like literacy taught by illiterates

The government has decided to abolish the Independent Advisory Group on Sexual Health and HIV and set up a new group to help with policy. The seat held on the old forum by the British Pregnancy Advisory Service has been given to the anti-abortion group Life.

At the same time, there was a parliamentary launch for the Sex and Relationships Education Council, an umbrella group of anti-abortionists, homophobes and abstinence promoters, with a resounding endorsement from Education Secretary Michael Gove.

One member, Christian abstinence advocates Silver Ring Thing, say they want to see "value-based, parent centred" sex education. Which is odd given that most times people have sex they would feel that something has gone wrong - in some instances even crossed the lines of the biologically impossible - if they ended up becoming parents as a result.

Of course, we know what they mean by 'value', and the most cursory look at their materials shows it; heterosexual patriarchal monogamous marriage. It's interesting to note their use of 'value' in the singular, like they've subconsciously wanted to be clear that there is one God, one model of sexual relationship, and all else shall burn in a lake of eternal fire.

Not that it's actually all overtly religious, as The F Word points out

Challenge Team UK, one of the organisations on the Council, is not a Christian organisation. Their volunteers are so passionate about the choice they have made to save their virginity until marriage, which is their choice so fair play to them, that they want to tell the world about it.

The FAQ part of the website includes, to my non-religious eyes, a fairly sensible question: “What if you save sex for marriage and then find out that you are sexually incompatible?” To this the answer is “Men and women are sexually compatible.”

But all these seats on panels and pressure groups is just an advisory thing, it's doesn't translate into actual real-world influence does it?

In Richmond, south-west London, the Catholic Children's Society has taken over the £89,000 contract to provide advice to schoolchildren on matters including contraception and pregnancies. Another Christian-run charity, Care Confidential, is involved in providing crisis pregnancy advice under the auspices of Newham PCT in east London.

This is not just about a clash of values, it's about outcomes. Abstinence-only sex education actually causes greater teenage pregnancies and STIs. Evidence published in the British Medical Journal shows that abstinence-based programmes

were associated with an increase in number of pregnancies among partners of young male participants. There were significantly fewer pregnancies in young women who received a multifaceted programme

This is real-world data about abstinence education, as opposed to the Silver Ring Thing telling us

God wants you to be holy, so you should keep clear of sexual sin. Then each of you will control your body and live in holiness and honour.

What comes next? A council of avowed illiterates to decide how English is taught?

As George Monbiot wrote a few years ago when Silver Ring Thing first came to the UK

The two western countries at the top of the disaster league, the United States and the United Kingdom, are those in which conservative campaigns are among the strongest and sex education and access to contraception are among the weakest.

The United States, the UN Population Fund’s figures show, is the only rich nation stuck in the middle of the Third World block, with 53 births per 1000 teenagers – a worse record than India, the Philippines and Rwanda. The United Kingdom comes next at 20.

The nations the conservatives would place at the top of the list are clumped at the bottom. Germany and Norway produce 11 babies per 1000 teenagers, Finland eight, Sweden and Denmark seven and the Netherlands five.

So that's more than ten times the number of teenage pregnancies in freemarket, abstinence-heavy, anti-abortion USA than in the Netherlands. The Tories think this is something to emulate.

Monbiot concludes

The catastrophe afflicting so many teenagers in Britain and America, in other words, has been caused not by liberal teachers, liberated parents, Marie Stopes International and the Guardian, but by George Bush, Ann Widdecombe and the Daily Mail. They campaign against early sex education, discourage access to contraceptives and agitate against the social inclusion (income equality, the welfare state) which offers young women better prospects than getting knocked up.

Abstinence campaigns like the Silver Ring Thing do delay the onset of sexual activity, but when their victims are sucked into the cesspool (nearly all eventually are), they are around one third less likely to use contraceptives (according to a study by researchers at Columbia University), as they are not “prepared for an experience that they have promised to forgo.”

