Is The Politician's Husband any good?

The Politician’s Husband is currently being shown on BBC Two on Thursdays at 9pm. I want to blog about this as I have never seen a political drama or comedy so badly done. All the shows I love, Yes Minister, The Thick of it, Party Animals, Borgen, The West Wing are all so superb I feel shocked at how awful this series is.

If I had handed this political script in during my creative writing courses my tutors would have handed it back to me with a lecture on writing responsibly about rape, stilted characters/dialogue, separating genres and keeping MPs political party-neutral and free from resemblance to any politicians. I know the writer of this drama is well established so gets to break rules more than I do but I do feel puzzled as to how this was commissioned. Caitlin Moran has already written in The Times on rumours the couple are based upon Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper. This, I have been strictly told by a creative writing tutor in the past, is literary death. I do realise Party Animals did refer to party politics, but the two main parties were there. The same goes for The Thick of it.

Separating genres keeps popping into my mind too. The reason I say this is that the drama tries to be satire and tragedy at the same time. We go from one scene with a fictitious MP from The Thick of it (and everyone smirking in the audience as a result) to a scene with Aidan raping Freya (and everyone feeling doubly sick and disturbed because of the satire). I’m quite confused as to why Peter Mannion MP is in this drama at all. It’s quite a good meta joke, but is severely ill-placed in a drama concerning the domestic abuse between two married politicians.

Also the series is lacking in politics. There may be political scenes in parliament but most of it comes across as a bit of a distraction from the domestic scenes. The West Wing and Borgen manage to balance these kinds of scenes with suburb skill. I love to follow the politics, then, just as it’s getting too much or I lose myself, the Prime Minister or President’s kids are back in play and my mind relaxes for a while.

The drama is full of cliché, with Aidan crushing wine glasses, kicking bins in toilets melodramatically and a son almost drowning in the pool. When this scene began I knew instantly his son would sink to the bottom, so poorly was it set up and directed.

I feel angry as this could have been a brilliant drama. The couple aspect of the drama is over-done and over-acted. Freya is totally unbelievable as an MP with such confidence and ambition. She would never stay with Aidan or forgive him a rape. The characters are badly drawn and have intensely irritated me and lots of other people on twitter who I have watched view the programme. However, they are mostly on the right as they have probably heard the rumours that Aidan and Freya have been based on Ed and Yvette so feel able to put the boot in.

Poorly done and a great example of how not to write a political drama.

Is Sarah Teather a liberal democrat?

The Same Sex marriage bill passed its second reading yesterday with a resounding majority of 225 thanks to Liberal Democrat and Labour party members' support.

However there was one Liberal Democrat who clearly wasn't playing ball.

Sarah Teather, the Liberal Democrat MP yesterday explained her reasons for voting against the same sex marriage bill: 'It is my view that where the extra protections offered to same-sex couples are marginal, and where the potential negatives to society over a period of time may be more considerable, I am unable to support the bill.'

Sarah says she supports other gay rights issues but can't support this one as she sees it as a private matter that the state shouldn't be concerned with. Despite the absurdity of this statement which made me question her intelligence and sanity for a few seconds, I agree with her faith defence. She shouldn't vote for gay rights as a strict catholic. Anyone who does is defying the bible. This is fact.

I always had deep issues with liberal democrat catholics when in the party. Is it something which can fit together or is it such an illiberal religion they can't be partnered? Sarah has shown herself to care passionately about benefit cuts in the past so we know she's not the harshest liberal. This makes us think she's a social liberal but how can that fit with such antiquated beliefs as those catholicism preaches?

A MP who thinks two people of the same sex marrying will bring potential negatives to society is no social liberal in my view.

Joining the Labour Party

It's all change again here on 'A week is a long time' politically.

As many of you already know my first choice of political party was Labour back in 1998 or 99 (I can't actually remember) when a teenager. I had already written to David Laws when living in South Somerset to get a pack of Lib Dem policies sent to me which I subsequently binned as I knew in my heart they weren't my natural home.

I even derided my A level Sociology colleagues for saying they would vote Lib Dem while carrying out a coursework survey on voting patterns of young people.

I then joined the Labour Party and wasn't put off at all by John Prescott's column in their magazine or their young members literature.

What did put me off was suffering with a student loan at university and the NUS more or less campaigning as Lib Dem Youth and Students against fees.

We also went to war when I was at university and I still oppose this war today.

