Monday, 3 December, 2007
- 3 Dec 07, 05:36 PM
Sudan
Gillian Gibbons has been and in a statement released by the Sudanese presidential palace she said she was sorry if she caused any distress. It's not clear when she will leave Sudan but her release from jail brings to an end Ms Gibbons’ ordeal but not the story of her conviction.
It has been alleged that the extremity of the response to her class naming a teddy Mohammed had more to do with the British government's outspoken criticism of the Sudanese government's role in Darfur than the school room incident itself.
Tonight we also report from where nearly two and a half million souls are dotted in camps throughout the area and gunman roam the settlements involved in the ever increasing number of rebel factions. In October alone seven aid workers were shot. We'll be speaking to one of the most outspoken critics of the Sudanese government who have failed to agree the terms for the new 26,000 UN/ African Union peacekeeping force, possibly delaying its deployment.
Donors
We have the results of an exclusive Newsnight poll into whether the government is covered in sleaze and if it's competent. .
The Labour donor maelstrom, imaginatively called "Donorgate", is still dominating the news agenda, and our political editor Michael Crick is on the case, while David Grossman is in Scotland where Wendy Alexander is fighting for her political life. She has said she won't resign as leader of the Labour Party in Scotland - she will await the result of the Electoral Commission report into her acceptance of a donation from an offshore benefactor Paul Green. Is she being kept in position as a "human shield" for Harriet Harman and even the Prime Minister? Gordon Brown's efforts to deflect interest onto his moves to reform in party funding raise more questions again - will the millions handed over by the Trades Unions dry up and if so how will Labour deal with its looming debt mountain?
We hope to be joined by a trade union leader live.
Afghanistan
We have a fascinating film from , about the relationship between British officials and tribal chiefs. It's back to the Great Game - British diplomats are following the template working in the same way they did during Victorian times, including being trained to speak Pashtun, apparently with great success.
Canoeist returns
John Darwin has walked into a London police station in the sea in front of his house at Seaton Carew near Hartlepool. But where has he been? And does he remember the moment he went overboard from his red canoe.
Of course his family are delighted he is home safely but how did he spend the intervening five and a half years. His return is a sad reminder to others whose loved ones are still unaccounted for. Such stories of people disappearing into the sea - and the fictional Reggie Perrin among them - hold a fascination for people. Tonight we'll be examining the impact such accidental and planned disappearances have on the ones they leave behind.
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What can one say .... Stonehouse and Reggie Perrin turning up on the same
programme as Wendy Alexander ... and
'yahs' in Helmand & Kabul learning to speak Pashtun to the 'fuzzy wuzzies'- schooling them in 'good governance'while dining out on the special FCO/DfID field allowances annually equivalent to the starting salary of Black Watch squaddies from the shires! Carry on up The Khyber
(after the Scottish opt-out) - we want'Peyton Place'(with Grossman)!
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Yes just like the Piano man that turned up.. oh please spare us !
let's instead look forward to Mrs Darwin returning for a warm reunion.
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What happened to the teddy bear?
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We are told that Mrs. Gibbons has many years experience teaching in Liverpool and I cannot help wondering what she would have done if one of her classes chose to call their teddy bear Jesus Christ.
I am happy for her release but get real. She may not be a blasphemer but she could do with a few lessons in tact.
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I do think the teddy bear was the real victim in all this. Please can we be told what his new name is? He must be so confused.
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At some stage over the past few days I couldn't help speculating that Harriet Harman's current predicament was part of a carefully decided plan to insure that if Harman actually won, her position would be untenable. However, if a politician in office including ministerial post can't manage to save up a reasonable sum for their own personal use to further their career, no wonder the country is in the state that its in. Many MP's are brainless ten bob fat cats who actually owe the sum total of their projected lifetime income and who are on paper millionaires. They are obviously slaves to the stock market and banking system, if they were not, Northern Rock would be nationalized by now.
Peter Hain was coming out with all guns firing against the stock market parasites during the start of his deputy leadership campaign, then perhaps after getting the perhaps fatal loan he turns into a good Nazi on welfare reform. After spending many years campaigning against Apartheid he does more to stoke discrimination against disabled people than anybody over the past 60 years. One rule for foreigners and when it comes to fighting financial apartheid at home its tough luck, have taken the ten pieces of silver now.
