UK MP's Majority Vote for Same-Sex Marriage

It's not over yet, but Equality in Marriage is one step nearer being law after it got through the first vote in the House of Commons yesterday. If you are on Facebook, you can keep up-to-date with what's happening on the Out4Marriage page here.

today's reports on the event include

The Independent
The Guardian
and even the Daily Mail eventually covered it :-)
NB the Mail includes a complete list of the MP's who voted against

A Rare Beast

I took one look at this and thought: aha! A Pushmi Pullyu. Learn all about it here.

Old News

The stream has turned to a trickle, but there is still incredulity at the absolute chutzpah of those British Members of Parliament and their expenses. This is my favourite at the moment - a $2500 duck island. It is actually hard for me to believe that such a group of bland bottom-kissers could be so bizarre and so incredibly corrupt. It is just a pity that Sir Peter Viggers did not buy a Canada Goose Island (known for their large and hard-to-remove poo)

leo abse z"l

leo abse, a welsh and labour member of parliament for over thirty years, has died at the age of 91. apart from being the older brother of our beloved friend dannie, he is also worth celebrating for his pioneering work in the reforming of british family and social life when i was a child. the times notes:

"His concerns were at the heart of the reforms that touched and revolutionised family and social life in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s: the acceptance of homosexuality, divorce and family planning, although he also interested himself in a great range of other social issues including abortion, prisons and, more recently, in vitro fertilisation."
the times obituary

in the grauniad, geoffrey goodman begins:

"The politician, social reformer, writer and lawyer Leo Abse, who has died aged 91, was a unique figure in the public life of our time. He reflected, and transmitted in grandiloquent style, the paradoxes of our age along with his own egocentric capacity to express, often in pyrotechnic rhetoric, the contradictions and absurdities in all our lives. He was a leftwing socialist with a Disraelian quality of showmanship, and a product of a Welsh–Jewish idealism oft times coated with Celtic imagery — always laced with a Jewish romanticism he sought, pointlessly, to disguise."
full obituary

from the telegraph:

"Abse was the first MP to initiate debates on genetic engineering, the dangers of nuclear power generation at Windcsale, and in vitro pregnacies; and he campaigned to change the law which made attempted suicide a criminal act. He made a special study of the problems of delinquency, divorce and counselling. It was due to him that the law was changed, in the Divorce Reform Act of 1969, to allow divorce after a marriage had broken down beyond repair. He despised the system of having to secure a divorce by a bogus admission of adultery or couples being compelled to remain married in name. He also saw that the interests of the child were made a prior consideration in divorce settlements. Perhaps his best-known achievements, however, were piloting through the House of Commons the Homosexual Law Reform Bill in 1967 and sponsoring what eventually became the 1975 Children’s Act."
full obit

with regard to the political psychobiographies abse wrote later in life, tam dalyell says in the indy:

"Abse's approach was to study the relationship between politics and personality. He dared to place under scrutiny the interior lives of practising politicians. He insisted this had nothing to do with cheap and scurrilous probing, but related to the belief that when political decision-making can have such fateful consequences as peace or war for a nation, the elected politician cannot claim the same right of privacy as that afforded to the electors.

Policies, for Abse, cannot be disengaged from the policy-makers. The drives and psychological needs of the politicians invade and distort the panaceas they offer to the electorates. If more objective assessments are to be made of policies, assessments must be made of the men and women who expound them. Abse himself deserved to be remembered as one of the most significant social reformers of 20th-century Britain."
full obit

it sounds like he was a man for his time. where are such people today?

poor old gordon brown

why is it that nice, decent, kind intelligent people find it so hard to succeed in leadership positions in the modern western world? in the us reform rabbinate, it has finally been realised that it is almost impossible to succeed in a post immediately following a charismatic leader, and now they try to place temporary rabbis to bridge the gap. poor old gordon brown just jumped right in there. and now look at how things are :-( i feel rather sorry for him.

peace in northern ireland?

are such things possible? today, we saw ian paisley, the democratic unionist party leader who spent decades denouncing republicans, and martin mcguinness, a former ira commander, standing next to each other as they prepared to begin governing the province of northern ireland together.
Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness, Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, Tony Blair, Peter Hain, and DUP leader Ian Paisley after the ceremony at Stormont
the main papers report it thus:

the guardian
the telegraph

from the times:

"Then and now

Martin McGuinness, on trial in Ireland, 1973 “I am a member of Oglaigh na Eireann (IRA) and very, very proud of it”
Yesterday in Stormont “As for Ian Paisley, I want to wish you all the best as we step forward towards the greatest yet most exciting challenge of our lives”

