What does Glasgow East Change?

What does Glasgow East Change?

So what does Glasgow East Change? The headlines suggest it spells the end of Brown and the usual suspects are calling for a leadership challenge. However of course many forests have already been lost in the facilitation of such hyperbolic nonsense throughout history and this is no exception. Before drawing an irrational conclusion it is worth considering the following: contrary to anonymous whispering campaigns there is no mood within the Labour party for such a contest- no up and coming minister would want the poisoned chalice and it would be a huge miscalculation for the party to appoint a second un-elected leader within only 2 years. In Westminster the fortunes of the SNP are of little consequence, even the clear message that Labour can’t even win in their heartlands will be ignored by the party hacks who’ll no doubt complacently give the usual array of sound bites about listening closely to “the message of the electorate.” Gordon Brown will weather the political storm for another few months and with only 2 years until the next election there will not be time to change leader even if they wanted to.

However, while very little has changed in London this result could be a turning point for the Scottish Labour Party. Following the long overdue resignation of Wendy Alexander the Scottish wing of the party are without a leader and no longer have the safety cushion of the West Coast to fall upon for votes. What has happened here is that we have seen people who would normally vote Labour switching their allegiance in order to punish the PM. Will these voters return in droves for the next Scottish election? With the extended honeymoon of the SNP and the real possibility of a Tory government south of the border the prospect of a renaissance of Scottish nationalism is a real possibility.

Regardless of who becomes leader the Scottish Labour Party they will be in a state of turmoil: Alexander’s last act was to commit the party to supporting an independence referendum and a potentially divisive contest could leave the party split in to factions and still unable to find a consistent line of attack against the SNP. For too long, especially in Scotland, the Labour party has been run, with few exceptions, by a core of politically sterile Blairites. It’s been over 15 years since the party last had any serious internal ideological debate and in the current climate it seems pertinent that they should almost certainly have one. Ironically a rising support for the SNP has coincided with a distinct cooling in attitudes towards independence, however with a Tory victory down south almost inevitable this is subject to change.

The last few months have seen the government achieve their worst local election results since 1968, following that they lost a strong seat against the Tories in Crewe, then they came 5th behind the BNP in Wales and now they’ve managed to lose in their Glasgow heartlands. The government machine however will manage to hear no evil and see no evil and will be as contented as ever to chug along to electoral oblivion. In this regard their fate south of the border seems to be exactly the same as it would have been had they won the seat: even if they had won in Glasgow East, where the Conservatives are irrelevant it wouldn’t have been much of a revival and it would do little to change the fact that the only thing keeping the Prime Minister in a job is the fact that there is no-one in the cabinet who has enough charisma or public support to take over.

The situation in Scotland though is in some ways even worse, without a leader and without any momentum they run the risk of becoming politically impotent, if they have to plough time and resources in to winning in the Glasgow then Alex Salmond is right in saying there really is no such thing as a safe Labour sea

wast not want not

“Waste not want not.”


So Gordon Browns latest solution for tax burdened hard working families is for us all to save £8 a week through eating their stale food. It would be cheap of me to point out the irony in this coming at the same time as Brown was set to embark upon 8 courses of the kind of fine food that is so rare to find in his Kirkcaldy constituency. In fact it would also be cheap to point out that this plea for prudence is coming from the same man who squandered billions through his indecision on Northern Rock. Finally it would be cheap to pass comment on the fact that this declaration of caution came shortly after MP’s voted to keep their notorious John Lewis list. However all cheap points aside the greatest waste and the greatest tragedy has been the way in which Brown has thrown away a once in a lifetime opportunity to reform our great country. When he should be championing deep and long lasting change Brown is spending his time sending out patronising messages about how we can save our pennies.

The past year has been a year if doom and gloom with U-turns and anonymous briefings defining the Westminster village in a way reminiscent of the final days of Major. This time last year Brown was riding on a wave of high expectations and strong public support. Since then we have seen precious little to get excited about, in no are of social policy has Brown managed to do anything seriously worthy of note, we are still in a quagmire in Iraq, the nation is still gripped with widespread discontent relating to petrol prices and in terms of health and education we have seen precious little. After 11 years of a Labour government the gap between rich and poor has grown and the widespread disillusion has seen the Labour Party fall behind both the SNP and Tories and have been rejected from almost every single city council across England and Wales.

Under not circumstances would the self proclaimed Heathcliff have envisaged his first year running so badly, a series of bad results in bye election could be followed by a disastrous result in Glasgow East which many are already saying would spell the end of Brown. While a defeat in the Glasgow heartlands would surely be crippling all of this speculation ignores they key point that no one in their right mind would want to lead the government right now. For a young up and coming minister like Milliband or James Purnell then surely a stint in the top job would be a political kiss of death, the best they could hope for is for the next election to be competitive. Also as Michael Heseltine can attest it is very rare for the one who bears the sword to ever wear the crown. There appears to be a sense of compliance within the government, from a voters perspective it appears it seems like there’s an acceptance that the party are due a term in opposition.

