Vox Polis

Looks like the Sandinistas are poised to return to power in Nicaragua under the leadership of Daniel Ortega. The US is in disgust, and condemnation is likely from the Western media. But the Sandinistas are not only a shell of their former selves they also have been widely misunderstood.

For me the 1980s funding of the Contras, a state sponsored terrorist group, was among the worst things the US has ever done (and it’s a long list in many people’s eyes). Although the Sandinistas defined themselves as Marxist, they weren’t Communists in the same sense as the Soviet Union. In fact they set about creating a direct democratic state, allowing all people to be involved in the running of the country. The Sandinistas created a full working health and education programme, that was absent under the rule of the Somozas who had preceded them and been overthrown in 1979.

Under pressure from the US, and their funded Contras, Nicaragua made concessions to the Western world and introduced representative democracy for their first elections in 1984. They were acknowledged to be “free and fair” elections by everyone but the US.

For the US, Nicaragua was a symbol of the Communist threat. Reagan (or someone from his administration) famously said that the “Sandinistas were 48 hours from Texas”- creating the impression that this poor, tiny nation was a direct threat to the US at a time when US-Soviet relations were improving. To think anyone could believe that the Nicaraguans were capable of travelling to the US let alone invade it, is beyond me.

Today, the Sandinistas are a different party and Ortega is now as left wing as Reaganism is (was). To believe that they represented a threat in the 1980s was wishful thinking on the Pentagon’s front. To believe that they are capable of anything such as that today is naive.

I posted an article last week about planned changes to the FoI Act that could make it very difficult for journalists to make requests under the act.  Part of basis for the changes is a report by Frontier Economics which claimed that the FoI requests were costing the taxpayer £35 million a year.  The Campaign for Freedom of Information (CfoI) made a request to the Department of Constitutional Affairs for access to the data used to formulate the report.  This request was denied on the grounds that the information “relates to the formulation and development of government policy” which makes it exempt from disclosure under the FoI Act.  As pointed out by Maurice Frankel of CfoI “The whole debate becomes very difficult if the Government is not prepared to release the factual survey which forms the basis of the Frontier Economics report.”

Quite what’s to be done when the department responsible for the FoI act are plucking numbers out of the air and then stifling attempts to call them up on this I don’t know.  That the FoI Act contains a clause allowing the government not to reveal the information it uses in policy decisions points to how little the government really believe in openness.

Via Out-Law.com.

Amnesty International have a new campaign to highlight how freedom of speech on the web is under threat - a worthwhile cause.

They point to bloggers who have been locked up for putting their political views on the web. They want people to sign their pledge at irrepressible.info. I’ve been trying to access the site for ages, and all i get is an error message.

Do you think that someone is trying to cull their freedom of speech on the web?

Let me know if you manage to get on.

Update - It’s now working (13.40) after trying for most of the morning (although I did receive a few server errors when trying to send my pledge). I suggest you sign this, although I can’t see what good it’ll do. Government’s will just ignore it.

The Department of Constitutional Affairs (DCA) today announced changes to the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act which would increase administrative charges for requests made under the act. Increased charges would lead to a greater number of requests breaking the £600 threshold above which a request can be denied due to cost. According to Maurice Frankel of the Campaign for Freedom of Information the changes “…would knock out a significant volume of the most important requests on public issues so it would have a pretty drastic effect on the legislation.” In addition to this it will become possible for information holders to refuse requests if the total of cost of requests from a single organisation in a 3 month period exceeds the £600 threshold. This bundling of requests would have a serious impact on the ability of journalists working for large organisations to make requests. It has been suggested that the changes would also make it particularly difficult to question ministers since passing a request up to a minister immediately adds several hundred pounds to the cost of a request. Needless to say a spokesman for the DCA (sort of) denied that the changes were intended to decrease legitimate use of the act - “The government are doing what they always said and reviewing the position after 12 to 18 months live running and considering changes in light of experience.”

I’ve no doubt that the FoI Act is used to make frivolous requests and that these cost the taxpayer money. However given the government’s willingness to waste money on say a giant tent, their zealous pursuit of savings in the case of FoI suggests that there might be more to the changes than just the finances. It’s all very depressing really, once again the government seem to have forgotten that they work for us not on a higher plane were they must occasionally tolerate requests from the proles. Hopefully further oversight freedom minded backbenchers or an outcry from the media will prevent these proposals from passing into law.

