Many people are still just making ends meet, still suffering from the tory cost of living crisis. So, imagine without warning, you get an overnight increase in your heating bills. Not by 10%. Not 20%. But by 500%!
That’s exactly what has happened this month to residents in Greendykes and other parts of the city where they are part of a district heating scheme. People are angry, and with good reason. Out of the blue they found their heating account charges had suddenly gone up from five pence a unit to 26 pence, adding up to £200 a month to bills. No notice, no explanation, just an automatic adjustment to their online accounts.
The Greendykes residents – some tenants, some owners – live in a new development built and managed by Places for People, a major housing association with property throughout Scotland. I backed residents in demanding the association step in to stop these ridiculous hikes by their contractors. To their credit, they have now said they will reverse the increase until they review the charges, but this is only a temporary measure.
The problem needs to be sorted at source. And the source is a crazy UK government energy support policy which treats district heating schemes as if they were commercial businesses rather than a collection of individual residents.
That means that the domestic energy cap set by Ofgem – currently 5.82 pence per unit – doesn’t apply to residents with gas or electric district heating sources but does still cover their individual electricity use.
District heating schemes are undoubtedly a good thing. More efficient, better for the environment. But UK government policy currently makes it five times more expensive than if folk had induvial boilers.
This has been a disaster waiting to happen. And after the business energy support scheme ended on 31st March, it is now happening.
I’ve written to Claire Coutinho the UK energy minister demanding urgent action to bring domestic district heating schemes under the Ofgem energy price cap. It’s a no brainer. Easy to do, regulations could be prepared and agreed in a few weeks. Let’s see if we can get a government that has been asleep at the wheel to finally wake up.
You’ll have seen the adverts on the telly. Happy healthy young people enjoying themselves on the Aegean coast. Looking like a cross between the casts of The Apprentice and Love Island, they soak up the sun, demonstrate prowess at water sports, and dine in Michelin restaurants and dance the night away. Capricious and carefree, everything is wonderful. Yes, Turkey seems nice.
If you live there, not so much.
Even more so if you are one of the minority Kurdish population.
Two weeks ago, there were municipal elections all over Turkey. Pro-Kurdish parties were expected to do well, not only in Eastern areas where they are the majority population, but in major cities where they represent the principal opposition to President Erdogan’s ruling AKP party.
One such area is the historic city of Van in Eastern Turkey – a place about the same size as Edinburgh. Abdullah Zeydan was the candidate for mayor for the Kurdish leftwing DEM party. He is no stranger to political repression having previously spent six years in prison for criticising the Erdogan government – an offence under the Turkish penal code. Released in 2022 he had his candidacy approved by the Supreme Election Board. On Sunday 31st March he got 55% of the votes cast in Van’s mayoral election.
No sooner were the votes counted than the Ministry of Justice demanded the local court disbar Zeydan and replace him with Erdogan’s candidate who had received just 27% of the vote. It’s hard to imagine any government so blatantly overturning an election result in this way.
The decision sparked mass protests not just in Van but all over Turkey and drew international condemnation. On this occasion there was a happy ending. Three days later on April 3rd, the Supreme Election Council overturned the local court and re-instated the elected mayor. This most egregious attempt to subvert a local election has been thwarted, but this is but one example amongst many in a systematic campaign by the Turkish government to silence its opposition.
The DEM party had been expected to do well and indeed they did. But they still had to overcome serial unlawful attempts to undermine the elections. Earlier in the year DEM released a summary of illegal voter registration in 21 constituencies where their support was strong. These are blatant attempts at major fraud to tip the balance against them.
An example is in Siirt city centre which DEM’s predecessor the HDP won narrowly in 2019 against Erdogan’s AKP. Since last May’s general election registered voters at one address increased from 10 to more than 2,000 and at another building – owned by the police – from 7 to 1,996. At a third address which hadn’t previously existed, 2,555 men who have never voted before in Siirt now appeared on the register.
These are the ones that were spotted. It seems reasonable to think that with ballot stuffing on this scale, some of it has bound to have been undetected.
But fraudulent voter registration is very much the soft end of a campaign of political repression against Kurdish representation which has being going on for decades. The HDP, now DEM, can testify to being on the receiving end of political violence for a very long time. Their leaders, including MPs, have been jailed, their offices ransacked by mobs and their organisation demonised as terrorists by a media which is pretty much in the pocket of the president.
Modern Turkey has always had a built-in tension with that part of Kurdistan which it incorporated early in the last century, but it has been turbocharged since the military coup of 1980. Until 1991 the very existence of Kurds was denied, the Turkish government referring to them as “mountain Turks”. The Kurdish language was banned, and those who spoke or sung in it were imprisoned. Still today, it is illegal for schools to teach in the Kurdish language, even in places where that is the language spoken by most of their pupils.
