Is there a case for not voting at all in the upcoming General Election?

I’m in a pickle. For the first time in my life I am able to cast my vote in a General Election and I don’t know what to do. My first political memory was when Tony Blair’s New Labour won the 1997 election. I was a month off being 8 years old and I could sense the excitement. We had moved to Brighton a year earlier from North Berwick, a small town 20 odd miles from Edinburgh. As fond as the memories are I have of North Berwick and as lovely and quaint as it is, I think it’s safe to say Brighton had more of a political vibrancy about it. It was a good place to start learning about politics.

I feel very lucky to have spent a good chunk of my childhood in a place where anything went. As everyone knows, in Brighton, it’s more than acceptable to be gay. I was seeing black and Asian people walking down the street. I didn’t see that in North Berwick. My world was being opened up. I was learning about different cultures. I’m not suggesting that I would have turned out to be racist and homo-phobic if I had stayed in North Berwick but to go from there to such a radically different place, certainly helped me develop.

However, I have developed a better understanding of Brighton as I’ve got older and I’m aware that it is not the perfect place. I love it but if you scratch beneath its apparent socialist and egalitarian ideas, you will see that the ideas are being put forward from a very middle class platform. So the question has to be asked, how much do these ideals mean in relation to where they’re coming from? The hypocrisy in modern political thinking is staggering. I can tell you for a fact that a large number of people in Brighton will vote Green. I can also tell you that the same people will own a five bedroomed house, a 4×4 and probably another, smaller car to get from A to B. The exaggeration here isn’t huge.

So, where does all this leave me? Well, I’m the same. Unfortunately I have to put myself in the same bracket. OK, i don’t own a house or a car. But I am at university and I live smack bang in the middle of my university town in what is officially called a “maisonette.” I’ve sold out already and I’m only 20! I consider myself to be a socialist safe in the knowledge that I don’t always behave like one. If I was a true socialist would I be at university? Would I own an expensive laptop? Would I have chosen to live in a “maisonette?”

The problem with all of us is that we are excessive in our wants and mistake some of these wants for needs. The luxury and extravagance of our lives is so great that it threatens society and the planet. We need a change in the political system to sort society out properly. And if we really want equality then people like myself are going to have to take cut backs on our own lives. If you say to someone “OK you want an equal society, to get this under way you have to take a 40% cut on your lifestyle and consumerism.” It would be interesting to see how many people would go along with that. I’ve got a feeling the person in the 5 bedroomed house with the 4×4 might want to stay put. And why not? They’ve been sold the game. The house, the cars, the sky tele. They’ve got every right to it because it’s available. I’m at university. I’ve been sold that one. “Go to uni, you’ve got to if you want to get anywhere in life, hold on though, we’re going to make sure you’re 20 or 30 grand in debt by the time you come out.”

In the words of Voxtrot, “We are living in some tiny joke.” Basically if no one votes in the General Election then we have the opportunity for real change. The only reason I would vote is to stop far right parties surpassing other parties. Politics has become so boring. Mainly because most of the talk is about recession, budgets and expenses and nobody really knows what any of it means. Or cares. I’m probably not going to vote to show I don’t care, wishing that I did care. And then I’ll realise I do care and wish I had voted. It’s a big decision. Needs a lot of thought as you can guess.

Love it or hate it. Football can give anyone anywhere hope

Football is the most popular sport in the world. It is recognised, understood, played and watched by people from all backgrounds and nationalities and it has the potential to unite people. Yesterday, India won the Street Child World Cup with a 1-0 win over Tanzania. The tournament was held in South Africa.

The tournament was set up to bring together street children from eight countries and four continents and for them to celebrate their potential and campaign for their rights to be recognised and upheld via the universal language of football. It was a seven aside tournament with the teams being made up of both boys and girls, aged between 14 and 16. During the 10 days the tournament was on, the children were able to get involved in arts projects and be creative with each other, having fun like most of the children we see in this country.

To coincide with the tournament’s closure there was a conference held for people from different professions to discuss street children’s experiences, rights and aspirations. The objective was to produce clear, practical recommendations on how to realise the rights of the world’s street children. It is to put forward a message to the World’s leaders that they have every right to a healthy and dignified life and under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Children they should have that.

This is undoubtedly a fantastic and exciting idea. But did you know about it? I only accidentally became aware of this tournament. As far as I know it has had little to no coverage in the mainstream media for the two weeks it was on. I thought people ought to know about it and celebrate it.