More at The Register.

Finally some outline of what’s going to be done with the House of Lords. But will the plans outlined by Straw, leaked to the Sunday Times, really reduce patronage?

Although many of the details don’t seem that different to those considered back in 2003, it’s worth going over what’s in the Times. They say that:

Only 50% will be elected, the other half is apparently to be chosen by a 9 person commission whose role is to make appointments to the upper chamber. Each party will have to submit a list to them for approval - A good attempt to end patronage, although what you have to do to get on the list is unclear.

There is a suggestion that the PM will be able to bypass the commission and appoint a few members - so the same system then, just with a commission to rubber stamp the nominations.

The plan suggests using the list system of proportional representation similar to the Scottish system for the elected half. The Scots use PR to elect regional representatives. However this allows patronage because it is the party that decides who’s on the list and who’s not - one feels that the PM will certainly have an influence here.

The best way forward is to make it more democratic (or 100% elected) and adopt the Wakefield report recommendations that:

A majority of the members of the new House will be nominated by the political parties, in proportions intended to reflect the shares of the national vote in the previous General Election.

This is what is required in a liberal democratic state. For too long we have stood by and allowed the authoritarian patriarchal system of government to continue, it must be stopped.

Like she really had much of a choice.  At least as an Independent she can now campaign for the lib dems a hung parliament  without upsetting those who sit next to her. 

Personally I think her sentiment is correct.  The best thing for Labour would be a hung parliament - if Labour MPs start losing their seats it would give them an imputus to rethink Labour’s losing strategy and become more relevant to the country.

Iain Dale mentioned today the threat his new web TV site, 18 Doughty Street, faces from the Television Without Frontiers directive - a directive that is ill considered and unenforceable, don’t forget that there’s always a way on the web.

Don’t worry, according to The Times Shaun Woodward is on the case.

In our interview with Iain Dale last week we warned him about this, he said (20 mins in) “Well the EU can talk about a lot of things, if they seriously start regulating the internet then we’ll have a Soviet style system, which some think we have already.” - Luckily Dale’s got a backup plan - move the channel to Sky!

It seems that the EU has decided to limit its 50th anniversary celebrations planned for next year. Originally there were to be 50 days of fireworks, parties, flag waving and fun. Now instead they’ve chosen some sickening exciting plans for citizen ambassadors who will tell how the EU influnces their lives. I wonder if they’ve also cancelled the motto/flag competition?!

But why the changes?

• Grandiose parties clearly are always open to criticism, especially when the EU costs taxpayers a lot of money - it raises questions such as are fireworks a good use of our money?!
• Its very difficult for the EU to do something “successful” in every member state. This clearly takes a lot of organisation. There’s a number of celebrations (such as the European Day of Languages and European Mobilty week) that we never hear much about.
• Some thought that the celebrations were going to be used as an opportunity to relaunch the EU Constitution - or at least a new treaty. Do the changes mean that this is also off the agenda.

The Indy reports that Government air travel has created 1000 tonnes of CO2 in the last year - clearly the Government’s going to have to deal with this if they want the rest of us to reduce our emissions (apart from continuing with the policy of carbon offsetting which doesnt reduce our environmental impact).

Many of these trips are for EU business, such as meetings in Brussels. The Lib Dems reckon only 30 tonnes could be saved by travelling on Eurostar instead. Further savings could clearly be made by conference calls, but many ministers will argue that it is important to carry out meetings in person.

Clearly this is a good argument for withdrawal from the EU (ministers won’t have to fly to Brussels) or complete integration of the EU (everything will be done in Brussels without ministers), depending on your political stance. Maybe even getting the MEPs who are already there to do more. On that note I wonder what the environmental damage of using Strasbourg Parliament is?!

Updated! - It seems that I’ve missed the point of this article and reported what I wanted to see. There’s a great graph in the Indy print version (just a list of figures online) showing that using Eurostar will actually significantly reduce the emissions created by visiting Brussels. Europe counts for less than 30% of the Government’s CO2 emissions from air travel, and this could be reduced by 90% by using Eurostar. Clearly we should force ministers to travel everywhere by train. It’s only 3 changes and 2 nights to get to Russia.

Thanks to Liam Byrne, the Home Office Minister, we now know what the Home Office thinks what the costs of introducing ID cards will be. A staggering £5.4 billion over 10 years - plus an extra billion or so.

For that we could have about 18 hospitals.