peterms

Absolutely, but I think it's potentially such a wide ranging subject (when is civil disobedience in general justified?) that it would deserve its own thread - marked with a strict bollitics health warning, of course. Another variant on the idea is to think about what happens when a government conspires against the economic wellbeing of its citizens. For example, when a government whips up hysteria about an economic state of affairs as a cover for redistributing wealth from poor to rich, and dismantling part of the state apparatus which supports and protects poorer people. When it is open to a government to create employment and maintain living standards, and it chooses to do the opposite for a section of the population in order to benefit another, already wealthier, section, then again at that point the argument for civil obedience is undermined.

Militarily? According to whom? According to political theory since the year dot. The reason states originally coalesced was the provision of common defence against external threats. Protecting the citizenry is the raison d’être of government and also the only reason we originally started to pay income tax - ironically during a war against France. Pacifists don’t have to like that, but denying it is the case makes any subsequent debate virtually impossible. There's an interesting question here. If the legitimacy of the state (eg in Hobbes' argument) derives from a social contract where we accept being ruled in return for being protected, then what happens if the rule is exercised but the protection turns out to be somewhat less than it might be? For example, in the 80's it became evident that the state was actively planning scenarios for nuclear war which would involve writing off many millions of the population to a grisly death, while advising us to paint our windows white and crouch under the kitchen table with a colander on our heads. Twenty years later, we were led into needless wars through lies and deceit, which have created real and current threats to our safety and security. In such a situation, is the basis for the political legitimacy of the state not undermined? Is civil disobedience not justified?

Which is a line that applies to just about everything this government has done so far. Oh no. Money driven, yes. Short term, no. The whole point is a long-term redistribution of power and wealth from poorer to richer. There's a clear strategy being pursued here, and their evident general incompetence shouldn't make us feel they can't actually achieve a large part of their narrower aims.

He's too busy trying to get that clapped-out old Alfa going.

I suppose combining the careers of politician and porn star has been done before, but I can't imagine Theresa May going for that.

I can see she wouldn't welcome being confused with her namesake...

Who will be the first members of the government forced to resign over press stories involving a) money genitals Sorry, that should read "next" not "first", since first has already been done. And I was thinking of the UK govt, but if you wish to give a view of another govt, feel free.

Think you missed the previous new member a few minutes earlier, something I can't fully remember but which ended with "anus". Possibly pics are not the best idea for that one.

Here's an interesting photo. It seems Ms May has popped in in her way to a Star Trek convention, while Mr Cameron has accepted a challenge to impersonate a bag of flour. Or Bernard Ingham, if there's a difference. Who says our leaders lack a sense of humour?

What stuff on newsnight? For those of us not watching it.

Who? What?

Not for the majority, probably. Interesting in the sense that the reaction to the poll tax was interesting. Will everyone be too busy slumped in front of Sky Sports and chewing pizza to get off their lardy arses and riot? Time will tell, I suppose.

So, I see that as well as cutting benefits for the poorest and reducing their housing allowances, we have managed to make these policy changes at a time when there's about the be a significant rise in food prices driven by a global food shortage. And we've just announced plans to cut back on court time, legal aid, police and social workers. Should be an interesting few months.

What else were the occupying western forces supposed to do? They couldn't hold Iraqi nationals in custody indefinitely (without massively expanding the popular resort in Cuba) and had no choice but to hand them over to the democratically elected Iraqi civil power. To have done otherwise would suggest that we didn't trust the Iraqi's to run their own affairs - a situation that would have had Fisk and the Guardian et al equally up in arms. Heads you win, tails I lose. Yes the Iraqi's are brutal feckers but that IS the reality of the Middle East. At great cost to all concerned it's been proven that the western model of liberalism, pluralism and human rights has no cultural traction or historical precedent to build on. In reality it never stood a chance as very many people commented before the neo-cons decided to invade. When the remaining US forces leave then Iraq will most likely become the proxy battleground of Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia, and if a wider war can be avoided (although the Saudi's are preparing now) that will most likely continue until a Saddam clone has the strength to impose his will on everyone else. Good huh? It seems the whole thing has been a total cockup from beginning to end. From supporting and legitimising Saddam, to selling him chemical weapons to use against his own people, to half-destroying his empire but not finishing the job, to encouraging the Kurds to rise up against him and leaving them completely exposed to be butchered, to having another half-thought-out invasion, to letting sites of unique archaeological importance be trashed and museums looted, to failing to restore law and order quickly enough, to this latest charade of conniving in the kind of brutality we were told we fought the war to end, to the utter failure to have a feasible long-term plan, it's been an object lesson in incompetence. Our involvement has been entirely selfish, guided by only two aims - to continue to destabilise the region for our own ends, and securing oil supplies for rich westerners to continue driving 4wds for another couple of years and oil barons to cream more profits. It's a sick and shameful charade, and an object lesson in futility and utter hypocrisy. And the cost, in shattered lives and money diverted from more worthwhile things, doesn't bear thinking about. But at least we've been consistent in our arrogant and negligent post-colonial meddling.

