#so she is still an MP and could cause real issues in parliament

[alwaysbuythebook]

Ooh, I have something to add that makes me laugh every time I think about it. MPs here actually can't just resign when they feel like it, at least not according to our formal laws. What they CAN do is accept a profitable role serving the monarchy. This automatically disqualifies them from serving as an MP, so any MP accepting one of these roles is resigning as an MP by default.

Except they can't invent one of those roles every time an MP wants to step down, because giving them another job just because they don't want to be an MP would be unfair to the rest of the country. And also this is an old rule, and since 1975 most of those roles actually don't disqualify you from being an MP. So we have two ceremonial roles which have deliberately been kept on the list of roles disqualifying someone from being an MP (Steward and Bailiff of the Chiltern Hundreds, and Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead).

These roles have been functionally useless and kept in use only for the purpose of disqualifying MPs since the 1600s. We alternate between them. It's a whole pantomime.

Can mp's in uk just resign like that? Asking because in finland mp's need eduskunta's(=parlament's) permission to resign(and are unlikely to get that permission without very good reason).

Lol, yeah, they can. I'm as amazed as you. But it's like any other job, if you don't want it anymore you can just... leave

[uk-news-talking-politics]

Last-gasp Brexit deal fix will poison our politics for years

By Ian Dunt

You can see the outline of a Brexit compromise already. The two sides want it. They're talking kind of the same kind of language. The trouble is that the compromise position is so utterly deranged that it will poison our politics for years.

The only remaining issue preventing a deal is the Irish backstop. This is the promise that, no matter what, there will be a frictionless border in Ireland. Theresa May's solution is to make sure it'll be never be used, by signing up the whole of the UK to the customs union and the single market for goods. The EU's solution is to accept that as a baseline offer but demand that the promise for Ireland remains in the treaty just in case.

The talks are now on what those just-in-case scenarios might be and how to address them. The two main areas of concern are reliability and time.

The former, which May chooses not to mention for obvious reasons, concerns what happens when she is inevitably replaced, either by Jeremy Corbyn or someone in the Tory party. Then her customs union and single market plans might be replaced alongside her and the backstop would have to be activated.

The latter concerns the gap between the end of the transition period and the start of Britain's new trading arrangement. This would leave a window when we weren't connected to the EU ecosystem and the backstop would then kick in.

Both of these points follow from outright stupidity - on both the EU and British side - at the start of negotiations. They now threaten to define us by the same stupidity for years to come.

Back when the Article 50 process started, David Davis promised that the "row of the summer" would be over sequencing. The EU had demanded that we talk about divorce proceedings first, like transition and the backstop, and only then discuss the future relationship. This would produce two documents: one on divorce, which was a legal text, and one on the future relationship, which was a political one.

Davis surrendered instantly, in a way that defined his approach to Brexit: loud talk, lack of preparation, functional incompetence and instant capitulation. But the truth is he was right. It made no sense to talk about Ireland without addressing the future relationship. And we are seeing the consequences of that foolish distinction now, in the inability to use Britain's decision on customs and the single market to neutralise the backstop as an issue.

Now the EU is stuck. It put the backstop down in law, but that relates only to Ireland. This is considered an outrage in Westminster. The promises Britain is making about how the future relationship would make the backstop irrelevant are unreliable, because they're just going in a political declaration which can be easily repealed or ignored by a future prime minister.

But if you allow the backstop proposal to include the whole of the UK, May can use it to smuggle Britain into the customs union and single market without having to take on any of its rules and responsibilities. You've pre-empted trade talks in a kind of cheeky, protocol-inserting fait-accompli.

So the current rumoured solution is to build little legal bridges between the divorce treaty and the political future relationship document. Think of it like an anti-Jacob Rees-Mogg firewall. It would prevent anyone unpicking the future relationship when they take over, but still force May to accept the responsibilities of customs union and single market membership during trade negotiations.

This is sensible, but it will cause havoc among the Brexiters. They will realise that they're being prevented from sabotaging the Brexit deal from outside the EU and will therefore have an incentive to sabotage it now, before we leave.

Things get even more insane when it comes to dealing with the time issue. Again, the EU bears as much culpability as the UK on this. It has been exactly as stupid as No.10. Both of them are living in a little fairy tale house, made of wishes and shortbread.

The transition does not need an extension of one year. It needs an extension of at least five and probably a lot more. Canada, a nuts-and-bolts, goods-only trade deal, took five years to negotiate and two to ratify. The deal we are going to be negotiating, by comparison, is unprecedented in human history. Never before have two large trading entities entered negotiations to pull themselves further apart.

We know how normal trade deals operate. You work down your tariffs. You stitch together some mutual recognitions agreements so that goods move faster. Maybe you do a deal on public procurement and intellectual copyright. And then you're good to go. The crucial thing is that both sides want similar things.

This is completely different. This is about taking two economies which are melded together through regulation, shared institutions and decades-old trade flows and extracting them from one another while trying to sabotage neither.

Negotiators will not be able to point to the usual easy wins of a trade deal - that this sector or that will have gotten rid of tariffs. They will only be able to point to attempts to satisfy a mercurial mandate from a dated referendum. It will be an absolute mess, without useful metrics to assess how it is going. It's not clear what Britain wants or if it can even articulate it, let alone negotiate it.

The opening period of the transition, from April 2019 onwards, will involve no meaningful trade talks at all. First there are the European parliament elections in May, and then the election of a new EU commissioner on the basis of the results. Nothing will get done until that's over with.

Then the British team need to develop a clear idea of what it is they are trying to achieve. What exactly will be the arbitration mechanism in the deal? The European Court of Justice will be involved somehow, but how much involvement can we countenance? How much influence can we get over regulations from Brussels? Norway has a contributory role in the formulation of new laws and active civil service involvement in enacting them at the national level. Is that enough? Or is it insufficient? The more control we want, the longer the talks will drag on.

Then the deal needs to be ratified. This will require the support of all EU member states in their own parliaments, including some regional parliaments, like Wallonia, where the far less controversial Canadian trade deal was nearly destroyed.

And then there is the implementation period (the real one, not the one May invented a couple years back). The new trading arrangements will require infrastructure which must be built and new systems - for IT, staff training, administrative oversight, regulatory surveillance and more - which must be put in place. If you want a glimpse of how hard, time-consuming and fraught with danger that is, consider the government's current struggles with the Universal Credit system, or HMRC's awkward and confused attempts to implement a new clearance system for customs. And then multiply it countless times.

The current transition time limit is 18 months. That is laughable. No-one, not one single person who understands what trade deals involve, thinks it is realistic. And yet there it stands, like they put clowns in charge of an international negotiation.

The new EU offer is of one additional year. And that is the clown's gag. That's the punchline.

This just creates a new cliff edge at the end of 2021. But this one will actually be harder to deal with. The EU's legal power to offer transition is in Article 50. But to get a new power for another transition it has to go to member states and ask for it. And then we're at the mercy of every country in the EU.

On the British side, the offer has been met with the usual self-harming disdain. Tory MP Nadine Dorries launched a typically ignorant attack last night. More will follow. The disconnect between reality and rhetoric in Westminster right now is genuinely alarming. They have watched the UK get pulverised due to the EU's time advantage for two years and learned so little that they now demand it happens again.

If Theresa May is asking for a longer transition period, she is stalling. It’s time to stand aside and let someone who can negotiate get on with it and deliver. I fully support DD as an interim leader. I’ve done my bit. It’s time for my colleagues to do theirs. #Brexit

But even if the transition could be extended to a credible period, we would still be in a living nightmare.

Eventually the EU will pass a law which is against UK interests - probably something on the City. We'll have to take it on and it'll explode into an ugly row. There's also a new EU financial plan for 2021-27 coming down the runway. If we're still in transition then - and we will be - we need to pay into it. But we'll have lost the rebate, so the sum will have gone up, with all the consequent confected outrage that will entail.

This is seriously ugly stuff. The tricks being dreamed up right now might allow May to sign off on a deal, but they do not guarantee she can get it through parliament. Even if she does, they'll either create a new cliff edge in the early 2020s or open up a whole new vista of pain into the end of the next decade.

Any responsible leader would at least extend Article 50 while we try to come up with a viable long-term solution which isn't so fraught with peril. But to suggest this is considered radical and extreme. That's what it's like when you let the lunatics take control. The basic conditions of sanity are precisely those which can never be countenanced.

[thechasefiles]

The Chase Files Daily Newscap 4/15/2018

Good Morning #realdreamchasers! Here is The Chase Files Daily News Cap for Sunday 15th April 2018. Remember that you can read full articles via subscribing to Nation News Online, purchasing a Sunday Sun Nation Newspaper (SS) or via Barbados Today (BT).

STAB OF DEATH - The usual hustle and bustle of a Saturday afternoon in Bridgetown came to a standstill yesterday following the brutal murder of a 36-year-old nail technician and mother of two. According to police reports, the woman, whose name was not released, but who our investigations indicated is Onica King of Four Roads, St Philip, or Lead Vale, Christ Church, was working in her shop at No. 41 Mandela Plaza on Swan Street when she was attacked around 2:45 by a man who is well known to her. He reportedly fled the scene on foot. This latest killing sent the number of murders in Barbados for this year to ten. When a Sunday Sun team arrived on Swan Street, the mood was sombre, with people speculating on what had taken place. Shops in the immediate vicinity of the plaza were also forced to close because the area was inaccessible. As news of the stabbing incident spread, hundreds of curious onlookers gathered on both sides of the cobbled street, which had already been cordoned off by police, so they could only watch from a distance. Many who abandoned their shopping or delayed trips home took up any available vantage point as they tried to catch a glimpse of the body, which was still in the building. Many passers-by, including fellow nail technicians, vented their frustrations about the incident and most called for the Government and the law to do something to punish the perpetrators. Since the stabbing, a video of the dying woman has gone viral, showing the victim’s two children (a boy and a girl) crying and screaming for their mother before being taken inside a room by an unidentified male. At least one woman collapsed on the street sobbing uncontrollably. When the news team left the scene at 5:45 p.m. a large crowd was still gathered, waiting on the body to be removed. This incident comes on the heels of the stabbing death of police officer Shayne Welch on March 26 during a reported love triangle at his home in Kingsland Drive, Christ Church. Applon Parris has since been charged for his death. (SS)

NEW BUT PRESIDENT ELECTED – Sean Spencer is the new president of the Barbados Union of Teachers. He secured more votes than former president Pedro Shepherd and Everton Briggs when elections were held on Friday. Below is the full list of those elected to serve on the executive for the period 2018 - 2019. President - Sean Spencer; Vice president - Richmark Cave, General Secretary - Herbert Gittens, Deputy General secretary - Rudy Lovell, Treasurer - Candacy Griffith, Public relations officer - Julian Pierre;  Executive members: Andre Holder, Asha Yearwood, Tanya Mayers, Jacqueline Prescod, Andrea Puckering, Dwayne Greenidge.  (SS)

MARA: IT WAS STRESSFUL, STRENUOUS – The former Member of Parliament (MP) for St John Mara Thompson is confident she made the right decision to step down from electoral politics. She spoke about the decision on Friday night after a meeting at the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) constituency office in Carters, Gall Hill. There she said her final goodbyes to party members and those who made up the constituency council. In a brief interview after the proceedings, she said while she enjoyed representing the people of St John as one of the few female MPs in Barbados, as a mother, she felt relieved. “I am so filled with relief that I am not sure if I have mixed feelings of such,” she said. “I am sure I made the right decision and I am happy to go and take care of Mara now.” Thompson, who was elected in 2011 after the death of her husband former Prime Minister and MP for St John David Thompson, in 2010, said public life was a bit more than she could chew. “Yes I found it was stressful and strenuous. I felt that I wasn’t paying sufficient attention to what’s happening at home and how the girls were doing. I still have a 16-year-old. “One of my daughters said to me when I first started out that I have taken on all the hats that David wore and as I thought about it leading up to my coming out, it was true. I pretty much took on everything he did, constituency and all, but David had a wife, a cooperative, supportive wife and I don’t have what he did.” When asked what was the straw that broke that camel’s back for her, she said it was too personal and could not comment. However, as it relates to her achievements, she said she was pleased with what she did, pointing to her success in completing the David Thompson Health And Social Services Complex at Glebe Land, opening a new post office in Four Roads and fixing roads in Haynesville and other areas. Thompson added that she thought people in that constituency were annoyed with her for her decision to back down but to her surprise they were not. “They seemed thankful and grateful to me for running . . . . It was a phenomenal experience and I learnt a lot despite it was taxing.” The candidate for the parish in the upcoming General Election is George Pilgrim, the general secretary of the DLP and three-time defeated St Thomas candidate.  (SS)

ALARM OVER WEIGHT OF GIRLS, WOMEN – Barbados is eighth in the world in relation to the number of females – 15 years and over – who are overweight or obese. According to a report produced by the World Health Organisation in 2011, Barbados comes in at 63 per cent in the rankings. Trinidad and Tobago runs a close second with 61 per cent, while Dominica and Jamaica bring up the rear with 60 and 53 per cent, respectively. Professor Alafia Samuels, director, Chronic Disease Research Centre, at the University of West Indies Cave Hill Campus, said the situation was alarming. She was giving the inaugural lecture entitled Confront The Epidemic Of Obesity – Is Sugar The New Tobacco? in the Roy Marshall Lecture Theatre. Data analysed in 2010 showed that 33 per cent of nine- to ten-year-olds were overweight or obese, representative of more than one per cent increase yearly. “The other issue with childhood obesity is that it causes raised blood pressure in children. Most children have no reason to have high blood pressure; it is a disease of adulthood, but obesity will bring on raised blood pressure in children,” she said. While she added that obesity was the most important underlying cause of death in Barbados, she said in order to reduce the amount of sugar consumed on a daily, people needed to eat foods with a low glycaemic index. “We break everything down into glucose, but the large starch molecules or complex carbohydrates give you a slow and extensive breakdown and therefore a slow rise in blood sugar,” she explained. She said sugar-sweetened beverages was the leading cause of obesity, diabetes and heart disease in both adults and children. (SS)

SOCIETY LOSING FIGHT AGAINST NOISE – The Society for a Quieter Barbados (SQB) has not been muzzled. But a lot of its members who agitated over the years for a noiseless Barbados have either passed away or are no longer active in the organization. President Carl Moore told the Sunday Sun that he was still inundated with noise complaints from Barbadians and visitors, but he said with only he and a public relations officer now running the show, there was little they could do to campaign against noise pollution.  Recalling when the organization was first launched in 2002, Moore said he never expected it to be around for a long time because he believed Barbadians would easily comprehend the seriousness of such an irritant. “All we had to offer was quiet, and we thought that people would welcome a little quiet, but it was not to be,” he confessed during an interview at his home.  At the height of its popularity the organisation attracted a membership of 250 people.  “But overtime people died. . . . We lost people like Dr Leonard Shorey, Peter Morgan, Leonard St Hill, Sir Frederick Smith and Oliver Jackman and things started to slow down from about 2006. We were pretty active in keeping a website, we ran short notices in newspapers and we participated in town hall meetings.” One of their major successes was having the issue of noise pollution addressed in the National Commission on Law and Order 2000. However, Moore said even with this significant mention the legislation which they so badly needed to bring effect to the issue, eluded them.“We were involved in all these things but still not able to nudge the decision-makers to the point where they would put on the statute books strong legislation to deal with noise pollution,” he lamented, pointing out that even though noise pollution was addressed in four pieces of legislation, they were relatively weak. “We were calling for something with real teeth. The Road Traffic Act, Highways Act and the Public Order Act, they all touched on noise and the nuisance that could be addressed. As far back as 1979, discussions were held but to date there has been no real progress and police have to rely on persuasion and veiled threats of prosecution. Moore, 78, said the SQB started to fall off around 2008, struggling for three consecutive years to raise a quorum. “So Barbadians have learned to live with noise, to tolerate it; but the thing about noise, you may adjust to noise by ignoring it but the ear never closes . . . .” Some of the noise pollutants include loud music, kites, revving of vehicles and motorcycles, political and church meetings, barking dogs; even the ringing of cell phones. Moore hopes that Barbadians would become more considerate and tuned into the health hazards that excessive loud noise can create, but he still remains optimistic that young people will step forward to continue to fight for a quiet society. (SS)