Parties which tried to represent a Kurdish interest were banned in the 1990s and still play a cat and mouse game with the central state even today. This official denial of all things Kurdish led to resistance movements like the PKK and a guerrilla war fought with the government. Turkey proscribed the PKK as a terrorist organisation and set about enlisting the support of the US, EU and others to do the same. Keen to keep Turkey as a NATO ally, most of them obliged, although international courts have ruled that this did not follow international standards of due process.
Since Erdogan’s election as president in 2014 he has doubled down on demonisation of the Kurds. Following the failed 2016 coup, Kurdish parties who had opposed the coup were nonetheless blamed for it and their repression intensified. Erdogan unashamedly nurtured and galvanised a right-wing Turkish nationalism in which minorities like the Kurds were the enemy. Speaking Kurdish, or engaging in Kurdish cultural activities was likened to terrorist activity. And it worked. Last year, despite widespread and coordinated centre-left opposition in the urban areas, Erdogan achieved a majority in the general election and was returned for another term.
Article 299 of the Turkish penal code makes it an offence to insult the President. It is punishable by four years in prison. And what constitutes an insult appears to be in the ear of the person receiving it. Since Erdogan became president the number of prosecutions under this provision have risen exponentially. The president, it seems, has something of a thin skin. This is an exercise in power, not vanity; the articles are used to suppress and outlaw political criticism and dissenting views.
It’s not just the Kurds who are on the receiving end of political repression in contemporary Turkey. Many human rights activists have fallen foul of the state authorities too. The most prominent in recent years being Osman Kavala, sentenced to life in 2022 on flimsy evidence which has been condemned by the Council of Europe and many Western governments (though not the UK).
It is, however, the Kurdish question which is the running sore that divides Turkey against itself, discriminating against its minority population, and preventing it becoming a modern democratic country at ease with itself. From demonising their culture to razing their villages the ground, the attacks by the Turkish state have driven many Kurds to leave. Many are here. The next time you go to a “Turkish” restaurant, you will most likely be served by Kurds. There is a “Scottish Solidarity with Kurdistan” group on Facebook who keep people up to date and coordinate support.
Kurdish people need, and deserve, our solidarity. We should begin by insisting that the Erdogan government ends it war on its own people and restarts the abandoned peace process with the PKK. Central to this will be the release of the Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan.
The man who founded the PKK long ago turned away from the armed struggle and for decades he has been advocating peaceful transition and co-existence. He has led the Kurds away from the notion of an independent state and towards the idea of respect and autonomy with the existing states of the near East. His writings on bottom-up community cooperation have inspired social movements throughout Kurdistan.
And he has done this for the last 25 years from a prison cell. Since being abducted by Turkish intelligence in 1999 he has spent his time incarcerated in a prison on Imrali island which the government built just for him. Ocalan is the key not just to justice for the Kurds, but for a brighter future for all of Turkey. Our government should join the calls for his release and stop turning a blind eye to the serial human rights abuses in Erdogan’s Turkey.
THE clocks have changed. It’ll be brighter tonight. The year moves inexorably forward towards the coming General Election.
Elections ought to be moments of change. A point in history where power transfers from one group to another, where ideas are won and the direction of a country changes. Exciting even.
But looking south across the Border to the contest between the main Westminster parties, it seems anything but exciting. It is almost impossible for Labour not to win in England. Yet you would be hard-placed to find too many citizens animated or enthusiastic about it.
In part, this is down to a deliberate ploy by the Labour leadership to promise nothing and say less. The main opposition party are seeking election precisely on the basis of not changing the incumbent Tory Party’s overall economic framework. That can only mean that the people who are being excluded and denied by the current system will continue to lose out.
For them, the election will change nothing. Indeed, that will be the case for most of us. It is hard to detect any serious difference between the two main parties.
Now, many people – and I probably include myself – believe through instinct or hope that Labour have to be better than the Tories. But in truth ,when you compare the stated policies of the parties, it is hard to make that claim. In areas such as pensions, the Tories even appear to be rather more committed to the welfare state than their opposition.
This grubby, uninspiring contest we have to look forward to is the product of wilful actions by political leaders, but their approach is enabled – even perhaps necessitated – by a ridiculous electoral system designed to ignore rather than resolve political differences.
First-past-the-post might be okay where a binary choice is to be made, but in any other context is simply not fit for purpose. It is deliberately designed to ensure that those elected are required neither to have majority support nor to represent a plurality of opinion. In the great majority of parliamentary seats, the winner represents only a minority of the voters who cast their vote.
When these results are aggregated to a state level, the distortion exaggerates. The first dislocation of results from the electorate allows political parties to form majority governments with the support of much less than half of the electorate – or at least those in the electorate who can be bothered voting.
In 2015, David Cameron won a majority of seats in the House of Commons with just under 37% of the vote. On that basis, he gave us Brexit. Shocking? Undemocratic? For sure, but nothing new.
Ten years previously, one Tony Blair got an even bigger majority with close to 35% of the votes cast.
