Horrific Attack in Nigeria

There was a horrifying attack yesterday in Nigeria, 16 people were gunned down on Bayero University campus in northern Nigeria. They have been attending religions services when small bombs went off inside the church. This drew them outside where they were shot by armed gun men. Before the police had time to respond the assailants had left the area on motorcycles. Although no group has claimed the attacks, the tactics are similar to that of the radical Islamist group, Boko Haram.

For years sectarian warfare has torn Nigeria apart, the north is predominantly Muslim and the south is predominantly Christian. The sectarian strife takes hundreds of lives every year as people fall victim to increasingly radicalised groups. The rise in the number of Christians over the past half century has helped as Islam is now contested as the prime religion of Nigeria, the current president is a Christian. Nigeria’s democracy is weak and could easily collapse if enough pressure was put on it.

Attacks are common from both sides of Nigeria, with churches being the primary target. Unfortunately it marks a trend in the increase in sectarian violence across Africa, we must help the Africans to overcome their differences and try to adopt a Sierra Leone attitude continentally (Sierra Leone has one of the highest levels of religious tolerance in the whole world). International companies must try and re-invest in the communities whose resources they are plundering, especially the oil companies.

Democracy Struggle in Michigan

This week in Michigan a huge blow has been dealt to democracy, there is a particularly unpopular law in Michigan (which I will come to later) that many people want overturned. It’s not the only US state with laws that many people want to overturn, in Maine and Ohio voters  rejected legislation that had been passed by their Republican led State legislators, in Arizona the most powerful Republican in the state was recalled from office due to his ‘papers please’ law. In Wisconsin, Republican governor, Scott Walker, faces a recall election on the 5^th of June. To get a law overturned in American states you must provide a certain amount of signatures (it varies state to state), if you have enough verified signatures  then the law gets put to a public vote. In Michigan the process was followed, people opposed to the legislation returned enough signatures to have the law put to a referendum (which is 5% of the number of people who voted in the last election), they even had more, 40,000 extra signatures were handed to the correct authorities who confirmed that the signatures were legitimate.

Despite this a challenge was brought by a group calling themselves “Citizens for fiscal responsibility” claiming that correct process had not been followed. So what horrifying, terrible thing had the petitioners done that this recall must be stopped? The font size was apparently too small. I’m not joking. This challenge was put to the Board of Canvassers who voted  along party lines, the two Democrats voted no to the challenge (and therefore yes to the recall) and the two Republicans voted yes to the challenge (and therefore no to the recall). What is important to note is the identity of one of the Republicans, Jeffrey Timmer, he is one of three partners at a Republican consulting firm that helped to bring the font size challenge to the petition. Clearly there is a conflict of interests here, he is both the defendant and the jury, voting on something that he has helped bring to the board of canvassers. It is a disgrace. Yet thankfully the petition is not dead in the water and the challenge will be brought to the courts where a final decision will be made.

The particular law that is up for recall is a very, very radical law. It is called the Emergency Manager Law basically it takes away local democracy in struggling towns and cities. The state of Michigan has the right to take away power from local elected officials such as mayors or councillors and give them to one person who has unilateral control over the municipality. This is a horrible attack on democracy and it is a law that should never have been passed. Many areas have already been taken over by emergency managers such as Pontiac and Flint, these towns have substantial African-American populations and have lost their voice in Michigan.

The USA has been a beacon of democracy for years, yet laws like these threaten to undermine the very reason why America is great. This law must be overturned.

Back in Recession

The UK has slid back into recession, making it the second time in four years. This means that it is the worst peace time recession in over a century, worse than the Wall Street Crash of 1929. After that the UK economy was shrinking for about three years, but recovered on the fourth and there was no double dip.

What caused the UK to go into growth was two successive quarters with negative growth. In the figures for the first three months of 2012 released yesterday it was revealed that the UK economy had shrunk by 0.2%, pushing us into recession. One of the major reasons for this shrink is the collapse in the construction sector in the first part of 2012 as well as fears of the Eurozone and the continued failure of the government’s economic policy. Yet there are no signs that the government plans on changing course for austerity, with some Conservative MPs calling for the cuts to go deeper and happen faster, they don’t seem to have got the point. When a policy is so clearly not working, it will not work by doing more of it. What’s even more worrying is that the majority of cuts are still to come which will drive up unemployment and possibly keep the UK in recession for the rest of the year. As I have written before, the policy of severe austerity is not working anywhere in Europe, shrinking or stagnating of economies is what is characteristic of Europe at the moment. The Dutch government has just fallen due to a disagreement in the ruling coalition over cuts, the Czech government could topple any day now and France is looking set to elect a socialist as president who will oppose the harsh cuts. What many on the left in Europe are looking at is the success of America, Obama has managed to recover the US economy to above its position before the crisis, while the UK is sitting 4% below the 2007 level.  Unemployment in the US is shrinking and confidence in the markets is growing, unfortunately centre-right politicians in Europe are ignoring both history and current events, they seem blind to the facts.