Yet to paraphrase the West Wing it has to be said that Labour MPs have a greater chance to affect change within 1 day in government than they do in a lifetime outside it. One of the main reasons for the government’s failings has simply been a poverty of ambition. It’s been a long time since the Prime Minister addressed the big themes of government; we are still yet to hear about the Brown vision, unless that vision involves mediocrity and a series of corny sofa interviews. If we accept that defeat in 2010 is inevitable then that only further underlines the need to Brown to make the big changes and put in practice the irreversible egalitarian policies that we always hear about him supporting.

Brown has wasted his first year in the top job, he has thrown away an opportunity that the majority of us will never have: the chance to help create the Britain of his dreams. Significantly a number of Brown’s wounds have been self-inflicted; the indecision, the 10p tax disaster and the serious questions about the health of the economy yet these have all happened under an air of doom from a PM who spent 1 years backstabbing and bullying his way in to power and has shown precious little ambition now that he’s in control. Brown needs to stop wasting the little time he has, stop chasing headlines in the right-wing press and remember the reason he got involved in politics: to make the country a fairer place. The extravagance of the G8 feasts, the John Lewis lists and the indecision over Northern Rock are one thing but to waste a full year and to waste the chance to introduce great reform in Britain’s top job is surely unforgivable.

Wendy Alexander

Wendy Alexander

From a partisan biased perspective the recent resignation of Wendy Alexander as leader of the Scottish Labour Party was an overdue end to a sorry saga. However regardless of the perceived political wisdom it has to be pointed out that from a Scottish Labour Party perspective this represents a key opportunity for political progress.

Alexander’s lasting legacy is the parties’ commitment to an independence referendum and if the party had any sense they would stick to it. Consistent polls have shown a growing support for independence yet while they have always shown a consistent support for greater devolved powers they have also shown a consistent, but shrinking, support for the union. The danger for the unionists is that eventually the apathy towards Westminster could plausibly develop into a support for independence.

With hindsight the best thing the unionists could have done would have been to unite around referendum during the first term of the parliament in order to call the SNP’s bluff. Without a doubt they would have won at the time and undermined the SNP for a generation. As things stand it would take a monumental blunder for the Tories to lose the next election and as such it would appear this will coincide with the SNP’s referendum timetable.

If I was a supporter of the Labour party I would urge them to unite behind any old rubbish, keep their heads down and weather the storm of bad headlines and blunders being made south of the border. The SNP have yet to convert a lot of people to their cause and have thus far failed to live up to the expectations of millions, they are still one million miles away from winning their mandate, their success is almost entirely built on the weakness of a very poor Labour Party.

I think it’s fair to say that with 2 leaders having resigned for financial irregularities and the widespread blunders of last years national deputy leadership race then yet another internal contest is going to be arousing the suspicion of many investigative journalists and to be honest I would find it hilarious if some peeping tom manages to find out that old habits die hard.

Regardless of any financial foul play I think we can all conclude that the main problem the party have is that there is simply no one on their benches who can compare to Alex Salmond in terms of his charisma, confidence and ease with the electorate, the key reason probably being that any competent candidates are already in Westminster. However Alexander wasn’t merely a bad leader, she was an utterly inept leader and if she was the intellectual powerhouse of the party then those of us who want to see them sink without a trace may see our wish coming true. If the party stick to their referendum pledge then in all likelihood they’ll win it with a small majority. The main danger for the parties’ long-term future comes from dropping their commitment. It is inevitable that if support for a referendum keeps chugging along there will eventually be a referendum, the Labour party need to strike fast because nothing will make Scottish people want to break up Britain more than a term or two of Tory rule down south when we can guarantee their Scottish vote will barely break in to double figures.

Personally I cant see the Tories providing too vocal an opposition, the union ensures an extra 40 or so Labour MP’s south of the border and surely the break-up of Britain would probably have the result of allowing the Tories to cling on to Westminster indefinitely. The future of the Labour party nationally is reliant upon them getting the timing of the independence issue right because if they get it wrong they will simply drift in to insignificance.

Reasons to Support the Miss Great Britain Party

Reasons to Support the Miss Great Britain Party

If I was one of the good people of Haltemprice and Howden I would be thinking very hard before I voted next month. With both the Liberal Democrats and the government failing to put up candidates it would appear the best chance tactical voters have of removing a right wing Tory is probably to support the Miss Great Britain Party. That Davis’s recent resignation was an ego trip is beyond question, however the question of whether or not it was a principled move is somewhat harder to answer.