So much for democracy, we now have a system which resembles a cross breed between Not the Nine O'clock news and Monty Python's Flying Circus, cutbacks at the Ministry of Silly Walks and other aspects of ( especially transport and environment ) policy which one might just expect from a government led by " Mr. Bean ".
Seen from the height of a thousand miles, the Earth looks the same as it did. How is it we can fly faster than day, but we can't find the things we need.
Uriah Heep ( 1975 )
This is perhaps a potentially more damaging story
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He's just won The Turner Prize!!!!?!
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The bear's just won The Turner Prize!
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.... in Liverpool ....
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I, like other, am relieved that this woman is to be released. However this episode surely warrants some intelligent analysis by Newsnight. Into, for example, the woeful response of our Foreign Office, or the role played by the self appointed Muslim negotiating team. In the face of a provocative act by the Muslim Brotherhood-founded Khartoum regime, the FO took 4 days to muster the response of 'expressing concern' and effectively appeared to surrender its state responsibilities to the unofficial muslim peer delegation. Is that what we should expect ! As for the self appointed negotiators, how and why did this team emerge ? Whom did it represent. What message did they give to the regime? And how come it had such access to and such influence with the Islamist authorities in Sudan ?
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#6 brossen 99 underestimates the crisis in British foreign policy:
far from being cut, The British
Council was commissioning more
Silly Walk research in May 2007
For further details & press ref see: This website also has information about Britain's cultural ambassadors.
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These would be the cultural ambassadors who get themselves banged up for creating cuddly prophets would they Neil?
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I can't help but think Paul D's comment (6.57pm) is undermined by the fact that Mohammed is one of the most common names on the planet, and Jesus Christ isn't. It's a comparison that just doesn't hold water.
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Dear Newsnight
The continuing self indulgent blame fest at Westminster is a convenient way for our Politicians to avoid the real issues facing the suffering and dying of this troubled world,
Re the Renurt prize, why Renurt because what this is about is the exact opposite to the brilliance of Turner, its is mockery of art, not a celebration of it, we al this, get Rid of it, and them, please spend the money where it is needed to help people, not on something almost sick like this,
Renurtism, renurts, they infest the art world nowadays, renurtism aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
I suggest we close all art colleges for 50 years to purge art of this …….self indulgent……..renurtism,
Re the winner of the renurt prize I suggest he donates his prize money to the originator of the work, Brian Haw –who is not a renurt but a brilliant brave and principled man,
Best wishes
Bob
Get rid of the renurts
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Donors
Surely the whole point is that the Labour party has made no efforts to set up a system of checking who the donors are and a compliance system to ensure that they donations comply with the law.
Are we surprised; not at all just look at the way it has run the UK during the last 10 years.
It isn't just the Scottish Labour party that is witnessing a slow motion car crash, it is the UK economy that has been run by; you guessed it Mr McBeen shortly to be a Mr Has Been.
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The released teacher has done well - she has drawn attention to the suffering of many in Sudan. Tonight's Newsnight report from Sudan should the reality of what is happenning. Wars and threats of wars are depressing. The time has come for a Global War on Poverty, Dictatorships and Corruption in Africa.
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The story of Mrs. Gibbons reflects clearly the huge confusion in understanding the relationship between culture and religion in Islam on two levels. The first one is the confusion of interpreting the story within Islam and that is shown through the immense difference of opinions within the Muslims inside the Islamic countries. Such issues like Mr. Gibbons’ will keep popping up due to the serious division inside the Muslim communities around the world concerning the way to link religion and culture. The other level is the low awareness in this country about the danger of living in a Muslim fundamentalist regime like in Sudan. We must keep asking the Muslims here to talk about the relationship between Islam and culture because only through such dialogue deeper clarity will emerge about how much of the Muslims' practices are religious and how much are cultural. Problems of relating religion and culture become much more complicated when they happen in a religion which is based on a divine law like Islam.
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Watching Newsnight as i am now, it is sickening to see even more excuses for not being honest about party funding !! Its just like a husband having an affair, it all fine when no one knows, but as soon as the affair is exposed he wiggles and sqirms trying to make excuses. This is what Labour is doing, they never thought they`d be found out !