POLICE APPEAL FOR INFO ON JEMMOTTS LANE FIRE – Police are currently investigating the cause of the building fire which occurred about 5:30 a.m. today at a section of the Ministry of Health at Jemmotts Lane, St Michael. They have cordoned off the area and are appealing for anyone with information to contact them. Public relations officer Acting Inspector Rodney Inniss revealed that both the upstairs and ground floor sections housing the Vector Control Unit were destroyed by the blaze. The upper floor of the Barbados Family Planning Association was destroyed while the ground floor suffered water damage only. One section of the two-storey wood and wall structure was used to store files, furniture and chemicals belonging to the Vector Control Unit. The ground floor of another section contained computers belonging to the Barbados Family Planning Association and, the upper floor was used as an exercise area. Three fire tenders and one water tanker along with 12 personnel responded to the fire and at 12:30 p.m. they were still on the scene. Anyone who may have any information on the fire is asked to call Central Police Station at 430-7676, Police Operations Control Room at 430-7100 or any other police station. All information will be held in strict confidence. (BT)

FIRE CAUSES CLOSURE OF TWO AGENCIES – At least two agencies will remain closed tomorrow after yesterday’s early morning four-hour blaze at the old Ministry of Health buildings on Jemmotts Lane, St Michael. The fire sent residents of nearby communities scampering, affected the Vector Environmental Section and brought operations at the Barbados Family Planning Association (BFPA) to a halt. It appeared to have started at one of the unoccupied buildings and was reported to the Barbados Fire Service at 5:30 a.m. The upper floor of the BFPA was destroyed and that agency will remain closed while the ministry’s Rodent Bait Distribution Centre will also be closed, with officials advising members of the public to collect the bait from any polyclinic except the Edgar Cochrane, Wildey and the Glebe, St George. A few residents who did not want to be named said they were awoken by the sounds of sirens and they quickly picked up the scent of burning wood. Smithy of Smith’s Corner Bar, which is located south of the compound, was on the beach when he noticed the smoke. He immediately rushed home to see if his property was affected. Though it wasn’t affected, the asthmatic said he and the eight other tenants of the two-storeyed building left due to the thick smoke. The intense flames burned for hours and engulfed a number of buildings, including the section used to store files, furniture and chemicals of the Vector Environmental Section, while the upper section of the BFPA used as an exercise area was destroyed and the ground floor used to store computers suffered water damage only. Those who showed up at the clinic yesterday had to be turned away. Minister of Health John Boyce who was briefed on the incident later said the necessary chemicals were taken away from the area. The BFPA acting executive director Anderson Langdon and chief financial officer Sonya Alleyne were both at the scene assessing the damages. Alleyne estimated that about 35 people from their Youth Advocacy Movement (YAM) which handles the Adolescent Young Mother’s Programme would be affected along with the Community Sexuality Education and other youth outreach activities. Langdon said the BFPA had been the home of the institution since 1966, and even though it was an old building, they had now being set back, as he made an appeal for help. Divisional officer Mervin Mayers said the residents who lived on Jemmotts Lane including residents of London Bourne Towers and Nelson Street were asked to move due to the asbestos roofing. Four fire tenders and one tanker, and 14 officers from Worthing Fire Station and Bridgetown responded and their investigations are ongoing. (SS)

RODENT BAIT DISTRIBUTION CENTRE CLOSED – The Rodent Bait Distribution Centre located on the old Ministry of Health compound, Jemmotts Lane, St Michael has been closed after today's fire which destroyed a block of buildings. The public is advised that rat bait may be collected from any polyclinic except the Edgar Cochrane, Wildey and the Glebe, St George.  (SS)

EUNICE GIBSON POLYCLINIC TO CLOSE EARLY MONDAY – The public is advised that the Eunice Gibson Polyclinic, at Warrens, St Michael, will close at 1 p.m. on Monday, April 16, to allow staff to attend the funeral service for a former colleague. The Ministry of Health apologises for any inconvenience this closure may cause.  (SS)

SIR JOHN A MAN OF PRINCIPLE – He was their cheerleader, their life coach and their teacher. And he was not afraid to take a stand if he believed in a principle. These were the memories of the children of Sir John Connell, Lachmi and Dr Kwame Connell who were speaking at his service of thanksgiving at the Cathedral Church of St Michael and All Angels yesterday. The 81-year-old retired Justice of Appeal passed away on March 28, and his service yesterday drew legal luminaries and politicians from across the divide to the 229-year-old church. During a service attended by Prime Minister Freundel Stuart; leader of the Barbados Labour Party, Mia Mottley; Retired Chief Justice Sir David Simmons; Chief Justice Sir Marston Gibson; members of the judiciary, the magistracy and the legal fraternity, Lachmi remembered her father as a man who stood on principle “regardless of the repercussions”. “An example [was] his voting with the Government while being an Opposition senator on the issue of increasing the number of constituencies, having discussed with the leadership at George Street that they would not rescind the law if they win the next General Election, only to be fired from the platform by then party leader Errol Barrow,” she said, adding his philosophy was that he should be able to face the man in the mirror every day. She said he was branded a radical but explained that his humble beginnings in a chattel house in the “Back Ivy”, born to a carpenter father and a seamstress mother, underpinned his philosophy of educating Barbadians. She added his one unfulfilled desire was that he wanted to do more for Haiti. Her brother Kwame said his father taught by example and was a teacher “who was never tired of learning”. “He wanted to educate his people even though it wasn’t always well received,” his son recalled. He held his father as their teacher, their cheerleader, their moral compass and their life coach. “He taught by example and he set a very high standard,” he told the congregation yesterday, adding his father had “genuine trouble” with the “concept of boredom” when “there were so many books to read”. The sermon was delivered by Dean of the Cathedral, Dr Jeffrey Gibson. (SS)

THOUSANDS ATTEND WINNIE MANDELA’S FUNERAL – Thousands of mourners crowded into a stadium in Soweto, near Johannesburg, where the campaigner was given a high-level send-off. Her casket was draped in the national flag, and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa delivered the eulogy. Mrs Madikizela-Mandela, former wife of Nelson Mandela, died earlier this month at the age of 81.  (BT)

KADOOMENT BAND LAUNCHES PICKING UP STEAM – The Crop Over Festival fever is quickly heating up. So far, a number of bands including Zulu, Khepri Kulture and Erup The Band have unveiled their costumes which they will take on the road come Grand Kadooment on August 6. The latest was Erup which released their Hidden Treasures: Gems of the Caribbean theme on Friday night at George Washington House. Their five sections include Ametrine, Black Opals, Mystic Topaz, Mojave and White Diamond. Zulu International Inc., the self-proclaimed Fun Band were the first out the gates on March 18 with their theme Hidden in the Stars. Sections include Milky Way, Unidentified Wukking Object (UWO), Stargazer, Apollo, Nebula, Supernova, The Auroras, Comet and SagiA: The Black Hole. New band Khepri launched soon after with sections designed by varying section leaders. Options include Denyque, Silent Morning, Flavaa Nation, Spektrum and Mojito. Krave the Band is set to launch tonite at Ignite Bim, followed by Xhosa tomorrow night. Kontact, Eunioa, Colorz, Baje, Aura, Betty West and LUX Carnival also have quickly approaching dates. Crop Over will be officially launched on June 2. (SS)

For daily or breaking news reports follow us on Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter & Facebook. That’s all for today folks. There are 263 days left in the year. Shalom! #thechasefilesdailynewscap #thechasefiles  #dailynewscapsbythechasefiles

[tomaszdechovskymep]

Norway has promised to stop stealing children

Are you still one of those who think that in Norway children can never be taken away from their parents for no reason? Do you still believe that there are always serious grounds for it? Well, then this article will definitely not be a pleasant reading for you as it will make you admit your own mistake.

 When we first started to heavily criticize Norway for what happened to Eva Michaláková and her children, a number of Norwegian politicians and journalist thought we were totally insane.  Today, a lot of them contact us themselves, informing us about system changes or about further and further cases of unjustified or suspicious child removals. The shift in public opinion is indeed enormous and the system is only defended by those who benefit from it financially or are worried that their own children could be taken away from them.

 1)       A Norwegian woman with a college degree has applied for asylum in Poland due to Barnevernet

Right now, the greatest amount of attention is attracted to the case of Silje Gram, a native Norwegian, who has applied for asylum in Poland because there is a risk that even her second daughter will be taken away from her in her home country. This case has been covered by the Norwegian media as well as the Polish radio or Czech media.  What is more, Silje´s Polish lawyer Jerzy Kwasniewski has confirmed that he has been helping several other Norwegian citizens with their asylum applications. I have been in contact with Silje and her colleagues for some time and I have had an opportunity to become familiar with some of the details of the case. And I am genuinely shocked at how far this system of child “protection“ can go.

Silje was deprived of her older daughter Fröy by Barnevernet upon a statement made by her ex-husband claiming that she allegedly abuses painkillers and leads a “chaotic life“. Barnevernet officials have neither specified what it means nor given any concrete reasons proving that the mother is so dangerous that her daughter is not allowed to see her until she turns 18.  They only had their assumptions which have never been proved – just like in Eva Michaláková´s case. But still, Silje, who was expecting her second child at that time, was notified that her second daughter would also be removed, although her frequent and regular blood tests had never proved increased use of even the most common analgesics.

Moreover, all the media point to the fact that Silje is educated and well-off, and that she has a good knowledge of law and Norwegian culture, so no one can really say that she is socially unadaptable or that there are some other cultural barriers – an argument that is often foisted by Barnevernet advocates on those who criticise the system. Also, Silje comes from a family of a Norwegian politician who had long been defending the system. Now he has changed his opinion, too.

Polish authorities have already confirmed that the application is being processed. So far, they have been careful about making any concrete statements regarding Silje´s chances of getting the asylum, but no one has brushed the application off. And what is more, Polish politicians and journalists have voiced their concerns about the fact that child removals in Norway have reached “epidemic level”. And it is this high level of child removals that gives evidence of system human rights violation in Norway, which is a fundamental condition for granting asylum.

Also, attention is now being drawn to the fact that over the last year 9 cases have appeared before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, which simply brings a lot of shame on Norway.  Moreover, at the beginning of October, Norway lost a dispute concerning the Norway vs. Becker case in which a journalist was unlawfully sanctioned and freedom of expression was not respected.                       

Picture 1: Silje with her daughter. The petition supporting her asylum application has already been signed by 11 000 people and the number of signatures is quickly growing. http://www.maszwplyw.pl/azyl-dla-silje-garmo-,76,k.html

  Picture 2: Silje´s father was an MP.  For him, it is also incredible to see how much the system is abusing its power now. http://www.se.pl/wiadomosci/opinie/uciekamzdzieckiem-znorwegii-dopolski-jej-historia-szokuje_1019059.html

 2) Morten Ørsal Johansen, a Member of Parliament, has admitted that Barnevernet is a state within a state and its only aim is to achieve as many unannounced urgent child removals as possible.

Morten Ørsal Johansen has been an MP since 2009, representing the same party as the Norwegian Minister of Children and Equality Solveig Horne. He caused great surprise at the end of September allowing the Indian newspaper The Sunday Guardian to publish the English version of his comment on whether the Norwegian authorities may remove a child for no reason. He said that he had always thought that there has to be a serious reason for a child removal. Then, however, he began to study concrete files, wondering how it is possible that the social service can do what they like and who these people actually are.

It is also necessary to note that Mr Johansen himself was once present a commission´s meeting that was supposed to evaluate whether or not Barnevernet had the right to remove children. There were 13 witnesses and 12 of them were against the removal. Barnevernet was the only party that insisted on it. Yet the commission decided to remove the children. They do it just to “make sure” in as much as 93 % of all cases.

And what was the reason for this urgent unannounced child removal? Mr Johansen says that it was a four (!) months old “ report on concern” claiming that someone heard the child say that “ daddy will be angry like father Emila from books by Astrid Lindgren ”. As little as this childish remark was enough …

And this is what Mr Johansen is deeply concerned about. The thing is that absolutely no evidence is required for both the removal itself and further permanent placement in foster care. Phrases such as “We think …” and “According to our evaluation of the situation …” are considered to be sufficient arguments, which means that, of course, no review is allowed because it is in the best interest of the child to be silent about everything. Simply anything can be hidden under these phrases and no appellate review is possible. They still have courts, some might object. But as the case of Maxine, little girl born into a Norwegian-Slovak family, has revealed, the parents have won their dispute regarding the immediate return of their daughter twice, Barnevermet, however, appealed and refused to return the daughter, claiming that the court was biased because it did not decide in their favour.

Mr Johansen also heavily criticized the police who are just dancing attendance on Barnevernet.  It is a well-known fact that in case of urgent child removals Barnevernet calls 4 policemen to guard the entrance to the house for 7 hours, together with 2 police patrols assisting them.

In conclusion, Mr Johansen promised to commit himself to this topic in the following election period (in Norway it is right after the elections). It was the last straw when he heard a recording with a Barnevernet employee saying that although they know the legislative requirement of developing every effort to return children to their families, they have practically no reason to fulfil it because the law is just something like an instruction.

Picture 3: Morten Johansen, Member of Parliament, first issued the article criticising Barnevernet in Norway. Later, however, he gave his permission to publish its English version in the Indian newspaper The Sunday Guardian. https://www.oa.no/morten-orsal-johansen/fremskrittspartiet/politikk/morten-orsal-johansens-anklage

 3) Minister of Children and Equality Horne has published „the law of love“ and is going to invest  NOK 80 million in „increasing the competence“ of Barnevernet employees

The growing criticism of Barnevernet procedures on the national as well as international level is already so strong that Ms Horne has promised to “stop stealing children”.  She is going to draw up a stricter law obliging Barnevernet to develop every effort to return children to their parents and to prove that they are actually doing so. The new law will also stipulate that the “report on concern” will have to include the evidence of Barnevernet claims and the reason for sending it.

In other words, the Norwegian idea of the best child protection system in the world is breaking down because real behaviour of Barnevernet officials is totally different from what they are theoretically supposed to be doing. However, I am personally convinced that no partial changes, massive investments in trainings and new laws will be effective until Barnevernet loses its power to carry out urgent child removals and the possibility of case review is introduced.

I wish you a nice day and a happy mind!

[aliklein772-blog]

Film Review: Brexit

Summary of contents

The film that I have chosen to review is the movie Brexit starring Benedict Cumberbatch. This movie came out in 2019 and was directed by Toby Haynes and written by James Graham. It takes place in 2015 and tracks the campaigns of leaving the EU staying. It follows Cumberbatch who plays Dominic Cummings, a political strategist who leads the popular, yet controversial, campaign to convince British voters to leave the European Union. Dominic Cummings was the leader of the Leave campaign in 2015-2016. Cummings was a very unliked person in British politics. He was unconventional, a rule-breaker, and, as some called him, annoying. The overall theme of this film, I believe, is the controversial way of how the UK voted to leave.

The beginning of the movie starts off with Cummings testifying in court years after the referendum. Then it shifts back to 2015 when Douglas Carswell (UKIP’s only MP) and Matthew Elliott (a political lobbyist)  were looking for someone to drive their campaign to leave the EU. Douglas Carswell, while apart of UKIP, was also a sort of rebel from them. He brought Matthew Elliott in on it because he thought he could be the one to lead, but he instead thought of Dominic Cummings. Cummings had had a history with Westminster and at first was hesitant to take the job, but eventually agreed. They built a team together and called their campaign the Leave campaign. UKIP’s Nigel Farage and Aaron Banks (UKIP donor) wanted to team up with the Leave campaign but Cummings refused even though he was advised otherwise. They were also against the I’m In the campaign, Prime Minister David Cameron’s party, that wanted to stay in the European Union. Throughout the film, it shows different types of campaign tactics that all sides used, but mainly focusing on the Leave campaign. They hired political strategists that used high tech data systems to track the 3 million British people that have never voted before. That was their target. It follows the intense campaign all the way to the vote and beyond. In the end, Cummings is back in that first scene testifying and saying how the campaign was brilliant and he doesn’t regret anything, but that he would have thought that someone should have stepped in to do a better job at transitioning the country to leaving. It seemed as though he was referring to the mess that the UK has made of Brexit.

Relation to Class related topics

I felt like this film touched on a few ideas topics that we have discussed in class. Recently, our class has talked much about immigration and the refugee crisis in our own countries that we’ve been studying. In the film, Dominic Cummings would do his own unorthodox focus group where he’d go to pubs and shoot some pool with them, have a pint, and talk to the local people about the issues they thought were at hand and why the UK should leave. He would say “Is it immigration?”, “Do you think it’s immigration”, and “Immigration? Why?”. The I’m In a campaign set up full-on focus groups with people who knew about the situation, people who only knew a little bit, and people who didn’t know much about what was going on. There were two older white men in the group, three people of color (on the younger side), and a white middle-aged woman. In the first session they had as a focus group they were a little more reserved in their opinions because they were around people they didn’t know. Then we see the focus group in the heat of the campaign and they are down each other’s throats. They were very divided on the idea of immigration and it became an issue of race. This is a very real issue that the people in the UK are facing. Part of them leaving the EU was to take back control of the flow of immigrants that come into the country. Most immigrants that come to the UK are looking for jobs which harm the UK citizens. Another issue the British feel immigrants bring to the country is foreign terrorism.