Perhaps the most grotesque distortion of first-past-the-post is in what happens when third or fourth parties do well. Far from seeing smaller parties get some minimal increase in their representation, the system just inflicts lethal damage on the party they have taken support from. This is because the winner doesn’t need a majority; just more than the person who comes second.
The are various websites where you can play til your heart’s content by predicting the outcome of the election assuming varying levels of support for each party. You plop in the vote share and press a button.
I try not to spend too much time on this but for the current purposes and to illustrate how crazy the system is, I ran this little exercise (It’s just for England and Wales).
Let’s assume Labour can get about 43% of the votes cast at the next election, the Tories 10 points behind on 33%, LibDems on just under 10% and Reform and Greens on five each.
That’s assuming a much smaller gap between Labour and Tory than has been the case for over two years now. But it sounds sort of plausible, I think. That split would produce a Labour government with an 120-seat majority.
Now, what happens if Labour support stays exactly as it is, but some Tories switch to Reform UK – which they are currently telling pollsters they will do in their legions? If 5% switch and the Reform UK vote goes up to 10%, the Labour majority rises to 188. If a further 5% switch, then the Labour majority goes up to 274 and the Tories are left with 100 seats.
There’s a point at which the changes become almost exponential, and seats start changing hands in droves without the winning party having to do anything at all. This is the sort of thing that gives democracy a bad name.
But if the distorted results weren’t already sufficient corruption of the electorate’s will, the first past-the-post-system conspires in other ways to undermine the expression and resolution of political differences. By its nature, the system requires the winner not to have majority support but to be the biggest minority.
That means it requires parties to form broad alliances of opinion to get levels of support above a third. In itself, this means that differences are resolved within parties rather than being matters for the general citizenry. Sometimes this leaves a party completely at odds with its own supporters, never mind the electorate as a whole.
Such is the case with Labour and Brexit where the party will not even contemplate returning to Europe even though this is the expressed wish of the overwhelming majority of their own supporters.
It cannot be healthy for democracy that not a single major UK party will commit to reviewing and reversing Brexit when this is what half of the population wants.
The toxicity of first-past-the-post for democracy intensifies as parties rooted in the centre-right or centre-left fight for the support of the same bunch of voters in the middle.
By definition, these voters will be paid more attention than those whose support is already in the bag, and by definition, this group of voters will desire a lesser degree of change than the rest.
he result is a set of less than inspiring polices and a whole lot of people well upset about that but unable to do anything about it. It’s little wonder many people will tell you: “They’re all the same.”
This frustration, the feeling of being unrepresented, festers and is destroying what passes for democracy. In England, Labour will win the next election, I’m sure. But it will be won by promising Tories they are in safe hands, by seriously alienating many traditional Labour voters, and with a huge level of frustrated abstainers.
It’s a weak base for governing and could end in disaster in a very small number of years.
Now, of course, we should note that the Labour Party at their last two conferences made commitments – by very big margins – to change the current electorate system.
But as if to illustrate exactly the problem, no sooner had these votes been called than Sir Keir and his entourage were insisting there would be no change.
The SNP support a proportional voting system where the results reflect the votes cast by the people. Given a chance, that’s what we will vote for, but in truth, the condition of parliamentary democracy in England is hardly our bailiwick and nothing is going to change until Labour say so.
Sadly, I can’t see that happening any time soon.
And in this – as in so much else – the aspirations of people who live here will be better served by Scotland becoming a new independent state with a proper functioning democracy enshrined in a written constitution.
Don’t take my word for it. Joseph Borrell, the EU’s foreign minister, and a man who is very careful with his words, said on Monday “This is unacceptable. Starvation is used as a weapon of war. Israel is provoking famine.”
Israeli ministers, and their apologists on the right of the Tory party, claim that they cannot allow aid to be delivered because Hamas will siphon it off for their fighters. Even if this were true to some extent, this is still an admission that starvation is being deployed for military purposes. But worse, Israel has extended the use of this tactic to attack the entire civilian population, most of whom are entirely innocent, their only crime to have been born Palestinian.
International law dictates that Israel as the occupying military power, are responsible for the wellbeing of the civilian population. Not only are they refusing to do that, they are stopping other peoples’ aid reaching Palestinians too. This is a war crime squared.
What little aid that does get in has no distribution process in place with UNRWA, the agency that could and should do it, neutered by the Israeli military. In consequence people already weak after eating grass and animal feed for weeks, scrabble over each other to fight for scraps. By definition those in most need will lose. It’s inhumane. Grotesque.
But the thing that should shame us most is that the UK government does nothing, acquiescence becoming complicity.
I used to have some regard for Alaistair Mitchell, the minister who fronts the government’s foreign policy in the Commons since MPs are not allowed to question Lord Cameron. Not anymore. On Tuesday, questioned for nearly two hours, he repeatedly refused to call for a ceasefire, defended weapons sales to Israel, and never once uttered a word of criticism or admonishment of the Netanyahu regime. Shame on him.
MICHAEL Gove gave a masterclass in silver-tongued sophistry in the House of Commons on Thursday. Usurping the role of Home Secretary, he launched the Tory government’s new “initiative” on “extremism”.