When Health Secretary Andrew Lansley calls in PepsiCo, McDonald's and Mars to write health policy it is an outrage, but it also makes sense as the government is there to grease the path of corporate power and increase the associated profits. To the Tories the payoff for that - more misery for the population and an expensive increase in demand for health services - pales in comparison.

But with this handing of power to the bigoted sex-hating monotheists, there's no such profit bonanza. This is simply the cruel claws of the Tories tearing into the flesh of the nation on general principle, acting out of opposition to any liberation or pleasure that is not paid for, and out of Francoesque deference to the vicious values of the traditional church.

bin laden: no justice no peace

I know I'm a little late out of the starting blocks to talk about the killing of Osama bin Laden, but still.

If the American government could find him unarmed, subdue his associates, shoot him in the face then take his body away, they could have taken him alive. He could have been brought back and the Americans could have given their reasons for taking him. More importantly, he could have given his reasons for doing what he did.

Had he been made to stand and speak, allowed to define his position, it would have made the majority of muslims actively go 'hell no, he's not speaking in my name'. By being subjected to summary execution he becomes a pliable cipher to be claimed by all manner of causes, the silence he leaves can be filled by a myriad of future propagandists to further division and violence.

The White House says releasing pictures of Bin Laden's body would give the Islamists a 'propaganda coup' and may make things worse. Yet killing him in cold blood clearly does exactly that.

After the Second World War, the Allies faced the problem of what to do with Nazi war criminals. Winston Churchill opposed the idea of any trials, saying with good reason that there can be no doubt about Nazi guilt, and giving them a platform to mitigate or prosetylise would only help them.

Justice Robert H Jackson answered for the Americans, saying

Undiscriminating executions or punishments without definite findings of guilt, fairly arrived at, would violate pledges repeatedly given, and would not sit easily on the American conscience or be remembered by our children with pride. The only other course is to determine the innocence or guilt of the accused after a hearing as dispassionate as the times and horrors we deal with will permit and upon a record that will leave our reasons and our motives clear.

The Soviets agreed, and we had the Nuremburg trials. This was a major step forward from previous victories where the spoils were carved up by the victors who made a point of humiliating the vanquished. It set a tone for post-conflict activity from which we can trace a line forwards to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Irish Good Friday Agreement.

If we are so right, it should be easy to demonstrate it. If our enemies are so wrong, let them spell it out for posterity. Let there be due consideration and evidence declared for all the world to see, now and in future. This is humane, this paves the way for peace, it speaks of a concern for justice that sets some folks apart from others.

The phrase 'brought to justice' is commonly used as a synonym for a tribunal or trial. So Barack Obama - his Nobel Peace Prize gathering dust at home - does a disservice to those progressive peace-seeking deeds set in train by his predecessor Harry Truman in 1945 by saying that the summary execution of Osama Bin Laden was 'bringing him to justice'. Justice is the process that ends with sentence. The killing of Bin Laden had no such process, it leapfrogged straight to punishment.

Obama has been keen to talk of "what makes us different" from Bin Laden with respect to the treatment of dead bodies. However, in the treatment of people who are alive, the Bin Laden operation is not easily distinguishable from the actions it punished.

There can be no claim that Bin Laden's deeds were worse than the Nazis. If people long before us, brought up in a world of empires, eugenics and all manner of supremacist thinking, could find a way to step forward, then we have no excuse for not doing the same.

The people whose policy of perpetrating crimes against humanity on those they intern in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib are not concerned with creating justice, let alone peace. Indeed, killing an unarmed captive who poses no immediate threat is in itself a war crime.

History shows that a preparedness to use force is not contradictory to the creation of peace, it just needs to be applied with intelligence, with forethought about the view from other parts of the world and from times yet to come, and with an abandonment of short-term Vin Diesel movie urges for retribution. When we yield to those impulses we pollute the moral high ground with the seed of future conflict.