Another topic I saw in the film that was discussed in class was the populist leaders. Nigel Farage was portrayed as a loud mouth drunk who actually didn’t know anything about how to run a campaign or stay relevant. He was better on tv and always knew what to say that he was behind the scenes. We have seen populists in our countries who do and say out of the box things that grab the public’s attention. Farage would be categorized as a charismatic strongman according to Mudde and Kaltwasser (2017). They describe a strongman to be “a masculine and potentially violent figure”, “a man of action”, and “use vulgar language” which Farage likes to display (Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2017). Farage is often seen and was portrayed in the movie, to be vulgar on tv and to be seen drinking and smoking.

Argument

The airing of this film caused an uproar and controversy amongst people everywhere. An article by the New York Times specifically discusses the film and says that everyone knew who won, they just didn’t know how. Most of the controversy stems from the fact that Brexit is still a very active situation and that The Leave party had done some illegal things. The Leave campaign won with 52 votes for leaving and 48 votes for staying. They did this by breaking the law and exceeding the campaign spending limit of 7 million pounds. The Leave party created a slogan saying “Take Back Control”. This was a phrase that encapsulated the campaigns central ideas about immigration, sovereignty, and disruption that voters could relate to.

The writer, James Graham, was getting questions as to why do the movie now. He had explained that this political event had killed someone. No one had ever thought that it could get as bad as it did. Graham is referring to Parliament Member, Jo Cox. She was shot and stabbed multiple times. This was just days before the Brexit Referendum. He said that something appalling had happened in politics where it had gotten so out of had that someone was killed. This was neither parties fault. However, the way they had done their campaigns sort of paved a way for something like this to come about.

Opinion

I thought the film was very interesting. In a way, it helped me make sense of the situation. Sometimes it’s not always clear when reading articles, but it helped to see how the campaign went on. This movie is based on true events and it just showed how chaotic the country was at the time. I felt like it did a great job of showing light on real people behind the populists that usually run the show. It also helped me and what I was studying about the country because I didn’t know anything about the campaign. All I knew was that there was a referendum and that UKIP was able to push the government into going forth with the vote. I think it could’ve done a better job at explaining where Dominic Cummings came from and why he had the reputation that he did because that was unclear at some points. It was also unclear if UKIP and the Leave campaign were working together. Yes, the campaign had people from UKIP and they both had a common goal, but they didn’t work with each other. What was also unclear was that at the end of the movie, before the credits, it had said that a billionaire had helped fund UKIP from the states and that people had lied about their statistics (mainly that the UK was giving the EU 350,000 pounds a week). That part could have been more explained in the video because it was not clear to me. Overall, I thought the film was very helpful in understanding how the UK got to where it is today; a mess of its own making.

[skriak]

The UK 2017 General Election: Why I endorse tactical voting

I have a strong dislike for the UK’s Conservative Party. Over the last seven years, they’ve gutted health and social care and blamed the resulting crisis on immigrants rather than their own policies. Just six months ago they passed the Investigative Powers Act, known as the Snooper’s Charter, giving the government unprecedented power to store citizens’ online browsing history with the excuse of cracking down on terrorism. My feelings towards most of the other parties are mixed, but I can safely say I’d happily take almost anyone else over Theresa May and her cruel policies.

The issue is that Labour are the only party with a real fighting chance of taking the majority away from the Tories. The Lib Dems and Greens have a smattering of support but are too left-wing for most people, much like how the far-right UKIP got decimated at the local elections now that the Conservatives have adopted most of their voter base. The effect, then, is that if the anti-Conservative vote gets split between Labour, Lib Dem and Green, it would essentially mean giving the Conservatives a bigger lead by depriving their main opposition. This sort of situation is why David Cameron said that a vote for UKIP was essentially a vote for Labour.

In a perfect world, the UK would use a better voting system than past-the-post. In the real world, though, it seems that tactical voting is a necessary evil if we want to prevent another five years of Conservative policies.

Labour aren’t my favourite party but they’re pretty good. Jeremy Corbyn in particular is basically the opposite of Theresa May: anti-austerity, pro-NHS and all-round quite progressive. The Greens or the Lib Dems might have been my ideal choice, since they don’t compromise as much as Labour do on some points, but realistically they have a low chance of winning. And since I care more about the Conservatives losing than any particular alternative winning, I have no trouble compromising with a party I like rather than one I might love. So if we treat Labour as our best hope of dethroning the Tories, then even a constituency with no chance of electing a Labour MP can be made to work against the Tories by voting for whichever candidate is most likely to beat the Conservative one. I’m unlucky enough to live in a Conservative stronghold, but I can still find out which opposing party is most likely to win my constituency and vote for them. This is tactical voting, and it’s a way of gaming an inadequate voting system.

I’ve seen some opposition to this idea, though. And I agree that it’s not ideal, but you know how the old saying about desperate times goes. The Conservatives have a strong following and it’ll take a strong following to beat them. Having said that, they only won Parliament by 12 seats in the 2015 election, which is hardly an insurmountable lead. If enough people agreed that another Tory government wasn’t worth the risk, then that majority could easily disappear.

Still, there are some issues causing division amongst anti-Conservative voters. Brexit is the elephant in the room, of course, and the election itself is a side effect of last year’s referendum result. I must confess that I voted Remain and still consider Brexit a bad idea overall. But with the triggering of Article 50, Britain has officially begun the process of leaving the European Union and there doesn’t seem to be any stopping now. Even if you’re passionately anti-Brexit, I think at this point it’s something we have to work with rather than fight against. Brexit in a general sense seems inevitable, but the form Brexit takes is not nearly as set in stone.

I’ve seen some people say that they like Labour, but can’t support them because they’re too moderate on Brexit. The Lib Dems are the only major party offering a second EU referendum, and while the Greens don’t go that far, they favour a much less extreme form of Brexit compared to the explosive departure that Theresa May is prepared to resort to. Labour has compromised on Brexit promises, I admit, and so I completely empathise with the frustrations of people who wish Labour would take a stronger stance. Ultimately, though, neither Green nor the Lib Dems have a serious chance at winning this election. Five years from now might be another story, but in 2017 the only serious chance we have is Labour. Corbyn’s Brexit might be a compromise, but it’s the only realistic possibility other than May’s all-or-nothing approach that could have a major impact on this country’s trade and overall economic situation. And May’s claims that Corbyn couldn’t handle the Brexit negotiations became laughable when she refused to turn up at a major debate one week before the election.

Is Labour perfect? Far from it. But when you compare Corbyn and his party to the current administration, I don’t think there’s any real competition. And the stakes in this election are too high to let the Conservatives win by fighting amongst ourselves. This is an election where compromise is a necessary evil, and that means voting tactically to reduce the number of Conservative MPs as much as possible. Even if you don’t like any of the parties, which I could understand, there surely has to be someone you like better than the Tories? If you value national healthcare and an unrestricted internet, then helping to take a constituency from to the Tories is worth the sacrifice of voting for someone you usually wouldn’t.

Sure, the Conservatives would come back five years later even if they get massacred this Thursday. But I like to think that a dramatic victory for Corbyn, a man that the Tories have been trying to smear as a pretentious clown, might have the effect of forcing the Conservative Party to rethink their strategy and come back with less extreme policies on immigration, care and anti-terrorism powers. That’s a best-case scenario, but stranger things have happened. Just look at it as an extra incentive to consider tactical voting if, like me, you’re worried about the direction the current administration is taking this country.

Please consider typing your postcode into https://www.tactical2017.com/ and seeing which party is most likely to defeat the Tories in your constituency. At the very least, please remember to vote this Thursday. I used to be one of those people who assume their vote won’t make a difference.

2015 general elction results: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2015/results

[robertmcangusgroup]

The Daily Tulip

The Daily Tulip – International News From Around The World

Saturday 4th March 2017

Good Morning Gentle Reader… Rant Time!!!.. So.. Women are 'weaker, less intelligent' according to Polish Member of the European Parliament Korwin-Mikke who the hell in Poland does he represent??? Does he not know the history of his own country??? Here is a few of the women that I could recall this morning over the first cup of coffee…Zofia Kielan-Jaworowska – Paleobiologist..  Hanna Bogna Margońska – Botanist Anita Dolly Haubenstock Panek - Biochemist…  Cypra Cecilia Krieger-Dunaij – Mathematician….  Liliana Lubińska – Neuroscientist… Hélène Sparrow – Microbioligist And the most famous of them all Marie Skłodowska Curie people always say she was French but she was a naturalized Pole born Maria Salomea Skłodowska was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person and only woman to win twice, the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two different sciences, and was part of the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes. She was also the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris, and in 1995 became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Panthéon in Paris… So I think Polish Member of the European Parliament Korwin-Mikke needs to get his facts in order and stop annoying me this dam early in the morning!! Rant Over….

AUSTRALIA CRACKS DOWN ON VISAS FOR FAST FOOD INDUSTRY…. Australia's Minister for Immigration and Border Protection Peter Dutton says the change will benefit young Australians… Australia will largely end granting visas to foreign workers to fill jobs in the fast food industry, the nation's immigration minister has said. Peter Dutton said the decision was designed to protect Australian jobs.Since 2012, more than 500 foreign staff have been granted a visa - known as 457 - to work at businesses including McDonald's, KFC and Hungry Jack's. The skilled worker visa, designed to fill Australian shortages, also extends to family members. "Australian workers, particularly young Australians, must be given priority," Mr Dutton said in explaining the change. He said visas would still be granted under exceptional circumstances. According to government statistics, 95,758 people were living in Australia on 457 visas in September last year, compared with 103,862 in 2015. The highest proportion came from India (24.6%), the UK (19.5%) and China (5.8%).

HOW INDIA USES RECYCLED PIPES TO DETECT FEROCIOUS SOLAR STORMS…. What does a sensational scientific discovery about a solar storm in the Earth's magnetic field have to do with old, recycled steel pipes which lay buried for more than a decade under a now-defunct gold mine in India? Almost everything….. More than 3,700 such pipes are actually at the heart of a most significant scientific finding. A team of Indian and Japanese scientists recently published an internationally-feted paper which recorded the events that unfolded after a breach in the Earth's magnetic shield. Using the GRAPES-3 muon (a sub-atomic particle) telescope - the world's largest of its kind - at the Cosmic Ray Laboratory in Ooty, a hill station in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, the scientists recorded a two-hour burst of galactic cosmic rays that invaded the atmosphere on 22 June 2015. The magnetic field breach was the result of charged particles from the Sun striking the Earth at high speed. Solar storms of such high magnitudes can knock out satellites and aircraft autopilots, cause catastrophic power outages, and take us, according to one of the scientists leading the research, Dr Sunil Gupta, "back to the Stone Age".

THIS IS NOT “FAKE” NEWS IT’S THE REAL THING…TRUMP ATTORNEY GENERAL JEFF SESSIONS MET RUSSIAN AMBASSADOR - SESSIONS ADJOURNED. Jeff Sessions Recuses Himself From Russia Inquiries. The attorney general says he’ll remove himself from any campaign-related investigations, including Russia’s possible election interference, after it came to light that he’d lied under oath about meeting Russia’s ambassador during the campaign. Sessions now says he was acting only as a U.S. senator when he met with Sergey Kislyak, but records indicate that Sessions’ trip was financed by campaign funds. Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente will oversee any related investigations. While the White House expressed “total confidence” in Sessions, some lawmakers are demanding his resignation. Attorney General Jeff Sessions met Russia's ambassador twice during Donald Trump's presidential campaign last year, the US government has confirmed. Mr Sessions, a senator at the time, did not disclose the contacts at his January confirmation hearing.But he stressed on Wednesday he had "never met any Russian officials to discuss issues of the campaign". Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi accused Mr Sessions of "lying under oath" and demanded he resign. Other Democrats called on him to step aside from an investigation by the FBI - which he oversees as attorney general - into the alleged Russian interference.The news broke just after a congressional committee agreed an investigation into Russia's alleged interference in the election.The House intelligence panel inquiry will scrutinise contacts between Donald Trump's presidential campaign and Moscow, members confirmed. The White House denies any improper behaviour during the election campaign and did not comment immediately on the latest development. Russia has consistently rejected allegations of interference.

MOUSE ON A PLANE GROUNDS BRITISH AIRWAYS HEATHROW FLIGHT…. Passengers were made to get off the plane after the alert A US-bound plane was unable to take off from Heathrow Airport after a mouse was spotted on board. Passengers on the 10:40 GMT British Airways flight to San Francisco were strapped in and waiting to leave when the "rather unusual occurrence" was announced. The crew told passengers planes cannot take off with mice on board, and that another flight would be scheduled. It eventually left about four hours later. One passenger, Carly, said there was "general disbelief" among she and her fellow travellers when the news was broken. "I'm not sure people knew how to react," she said. She said they had been told another plane had been found, but the passengers would have to wait several hours for a gate to be found before it could take off. Some of the flight's passengers tweeted their reactions. Matt Watt wrote: "Just had my flight to SFO cancelled because of a mouse on board the plane. Could it not get a visa?? #britishairways", while @midlandsound wrote a Haiku: "About to fly to SF, There is a mouse on the plane, We all must get off."He also wrote: "I'm going to sell this to the movies. It can be the slightly more pedestrian prequel to snakes on a plane. Maybe this is what lured them on?"

GOVERNMENT DEFEATED ON BREXIT BILL…. The government has been defeated after the House of Lords said ministers should guarantee EU nationals' right to stay in the UK after Brexit. The vote, by 358 to 256, is the first Parliamentary defeat for the government's Brexit bill. However, MPs will be able to remove their changes when the bill returns to the House of Commons. Ministers say the issue is a priority but must be part of a deal protecting UK expats overseas. The bill will give Theresa May the authority to trigger Brexit under Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and begin official negotiations. The amendment backed by the Lords requires the government to introduce proposals within three months of Article 50 to ensure EU citizens in the UK have the same residence rights after Brexit. But it could be overturned when MPs, who have already backed the Brexit bill without amendments, vote on it again.

Well Gentle Reader I hope you enjoyed our look at the news from around the world this, first week-end of the month Saturday morning…

Our Tulips today are beautiful rows of Tulips & Mount Hood in Oregon. Photo by Ashwanth Kadiyala

A Sincere Thank You for your company and Thank You for your likes and comments I love them and always try to reply, so please keep them coming, it's always good fun, As is my custom, I will go and get myself another mug of "Colombian" Coffee and wish you a safe Saturday 4th March 2017 from my home on the southern coast of Spain, where the blue waters of the Alboran Sea washes the coast of Africa and Europe and the smell of the night blooming jasmine and Honeysuckle fills the air…and a crazy old guy and his dog Bella go out for a walk at 4:00 am…on the streets of Estepona…

All good stuff....But remember it’s a dangerous world we live in ….. 

Be safe out there…

Robert McAngus

[allofbeercom]

Who is Leanne Wood? A profile of the Plaid Cymru leader – BBC News

Image copyright Getty Images

When Plaid Cymru started looking for a new leader in 2011, Leanne Wood faced rival candidates grounded in the party’s Welsh-speaking heartlands.

But it became apparent that Plaid members wanted change.

They found it offered by a left winger from a non-Welsh speaking background in the former industrial valleys of south Wales.

She won a decisive victory and took the Labour stronghold of Rhondda, her home patch, at last year’s assembly election.

But success with the wider electorate in the rest of Wales has not come so readily.

Born in 1971 to parents Jeff and Avril, she and her sister Joanna were raised in the village of Penygraig.

Image copyright PA

Image caption With parents Jeff and Avril in the former mining village of Penygraig where she lives on the street where her grandparents lived

She still lives there with her partner, Ian, and daughter, Cerys.

Their private life is just that – private.

Though she has spoken frequently about how her working-class upbringing shaped her politics, she keeps her family away from the media.

Understanding why she has stayed so close to home is crucial to understanding her politics, says Plaid AM Adam Price, a long-time friend and ally.

“She sees the role of a politician that you represent the people in whose community you live and you have a real sense of what matters to them because you live among them,” he says.

Witnessing the decline of those communities and the miners’ strikes of the 1980s was a political awakening.

Image caption Described as very clever by school friends, Leanne Wood became interested in political issues around the time of the miners’ strike in 1984-85

She has recalled how her father was laid off from the builders’ yard where he worked, and talked about the experience of joining a separate queue for free school dinners.

