Porn-again government

Amazingly, the Prime Minister and his government want to ban access to internet pornography.

Yes, the politician who is best friends with Murdoch, The Sun and a range of unsavoury characters associated with that newspaper, most famous for a) accusing Liverpool fans of urinating on their comrades' dead bodies and b) running a daily picture of a young lady with her secondary sexual characteristics on display.

Clearly he's decided, à la Marshall McLuhan, that the medium is the message. Paper-porn: fine. Screen-porn: evil. And maybe there's something in this: printed material is easier to regulate and it's probably harder to acquire the vilest stuff if you have to run the gauntlet of a shopkeeper rather than simply lock yourself in the bathroom with an iPad.

You can see the attractions. Nobody wins votes by declaring that porn's fine, help yourself, relax. Not with the Daily Mail about, anyway. Let's not get into a discussion of whether the Daily Mail's constant diet of pictures of underage girls in bikinis is paedophilic (it is). That would just muddy the waters. Every government wants to be seen to oppose Filth. The more Filth you claim is out there, the more Filth you can claim to have cleared up in the face of Anonymous Offshore ISPs who Don't Care About Your Kiddies. The more Filth you clear up, the more votes you get.

This time, the Prime Minister has hit on a wheeze.



Previous governments have persuaded ISPs to instal filters which 'parents' (apparently the only citizens worth giving a flying one about) have to opt into to block pornography. They like it that way: no providers want to make their customers answer the question 'are you a filthy pervert?'. Filthy perverts make up a large proportion of the customer base and you don't want to alienate them. Especially if the filth they're downloading is perfectly legal. There are laws against downloading certain kinds of porn. And there are laws against ISPs making them available. Those intent on circulating or consuming illegal pornography are, I suspect, beyond Googling for their particular interest and won't be affected at all by the proposed tweak. There is an internet out there beyond Google and Facebook, you know. So what we have here is a crackdown against people who have tastes you and I (possibly) don't share.

So the Prime Minister's solution is to make open access the default, while allowing filters to be installed. This is called 'active choice'.

The Prime Minister's wheeze is both genius, and cynical. He's written to the ISP's demanding action. Sorry, not action but rebranding.

"Without changing what you will be offering (ie active-choice +), the prime minister would like to be able to refer to your solutions [as] 'default-on'"

I'll type that again in case you didn't get it:

"Without changing what you will be offering (ie active-choice +), the prime minister would like to be able to refer to your solutions [as] 'default-on'"

That's right. He's suggesting that the ISPs connive with him in a cynical attempt to garner approving Daily Mail headlines by actively misleading their customers, rather than actually do anything.

Sigh. We've been here before. Every three months or so, some Tory MP demands that all citizens be blinded by red-hot pokers to prevent them from seeing Filth. I have no doubt that the Pharoahs campaigned against Sick Perverted Hieroglyphics ('er, look, that one's having sex with someone he isn't related to') and under-the-counter papyri. I'm also reminded of one fact I took away from a class I attended on pornography: that it took a mere 7 years from the invention of photography before a man was arrested for trading mucky pictures featuring a lady with a Shetland pony. I'm not sure that adds to the debate but it's a mental image that you'll find difficult to shake off.

I think my main point is that moral panics always attend new technological developments. After a while, things settle down, but the intervening period is ripe for political exploitation. What's interesting about Cameron is the sheer cynicism of trying to make political capital while simply doing nothing. He clearly doesn't really care about the issue he's manufactured: it's just a stunt.

Filters don't work. Any child with two brain cells to rub together will be able to get round one. Any child with one brain cell will be able to Google for instructions about how to get round filters. These supposed technical fixes are a massive evasion of the real challenge. You don't put an electric fence round the tiger enclosure so that potential trespassers learn they'll get a mild shock if they cross the barrier. You make it clear that if you go into the tiger enclosure, you'll get eaten. A couple of years ago, I heard some Sir Bufton Tufton backbench Tory MP demand that the government protect his children from Internet Pornography. I was suprised to hear an instinctive small-state libertarian demanding state intervention: these are of course the people who don't want to outlaw smoking around children etc. etc.

So I wrote to him with a suggestion: instead of demanding that the state mandates some useless technical fix (the electric fence), how about he engage in some parenting? Actually educate his kids about what pornography is, what its social effects might be, and what healthy sexuality involves (and yes, for some people this might include some use of pornography). Then he could monitor his kids' internet use, or simply keep the computer in the drawing room rather than have one in every bedroom.

Obviously he didn't reply.

Every society generates pornography, and then argues about what constitutes porn. I can't help recalling that Jilly Cooper's Rivals breathlessly follows the sexual adventures of Caitlin O'Hara, culminating in her defloration a full week after she reaches the age of consent. That certainly makes me more uncomfortable than the idea that people are looking at pictures of consenting adults. The same goes for the Mail's obsession with the bodies of celebrities' children, encapsulated in the revolting phrase 'all grown up'. I'm not keen on pornography. I find it reductive, exploitative and often boring - though amongst my 4000+ books there are plenty are or would have been considered pornographic by previous generations. I don't necessarily oppose the production of texts or images that give people a sexual thrill: I just oppose the conditions of their production and the sexual politics of most pornography. And they're mostly rubbish. Then again, my experience with such stuff is rather limited. A few tatty magazines passed around in school; foreign Channel 4 films in the days when it wasn't wall-to-wall exploitation of the sick and poor; some novels recommended with nods and winks and that's about it. I don't have the internet at home (I know, I'm such a luddite) and my office colleagues would probably prefer that I didn't explore the web's sexier corners while I'm at work. Besides, I've enough novels left unread without adding to the pile.

My views are encapsulated by Pulp's creepy, exhausted, claustrophobic 'This Is Hardcore', the song that called time on the Carry-On lad culture of Britpop (sorry about the ads: I wish a government scheme would filter them out):



It would take a brighter person than either me or the Prime Minister to work out where the border is between the erotic and the pornographic. The difference between us is that I'm not chasing headlines, and I believe that most people, given the right education, are capable of sensibly differentiating between harmful and harmless use of erotic materials. Nor do I believe that governments should use moral pressure to end the use of material of which they don't approve but are too cowardly to ban. You can't legislate for culture – but you can encourage a more grown-up approach. The problem the Prime Minister has is that he's in denial. He's torn between the hypocritical conservatism of the Mail and its readers who hark back to a (non-existent) period of innocence and the conservatism of his free-market friends who will always find profit in the human body and the sexual act.

The Media Blog has helpfully pointed out how the Mail is reporting Cameron's announcement:

It's easy for me: as an anti-capitalist, I can say that capitalism will always exploit sexuality, will always reduce the body to the labour it produces. Without capitalism, perhaps a healthier sexuality will be possible, or at least a less exploitative and misogynistic pornography industry. Plenty of hard-left and libertarian thinkers believe that once exploitative capitalism and repressive hegemony are removed from the picture, we'll live in a poly-sexual paradise in which all sexual practices are demystified and equally fulfilling and respectable.  I'm not entirely convinced: plenty of sexual Utopiae (look at the 60s communes) lead to vicious harm.