So I resigned after not being active from Labour.

Now 13 years later and after three years of a Tory government and seeking change fruitlessly in the Lib Dem & Green parties I've decided I'm Labour once more.

A small political party can only do so much. Labour can achieve all I want while not being as flawlessly perfect in their left wing policies as the Greens.

I still sympathise with the Green Party's aims and values like the living wage but want these things implemented not just dreamed about. Talked about on the BBC a lot not just four times a month.

You might not notice much of a difference in my blogging but I'm hoping it might enthuse me a lot more!

Losing the war on drugs?

The Prime Minister has ruled out a Royal Commission to look into the decriminalisation of drugs which was a Lib Dem policy in their 2010 General Election manifesto.

David Cameron said "Drugs use is coming down, the emphasis on treatment is absolutely right, and we need to continue with that to make sure we can really make a difference."

Yet the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse successfully treated just 29% of the treatment population in the years 2005-2012. That's two out of every three people being treated by the government for substance abuse who haven't managed to stop abusing substances over the past seven years.

Many of the rehabilitation strategies are not successful due to a criminal record and the many problems and barriers this places on the individual. This causes relapse and a descent back into crime. Drug addicts are often pulled out of the cycle of crime and drug misuse by methadone but not all of them. A lot of them access heroin and other drugs easily in prison. When they get out they are sent to abstinence based treatment charities for mandatory assessments. This often leads them to 'kick back' and commit more crime to go back to prison where they can access drugs easily; where they don't have to attend appointments. Of course they can't find work so face a bleak financial situation too which also leads them back to prison.



I was sent some information from the breaking the taboo campaign last week. The campaign launched last Friday and gains some impressive support. The Countess of Wemyss, Amanda Feilding, who is director of The Beckley Foundation, argues for decriminalisation of drugs with tough regulations and controls on them.

What's startling in the film above is the proportion of drug users who are considered to be a problem to society. The figure is ten per cent. Ninety per cent of all serious organised crime is related to drugs. Yet governments and politicians continue to wage a war on freely growing poppy and cannabis plants as if they will disappear.

A new direction!

There are so many blogs on the internet now I doubt you've even noticed that I've not blogged here for over three months. You'd be forgiven, if an alien, for thinking the London Olympics happened just the other day if you started reading my blog. It's all out-of-kilter and strange not to have blogged for this length of time.

I will begin to blog once more on a weekly or twice-weekly basis and you will notice a change of direction. Not only will there be political analysis or a news story but reviews and purely comment pieces from me once more. I will try to include tabloid stories as well as more serious articles, although the latter inevitably suffer from lack of interest and we all know how many seconds people stay on your blog if you bore them. Yes, that's right. One.

So, keep checking back for what I hope will be more exciting content in December and leading into 2013. I have been blogging for over five years now and long may it continue!

Are the Liberal Democrats campaigning in the wrong constituencies? Or are the Tories?

An article by Oliver Wright in the Independent on Saturday has shed more light on just how determined the Liberal Democrats are to stonewall the government's planned boundary review this autumn.

The bill seems to be taken as red in the Tory Party and they are already activating their general election campaign based on it going through parliament and becoming law.

Appearing on the Today programme last week Liberal Democrat Minister Jeremy Browne admitted that he would be willing to rebel against Tory plans to redraw parliamentary boundaries.

However the Tories are selecting candidates and campaigning on the proposed new constituencies, making their election strategy effectively useless if the plans do not pass the Liberal Democrat rebellion.

The Liberal Democrats are basing their election strategy and selecting candidates on the basis of the existing constituency boundaries.

Thousands of pounds will be spent on campaign literature, canvassing data and candidate selection and will be rendered completely useless in one party when the bill fails or succeeds.

Women win gold at the Olympics but are they still rated bronze?

It's day five of London 2012 and we have eight medals. Half of them have been won for us by women. We started climbing the medal table as a result of Helen Glover and Heather Stanning, two proud rowers who won our first gold.

This is the first Olympic Games to have a woman competing on behalf of every country. It's a huge step. Women are now rated just as highly as men in a lot of sports, although football and cycling have a way to go.

With the current women's football team heading towards the Olympic quarter-finals and prime time BBC one, though, that shouldn't last much longer. There's the inspiring autobiography by team player Kelly Smith – a tale of overcoming severe depression and alcoholism to play at this high level. Then there's Karen Carney and Steph Houghton's solid play and goals to get excited and passionate about.