 The British government is looking increasingly incompetent, the budget was extremely unpopular, the economy is shrinking and they’re embroiled in a scandal with the Murdochs. What will happen next is anyone’s guess, I don’t believe that the UK government is close to collapse but if the current string of embarrassments continue it would be perfectly conceivable that the coalition could fall apart.

Regardless what will happen, yesterday’s news is extremely disappointing for the UK.

Revenge of the Murdochs

Today James Murdoch made an appearance at the Leveson Enquiry and released some explosive information. He has basically accused Jeremy Hunt, the Culture Secretary, of being corrupt. We all remember the scandal surrounding the Murdoch Empire that erupted last year, one of the effects of it was that News International stopped attempting to purchase a majority stake in BSkyB. Prior to this, Jeremy Hunt had been tasked with deciding whether or not the takeover would be fair and maintain a balanced media. Hunt was supposed to be acting in a quasi-juidicial fashion, taking a neutral stance and deciding whether or not the bid could go ahead based on evidence provided. What James Murdoch has revealed is that he had a huge amount of contact with Hunt throughout the whole process, with Hunt providing information that should have never been leaked.

Jeremy Hunt is facing calls to resign

The Conservative hierarchy in Downing Street have rallied around Hunt, especially the Prime Minister. They claim that the contact used by Murdoch is not trustworthy and that he was simply lying to make him seem like a big player to his boss, James Murdoch. Yet there is one big piece of evidence that throws the spanner into the works of this theory, an email from the contact to Murdoch on the 24^th of January 2011 explained how he had had a meeting with JH (supposedly Jeremy Hunt or one of his staff) in which they discussed the details of an address that Hunt would give the House of Commons the following day. In the email quite precise detail is revealed about how Mr Hunt was to reject calls for a review over the BSkyB bid, which would have slowed the process down for at least a couple of months.

Hunt is known to be a fan of the Murdochs, on his own website Hunt claims that the Murdoch Empire is essential to the health of British Media.  It may not prove his guilt but it does reveal that Hunt could not have approached this from a quasi-judicial perspective and should never have been chosen for this job.

Both Harriet Harman and Ed Miliband of Labour have called for Jeremy Hunt to resign over the scandal in a statement made yesterday Ed Miliband said: “He should resign. He himself said that his duty was to be transparent, impartial and fair in the BSkyB takeover. But now we know that he was providing advice, guidance and privileged access to News Corporation. He was acting as a back channel for the Murdochs.”

Although I do believe that the Labour Party should hold off calling for Mr Hunt’s immediate resignation I also believe that Cameron should not say he backs Hunt. Both should wait until all the evidence is in about this scandal, Hunt need time to reply to the allegations and Murdoch needs to provide more evidence of the alleged corruption.

Furious with the current coalition government for abandoning them the Murdochs' have taken their first revenge strike against the government. What is more important is that the tomorrow it is Rupert Murdoch's turn at answering questions at Leveson.

Good News for Green Energy

We all know that fossil fuels are limited, one day they will run out, as well as that fossil fuels are getting harder to extract as the easily-accessed supplies are being drained fast. As well as this global warming, accelerated by man, is a major reason for more renewable forms of energy. So for fellow greens, good news came yesterday as the US and UK agreed to invest in floating offshore wind farms. This news came after the end of a meeting held in London on clean energy and was attended by representatives from 23 countries.

The UK has massive potential in wind farms, about one third of potential offshore wind farms in Europe are in British waters. Up until now there have been two major problems with offshore wind farms, the first is cost and the second is the difficulty of placing turbines in deep waters, which is also where the wind is fastest. The floating turbines are much less costly than those attached to sea beds as no foundation work on the sea bed is required. Repairing the turbines is also easier as the floating turbines can be brought to land to be repaired, whereas those attached to the sea bed must be repaired at sea.