He can't address the relationship between capitalism and pornography because his solution to everything from the NHS to nuclear weapons is that the market is good. To be consistent, he has to accept that individuals have the right to sell their labour – even sexually – for corporate profit. I simply don't accept this premise. Cameron's solution is sheer cant: avoiding his responsibility as a legislator and proposing deception to the market rather than taking a concrete position. The worst of both worlds.

When the 'debate' is reduced to cynical politicians reacting to the demands of cynical newspapers, all nuance is deliberately lost. That's why the Labour Party's response is 'OK, but that's not repressive enough'. I really wish they'd said 'stop mucking around with moral panics and improve school and parental sex education'.

As I said, we teach a module here which includes a session on pornography. It takes a cultural and historical approach and invites students (fully prepared and invited to opt-in) to discuss the shifting boundaries of taboo. We discuss the social contexts of forbidden texts, and explore the boundaries of what's acceptable in public discourse. There's a really simple reason for this: millions of people consume pornography. More than read Jane Austen, I suspect.* We need to talk about what people actually do rather than what they should do. Governments making it more difficult to access this stuff doesn't stop people wanting to access it. It's like I said to the Tory MP: fiddling with the technical stuff is an evasion of his public and private duty. It's much more mature to clearly delineate what's legal, then make sure adults and children understand the nature of pornography and its use within a civilised framework. Porn isn't going to go away. Fetishising it with technological obstacles isn't going to make it less attractive to some people: it's going to be more attractive. Whereas an education system which contextualises it might make porn less exciting.

But then we might have to examine the Mail's Sidebar of Shame, or Mr Murdoch's Page 3. And we can't have that.

And while we're at it, what's more pornographic than the world's media training its cameras and notebooks expectantly on a young woman's vagina waiting for the birth of another benefits-dependent child of workshy parents royal baby?

*For those of you who enjoy both Jane Austen and pornography, I can recommend Arielle Eckstut's Pride and Promiscuity: the Lost Sex Scenes of Jane Austen (as endorsed by the Jane Austen Society of America) and Szereto's Jane Austen: Hidden Lusts, both of which have considerably more respect for Austen's prose than P. D. James's execrable Death Comes To Pemberley. 

The dumbest guys in the room want a word with you

In case you've missed the obscure rustlings in the Tory undergrowth, there's a new and only fitfully literate manifesto out from the Forty Group. These are the forty Tories in the most marginal seats - the mediocrities not expected to win last time and destined for a watery grave in 2015 barring the government giving us all everlasting-life pills and flying cars between now and then.

It's a fascinating read. It's the product of people who appear to have been imprisoned in the basement of a think-tank since the Suez Crisis. Everything has passed them by: racial equality, the EU, the crashes of the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, sexual liberation and equality, the end of Empire: the lot. It's like the company directors of Barnes' satirical England, England, or the near-future Tory government of McEwan's A Child In Time: fuelled by paranoia and sexual damage. All you need to heal the country is to hand it over to Big Business and sterilise the poor and the young. You think I'm joking? Read on…

Needless to say, my egregious, poisonous, dishonest and vacuous MP Mr Paul Uppal is one of the conspirators, never having met a short-sighted, reactionary and revanchist idea he hasn't liked. Not that he contributed any of the ideas, of course: his grey matter is too busy inventing evidence for Parliamentary speeches. One of life's sidekicks, our Uppal. He's the Richard Hammond to the government's Clarkson: he enjoys the cruelty but doesn't have the imagination or wit to do anything more than cheer it on.

So let's have a look at these intellectual adventurers' solutions to the country's ills:

1. “Excessive regulation is the biggest brake on our business
expansion."

This sets the tone for the entire document. The innocuous tone of this assertion belies a total absence of fact (who says? one-third of Chambers of Commerce survey respondents: not exactly clinching), and in particular ignores the biggest credit crunch and recession since the Weimar Republic, which I would consider a greater drag on business than 'excessive regulation'. This is simply imported American small-state ideology unconvincingly dressed up as fact. Surely nobody could object to 'excessive' regulation? But what do they mean by 'excessive' and 'regulation'? Easy: they're free-market ideologues (in theory: Uppal wants tax breaks for commercial landlords like, er, him). To them, all 'regulation' is excessive. And what they mean by 'regulation' is things like pollution restrictions, the minimum wage, unfair dismissal protection, the right to organise, to be protected from sexual or racial harassment, to a working life that takes into account family needs. It also – explicitly in this manifesto – means exempting small companies from contributing to employees' pensions. The result? Either they starve or the costs are passed on to the state.

What these people want is the capitalist dystopia of Back to the Future II before Marty goes back and saves the day from Biff Tannen. The problem with the Forty Group is that given a choice between Democracy and the Triumph of the Market, they plump for the market every time – because they've benefited from both markets and (though they'd deny it) democracy and the state. The experiences of those they're meant to represent are far less important than the Hayek and Pinochet they cream over in private. The Market is what needs appeasing: not the humans for whom (they forget) politics serves.

Big idea No 2 is 'more female entrepreneurs'. And celebrating the ones we have. Not exactly a policy, and again, it leaves unquestioned the notion of entrepreneurship, which is far less economically important than the discourse around it suggests. All 60 million of us can't be entrepreneurs, nor can all 30 million women. The glaring absence of any actual ideas suggests that 'women' as a concept are fairly alien to the authors and not at all a priority.

Moving on to number 3, we discover that discredited, dystopian, Ballardian notion of handing over Town Centres to private businesses, neatly ensuring that Consumers (we're no longer citizens) aren't impeded by unproductive drones: people taking the air, holding protests, chatting or otherwise subverting the Business of Business. The dreaded Portas is invoked in the course of a plea to turn over our towns to cars and shopkeepers: physically and legally. It's a bleak vision but a profitable one for someone who'd directly profit from this policy.

The next bit wounds me deeply:

“Universities offer a perfect environment for fledging businesses.”

Actually, universities offer a perfect environment for critiquing and comprehending the status quo, including capitalism. The problem is that these guys are spiritually poor: like Gradgrind, they can't see further than the balance sheet (and certainly don't want to address capitalism's manifest failures: another advantage of ignoring recent history).

The plot here is to make universities become profit centres, mini-industrial estates, the butlers of businesses, entirely subservient to the (often short-sighted) demands of businesses, which would – surprise – get another tax break. In case you've forgotten, universities are about new ideas and not simply reinforcing the prejudices of the hegemony (which is why Mr Gove hates us so much).

No. 5 proposes encouraging more people to start their own business. Hard to object, though it's marginal at best: most people work in, and want to work in, stable established businesses. The meat of the idea, if we're being kind, is to suffuse schooling and higher education with capitalist propaganda: this isn't policy, it's a naked attempt to turn Britons into a nation of alienated privateers, a programme already advanced by the wholesale abandonment of secondary education to the tender mercies of the very shady businessmen currently 'sponsoring' academies. The result will be a country of obedient conformists in a nation safe for exploiters, polluters and rent-seekers.  