Below I’m going to put the web address for the Street Child World Cup, a website where you can donate money for the street children of the world and also an article written by Nwankwo Kanu. An African football legend.

http://streetchildworldcup.org/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/jan/03/nwankwo-kanu-african-cup-of-nations

http://www.casa-alianza.org.uk/

Binyam Mohamed: A small case study

I have followed Binyam Mohamed’s story and life for about two years now. I was at Heathrow Airport with my girlfriend at the time, waiting for a plane to take us to Vietnam. The trip was life changing but I had expected that. An impulse purchase of a book that I thought might be interesting turned out to also be life changing. I hadn’t expected that.

The book is titled “Bad Men: Guantanamo Bay and the Secret Prisons” and was written by Human Rights Lawyer Clive Stafford-Smith. He was Binyam Mohamed’s lawyer while Binyam was imprisoned at Guantanamo.

Binyam Mohamed was kidnapped during the US “war on terror” in Pakistan. He was then taken to Morocco by the CIA and tortured. After that he was taken to Guantanamo Bay where he was detained for four and a half years without trial. He was eventually released and got back to the UK on 23rd February 2009.

Mohamed is one of Stafford-Smith’s main case studies in the book. The humanity, humour and general decency that comes across from him is astonishing in relation to what he went through. He was horrifically tortured throughout his time as a prisoner and he was proved innocent. He had gone to Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2001 to “see the Muslim world through his own eyes.” He had lived in Britain and had a drug problem.

In a commission he held up a sign that read “con-mission” to convey his views on his situation. He also insisted that Stafford-Smith got him a Dutch football shirt to wear. Holland’s kit colours are orange, the same colour of Binyam’s prison outfit that he wore everyday in Guantanamo.

Stafford-Smith described his first meeting with Binyam in his book: “Binyam was twenty-seven. He was tall and gangling, dark-skinned, originally from Ethiopia. He smiled and immediately told me how glad he was to see me. He spoke quietly, with a particular dignity. Some prisoners would take many hours of convincing that I was not from the CIA, but Binyam immediately opened up.”

I have an affinity with this story because I read Clive Stafford-Smith’s book before anyone knew about Binyam Mohamed. Therefore I feel there is an importance that his case is realised by as many people as possible. There are many other terror suspects who have been detained without charge and there are many people still detained today. But this particular case is documented superbly and I implore people to take the time to find it and read it.

The delicacy of the Venables case needs more appreciation

I’ve heard a lot of people say that they are disappointed with Justice Secretary Jack Straw’s announcement that details of why Jon Venables is back in prison are to be kept from the public domain. The fact that it’s none of our business is not a good enough reason for us not to know apparently. There is much animosity aimed at Venables and immediately the reaction is to think, “well that’s fair enough, what he did was disgusting.”

Jon Venables and Robert Thompson murdered James Bulger, a two-year-old boy, in 1993. The way in which they murdered him is widely known to be horrific and I won’t go into details here. Venables and Thompson were 1o years old when they committed this murder and there seems to be a widespread consensus in this country that these boys were evil and always will be.

First of all, no one is born evil. As children, for whatever reasons, these people learnt the wrong way to behave and took it to drastic and tragic levels. It is clear that they were a danger to the public and that they needed some serious psychological help. In my view, the most important thing about prison or a youth offenders prison in this case, is the rehabilitation of someone. Knowing that you’ve done wrong and paying for your crime is part of that but it goes deeper. Prison and particularly the imprisonment of children is a very grey area. How can you expect to lock someone up at 10 years of age and then think they will survive in society when they’re released as an adult? The imprisonment helped Venables and Thompson regarding education at least, with both of them achieving A-Levels whilst they were doing their time. But these guys have been labelled as criminals since they were 10.

Their life chances were clearly very small before they went to prison and perhaps now, in Venables case anyway, their life chances have got even smaller. The whole story here is extremely sad. It’s all very well for us to have our views and to point fingers but Venables and Thompson were born into Britain’s underclass where things like this happen far more often that we like to admit or know. This is the scapegoat story that the press got hold of. More recently the Baby P story was another one where it is one, sad, tragic case that we all know about but the truth is that it is one case in hundreds and thousands. People were waiting with baited breath for one of these ‘evil’ people to commit another terrible crime so that they can confirm that they’re indeed ‘evil.’ Well here you go. Jon Venables is your man. We don’t know what he’s done but you can be sure he’s still the evil bastard you always thought he was and that he’s committed his latest crime out of sheer evilness.