Iraq is arguably the site of the first emergence of civilisation. Their cultures, Ur, Sumer etc, were hardly known for delicacy in interrogating prisoners, or affording them human rights. Have we progressed so little in so many thousand years? Do we still turn "enemy combatants" over to psychos for torture which we already know will end not in better intelligence about enemy movements, but simply in the death of those interrogated, and the gratification of their tormentors? Give them a little thrill as they cut them up, or shoot them from a helicopter?

Here's a good piece, from someone who's clearly had a long involvement in trying to uncover some of the secrets of this and other conflicts.

Unlike labour who gained total power by kissing rupert's butt and giving pensioner's a 75 pence a week rise. I know that's a line gideon used, but it was gordon who gave him the ammunition. At that time I was disgusted with labour. Labour sold out on the nhs, privatising services, pfi schemes so the lovely hedge funds and venture capitalists could make profits, guiding the regulators to be soft because they failed to understand the risks. Thye sold out on ethical foreign policy because they wanted to garner respect from the US of A. They sold out on nuclear planning - literally months before announcing new nuclear power stations, they privatised the state owned design authority. Labour sold out their ethics to nulabour. If they had relented and ditched gordo back at the start of the year we would have a lib-lab coallition now. They sold out to the largest threat the UK democracy - rupert, having him around to lunch once a month - I used to be accused of being obsessed by murdoch by the nulabourites in those days. How times change. I can't argue with your view. New Labour have done many thing which I didn't personally agree with. I think a lot of people feel the same way. They have alienated what was traditionally core support in the pursuit of other votes. Now the other votes have peeled away, the previously dependable core support is less visible as well. Maybe some people feel taken for granted, as though the Blair-Mandelson calculation was on the lines that the core support had nowhere else to go, so would swallow the new policies even if they didn't like them. If the Libs are doing a similar "reinvention" of their party, will they be able to avoid those mistakes? The reaction of Liberal activists over the next few months will be fascinating.

She might be thinking about having the pastry lid on a dry surface instead of the usual moist pie filling, which to be fair does sound as though it might not go that well - two relatively dry textures together. If you want a puff pastry lid on a fish pie which has mash on top, then I suggest the best way would be to cook the pie with mash topping in your usual manner, cook the pastry lid separately on a baking sheet, and just place it on the pie at the end when both are cooked. Putting the lid on at the end is how restaurants often do it. The bit that would seem a bit odd is having the mash separating the filling from the pastry. One way round that, if you really want both, would be to cook the pie as normal, then loosen it away from the sides of the bowl, invert it onto a plate, and put the pastry lid on top of that, with the mask on the bottom and the filling in between. Or else put the pastry lid on the plate and serve the pie on it, with the pastry on the bottom and the mash on top. Unconventional, but if it's what you want...

Councils plan for exodus of poor families from London • Benefit cuts force officials to book up B&B accommodation • More than 200,000 may leave capital in 'social cleansing'

For those who see the Libs position as a complete about-turn from their previous position, there's an interesting piece in the LRB, referencing something called the "Orange Book" which Clegg, Cable, Laws etc contributed to a few years back. The author says that what Clegg is doing now is entirely consistent with the line he has been proposing for some time, and that he hasn't suddenly changed direction. From that perspective, the chances of him deciding that he's making too many compromises and selling out too much appear slimmer than if he was coming from the school of liberal thought most of us assume was the case. Too long to quote in full, but here's the link, and here's an extract.

I don't suppose this will surprise anyone, though it will have been denied vehemently ast the time, if any dribs and drabs of information about what was happening leaked out.