“I understand what struggling means,” she wrote on her website.

While at Tonypandy Community College – or “Pandy Comp” – she had no intention of going into politics, dreaming instead of becoming a TV newsreader. Moira Stuart was a role model.

She left school at 16 and got a job in a factory making artificial flowers.

Low pay and poor conditions convinced her to go back and study for A levels.

For many politicised young people from that background, there was a well-trodden path into the Labour Party.

But some thought getting rid of Margaret Thatcher was not enough.

They decided fundamental changes were needed to the way power operates in the UK.

Who is Leanne Wood?

Date of birth: 13 December 1971 (aged 45)

Job: Probation officer, university lecturer, Plaid Cymru leader since 2011

Education: Left Tonypandy Comprehensive at 16 – remembered as “clever” and “great fun” – to work in a factory. Returned to education and graduated from the University of South Wales

Family: Partner Ian and 12-year-old daughter Cerys Amelia

Hobbies: Allotments, where she grows her own vegetables. Beer enthusiast and member of the Campaign for Real Ale. Musical tastes include Catatonia (as seen in “van share” with Victoria Derbyshire), Massive Attack, Bob Marley and Bach. Favourite single… anti-monarchist anthem God Save The Queen by the Sex Pistols

A colleague who has worked closely with her says Leanne Wood saw poverty arrive in the valleys and concluded that “it would never be a priority for a Westminster government and the answers were to be found here in Wales – that we would have to plough our own furrow, shape our own future”.

Image copyright Leanne Wood

Image caption Wood and Jill Evans were arrested in 2007 for blocking a road into Faslane Naval Base, home to Britain’s Trident nuclear missile system

“We were abandoned, effectively, by the Labour Party, and seeking a new political home,” says Adam Price.

When they found that home, they discovered Plaid could claim its own tradition of radical left-wingers.

Among them was the economist DJ Davies, a founding father of the party who wrote about the economics of Welsh independence. Leanne Wood cites him as an influence.

Image copyright Alamy

Image caption A borough councillor at 25, Leanne Wood became political researcher for Plaid MEP Jill Evans in 2000, a year before launching her campaign as Westminster candidate for Rhondda

Image caption The campaigner – Leanne Wood at the Cardiff Bay Republican Day in 2011 and at the city’s LGBT Mardi Gras (r)

After studying at what is now the University of South Wales in nearby Pontypridd, she became a probation officer.

She was a local councillor, worked for the Plaid MEP Jill Evans, and lectured in social policy at Cardiff University, before being elected to the Welsh Assembly in 2003.

The year before, in 2002, her boyfriend, David Ceri Evans, took his own life.

Years later, she spoke to ITV’s Good Morning Britain about coping with the tragedy, saying it was “something that is informative to politics because I think my experience having worked as a probation officer as well has meant that I’ve seen some real difficult experiences that people have had to live through”.

Anyone who had never met her before she became an AM could be in no doubt about Ms Wood’s politics when she arrived in Cardiff Bay.

A republican, she was once kicked out of the chamber for calling the Queen “Mrs Windsor”.

Image caption Leanne Wood “inclined her head” instead of curtseying when she met the Queen in Cardiff last year

She was arrested in 2007 at an anti-nuclear protest at the Faslane naval base.

And in the same year she was among four Plaid AMs opposed to a coalition with the Conservatives.

Eventually, the then Plaid leader, Ieuan Wyn Jones, took the party into a coalition with Labour.

In her own words

Setting things straight in a leaders’ TV debate when UKIP’s Paul Nuttall kept getting her name wrong: “I’m not Natalie, I’m Leanne”

Telling BBC Wales that Brexit was not the only thing on voters’ minds before May’s local elections: “Most people talk about dog poo”

Her verdict on the Queen’s speech in December 2004: “We are more at risk now than we have ever, ever been before and the measures outlined in Mrs Windsor’s speech will not address this risk”

Meal times at Tonypandy Comprehensive School: “We were stigmatised for having free school meals. We used to have to stand in a separate queue from the paying children”

At Plaid Cymru’s conference in Newport this year: “If you live here and you want to be Welsh then as far as we are concerned, you are Welsh and your rights will be defended by the Party of Wales”

There was no ministerial job for Leanne Wood, leaving her free to roam across subjects.

She delivered a lecture to Plaid activists in 2010 asking whether the party needed a new direction.

The following year she published a pamphlet about an environmentally conscious economic strategy to revive the former coalfields.

It combined two of her passions: co-operative politics and allotments.

When election defeat ushered Mr Jones out of office, Ms Wood started talking about how young Plaid members were encouraging her to stand – a hint that she would offer a break from the cautious, centrist Mr Jones.

Image copyright Rhys Llwyd

At the start of the leadership contest, she was an outside bet.

But enough Plaid members liked what they heard and read, choosing her as their first woman leader and the first leader not fluent in Welsh.

She took up the reins with a call to work towards “real independence”.

She has a much higher profile than all previous Plaid leaders, thanks to her inclusion in the leaders’ TV debates for the 2015 general election.

Lining up alongside David Cameron and Ed Miliband was, says an aide, a “huge deal”.

Her team poured their efforts into preparing for the debates, trying to make sure that she left an impression in voters’ minds that Leanne Wood was the voice of Wales.

Image copyright Keith Morris

Image caption Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has praised Leanne Wood’s performance as leader

Supporters say viewers liked her authenticity, pointing to good approval ratings as proof.

What they cannot do is point to seats won in parliament – Plaid still had only three MPs.

And although hopes were high in Plaid before last year’s assembly election, the leader’s victory in the Rhondda was its only advance. Plaid won 12 seats, the Tories 11 and Labour 29.

What others say

“I was proud of Leanne, I know you were proud of Leanne and I promise you I will always work with Leanne Wood in the best interests of our two countries,” Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said at Plaid Cymru’s conference in 2015.

Vice chair of British CND and friend John Cox: “She’s a campaigner who happens to have become a leader of Plaid Cymru. But it’s not like some people I’ve known who throughout their political lives have been climbing from one step to the next. She’s not that sort of person. She’s not a successful politician; she’s a successful campaigner.”

Former Pontypridd probation service colleague Rob Thomas described her as “a doughty fighter, who will not take no for an answer very easily”.

Soon after the election, Conservative and UKIP AMs lent her their support, causing a dramatic tie between Ms Wood and Labour’s Carwyn Jones in a vote to nominate the first minister.

It forced Labour to make concessions to Plaid, although there is no formal coalition between the two parties.

In reality, there was never any real prospect of Ms Wood becoming first minister last summer. She has ruled out ever working with the Conservatives, let alone UKIP.

Meanwhile, there’s a debate within Plaid about the party’s attitude towards Labour – something Ms Wood herself conceded when she said on the eve of a party conference last year that it was something Plaid was “actively considering all the time”.

Image caption Leanne Wood won praise for her dance skills during a Strictly Cymru Dancing 2016 fundraiser, pictured with actor Richard Elfyn (l) and Plaid Cymru councillor and actor Danny Grehan

The current arrangement – in opposition, but sometimes working with Labour – probably puts Ms Wood in the centre ground of opinion in the party.

She campaigned with Mr Jones for a Remain vote in the EU referendum and helped draw up a Welsh Government plan for Brexit.

But her “project” is to eventually replace Labour.

The Scottish nationalists provide the blueprint – first become the biggest party, then build the case for independence.

Both goals are some way off and Plaid members are annoyed by unfavourable comparisons to the Scottish nationalists’ success.

Defections mean Ms Wood no longer leads the largest opposition group in Cardiff Bay.

But positive results in local council elections have boosted Plaid’s hopes of inflicting wounds on Labour in the snap general election on 8 June.

Image copyright Plaid Cymru

Image caption Looking down on the village of Penygraig in the Rhondda Valley

Before the local elections, she said her five years at the helm had seen its “ups and downs”.

While campaigning, she has let rip with her anti-Tory convictions, asking voters to “defend Wales” from a Theresa May government.

And she pondered in public about whether she should stand as a Westminster candidate in the Rhondda, a move that would have required her to quit as party leader under current rules.

Eventually, she decided against.

Senior figures in Plaid privately told the BBC they were dismayed by her openly flirting with the idea.

Nevertheless, the Rhondda is one of two or three seats Plaid hopes to snatch from Labour on 8 June. If it does so, this election will be remembered as one of the bigger “ups” in Ms Wood’s political career.

Related Topics

Plaid Cymru

Leanne Wood

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/07/08/who-is-leanne-wood-a-profile-of-the-plaid-cymru-leader-bbc-news/

[endenogatai]

UK U-turns on Huawei and 5G, giving operators until 2027 to rip out existing kit

The UK government has confirmed a widely expected U-turn related to “high risk” 5G vendors linked to the Chinese state — attributing the policy shift to the US recently imposing tighter sanctions on Huawei’s access to its technologies.

UK digital minister Oliver Dowden told parliament the new policy will bar telcos from buying 5G kit from Huawei and ZTE to install in new network builds from the end of this year. While any of their kit that’s already been installed in UK 5G networks must be removed by 2027.

Although legislation to enable the enforcement of the policy has still to be laid before parliament and could face challenges from MPs who want to seek a more rapid removal of Huawei kit.

Yesterday telco BT warned against any overly rapid rip-out of existing Huawei kit, suggesting it could cause mobile network outages, generate security risks and further delay upgrades to the country’s fiber broadband network which the government included in its manifesto. BT CEO Philip Jansen had suggested an ideal timeframe of seven years to remove existing Huawei 5G kit so the government appears to have served up its best case scenario, while still piling additional cost on next-gen network builds.

Dowden conceded that the new policy will also delay the rollout of UK 5G networks but claimed the government is prioritizing security over economic considerations.

“Clearly since January the situation has changed. On the 15th of May the US Department of Commerce announced that new sanctions had been imposed against Huawei through changes to the foreign direct product rules. This was a significant material change and one that we have to take into consideration,” he told parliament.

“These sanctions are not the first attempt by the US to restrict Huawei’s ability to supply equipment to 5G networks. They are, however, the first to have potentially severe impacts on Huawei’s ability to supply new equipment in the United Kingdom. The new US measures restrict Huawei’s abilities to produce important products using US technology or software.”

Dowden said the National Cyber Security Center had reviewed the new US sanctions and “significantly” changed their security assessment as a result — saying the government would publish a summary of the advice that had led to the policy U-turn when challenged on the U-turn by the shadow digital minister.

“Given the uncertainty this creates around Huawei’s supply chain the UK can no longer be confident it will be able to guarantee the security of future Huawei 5G equipment affected by the change in US foreign direct product rules,” Dowden added.

A Telecoms Security Bill had been slated to be introduced before the summer recess but will now be delayed until autumn given the policy swerve.

In terms of costs and time associated with restricting and then ripping out Huawei kit from UK 5G networks, Dowden suggested it would add between two to three years more to 5G rollouts — and cost up to £2BN.

“We have not taken this decision lightly and I must be frank about the consequences for every constituency in this country,” he said. “This will delay our roll out of 5G. Our decisions in January had already set back that rollout by a year and cost up to a billion pounds. Today’s decision to ban the procurement of new Huawei 5G equipment from the end of this year will delay the rollout by a further year and will add up to half a billion pounds to costs.”

The additional set of requiring operators to rip out existing Huawei 5G kit by 2027 will entail “hundreds of millions of pounds” more to their costs.

“This will have real consequences for the connections on which all our connections relay,” he further cautioned, warning against that going any “faster and further” than the 2027 target — saying to do so would add “considerable and unnecessary” additional costs and delays.

“The shorter we make the timetable for removal the greater the risk of actual disruption to mobile networks,” he also said.

It’s a very significant change of government policy vs the package of restrictions announced in January when Boris Johnson’s government expressed confidence it could manage any risk associated with vendors with deep links to the Chinese state.

And Dowden faced a barrage of questions from opposition politicians about the “screeching U-turn” and the associated delays to the UK’s 5G network infrastructure from not having taken this decision six months earlier. 

Shadow digital minister Chi Onwurah said the government’s digital policy lay in tatters — and called for it to set up a multi-stakeholder taskforce to lead the infrastructure charge. “This entire saga has shown that the government cannot sort this mess out on their own,” she said. “We need a taskforce of industry representatives, academics, startups, regional government and regulators to develop a plan which delivers a UK [5G] network capability and security mobile network in the shortest possible timeframe.”

On government backbenches, Dowden’s statement was more broadly welcomed. Although Johnson has faced significant internal opposition from a group of rebel MPs in his own party to his earlier Huawei policy so it remains to be seen whether they can be convinced to back the new package. One rebel MP source, speaking to the Guardian, warned the fight is back on — saying they’ll table amendments to the telecoms security bill to further shrink the timeframe to rip out Huawei kit, including also for 3G and 4G, not just 5G.

On the issue of what’s to be done with kit from high risk vendors that’s in use in non-5G networks, the government sought to slip in another delay today — with Dowden telling parliament the issue “needs to be looked at”, and announcing a “technical consultation with operators to understand their supply chain alternatives”.

“Given there is only one other appropriate scale vendor for full fiber equipment we are going to embark on a short technical consultation with operators to understand their supply chain alternatives. So that we can avoid unnecessary delays to our Gigabit ambitions and prevent significant resilience risks,” he said.

The technical consultation will determine government policy toward Huawei outside 5G networks, Dowden added.

The government has said before it’s taking steps to increase diversification in the supply chain around 5G network infrastructure kit. Dowden reiterated that line today, saying the UK is working with Five Eyes partners to try to accelerate diversification, while tempering the ambition by couching it as a global problem.

Over the longer term he said the UK wants to encourage and support operators to use multiple vendors per network as standard, though again he cautioned that the development of such open RAN networks will take time.

In the nearer, medium term, he suggested other large scale vendors would be needed to step in — saying the government is already having technical discussions with alternative telecoms kit makers, including Samsung and NEC, about accessing the UK market to plug the gap opened up by the removal of Huawei equipment.

“We are already engaging extensively with operators and vendors and governments around the world about supporting and accelerating the process of diversification. We recognize that this is a global issue that requires international collaboration to deliver a lasting solution so we’re working with our Five Eyes partners and our friends around the world to bring together a coalition to deliver our shared goals,” he added.

We’ve reached out to Huawei for comment. Update: In a statement, Ed Brewster, a spokesperson for Huawei UK, told us:

This disappointing decision is bad news for anyone in the UK with a mobile phone. It threatens to move Britain into the digital slow lane, push up bills and deepen the digital divide. Instead of ‘levelling up’ the government is levelling down and we urge them to reconsider. We remain confident that the new US restrictions would not have affected the resilience or security of the products we supply to the UK.

Regrettably our future in the UK has become politicized, this is about US trade policy and not security. Over the past 20 years, Huawei has focused on building a better connected UK. As a responsible business, we will continue to support our customers as we have always done.

We will conduct a detailed review of what today’s announcement means for our business here and will work with the UK government to explain how we can continue to contribute to a better connected Britain.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8204425 https://ift.tt/3gUNbTB via IFTTT

[sheminecrafts]

UK U-turns on Huawei and 5G, giving operators until 2027 to rip out existing kit

The UK government has confirmed a widely expected U-turn related to “high risk” 5G vendors linked to the Chinese state — attributing the policy shift to the US recently imposing tighter sanctions on Huawei’s access to its technologies.

UK digital minister Oliver Dowden told parliament the new policy will bar telcos from buying 5G kit from Huawei and ZTE to install in new network builds from the end of this year. While any of their kit that’s already been installed in UK 5G networks must be removed by 2027.

Although legislation to enable the enforcement of the policy has still to be laid before parliament and could face challenges from MPs who want to seek a more rapid removal of Huawei kit.

Yesterday telco BT warned against any overly rapid rip-out of existing Huawei kit, suggesting it could cause mobile network outages, generate security risks and further delay upgrades to the country’s fiber broadband network which the government included in its manifesto. BT CEO Philip Jansen had suggested an ideal timeframe of seven years to remove existing Huawei 5G kit so the government appears to have served up its best case scenario, while still piling additional cost on next-gen network builds.

Dowden conceded that the new policy will also delay the rollout of UK 5G networks but claimed the government is prioritizing security over economic considerations.

“Clearly since January the situation has changed. On the 15th of May the US Department of Commerce announced that new sanctions had been imposed against Huawei through changes to the foreign direct product rules. This was a significant material change and one that we have to take into consideration,” he told parliament.

“These sanctions are not the first attempt by the US to restrict Huawei’s ability to supply equipment to 5G networks. They are, however, the first to have potentially severe impacts on Huawei’s ability to supply new equipment in the United Kingdom. The new US measures restrict Huawei’s abilities to produce important products using US technology or software.”