Everybody Hurts? Lets get some perspective on this

The video for the all star charity single “Everybody Hurts” was released today. Simon Cowell has gathered up all the pop stars you could possibly think of to cover REM’s infamous song to raise money for the Haiti earthquake disaster. It will raise an awful lot of money. And that is great and shouldn’t be criticised…

The video is a montage of the wonderful pop stars singing in the recording studios in Los Angeles and London, depending what part of the planet the particular pop star was on at the time, mixed with footage of the travesty that has become Haiti. The soft voice of Cheryl Cole can be heard while we watch babies crying and covered in blood. “Everyboooooody huuuuuuurtsssss, sssooooooometimes.” Yes Cheryl, this is true but that’s no reason for you to feel alright about singing this in reference to the unimaginable despair that Haitian people are living through right now. And that’s what it is for us. Unimaginable. When REM sang “Everybody Hurts” they were excluding the people that they didn’t know anything about surely. They must have been talking about a certain kind of hurt. A hurt that they and people they know have experienced. To talk about a hurt that you have no idea about and will probably never experience, something like an earthquake, is surely a bit disrespectful? Of course a song can resonate universally but these big names singing this song out of pity for the people of Haiti sits incredibly uncomfortably with me. I thought the words to this song were about people that we can identify with and have things in common with. Like bereavement and break ups and job losses and so on. This isn’t to belittle any problems or hurt that any westerner experiences but the Haiti earthquake is something that most of us will never know the full impact of.

The truth is all these stars: Cheryl Cole, Leona Lewis, Gary Barlow, Robbie Williams, James Blunt and the man behind it all, Simon Cowell, could have just got together and worked out how much they wanted to give and then privately donated loads of money. The hope is they have all done that anyway.

But make no mistake about it, this charity single is being released primarily to make us feel better about ourselves in this country. We buy it, it gets airplay in abundance, we hear one of the most well known and depressing songs of all time and we feel like we’re saving Haiti in the whole process. “Everybody hurts sometimes.” “Yeah come on Haiti, pull yourselves together, we all hurt sometimes but you’ll be alright.” It’s such an unbelievably inappropriate song choice. And the fact it’s being sung by the biggest money making mega stars ever makes the hypocrisy of the whole thing so blindingly obvious. The dignity is lacking.

I attended a concert for Haiti last week in London called “Concert for Haiti.” El dignity did flow. It was a mixture of speeches, poetry and music. First up to say a few words was a national treasure. I’m not really into the whole ‘national treasure’ idea because I’m so far removed from being patriotic I’m often embarrassed to be English or Scottish or British. I’ll go with British. But Tony Benn is English and he is a treasure. He probably didn’t speak for more than five minutes but what he said will mean more to me and more importantly, mean more to Haiti than the charity song by the stars. He spoke about how when he was born, 84 years ago, there were two types of people. There was the English and then there were foreigners. He spoke with pride that in his lifetime he has seen that change so dramatically. He emphasised the importance of a multi-cultural society and told us to remember the human link between all of us when facing challenges. Contributions from actual Haitian people is what brought the real sense of dignity to the evening.

Every single person who spoke at this concert felt it absolutely necessary to put across the stark reality that the problems in Haiti won’t be solved next week, or next month or next year. The charity single doesn’t spread that message. It’s a way for us to feel like we’ve done something and then forget about it. We know how it works. It won’t be long before the Haiti disaster goes down the pecking order on the news. And the majority of us will forget. Something else will happen. Another big news story will come along for us to get swept away with.

The video for the single is made for you. Not for anyone in Haiti. It starts all sad and depressing and then when that little uplifting bit comes at the end of “Everybody Hurts” you see people being pulled alive from the rubble as if to say anything is possible. If it works and you buy the single, which you should do, then great. But don’t think that this song is for the Haitians. It is to send you on an emotional roller-coaster. Best bit of advertising I’ve seen for a while with the best celebrity businessman in Simon Cowell behind it all. Go out and buy it. But know you can always do more.

Donations for Haiti: http://www.unicef.org.uk/give/index.asp?page=32

Uni Blog

I will be writing a blog for the next few weeks on current affairs. I will try to write the blog with an angle on human rights. Please do comment. Thank you.

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