The same is true of the next section: elevating 'workplace skills' rather than merely 'intellectual skills'. Presumably this will include Advanced Loyalty, Total Submission and Shutting Up. Then we're back to free-market capitalists' demands for more taxpayers' money. The State is evil, unless it's bankrolling these Tories' friends:

A state-backed Enterprise Bank could be a permanent solution to the lending gap and would lend to any company

The next section continues the theme: it namechecks Germany's industrial success without mentioning the employee-union-owner structure. Instead, industrial success depends (brace yourself) on handing over the State to business:

More must be done to address politicians’ knowledge gap of industry through better cooperation and collaboration with industry itself. This means having those who have served in the sector taking more prominent roles in the relevant departments of BIS and the Treasury and more policies that actively promote manufacturing. 

This is a tacit admittance that these politicians are anti-politics. They don't negotiate the competing requirements of the people: they just want to hand the state over to their mates. They also don't want to address economic matters. To them, manufacturing is held back by whinging lefties, not macro-economic factors. Once we 'free' children to stitch footballs, we'll all get rich. And once we unblock those outflow pipes:

Policies that are aimed at tackling climate change have their heart in the right place but are stifling industry.

They also want us to fly everywhere too.

The global trade section is particularly backward looking, to the League of Empire Loyalists. Instead of trading with those perfidious Europeans, the UK should demand that those disloyal Commonwealth johnnies should show some gratitude and shovel their dinero Britain's way. You know Godwin's Law? That the first person to mention the Nazis in pursuit of an argument, has lost. Voila:

World War Two demonstrated the extent to which we need countries like Australia and New Zealand to overcome obstacles and challenges, and in present times the Commonwealth could provide the key to our part in the global economic recovery… Traditional links should be at the forefront of any anti-trade barrier argument and there is nothing wrong with playing on old sympathies

And then we get to another nasty little surprise: the 'logistics friendly' government, i.e. one which encourages more and bigger lorries onto the road while ignoring mass transit such as rail. Less a policy, more a present for their mates. But this is just a warmup for the real nastiness: energy policy. Dig, drill, burn and rape with no regard for environmentalism – particularly fracking. The Big Idea is in fact Deny and Defer.

This gas should be used to replace coal and oil in our power stations, producing a reduction in our carbon emissions on an order of magnitude greater than anything achieved to date by wind or solar.

This is offensively dishonest: shale gas is a fossil fuel. It's better than coal, but there's no way on earth it'll be used as a temporary stopgap on the way to a carbon-free future. It's just a greedy, selfish fuck-you to our descendants. The only think climate change is good for is making money: the unspoken assumption is that it's all a big hoax:

let the market take its course. The plethora of artificial incentives, such as feed in tariffs and renewables obligations, should be phased out…

Though they are deeply interested in geothermal energy, which I had no idea was or could be a major player in UK generation. Presumably one of their donors has some hot water going cold without subsidy.

But we need to give projects like this greater government support.

To help geothermal companies attract private investment we need to create the right financial incentives using the Strike Price and the Renewable Heat Incentive. At the moment less technologically proven and cost effective renewable energy technologies receive larger incentives. 

But now we're getting close to these guys' hearts. Having spent an awful lot of our imaginary money subsidising their mates' businesses, they address tax. And guess what? They're not keen. The magic word here is 'simplification', by which they mean 'less tax for corporations and the rich'. But they don't say so. Embarrassingly, the policy doesn't have a single word to say about income tax, corporation tax, artificial vehicles, off-shoring, evasion or avoidance. Instead, they propose that public servants' tax returns be made public. And that's it.

But when we turn to property, we're reminded strongly that this is the manifesto of the 1%. The pressing issue is apparently too much taxation on property sales. Not the massive gap between salaries and property prices. Instead, they want to reinstate the Property Madness which condemned most of to mouldy flats and the extortion practiced by landlords like Uppal.

The housing market is in need of a tax neutral nudge in the right direction to make it more buoyant and fair. 

Ah yes, the 'nudge theory'. Who needs to bother the populus's pretty little heads with ideas? And what to we onlookers get as a reward for tolerating gimcrack developments thrown up willy-nilly?

Maybe a playground for local children, maybe the renovation of the Parish Hall. The sums will be minor

Even the most naked attacks on our collective decisions are dressed spuriously in the language of liberation. Everything our local authorities do, it's assumed, is repressive and incompetent. We busy people are to be freed… but only to choose a different corporate interest:

the localism act introduced a ‘community right to challenge’ clause which gives community and voluntary groups a ‘right’ to challenge a local authority for the services they provide.
The clause is limited in that it merely provides for a local authority to trigger a procurement process which may mean that the challenging group is not successful in being commissioned to provide the service.
There is a need to create much more diversity of provision at the local level which harnesses the expertise, skill and knowledge of a the community and voluntary sector. 

Yes, it's illiterate, but you have to look at the discourse as well as the typing. Elected local government = Stalinist Monster. 'Diversity of provision' sounds lovely.

Local groups should also be encouraged and similarly incentivised to challenge as consortia which would enable a consortia of local groups the ability to challenge for a range of services. For example a consortia of local groups currently providing youth services outside of that which is provided by the local authority could come together to put in a joint bid for the whole of a local authorities youth provision. Local authorities should actively encourage and facilitate these local consortia.

It took me a while to get the hang of this illiterate garbage, but I think what they're really saying is this:

We all like diversity. But really it means public services sold off to offshore, tax-evading, profit-increasing, service-reducing, unaccountable, wage-lowering exploiters.

Only they think these are positive terms.

You can have a small prize if you can explain this sentence:

we need to write the independence of local government into our unwritten constitutional arrangements.

Er…how?

Apparently Local Government is going to be freed from the Tyranny of Central Government through establishing a Decentralisation Committee. Excellent. Where's it going to be located? 10 Downing Street! Who's going to head it? The Prime Minister. Glad that's clear.

Another example of the group's faux niceness is the section on Community Hospitals. They're for them, and opposed to the centralisation of specialities in mega-hospitals. Medical madness, of course: you want your child's heart surgery done by a doctor who does these ops every day, not one who gets one every few years. But there are no votes in closing down St. Teacosy's down the road. Perhaps, though, they have in mind the Cuban polyclinic initiatives, which are hugely successful.

Er, no. They just want to close the NHS:

Community hospitals also need to be freed from the central control of the NHS. They should be free to own their own buildings and service users and employees should be encouraged to develop new ownership models based on mutual, cooperative or social enterprise models where that would maintain or enhance existing community services. 

But more positively, their plan for transforming Britain – in the depths of a serious recession, mass unemployment, failing services, overworked hospitals, environmental apocalypse etc – come in Idea Number 30: Cleaner Beaches. You want detail? They've got detail! They're going to test the water a few times a year rather than just in the summer. Seriously, these Tory kids are blowing my mind with their wacky, zany ideas!

Is all this affecting your mental health? Don't fret: they've a policy idea to treat your aching brainpan! You'll never guess what it is…

GPs should to be encouraged to look beyond traditional approaches whether through drugs or short term psychological therapies so that patients do have a viable range of choices appropriate to their condition. Commissioning should be opened up to allow therapists operating in private practice, in longer term therapies, to be able to bid for services within the NHS. 

So that's a) homeopathy on the state and b) more privatisation. 

I feel better already.

And in case you're thinking 'at least they care about my children's mental health even if they're deluded about the solution, let's see why they want you to get better:

Increased levels of achievement, education and productivity on an individual level that will translate to an increased ability to contribute to the state. 

