarian, corrupt President Putin and the culture that he has helped to create, and not toward the Russian people themselves.
I will watch the Sochi Olympics with interest, as I always do, and I hope that they are a wonderful sporting success, free from any of the feared violence or disruption. But you must excuse me for not joining in the celebration of the despot Vladimir Putin’s moment of triumph – the man does not deserve a victory lap on the world stage.
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Regina v. The Mormons
The institutional might of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is about to come face-to-face with the impartial hand of British Justice. No, scratch that.
The worldwide leader of the Mormon church has been ordered to answer allegations of fraud at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, on pain of arrest if he fails to comply. No, still not quite there.
A malleable judge has been persuaded to use a rarely-used legal procedure in an attempt by a dissatisfied former member to hold a religious organisation to the same standard of proof that one might expect a car manufacturer to be able to guarantee the reliability of its product, in an ego-stroking show trial guaranteed to waste the time and money of everyone involved. There, that’s closer to the mark.
The Telegraph reports on the details of this case, which seems to hinge on the idea that because the Mormon church asks members to tithe a proportion of their income to the church, and because the Mormons cannot offer the same definitive proof of their teachings as I can prove the existence of a physical object such as the computer on which I am typing (Semi-Partisan Sam is not written on golden plates, sadly), their representations amount to a fraud:
A British magistrate has issued an extraordinary summons to the worldwide leader of the Mormon church alleging that its teachings about mankind amount to fraud.
Thomas S. Monson, President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been ordered to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London next month to defend the church’s doctrines including beliefs about Adam and Eve and Native Americans.
A formal summons signed by District Judge Elizabeth Roscoe warns Mr Monson, who is recognised by Mormons as God’s prophet on Earth, that a warrant for his arrest could be issued if he fails to make the journey from Salt Lake City, Utah, for a hearing on March 14.
In one of the most unusual documents ever issued by a British court, it lists seven teachings of the church, including that Native Americans are descended from a family of ancient Israelites as possible evidence of fraud.
Where to begin?
Firstly, perhaps, with the observation that perhaps the time has come to discontinue this little-used legal procedure that apparently enables anyone nursing a strong grudge or resentment to haul his or her enemy in front of a magistrate for the purposes of making a public statement of disapproval. The British justice system should not be a plaything for individuals to use to settle personal scores – evidence of criminal behaviour, which is what fraud ultimately is, should be reported to the police and go through the proper channels. The Crown Prosecution Service often manages to make a hash of even those cases that have gone through the first round of scrutiny by law enforcement agencies; what chance do they then have of successfully prosecuting a person or organisation whose guilt is not even taken seriously by the police?
Secondly, the exercise amounts to a waste of public funds. Thomas Monson, President of the church, has already dismissed outright the notion of turning up at Westminster Magistrates’ Court to answer the charges. It just ain’t going to happen. The court to could attempt to satisfy itself by trying Mr. Monson in absentia, perhaps with a laminated mugshot propped in his empty seat, but that will be all the satisfaction that they are likely to receive.
Thirdly, can we really abide a justice system that could potentially make the leader of a fairly significant, relatively harmless (if somewhat quirky) religious faith persona non grata in our country, on pain of arrest by the police, if they fail to drop everything that they are doing and hasten to London to take part in a fatuous show trial?
Finally, and most importantly of all, think on the precedent that this case would set if it were to proceed any further (which it almost certainly will not). Yes, the Mormons believe some quirky things – the translation of the Book of Mormon from gold plates by Joseph Smith, an eyebrow-raising explanation of the origins of the Native American people, and the assertion that the Garden of Eden was located in what is now Jackson County, Missouri, to give away just some of the spoilers. But really, all that separates the claims of the Mormon church from those of other major religions such as mainstream Christianity is the factor of time – the Mormons most recent revelations occurred in the nineteenth century as opposed to the first.
If the Mormon church is to be found guilty of fraud for every instance in which it has received a donation or tithe payment on the basis of their religious teachings, then the Catholic Church and the Church of England should start liquidating assets in preparation for one hell of a large class action lawsuit from their followers. The idea is risible.
And imagine the policework, the investigation that would be required to argue the case in court. The fees racked up on both sides to procure the services of archaeologists, historians, theologians and intellectuals to support their respective arguments would be astronomical. Richard Dawkins would become one of the richest men in Britain.
In seriousness, though, perhaps there are shades of grey in terms of the general principle at stake – the question of whether cults should be in any way criminally liable for duping and conning money out of naive followers. I don’t propose to set that line here, nor do I claim any qualification to do so. But I can comfortably say that the Mormon church is not on the wrong side of that line.
Ultimately, it comes down to this: I don’t want District Judge Elizabeth Roscoe going through my Bible line-by-line and telling me whether or not I have a claim against the Catholic Church. I am a person of faith, but I am uncomfortable enough that religion is so intertwined with the legislature and executive of this country, without also having to fend off probing attacks from the judiciary.
If you were raised a Mormon, or if you were persuaded to convert by one of their charming missionaries, then you almost certainly entered into the religion with a sound mind and a free will. If you later come to stop believing in the mysteries of that faith and decide to leave, that is also your choice. But there’s a clear No Refunds policy at the cash register, and you should not be bothering the courts arguing that you are entitled to one.
So let’s have no more talk of fraud.
Semi-Partisan Politics 