Peace is the most precious of our intangible resources. It does not mean we cannot sacrifice some of it, but it must always be done reluctantly and with awareness of the consequences, actively concerned with minimising how much peace we lose.

glastonbury: a load of bull

Next month's Glastonbury Festival is to have a 200 seater bullring built from old canal lock doors. Festival head honcho Michael Eavis told the BBC

I've got this bullfighter coming over from Portugal with a cape to fight an artificial bull in a mock bull fight.

They can't get any British bullfighters for the simple reason that such cruelty to animals is illegal in the UK.

What's going to be new for next Glastonbury? Paying convicted badger baiters and dog-fighters to hold mock fights?

why i'm voting yes

It doesn't feel like a country with an imminent referendum. I remember seeing flyposters in 1997 in Wales. I remember seeing posters in house windows in 1975. I've seen neither this time.

It is perhaps because - oh the irony - AV is nobody's first choice of voting system. One of the No campaign leaflet's main points is that only three countries have it. But take a look at the swathe of countries that emerged from the Soviet Bloc twenty years ago; none went for AV but none went for First Past The Post either.

Another of the No campaign's arguments is that we should vote No because Nick Clegg wants us to vote Yes. Appealing though that sentiment is, there is a more persuasive point for a Yes vote; David Cameron wants you to vote No.

Meanwhile, outside the infant school playground, this is not about which party wants you to vote which way. It's about parties of all shades off into the distant future.

First Past The Post only works if there are two candidates. This is why only an institution as retrogressive as the British Parliament - still swearing an oath of allegiance to a ruler who holds her position because she is vaguely descended from ancient foreign robber-barons - sticks by it. The Welsh Assembly, the Scottish Parliament, the Greater London Authority all use more representative methods and none of the evil things the No campaign talk of are going on there. Hell, even the Tory party don't elect leaders that way.

The No campaign says AV will cost £250m. Most of this will allegedly be the cost of electronic voting machines; yet such machines are not necessary, are not planned, and indeed Australia has AV without voting machines and gets along just fine.

Contrary to the No claims, AV will not let extremist parties in, because they are never going to get over 50% of the votes no matter how many run-offs happen. Channel 4 found the BNP are not even going to have enough votes to make their second preferences swing a seat, not even close. If and when fascist parties rise it is fascists and fascism we should be fighting rather than rigging systems to exclude all small parties.

The Yes campaign's not afraid of being disingenuous either, though.

The beer poster presumes most of us want beer; the cat video presumes we mostly want cats. This works if you're the fraction of a percent who vote for the various socialist parties who would like to support each other as second preference, but not far beyond it. The implication - that all non-Tory parties are essentially the same - certainly doesn't apply to party politics as the British public know and vote for it.

AV will not put an end to tactical voting; we'll still be scared that if we don't put the main Tory-challenger second then it'll let the Tory in. AV might make centre parties work harder to get second preference votes from the margins, but then again it's also easy to imagine that it may - like First Past The Post definitely does - drag the policies of candidates to the centre. AV will not stop elections being fought by vested interests, nor will it make MPs more accountable. It will not stop candidates lying, nor will it end cheapshot polices.

But what AV will do is widen who elections are aimed at. Currently, it's all about a few thousand easily swayed gullibles in a handful of swing seats. Under AV, it'd be about a greater pool of slightly-less-gullibles in a larger number of swing seats. The leverage becomes greater. Most importantly, AV opens the door to further reform, to a greater plurality of voices being heard. Look at the make-up of the UK's institutions run by other electoral methods and you plainly see that.

In 1997, Wales voted Yes to having a Welsh Assembly by the narrowest of margins; 50.3% to 49.7%. On the same day, Scotland was asked if it wanted a parliament with tax-raising powers and overwhelmingly voted Yes. Polls in Wales showed that had they had the same offer as Scotland - and I defy anyone to give a good reason why they weren't - they would also have voted a strong Yes. Many people were not against devolution but actually against such a crap offer.

But as this year's new Welsh Assembly powers demonstrate, grey politics tends to work incrementally. Had Wales said No in 1997 they wouldn't have had this year's chance of improvement. Don't let the UK make that mistake, thinking that a vote against AV will somehow advance the chances of a fairer system. The reverse is true.