Ian Paisley, opposing the Anglo-Irish Agreement, 1985 “Never! Never! Never!”
Yesterday in Stormont “That was yesterday. This is today and tomorrow will be tomorrow. From the depths of my heart I can say to you today that I believe Northern Ireland has come to a time of peace”"

from the independent:

"Over the years I heard them, repeatedly and routinely, send out the message that there would be no compromise, no sell-out, no surrender. But now there is a new rhetoric and all of the old certainties are disappearing. Ian Paisley, now Northern Ireland's First Minister, spoke of "a time when hate will no longer rule". Martin McGuinness, ex-IRA and now his new deputy, spoke of peace and reconciliation. They both clearly meant it."

new york times

finally, from ian paisley (the auld preacher)'s speech, his conclusion:

""I have sensed a great sigh of relief amongst all our people who want the hostility to be replaced with neighbourliness.

"The great king Solomon said, 'To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.
'A time to be born and a time to die.
A time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted.
'A time to kill and a time to heal.
A time to break down and a time to build up.
'A time to get and a time to lose.
A time to keep and a time to cast away.
'A time to love and a time to hate.
A time of war and a time of peace.'

"I believe that Northern Ireland has come to a time of peace, a time when hate will no longer rule. How good it will be to be part of a wonderful healing in our Province. Today we have begun to plant and we await the harvest.""

if it can happen in northern ireland, dare we hope in other places ... ... ... ?

when do candidates tell the truth?

how naive is it of me to think that candidates for election should tell the truth and keep their promises? ok, very naive. then where does one draw the boundary with regard to how much spin we will accept? and how do we enforce such choices?

theoretically the third question is the easiest to answer, if you believe that voting can make a difference.

why am i going on about this just now? i found an article in the sunday times online about carl bernstein's new unauthorised 640-page biography, A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

complete article here.

when i was about 11 bernstein was one of my heroes. we spent the summer of 1973 in the usa, and our friend bonnie who worked for the epa took us around dc. the first place we went was to a howard johnson's opposite an office building, and from our seat by the window bonnie pointed out the windows of the rooms where the watergate break-in had taken place. i got totally into politics for the first time in my life. *pause while i rummage in my room*

not a good pic but one of the buttons i bought at the time. o, and i also asked for the hardback "the final days" for my big chanukah present.

scroll forward 33 years. the sunday times anticipates bernstein's latest perspective:

"For years Bernstein suffered from writer’s block, but Knopf is promoting his biography as a triumphant return to form. Publisher Sonny Mehta said his portrait would “show us, for the first time, the true trajectory of Hillary Clinton’s life and career”. It will be published simultaneously in Britain by Hutchinson.

According to the publishers, it will cover everything from Clinton’s “complex relationship with her disciplinarian father” to “her courtship with Bill Clinton and the amazing dynamic of their marriage, during the most trying of circumstances”."

i think i feel sorry for hillary. i am, however, no longer sure for whom i wish to vote. it's like the game show 'the weakest link'. it often does not matter who the strongest link actually is. the people vote according to their perception, and for tactical reasons. how much spin will i accept?

before i had heard of richard nixon, i lived in a world where the president or the prime minister was a good man. we trusted him to lead our government honestly and to the best of his abilities. i also was taught to find a policeman if i was in trouble, and to make sure that i paid the bus conductor even if he forgot to ask me for a fare. that was obviously over the rainbow, yet i still hope for some of those attitudes to turn the tide today. *sigh*

gordon brown

for those of you outside the uk, who is gordon brown? he is currently the chancellor of the exchequer in the labour government, and expected to succeed tony blair as prime minister of the united kingdom in the near future. he is presenting the budget today, and is therefore under particular scrutiny.

is he really a "stalinist", as stated in the news yesterday? and what does that mean in any case?

if you look at the independent's comment, one might surmise that they are inferring totalitarian behaviour, and using (or, i think, misusing) the term stalinist to indicate the socialist bent of the chancellor. i don't think, however, that they are criticising him for being a socialist, since he is the #2 in the labour party :-) on the other hand, it is a much more evocative term than 'authoritarian', more evil than 'control freak'.

then again, as the independent notes:

"Lord Turnbull said yesterday he had been speaking off the record but in a BBC Radio 4 programme on the civil service under New Labour to be broadcast tomorrow, he says too much power has been developed at the centre of government."

thus, perhaps, the government is being criticised for the corruption of its socialist roots. that, however, is very old news, because this is, of course, new labour.

how much longer will i remain an anachronistic idealist who still hopes that one day we can find a way to make "from each according to her/his ability, to each according to his/her need" a viable social policy? *sigh*