Curated from , written by Robin Valk

There are many reasons to bemoan the huge loss of broadcasting jobs in our region. The best is simple economics, but a bit of fairplay wouldn’t hurt. The Midlands region pays more license fees, but sees less BBC spending, than any other region.  

BBC regional spend by license fee payer

As far as the Midlands media industry is concerned, it’s not even a case of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. You can’t shut a door that’s been smashed to pieces and left hanging off its hinges. 

It’s taken years, decades. Thousands of jobs have gone. So it was interesting to attend the freshly-formed ‘ first meeting. New to me and probably you, but with a formidable array of mainly BBC Drama and TV contacts, this took place on Thursday this past week. During the meeting, some breathtaking statistics were reeled out, which you really should know about. 

The fact is, things are bad – really bad. If we ever want to see a proper grown-up media sector in our region again, there’s a lot of ground to cover, a lot of assumptions to challenge, and a lot of attitudes to confront. Locally, a toxic combination of laziness, arrogance, bad thinking and poor decisions has sped the process along. More after the jump.  

Curated from , written by Deirdre Alden

Next week’s Council papers have been published, and the Question Time session has been axed. The first explanation given for this was that there is never a question time session on Budget Day. When a quick check of previous year’s papers proved this to be patently untrue, the new explanation was that at the same time as it was decided to lengthen the Question Time session this municipal year, it was also decided not to include the session on budget day.

Of course it would take a sizeable chunk of time out of the pitifully short meeting which now passes for a Full Council meeting in Birmingham under Labour, but then there is nothing to stop the budget day meeting being extended to allow for questions AND a decent debate on the budget. When John was first a Councillor (he was elected in 1983), budget meetings regularly went on till very late in the evening. This Labour administration however prefers Council meetings to be over by 6.30 pm so they can all pack up and go home early.

So Question Time is axed this month. Ah well, I suppoe it’s one way to protect the Cabinet Member for a Green, Safe and Smart City from a barrage of hostile questions about wheelie bins like he faced last month.

Curated from , written by Editor

by Peter Watt

Imagine for a minute if there was a terrible accident that claimed a hundred lives; it would dominate the news for weeks.  Or the outbreak of food poisoning caused by some poor hygiene in a major food distributor that made some people ill and perhaps a few poor vulnerable souls to die; it would be a huge story.  The horsemeat scandal has been front page news for days and it’s not (yet) a public health concern.  And yet 1200 people are allowed to die unnecessarily in a NHS hospital and no one seems to notice!  The report into failings at the Mid Staffs hospital was news for a day – and on some outlets it didn’t even top the news schedule for the whole day.  Up to ten other hospitals are now being looked at as their mortality rates are worryingly high.  What is going on?

It really is bizarre; no matter how many times we read about those unable to help themselves being left in wet or soiled beds or left to starve in one of our hospitals it seems to make no difference.  There is an attitude about the NHS that makes it all but un-challengeable.  Politicians in particular are scared of the NHS.  The Tories decided to ring-fence the NHS budget when they were busy slashing virtually every other departmental budget so scared were they of being seen as anti-NHS.  Labour wraps itself in the NHS flag at every opportunity.  Labour politicians who’ve tried to tinker with it are castigated – Alan Milburn and John Reid still have the scars.  We say things like “the NHS is the envy of the world.”  And seem to actually believe it!  The truth is that virtually no other country has copied it as a model.

What is true is that many countries rightly envy the fact that we have universal free health care, they don’t though envy the way that we have chosen to deliver it.  Yes there are some incredible people working for the NHS that provide a great quality of care.  And yes, many of these people work hard and, often under great pressure care for patients with skill and compassion.  But every time anyone criticises the NHS as a model of health care delivery, people tell stories of amazing care and lives saved.  We remember the care that we had when we or a loved one needed it.  We remember that we, and our children were born in NHS hospitals and look with fear at the health care system in the States.  Those criticising are branded as anti-NHS and people back off.

