The police ban Babyshambles from Moonfest:

The decision came after police asked an intelligence officer to research Doherty’s band, Babyshambles, who were booked to headline Moonfest festival in Westbury, Wiltshire, next week. They concluded that the band’s tendency to “speed up and then slow down the music” could create a “whirlpool effect” and spark disorder.

A horrific phenomenon also known as “Putting on a good show”. Apparently Superintendent Paul Williams would prefer “Cliff Richard or Bucks Fizz” to play.

Doherty is reportedly “absolutely devastated and furious”, which suggests that this was one of the shows which he actually intended to turn up to. A day was shortened, a festival pretty much ruined (the amount of Babyshambles fans who came there just for Pete was doubtless substantial) and the puritans win in their efforts to stamp out some fun once more.

Don’t push it.

BoJo appears to enjoy abandoning election promises. Today, one on the living wage:

London Mayor Boris Johnson has reneged on a pre-election promise that only hotels and restaurants paying a ‘London living wage’ would be promoted by Visit London ahead of the 2012 Olympics.

Johnson, who increased the London living wage from £7.20 to £7.45 an hour earlier this month, made the vow at an election debate held by campaign group London Citizens in Westminster on 9 April.

The Mayor initially denied making the promise in a letter to Caterersearch, but when we presented his press office with video proof, he then sent an updated letter, in which he claimed a partnership with businesses would be a more effective way of implementing a London-wide living wage.

In the updated letter, Johnson said: “During my election campaign, I supported a list of proposals on the living wage that included this idea. However, further work in this area has made it clear that a positive approach of partnership with business to promote the London living wage is more appropriate, and likely to be more effective in achieving the key goal of the wider implementation of the living wage.”

Emphasis mine. Let’s translate that statement:

“I broke a pledge made during the election, probably because I can’t be bothered to implement it. Because to do so, I’d need to put the squeeze on tight employers and make sure they paid decent wages. Instead, I’d prefer a few dinners - sorry, partnership- building exercises - with them. Thus, I can claim all of the credit while delivering nothing myself.”

If, of course, he ever meant it. The Mayor made that pledge, you may recall, at the London Citizens’ hustings while under intense abuse from the audience for his original opposition to the minimum wage. Who wouldn’t say a few shallow words at the start of the evening to silence the hecklers for the night?

Although it’s still customary to keep even false promises…

(Hat-tip: Dave Hill)

Somewhere on the Cornish coast this Tuesday, I blearily opened the Guardian to find a comment piece by Miliband (D). I mostly ignored it; the first few lines looked to be mildly vacuous, the rest Mandelsonian Kremlinology in full-flow. Enough to spoil my tea, at any rate.

Somewhere on the Cornish coast this Wednesday, I glanced at the Guardian’s cover. And found minister after minister (and Bob Marshall-Andrews) calling for Miliband’s political testicles on a platter. All over that rather dull article? Imagine my confusion.

Milipede’s statement wasn’t news. He wants to attack the Tories - duh. He wants to talk up the government - duh. He wants to find a new direction - as he did several months ago. Where’s the attack in that? As James points out, Miliband makes more of a case for an offensive against Cameron rather than Brown. A classic storm in a teacup, were such a cliche physically possible.

And yet the storm came. We can assume much from that: the Brownites at least are jittery enough to turn an non-challenge into a challenge, and the newspapers haven’t found much else to savage. Balls&co. saw the article, and instantly assumed Miliband wanted to depose Brown, immediately. Given the politically neutered tone of the article - with all the punch of an undergraduate essay - that says something about the power of their collective imagination. They’re terrified a coup is on the way, and will brief furiously at the first sign of a possible challenge, however marginal it seems.

Miliband’s reaction provides a little more interest. He didn’t make a challenge, but the Brownites presented him with all he needed by briefing that one was imminent; and yet he held back. What does that say? He might be worried that he’ll follow in Heseltine’s footsteps, wielding the knife, but never holding power. He might simply suffer from extreme political cowardice - wasn’t a challenge due last year? And, of course, he might have no ambitions for leadership (hah)…

So - the Brownites are scared of a man who seems unable to justify that fear in the height of the media’s silly season. It’s as simple as that. Isn’t it?

“The Labour party never does mad things.”

David Miliband

That memo I mentioned yesterday turns out to be even worse than suspected. To summarise; it gives the BPI the ability to monitor the internet activity of suspected filesharers. The BPI then passes their details onto ISPs, who first send threatening letters, before slowing and then cutting off internet connections.

That’s a scheme flawed on many levels. The BPI’s powers to monitor internet users and share their details forms an outright assault on their liberties; it’s in effect allowing a private organisation to police behaviour. Their solution, meanwhile, is simply draconian. The move targets suspects rather than the definitely guilty - sound familiar? It then seeks to disconnect them, and anyone else in the same household. That you might have fallen victim to malware or someone else in the house might have done the sharing doesn’t matter. You’re on the same ISP - so they assume you did it.