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The media, including Kirsty Wark but also many others, are showing themselves to be no longer competent to report on politics, being unfit for purpose, and preferring short-term and hyperbolic hysteria, personal vanity, and a hectoring manner, to the earnest detachment necessary to the forming of sound democratic judgment by the voters. In view of this manifest incompetence may we expect resignations, along the lines demanded of civil servants and politicians?
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Rob (#13) There are over 1.4 billion Muslims, and, because of the birth-rate, unlike the slowly extinguishing secular west, it is growing.
In the Islamic world it's an honour for a male child to be named after their most revered prophet.
The West is largely secular, and irreverent, which is one of radical Islam's main criticisms of its culture, i.e. that it is decadent:
The fact that some find it difficult to understand how calling a dog Jesus (another Islamic prophet) would have offended in more religious times is likely to be taken as further vindication of their assessment.
There's more to the politics of this than meets the eye:
Fitness, in the final analysis, is reproductive fitness. Driving down reproductive fitness in a sub-group is an act of demographic warfare, evidence of lack of biological fitness, or just suicide. Orthodox Judaism and Islam have above replacement level fertility rates. The secular 'developed world' does not.
As they say. 'Do the maths'. Who encourages/criticises whom to do what?
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BRITISH DIPLOMACY
Teddy bears and beards are in the news, with regard to interacting with cultures other than our own. But how does moving among Taliban elders, who have no fear of death, in your Christian flak jacket rate as a smart move? Is it not a bit like visiting the suburban neighbour in a hospital mask?
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The media, including Kirsty Wark but also many others, are showing themselves to be no longer competent to report on politics, being unfit for purpose, and preferring short-term and hyperbolic hysteria, personal vanity, and a hectoring manner, to the earnest detachment necessary to the forming of sound democratic judgment by the voters. In view of this manifest incompetence may we expect resignations, along the lines demanded of civil servants and politicians?
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The media, including Kirsty Wark but also many others, are showing themselves to be no longer competent to report on politics, being unfit for purpose, and preferring short-term and hyperbolic hysteria, personal vanity, and a hectoring manner, to the earnest detachment necessary to the forming of sound democratic judgment by the voters. In view of this manifest incompetence may we expect resignations, along the lines demanded of civil servants and politicians?
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British Council is only interested in 'cosy profits', Paul D - and to be fair the teaching establishment
involved in this incident was not
I think one of theirs - for once!
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Re : Donorgate.
What planet is John Denham MP living on ? I saw him being interviewed by Kirsty Wark on Newsnight earlier, and he tried to claim that there was no suggestion that anyone had been involved in corrupt behaviour in the Donorgate affair.
Surely by the very fact that the police are to be involved, there is every reason to believe that corruption has indeed taken place. After all, a series of "unlawful" donations have come to light, after what would appear to be a clunking-fisted initial attempt at damage limitation - the immediate resignation of Paul Watts.
The public were expected to believe that it was all his fault, and nobody else was culpable.
Many people must have been aware of these illegal donations, and it is logical to start with the assumption that the beneficiaries are therefore clearly under deep suspicion.
Their pleas of innocence and ignorance appear specious to any normal member of the public. If they had any shred of decency, they would resign.
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Are there any pictures of the teddy?
I do hope we get to see the fluffy creature that has caused all this fuss. Mind you, the publication of the teddies picture might cause upset within certain religious groups, we don't want to ride roughshod over any religious sensitivities now do we.
Islam really does need to 'get with the programme' and do something about its public image that it projects on to the rest of us... really, this story has been laughable from beginning to end, and puts its dogmatic religion further down nearer to the biblical past rather than what it really needs... enlightenment.
" all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is but a dream and we the imagination of ourselves"
Am with Bill Hicks. No mention of a God or a teddy to confuse or amuse us.
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WHO (WHAT POLITICIAN) CAN GIVE US THE FUTURE WE WANT?
It is obvious that the Brown government is in desperate trouble. In view of the years he spent undermining Tony Blair’s government, and telling us how brilliant he himself was, we may celebrate his downfall – as being well and truly earned! However, this leaves us with a serious problem; who or what should replace him?