They don't care why you're ill. Causes are irrelevant. They just want you back up that chimney and paying your taxes (not you, Mr Vodafone, you're excused) because someone's got to subsidise those corporate taxes and let's face it: you'd have to be mad to go along with this stuff.

But some citizens are Just Not Playing The Game, and Spoiling It For The Rest Of Us. The bankers? Guess again. Corrupt MPs? Nope. News International? Keep trying. Google, Starbucks, Lord Rothermere, the Daily Mail? No, no no and no. It should be obvious.

Teenage mothers. 

If it wasn't for those greedy bastards, we'd all be living in Easy Street right now. The banks would be solvent, the job centres empty, the Volvos full and the kiddies dancing round maypoles spontaneously erected from Walthamstow to Moss Side.

Take access to housing benefit, for example. 16-17 year olds are currently entitled to claim housing benefit if they “have a good reason for not living at home.” Some teenagers may view this, quite incorrectly, as an automatic right to free housing, encouraging them to have a child. 

Evidence? Oh really, what planet's political discourse have you been engaged with recently? We all know teenage mums have caused a) the credit crunch b) SARS c) 9/11 d) Charles Saatchi's violent behaviour d) Jimmy Savile and e) the decline of Channel 4's credibility, to name just a few of their crimes against humanity. So what if there's no evidence? Mr Duncan Smith made it very clear in his radio interview yesterday: evidence schmevidence, it's what he believes that matters.

All benefits to teenage mothers should be made on the condition of them living with their parents or in supervised hostel accommodation

So what if some of this very tiny number of people are fleeing abusive and neglectful homes? They need punishment. They might be old enough to join the army, kill people, be killed and pay taxes, but the female youngsters are still the property of their parents. If they're not forced back into the home with their little one, or locked up in a Home For Shamefully Disgusting Incontinent Little Slappers Who Are No Better Than They Ought To Be and taught to Know Their Places, how are they ever going to learn that female abstinence unless within the boundaries of a middle-class heterosexual official marriage is the cornerstone of Western Civilisation. Or more simply, ladies of a teenage persuasion: keep your legs crossed or the terrorists win. And the fathers? No mention. Presumably they're just 'sowing their wild oats'. Boys will be boys!

Note the sheer, despicable cowardice here:

The public perception of these policies adds to the general view that many teenagers are having children to attain benefits and subsidised housing, creating a great deal of resentment and unease. 

There's no attempt to ascertain any facts. Instead, they're nakedly endorsing 'the general view', 'resentment and unease' generated by… well, by them and their friends at the Mail.

Teenagers will be left in no doubt that teenage motherhood will not lead to an automatic right to subsidised housing and other benefits, while the general public can be assured that a teenager’s motivations for having a child are not related to housing access. 

They've found a victim, the lynch mob's waiting and these Tory scumbags are knotting the nooses for a very profitable hanging. And people wonder why they make me angry.

And then it gets really sinister. Under the guise of 'contraception efficiency', these Tories have decided that abortions have got to go. Especially for women who've had more than one. Yes, they're extended CCTV and GCHQ's activities to the final frontier: the uterus.

The Government should, for example, consider the merits of allowing agencies to check in with women post abortion, ensuring that they are continuing to use contraception provided to them.

Can you imagine the conditions and content of these 'checks'? Present yourself at the DSS for a Paupers' Duff-Upping Prevention Swab? Perhaps an RFID tab on your pill box. Or simply a two-way TV screen through which the Leader (in this case, Jeremy Hunt) conducts a uterine inspection before work on Monday morning. Free membership of the Primrose League for any C2DE who volunteers for sterilisation!

Marriage, of course, is key. What's stopping people having a proper (i.e. religious) marriage? The 1753 Act for the Better Preventing of Clandestine Marriage, which bans religious marriages in any random location. Spot on, Tories! That's why marriages have been declining. And not a widespread perception that it's not appropriate for the range of sexual and romantic dispositions now available. Thank heavens you've got to the root of the matter.

But what if some feckless oiks slip through the net, have some kids, and can't make them go to school for their daily class in (Significant Dates in Conservative Party) History? Can't pay the fine?

fines should be taken directly from child benefit payments… It might just give the most dysfunctional family the incentive to get their child to school.

Starve them into submission. That's the ticket! It's not as if truancy and other social problems are at all complicated. It's the poor kids who are to blame:

Pupils on free school meals are around three times more likely to play truant than their counterparts. 

I'm too depressed even to bother presenting you with Idea 37: male role models in schools. Apparently all engineers, fire-fighters and soldiers are men. And we should be getting trained killers into school to give the boys something to which to aspire. 

Still, at least they're tackling the Timebomb of Obesity. Which could be very messy if we don't defuse it. But don't worry, it's easy to fix. Just abolish the 'risk-averse culture' and it'll all be fine. Anybody who mentions the pervasiveness of fat-laden food and the massive sell-offs of school playing fields will be sent to the Coca-Cola-sponsored naughty step.

And now we're back to education. One of the Forty, Paul Uppal, has a large university in his constituency. A university which finds itself repeatedly victimised by a government determined to restrict funding, research and high-achieving students to a small band of élite universities. A university which is doing its best to make ends meet by providing a decent education to overseas students. 

What does Paul want to do about this state of affairs? 

The permanent cap on non-EU workers has been a success and should now be extended to include some of our universities. We must be unashamed in our policy of only wanting to attract the very brightest and best students to come to the UK and so our top universities would be allowed to continue to enrol all students on an unlimited basis as they do now. 

That's right! He wants to deport all our non-EU students. They didn't get in to Oxford or Cambridge, so they must be thick (because obviously all universities offer the same courses) and they're just scrounging, even if they do pay massive fees which subsidise the EU students. For Christ's sake. 

And there we have it. Forty fag-packet ideas to keep the UKIP wolf from the Tory door. A rag-bag of cruelty, prejudice, hysteria, pandering, reaction, hypocrisy, bare-faced lies, omissions, distortions and fantasies. Many of them are dignified by the name 'idea': they're mere wisps, dispersed on the lightest intellectual breeze. All concerned should be ashamed and embarrassed. 

If I was Labour, I'd buy a million copies and send them to every household in these MPs' marginal constituencies. IF you thought Hunt et al. are vapid, this lot need the attentions of a mortician. Certainly there's no detectable cerebral activity. They're dead men (and 8 women) walking. If this is the best the Conservative Party can do, they're history. Let's make sure. 

Hot Air for Uppal

I wrote to my MP about the UK Government's 'relaxed' attitude to environmental emissions and climate change, asking him to vote for a legally binding carbon target as part of the Energy Bill. As expected, he sent me a long, disingenuous letter which claimed that The Market Will Provide.

New stats are out. UK emissions rose by 4.5% last year, even in the depths of a recession, and without counting emissions outsourced to China and other manufacturing centres. We've missed our 2011 renewable energy commitment and have no chance of meeting our 2020 targets.

Cue another weary letter to Mr Uppal, complete with statistical sources, with no serious expectation of a meaningful response.