Dowden said the National Cyber Security Center had reviewed the new US sanctions and “significantly” changed their security assessment as a result — saying the government would publish a summary of the advice that had led to the policy U-turn when challenged on the U-turn by the shadow digital minister.

“Given the uncertainty this creates around Huawei’s supply chain the UK can no longer be confident it will be able to guarantee the security of future Huawei 5G equipment affected by the change in US foreign direct product rules,” Dowden added.

A Telecoms Security Bill had been slated to be introduced before the summer recess but will now be delayed until autumn given the policy swerve.

In terms of costs and time associated with restricting and then ripping out Huawei kit from UK 5G networks, Dowden suggested it would add between two to three years more to 5G rollouts — and cost up to £2BN.

“We have not taken this decision lightly and I must be frank about the consequences for every constituency in this country,” he said. “This will delay our roll out of 5G. Our decisions in January had already set back that rollout by a year and cost up to a billion pounds. Today’s decision to ban the procurement of new Huawei 5G equipment from the end of this year will delay the rollout by a further year and will add up to half a billion pounds to costs.”

The additional set of requiring operators to rip out existing Huawei 5G kit by 2027 will entail “hundreds of millions of pounds” more to their costs.

“This will have real consequences for the connections on which all our connections relay,” he further cautioned, warning against that going any “faster and further” than the 2027 target — saying to do so would add “considerable and unnecessary” additional costs and delays.

“The shorter we make the timetable for removal the greater the risk of actual disruption to mobile networks,” he also said.

It’s a very significant change of government policy vs the package of restrictions announced in January when Boris Johnson’s government expressed confidence it could manage any risk associated with vendors with deep links to the Chinese state.

And Dowden faced a barrage of questions from opposition politicians about the “screeching U-turn” and the associated delays to the UK’s 5G network infrastructure from not having taken this decision six months earlier. 

Shadow digital minister Chi Onwurah said the government’s digital policy lay in tatters — and called for it to set up a multi-stakeholder taskforce to lead the infrastructure charge. “This entire saga has shown that the government cannot sort this mess out on their own,” she said. “We need a taskforce of industry representatives, academics, startups, regional government and regulators to develop a plan which delivers a UK [5G] network capability and security mobile network in the shortest possible timeframe.”

On government backbenches, Dowden’s statement was more broadly welcomed. Although Johnson has faced significant internal opposition from a group of rebel MPs in his own party to his earlier Huawei policy so it remains to be seen whether they can be convinced to back the new package. One rebel MP source, speaking to the Guardian, warned the fight is back on — saying they’ll table amendments to the telecoms security bill to further shrink the timeframe to rip out Huawei kit, including also for 3G and 4G, not just 5G.

On the issue of what’s to be done with kit from high risk vendors that’s in use in non-5G networks, the government sought to slip in another delay today — with Dowden telling parliament the issue “needs to be looked at”, and announcing a “technical consultation with operators to understand their supply chain alternatives”.

“Given there is only one other appropriate scale vendor for full fiber equipment we are going to embark on a short technical consultation with operators to understand their supply chain alternatives. So that we can avoid unnecessary delays to our Gigabit ambitions and prevent significant resilience risks,” he said.

The technical consultation will determine government policy toward Huawei outside 5G networks, Dowden added.

The government has said before it’s taking steps to increase diversification in the supply chain around 5G network infrastructure kit. Dowden reiterated that line today, saying the UK is working with Five Eyes partners to try to accelerate diversification, while tempering the ambition by couching it as a global problem.

Over the longer term he said the UK wants to encourage and support operators to use multiple vendors per network as standard, though again he cautioned that the development of such open RAN networks will take time. In the nearer, medium term, he suggested other large scale vendors would be needed to step in — saying the government is already having technical discussions with alternative telecoms kit makers, including Samsung and NEC, about accessing the UK market to plug the gap opened up by the removal of Huawei equipment.

“We are already engaging extensively with operators and vendors and governments around the world about supporting and accelerating the process of diversification. We recognize that this is a global issue that requires international collaboration to deliver a lasting solution so we’re working with our Five Eyes partners and our friends around the world to bring together a coalition to deliver our shared goals,” he added.

We’ve reached out to Huawei for comment.

from iraidajzsmmwtv https://ift.tt/3gUNbTB via IFTTT

[technicalsolutions88]

The UK government has confirmed a widely expected U-turn related to “high risk” 5G vendors linked to the Chinese state — attributing the policy shift to the US recently imposing tighter sanctions on Huawei’s access to its technologies.

UK digital minister Oliver Dowden told parliament the new policy will bar telcos from buying 5G kit from Huawei and ZTE to install in new network builds from the end of this year. While any of their kit that’s already been installed in UK 5G networks must be removed by 2027.

Although legislation to enable the enforcement of the policy has still to be laid before parliament and could face challenges from MPs who want to seek a more rapid removal of Huawei kit.

Yesterday telco BT warned against any overly rapid rip-out of existing Huawei kit, suggesting it could cause mobile network outages, generate security risks and further delay upgrades to the country’s fiber broadband network which the government included in its manifesto. BT CEO Philip Jansen had suggested an ideal timeframe of seven years to remove existing Huawei 5G kit so the government appears to have served up its best case scenario, while still piling additional cost on next-gen network builds.

Dowden conceded that the new policy will also delay the rollout of UK 5G networks but claimed the government is prioritizing security over economic considerations.

“Clearly since January the situation has changed. On the 15th of May the US Department of Commerce announced that new sanctions had been imposed against Huawei through changes to the foreign direct product rules. This was a significant material change and one that we have to take into consideration,” he told parliament.

“These sanctions are not the first attempt by the US to restrict Huawei’s ability to supply equipment to 5G networks. They are, however, the first to have potentially severe impacts on Huawei’s ability to supply new equipment in the United Kingdom. The new US measures restrict Huawei’s abilities to produce important products using US technology or software.”

Dowden said the National Cyber Security Center had reviewed the new US sanctions and “significantly” changed their security assessment as a result — saying the government would publish a summary of the advice that had led to the policy U-turn when challenged on the U-turn by the shadow digital minister.

“Given the uncertainty this creates around Huawei’s supply chain the UK can no longer be confident it will be able to guarantee the security of future Huawei 5G equipment affected by the change in US foreign direct product rules,” Dowden added.

A Telecoms Security Bill had been slated to be introduced before the summer recess but will now be delayed until autumn given the policy swerve.

In terms of costs and time associated with restricting and then ripping out Huawei kit from UK 5G networks, Dowden suggested it would add between two to three years more to 5G rollouts — and cost up to £2BN.

“We have not taken this decision lightly and I must be frank about the consequences for every constituency in this country,” he said. “This will delay our roll out of 5G. Our decisions in January had already set back that rollout by a year and cost up to a billion pounds. Today’s decision to ban the procurement of new Huawei 5G equipment from the end of this year will delay the rollout by a further year and will add up to half a billion pounds to costs.”

The additional set of requiring operators to rip out existing Huawei 5G kit by 2027 will entail “hundreds of millions of pounds” more to their costs.

“This will have real consequences for the connections on which all our connections relay,” he further cautioned, warning against that going any “faster and further” than the 2027 target — saying to do so would add “considerable and unnecessary” additional costs and delays.

“The shorter we make the timetable for removal the greater the risk of actual disruption to mobile networks,” he also said.

It’s a very significant change of government policy vs the package of restrictions announced in January when Boris Johnson’s government expressed confidence it could manage any risk associated with vendors with deep links to the Chinese state.

And Dowden faced a barrage of questions from opposition politicians about the “screeching U-turn” and the associated delays to the UK’s 5G network infrastructure from not having taken this decision six months earlier. 

Shadow digital minister Chi Onwurah said the government’s digital policy lay in tatters — and called for it to set up a multi-stakeholder taskforce to lead the infrastructure charge. “This entire saga has shown that the government cannot sort this mess out on their own,” she said. “We need a taskforce of industry representatives, academics, startups, regional government and regulators to develop a plan which delivers a UK [5G] network capability and security mobile network in the shortest possible timeframe.”

On government backbenches, Dowden’s statement was more broadly welcomed. Although Johnson has faced significant internal opposition from a group of rebel MPs in his own party to his earlier Huawei policy so it remains to be seen whether they can be convinced to back the new package. One rebel MP source, speaking to the Guardian, warned the fight is back on — saying they’ll table amendments to the telecoms security bill to further shrink the timeframe to rip out Huawei kit, including also for 3G and 4G, not just 5G.

On the issue of what’s to be done with kit from high risk vendors that’s in use in non-5G networks, the government sought to slip in another delay today — with Dowden telling parliament the issue “needs to be looked at”, and announcing a “technical consultation with operators to understand their supply chain alternatives”.

“Given there is only one other appropriate scale vendor for full fiber equipment we are going to embark on a short technical consultation with operators to understand their supply chain alternatives. So that we can avoid unnecessary delays to our Gigabit ambitions and prevent significant resilience risks,” he said.

The technical consultation will determine government policy toward Huawei outside 5G networks, Dowden added.

The government has said before it’s taking steps to increase diversification in the supply chain around 5G network infrastructure kit. Dowden reiterated that line today, saying the UK is working with Five Eyes partners to try to accelerate diversification, while tempering the ambition by couching it as a global problem.

Over the longer term he said the UK wants to encourage and support operators to use multiple vendors per network as standard, though again he cautioned that the development of such open RAN networks will take time.

In the nearer, medium term, he suggested other large scale vendors would be needed to step in — saying the government is already having technical discussions with alternative telecoms kit makers, including Samsung and NEC, about accessing the UK market to plug the gap opened up by the removal of Huawei equipment.

“We are already engaging extensively with operators and vendors and governments around the world about supporting and accelerating the process of diversification. We recognize that this is a global issue that requires international collaboration to deliver a lasting solution so we’re working with our Five Eyes partners and our friends around the world to bring together a coalition to deliver our shared goals,” he added.

We’ve reached out to Huawei for comment.

from Mobile – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/3gUNbTB ORIGINAL CONTENT FROM: https://techcrunch.com/

[kerahlekung]

Muhyiddin’s Legitimacy In Question...

Muhyiddin’s Legitimacy In Question....

As expected, the next Dewan Rakyat (Lower House of Representative) sitting, scheduled to meet on March 9, has been postponed to May 18 under the instruction of newly crowned Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin. Essentially, that means the 72-year-old premier was sworn in without the necessary 112 minimum seats required to form a simple majority government in the 222-seat Parliament. The refusal of Muhyiddin, whom former premier Mahathir Mohamad has claimed as the traitor who launched a coup to topple Pakatan Harapan government, to face the House also means his government faces the legitimacy issue. The deliberate delay is seen as an attempt to buy more time to bribe Member of Parliaments (MPs) who had not already supported him in a coup last week. Therefore, between now and May 18, many MPs will be instant multi-millionaires as Muhyiddin cannot afford the humiliation of being mocked as the shortest-serving prime minister in Malaysia’s history. He only commanded 114-majority support in the Parliament. But even that number can be disputed as his former boss Mahathir had claimed he too has 114 MPs behind him. Before he was sworn in, his so-called Perikatan Nasional coalition’s 114-majority came from his own party Bersatu (25 MPs), Azmin and his gang of traitors (11 MPs), oppositions Barisan Nasional (a coalition of UMNO’s 39 MPs, MCA’s 2 MPs plus MIC’s 1 MP) and PAS (18 MPs) and Sarawak-based GPS (18 MPs). Interestingly, GPS said it will only be a Perikatan Nasional-friendly party. However, Muhyiddin was believed to have had included every single MP in his party during his audience with the country’s Agong (King), when in fact at least 3 of them (Mahathir, his son Mukhriz, and Syed Saddiq) did not sign any statutory declarations (SD) at all – leaving Muhyiddin with 111 MPs at best. To prove his claim, Mahathir had published a list of names of the 114 MPs behind him. So far, it has been established that six of Bersatu MPs – Mukhriz, Mahathir, Muar MP Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman, Simpang Renggam MP Dr Maszlee Malik, Kuala Pilah MP Eddin Syazlee Shith, and Kubang Pasu MP Amiruddin Hamzah – are with Mahathir. This further reduced Muhyiddin support to merely 108 MPs, less than the 112 votes required to form a government.

In contrast, neither Muhyiddin nor the Palace has disclosed in details of the 114 MPs allegedly supporting the premier – either before or after the swearing-in. This has led to belief that the new prime minister was indeed bogus and had scammed his way through to the Palace. In fact, with the exception of Indonesia and Singapore, not a single Western country has recognised the new government. Ties between Singapore and Malaysia were rocky under Mahathir’s past two administrations – first from 1981 to 2003 and subsequently from May 2018 until the collapse of the Pakatan Harapan government last week. Naturally, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong was quick to congratulate Muhyiddin Yassin, whom Singapore considers as friendlier and easier to deal with. The legitimacy of Muhyiddin government, like it or not, depends heavily on the Western countries, especially the United States, United Kingdom, European Union and even China. Immediately after Mahathir was sworn-in on May 10, 2018 as the 7th Prime Minister of Malaysia, the U.S., UK, EU and China congratulated and recognised his government the very next day (May 11). Since Muhyiddin took his oath of office at Istana Negara (Palace) on March 1, there has been no indication that America, Britain, Europe or China will endorse his regime. And it’s not hard to figure out why congratulatory notes have yet to arrive for the Malaysian leader, arguably the first prime minister who squeezed into power as a backdoor government. Without proving he has the numbers in the Parliament, it would make the foreign powerful and influential countries look like a fool for hastily recognizing Muhyiddin in the eventuality his regime suddenly collapses. After all, he snatched the power through a coup de grâce, not through the ballot box. He got the throne through seizure of power by working with crooks, not through democracy. To add salt to injury, the undemocratic coup caught the attention of the Guardian, a British daily newspaper that went as far as calling the latest political development a “Royal Coup” – suggesting that the Malaysian monarch was somehow involved in returning the extremely corrupted UMNO political party, which until the May 2018 General Election, had ruled for 61 years since independence in 1957.

The Guardian appeared to be questioning the legitimacy of Muhyiddin by virtue of the monarch’s refusal to meet Mahathir to ascertain the 94-year-old former premier’s claim made at the eleventh hour that he had the crucial 114 MPs support to form the government. At the epicentre of the fears are the prospect of Muhyiddin, in his desperation to stay in power, will release Najib Razak. Former PM Najib is facing 42 counts of corruption and money laundering charges in relation to 1MDB scandal. If convicted, he could be sent to up to 20 years in prison, not to mention fines. The U.S.-DOJ investigation results says that over US$4.5 billion was misappropriated from the 1MDB fund, with some of the money used to buy the private jet, a superyacht, Picasso paintings, jewellery and real estate. After Najib’s defeat in the 2018 election, police raided his children’s posh Pavilion Residences condominiums and discovered a staggering RM117 million cash together with RM1 billion worth of 12,000 pieces of jewellery, including an eye-popping 567 handbags consisted of luxury handbags from 37 different designers such as Chanel, Prada, Hermes and ultra-luxury Bijan. Najib’s wife, Rosmah Mansor, is being charged soliciting for herself bribes to the tune of RM187.5 million, being kickbacks for helping Jepak Holdings to obtain a RM1.25 billion project known as Project Bersepadu Sistem Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Hibrid. The project involved installation of solar hybrid systems and for the maintenance and operation of diesel generators for 369 rural schools in Sarawak. Similarly, UMNO President Zahid Hamidi, whose party’s largest pool of MPs keeps Muhyiddin premiership alive, is facing record 87 charges of money laundering, corruption and criminal breach of trust (CBT). Other UMNO warlords like Abdul Azeez Abdul Rahim and his brother Abdul Latif, Tengku Adnan and Bung Moktar could also walk away scot-free under Muhyiddin’s Kangaroo Court. It was no-brainer from the start. If Muhyiddin does not interfere with the judicial system to release all the UMNO crooks currently on trial, his government will definitely collapse due to its razor-thin majority. A Member of Parliament will be disqualified if he / she has been convicted of a criminal offence and sentenced to one year’s imprisonment or a fine of RM2000 or more. In his inaugural speech titled “An Appeal to Malaysians” aired over all local television networks on Tuesday (March 3), PM Muhyiddin tries to convince the people who are still horrified and angered over the coup that he would combat corruption and abuse of power. Hilariously, if he does exactly that, he will lose power. His empty rhetoric should be taken with a pinch of salt. - FT

A government devoid of moral legitimacy...

