Wednesday 27 February 2013

Who needs nuclear weapons anyway?

A heavily-guarded nuclear facility 150 miles south west of Tehran is now an active production plant, according to information obtained by The Telegraph. Photographs show a cloud of steam rising from the location, to which inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency have been denied access for the past 18 months. This evidence may indicate the ‘heavy-water’ production through which a nuclear rector can generate the plutonium required to produce a bomb. Either that, or someone is making an awful lot of tea.

Although Iran is not yet believed to have the technology needed to reprocess plutonium, as required for weaponry, this development will be causing headaches in high places. The Telegraph quote Mark Fitzpatrick, a former US State Department official at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, as suggesting that Iran might acquire the required reprocessing technology from North Korea.

If Mr Fitzpatrick had any evidence as to why a reclusive totalitarian regime, communist in all but name, would ably assist an Islamic Republic almost 4000 miles away, he was not letting on. However, the implication is that people we don’t like must all know each other. Worryingly reminiscent of when we were told that Saddam Hussein was best mates with al-Qaeda, so we should attack him, or them, or preferably everybody, and we all remember how that one turned out.

Back home, it seems likely the Labour Party will echo Conservative commitments to support a like-for-like replacement for Trident. The Independent report that Ed Miliband will include the maintenance of Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent in his election pledges, leaving just the Liberal Democrats ploughing a lonely furrow of cheaper alternatives.

Robust rhetoric about defence of the realm will play well in the shires, but may not be music to every ear in times of austerity. With the UK losing its AAA credit rating, national debts of £1,111 billion and counting, stalling growth and a flat-lining economy, can we really afford to spend £25 billion replacing something we never used in the first place? Germany has no nukes, but has retained its AAA rating, has a higher GDP per capita than us and a significantly more successful football team.  

Granted, with rogue states doggedly pursuing a nuclear narrative, we need major players on the world stage with suitably armed sabres to rattle when required. That is what America is for, that and the West Wing. Only nine out of 195 sovereign states on the planet have nuclear weapons, and one of them is an island just 500km across, ranked just 23rd richest in the world by the IMF, who really can’t afford them. It’s time to have a serious conversation about whether we really need an independent nuclear arsenal. Britain isn’t a bulldog anymore, it’s a Jack Russell, and there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s lower maintenance.

Tuesday 26 February 2013

One Billion Rising


As 109 balloons rose up into the skies above Parliament Square on Valentine’s Day morning, a billion people across the planet prepared to rise up to oppose violence against women. The brainchild of the playwright Eve Ensler, of The Vagina Monologues fame, ‘One Billion Rising’ saw women, men, and children across 203 countries take to the streets to dance in protest, in unity, and support. Statistically, one in three women will be subjected to sexual or physical violence at some time in their lives, which constitutes a billion global victims.  

The international day of action was the culmination of a project coordinated by Ensler’s ‘V-Day’ organisation, which has raised over $85 million in the last 15 years to fund education and anti-violence initiatives across the world. In addition to messages of support from world leaders including David Cameron and his Australian counterpart Julia Gillard, a sprinkling of celebrity activists like Thandie Newton and Anne Hathaway, folk of every creed and colour were galvanised into a potent display of people power, performing Debbie Allen’s spirited choreography. 

600 Egyptians danced together in western Cairo, others on the shore of The Red Sea. Human chains stretched across Dhaka, as Polish women danced inside the Warsaw Central train station. Similar scenes were witnessed in Ethiopia, India, Mexico, the Philippines, Afghanistan, along with most major cities across the western world. Eve Ensler was among the hundreds dancing in the City of Joy, the refuge for rape victims she established in the Democratic Republic of Congo, still regarded as the rape capital of the world.

Ensler described the global response to One Billion Rising as “beyond her wildest dreams,” and she is a woman who can certainly dream big. But now the dancers’ blisters are better, and the press releases have wrapped last week’s fish and chips, what should a worldwide refocusing on the issue actually look like?  

Despite warm words and admirable intentions, the pursuit of progress faces substantial stumbling blocks on both a personal and parliamentary level. In the United States, the Guardian reports Republican resistance to the Violence Against Women’s Act, because its proposed legal protections would extend to undocumented immigrants. Would that equate to an essential economic adjustment in times of austerity? Or proof that only in a puppet democracy do human rights come with strings attached?

Our political representatives have long had an ability to water down a bit of people power into policy impasse. Just as appalling, however, were the unpublishable utterings of a knuckle dragging minority on twitter, poignantly proving the need for the project they so poisonously opposed. 

As parents, we are patently aware that whilst our offspring may not always adhere to what we tell them, all too often they hear what we say. Whether we like it or not, that puts fathers in the frontline when it comes to instilling in our sons an ingrained acceptance and respect for the women and girls around us, which endures no matter how bad your day, or how much you drink. When that respect becomes as deep and dependable in our young men's lives as the very blood in their veins, then a lot less will be spilled.

Wednesday 13 February 2013

One MP, Two Partners, and Those Pesky Penalty Points.

Note to self, Mr Huhne, when involving ones wife in a minor criminal cover-up, greater care should be taken not to leave her afterwards.

Having given up his cabinet post, and resigned as MP for Eastleigh, Chris Huhne’s diary must be about as empty as his laundry basket, now the contents have received a thorough airing in court. With hindsight, the former Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change may wish he had just taken the penalty points himself, when caught speeding on the M11 back in 2003. Such was the crowded nature of his driving licence at the time, however, that it would likely have meant him losing it. Achieving his parliamentary ambitions may have proved improbable from the back of a taxpayer funded taxi, granted, but swapping Her Majesty’s Government for staying at Her Majesty’s pleasure would kick his goal of being Lib Dem party leader into considerably longer grass.

Having changed his plea to guilty, for perverting the course of justice, Mr Huhne has now popped home to pack his pyjamas. He will be sentenced at a later date, the judge having told him to “have no illusions” regarding what awaits him.  His ex-wife, meanwhile, former joint head of the UK Government Economic Service, Vicky Pryce, is pleading not guilty to a similar charge, citing marital coercion. The couple divorced in January 2011, when details came to light of an affair between Chris Huhne and PR adviser Carina Trimingham, his current partner.

The jury at Southwark Crown Court has heard recorded phone conversations between the former couple, secretly set up with the able assistance of Sunday Times Political Editor Isabel Oakeshott. The expletive ridden excerpts appear to chart Ms Pryce’s attempts to entice her ex-husband into admitting to their driving deception, albeit with limited success.

Whatever the outcome in court, they will be not be the first couple to have played pass the penalty points, nor the last to break up due to a husband’s unreliable underpants. But the fact that the former Secretary of State apparently got right through Westminster School and Oxford University without learning the phrase; “hell hath no furry like a woman scorned”, may be as big a mystery as how he thought he could possibly get away with it all.  

The case continues, his political career may not.