Dear Mr Uppal,thank you for your reply to my letter about the legally binding carbon targets.
Could you reflect again on this issue, given that the UK's emissions actually rose by 4.5% in 2012 (without counting 'outsourced' emissions), and the assessment that the UK is 25th of 27 EU member states in renewables contributions, is the only country which failed to meet its interim targets, and is calculated to miss its 2020 target set out in the 2009/28/EC Directive, otherwise known as the RES Directive?

What specific steps will the government take to address these two failures?
Hugs and Kisses,Plashing Vole.

Despite this - can I ask you all to write to your MPs along the same lines?

Oh yes: here's his latest Parliamentary humbug:

The hon. Gentleman is making some partisan points, so I want to add balance to the debate. I have been poor—dirt poor. I used to share my bedroom with my siblings and cousins. By modern descriptions, I would have been classified as homeless. His main argument is about foreign capital coming to the UK and London. Does he not think that that is symptomatic of people recognising that we have a Government who are making credible decisions and creating financial stability?

Not sure whether I should weep or laugh. 'Credible'? With borrowing sky-high, deficit reductions postponed to 2018 and the poor getting poorer and poorer, under a government determined to evict anyone with a box room and clear London of the labouring classes, while reducing taxes for the millionaires (he's too modest to mention that he's a millionaire, from property speculation). He is utterly despicable.  

Political Smackdown!

No need for commentary from me: just a classy smack-down for my arrogant and out of touch MP, Paul Uppal:

Paul Uppal (Wolverhampton South West, Conservative):
On the issue of fact and fiction, I respectfully say to the hon. Gentleman that this comes in the context of a week when the shadow Chancellor, directly answering the question of whether Labour spent too much, said, “No, I don’t think we did.” That is not fiction; that is fact. This debate comes in that context.

Christopher Leslie (Nottingham East, Labour):

The hon. Gentleman seems to think that the problems of the global financial crisis were caused by too many police officers, nurses, teachers, hospitals, new schools… I am only trying to answer the question, Mr Amess. I am trying to be as helpful as possible to the new guru of No. 10’s policy unit. I envisage him sitting at the table there with many of the new fresh-faced Members as they produce detailed papers that are then ignored by the Prime Minister weeks later. I wish the hon. Gentleman luck. I hope he has some influence in that new august body and that when the reshuffle comes he does as well as the Minister assumes he will.

While I'm at it, Mr Uppal claimed last week that removing rights from workers in exchange for a few shares would transform employees into 'employers', referencing his own business experience. However, Mr Uppal is very reluctant to discuss what his company does and how it works. From what I can tell, Pinehurst Securities is enmeshed with his family, employs very few people and is merely a property speculation company. Are his unrelated employees shareholders?

 If he's so keen to enfold employees into the corporate structure, why does he require them to give up their health and safety protection, right not to be discriminated against and so on before British workers are permitted to rise above the status of wage slave?

 The truth is that this is a scam. It's another way of degrading working conditions for the poor, while providing a massive tax-avoidance loophole for the rich. Imagine you're signing on at a high level for a bank. You sign away your employment rights in exchange for a massive chunk of tax-free shares. You know that you don't need statutory protection: you can afford high-powered lawyers if working life takes a turn for the worse. Meanwhile your employers have found a way to pay you £50,000 without troubling the HMRC. Win-win. Unless you're one of the minimum wage drones Mr Uppal thinks are wrecking the economy.

Paul Uppal: Citation Needed?

In a welcome return to Parliamentary debate, my secretive millionaire MP is stoutly defending tax breaks for the seriously rich (i.e. him) in the midst of the worst depression since the 1930s. Most of it, as you'd expect, the usual vacuous attack lines generated by Tory HQ. And of course he can't find room for the employment statistics for the constituency, which would show a drop in employment in every quarter since he was elected, if it's anything like the neighbouring constituencies. 

But as usual, little Paul over-reaches himself. Yet again, he's discovered some constituents who utterly agree with him and – despite being young and not members of Parliament – display a firm grasp of Parliamentary language:

My constituency has a rich industrial heritage, but many young constituents come to me and say that at so many points in the history of the constituency they have been dependent on the public purse and whatever quango or mechanism. I think people are looking forward to some aspect of private sector entrepreneurship to provide a route out of the poverty that exists in so many of these industrial constituencies.

So these young people make an appointment with Mr Uppal (you can't drop into his surgeries unannounced) to discuss political history? I'm not quite sure how 'young people' can have suffered this Oppressive State Nightmare at 'many points in the history of the constituency', nor do I believe that any young people see themselves as trapped in a cycle of dependence - especially as Mr Uppal's government removed the only support available, namely the Educational Maintenance Allowance. Unless he's suggesting that the young unemployed people of this city believe that they'd be free to save the economy if only the state wasn't forcing them to accept unemployment and housing benefit. 'Let Us Starve' they chant as they parade through the city. 'Homelessness Makes Us Strive' is another of their favourites.

The idea that individuals and the economy are being held back by the minimal state support for individuals is simply an ideological talking point. The only bright spot in this city is the foundation of a Jaguar-Land Rover engine plant. Paul finds room to mention it:

 Jaguar Land Rover is bringing private sector investment into my constituency for the first time

Firstly, I strongly doubt that this is the 'first' private sector investment in the constituency. Ever? This is just nonsense. The place has lots of companies, many of them international corporations. There is no possible way that this could be true. Anyway, turning to Jaguar Land-Rover: it's not actually in his constituency for a start. Is this project the product of entrepreneurial, private sector energy? Not if you read the newspapers it isn't:

The regeneration project is a joint venture between Advantage West Midlands, Wolverhampton City Council, Staffordshire County Council and South Staffordshire Council.

The lesson of this benighted city is that the private sector has failed. It used to be an industrial powerhouse, but failure to innovate and to invest, couple with a determination to reduce wages and export jobs, has left the city destitute. The idea that the state has squeezed out the private sector is utterly ridiculous: the Dark Place has lost jobs and hope throughout the past 30 years: precisely the decades of Thatcherite free market economics (practised by both main parties) and the deluded discourse of entrepreneurialism. Who brought Jaguar-Land Rover here? It wasn't JLR on its own: it was the taxpayers of this area through their local councils and the taxpayers of this country through Advantage West Midlands: JLR was essentially bribed to come here.

Paul Uppal has been free from the constraints of the state: family money enabled his very successful business career in property speculation - precisely the kind of activity which has bankrupted this country without employing a single person or creating any wealth beyond his own enrichment.

Uppal is, I think, either a liar or fantasist. I just don't believe that these 'young constituents' exist beyond meetings of the local Conservative Party. And his economics go no further than the concerns of his political career. It's time for another letter:

Dear Mr Uppal,
I note your recent speech in parliament expressing the desire of 'many young consituents' to escape dependency on the public purse and quangos. Could you please enumerate to me how many young constituents have expressed this desire and how they experienced this 'at so many points in the history of the constituency' given that they are 'young'. To what organisations and mechanisms do you think they are referring

Secondly, could you please make public the unemployment statistics for the constituency since your election in 2010? I gather that constituency break-downs are provided for each Member of Parliament and that other MPs in the city make them public. 

Finally, I note that the biggest investment in the city for some years (Jaguar Land Rover) was achieved through the incentives provided by Wolverhampton City Council, South Staffordshire Council, Staffordshire County Council and Advantage West Midlands. Given your professed opposition to quangos and state subvention for the private sector, will you be lobbying for an end to this taxpayer support? 

