… have you got that straight?
Thoughts prompted by the defection of a Tory of little distinction to the Labour Party.
…senior Conservatives claimed that Mr Davies had never been able to accept Mr Cameron’s pro-green, socially liberal agenda. “He’s quite grand and old fashioned,” said shadow trade secretary Alan Duncan.
The Independent has finally caught up with this blog by noting that there has been a sudden, seriously frightening (at least should you be a poor person in a poor country) jump in world prices of staple foods – and it has found a catchy new name for the phenomenon, agflation (from agriculture plus inflation) that I fear we’re going to hear a great deal more of over the next few years.
You’ll see I’ve a new little poll in my right sidebar – what do you believe about the risk of climate change. This shadows a straw poll conducted among Green Party members – I’ll be interested to see how the results compare…
The serious: what place do the dead have in the society of the living?
The light: you just can’t find a decent political insult anywhere these days – you odiferous tickle-brained rump-fed codpiece.
Where 59 per cent of Labour MPs think Britain a united country, only 22 per cent of Conservative MPs do. Where 98 per cent of Labour MPs consider Britain a better country to live than it was 20 years ago, only 41 per cent of Tories do.
The starkest gaps were on racial diversity. More than nine out of ten Labour MPs agreed that “the diverse mix of races, cultures and religions now found in our society has improved Britainâ€, but nearly a half of Conservatives disagreed. A call for people to be more tolerant of different ethnic groups and cultures found support from 94 per cent of Labour MPs but just two thirds of Conservatives. How can you oppose greater tolerance? And multiculturalism was backed by eight out of ten Labour backbenchers but rejected by the same proportion of Conservatives. Oh, and on gay rights, you have 83 per cent backing for equality from Labour compared with less than half of the Tories.
From Alice Miles
… and lots of other places: advocate the advancement of women. The president-nominee of India (a much less powerful post than it sounds), Pratabha Patil, said:
“Women have always been respected in the Indian culture. The purdah system was introduced to protect them from the Muslim invaders. However, times have changed. India is now independent and hence, the systems should also change,†she said.
“Now that women are progressing in every field, we should morally support and encourage them by leaving such practices behind.â€
Now her history might be a bit ropey (if entirely traditional), but not a lot there, you would have thought, to cause a huge row. But it has.
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