The notion that Davis has become an overnight libertarian is simply nonsense. It is worth remembering that Davis has failed to ever support a single piece of gay rights legislation and even voted against the repealing of Section 28. Regarding other Tory fetishes Davis is a supporter of the death penalty, zero tolerance policing and curbing immigration. The fact he has the support of lefties like Benn and Bob Marshall Andrews is frankly bizzare.

Regarding the question of detention without charge it is worth remembering that Davis was an enthusiastic supporter of the 28 day detention law so it seems to me that it’s not the principle of the proposal he’s campaigning against it’s the degree of it. While one could regard this as noble do we really believe that it’s really the thought of the extra 14 days that has prompted him in to action.

It is known that Davis is on the traditionally right wing side of the Tories and it is known that he’s a potential threat to Cameron as we already know he has run for the Tory leadership twice. Having now defined himself as a political maverick Davis now has the potential to prove a thorn in any future governments side and has now attained an element of bargaining power against any future Prime Minister.

The greatest tragedy of this drama is that civil liberties are now becoming the ideological domain of the right wing. There is a strong case to be made against I.D cards, CCTV and the erosion of civil liberties, however I would rather that this case was being made by a candidate who doesn’t oppose gay rights, trade union rights and a minimum wage for Britain’s poorest workers. If we want to keep out another right wing Tory then it seems the best way to do so is to vote for the right honourable Gemma Dawn Garrett of the Miss Great Britain Party.

Lesbians of the world come out!

Lesbians of the world come out!


“Some women can’t say the word lesbian… even when their mouth is full of one”

For anybody living under the impression that the gay community in Britain is any less patriarchal than wider society the results of the Independent on Sunday’s 2008 Pink List must have been an eye-opener. The list of Britain’s 101 most ‘influential’ gays and lesbians was unlikely to be ground-breaking but the fact that the list was made up of 83 men and only 18 women suggests a wide disparity in the mainstream gay hierarchy, having said this I could confidently predict that if the list had been a gay rich list the gender balance would probably have been equally skewed. Bisexuals and transgender people however fared even worse with out a single mention.

What the list reveals though is a far wider problem in the LGBT community; there is not a single significant lesbian role model for young people. While one could turn on the television any night of the week and see reasonably realistic depictions of gay males can we say the same about lesbians? When was the last time a mainstream publication was launched with a lesbian target market? Gay men have Attitude, GT and all sorts of other alternative FHM magazines but what about lesbians? This poverty of lesbians in the public eye is epitomised by the inclusion of 1980s pop diva Samantha Fox on the pink list: the reason being because of an appearance on Celebrity Wife Swap.

One of the great problems with the depiction of lesbians in the media is that so much of it feels targeted at men, be it the lesbian antics of TATU or soft porno movies along the lines of Bound or even the gruesome spectacle that was Cruel Intensions. Even the great majority of lesbian porn is aimed at men. As I write this I’m trying to wrack my brain for a single high profile lesbian writer in a single daily newspaper or a single lesbian pop star or entertainer… who would have ever thought Alex Parks had the potential to be revolutionary? Other media omissions have included the recent Channel 4 gay season which was almost entirely dedicated to the plight of gay men, in fact arguably the centrepiece of the season was a drama called Clapham Junction which on one hand insinuated that every man in London as a closeted homosexual but on the other hand didn’t have a single lesbian character. Similarly Bad Girls insinuated that the only place in society one can find lesbians is in prison.

One could justify this sexist whitewash by saying that the media is reflective of viewer demands. In some ways the problems I have outlined are problems of a wider society in which all of the media institutions and the majority of the worlds money in the hands of men. Nevertheless there have always been and are today a number of brave and inspiring lesbians and I can only conclude that if the media and wider society do not change their outlook soon then young lesbians across the country can look forward to yet another few years of having Samantha Fox as their best public face and after hundreds of years of being overlooked by British law and whitewashed by our media then that would be tragic.

Cheer Up Stephen Frail

Following the news that Stephen Frail is being kept on by Hearts throughout the pre-season period I thought I would give my prediction about what will happen at Tynecastle over the next couple of years.Personally I take what Romanov says at face value, I believe that he honestly wants hearts to be a Euro power, I believe that he sees himself as a Roman Abramavich figure that likes the glamour of a football team. However I don’t think Romanov cares whether or not that team is Hearts, in fact he offered his money to other clubs first.

Anyway now that hearts have finished a lowly 8th and there is no sign of Euro football and the best players have all gone I think he cant help but lose interest, we already know that next season is likely to be the last one at Tynecastle but if and when Hearts fail to reach the UEFA cup next year I cant see Romanov maintaining any interest in the Hearts project.Another bottom 6 performance and Hearts fans may actually take action, if they boycott season tickets then the club loses its main lifeblood at a point when they are moving to a stadium of 40,000+ which would mean effectively you could turn up at Murrayfield and get your own wing of the stadium with no need to book, the atmosphere will be non-existent and the turnout will be dire.