Yours,
Plashing Vole

Cynical, moi?

I may have mentioned my suspicion that Paul Uppal MP's shameless pandering to religious groups over the past couple of years is nothing more than a cynical and racist election strategy. The alternative, of course, is that he actually believes religious people are superior to the rest of us. I'm not sure what's worse.

Anyway, I have this feeling that Paul was picked because the Tory party knew it had a problem appealing to ethnic minority voters, and that the Conservative Party believe (as have other parties) that voters will turn out along party lines. Shamefully, the Labour Party has on occasion behaved the same way. And it's certainly true that in some places, at some times, the electorate appears to voted along racial lines. It is also true that at times of racial tension, elected representatives who have experienced the discrimination and hostility which goes on might reassure under-represented communities that their specific needs will be addressed. Not in this case, however. Despite being Enoch Powell's old stamping ground back in the day, this city is remarkably free of the racial tensions which blight other places. The Labour Party and other groups have done a great job in tackling racial discrimination while insisting that we citizens are united by our political requirements and ideals, whatever our ethnic origins. The Conservative Party, sadly, wants to undo the bonds we've forged across these borders.

Me, I'm not racist. Not even a little bit. I don't think that this city's Sikh community, or any other ethnic group, will look at Paul and say 'hey, he might be a weaselly, craven and self-interested bigot who doesn't like to talk about his millions of pounds acquired through socially-destructive speculation, but he looks like us!'. They will weigh up the man's merits and that of his party, then decide on those lines. Some will vote for him, some will vote against him.

Political parties in the 90s have taken a nasty, disturbing turn towards bloc politics. The Labour Party in the 1990s, led by people who'd never met the working-classes, let alone emerged from them, assumed that poor whites were racist xenophobes, and played on their supposed fears, pushed by Michael Howard's nakedly vicious 'are you thinking what we're thinking?' campaign (we weren't). But away from the headlines, there's a dangerous move away from politics (what do we want government to do? How shall we pay for it?) to identity.

Which leads me to Gary Gibbon's blog. Gary is a rather good Channel 4 journalist who's currently out in India covering the Prime Minister's arms sales trip. Who has caught his eye? Why, it's Paul Uppal MP! Why's he there? His family were refugees from Uganda, not immigrants from India. Well, it's all about the visuals:

The polling suggests he cannot win the 2015 general election without winning support amongst ethnic minority voters. They are a key wedge of support in some marginals and, as I said yesterday, Sikhs have been identified by Team Cameron as particularly susceptible to the idea that the PM is different from crustier Tories of the past.
Seats where Sikh voters could make a difference include Wolverhampton South West, Enoch Powell’s old seat now represented by Tory Paul Uppal with a wafer thin majority. Mr Uppal has been accompanying David Cameron on this trip along with Tory MPs Shailesh Varah and ethnic minority vote-winning Tsar MP Alok Sharma. They all have some very good snaps for their election literature and David Cameron has useful pictures too.
Polling suggests some ethnic minority voters want to see individuals from their own communities before they’ll truly believe the Tory Party has changed.

The BNP asks white people to vote for it because they're white. How is this stunt different? It's deeply cynical – a way of brushing the awkward arguments under the carpet: the EU, education, health, the deficit, welfare cuts, the lot: including the way ethnic minorities suffer the worst cuts and blows from this appalling government. Instead, Uppal's basing his appeal solely on his skin colour.

We don't have enough political representatives from ethnic minorities, or females. I firmly believe parties should be searching for good candidates. But putting them up for election only in places with large ethnic votes is simply a thinly-disguised acceptance of racism. It tacitly admits that white people won't vote for minority candidates and minority communities will vote for someone who looks like them over someone who doesn't. I think British people are much more mature than that, but when the parties behave in this way, it authorises racialised discourse. The BNP must be loving this because it perfectly suits their agenda. And of course it's the curse of Northern Ireland: in an upcoming by-election, the major unionist parties are trying to find a single candidate so that they can get Protestants to vote for a Protestant and win rather than dividing the vote between political parties with differing political beliefs. Never mind the principles, they're saying, be tribal.

Finally, this disgusting strategy won't work. The inhabitants of this benighted city voted in Paul Uppal by a majority of only 691, running against a Labour MP representing the most reviled and exhausted government in decades. The voters have already had a chance to divide along racial lines and they didn't take it. They're better than that, and they won't be fooled by a few pictures of Cameron and Uppal wearing bindis and admiring the Taj Mahal.

Opportunism, thy name is Uppal

You may have heard yesterday that the Conservative Party's effort to reduce the number of parliamentary seats and equalise constituency sizes was defeated yesterday, thanks to four Conservative MPs and every other party opposing it, including the Liberal Democrats.

On the face of it, equal constituencies and fewer MPs sounds reasonable. In practice, it's a Tory plot to gain themselves and inbuilt majority. It rides roughshod over local loyalties and identities too.

Needless to say, ultra-loyalist government today Mr Paul Uppal, my local MP, was ensconced in his usual position, half-way up the Prime Minister's colon. Needlessly, I should add: despite this apparently being the PM's most passionate point of principle, he didn't bother to turn up and vote. I'm quite certain Mr Uppal voted on a point of principle and not at all because the new boundaries would dump a lot of those nasty poor slum voters and replace them with rich rural Tories from the outlying villages. Mr Uppal's majority is, of course, 691.

On that point of principle about the democratic deficit, is there not an irony in the fact that Labour and Liberal Democrat Members are often inspired by the Chartists, who voted for equal-sized constituencies? There is a perverse relationship today, in that those Members are going to go through the Lobby and vote to retain the disconnect and the democratic deficit.

This is a little rich from Mr Uppal. A number of measures to reduce the 'democratic deficit' have been proposed by the Liberal Democrats and assorted Labourites in the recent past. Indeed Mr Uppal has gone through the Lobby voted against the Alternative Vote, which would have gone a long way to reducing the 'democratic deficit' by making sure that any elected MP had the positive support of 50% + 1 vote of the turnout. (Mr Uppal received 40.7% of the vote, while his Labour opponent managed 39%.  Only 68% of the electorate bothered turning out).

Other 'democratic deficits' Mr Uppal appears not to mind include the House of Lords: not only is he opposed to a democratically-elected Upper House (surely not because he thinks he may one day be awarded the ermine?), he supports the Prime Minister's efforts to boost its numbers to almost 1000 peers. That's right: Mr Uppal wants 600 MPs elected by you and me, and 1000 unelected legislators – the descendants of robber barons, rackrent landlords, the upper management of a tiny religious sect known as the Church of England, party donors and other assorted hacks – who get a say in law until the day they die without ever having to face the judgement of the people.

And he lectures us about a political 'disconnect and the democratic deficit'. The man's an embarrassment.