Nor will any of this actually work. Record companies seem completely blind to the motivation behind filesharing; its ease and speed. It’s the difference between pressing a button and a half-hour bus journey to the nearest music shop and back. That filesharing, much like borrowing a CD, allows consumers to sample entirely new realms of music before splashing out on several albums also gets ignored. Record companies claim filesharing eats into their profits - but it seems unlikely they’d sell as much as they did without this interaction between consumers.

Of course, this blinkered approach to filesharing could well be selective. As Billy Bragg points out, the internet benefits two main ends of the music industry; producers and consumers. Artists can connect directly to listeners through social networking and online stores - and cut out the middle-men of record companies. They’ll retain some power through the offer of improved marketing and better recording facilities, but the internet challenges their grip on the music industry as never before.

Take three examples, from the top and bottom of the scale in terms of size. At its largest extent, bands such as Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails have bypassed those middle-men entirely, putting their music online and allowing downloaders to set the value. At the other end, and smashing the myth that the internet only benefits wealthy groups like Radiohead who’ve already made it, come whole genres which developed on and through the internet. Dubstep began in Croydonian basements and spread across the world through the power of filesharing, to the extent that one of its most inspired disciples hails from Japan. It’s only since that electronic rise that solid CDs have begun to appear on shop-shelves and the music made its way into meatspace.

So, when record companies attack filesharing as it is, it’s with a mind to maintaining their corporate power. That certainly looks to be the motive behind the rather measly carrot offered to consumers under the Memo; legal filesharing through passworded monopolies owned by the companies. They keep their cut, and artists and consumers get the same raw deal as before. And the internet loses its most powerful edge of being open to anyone with a connection. Hardly a move, then, born out of the concern for artists Undertones corporate frontman Feargal Sharkey so frequently whines.

This memo serves one purpose; to retain the iron grip of recording companies on the music industry. It fails to exploit the internet at its best, and so fails artists and fans. Do we really want that?

BoJo pretends to be a liberal Conservative. He’s transparently not; first, he banned alcohol on public transport, and now he wants to restrict access by under-21s to it. Thus:

Young adults will be banned from buying alcohol in shops under a scheme being backed by Mayor Boris Johnson.

Off-licence owners are to be asked to stop selling drink to under-21s, even though they are legally entitled to buy it at 18.

The voluntary scheme will start in Croydon and is likely to be rolled out across London.

Mr Johnson said that it was the type of solution that Londoners would welcome to the “huge problem” of binge-drinking by the young.

Let’s explore what this actually means. BoJo wants the state to encourage shops to actively discriminate against a group of adults on the basis of a factor beyond their control. That group has the legal rights of every other age-group - and potentially has done for three years.

And, of course, it won’t work. 18-21 year olds have been drinking for as long as can be remembered, and show no desire to stop. They’ve quite possibly been drinking since before their 18th birthday, and most will know how to get alcohol without the state’s consent. So, it won’t eliminate drinking; it’ll simply drive it underground, beyond any reasonable hope of regulation.

So - discriminatory, ineffective and generally illiberal. 18-21 year old are adults with full legal rights and who pay taxes - and yet BoJo wants to treat them like children. He’s not a liberal. He’s a disgusting paternalist willing to sacrifice the rights of a minority for populism’s sake.

This floated my way through an e-mail. Via, I’m told, a site I wouldn’t approve of:

Does Eden remind you of anyone, I wonder?

Contrast Lucas’ mature campaign launch with the behaviour of Derek Wall. Derek, currently the party’s other Principal “Speaker” possibly fancies himself as a rival for the post. And so, he ponders into the debate. With invective, and little else.

A discontented Green Left activist forwarded the following from their e-mail list:

Caroline can spend £2,700 and employ an army of phone canvassers to win and
will get a Guardian editorial, no doubt singing her praises...
the new elction rules are very very damaging for internal democracy in our party.

Likewise while Caroline is a superb Principal Speaker, my opinion is that she
will be a very poor leader, if this latest episode is anything to go on..
I fear that we face a very difficult couple of years

Excuse me, Derek? There are some very bold claims there, with little to support them. Where’s Caroline going to get £2700 for an army of phone-canvassers, or indeed that army? And, indeed, where’s the evidence she wants them? He provides no grounds for his invective, and no evidence.

And likewise the other accusations. Caroline might get a Guardian editorial; so what? There’s no use implying something nefarious without actually supporting it. And, again, he doesn’t actually point out how the new rules damage the party, or how Caroline would be a poor leader - or how the next years might be difficult. Does he want to be ignored?

Presumably not, as he develops his whinge on Socialist Unity:

I am not posting this to say how wonderful my own political party is, in fact I am quite anxious about how the new leader/deputy leader structure will play out…my fear is it will take us down the European Green Party route of ‘nu green’.

Again, note the general lack of evidence anywhere. It’s frustrating; how can you have an argument with someone, when they provide no substance to argue with? Perhaps he’s trying to raise concerns about how having a leader will affect party democracy.