Yet the depressing stories still appear in the media about women not achieving the same level of attention or press coverage. Games which show women competing have to be shown a few times before people start to get to know the players and start to petition the BBC when they're not able to watch. The level of money women earn is still not on a par with men, further emphasising the view that women don't work as hard as men, despite the medals being non-gender specific. I've looked at the medal table again. It definitely doesn't specify that one of our gold medals was female. It doesn't care.

Helen Lewis highlighted the fact on Monday that the official Olympic sports videogame features just one women's sport. Embarrassingly for Sega that sport is beach volleyball where the characters appear in bikinis.

Lizzie Armitstead has today spoken of her disappointment at the sexism around women's cycling events in the UK. She won silver for us. Today William Fotheringham summed up the situation in the Guardian:

“Currently, if my local budding junior women's international is to be believed, there is no obvious pathway for her within the British Cycling system once she or her contemporaries turn 18 because the women's academy was abandoned a few years back. The prize money is, at times, derisory in a women's race. The only option is to up sticks and race abroad, as Armitstead does. There is no round of the UCI women's World Cup in Britain. Not surprisingly, the pool of British women internationals is currently relatively small compared to the situation among the men.”

Lizzie thinks it's partly a problem with the lack of women in journalism covering sport or lack of female sports journalists being put forward by their media organisation to cover it.

One of the things I have enjoyed about the BBC's coverage is the strong presenter Claire Balding. When the swimming is on the TV is perfectly balanced. I watch a male presenter with a female presenter. Sharon Davies interviews the male and female swimming stars. However when I turn over to BBC Three the women's football and a whole host of other sports is presented by a man and also the main evening BBC one programme is too.

It's a start though.

Nick Clegg eyes up a Lib Dem coalition government with Labour in The People

In an interview with The People newspaper, which has been reported today by the Telegraph, Nick Clegg has outlined his position on working with the Labour Party should they fail to win a majority in the 2015 General Election.

He says he would be willing to work with the Labour Party if the electorate didn't agree on one party by a majority of votes.

This interview, perfectly timed a couple of weeks after the mass Tory rebellions against reform of the House of Lords, and at the start of the summer recess, will sharply remind the Tories of their position in the coalition and how unpopular they've become in the polls.

Clegg talks to The People about the potential of a Lab/Lib coalition:

"Yes. If the British people said that the only combination which could work would be those two parties, in the same way as after the last election the only combination which could work was Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, it would be obvious that Liberal Democrats would need to do their duty."

Despite letting his arrogance show (the voters don’t pick two parties in a hung parliament, they reject all of them as none of them end up with a majority) he seems to be thinking realistically about the possibility of working with Labour.

Labour is known to dislike Nick Clegg and may refuse to work with him. In an interview with the Mail on Sunday former Labour member Vince Cable isn't ruling out being elected as leader and taking Clegg's place.

Potential Lib Dem leaders who could put their names forward in the event of a contest later this year or early next year:

Vince Cable
Simon Hughes
Chris Huhne
Jeremy Browne
Perhaps even Charles Kennedy?

The mid-term fireworks continue with rumours of Tory MPs discussing a possible Tory leadership contest. There has been a lot of talk this weekend on twitter about a ComRes poll which tells of George Osborne's unpopularity as Chancellor with 1 in 5 Tory voters wanting him replaced. It wasn't so long ago that the Tory Party were rallying around Osborne eyeing him as a potential leader.

Potentially we could have David Miliband as Prime Minister working with Deputy Prime Minister Vince Cable with George Osborne in Tory opposition post May 2015, but in the words of Vince Cable “Who knows what might happen?”

House of Lords reform - where now?

Today the Coalition government chose to drop its programme motion in the Lords reform debate due to Tory rebel backbenchers and opposition from the Labour Party. This would have placed a strict time limit on the Lords reform bill on its route through parliament.

The bill will return in September. The Coalition government will almost be 30 months through its 60 month duration at that point. Lib Dem MPs will have had the summer to plot and discuss the coalition. The conference season will be in full swing and party divisions will have been heightened after meeting party activists. In the Lib Dem party, the activists will certainly let the parliamentary party know their views on the flailing bill. Will Clegg survive? Will there be another leadership contest? Clegg has been leader since late 2007 so hasn't completed a five year term yet. Faced with the prospect of increasing bickering and in-fighting the Lib Dems will surrender Clegg instead of their red boxes.