I simply could not bring myself to watch the swearing-in ceremony of the 8th prime minister yesterday. Such occasions ought normally to be a celebration of our democracy but this was a mockery of it. Like millions of other Malaysians, I am stunned and angry that political parties that were soundly rejected by the people at the last elections have plotted and schemed their way back to power. How is it even possible that we could so quickly go from dancing in the streets at the rebirth of our democracy to sullenly and helplessly resigning ourselves to the fact that a nefarious coalition – which includes UMNO and PAS and putatively led by Muhyiddin – is now the government of the land. Unlikely to inspire confidence Muhyiddin has called on all Malaysians to respect the decision of the Yang di-Pertuan Agong and unite behind the new government; he is asking too much of us. His Majesty fulfilled his constitutional obligations, of course, and cannot be faulted. Having found that Muhyiddin had the numbers, he had to follow the constitution and appoint him prime minister. But the king’s decision was not an endorsement of the character of the man or the way he schemed his way to power. The whole way it was done will certainly not inspire confidence in his legitimacy nor will it persuade Malaysians to unite behind him. The country is deeply divided; it is not likely that he will be able to bring the people together. Whichever way you look at it, what we now have is a backdoor government born out of treachery and betrayal and supported by an axis of “crooks and kleptocrats” who have found common cause with extremists and opportunists. Muhyiddin may have the numbers on his side but he will never be able to claim moral legitimacy. He and the rest of the unprincipled politicians who now shelter under his banner should not minimize how deeply shocked, distressed and aggrieved millions of Malaysians are by their treachery. It will not easily be forgiven nor will it be forgotten.

Our fate now in the hands of Sabah and Sarawak There is still a glimmer of hope that our parliamentarians will do the right thing when Parliament reconvenes and bring down this backdoor government through a no-confidence motion. Given the intense horse-trading and deal-making that will go on between now and when Parliament eventually reconvenes, anything is possible. With many politicians interested only in advancing their own careers, nothing is certain until Parliament votes, if it ever votes at all. The fate of our nation is particularly dependent on parliamentarians from Sabah and Sarawak. How they finally vote when Parliament reconvenes will determine whether Muhyiddin’s backdoor government stands or falls. I can only pray that the people of Sabah and Sarawak will rise to the occasion and urgently make their views known to their parliamentarians. No one will blame them, of course, for demanding the best deal they can get for their respective states in exchange for their support; they have been neglected by Putrajaya for far too long. They should not, however, have any illusions that they can isolate themselves from the consequences of supporting Muhyiddin. They should not think, for one moment, that they will be safe, for example, from PAS president Hadi Awang’s grand scheme to turn Malaysia into a fully-fledged Islamic state. Hadi has repeatedly stated his intentions about hudud, repeatedly called for the exclusion of non-Muslims from high office, repeatedly shown his bigotry towards other racial and religious communities. Now, thanks to Muhyiddin, he will be in a position to legislate his bigotry and extremism into law. And whatever he does in the Peninsula will, sooner or later, touch Sabah and Sarawak too. GPS leaders may dislike the DAP for challenging them but there can be no doubt that Hadi is the biggest threat to the democratic and secular moorings of our nation.

They should remember too that a vote to prop up the Muhyiddin administration is a vote for the return of kleptocracy, corruption and maladministration. Scandals like 1MDB will become commonplace; the country will be driven to insolvency. They shouldn’t be surprised as well if some of the leaders now facing charges for corruption and abuse of power are let off the hook, especially now that Tommy Thomas has resigned and Muhyiddin will get to appoint his successor. And there is every possibility that our democracy itself will suffer tremendously. UMNO got overconfident pre-GE14; it took too much for granted. It will not make the same mistake again. Together with PAS, they will set out to reorder the political landscape of the country to ensure they never lose power again. Last but not least, we will begin to see the strengthening of anti-democratic legislation to stifle dissent and quench opposition to their rule. They will have no choice but to crack down on freedom because the government will remain deeply unpopular and resented by many. History repeating itself? No doubt some will say that this is simply a worst-case scenario; I suggest it might well be a case of history repeating itself. We’ve been there before, remember? It was why Malaysians of every ethnicity, religious and social background demonstrated, protested and pressed for change. Before GE14, we were headed for a failed state; it looks like we might now continue down that path once more. This is what is at stake when Parliament reconvenes. If our parliamentarians, or at least enough of them, do not come to their senses and vote against this backdoor government, our nation will be dealt a body blow from which it may not recover. - Dennis Ignatius

Barulah faham poster PRU14 Ku Nan...

Ramai yang hairan bagaimana Adnan Mansor boleh kumpul kekayaan dekat RM 1 bilion. Bagi otak politik ia tidaklah menghairankan. Setiausaha Agong UMNO itu memegang 3.5 juta saham dalam Sports Toto melalui syarikat nominee iaitu Simsec Nominees. Adnan Mansor ketika itu adalah Pengerusi Perhubungan UMNO,WP,KL dan Setiausaha Kerja UMNO Malaysia. Pada 2010,Berjaya Group berminat untuk melabur RM 3 bilion untuk sebuah kasino baru di Berjaya Hills,Bukit Tinggi,Pahang. Namun cadangan itu mendapat bantahan banyak pihak dan akhirnya ditolak. Bayangkan jika itu berjaya,tentu komisyen untuk orang kuat UMNO juga lebat.

Bercerita tentang saham dalam syarikat judi antara pemiliknya adalah bekas exco Pemuda UMNO,Datuk Mohamed Al Amin yang memiliki 1.9 juta saham dalam Magnum Corporation Sdn.Bhd. Selain itu bekas Speaker Dewan Rakyat,Allahyarham Tan Sri Noah Omar memiliki 602,318,000 saham dalam Resort World Bhd. Yayasan Noah yang kini dikatakan diwarisi Najib dan Hishamuddin dan kekal memegang saham 3,334,600 dalam Genting Bhd. So apalah sangat harta dekat RM 1 billioon itu berbanding nasib orang Melayu yang dapat diselamatkan daripada DAP beoi dak? Lagi pun,yang dapat duit saham judi pun Melayu juga.Cuba jangan dengki...- Buku 'Malaysia,Darul Kasino'

Dokumen berkenaan aset sdra Adnan Mansor yg hampir RM1bilion ini bukan fitnah, ia adalah pendedahan dari mahkamah. Satgi adalah puak lebai kelarah kata DAP tak buleh lihat org Melayu kaya. Ada ja alasan & dalilnya. Lembaran aset ini perlu di perincikan. Ini tidak masuk lagi harta anak dan pasangan. LHDN perlu audit semua cukai di bawah sdra Adnan Mansor. Untuk rekod, semua pimpinan PH telah buat pengistiharan harta yg buleh di capai dalam laman web kastam yg buleh di tonton ramai seluruh Malaysia. Dan, hari ini sdra Najib dalam bernada lembut utk berbaik dgn Muhyiddin secara tidak sengaja mengaku bahawa dirinyalah yg terbabit berusaha menyatukan Umno dan Pis/Panmip + Bersatu sebagaimana yg rakyat saksikan rampasan kuasa @ pengkhianatan melalui pintu belakang.

Dua kali GM keluarkan nukilan berkenaan strategi umno adalah dalang rancangan rampasan kuasa dan kaitan Hishamudin dan Azmin hingga ke hotel Sheraton. Nukilan pertama adalah pd mlm rancangan di hotel tersebut, nukilan kedua bertarikh semalam. Ini mengesahkan penulisan di sini adalah tepat. Pd masa sama, sdra Mahathir terhumban dlm permainannya sendiri.  Melayu tidak sedar bahawa Umno Baru sedang memperkotak katikkan bangsa Melayu itu sendiri. Bagi menghalalkan, DAP di jadikan alasan. Hari ini setelah program pengkhianatan mandat rakyat berjaya di lakukan menerusi rancangan umno baru & BN (Kleptokrasi), pentadbiran mereka "Haru Biru" habih..- Gino Marvela

Lawak politik di Melaka belum habis... 

Lawak apa pula berlaku di Melaka? BN umumkan mereka tidak jalinkan kerjasama dengan dua orang Adun Bersatu. Dua Adun itu lompat meninggalkan PH menyebabkan kerajaan pimpinan Adly Zahri runtuh. BN cadang untuk tubuhkan kerajaan ekoran kejadian itu. Alih-alih hari ini, dua Adun itu tidak bersama pula.

Saya nak bagi tahu Rafiq minta kerusi sampai  menangis-nangis - YAB Hj Adly Zahari,MB Melaka...

Bagaimana pun menurut BN, mereka tetap cukup nombor untuk tubuh kerajaan apabila akan bergabung dengan dua Adun lain yang juga telah tinggal PH. Salah seorang sang juara menembak babi.

Apa pula jadi kalau dua Adun itu seminit dua lagi batalkan sokongan kepada BN? Pejabat TYT telah pun keluar surat jemputan majlis angkat sumpah CM baru. Lawak politik di Melaka belum berakhir.

Cadangan Adly agar Dun Melaka dibubarkan adalah terbaik untuk menamatkan lawak-lawak politik di Melaka itu. - mso

Muhyiddin, Azmin Racun 'Otak' Tun M - Khalid Samad...

Khalid Samad WhatsApp Muhyiddin Suruh Khianati PN...

Muhyiddin in charge of all federal departments. 

What a joke si pengkhianat ini...

cheers...

Sumber asal: Muhyiddin’s Legitimacy In Question... Baca selebihnya di Muhyiddin’s Legitimacy In Question...

[conversci]

CSN Event Report: Why mitochondrial donation is important

Event date: 28 November 2018

Mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell. The result of a symbiotic relationship that began over two billion years ago. As oxygen levels on earth rose, a bacterium engulfed a smaller bacterium which used oxygen to produce energy. Once inside, the small bacterium was well protected and thrived. In exchange for this protection it could support its host when food was scarce, using free oxygen to produce energy in the form of adenosine triphosphate (ATP). These bacteria evolved together, eventually becoming the mitochondria that power our cells.

One of the remnants of these ancient beginnings is mitochondrial DNA. Separate from the nuclear genes that define our unique features, mitochondrial DNA is a small circular molecule we all carry. Its only role is to encode components critical for mitochondrial function. However, mutations in this DNA can result in mitochondrial disease, an energy production disorder that has serious implications for patients and their families.

The nuclear genes that make us who we are come from both our parents, but all mitochondrial DNA comes from our mother’s egg. Maternal inheritance means mitochondrial DNA diseases often plague whole families as the mutations are passed on through female heirs. Unfortunately, these disorders can also be difficult to diagnose because the symptoms and presentations are variable with significant differences between siblings, tissues, and even individual cells.

Imagine having a history of hearing loss and low body weight run in your family. You might just dismiss these as family traits and adapt your lifestyle accordingly. Now imagine your mother starts experiencing digestive issues, then shortly after a simple colonoscopy begins to deteriorate and develop what you perceive to be an eating disorder. After being in and out of hospital for over a year, she is losing muscle and starts refusing help. No longer willing to wear her hearing aids, you slowly lose the ability to communicate with your own mum.

While all this is happening, your brother starts experiencing heart issues and biopsies reveal he has mitochondrial cytopathy. You start to wonder, what if this is all connected? What if your ‘family traits’ are really pointing to a history of mitochondrial disease? Then, only days after receiving antibiotics for an infection contracted in hospital, your mum passes away.

Shelley Beverley does not have to imagine, this is just a part of her real-life story. After losing her mum, Shelley sought testing for mitochondrial disease and discovered she has a mutation that causes Mitochondrial Encephalopathy, Lactic acidosis, and Stroke-like episodes, commonly known as MELAS. Sadly, there is no known treatment for mitochondrial disease and Shelley also lost her brother before his 35th birthday, less than a year and a half after her mum passed. Now, after losing half her family to this disorder, Shelley is hoping to have a child of her own to carry on her mother’s memory. However, maternal inheritance of mitochondrial DNA means Shelley would pass on her mutation to her children. Fortunately, there are reproductive options available to minimise this risk.

Preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) is an in vitro fertilisation technique that can take advantage of the fact that not all mitochondria carry the mutation. The percentage of mutant mitochondria in a cell is called the mutant load and is part of what makes the symptoms of mitochondrial disease so variable. As cells divide the mutant load can change depending on how the mitochondria are distributed when division occurs. This variability means PGD can be used to select an embryo with a low mutant load, minimising the risk of Shelley having a child with mitochondrial disease. Regrettably, after five rounds of PGD, Shelley has still not been able to find such an embryo.

It has been recognised that despite PGD being an excellent option for some patients with mitochondrial disease, it is not always effective. This has led Professor Sir Doug Turnbull to lead some ground-breaking research in the field of mitochondrial donation. The technique his group have developed can offer patients with mitochondrial disorders, like Shelley, another reproductive option. Unfortunately, this technique has yet to be legalised in Australia.

Mitochondrial donation is a technique designed solely to prevent the transmission of mitochondrial DNA diseases and has been in development since 2000 in the Turnbull lab. This research has built on decades of experience in mice and has been optimised for use in human eggs. The technique uses a process called pronuclear transfer, where the pronuclei from the parents fertilised egg are transferred to an enucleated donor egg. The resulting embryo contains the parent’s genetics and the mitochondria of a healthy donor. Any resulting child would carry the traits of the parents, as they normally would, but lack any mitochondrial mutations carried by the mother. Moreover, even if a resulting child were female, she would no longer be at risk of passing on the disease, effectively ending the cycle for that family.

Despite this technique being able to prevent further transmission of a terminal and debilitating illness that has likely affected families for generations, it is still illegal to perform in Australia. In fact, in 2010 when Sir Doug published the feasibility of this technique on human eggs, it was still illegal in the UK as well. Although they could do the research, they were not able to put the resulting embryos into a woman. To take this ground-breaking research to the clinic, Sir Doug worked with all levels of government to prompt policy change in the UK to permit the implantation of embryos “altered to prevent the transmission of serious mitochondrial disease”.

The process to legalise this technique was exceptionally comprehensive and took over 10 years in the UK, starting back in 2005 when the Turnbull lab was first licenced to work on human embryos. Still, progress was challenged at nearly every stage by activist groups, the church, and the public. Additionally, the media was particularly counterproductive with terms like 3-parent babies drawing unwarranted attention by inaccurately portraying the technique and the ethical issues in question. However, despite the debate, the data showed that there was unquestionable benefits and three independent scientific inquiries certified the safety and efficacy of embryos generated through the technique.

After this incredibly thorough process, the House of Commons voted with an overwhelming majority of 382 to 128 and now this technique is currently being trialled in New Castle in patients. Sir Doug has remained closely involved in the development of the clinical pathway for this technique to ensure patients are well informed and are receiving the best possible care. He even helped ensure the first 75 patients are funded by the National Health Service by agreeing to enroll their child in a follow-up study at 18 months.

There are many patients in Australia, like Shelley, for whom time is of the essence and mitochondrial donation offers a life altering opportunity to have a child free of mitochondrial disease and end the cycle for their families. Groups like the mito foundation are advocating on behalf of the mitochondrial disease community in Australia by keeping pressure on parliament to ensure policy changes are implemented in a timely manner. We do not need to reinvent the wheel, Australia can follow the UK’s example. Their thorough process has set an excellent guide and should streamline the legalisation process here.

People like Shelley have lost enough to mitochondrial disease, they deserve to have reproductive choice. 

Please show your support by contacting your local MP.

Cameron McKnight | Science Communication Officer 

If you missed the event or would like to view it again, you can do so by viewing the links above to the full version or Shelley Beverley’s personal story.

What people said about the event:

Heart-wrenching. She is a very courageous person. Her presentation gave me insight into the devastating effects of the disease.                 

Fantastic way of illustrating a real case of a disease.  I teach genetics,  and this was the first time I was confronted with evidence of a real case.

It was incredibly moving and totally revised my understanding of the disease.

A very moving, personal account of how mitochondrial disease has impacted her life. Prior to this, I was not aware that mitochondrial disease existed let alone the affect it has on people lives.      

Poignant, moving, courageous, humbling, inspirational.                                                     

[simonlegend]

What is choice?

From Wikipedia:

Choice involves decision making. It can include judging the merits of multiple options and selecting one or more of them. One can make a choice between imagined options ("What would I do if...?") or between real options followed by the corresponding action. For example, a traveller might choose a route for a journey based on the preference of arriving at a given destination as soon as possible. The preferred (and therefore chosen) route can then follow from information such as the length of each of the possible routes, traffic conditions, etc. The arrival at a choice can include more complex motivators such as cognition, instinct, and feeling.