How to get re-elected: by Paul Uppal

After our much needed festive break, the egregious and secretive millionaire representative for The Dark Place is on his feet again, and this time he's taking the opportunity to tick off all those whinging constituents:

That point is well worn and made continually, and I am sure that all Members are aware of the top rate of tax being cut, but there is an element of financial amnesia here. As even people who only have a rudimentary understanding of economics will appreciate, the main way that wealthy people accumulate wealth is through wealth creation, rather than income, which is always variable. If we look at capital gains tax, the current rate is 28%, which is in stark contrast to the previous Labour Government, where venture capitalists were paying capital gains tax at a rate of 10%—often much lower than the cleaners who were cleaning their offices.

That's right. If you disagree with Paul, you're a thicky thick thicko. And we should listen to him, because underneath the modesty which compels Paul to keep schtum on the sources of his considerable wealth, he's a man on firm ground. Remember: Paul has never picked up a shovel, employed a large number of people, contributed to the wealth and gaiety of the nation with a new thingamabob, ratchet, widget or idea. He is a propertly speculator.

When he says that 'wealthy people accumulate wealth… through wealth creation, rather than income', what he means is that he avoids paying the same tax rate as me (despite me being very much not a millionaire) by paying himself dividends rather than a salary from Pinehurst Securities. The top rate of income tax is 40% on earnings above £42,000. The top rate for his capital gains, as he points out, is 28% (though of course needy Paul is also kept off the breadline by his £65,000 parliamentary salary).

Uppal's right that Labour's capital gains tax rate was a shameful 10%, but it's time he stopped making petty points like this. He fails to realise that from the outside, we're the farmyard animals and looking from the pigs to the men, it's hard to tell them apart. New Labour was obsessed with financial sharks because it had no industrial policy, nor any interest in one: I don't think this is quite so true of the current Labour Party.

Paul Uppal and his friends are not the solution. They are the problem. Uppal's business has contributed nothing to the British economy: it simply shifts money around. No jobs are created, no innovations generated. And yet he has lobbied for – and won – another tax break for owners of empty properties, who'd rather we subsidised them than accept a lower market rate: he's just another hog at the trough, but this hog spends his time denouncing the poor for their expectations of state aid!

Quite simply, Paul Uppal MP and his party are parasites. It's clear from the legislation they've enacted (top rate of income tax dropped, corporation tax dropped, tax inspectors sacked, food safety protection cut, welfare for disabled children cut…) that they have no intention of acting in the national interest. They are shamelessly pursuing a policy of class warfare and self-interest. They have captured the state and in the Kenyan phrase, it is 'their turn to eat'.

Am I making too much of this anodyne little speech? Well, Mr Uppal made it during a debate about the Living Wage. He's against it, just as the Conservative Party was against the Minimum Wage. The miserable nature of this country is obvious from the fact that the notional living wage is higher than the legal minimum wage. Put simply: you can't live on the minimum wage (and social security benefits are even lower). Under Labour, the scandalous solution was to subsidise low wages with social security – essentially inviting corporations to inflate their profits and share prices at the expense of the taxpayer and the poor. That's why I'd upgrade the minimum wage to the living wage and abolish benefits for those in work. The shareholders (including my own pension provider) need to accept that profits shouldn't come at the expense of cold houses, bad food, thin clothes and poor health.

Under the Tories, it's far, far worse. With the vicious attacks on social security, the state won't even be providing that safety net. So wages will remain at the rock bottom, and the state won't even cover the difference between the minimum and living wages. People are being driven from their homes, while Mr Uppal spends his time speaking up for the already rich.

And they accuse the left of waging class war.

Lies, damned lies and Paul Uppal

The invisible MP has resurfaced with a piece on his website proclaiming that the Autumn Statement is 'good for the West Midlands'. Usually when he puts this kind of thing up, I find that it's a version of a standard statement circulated to all government MPs. 

Unless the Conservative Party has developed telepathy, this is indeed the case. Look, a Lincoln MP says the same thing. As does Mundell from the Scottish Borders. And Graeme Leach. And another 88 MPs. 

Statement 1:

The economic recovery is taking longer because the damage is worse than we feared. But the economy is healing. 

The economy is not healing. There are no more jobs. There is no recovery. Quantitative easing has had no discernible effect other than to reinflate the banks' balance sheets. The government has had 2 and a half years in office: it is now causing 'the damage'. 

The last thing we could do is put all this progress at risk and attempt to borrow less by borrowing more. We cannot turn back.

The grammar of this is almost beyond me, and perhaps Derrida. Obviously the government 'could' make this attempt. Perhaps whichever drone wrote it means 'should'. And we are borrowing more. It doesn't look like it at first glance because Osborne pulled three tricks. Firstly, he shifted the Post Office pension fund onto the books, which is pretty dodgy: pension funds aren't just pots of cash. They have to be paid out. Then he counted the £4.5bn sale of 4G frequencies… even though the sale hasn't actually happened. Finally, he transferred the QE debt interest from the Bank of England to the Treasury's bank account. This is just a delaying tactic, and one which a Financial Times journalist described as proof that this government no longer has any serious economic policy. 

But wait! There's a bit about the West Midlands!

Paul Uppal commented:
"This is fantastic news for Wolverhampton South West.
"The West Midlands will see two million people get an income tax cut. The 3.5 million people who drive will welcome the cancellation of a rise in fuel duty that the Labour Government had planned for. Businesses will welcome the drop in corporation tax and the small business rate relief. And the raft of capital infrastructure projects will unlock growth and equip Britain to compete in the global race.
"Times are tough. But the economy is healing – and the measures announced today will bring welcome support to families and businesses in Wolverhampton South West."

He must have written that bit, surely?

But alas no. His interns have inserted the words "Wolverhampton South West" into the prepared text also used by Christopher Pincher in Tamworth and by Claire Perry MP, Chris Kelly MP of Dudley, and Clifton Brown. Given that Perry and Brown are from the South-West, it seems the Tories have issued the same statement to all their MPs, despite them representing very different places. So actually, they think the budget is going to be a roaring success from the grouse moors of Dumfries to the metal-bashing inner-cities of the Black Country.

Alternatively, you might view this as cynical propaganda masquerading as spontaneous thought ('Paul Uppal commented'.

As to the detail: millions of people will get a tax cut. More to the point, Paul Uppal, as a millionaire property speculator will get two tax cuts. One because the top rate of tax has been abolished, and the other because tax relief on unoccupied property is being offered. Paul's business is property speculation. He doesn't want market forces to dictate lower rents: he wants taxpayers to subsidise him leaving properties empty until the climate improves. And he's got what he wants.

Business will welcome the cut in corporation tax… those who pay it. They'll still get massive subsidies from us though - because most benefit claimants are workers not paid enough. We fill the gap with housing benefit and income support, boosting the profit margins of Paul's friends. The rest of course is just meaningless cant.

As usual.  

Meanwhile, Uppal is in favour of regional and performance-related pay for teachers and nurses (despite the obvious problem: children and viruses are variables you can't account for). However in his case, I'm all for it. This is a poor area and it's getting poorer while under his charge. His salary should therefore go down. Or we could link his salary to his vote. Uppal got 40% of a 68% turnout. By my calculations, 28% of the electorate voted for him. So he gets £28,000 per year. If he persuades more people to vote for him next year, he gets a pay rise as a reward for supporting a fine job by the government. If someone else does better, s/he gets it. Simples!

Another day, another Uppal idiocy

Smarmy Paul, back from shilling for the Israeli government, got a question at PMQs this week. Let's have a look, shall we?

