Nadine Dorries and the Right to Know
Abortion Counselling: Nadine Dorries vs Evan Harris
I love how Dr Harris breaks Dorries’ argument so easily, succinctly and utterly.
Nadine Dorries Attacks Student Demonstrators
Nadine Dorries, Conservative MP and notoriously less than fully truthful blogger has said (in said blog) of yesterday’s student demonstration against the proposed hike in tuition fees:
The NUS informed the Police that there would be 5000 students attending the demonstration yesterday. They upgraded that to 15,000 on Tuesday night. The final figure was possibly as much as twice that number.
The final figure was a lot higher than even that. It’s was demonstrable evidence that, far from being apathetic, students can get motivated to stand up for what they believe in.
The students arrived from all over the country, many in NUS organised coaches.
There are many eye witness accounts of NUS officials being right in the middle of the mêlée which ensued.
Are there? I’d be surprised if Ms Dorries can provide any evidence of this. I was there and saw no evidence of anything of the sort.
Many of the students who attended were visibly shaken at what was unfolding before their eyes.
The staff working in the offices at Milbank were terrified.
Someone threw an extinguisher off the roof which easily, so easily, could have killed someone.
Sir Paul Stephenson, has been incredibly professional in the way he has come out this morning and taken the hit on the chin.
Many of us MPs don’t believe that is right. Westminster was swarming last night with literally hundreds of Police officers. If Sir Paul had known the correct number of students attending, maybe he could have had enough Police in place quickly enough.
I think that’s an unbelievably naive position to take. So Aaron Porter underestimated the numbers he expected – that’s entirely beside the point. The point is the Met allowed a student protest to run past Tory Party HQ, and then chose to defend it with only a dozen beat cops. I’m not defending the violence in any way, but common sense should have told them that that sort of planning was downright incompetent. Well done to the Met – I agree – for not going in and busting heads the way I thought they were going to, and they should of course prosecute the rioter who threw the extinguisher down at the police, but to blame the NUS for the Met’s incompetent advance planning is just ridiculous.
It appears that the President of the NUS, Aaron Porter, did not brief him adequately. The NUS organised a demonstration which has resulted in people in hospital and students with criminal records, before they have even had time to fill in a job application form.
It was an NUS demonstration. It is not good enough that today they want to distance themselves from what happened with a ‘not me Gov’ statement. They cannot.
Sure they can, and they are right to. It’s preposterous to hold the NUS to account for the behaviour of every single person associated with the protest, be they student or not – there were far more than the 50,000 some reports have suggested attended. How on earth could the people responsible for organising a peaceful protest be expected to manage each and every participant on the ground? Porter himself strongly denounced the violence from an early stage, the Met were extremely slow to respond (I know – unlike Ms Dorries I was actually there) and the stewards were desperately trying to shepherd demonstrators away from Millbank Tower. Maybe they should have been better trained, or there should have been more of them, but I doubt that would have had any noticeable effect on what happened. I also doubt the numbers attacking the tower would have been that much fewer, if the total overall number of protesters had been lower.
It is not good enough that the police are expected to shoulder all of the blame.
Aaron Porter should resign. He was the architect of a dangerous demonstration which could have resulted in the loss of life.
An ignorant thing to say, based on at best questionable motives. He was the architect of a peaceful, legitimate demonstration and had nothing whatsoever to do with the violence which impinged on it. Ms Dorries should be ashamed of herself.
The Police should be congratulated for what they did manage to achieve in the face of adversity.
Everyone has a right to peaceful demonstration. No one has a right to terrify and endanger the lives of others. Aaron Porter was responsible for that. It was an NUS demonstration and therefore they are fully responsible.
Yes they should – those on the ground had to put up with a mob, some of whose members were throwing missiles at them for no discernible reason. But to blame Porter for that is contemptible and I believe Ms Dorries should be condemned by every right minded person associated with or aware of the protest. Same old Tories, eh?
General Election: Rational and Irrational
It was an awful night wasn’t it? I mean what happened to the rise of the Liberal Democrats? How on earth could so many polls have picked up such a seismic shift in British politics for so many weeks, for it to drop right back off the bottom of the scale again? How could so many rational people vote Tory again, given what they did last time, and considering how awful their policies were this time? It wasn’t all doom and gloom though:
Caroline Lucas’ triumph in the Brighton Pavillion constituency was despite the first-past-the-post voting system, and really should be celebrated by anyone involved in progressive politics in the UK, particularly those who are looking for a genuine alternative to the neoliberal consensus offered by the three main parties. Sadly in my constituency the Green vote melted away – Joan Ruddock was returned as MP yet again, and the council went overwhelmingly back to Labour.
Elsewhere the Commons lost Dr Evan Harris, which quite frankly is a disaster, although you wouldn’t know it from the Torygraph:
A stranger to principle, Harris has coat-tailed some of the most vulnerable and weak people available to him to further his dogged, secularist campaign to have people of faith – any faith – swept from the public sphere. The Lib Dems served the purpose of providing him with a parliamentary seat, but his true love was the National Secular Society. For a doctor, he supported the strange idea that terminally ill people should be helped to kill themselves. He pretended to defend Roman Catholics by attacking the Act of Settlement, with the real aim of undermining the established Church of England. A drab, secular determinism was his sole motivation; his parliamentary career consequently a one-trick pony.