The only thing to be said abstaining from voting at all is that, as with any election, you give your mandate to the power-crazed fuckheads in charge. But the only reason to abstain is if you genuinely think that it will make no difference at all. As the switch from Labour to ConDem has proven in stark terms, there is a spectrum of how wrong government can be. Lives and livelihoods exist in the gap between bad and worse.

The only strong reason to vote No is if you genuinely believe First Past The Post is a fairer system, in which case you are too hard of thinking to deserve a vote at all.

earth day

Oops, bit late.

The other day was Earth Day, and I published a guest-post at On This Deity about it.

death by delia

After romantically fantasising about violent death, I find I get a bit peckish. So thankyou Youtube for suggesting I follow listening to the Smiths' There Is A Light That Never Goes Out with a Delia recipe for french onion soup.

ian tomlinson's killer given enough rope

It's the second day of the inquest into the death of Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protests. The officer who assualted him, Simon Harwood, has been giving evidence, logged on the Guardian's blog.

He says before he got to Tomlinson he 'collided' with a BBC journalist but then, after the footage is shown, admits he pulled him to the ground. He says he was hit on the head from behind by a missile, then it is pointed out that he had his back to a wall at the time. He say his push on Tomlinson was slight and didn't 'push through', then after the footage is shown he has to admit that he did.

Why is he giving such misleading fob-offs when the evidence is plain and he is immediately shown to be lying? Because it's the way cops answer questions, and they usually don't get tackled this closely, normally they get to give their one version and that is accepted as truth.

Harwood was unlucky. The kind of assaults dished out thousands of times that day, and on hundreds of other days, risk death but usually only injure. As I said at the time,

Look at the video of Ian Tomlinson. Look at the casualness of the officer who attacks him. Look how the colleagues are completely unsurprised.

Do you think this is the only time that officer behaved like that? Do you think the colleagues didn't do the same thing elsewhere?

Even when they do kill, a later haemorrhage is hard to link up with a single assault and, of course, until a couple of years ago those assaults were very unlikely to be caught on video. Harwood is experiencing something new for police, and he has no idea how to respond.

Harwood says he 'couldn't recall' if he warned Tomlinson before striking him.

Asked if Tomlinson posed a threat, he replied: "Not to me, no," leaving an open implication that he might have posed a threat to others. This was picked up and, pushed further about whether Tomlinson posed a threat to anyone at all, Harwood conceded, "No, I don't believe he did, no."

He admitted a breach of duty by not recording any of his uses of force against Tomlinson in his Evidence and Actions Book.

And this was only the softly-softly questioning designed to get Harwood's version, before counsel for the Tomlinson family question him.

Harwood interrupted Matthew Ryder, counsel for the Tomlinsons, to disagree when they said - as is plain on the footage - that Tomlinson had his back to Harwood.

Eight days after the incident, when Harwood had watched the footage dozens of times, he made a statement saying "if this was me, the use of force was necessary, proportionate and reasonable". Counsel point out that he was then (as he is today) using misleading qualifiers. There was no 'if' about it - it was him and he knew it at the time of the statement. After repeated questioning, Harwood concedes that 'possibly, yes' he had known at the time.

Ryder: We have all see the video, how you push him and follow through, and we have heard from everyone else who was there as to how they perceived it. You have told us that you didn't perceive Mr Tomlinson to be a threat … If you want to help, would you like simply to admit that what you did to Mr Tomlinson was unreasonable, unnecessary and excessive?

Harwood: No.

Harwood said if the officer using force believes it to be reasonable at the time, then it is reasonable. No other test can or need be applied.

Utterly gripping stuff pouring light onto a dark injustice, but we already know the outcome. Not just because experience shows that cops routinely get away with killing the public despite overwhelming evidence, but because the decision not to prosecute Harwood was taken last July.

This is all uncomfortable for Harwood but, like so many other killers in uniform, he nothing to fear except embarrassment.

john and yoko's bed in

I've written another guest post for kickass countercultural anniversary blog On This Deity.