Like a political matador, Gove parried concern and criticism from left and right. Unfazed, he praised his opponents for any criticism they threw his way. Nothing to see here. All very sensible. After all, we all hate Nazis.
Actually, there’s quite a lot to see here. Gove’s performance follows Sunak’s attempt to portray himself as custodian of the public’s morals just two weeks before. This is an exercise in political deflection, pure and simple. Out of ideas, out of support and almost out of time, this is a government desperate for anything to take the attention off its record.
So, why not create an enemy within? Demonise and vilify protesters who try to undermine the cosy consensus of what constitutes so-called Britishness. Underpinning this is a load of nonsense about British values – as if there were a universal set of beliefs and attitudes that we all share. It’s a 2024 version of John Major’s warm beer and the slap of leather on willow.
Who decides what is and what is not an acceptable opinion? Undoubtedly, Michael Gove would count among his British values support for the Union under the crown. I support neither – does that make my values less respectable than his?
And what happens when views change over time. When I was at primary school, gay men were jailed for having sexual relations. I dare say at the time this was widely supported by the public. Was that a British value then? Why is it not one now?
The current initiative is about delegitimising those who do not agree with the prevailing orthodoxy. It is consistent with a government which in recent years has brought in the most draconian legislation on public order designed to incapacitate or outlaw protest and dissent.
True, Gove pulled back on some of the scary suggestions earlier in the week about blacklisting groups like the respected Palestine Solidarity Campaign. In the end, very few groups were named as he repeatedly referred to neo-Nazis and Islamists in the same breath.
This was another dark day for Muslim communities. Although he was at pains to stress otherwise, there are plenty who will hear “Islam” when he says “Islamist”. The rabid right is none too discerning when it comes to theological distinctions. Rather than tackle Islamophobia, Thursday’s statement will enable it.
The Government points to the protests across the UK since October 7 and suggests that they are a prime driver in the rise of violent extremism and increasing attacks on both Jewish and Muslim people.
Strangely, it never once considered that its own actions might in some way be responsible.
It is no wonder that decent people are taking to the streets. They are horrified not just by what is happening in Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, but also by their own government’s complicity in the tragedy.
They see starving people killed in an air strike while queuing for food. They see residential areas bombed for 150 nights in a row. They see more than 14,000 babies and children dead. Who wouldn’t be moved to protest?
But then they see a UK Government that does nothing. That sits on its hands at the United Nations. That continues to license the export of weapons and military systems to the IDF aware that some of it must be used in the commission of war crimes.
Perhaps instead of trying to justify Israel’s actions as self-defence, if the UK Government had just once acted to prevent this humanitarian catastrophe, people would feel listened to.
It is the unwillingness – or the inability – of the Westminster consensus to tolerate views outside a narrow range that forces people to organise on the streets.
Any functioning democracy must have a way to register and adjust to public opinion and desire, a dynamic relationship which allows for policy change. This one only has denial.
Instead of listening to those demanding justice for Palestinians, the Tory government has sought to demonise them. They have been called antisemitic. They have been called hate-filled.
Now anyone who has been on these marches and rallies knows that this is not true. They are not antisemitic in character – indeed, many Jewish people and organisations are part of the protests.
We should never think we have to choose between standing up for Palestinian rights and fighting antisemitism. They are two sides of the same coin. We do both. In my experience, that is the overwhelming view of those who march for peace and for human rights.
The hypocrisy of pleading for tolerance by a party whose senior lieutenants claim London has been taken over by Islamists is astounding.
There is something otherworldly about the fact that the UK Government launched a statement on countering extremism and political violence in the same week that it was reported that its main funder suggested that Diane Abbott should be shot. You couldn’t make it up.
But the political irony over the member for Hackney North doesn’t end at the Tory Party. Incredibly, Labour took to social media condemning the Tory donor’s comments and seeking to raise funds themselves, somehow forgetting to point out that they had expelled her from their parliamentary party for her own comments on racism.
Gove’s statement was political posturing, nothing else. And it didn’t suggest any change to the law. None of this is to say that there is not a problem with rising political violence. There is. But it is one principally emanating from the extreme right who are hell-bent on attacking migrants and ethnic minorities.
This has been festering for years and the refusal by mainstream politicians to call out racism has allowed it to become ingrained in some communities. But the cosy Westminster duopoly which defines what is acceptable in polite politics and excludes the rest is to blame too. A corrupt electoral system in Westminster has left many feeling unrepresented and left them easy prey to the right-wing conspiracy theorists who spread poison in poor communities.
Thankfully, in Scotland the political debate is along other axes, and alternatives exist. But we should not get too blasé. There’s still ignorance and prejudice aplenty here and it can sprout quickly and virulently if not checked. Pollsters Redfield and Wilton report that Scottish voters now say immigration is their third most important issue at this election.