Certainly, Gordon Brown has abysmal ratings for trust, surely the basis for any government, but so do almost all other politicians. David Cameron’s ratings in this area are not much better. More important, perhaps, Brown still scores better than Cameron in terms of his ability to lead the country.
Moreover, this position has been developing ever since the fall of the Thatcher government. It is, therefore, a potentially catastrophic time for all politics and all politicians; and that is important for all our futures. So who will save us?
Gordon Brown has, as predicted, reverted to type. He is a ruthless control freak, who wants to rule with a minimum of acolytes who agree with his every thought; well done Ed Balls. All of this should be no surprise. What we now know, however, is that – despite the decade-long publicity about how effective he is as a manager – he is grossly incompetent in all the areas he needs as a leader. Come back Tony Blair, all is forgiven; but of course he can’t return!
Whatever you may think about David Cameron’s well-promoted PR image – after all his prior career was in PR – we know nothing about his management abilities; he ducks all the difficult decisions. More important, he really has not been able to control his party, and – once in power – we must fear that the right wing will once more capture government. In any case, despite all the problems of Labour, his party’s poll ratings seem to be stuck at 40%.
That leaves the Liberals, but both the potential new leaders are as yet untried. The party does, though, at last seem to be benefiting in the polls from Labour’s troubles.
So, if not who, what can we vote for?
I think the only hope might be a hung parliament. The electorate seemed to be working towards this in the early 1990s, but the failures of the opinion polls, which wrongly suggested that the Labour was ahead – compounded by Neil Kinnock’s triumphal mass celebration (which also suggested they were already home) – led the voting in the wrong direction. Then, for the next three elections, they had Tony Blair; who, despite everything, they trusted to be an effective leader of the centre. At the next election they will have no similar safe choice, and I would predict that voting for a hung parliament might once more be on the cards.
Such a situation might allow the government of ‘all the talents’ which Brown promised. This resonated with the electorate; but there was never any chance that Brown, the ultimate control freak, intended this as anything more than a PR stunt. A real hung parliament would allow the real talents to emerge.
So, if you want to choose a better future, start voting (in the various polls) for the Liberals.
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WHO (WHAT POLITICIAN) CAN GIVE US THE FUTURE WE WANT? I long since came to the conclusion: NONE WHO HAVE BEEN SCREENED AND SELECTED BY PARTY POLITICS.
A couple of poignant musical references: (1) "They would not listen they're not listening still - I guess they never will".
(2)Joni Mitchell on TV yesterday said (in this case of the music industry but it is true for life) "The sediment has floated to the top".
We now have so many false "givens": school is a natural good; mothers are redundant; war solves problems, (arms are defence equipment)
academics are superior to the rest - add your own. Out of this comes the "floating sediment" - in all walks of life - but accentuated in party politics to a surreal, heartbreaking degree. Nuff sed.
Oh - not wanting to be just another "deplorer", I did work out a possible way out of this (offered to Rowntree 1995) but, as ever, they did not listen . . .
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Barrie (#29) A thoughtful contribution as ever, but I've yet to read anything from the JRF which isn't deducable from statistics we get from the ONS and other government statisticians. Like many 'think tanks' they tend to just report and explicate the statistics to the seemingly ever less literate/numerate (but ever more educated) masses who don't/won't/can't think for themselves and stop voting for their own destruction.
/blogs/newsnight/2007/09/wednesday_19_september_2007.html
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ADRIENNE
Ta muchly. Were I to expand regarding Rowntree it would not get posted. Your circumspection commendable. In passing, I am fascinated by the numbering ethos on this blog. Currently (!) I am at 28 but you see me as 29 - where I see you. Off to read your links now - least I can do. (:o)
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Barrie (21),
Similar thoughts occurred to me.
And regarding the evils of party politics, I believe we are virtually inseparable.
/blogs/pm/2007/12/the_glass_box_for_monday_29.shtml
comments 30, 41, and following.
Salaam/Shalom/Shanthi/Dorood/Peace
Namaste -ed
Carson's Observation on Footwear:
If the shoe fits, buy the other one too.
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