Today is the 42nd anniversary of John and Yoko's first bed-in for peace.

[No comments here; the place to leave them is on the On This Deity post]

marley's mellow moneyspinner

Well the other week there was Bob Geldof selling his arse to promote watches.

This week I found product endorsement far beyond that. It is so unlikely that I didn't get disgusted or outraged but literally stood there in the shop laughing.

Having trouble sleeping? Try a can of relaxing citrus flavour Marley's Mellow Mood.



It's got several herbal extracts, though frankly if you ask anyone what herb they think mellowed Marley the answer is unlikely to be 'chamomile'.

Just as the Martin Luther King estate rob the great man's grave for cash, so the Marley heirs license his image to hawk soda drinks and thereby make him no different to the Disney toys that come free with Happy Meals.

climate camp is dead, long live climate action

The Camp for Climate Action has announced that it is disbanding. The statement is bold and clear, acknowledging the Camp's achievements - tangible in the cancellation of Heathrow's third runway and the shelving of Kingsnorth power station - and is certainly a brave move.

I want to be clear that I admire the work the Camp has done, and I genuinely don't have a clear idea as to whether the disbanding is a wise move or not. What I am uneasy about is the unreserved glee with which it is being met, and the underlying reasons for that.

Climate action requires long term effort with little chance of major success, and even less chance of being able to measure your contribution to that success. As such, it is really not very rewarding. I should know, I'm one of the people who was involved in the Camp and has latterly ducked out.

It also demands that we all change much of the way we live our lives. This is never going to be comfortable. It is much easier to have 'me and my friends good, those people over there bad' campaigns. This tendency was seen in Climate Camp with some people saying action should never impede the actions of individuals and that 'government and corporations' should be the sole targets.

The anti-cuts campaigns are much more comfortable from this position (as long as we ignore the contradiction of anarchists complaining about a reduction of state intervention in our lives).

The austerity issue should not distract people from continuing vigorous climate action. Take it from The Onion.

climate change, the popular mid-2000s issue that raised awareness of the fact that the earth's continuous rise in temperature will have catastrophic ecological effects, has apparently not been resolved, and may still be a problem.

Back to the Climate Camp statement itself, there are elements that smell a bit funny to me.

Climate Camp leaves a space. What fills that space is up to us. This is a unique opportunity to work together with others to create a more co-ordinated, dynamic and stronger movement against climate change and its root causes.

Climate Camp acted as a lightning rod for those who wanted to take action. Much of climate action away from the Camp has been taken by people who have met and bonded through the Camp. With such loose structure and affiliations, it was easy for people to be involved in different ways and to different degrees and yet still feel part of it, to be propelled by its underlying momentum.

With no other organisation having a similar role, it is very hard indeed to see how taking it away will create something stronger and more dynamic.

we can’t demand that society changes radically, while we ourselves do not.

This is a rationalisation hiding in a word game. The implication is that drastic change of methods and views is, in and of itself, a good thing. That is simply wrong.

Doggedly holding on to a tactic that has become useless is stupid, sure. Refusing to revisit your fundamental philosophy to see if it still makes sense leaves you open to inconsistency and irrelevance. And as William Blake said, 'The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind'.

However it is perfectly possible to hold a radical political perspective and advance it by the same methods for a lifetime. If we oppose some of the fundamental structures of our culture - the profit motive, consumer-capitalism, enormous concentrations of power - then we're unlikely to be in for a quick win. We are probably going to spend our whole lives working on this stuff. Radically changing away from that is not going to help the cause. Doing so for its own sake would actually reduce our chances of improvement.

The movements for women's rights and trade unionism took several generations to make solid advances. Had they been distracted by more popular issues or decided to change for its own sake, we may well not be enjoying the fruits of their work today.

None of this is to say that Climate Camp has taken the wrong decision. Time will tell whether it was the right move or not, and I can readily see how it might turn out to be the right thing. But regarding such change as an intrinsically good thing is erroneous, and engendering that idea could damage radical movements in future.