And the result of this NHS cult is that we are never quite brave enough to face the truth.  That the NHS is inefficient, just think IT procurement!  That it is bureaucratic, cumbersome and unresponsive.  That it doesn’t deliver universal care as what is delivered depends on where you live.  That the rationing of care is already a reality but that we dishonestly pretend otherwise. That whilst there are some really dedicated staff there are also some who need sacking and prosecuting for abusing the vulnerable.  That there really are too many hospitals in London and it is right that some should close.  That the repeated and frequent stories of cruelty and abuse are a national disgrace that should shame us all.  It is worth remembering that the Mid Staffs scandal happened at a time of unprecedented rises in NHS budgets under a Labour government.

And yet we hear that the problems are just the result of cuts and low staff levels.

The party that is rightly so proud of creating the NHS should be the one that is now fighting angrily for a better way.  After all, those rich enough can and do buy their way out of the system.  In fact, it very well may be that politically it could only be a Labour government that could make the changes needed.  The Tories simply wouldn’t be trusted.  But Labour could do it; Labour could start to be honest about health care with voters.

Andy Burnham has begun to do this with some genuinely new thinking about lessons learned from the Francis report.  He has been thoughtful, insightful and honest in his thinking and acknowledges many of the failings in the NHS and of some of Labour’s reforms.  He has drawn in response to Francis:

• That NHS culture has become too commercial and target driven;
• That we need ‘whole person care’ that better integrates health and social care’
• That we need a more cautious approach to top-down change.

But is that really it?  In response to the inefficiency, the unnecessary deaths and suffering, the dishonest approach to rationing – that is it?  Shouldn’t we be demanding the full integration of health and social care provision and an NHS that is more local and locally managed?  Are we really saying that the very best way of delivering health to 60,000,000 people is a service directed from Whitehall?  And that we are going to avoid talking about the need for further rationing?  Of course we should provide free health care and I want my grandkids born in local hospitals.  Yes there are some really dedicated staff in the NHS.  But unless we face up to the very real failings of the system then we are letting people down.  As Robert Francis QC, concluded in his inquiry into Mid Staffs:

“A number of staff and managers at the hospital, rather than reflecting on their role and responsibility, have attempted to minimise the significance of the Healthcare Commission’s findings. The evidence gathered by this Inquiry means there can no longer be any excuses for denying the scale of failure. If anything, it is greater than has been revealed to date. The deficiencies at the Trust were systemic, deep-rooted and too fundamental to brush off as isolated incidents.”

It’s time for Labour to be brave.

was general secretary of the Labour party

Curated from , written by Nick Cohen

I went to the Toynbee Hall, the meeting place for the radical east end, this week to listen to a debate many radicals would rather not hear.

British Asian feminists and their supporters had gathered to launch the an organisation whose work I would say is close to essential. It is not fashionable, however, because its focus is the collusion between the Anglo-American left and the Islamist right, which has betrayed so many Muslims and ex-Muslims, most notably Muslim and ex-Muslim women. Gita Sahgal, Nehru’s great niece, became the movement’s figurehead and eloquent spokeswoman when the once respectable and now contemptible Amnesty International for protesting about its promotion of supporters of the Taliban. She and her allies are now trying to stir Britain’s sleeping conscience.

The failure of Britain’s liberal establishment and white left to combat reactionary religion, or even call it by its real name, stuns them. I can say from experience that if I talk about the “American Christian right” or the “Israeli right” no one will blink. Nor should they, I am using specific terms whose meanings are clear. When I use equally precise language talk about the “Muslim right,” one of the great forces of reaction in the world today, my comrades either go blank, because I am using language they cannot understand, or accuse me of” racism,” lack of “empathy,” inappropriate “language” or some other gross offence against modern etiquette.

Meredith Tax, a battle hardened campaigner, has had

Nobody on the left ever objected when I criticized Christian or Jewish fundamentalism. But when I did defence work for censored Muslim feminists, people would look at me sideways, as if to say, who are you to talk about this? This tendency has become much more marked since 9/11 and the “war on terror.” Today on the left and in some academic circles, people responding to attacks on Muslim feminists in other countries are likely to be accused of reinforcing the “victim-savage-saviour” framework or preparing for the next US invasion. This puts anyone working with actual women’s human rights defenders in places like North Africa or Pakistan in an impossible situation.

Other speakers were from Southall Black Sisters, Bengali secular campaigns against Tower Hamlets’ Islamist establishment and Iranian resistance groups – classic left wing figures, in other words. Yet they are ignored or in the case of Sahgal fired for speaking out.