Fine. I’ll have that argument anyway, and put across my own view. Wall feels that a leader will be bad for party democracy; he led (hah…) the campaign against leadership so flattened in last year’s referendum. In evidence of this, he cites the centrism and centralism of European Green Parties entering coalitions with convervatives, against the howls of activists. He never cites reasons why we’d follow suit if we had a leader.

Or, indeed, that it’s leaders who are the problem. The Germans have co-leaders who function in much the same fashion as the current co-speakers over here - and they’re in coalition with the CDU. On the other hand, the countries where the Greens have allied with right-wing parties are function on PR, to an extent; and the parties were rarely as radical as the English and Welsh Greens as it was. They aren’t automatically comparable with the situation here. There’s no positive evidence to suggest Wall’s fears are justified.

And plenty to suggest they aren’t. Namely, the rules themselves - which don’t set the leader up as some great Uber-fuhrer of the party. They’re heavily accountable, can’t hammer their decisions on local parties, and exist as much to provide a coherent national narrative as to lead.

And, more relevant to the present, there’s no evidence to suggest Caroline would draw all power to herself. JimJay made an excellent point in his post on her launch:

I particularly liked the get involved section of the campaign site, with its focus on signing local members up as national members, and ensuring that supporters are paid up members by July 24th so they can play a full part in this important political decision making process.

For internal democracy to be meaningful it has to be both inclusive and vibrant in a very concrete way - I’ve no doubt some will be sniffy about the idea of any campaigning at all but without reaching out and spreading the discussion executive posts would inevitably go to those best placed to gain profile in the party, or factions within it, rather than allowing the members as whole to make genuinely informed decisions.

A healthy and active internal democracy is also something that attracts those who have not yet joined the party rather than repels them. Personally I don’t give any credit to the idea that internal democracy is something that should held in secret - because this inevitably ends up shielding the members themselves from discussion and does nothing to increase transparency and accountability of the executive to the members and of the party to the public.

The leadership debate fostered a lot of activity within the party, and showed just how healthy internal democracy was. Lucas’s campaign looks as though it’ll build on that - encouraging people to get involved in the party, and make democracy actually function as it should. Far from killing internal democracy, this could give it a great boost.

So, that’s your debate. The cynic in me isn’t convinced Dezpot (as he shall now be known) wants it. He stands little chance in any one-on-one election, and might well lose his position under this system. That’d explain the poor quality arguments on his part, and yet the desperate urge to make them. But I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt - perhaps he’s genuinely paranoid, instead.

Dave Hill carries a selection of key questions for Wednesday’s MQT. Notice in particular John Biggs’ continued attempts to set himself up as a man of cutting wit, with all the elegance of a 14 year old - and the rather more substantial scrutiny from the Green AMs.

But what of Barnbrook? Bananaman doesn’t at all feature in Dave’s post. Perhaps because his oral question is less than cutting:

In light of the metropolitan polices recent figures for knife crime can the Mayor recognise that 42% of knife crime is carried out by the African Caribbean community who only make up 9% of the population and what measures will the Mayor take to address this.

So - a scarcely veiled piece of racism. Barnbrook poses a question ostensibly about a universal issue, and then throws in selectively abused statistics designed to imply it’s all the blacks’ fault. It doesn’t quite say that anyone with dark skin is a blade-wielding thug, but it means it.

And are the written questions any better?

In light of the recent departure of Deputy Mayor Ray Lewis, will the Mayor now start to appoint advisors based on merit and real experience rather than what I personally consider and understand him to be doing, appointing anyone just to make up his racial quotas?

Let’s take that as a definite no then. It’s outright racism now - and it confirms common thoughts on BNP strategy. They keep the public image - and the oral questions - relatively clean. Dogwhistle politics and veiled racism is in; overt attacks on ethnic minorities aren’t. Those get saved for the written questions that fewer people see - like this.

They get stranger, though:

Can the Mayor confirm how he knows Ray Lewis and who recommended his appointment?

What’s he implying? The answer is obvious - the Tories have wanted Lewis for a while, and that’s how he ended up in City Hall. But the implication of wrongdoing inherent in the question strikes me as peculiar. Does Barnbrook want an admission that the two met in a secret multiculturalist underground sect clubbed together to pass Britain into an era of leftist dominion?

In light of the Mayors support for the ban on British National Party members joining the police force, can the Mayor explain the reasons for his opinion?

Perhaps because they’re fascists, who’ve a record of using the police to smash democracy. Oh, and learn to use the apostrophe, Richard.

Can the Mayor confirm what measures he will take to ensure that British culture is preserved and takes priority in London?

Can Richard Barnbrook confirm what measures he will take to inform us all precisely what he means by “British culture” in such a culturally diverse City as London?

And, last of all, the bugbear:

Can the Mayor confirm how much funding he will be allocating to next years St Georges Day celebrations in London?

He wants a new costume, you see.

So - a series of execrably pointless questions centred on a vile racist paranoia. Par for the course for neo-fascists, then?