Romanov is no footballing tactician, his interventions are personal, he didn’t intervene to get rid of Presley, Hartley, Webster and Gordon because they were bad players, he did it for personal reasons, similarly we know he effectively disposed of Burley, Rix etc for the same reasons.

On the topic of management and playing staff I think it’s reasonable to assume that any club known to be run and bankrolled by a controlling dynasty are going to find it very hard to attract either strong independent management or players of the calibre that Hearts have lost over the last few years. What self-respecting well-known player/manager would want to tarnish their own image with a stint at the ‘circus club’? On a similar point as HFC are paying the highest wages in the country outside Glasgow it means that in the long run wages will have to be capped and cut in order to try to balance the books, which will further repel any careerist players who are considering playing for Scotland’s 8th best team.

My prediction is that Romanov will keep running the circus until the end of next season, I don’t think he will bring in an independent manager because I think he likes the control, however my prediction is that hostility from fans and poor economics will eventually make him pull out, there's no need for him to try and own a euro footballing power if they don’t get in to Europe.

At the end of next season I predict Romanov will pull out and leave them with Murrayfield, a huge debt and a shattered fan base. Even from a Hibs perspective this is bad news, the hilarity and novelty of the ‘big team’ being bankrupted will have worn off long before the end of the first season without a derby. In short, unless there are big changes then Hearts are fucked…

Tai Chi

Learning Tai Chi

Every January sees a short term influx of optimistic born again fitness enthusiasts pouring in to their local gym during that short- lived period in which a new years resolution is yet to become dropped like a bad habit. Like clockwork I always find myself giving in to the same annual instincts. Anyway this year I have taken up the traditional Eastern art of Tai Chi. After a short introduction from our new teacher my small class began by learning basic breathing techniques, which in itself was a revelation, until now it had never even occurred to me that I breathe wrongly. Apparently when we breathe- in our diaphragm is meant to inflate and then deflate upon release, apparently this is the way babies breathe but somehow as we become older and wiser we forget how to do it. This left me with the realisation that things which should be natural can actually be very hard to do, for example the next instruction of the night was to simply relax. The problem with this is that it feels almost contradictory to be told to relax upon command; I found myself fumbling around trying to relax only to make myself gradually more tense.

Initially I felt daft as we slowly manoeuvred our way around our invisible boxes and guided invisible balls around our abdomens. It all felt like hippy dippy nonsense as we were told to “fetch and guide the water” and other commands which underlined my early suspicions that Tai Chi was simply not for me. I felt self conscious for the first half of our session; it felt so odd to be doing these strange limp wrested movements to mock eastern music. However upon reflection this was simply a macho reaction to the idea that Tai Chi is too feminine, it was a reaction against the fact that Tai Chi challenges the foundations of manliness and what we observe to be socially acceptable behaviour. What occurred to me half way through the lesson was that there’s no need to feel awkward or self conscious when everyone else is doing almost exactly the same thing as you are. This was to be my epiphany of sorts, as soon as I stopped feeling awkward I began to feel genuinely relaxed, very soon my arms were floating about in the same floppy effeminate fashion as everyone else’s and it no longer mattered how we looked. The emphasis was placed on being calm and slow and this was such a welcome relief from the stress and pace of everyday life and really provided a contrast with the rain we could hear lashing against the nearby windows.

What is interesting about Tai Chi is that it’s effectively a half way house between Yoga and Karate, it can be tender and it can also be extremely violent. The moves in themselves felt like flaccid dances but when the moves were explained it turned out that these simple limp steps were actually also ways to break people’s arms or vital organs. It was when this dual identity became apparent that I really began to see the universal appeal of Tai Chi. Sometimes there’s a thin line between violence and art and for that reason Tai Chi should be relevant to both retired grandparents and to knife wielding psychopaths. Once you detach your ego and relax yourself then there’s really nothing quite like floating around like an incredibly dangerous butterfly. This emotion is of course not exclusive to Tai Chi, all martial arts have the same dance- like foundations, boxing shares the same graceful steps and the same appetite for chaos, wrestling can be described as ballet for butch men, even football incorporates the same carefully rehearsed skilful steps from its premier athletes.

In an age of nuclear weapons and constant terror alerts it’s satisfying to know that there are millions of people around the world who express themselves through this same elegant art and even that thought makes me feel optimistic. It was when I conquered my inhibitions and let myself become enthralled in something so powerful that I knew that for the first time there’s a chance this New Year’s resolution won’t be next months regret.