We don’t know why. But we would be foolish to assume that this degree of salience is because they all support the progressive policies of the SNP and welcome migrants. Some will, but others may be susceptible to the hostile attitudes being promoted by the Tories and insufficiently countered by Labour. This is why – whether it makes us popular in the short-term or not – we must ensure the fight against all forms of racism is central to our prospectus for change.
As we limp towards a general election later this year, energy policy will feature high on the political agenda. Sadly, though, it looks as if one aspect of that debate will escape serious scrutiny due to a cosy consensus between the main parties at Westminster. Nuclear power.
Earlier this week Parliament debated the government’s recently published civil nuclear roadmap. This hare-brained scheme sets out an ambition to quadruple the current 5.9 gigawatts of nuclear energy production by 2050. Sadly, not only does the Labour party support this Conservative plan, it accuses the government of dragging its feet on implementation, suggesting that if anything a Starmer administration will accelerate the nuclear programme.
It’s crazy that this 20th century technology still commands such widespread political support in the UK. A quick recap. Nuclear power is – by far – the most expensive way of generating electricity ever devised by mankind. Contrary to claims it is not a renewable energy source. It is fuelled by uranium ore of which there is approximately 90 years supply left, less if programmes expand. Most of this is in Kazakhstan so it hardly qualifies as a secure energy source.
Moreover, it produces toxic waste which has to be kept isolated from human beings for generations. The new roadmap by the way suggests a new form of reactor which will produce twice as much waste and has no credible plan to safeguard it.
You can only spend a pound once – and if the government spends billions on nuclear that investment will be siphoned off renewable energy development. The craziest part of Labour’s plan is to argue for a further windfall tax on oil and gas in order to subsidise new nuclear plants in England. Don’t get me wrong, corporations should pay fair taxes, especially on excess profits. But of all the things you might spend that revenue on, subsidising nuclear power must surely be the worst.
If this continues, our children will look back mid-century and wonder why we didn’t make use of the phenomenal natural energy resources from sun, sea and air. We can stop this nonsense by the simple measure of putting Scotland’s energy policy in the hands of the people who live here. Another reason why Scotland should be an independent country.
“Don’t go that way, there might be snakes”, says Mette. We keep to the trampled path that leads to the inflatable white tent. Inside a front room sits a nurse at a desk full of contraceptives and leaflets, through the back a consulting room where women can get an IUD or implant fitted on the spot.
The set-up is part of a festival like event which includes contemporary African dance, a DJ giving sexual health messages through a pulsating sound system, and groups of young people discussing family planning methods under the shade of nearby trees.
We are in Bagamoyo, fifty miles north of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s largest city. I’m here during the parliamentary recess on a five-day trip with Conservative Baronesses Jenkin and Hodgson, and Labour MPs Kim Johnson and Apsana Begum supported by our organiser Mette Kjaerby. All of us from the all-party parliamentary group on population, development and sexual health. The title is a mouthful, it’s basically a cross party campaign to improve women’s reproductive rights across the world.
For us, that means finding out what the UK government is doing through the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and building pressure to make it do more, better. Today’s event has been made possible by funding from the FCDO. Future ones are now under threat as funding reduces.
At a global level the link between sexual health and rights and unintended population growth was established decades ago. The UN set up a dedicated agency, UNFPA, to co-ordinate efforts and it is under their auspices we are here.
Tanzania was run by Britain when I was born. In 1961 it became an independent republic and Julius Nyere, the man who had led the independence movement its first president. The country Nyrere established had ten million people. Today it has 62 million. The population has doubled in the last twenty years and is predicted to double again by 2050. It is the eighth fastest growing country in the world, and a good place to start if we are going to manage global population at sustainable levels.
Worth noting the land mass is five times that of Britain, and there are large areas of fertile land yet to be cultivated. Those hostile to birth control say that unlike many countries, Tanzania can feed itself even with a growing population. Even if that were true to some extent there are still numerous benefits to reducing the birth rate, for the women and girls involved, and for the country as a whole. Besides, the continuing influx into urban areas means services are already under pressure. With increased arrivals from the countryside numbers will swell to crisis point.
Dar es Salaam is a massive urban sprawl. It has grown rapidly with inadequate planning or investment in the infrastructure required to cope with a huge population. The roads are good but already full of traffic and there is minimal public transport. Despite a network of bus only expressways under construction it is hard to see how it could double in size without serious collapse. That point is accepted by the government officials and ministers we met, all of whom are now behind the drive to give women choice and access to contraception.
The current fertility rate is 5.8, far higher in the rural, poorer, areas outside the cities. Admittedly that is down from a high of over eight some years ago. Everyone knows that figure isn’t sustainable. No-one will put a figure on what it should be, and targets are eschewed for fear that they might seem draconian and lose public confidence in the process. But everyone we spoke to was clear: it has to fall.