May I highlight for my right hon. Friend a free school that will be opening in one of the most deprived wards in Wolverhampton next year? It will provide a real ladder for social mobility for young people. It is a great, tangible advert for what this Government are doing in education, and he is more than welcome to visit.

Oh dear. The usual tissue of untruths. It's true that a 'school' is opening in the city. The rest is spin, starting with the adjective 'free'. It's not free. It's paid for by us, the citizens of the UK. 'Free' in fact means 'outside the planning and supervision of the wider community'.

The School is Anand Primary. It has a revolting and rather evasive video which may induce vomiting:



Its mission:

working tirelessly to deliver a new Sikh ethos

Which rather implies that there's a coherent, discrete Sikh identity, of course. And that Sikhism, alone of all religious doctrines, is entirely beneficent. But let's not get into those deep waters.

What else? Well:

Our school will be a safe, happy and eco-friendly place dedicated to giving your children the best start in life. The highest standards of teaching will be complemented by a wide range of extra-curricular activities to enable all the children to fulfil their academic, creative and sporting potential.

A wise man once said that if a statement's reverse can't be plausibly delivered, then it's meaningless. I'll give it a go.

Our school will be an unsafe, unhappy and wasteful place dedicated to giving your children the worse start in life. The lowest standards of teaching will be complemented by no extra-curricular activities to enable a few of the children to fulfil their academic, creative and sporting potential. 

See? Nonsense. And I'd be very surprised if a school of 60 pupils with no actual premises is equipped to deliver all this anyway. To say nothing of the nasty little secret at the heart of Free and Academy schools: they're exempt from laws requiring qualified teachers, minimum nutrition standards, democratic governance, Freedom of Information compliance and a host of other rules which have transformed state schools in recent years.

Then we reach the Sikh values:

• Kirat Karau – which means that we should all earn our living through honest means and hard work. We should all take responsibility for ourselves and should never compromise our integrity.
• Vandd Shakau – which means that we should share the fruits of our toil with all. We should respect everyone and work in the self-less service of all.
• Naam Jappau – which means to keep God in mind at all times. To not waste a second of the time we have on this planet but to use it to become the best that we can be.

Wow. What a radical and distinctive moral vision. Don't cheat, work hard, be responsible for your actions and be community minded. All very nice, but I'm not sure we need an entirely separate school to promote these values: I very much suspect and hope that all the other schools in the locality hold the same ideals. Except Business schools of course. Those people are scum.

Naam Jappau is, I suspect, the real point of this establishment. Despite the video's claim that the school will be open to all, its purpose - like that of all religious schools - is to provide segregated education without interference. Plenty of dishonest non-religious parents send their children to Catholic schools, for example, but I suspect that it won't happen in this case. The proof is in the eating, of course but religious schools tend to become ghettos, which are not well-known for achieving social mobility.

'Oh, but you're just a big racist', I hear you objecting. 'Catholics and Protestants and Jews all have separate schools'.

Don't worry, dear readers. I hate those schools too. And I know whereof I speak. I only attended Catholic schools. I've been physically assaulted by the Sisters of Mercy, the Christian Brothers and the Benedictines. I'm also familiar with the Northern Irish education system, whose segregation has perpetuated state-sponsored sectarian hatred for generations. Schools controlled by a particular religious ethos promote separation, isolation and superiority. They encourage students to see themselves as Chosen People with a secret code to Paradise rather than as free and equal citizens rather than privileged members of an Elect. They also retard intellectual development: at one of my secondary schools I became convinced my name had been changed to 'Shut Up', as that's the reply I got to every question on religious matters. Inquiry is never given free rein in a school which assumes as a matter of policy that there's a deity (or deities). The rights and needs of subjugated groups are never accepted - what links most religions is misogyny and often homophobia.

My Catholic education was psychologically and culturally damaging. It was also, with the honourable exception of one school, educationally substandard. Inquiry was limited, certain subjects were verboten (I lived in a state of perpetual ignorance with regard to sexuality, gender relations and basic biology for many years afterwards) and challenging ideas went unmentioned. It was no battleground of ideas. There were no questions, only pre-packed answers.

This city doesn't need religious schools. The ethnic groups which want them aren't persecuted and fading away - the Catholics, Protestants, Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims are strong, proud and enduring traditions here. They're free to educate their children religiously at home and in their places of worship. What we don't need is an educational system which systematically promotes segregation (and let's not forget that Sikhism is one of the few non-proselytising religions: it's an ethnic category as much as it is a religious denomination). Children should learn about each other's cultures in school without a teacher telling them that one lot is right/Chosen/going to heaven and the rest are misbegotten heretics. Schools shouldn't, to be blunt, exist to reinforce division, untestable claims and the status quo. How many free thinkers will we get from schools whose ultimate answer to every question is 'Because God says so'?

But returning to Paul Uppal. What's this bit?

It will provide a real ladder for social mobility for young people.

Seriously? How? What's the metric? How will removing some children from existing primary schools and sending them to a new school based on religious and ethnic identity promote social mobility? As far as I can see, it will retard it. Social mobility is about working-class people moving into the professions and income brackets (though those who like the idea rarely mention the possibility of downward social mobility). It's a class and economic issue, not an ethnic or religious one. At this point, Mr Uppal is just spouting arrant, embarrassing nonsense. They're just words, signifiers with no signified.

Social mobility means closing the fee-paying schools, abolishing Academies and Free Schools and taxing the rich and the likes of Apple and Google to make sure that the resources of Eton are available to all children everywhere. There's no secret to how fee-paying schools get good results. They weed out any child they don't like. They have tiny classes and resources coming out of their ears. In the state sector you don't get £30,000 spent on you per year until you go to prison, where there are fewer ski trips and lacrosse lessons.

This city doesn't need more money diverted to vanity schools. This city has a food bank. I'd humbly suggest that an economic structure which ensures people don't depend on charity to stave off hunger would be a greater contribution to 'social mobility' than any amount of niche educational establishments.

I despair, I really do. My only explanation other than wilful stupidity is that Mr Uppal is a racist cynic. He's decided that the Sikh community will deliver him a bloc of votes if he promotes this scheme – and that's all he needs. Personally, there's a lot to admire in Sikhism, and I've got nothing against Sikhs, just as I have nothing against most religious bodies, other than their baffling need to install some form of deity in the scientific gaps.

Paul has just returned from a country which explicitly identifies itself as a Jewish state. Its Muslim population is legally discriminated against in every area of life. Both sides see the other not as humans, or fellow citizens, but as enemies. Despite the similarities between Judaism and Islam, religious difference has become religious hatred because the communities never meet - just like Northern Ireland, only hotter. Is this what's inspired Paul's mission to Balkanize this small and relatively peaceful city?

Will the other politicians in the city oppose this and other 'free' schools and 'academies'? Not a chance. None of them see any electoral advantage in challenging the discourse of 'choice' (as though it's a magic solution for all ills) or 'identity politics' - and votes trump principles. Personally, I think secular schools run by a democratically-elected council which has the resources and the strategic oversight to plan for the city's needs is a proud and radical idea. But everybody else would rather retreat to the tactical jockeying and appeasement we call democracy.

And people call me cynical.