Another comment on the merits of the approach taken by the government.

So if Natwest, Lloyds, Halifax, Northern Rock, etc, etc had been allowed to go bankrupt what do you think would have happened? I suspect it wouldn’t have been pleasant. It would have been a nightmare. I don't think there was any real alternative to intervention. Some commentators have made an argument that some of the banks should have been allowed to go bust, and there's clearly a case for that, but the risk was that the effects would have been so wide-ranging as to create total chaos. However, there clearly is an alternative to what is happening now - we seem to be back to handing out bonuses, we are levying a new tax which will raise less than is being handed back to them through corporation tax, and it's basically as you were with us paying the bill by letting over a million people in the public and private sectors lose their jobs over the next few years. That is simply staggering.

You need to look at the whole quote. (my emphasis) A lot of temp accommodation in this country is provided by volorgs, charities and to a much lesser extent, churches. Most of it is funded through the capital and revenue funding system which requires submission of the CORE data. Crisis is very well placed to know about the minority of temp accommodation which is outside this system, and as they explain in the section you have only partly quoted, they have made an allowance for it and explained their rationale for doing so. Your statement that the figures exclude hostels and shelters provided by volorgs etc is wrong, as it is based on overlooking the explanation given by Crisis. This is not to say that there is not a homelessness problem in the UK; there is, and it's about to get a lot worse. I've just looked at the HUD figures in the 2008 annual report to Congress, and they're quite interesting. That's an estimate of over a quarter of a million people sleeping rough, compared to the Crisis estimate of 700 here. The definition in both cases seems to be roughly similar, from what I can tell - people sleeping in tents, boxes, vehicles, or literally on the street. Of course in both countries it's hard to be very accurate about this number, because lots of street homeless people try to conceal themselves, for fear of attack. I'm unclear how comparable some of the other figures are, because definitions will vary. For example, I can't tell what "emergency shelters or transitional housing programs" would equate to in UK definitions. Emergency shelter is probably broadly comparable, but it tends to be lumped together with the "transitional" bit, which is much less clear. But probably the street homeless figure is defined in a fairly similar way. On those figures, there seems to be a very significant difference of magnitude between the two countries, in this category, using snapshot figures in both cases. On the B&B point, aren't motels or cheap hotels the nearest equivalent? Or is that the "voucher" system I've seen mentioned?

A stunning level of ignorance of facts in that post. If this homeless advocacy group (so it's presumably not right-wing propaganda) is to be believed, the UK has a higher homelessness rate than the USA... Western Europe has, in general, at least as big a homelessness problem as the USA (Western European governments by and large pretend that there's no problem, and only a few pressure groups even attempt to call them on it). (I fully expect you to suddenly become quiet when confronted with actual facts... I'm used to it by now) Oh dear. I feel chastised by the chiding tone of your post. So, returning to facts, let's look at the page you quote. You will see that the group adopts a broad definition of homelessness, which I think has merit, including "owner dissatisfaction in concealed households", and "risk of eviction". You use this to counter a stat about the number of people in the US who have had to sleep in a homeless shelter? If you take those out, the implied number of homeless is still c. 600k, which is double the rate in the USA implied by the 1.5 million figure (and from personal experience, the majority of folks in the "sleeping on someone else's sofa" situation will end up spending a night in a shelter... the shelter statistic on the site I linked is, as best I can tell, a snapshot statistic). Oh, come on. Get real, as you cross-Atlantic peeps would say. On the page you quote, there are nine categories of visible and hidden homeless. The one which is directly comparable to sleeping in night shelters is the third of the nine, "hostels, night shelters and refuges". You can also reasonably include category 1, rough sleepers; some of these will have spent nights in homeless shelters, others won't. On the figures you quote, that's something like 44,000, as an overestimate. Far too many people, anyone would agree. But it leaves me wondering about the basis for your strident claim about my ignorance of the "fact" that the UK has a higher rate of homelessness than the US. The US has what, roughly 5x our population? So we would need more than 300,000 people sleeping in shelters even to catch up, never mind pass that? Or about, what, seven times the figure you claim to have found? Please feel free to correct my rough mental arithmetic here. Oh, since you are concerned that I become quiet when confronted with "actual facts", I'm off to bed shortly, but I will be happy to review whatever "actual facts" you see fit to present in the morning. Night night!