The UK already has more wind turbines on in its waters than any other country in the world and the government's continued support for it makes it the most attractive market globally. The news today will make it all the more lucrative for companies, floating wind farms are already being built by Norway and Portugal. The US Department of Energy is creating four sites in American waters to help move America into the clean, green age of energy. The project in the UK is part of a wider attempt to significantly increase the amount of off-shore wind energy the UK consumes by 2020. Off-shore wind farms pose two massive benefits to the UK, firstly it's clean so pollution is lowered and the energy is not affected by fluctuating fuel prices due to a troubled Middle East.

We must sever our dependence on fossil fuels, particularly oil, otherwise we will be left behind in a new world.

Major House of Lords Reform

A government report has called for massive House of Lords reform. What the report suggests is a reduction in the membership to 450 peers, 80% of which would be elected and 20% of which would be appointed along the lines of the current system used for the whole house. The new peers may be called 'senators' and thus the reformed house would be called a 'senate'. Although I am totally in favour of House of Lords reform and I want greater democracy, I also believe that to maintain our culture and heritage it should still be called the House of Lords and those elected or appointed to the house should still be peers.

The proposals have cross party support, the Labour Party considered it during their time in office, this is a Liberal Democrat part of the coalition agreement and the Conservative hierarchy have supported it. Yet there is significant disquiet amongst many back bencher Conservatives who believe that such a monumental change to British governance should be put to the electorate in a referendum. This idea is a bit bizarre, the majority of the country support House of Lords reform, so they would almost certainly lose. Also a referendum is very expensive and would distract the government from the more important tasks at hand like the international and internal economic situation.

In my opinion this House of Lords reform (if passed) would mark the end of an incredible journey of reform of the upper house. The Liberals were the first to start the process with the Parliament Act of 1911, this act removed the veto power of the House of Lords. Labour would continue this progress with the Parliament Act of 1949, this reduced the amount of time the Lords could delay a bill by. In 1999 Labour continued with the House of Lords Act 1999, this got rid of the majority of hereditary peerages, for the hereditary peers that were left the peerage would expire upon their death. An elected chamber is what is required to complete our journey to better democracy. I urge the government to push ahead with the promise of reform and to ignore Conservative opposition.

Sarkozy Set to Lose

The exit polls from the French Presidential election show Sarkozy losing the first round by one percentage point. Coming out on top is his socialist rival, François Hollande.

François Hollande

For weeks opinion polls had predicted that the first round of voting would be close between Hollande and Sarkozy, with Hollande being just slightly ahead of the incumbent President. Sarkozy's followers believe that, because the men came so close in the first round that Sarkozy could manage to win in two weeks time when the French go to the polls again. But it is also important to note that as well as predicting a tight win for Hollande in the first round, they also predicted Hollande trouncing Sarkozy in the second round of voting.

What is most surprising about the race is the amount of the vote that the far right candidate, Marine Le Pen, attracted. She managed to get almost 20% of the vote (nearly one in five French voters), this progress made by the far-right in France is extremely worrying. So why have the French voted en masse for a far-right candidate? Some of her policies are quite appealing to many French people for one, she has been anti-globalisation, which is also a characteristic claimed by Hollande, she also has managed to tap into the fear that many French people have that French culture and heritage is being eroded by immigration and European integration. France is one of Europe's, and the world's, oldest countries having existed in some form since around the 5th/6th centuries and French people are very proud of their heritage and identity. I really hope that when people voted for Le Pen they forgot that at the heart she is racist. For you cannot be far-right and non-racist, it isn't possible. Since the 2007/8 economic collapse and subsequent recession far-right groups have made significant progress across Europe, in Germany I have written about the rise of the Immortals and other far-right groups. The far-right is also gaining in debt-stricken Greece and the Norway massacres shocking the country to its core. With recovery on the horizon it is possible that the rise of the far-right will be quelled and the fears of a pre-WWII Europe will be gone.

The likely outgoing
Nicolas Sarkozy 

Despite the rise of the far-right, it looks like France will have its first socialist president in 17 years. Electing a socialist president will be a game-changing on the French, European and world stage. Hollande will challenge the cuts that Sarkozy, Merkel and Cameron have been supporting and will probably look towards an Obama stimulus package for growth. If he wins I wish him good luck, I hope he wins as we need some left-wing views on the European stage.