A top priority for a lot of Lib Dems, Lords reform, along with PR or AV, will freeze a lot of water and create a glacier between the Lib Dems and Tories. The Lib Dems have threatened not to support the Tory bill on constituency boundary changes in return for the Tory Lords rebellion, which would mean a reduction in the amount of constituencies from 650 to 600.

In September the bill will now be filibustered through Parliament, itself an offence to the democratic process, while many MPs and Lords will use the issue of democracy against the reform bill. While they speak at 3am on the history of the lords and how sacred it is to democracy for hours and hours other legislation crucial to bring Britain out of recession may be delayed.

An issue may still be in the public interest even if they public isn't interested in it, as we've learned at the Leveson Inquiry so many times. Many Tory MPs are using the severe lack of political knowledge and interest of most of the British public against them. Most people are more interested in Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes this week but it does not necessarily indicate it's not in the public's interest for this bill to be debated properly and promptly.

In my last post on Lords reform I argued that the proposals may not improve the situation democratically or for the better. The fact that most Lords have previously been MPs does not matter. Most of them are mature and have had careers before being MPs. They brought a lot of expertise and experience with them into the Lords. That may not be the case now. Candidates who stand for the House of Lords will follow the same researcher-advisor-candidate conveyor belt I outlined before.

To truly make the process democratic we need elections similar to US primaries so the public can vote properly on who enters the House of Lords. At the moment, unelected candidates, appointed by their party machine, will be put forward as they are for General Elections for the House of Commons. How will this make the process any more democratic?

So keep a keen eye on conference season this autumn. The Lib Dems are in for a turbulent time internally and in the coalition.

Scientology? Yes it is just a cult

After news of the divorce of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes there have been a few articles written by mischievous journalists on whether Scientology actually differs much from other religions.

They have argued that there are the same fictitious characters, stories and bullying within the Church of Scientology as there are in other churches. They say that Catholicism is just as bad in its treatment of children, Christianity just as make-believe, Jehovah’s Witnesses just as aggressive towards its ex-members.

What they haven’t been talking about is the emotional blackmail which makes it different from all other religions.

On Operation Clambake, a website run by a concerned Norwegian, Andreas Heldal-Lund explains why he sees the Church of Scientology as a cult, separate from religion:

1. It uses psychological coercion to recruit, indoctrinate and retain its members.
2. It forms an elitist totalitarian society.
3. Its founder/leader is self-appointed, dogmatic, messianic, not accountable and has charisma.
4. It believes 'the end justifies the means' in order to solicit funds and recruit people.
5. Its wealth does not benefit its members or society.

Indeed, in the UK, the Charity Commission refuses to rubber stamp Scientology as a religion but it still enjoys tax relief. The Church has just been declared insolvent in Norway and membership is declining in Australia.

Most followers or members of religions know a fair bit about their religion. In Scientology a lot of the knowledge is only imparted as members part with their cash. They don’t even know about how the world is believed to have begun, according to Scientologists, until they have studied quite a few modules. Lord Xenu, according to Scientology, brought billions of humans to earth, stacked them around volcanos and blew them up. This was how human life started on earth.

But as John Sweeny says in his Panorama investigation 'The secrets of Scientology':

'When you walk into a Church of Scientology no-one will mention Lord Xenu. And that makes it completely different from other faiths. For example, Christians don’t say 'What cruxifiction?''

When I think of other religions I can’t think of one which encourages 'disconnection' – allegedly a Scientology policy of getting members to completely cut their friends and family out of their life if they don’t also join the Church.

There also isn’t another religion which tapes members and then uses psychological information and data against them if they don’t quietly leave the church. Scientologists 'audit' each other using an 'e-meter' which reads people's emotions as they confess to their innermost psychological thoughts and actions. Catholics can go to a confessional behind a curtain and remain anonymous but are not taped and the information certainly wouldn't be used against them in any argument. If it was, the Priest would lose their position. There is a policy of confidentiality in the Church of England too.

In his Panorama investigation, John Sweeney also said that Scientologists 'admit that other personal information about you can be used against you. So beware if you dare to leave.'

The argument that Scientology is just the same as other religions is usually made by atheists or former religious believers who haven’t truly analysed their thought processes. It's also disrespectful.

A religion you can’t leave without psychological harassment and fear? That would be a cult.