So, all efforts are now going into scaling up family planning. Key is expanding access to modern methods of contraception. Currently about two in five women of reproductive age (15-49) are using some form of contraception. Probably around ten percent will have fertility problems. That leaves almost half – eight million women – who are not currently planning their pregnancies. Agencies say that almost half of that number have already had some interface with the health system, typically when giving birth, and have been offered contraception but are not using it. UNFPA calls this category unmet need.
Unmet need will have to be met, and that requires a range of approaches. Making sure the distribution and supply of materials is up to scratch and women can get the right product at the right time is one. That’s the easy bit.
Much harder is trying to overcome the attitudes embedded in communities steeped in a strong culture which keeps myths alive. This is most intense in the more rural areas and amongst nomadic communities where the birth rate is considerably higher.
Many young women still believe that using contraception will make them infertile. We heard stories of women ostracised from their villages because they have chosen to use contraception – the social pressure not to is intense. Nonsense about contraception reducing sexual desire – for men and women – is also commonplace.
There is still a strong belief amongst these harder to reach communities that bigger families are better. They see more mouths to feed as more than offset by more youngsters to work the land.
Sometimes this is enforced by more than ideas. Agencies working with women who have suffered domestic violence report how they will be more of a target if they are known to be using contraception. There are stories of men cutting implants out of their wives’ arms leaving them to be patched up by mobile clinics.
Until not so long ago these attitudes were tolerated by the government. The former president John Magufuli was well known as a sceptic when it came to family planning, seeming at times to promote procreation as a form of personal and national virility.
That’s changed. Serious work is now underway to reach those not already being offered birth control. We saw a range of creative and imaginative approaches to both increasing services and encouraging their take-up.
Mary is a retired nurse. She now works as a community outreach volunteer in a village health facility run by Marie Stopes Tanzania (MST). She talked to me about her job knocking on doors and speak directly with women to encourage them to come to facilities like hers. Between the health ministry and the main NGOs there are around twenty thousand Marys and they are reaching hundreds of thousands of women every month.
There is a particular problem with teenage pregnancies – 22% of young women pregnant before eighteen. Impressive work is going on at a granular level to reach them. UMATI is an NGO which runs a number of youth centres offering recreational activities combined with sexual health education and direct provision of contraception. The clinic we visited sees 35 young people every day. On Saturdays they take over the local health service clinic and run it specially for young people who are in school through the week. Sadly, that’s now under threat as a result of our foreign office stopping funding last December.
Suzana Mkanzabi runs UMATI. “key to success is the empowerment of young women” she tells me, “we know once they reach 18 they have more agency and confidence to make their own decisions, to have choice.”
Government policy is now being directed towards that end. In 2015 the law changed to mandate seven years primary and four years secondary education for all. So, although there is no legal school leaving age, since primary usually starts at seven this should keep most in the system to around 18. But it is taking time, parents keep kids home saying they cannot afford the associated costs of uniform and materials, and enforcement varies amongst the 25 regions.
Campaigners also hope this year to see the age of marriage consent raised from fourteen to eighteen, a move which many say will push the average age of pregnancy upwards.
Things are moving in the right direction but there is a race to reach, educate and service the country’s sixteen million women of reproductive age before it is too late – to build a virtuous cycle instead of a vicious one. And in doing that the many passionate Tanzanians we met need our help.
This is the sharp end of the debate on aid funding. This is where the cut form 0.7% of GDP to 0.5% kicks in. It’s time to reverse this Conservative mantra and for this rich country to once again be seen as a leader rather than a shirker when it comes to doing the right thing.
This week we witnessed another act in the ongoing pantomime of elected members of parliament trying to hold the UK government to account for its policy on the Middle East. The man in charge, David, now Lord, Cameron isn’t there of course, not having been elected by anyone himself. The rest of us are supposed to dutifully accept this grotesque contempt of democratic norms and make do with his platitudinous deputy Andrew Mitchell.
Mitchell, for those not too scunnered to listen, delivered a restatement of the UK’s belief in a two-state solution with Israel staying within its 1967 borders and the Palestinian territories it currently occupies transformed into a viable new state. This mantra is now so divorced from reality on the ground, and so at odds with the government’s actions, that you don’t have to be a cynic to question whether the FCDO officials who write this stuff even believe it anymore.
This matters. The horror of the last four months in Gaza has forced everyone to confront what happens when it stops. Talks about a ceasefire are underway as I write and might possibly have produced a halt in the war by now. As well as getting humanitarian aid into Gaza this could create the space for the world to intervene and assist in constructing a political solution which will remove the cause of the violence.
And if that happens Britain’s intentions are of consequence. Yet never has there been a government policy which has been pursued with such a lack of effort or sincerity. Worse, the actions of the UK government seem designed to actively undermine its own stated objectives.
To be clear, the political leadership of Israel does not want a two-state solution. Has not wanted it for some time. Has done everything it possibly could to prevent it. Has one state control of all the land in question and is deepening its foundations with every brick laid on every new illegal settlement. And for decades Israel has exercised coercive control of the occupied Palestinian communities designed to break their ability to exercise political agency. For decades.