All emphasized how many in the British state and British left were racists hiding behind liberal masks. On the left, the racism came in the constant postponement of campaigns to improve women’s lives whether they are immigrants or in the poor world. Their suffering must always be subordinated to the struggle against “American imperialism”. This would be bad enough if we did not see from the far Left way into the liberal mainstream supposed progressives allying with clerical reactionaries and clerical fascists. They ignore the victims of theocracy and accept their oppression.

You might think that Sahgal and her comrades would be inundated with offers of support. At one level they are. Politicians, journalists and honourable people from all backgrounds want to hear the arguments they are making. But they are desperately short of funds. The institutions of liberalism, which ought to be their friends and donors, have been taken over by anti-liberal men and women. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch look with horror on those who speak out about murder, mutilation and oppression if the murderers, mutilators and oppressors do not fit into their script. The Guardian, New Statesman and BBC turn away with embarrassed coughs. The police want to keep the natives of the East End quiet by cooperate with Islamic Forum Europe. Although Labour ministers, particularly Labour women ministers, tried to speak out against the double standards during the last government, the policy of the Labour establishment has been to do nothing to upset the ethnic block vote. The Liberal Democrats meanwhile are as reliably anti-liberal on this issue as on so many others. It tells you all you need to know about the debased state of liberal-left politics that Sahgal and Tax are more likely to get a fair hearing from Cameron than Miliband or Clegg

To give you an example of how deep the rot has penetrated, take the behaviour of Human Rights Watch. Its executive director Kenneth Roth urged Western governments to support the Muslim Brotherhood governments in the Middle East. (Roth cannot, you see, confine himself to reporting abuses of human rights without fear or favour. He is too grand for that now, and issues orotund statements on foreign policy as if he were Henry Kissinger, a cynical old brute he is starting to resemble.)

Sahgal replied

Y

ou fail to call for the most basic guarantee of rights—the separation of religion from the state. Salafi mobs have caned women in Tunisian cafes and Egyptian shops; attacked churches in Egypt; taken over whole villages in Tunisia and shut down Manouba University for two months in an effort to exert social pressure on veiling. And while “moderate Islamist” leaders say they will protect the rights of women (if not gays), they have done very little to bring these mobs under control. You, however, are so unconcerned with the rights of women, gays, and religious minorities that you mention them only once, as follows: “Many Islamic parties have indeed embraced disturbing positions that would subjugate the rights of women and restrict religious, personal, and political freedoms. But so have many of the autocratic regimes that the West props up.” Are we really going to set the bar that low? This is the voice of an apologist, not a senior human rights advocate.

I hope you could hear a lot more in that vein. The trouble is that because the Centre for Secular Space argues against our shifty consensus it has no money. They need everything from computers to wages for secretaries. If you can help at all, even by giving them an old laptop, please contact them via the

The post appeared first on .

Curated from , written by martin mullaney

Why I will be chaining myself to Moseley Road baths this Thursday 14th February

This Thursday, 14th February, between 10am and 12noon I will be chaining myself to Moseley Road baths at protest against Bir

mingham City Council’s recent decision to cancel the Heritage Lottery bid for phase 1 of the restoration of the baths AND its announcement that once the current boilers break down or the buildings have a structural fault they will be permanently closing the building to swimming. Readers of my blog will know that both the boilers and the roof of the building are on their last legs and probably won’t last longer than 2015.

I will be wearing an Edwardian swimming costume, since Moseley Road baths are the last completely intact and operating Edwardian swimming baths in Britain. Statutory listed Grade II* – less than 10% of listed buildings have such a high listing – these baths are not only important to Balsall Heath, but are of national importance.

I was Cabinet member for Leisure, Sport and Culture for Birmingham City Council from 2009 to 2012 and led on the Council’s Heritage Lottery bid for these baths. In March 2012, I persuaded my Cabinet colleagues to commit to allocating £3million of 2015/16 capital money from the Council’s budget, which would be used as match funding against a bid for £5million from the Heritage Lottery fund.

The total cost of this phase 1 of the restoration of Moseley Road baths would have been…

• Read Martin Mullaney’s post in full .