Simple choices might include what to eat for dinner or what to wear on a Saturday morning – choices that have relatively low-impact on the chooser's life overall. More complex choices might involve (for example) what candidate to vote for in an election, what profession to pursue, a life partner, etc. – choices based on multiple influences and having larger ramifications.

Freedom of choice is generally cherished, whereas a severely limited or artificially restricted choice can lead to discomfort with choosing, and possibly an unsatisfactory outcome. In contrast, a choice with excessively numerous options may lead to confusion, regret of the alternatives not taken, and indifference in an unstructured existence;[1] and the illusion that choosing an object or a course, necessarily leads to the control of that object or course, can cause psychological problems.

Choices that are can be engineered to influence preferred outcomes, aren’t really choices. You’re conditioned and influenced by those who would prefer your choice to lead that outcome. They will persuade you that you’re making this choice in the knowledge that your own preferences are merely incidental. They’ll make false promises. They’ll lie to your face, as long as your choice matters to them. And once you’ve made that choice, all that matters then is their preferred outcome, not yours. You made the choice, they’ll remind you. They will determine the outcome.

A true test of democracy is not acting on that first choice, blindly pursuing that towards an outcome, nobody envisaged let alone wanted. Yet here we are.

Theresa May has to now sell us this Brexit deal. She has to commit to what she negotiated. If it’s voted down by Parliament, then a fresh choice will emerge. But first, she must persuade MPs that if they don’t vote for her deal, they’ll risk No Deal. And to sell her deal, she must tell MPs what the legal advice was, that led to negotiators reaching this deal. And she must use No Deal scenarios to show how much better her deal is compared to No Deal. She is now committed to a binary choice. She has ruled out No Brexit. However, this third choice represents two different things:

For those who voted Remain, No Brexit is the desirable outcome. Those of us who have seen how damaging this entire process has been, No Brexit is a vindication. We remain in the EU, under current terms. The United Kingdom will remain amajor player in its structure, a full participant in its institutions, and we shall continue to pay our membership and benefit from access to the Single Market and its trading partners.

For those who voted Leave, it’s a much more fundamental issue. No Brexit represents a failure of democracy and a loss of faith in the entire democratic process. The Leavers were told they had gained the UK’s “independence” from the EU, and that we would be free to negotiate trade deals of our own. For some, the chief concern was immigration. For some, their chief concern was future prosperity. And during this process, they had been told of retaining all the benefits without the obligations. But the government were reticent. They still haven’t published in full, their Impact Assessments. They still haven’t produced their legal advice, on which negotiations were based. Leavers have been cynically placated with false promises. Even now, some Leavers will tell you that the immediate impact of No Deal is “Project Fear” and will stick to the long disproved rhetoric of Farage, Johnson, Rees-Mogg, Davis and Raab. Even those who back May’s Deal like Gove and Fox are biding their time. And Leavers will continue to insist we get on with it. They haven’t considered just how difficult it will be to function, outside of the EU and without any existing trade deal in place. As a major trading nation, such a situation is unprecedented.

On the face of it, avoiding all the heartache of disgruntled Leavers and a disastrous No Deal, means May’s Deal is the best option. After all, negotiations result in compromise and not getting everything you want. May will insist that Brexit under these terms delivers on the referendum; we’ll leave the EU. We’ll end Freedom of Movement, we’ll protect our borders with the Backstop, we’ii enter a transition period, which will enable us to prepare for Brexit under these terms, and we’ll be able to negotiate new deals. However, the Backstop ties our hands. The EU will have a veto determining our ability to fully exit the Customs Union. Our immediate future will mean accepting changes in all sorts of rules, without a say. We’ll pay back our negotiated divorce bill of £39bn. Will we ever live long enough to say we have fully exited under these terms, when they represent Brexit In Name Only? What choice will we have, if this deal is rejected?

Here’s what I think could happen

May’s deal is voted down. May will be faced with another No Confidence vote, this time not from within her party, but from Parliament against the government. She will forced to resign. The government cannot maintain power without a working majority as the DUP will withdraw their Confidence and Supply arrangement, so a General Election will be called. Campaigns will be focused on the offer of a 2nd referendum to determine if we accept the only deal available, accept a No Deal exit or withdraw Article 50 and remain as we are in the EU. It could get messy. We could end up with a government of National Unity, charged with delivering on Brexit or overseeing the 2nd referendum. It could mean us making an appeal to the EU to extend the Article 50 period. It could mean we Brexit under EEA terms, or no Brexit at all. 

So it becomes an even more fraught choice. But first, we must accept that the choice that was presented to us in 2016 was a false choice. The campaigns of 2016, both Leave and Remain were flawed and dishonest. Too much of the information we received was baseless and fraudulent. Too many shady actors behaved despicably to influence our decisions. And too many voters expected unrealistic outcomes when they made their choice. We need to understand what our choices are, what they’ll lead to and what it will cost us. Nobody voted to be poorer, but that’s exactly what we’ll be if MPs make the wrong choices in our name on December 11th.

[96thdayofrage]

Reflections on South Africa: Whose Capital, Whose State?

The polity, the state and the economy of South Africa are the captives of global empire. Two decades after the fall of apartheid, it's a new day.

Main argument summarized

President Jacob Zuma narrowly survived the recent (9 August 2017) parliamentary secret ballot on no confidence in him. 177 MPs voted for the motion, 198 against and 9 abstained. Clearly, many African National Congress (ANC) MPs had voted for the motion and against their president. It was a close call. Had the motion been carried, the President and his cabinet would have had to resign immediately. [1]

In this piece I take a longer term perspective. Briefly stated, my view is that it is not in the parliament or even in the ANC where the real problem (or its solution) lies. In other words, even if President Zuma were to leave (and replaced by, say, Cyril Ramaphosa), the country is nowhere near getting out of its political crisis. Why not? It is because the problem lies, essentially, in the captured polity of the South African state and economy. This has deep historical and systemic roots, and it is an attempt to analyze these that I write this piece.

Whose capital?

Some questions remain perennial. As long as capitalism remains the dominant system of production, one question on which we need clarity is the ownership of capital. The ownership of capital can change from time to time -- for instance from private hands to state control. But there are certain aspects of ownership that will remain substantially the same. Even if the state takes over capital, the question still remains: whose state is it?

The two questions -- whose capital and whose state? -- cannot be dismissed away during the long course of struggle against capitalism and imperialism.

Dialogue with Joe Slovoe and Ruth First

During our days in Dar es Salaam in the 1970s the question of who owns capital in South Africa had become a major issue of contention between our party in Uganda (at that time still clandestine, and led by the late Dani Nabudere) and the South African Communist Party (SACP). We had debates with, among others, Joe Slovoe and Ruth First. For a time, Ruth was based in Dar es Salaam on secondment from the University of Durham. She had assisted me to run a course called “East African Society and Environment” (EASE), a mandatory course for all those studying the Social Sciences. We discussed a wide range of issues with Ruth and Joe whenever Joe happened to pass through Dar. Joe maintained that the capital in South Africa was South African, owned by global capitalists but only temporarily. Once apartheid was defeated, this capital would be nationalized. We agreed that the capital should be nationalized, but contended that this was not such an easy matter as Joe seemed to suggest.

Let me elaborate.

Continuing dominance of imperial capital in South Africa’s economy

At the time of our conversation with Joe and Ruth, we argued that the so-called “South African” capital was not owned by the Boers, except a few minor banks, among them, or example, the First National Bank (FNB) Trust Bank, Sanlam, and Volkskas) -- and agricultural lands. The “South African” capital was owned by global corporations. Anglo-American, for example, was precisely that – owned largely by the British and the Americans. The Standard Bank of South Africa was owned by the British. And so on with respect to other banks, mining companies, large estates, and insurance and shipping companies, etc.

We argued that the ANC (and other parties) would have to fight against Boer nationalism first. To nationalise banks and assets owned by imperial corporate capital, like the Standard Bank of South Africa, you’d have to fight yet another war against imperialism. It would not be so simple an exercise as it might appear. Ruth slowly came closer to our position; Joe was adamant that once the state was captured by the people of South Africa, one of the first things the government would do was to take over the control of capital on the way to building socialism.

Let us, therefore, look at the record so far.

South Africa’s first “independence” from Britain was by the Boers in May 1910. The second “independence” came in April 1994, in which the empire colluded with the ANC: it more or less told the Boers that their era was over, and they must make peace with the Africans. In other words, the empire simply betrayed their erstwhile allies in South Africa, and turned from the Boers to Africans.

As of today, just as the Boers had failed to take over imperial capital, the post-apartheid regime has also, 23 years down the road, failed to take over imperial capital in South Africa.

To be sure, the government inaugurated the Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) program, and up to a point the imperialist capital played ball by offering shareholding (and even selling off minor assets) to Africans, including, for example, Cyril Ramaphosa. But the BEE is nowhere near creating “national” capital. In fact, according to my analysis, there is really very little “national capital” in South Africa. The South African struggle to nationalise the economy has substantially failed. In fact, the “independent” ANC government has not even been able to fulfil its promise to people to restore their lands, let alone banks. (In neighboring Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe was at least able to transfer land to the people -- notwithstanding the shortcomings).

South Africa’s first macroeconomic plan, 1994 - the Reconstruction and Development Program (RDP) -- looked promising. But it had no clout, no backup by the state. Why not? Look back to what happened immediately after independence. The people were politically demobilized. I travelled around South Africa several times during those early years, and I could see that the people who had given their lives to the cause were getting disillusioned. The South African state was firmly in control of the empire -- it was a neocolonial state -- and the first thing it did was to demobilize the masses.

The RDP was replaced with the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy in 1996. GEAR was replaced in 2005 by the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (ASGISA). After Thabo Mbeki, Zuma replaced ASGISA with New Growth Path (NGP). Except for RDP (which lasted only two years) all other macroeconomic plans were fully in alignment with the empire’s neoliberal agenda.

That’s where we stand as of today -- like it or not.

The hullabaloo over nationalization

On March 30, 2017, President Zuma sacked Pravin Gordhan as finance minister, replacing him with Malusi Gigaba, who appointed Chris Malikane as his adviser. Malikane has come out strongly in favor of nationalization. In an “opinion piece” that he had written before his appointment, he had said that the government should nationalize the country’s national resources. In the hoo-ha that accompanied his appointment, and as the word spread around of his views creating near panic even within the ANC, the minister distanced himself from Malikane, and went on to assure foreign corporations that there was no intent to nationalize their assets.

And this is the point of this essay. Twenty-three years down the road to South Africa’s independence from the Boers, the government dare not touch imperial capital. It was not surprising that in the aftermath of the public expression of Malikane’s views, South Africa’s credit rating fell to “sub-investment” grade; and the value of its national debt was downgraded to two levels below “junk.” The empire was fuming against the government for their lack of loyalty. Had the empire not helped to liberate the people from the Boers? So, of course, it is not surprising that Minister Gigaba rushed to imperial capitals to assure them “please don’t panic, you are welcome to invest in our natural resources. Please come.”

And this is where the problem lies in South Africa.

Let me now come to the second part of my interrogation.

Whose state?

The captured polity of the South African state

As we noted earlier, the nitty-gritty of the problem lies neither in the parliament, nor even in President Zuma as head of the ANC. Let me repeat: “… even if President Zuma were to leave (and replaced by say Cyril Ramaphosa), the country is nowhere near getting out of its economic and therefore political crisis. The problem lies, essentially, in the captured polity of the South African state and economy.”

Earlier, we also saw how RDP morphed into GEAR, GEAR into ASGISA, and ASGISA into NGP. Except for RDP (which was killed in its infancy), all other macroeconomic plans were fully in alignment with the empire’s neoliberal agenda. South Africa had abandoned its liberation project in favor of a neoliberal project, and had evolved into its second phase (the first was under the Boers) as a neocolonial state.

Kwame Nkrumah revisited

It is important to understand the phenomenon of neocolonialism, because unless we do so it is not possible to properly analyze the so-called “post-colonial” state in Africa. “Post-colonial” is a temporal concept, a time-based notion that has been used for political ends not only by politicians but also by the academia and the media. Many of them argue that “post” means the end of the empire: Africa is now “independent”; gone are the days of colonialism and imperialism. This is palpably untrue. Our understanding is that independence is an important achievement, but it manifests itself only at the political level and that, too, only partially. The economy is still not liberated from the control of the empire, and so even its politics are compromised. Amongst all African leaders, the person who best understood and defined neocolonialism was Kwame Nkrumah.[2]

Here I describe five principal features of neocolonialism.

A neocolonial state does not negate the rule of the international financial oligarchy.

However, and this is important, the neocolonial state is at a heightened level of contradiction between imperialism and the people.

The empire, though it may still control the economy, has no direct political control. It operates in a different political context; it has to use local agents, and this makes it more cumbersome for it than during direct political rule.

Political independence, even if partial, is an important stage in the fight against imperialism. The common people are brought into the democratic process directly. Political parties are formed to vie for power and they have to reach out to the people for votes. Elections are regularly manipulated by political leaders and the empire. Nonetheless, people continue to demand “free and fair” elections.

Above all, political independence exposes the internal class contradictions -- class oppression and class struggle -- more clearly. The danger is that these are then seen as the “principal” contradictions which the empire continues to exploit and use for their own ends.

More than a quarter century since political independence, South Africa is still a neocolonial state. Its economy is still, for all intents and purposes, under the control of the empire. South Africa has not liberated itself fully.

So the struggle continues.

A luta continua

The next phase of the battle for liberation has to be fought at three levels: the ideological; the state and economy; and the global. All three are interconnected and contested terrains. Also, at all the three levels the battles are concrete expressions of the history and contemporary circumstances of South Africa. This said, it is also important to learn from other experiences -- especially from countries in the global south that are fighting against capitalism and imperialism. It is risky to generalize, for the battles at all levels are complex; so in this essay we can only talk in general terms. The actual strategy and tactics can only be worked out by people in South Africa in their ever changing circumstances.

At the ideological level

The ideological battle is on a “mixed terrain” in the sense that every major combatant will have its own ideology, and this will be contested by others – and, to make matters worse, even within its own terrain. Within the capitalist camp, for example, the ideological battles on economic theory are fought -- in the main -- between the orthodox neoclassical diehards represented by the World Bank and the IMF, and the heterodox neo-Keynesian social-democratic reformists.[3] These ideologies have their representatives in South Africa at various levels -- in the state, among the academia, in the media, in political parties, and even amongst the trade unions.

Besides the intrusion of imperialist ideologies within the ranks of the working classes and the petty bourgeoisie, there are other forces also at play at the grassroots level which is fragmented along ethnic, religious, regional, gender and other factions. The debates between and within each faction can get extremely complex, and largely beyond the reach of ordinary people. Earlier, we discussed how this has happened in the discourse amongst the left triggered by the sacking of Gordhan as finance minister and his replacement with Gigaba who appointed Malikane as his adviser. We referred to how Malikane’s views on nationalization came under fire from a section of the left led by SACP’s Jeremy Cronin. Malikane was then deftly defended by Oupa Lehulere.[4]

These are important debates, but in my view, the polemical style is distractive and potentially divisive. Some of us from Uganda had a similar debate in the 1970s, the scars of which lasted for quite a while. Importantly, what emerged from our debate was the central question of who is the principal enemy of the people of Uganda. Looking back to the 1970s and our own experience in Uganda I would say that the empire (the USA, the European Union and Japan) is the principal enemy. We do have many divisions and contradictions amongst the people, but following Mao, we argued that these contradictions are “secondary” to the “primary” contradiction with the empire.

Following this, the view of the leaders of the government of the Uganda National Liberation Front (UNLF) was that we must resolve the internal secondary contradictions amongst the people in order to face the principal enemy on a united front. The UNLF government lasted only one year and was ousted in May 1980 by a military coup. From then on -- now 37 years -- Uganda is torn apart by the secondary contradictions, and the empire is laughing all the way to loot Uganda’s resources at the cost of the millions who live in poverty and despair.

My analysis above leads me to conclude that this is true also of the South African situation. For over a quarter century the people are paying the price of ideological cleavages among the left -- including between and within the political parties and the trade unions. Clearly, there is no vanguard party or leadership in South Africa to unite the people on a single trajectory of the “second” liberation from the ideological stranglehold of the “development” paradigm of the neoliberal agenda.

In follows that the South African political leadership at all levels (state, parliament, political parties, the trade unions, the media and the academia) need to set aside their contradictions, and bring all democratic forces together to unite against a single enemy, just as they had done during the first phase of the struggle against the Boers. This is much more challenging, but the absence of a vanguard party makes the challenge even more daunting.

At the level of the state and the economy

Given that the South African state and economy is “captured” by the empire, it is important to identify the comprador elements within the state and the economy that service imperialist interests, and to assess the degree of their control over policy. My guess is that these number no more than a couple of thousand individuals.