Throughout it all successive UK governments have stood by and allowed this to happen. Worse, they have aided and abetted. Weasel words are uttered about the settlements being illegal but never a sanction has been considered. Trade agreements get signed, weapons and technology get sent, diplomats are instructed to frustrate international agencies in their criticism.
For many years, the Israeli government has been allowed to pursue a policy of expansion and suppression of the Palestinians without challenge or consequence. This has to change for the simple reason that no lasting peace is possible until it does.
We can start by recognising the State of Palestine. 139 counties have done so. Why not this one? A lot of confusion surrounds this. Recognition is not to say that Palestine exists and functions as a normal state should. It clearly doesn’t, indeed, is actively prevented by Israel from so doing. Recognition is about agreeing in law that the Palestinian people have the right to statehood, about enabling for them the same agency that the Israelis already have. Recognition is about giving Palestinians the right to a voice, a seat at the negotiating table. It is a logical nonsense to claim that you support a two-state solution, but then refuse to recognise one of the states.
Andrew Mitchell parroted the usual nonsense again last Tuesday, that Britain would recognise Palestine when “it best serves the interests of peace”. It is a meaningless statement, designed to be so. Worse, it suggests to many that a Palestinian state is not a right, but a reward to be granted in return for some undefined action, the promise used as leverage. That is what gets the UK a bad name.
If Scotland had the ability to speak for itself on the world stage, I have no doubt that we would join an increasing number of European countries in recognising Palestine. In the meantime, it is a case we will prosecute with vigour in the union parliament.
Of course, the UK can apparently move with speed and purpose when it wants to on the other side of this debate. Last week Israel alleged that 12 employees of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) were involved in the October 7th Hamas attacks. UNRWA has 13,000 workers in Gaza and provides a vast range of essential services. Within hours of the allegations the UK had announced that it would suspend funding for the whole organisation. It’s akin to closing down funding for the whole NHS because Harold Shipman was found guilty of murder.
Now of course, UNRWA employees should be held to account if they were involved the horrific attacks in early October, and these allegations must be investigated. But by any measure the response of the UK and other western funders was an overreaction. Once again, the entire civilian population of Gaza are set to be punished for the actions of a few. It is, as the SNP spokesperson Brendan O’Hara rightly observed, another round of collective punishment on a people already teetering on the brink of survival.
Britain’s speed of response is highly selective. They were not so quick off the mark when it came to dealing with the recent judgements of the International Court of Justice in respect of South Africa’s charge of genocide against Israel. Whilst it will take a year or more for the ICJ to determine the case, they announced a series of interim measures insisting that action is taken now to prevent genocide occurring in Gaza. Were the UK government really concerned about the rule of international law they ought to have immediately reviewed policy to ensure compliance with the court. Instead, and to the alarm of much of the rest of the world, they claimed the case should not have been brought and acted to undermine the authority and judgment of the court.
UK ministers are less than convincing when they claim that they encourage Israel to uphold international law. To prove genocide is a high bar but there can surely be no question that Israel is in obvious breach of international humanitarian law.
Too many people are letting this pass. It’s not okay to shoot and kill unarmed civilians approaching under cover of a white flag. It is not okay to send special forces into hospitals and execute people in hospital beds whilst they are getting treatment. When did we dispense with arrest and trial?
Most of all the massive and continuing attacks on civilian infrastructure and the mass deaths of unarmed non-combatants is not okay. I had an argument with a senior Tory last week who thought it was. He argued international law justified civilian casualties if the overall military objective was being met. He is wrong. Legally and morally.
To demonstrate compliance the UK government ought to have made sure that it could not be accused of complicity in genocide. Given that this country is one of the biggest arms exporters to Israel and that those armaments and systems rare now being used against the civilian population an obvious and logical response would be to immediately suspend arms exports until there can be certainty about their deployment.
Components for this weaponry are being made here. The Italian firm Leonardo employs 1800 people in Edinburgh making guidance systems for F35 fighters being used against Gazans by the IDF. It has multiple other licenses to supply armaments to Israel. I believe that the government should halt these licenses right now. And while the UK reviews licenses, I have written to the company suggesting that it would help their own reputation and protect them legally if they were to voluntarily stop supplying the IDF whilst genocide is being investigated.
In the midst of the terrors and chaos unfolding in the Middle East the only response of democrats can be to insist on the universal application of international law. It’s difficult. It’s not trendy. But it is the only way to get through.
WELL now, my last column seems to have touched a nerve for many.
Usually, I don’t get a lot of reaction to my musings on the topics de jour, but my suggestion last time that people who support independence should vote SNP at the coming election, and an observation that the cause will be set back if they don’t, seems to have caused more than a little excitement.
Not amongst my parliamentary colleagues and party members, it should be said, most of whom thought it was fair enough, but among opponents of independence of every hue.
The proposition was restated in similar terms by the First Minister when launching the party’s election campaign. He said that if Scottish Labour get their feet under the table, they will swiftly take independence off it. Keir Starmer will claim every vote as one for shutting down and shutting out those who believe Scotland would be better off as an independent state.