Now he’s gone to spend more time with his NSS pamphlets and the House of Commons is better for his passing. His political demise will be mourned only by those with a strange fascination for death, those euthanasia enthusiasts whose idea of care for the elderly and infirm is a one-way ticket to Switzerland. But now Dr Death cannot bring a malign influence to bear on the legislature any longer. Bye bye, Evan.
Nasty, nasty, just plain nasty, and that was written by an Anglican priest, who’s supposed to believe in charity. Evan Harris’ parliamentary career (which will surely resume after the next election in 6-12 months) was marked by an emphasis on science, rationalism, evidence-based policy making, compassion and common sense. Whatever the issue you knew the moment he was interviewed about it you knew he would be the one, often the only Member of Parliament who would actually make complete sense. On parliamentary reform:
The recent Coroners and Justice Act – to mention just one of many – contained significant amendments to the law on murder, mercy killing, manslaughter and assisted suicide. While the media debates these matters and the public expects its MPs to, these weren’t even discussed in two days of debate because of the way the government organised the guillotines, as I protested, with no consultation and without regard to the lack of propriety involved in seeing the elected house passing laws “on the nod”. No other self-respecting democracy would tolerate this control of the agenda by the government.
On free speech:
On maintaining a secular NHS:
But maybe Ben Goldacre puts it best:
Recently we were comparing hate mail, and it occurred to me that you could only really pay tribute to the vital contribution Evan has made by listing all the groups who despise him, and the vicious hate campaigns they have mounted. The antivaccination conspiracy theorists hate him, because he drove for more and better evidence on the MMR and autism hoax, and helped expose it through the GMC. The animal rights protestors hate him, because he has dared to stand up for necessary and well-regulated animal experiments, an unpopular cause even among those who quietly benefit from their results. He is despised by fundamentalist christians, because he defends stem cell research and a woman’s right to choose what happens to her own body when she is pregnant. Homophobic christians (not all christians, but the homophobic ones) despise him, because he is clear that if you run a B&B, you have to let a gay couple stay, the same as any other (and although nobody ever mentions it, if you’re gay and run a B&B, you have to let a christian stay too). He is despised by homeopaths because he dared to examine the evidence for their magic beans, he is despised by climate change denialists for the same reason, and alongside all of this, he has led the field on libel reform and on free speech, on disentangling church from state while remaining respectful on religion, he has stood up and been a clear thinker on the role of scientific advisors and evidence on policy, and much more.
But of course he was up against the likes of this:
@Nadine4mp: Do my eyes and ears deceive me? Has Dr Death really lost his seat ?
Evangelical Christianists are on the march, demanding special rights in employment, and now in politics seek to supplant progress, equality and reason with myth, superstition, fear and hatred. That’s not the politics I recognise in this country, that’s not even the way I see this country at all. Make no mistake it’s a triumph that the BNP had such a catastrophically bad night on Thursday night, and that the Green Party is now represented in Westminster, but that chamber is not the place for those who seek to turn the clock back on modernity itself. I myself will continue to argue against religious extremism in any area of civic life, and for the diversity agenda to continue to operate against bigotry and discrimination, not to uphold rights to discriminate. I’ve long been a fan of Dr Harris and hope very much for his political career as an MP to resume with as short a gap as humanly possible. I hope my readers who agree that the principles of the Enlightenment should be fought for at all costs will join with me in making sure we get this vital asset to our lives back in parliament soon.
David Cameron’s Agenda
Straight from the horse’s mouth:
During the 20 reasons for 20 weeks abortion campaign I spoke to many representatives from various faith organisations.
Without exception, every single one supported the campaign. Muslim and Jewish faiths all support strongly the reduction from 24 weeks.
David Cameron, is the only leader who has said he wishes to see a reduction in the upper limit. They are not words you will ever hear pass the lips of Nick Clegg.
With all faiths, home and family is paramount, as is community and society. As one Muslim leader said to me, ‘community and care for our neighbour is the pillow of Islam’.
Our families and our neighbours, our community and environment are the key elements of the ‘big society’ David Cameron wants to dictate how we live as opposed to the control of the ‘big state’ we live within today.
If you want to see marriage and the family supported and reinforced. If you agree that social abortion is performed at much too late a stage. If you are appalled at the over sexualisation of young people, if you want the principles of decency and propriety to return, if as a parent you want to send your children to faith schools and have control over the content of sex education taught to your children – it appears to me there is only one party and one man you can and should vote for.
Every Christian and person of faith has to ask themselves the very important question, does my faith play a part in how I cast my vote? If it does, then surely there is only one way anyone of any faith in this country can vote?
Nadine Dorries tells it how it is. What else can anyone add? Vote Tory if this is the Britain you want.