We noted earlier that at independence the empire had thrown baits to a tiny minority of African entrepreneurs, followed by the government’s BEE (Black Economic Empowerment) project. This has not changed the fact that the economy is still in the hands of imperial capital. Even the Old Mutual, to take one example, that was initially created out of workers’ savings was “demutualised” after independence, following which it migrated to the UK and became a part of imperial capital. Indeed, most of the large properties in Johannesburg and other large cities, banks, insurance and shipping companies, export and import companies, mining and large estates are still owned by global finance capital.

Instead of analyzing these in concrete detail, the left in South Africa are engaged in what I consider to be a futile debate on whether the state is captured by “monopoly,” “white,” “largely white,” “overwhelmingly white,” “majority white,” or the “established monopoly capital.” This is a futile debate unleashed by Cronin’s attack on Malikane. (Malikane, after all, was only expressing his personal opinion). Of course, I don’t think Malikane’s prescription of nationalizing South Africa’s resources can be officially implemented without provoking a major counter-attack by imperial capital, as indicated by the reaction of the global financial credit and investment markets. Malikane is correct that the resources should be owned by South Africa, but for that to happen there is need for a concrete strategy -- a phased strategy with sophisticated tactics - to lead the masses. The GEAR, ASGISA, and now NGP are all neocolonial macroeconomic blueprints, not plans for the liberation of the nation.

And this leads us to the third level -- the global. Political independence, despite its shortcomings, has opened the space for South Africa’s leadership to interact with forces outside the control of the empire.

At the global level

This is a vast subject that needs an entirely separate treatment. However, some salient issues might be upfronted here for further discussion.

It should be clear to any objective observer of the global geopolitical scene that there is a fundamental shift in global economics and power politics.

To start with, the west is in the middle of a deep crisis, worse than the crisis of the 1930s. This crisis cannot be explained by the mainstream economistic concept of “cyclical” ups and downs of the economy. The crisis is structural and systemic. In the United States the so-called “deep state” is fighting hard to hold on to its turf under attack by President Trump. The Republicans and the Democrats are in a state of siege and, together, are fighting Trump with the help of “the Establishment” that includes the media.

Europe is fragmenting, starting with Brexit. And there are other proto-nationalist movements in the rest of Europe that have challenged the legitimacy of the undemocratic institutions located in Brussels. The only thing that holds the West together is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). But in order for NATO to survive, the West needs to “invent” enemies - North Korea, Iran, Yemen, Russia, China and others. With American and NATO military encirclement of the whole world, the Western governments make their peoples feel as if it is them in the west that are beleaguered! It is simply incredulous.

There used to be a group called G7 (consisting of the USA, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, and Canada) with the ostensible purpose of stabilizing the global system. At one point it invited Russia to make it G8. But this did not work out. G7 is now replaced by G20 -- a concoction of the West in recognition of the fact that it must adjust itself to a new reality -- that of Russia and the emerging countries of the global South. Germany holds the G20 presidency for 2017. The ostensible objective of G20 is to support private investment, sustainable infrastructure, and employment in African countries, as well as contribute to the AU Agenda 2063 -- called the “Compact with Africa” which Germany spearheads. Its real purpose is to recover the economic and political ground that Europe and America have lost in Africa.[5]

China is steadily taking over the command of the global economy. Its "Yī Dài Yī Lù” (“One Belt, One Road”) project is a daring and ambitious project with two “roads”- the land-based "New Silk Road", and the Maritime Silk Road. The routes will cover vast areas of Central and West Europe, as well as Asia and Africa, opening doors for China’s trade and investments. China has adopted capitalism, but has adapted it to its own needs and circumstances learning from over 3,000 years of history and the Maoist revolution. China has advised African countries to choose their own path to development. China now favors a free movement of goods and capital, but is very protective of its own industries and technology (in which it is fast catching up with the West), and careful about free movement of services. China talks about “economic globalization”, not “neoliberal globalization”. At the 2017 Davos conference, President Xi Jinping delivered a well thought-through, clever speech, basically saying that China is not ready to take up world leadership, but it may be forced to do so because it was clear that the United States and Europe do not have the material and moral capacity to lead anymore.[6]

I can go on and on. South Africa (and the rest of Africa) have benefitted from having China (and Russia) to counter 500 years of western hegemony. South Africa should learn from China whilst, also, maintaining a strong negotiating position with China, especially on investments. South Africa is the only African member of G20, but is acting in a servile manner in relation to its dominance by the West. China, too, is a member, but it knows its limitations and is ploughing its own furrow independent of the G20.

Concluding thoughts

Let me summarise and gather the main points of my thoughts.

South Africa is still a neocolony – now in its second phase. South Africa's first independence struggle was waged by the Boers. The first neocolonial state lasted from 1910 to 1994.

South Africa is now in the midst of the second phase of liberation – this time from imperialism. Political independence from the Boers was an important stage in the fight against imperialism. The common people are brought into the democratic process directly. Political independence, whilst partial, has heighted the level of contradiction between imperialism and the people. Political parties are formed to vie for power and they have to reach out to the people for votes. Elections are regularly manipulated by political leaders and the empire. Nonetheless, people continue to demand "free and fair" elections. That’s good.

Who owns capital in South Africa? It is still primarily in the control of imperialist global corporations. The BEE (Black Economic Empowerment) project has failed to create (and cannot create) “national” capital. Thus, imperialism is still the principal enemy of the people. The empire, though it may still control the economy, has no direct political control, and has to use local agents in state and economy. These are “compradors” -- about 2,000 in all.[7] Through them the empire is exploiting labor and the natural resources of the land.

Immediately after independence from the Boers in 1994 the masses were politically demobilized; their remobilization has only just begun. I would put the date to Julius Malema’s rise to express the frustrations of the youth and the masses.[8]

The ruling political elite lack ideological clarity; they are still under the ideological stranglehold of the neoliberal paradigm of “development”. This is chocking the economy and the people.

However, there are positive developments at the level of global geopolitics. The west is in deep economic, political, and moral crisis. The rise of China and Russia has opened space for South Africa (as also for other countries of the global south). The G20 is part of the imperialist agenda. South Africa, as its only African member, should put forward the demands of the people of Africa, and not be subservient to the west.

There is obviously no vanguard party or leadership, and this enables the current political elite to “play politics” with secondary contradictions amongst the people. The absence of a vanguard party makes the challenge of uniting the nation to fight against imperialism in this second phase daunting. I fear it is going to be long, long, struggle without a vanguard party.

@ Yash Tandon

[samanthasroberts]

Who is Leanne Wood? A profile of the Plaid Cymru leader – BBC News

Image copyright Getty Images

When Plaid Cymru started looking for a new leader in 2011, Leanne Wood faced rival candidates grounded in the party’s Welsh-speaking heartlands.

But it became apparent that Plaid members wanted change.

They found it offered by a left winger from a non-Welsh speaking background in the former industrial valleys of south Wales.

She won a decisive victory and took the Labour stronghold of Rhondda, her home patch, at last year’s assembly election.

But success with the wider electorate in the rest of Wales has not come so readily.

Born in 1971 to parents Jeff and Avril, she and her sister Joanna were raised in the village of Penygraig.

Image copyright PA

Image caption With parents Jeff and Avril in the former mining village of Penygraig where she lives on the street where her grandparents lived

She still lives there with her partner, Ian, and daughter, Cerys.

Their private life is just that – private.

Though she has spoken frequently about how her working-class upbringing shaped her politics, she keeps her family away from the media.

Understanding why she has stayed so close to home is crucial to understanding her politics, says Plaid AM Adam Price, a long-time friend and ally.

“She sees the role of a politician that you represent the people in whose community you live and you have a real sense of what matters to them because you live among them,” he says.

Witnessing the decline of those communities and the miners’ strikes of the 1980s was a political awakening.

Image caption Described as very clever by school friends, Leanne Wood became interested in political issues around the time of the miners’ strike in 1984-85

She has recalled how her father was laid off from the builders’ yard where he worked, and talked about the experience of joining a separate queue for free school dinners.

“I understand what struggling means,” she wrote on her website.

While at Tonypandy Community College – or “Pandy Comp” – she had no intention of going into politics, dreaming instead of becoming a TV newsreader. Moira Stuart was a role model.

She left school at 16 and got a job in a factory making artificial flowers.

Low pay and poor conditions convinced her to go back and study for A levels.

For many politicised young people from that background, there was a well-trodden path into the Labour Party.

But some thought getting rid of Margaret Thatcher was not enough.

They decided fundamental changes were needed to the way power operates in the UK.

Who is Leanne Wood?

Date of birth: 13 December 1971 (aged 45)

Job: Probation officer, university lecturer, Plaid Cymru leader since 2011

Education: Left Tonypandy Comprehensive at 16 – remembered as “clever” and “great fun” – to work in a factory. Returned to education and graduated from the University of South Wales

Family: Partner Ian and 12-year-old daughter Cerys Amelia

Hobbies: Allotments, where she grows her own vegetables. Beer enthusiast and member of the Campaign for Real Ale. Musical tastes include Catatonia (as seen in “van share” with Victoria Derbyshire), Massive Attack, Bob Marley and Bach. Favourite single… anti-monarchist anthem God Save The Queen by the Sex Pistols

A colleague who has worked closely with her says Leanne Wood saw poverty arrive in the valleys and concluded that “it would never be a priority for a Westminster government and the answers were to be found here in Wales – that we would have to plough our own furrow, shape our own future”.

Image copyright Leanne Wood

Image caption Wood and Jill Evans were arrested in 2007 for blocking a road into Faslane Naval Base, home to Britain’s Trident nuclear missile system

“We were abandoned, effectively, by the Labour Party, and seeking a new political home,” says Adam Price.

When they found that home, they discovered Plaid could claim its own tradition of radical left-wingers.

Among them was the economist DJ Davies, a founding father of the party who wrote about the economics of Welsh independence. Leanne Wood cites him as an influence.

Image copyright Alamy

Image caption A borough councillor at 25, Leanne Wood became political researcher for Plaid MEP Jill Evans in 2000, a year before launching her campaign as Westminster candidate for Rhondda

Image caption The campaigner – Leanne Wood at the Cardiff Bay Republican Day in 2011 and at the city’s LGBT Mardi Gras (r)

After studying at what is now the University of South Wales in nearby Pontypridd, she became a probation officer.

She was a local councillor, worked for the Plaid MEP Jill Evans, and lectured in social policy at Cardiff University, before being elected to the Welsh Assembly in 2003.

The year before, in 2002, her boyfriend, David Ceri Evans, took his own life.

Years later, she spoke to ITV’s Good Morning Britain about coping with the tragedy, saying it was “something that is informative to politics because I think my experience having worked as a probation officer as well has meant that I’ve seen some real difficult experiences that people have had to live through”.

Anyone who had never met her before she became an AM could be in no doubt about Ms Wood’s politics when she arrived in Cardiff Bay.

A republican, she was once kicked out of the chamber for calling the Queen “Mrs Windsor”.

Image caption Leanne Wood “inclined her head” instead of curtseying when she met the Queen in Cardiff last year

She was arrested in 2007 at an anti-nuclear protest at the Faslane naval base.

And in the same year she was among four Plaid AMs opposed to a coalition with the Conservatives.

Eventually, the then Plaid leader, Ieuan Wyn Jones, took the party into a coalition with Labour.

In her own words

Setting things straight in a leaders’ TV debate when UKIP’s Paul Nuttall kept getting her name wrong: “I’m not Natalie, I’m Leanne”

Telling BBC Wales that Brexit was not the only thing on voters’ minds before May’s local elections: “Most people talk about dog poo”

Her verdict on the Queen’s speech in December 2004: “We are more at risk now than we have ever, ever been before and the measures outlined in Mrs Windsor’s speech will not address this risk”

Meal times at Tonypandy Comprehensive School: “We were stigmatised for having free school meals. We used to have to stand in a separate queue from the paying children”

At Plaid Cymru’s conference in Newport this year: “If you live here and you want to be Welsh then as far as we are concerned, you are Welsh and your rights will be defended by the Party of Wales”

There was no ministerial job for Leanne Wood, leaving her free to roam across subjects.

She delivered a lecture to Plaid activists in 2010 asking whether the party needed a new direction.

The following year she published a pamphlet about an environmentally conscious economic strategy to revive the former coalfields.

It combined two of her passions: co-operative politics and allotments.

When election defeat ushered Mr Jones out of office, Ms Wood started talking about how young Plaid members were encouraging her to stand – a hint that she would offer a break from the cautious, centrist Mr Jones.

Image copyright Rhys Llwyd

At the start of the leadership contest, she was an outside bet.

But enough Plaid members liked what they heard and read, choosing her as their first woman leader and the first leader not fluent in Welsh.

She took up the reins with a call to work towards “real independence”.

She has a much higher profile than all previous Plaid leaders, thanks to her inclusion in the leaders’ TV debates for the 2015 general election.

Lining up alongside David Cameron and Ed Miliband was, says an aide, a “huge deal”.

Her team poured their efforts into preparing for the debates, trying to make sure that she left an impression in voters’ minds that Leanne Wood was the voice of Wales.

Image copyright Keith Morris

Image caption Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has praised Leanne Wood’s performance as leader

Supporters say viewers liked her authenticity, pointing to good approval ratings as proof.

What they cannot do is point to seats won in parliament – Plaid still had only three MPs.

And although hopes were high in Plaid before last year’s assembly election, the leader’s victory in the Rhondda was its only advance. Plaid won 12 seats, the Tories 11 and Labour 29.

What others say

“I was proud of Leanne, I know you were proud of Leanne and I promise you I will always work with Leanne Wood in the best interests of our two countries,” Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said at Plaid Cymru’s conference in 2015.

Vice chair of British CND and friend John Cox: “She’s a campaigner who happens to have become a leader of Plaid Cymru. But it’s not like some people I’ve known who throughout their political lives have been climbing from one step to the next. She’s not that sort of person. She’s not a successful politician; she’s a successful campaigner.”

Former Pontypridd probation service colleague Rob Thomas described her as “a doughty fighter, who will not take no for an answer very easily”.

Soon after the election, Conservative and UKIP AMs lent her their support, causing a dramatic tie between Ms Wood and Labour’s Carwyn Jones in a vote to nominate the first minister.

It forced Labour to make concessions to Plaid, although there is no formal coalition between the two parties.

In reality, there was never any real prospect of Ms Wood becoming first minister last summer. She has ruled out ever working with the Conservatives, let alone UKIP.

Meanwhile, there’s a debate within Plaid about the party’s attitude towards Labour – something Ms Wood herself conceded when she said on the eve of a party conference last year that it was something Plaid was “actively considering all the time”.

Image caption Leanne Wood won praise for her dance skills during a Strictly Cymru Dancing 2016 fundraiser, pictured with actor Richard Elfyn (l) and Plaid Cymru councillor and actor Danny Grehan

The current arrangement – in opposition, but sometimes working with Labour – probably puts Ms Wood in the centre ground of opinion in the party.

She campaigned with Mr Jones for a Remain vote in the EU referendum and helped draw up a Welsh Government plan for Brexit.

But her “project” is to eventually replace Labour.

The Scottish nationalists provide the blueprint – first become the biggest party, then build the case for independence.

Both goals are some way off and Plaid members are annoyed by unfavourable comparisons to the Scottish nationalists’ success.

Defections mean Ms Wood no longer leads the largest opposition group in Cardiff Bay.

But positive results in local council elections have boosted Plaid’s hopes of inflicting wounds on Labour in the snap general election on 8 June.

Image copyright Plaid Cymru

Image caption Looking down on the village of Penygraig in the Rhondda Valley

Before the local elections, she said her five years at the helm had seen its “ups and downs”.

While campaigning, she has let rip with her anti-Tory convictions, asking voters to “defend Wales” from a Theresa May government.

And she pondered in public about whether she should stand as a Westminster candidate in the Rhondda, a move that would have required her to quit as party leader under current rules.

Eventually, she decided against.

Senior figures in Plaid privately told the BBC they were dismayed by her openly flirting with the idea.

Nevertheless, the Rhondda is one of two or three seats Plaid hopes to snatch from Labour on 8 June. If it does so, this election will be remembered as one of the bigger “ups” in Ms Wood’s political career.

Related Topics

Plaid Cymru

Leanne Wood

Source: http://allofbeer.com/2017/07/08/who-is-leanne-wood-a-profile-of-the-plaid-cymru-leader-bbc-news/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2017/07/08/who-is-leanne-wood-a-profile-of-the-plaid-cymru-leader-bbc-news/