The BBC suggested that the FM got his inspiration for this from my column earlier in the week. Hardly. Humza has many better sources of inspiration than me. It’s not even a matter of great minds thinking alike. It is, frankly, just a statement of the blindingly obvious.
I like to think that my political arguments – although nurtured by an ideological credo – can be backed up by evidence. So here goes. I present exhibit A. Last Tuesday, the Alba MP Neale Hanvey introduced his Scotland (Self-Determination) Bill to the House of Commons which sought to change the law to allow the Scottish Parliament to legislate for a referendum on independence.
Much as I agree with the sentiment behind Neale’s case and I firmly believe in the principle of self-determination, I don’t think conferring a specific power on Holyrood is the best way to achieve it. I would have preferred changing the schedule of reserved powers to remove or qualify Westminster’s exclusive right to deal with constitutional matters, thereby creating a competence for the Scottish Parliament to act within the constraints of existing constitutional law.
But that’s not the point. The vote on Tuesday was not on whether people agreed with Neale’s proposal but whether he should be allowed to introduce the bill for debate. And of course, we should have. Which is why my SNP colleagues and I voted for it.
Not surprisingly in a chamber where Scotland’s interests are at best peripheral, the vote was 228 to 48 against discussing the matter further. But what’s instructive is to look at who voted in which way. Most of the Tories didn’t bother; two even voted for the bill. But every Labour and LibDem MP present was instructed to vote against. Strange behaviour, this. The nature of these private members’ bills is that very few are opposed as they are unlikely to get anywhere in the legislative machinery of the parliament anyway. On this occasion, however, Labour went out of their way to vote against it.
It was to make a point.
My suggestion that if the SNP lose the election then the debate on indy stalls was predictably seized upon by hardline Unionists. From Brian Wilson to Douglas Ross (below), they leapt on it with glee to suggest this was the way to deny and defeat the aspiration to control our own affairs.
But not so fast, guys. I wasn’t suggesting this was going to happen, just warning of the dangers that it might, particularly if many indy supporters stay at home. It works the other way around. If we don’t lose the election, our ability to prosecute the case for independence is enhanced and energised. I trust Messrs Wilson and Ross will accept that.
I firmly believe we can win this election. Now, I know many people are getting mightily pissed off at the fact that voting for the SNP in the past hasn’t produced independence. That is principally because the Conservative government at Westminster has been determined to deny our mandate in the hope that it will go away.
Our determination must be to not let it go away. And that’s the thing about mandates – each one only lasts until the next. So that is why it matters. That is why anyone who supports independence – or even the right to have a choice on independence – should vote SNP.
I seemed to have provoked a reaction from some elsewhere in the Yes movement too; shot by both sides. Alba’s Ash Regan commented that “the independence movement is bigger than one person or one political party”. If she had actually read the article, she would have found me agreeing with her.
Of course, different parties and many voices must build our movement. But 2024 isn’t the final vote to declare our independence – it’s an election for members of the Westminster Parliament. There will be several steps yet to becoming independent, this is just the next one. Given the corrupt first-past-the-post system, only the SNP can win seats for the movement in this election. The movement should take advantage of the party to make that happen.
I even got taken to task by my old friend Iain Macwhirter. Iain is extremely vexed at some of the policies of the Scottish Government, and he writes these days for a different demographic. Nonetheless, he is guilty of several unforced errors of logic in his recent Times column.
He quotes me stating my central proposition and says: “If this is so, the great constitutional debate may be over because the latest opinion poll suggests the SNP are on to a loser.” Leaving aside the wisdom of basing a political argument on one opinion poll, he has just made a great leap from me suggesting an election defeat might halt progress towards indy to him implying the matter is closed. Woah!
The debate will only be over either when independence is achieved or when everyone stops wanting it. Every SNP MP elected – even if only one – will argue the case for Scotland’s independence. I’m only saying that if we don’t win a majority, we cannot claim a national mandate. If that happens, you can be assured, we won’t be shutting up and we will set about the task of getting that majority next time round.
The “SNP bad” brigade, including some influential commentators, repeatedly decontextualise the actions of the Scottish Government. Ignoring the good, highlighting the bad. Leaving no dysphemism unused, they believe the party needs to get a kicking and they’re happy to hold the coats.
And some of our hitherto supporters will even go so far as to explicitly endorse the principal party of the Union in Scotland. How else can we explain Iain’s statement: “It has long been accepted that the road to Number 10 runs through Scotland.” Does it? Does it really? Didn’t Tony Blair win three elections in a row, each one with a bigger majority than the total number of Scottish MPs?
The only thing voting Labour in Scotland will achieve is stacking up a bigger majority for the least radical, least ambitious opposition party in history, giving Starmer a blank cheque and setting the cause of independence back until the next time. I mean, do that if you want – it’s a free country – but don’t claim you’re supporting independence when you do.
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