Interesting article by Seamus Milne. He argues that part of the reason that the government is so keen on PFI (for example) is that job opportunities working for private companies are often available to ministers when they leave office. These companies then often win lucrative government contracts:

But corporate capture goes much further than lobbying. The revolving door that propels civil servants into the arms of companies for whom they previously set rules and signed off contracts was well established before New Labour came to power. But the process that saw Tony Blair's former health adviser Simon Stevens effortlessly transmute into European president of the US company UnitedHealth, or his foreign policy adviser David Manning collect a clutch of directorships, from Lloyds TSB to Lockheed Martin, has now become the norm.

What's new for Labour is the stampede of ministers for the revolving door. Since 2006, 37 former members of the government have been given permission to take private sector jobs within two years of leaving office. As with their Tory predecessors, many of these jobs involve working for companies directly bidding for government contracts and privatised services. They include Blair himself, of course, whose £12m annual income now includes multimillion contracts with banking groups JP Morgan Chase and Zurich Financial Services, in a sector lovingly protected during his time in office.

What do you think?

Indian court rules gay sex is legal.

Just wondering. I doubt that there are many people on my flist who actually vote either Labour or Conservative, but if you absolutely had to choose...

I really don't understand why people would choose the Conservatives. They're just like the Labour party these days, except they hate the poor even more! And they have more homophobic backbenchers!

Poll #1422306
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Would you prefer a Labour or a Conservative government after the next election?

AN Wilson is such a tool.

1)Infinite thought points out that there's nothing to do in England in the evening except go to the pub.

2)Seamus Milne argues in the Guardian that the election result in Iran was not due to electoral fraud, and that the people who support Mousavi are the western supporting elites and the middle classes, whereas the poor (generally) support Ahmadinejad. I'm not endorsing what he writes (I'm finding what's going on in Iran very difficult to understand), but I do think that it's interesting.

Libby Brooks - The welfare reform bill has a message: long-term unemployment will be punished, regardless of health or dependants. Read this.

I think that the plan to force people to work for their benefits after having been on benefits for 3 years is appalling, for the following reasons:

1)They will be working for far less than minimum wage.

2)AFAICT the jobs they are forced to take will be entirely unskilled.

3)It takes work away from other people.

4)I doubt it will improve their chances of finding other employment - unskilled work that someone has been forced to do won't look good on their CV. References will be laughed at.

5)It takes up that could be spent looking for other jobs.

6)Believe me, the welfare state in Britain is fairly punitive as it is. £64.50 a week (or less than £50 if you're under 25) is not luxurious.

ETA: This is worrying, given that we're almost certainly going to have a Conservative government in 2010 (from the Libby Brooks article):

"George Osborne said recently that welfare spending would be one of the biggest areas of saving for the Conservatives.."

Well, the BNP got 2 seats, the Tories won by a massive margin, UKIP came second and the centre left collapsed all over Europe with wins for the centre right and far right.

Looks like Labour could get as little as 16% of the vote. I'm wondering if Gordon Brown will still be PM by this time tomorrow.

The BNP won a seat in the European parliament. Bollocks.

From marnanel, a yahoo answers post:

I came in and shehad the two girl barbies kissing. I asked what she was doing and she said they were getting married.

What do I do? How do I react?

Do I tell her usually men and women get married? (which I know that same sex marriage happens) If I don’t say anything then she might think it is okay for her to go out kissing other little girls.

I am not anti gay but I tend to favor the traditional way of life when it comes to opposite sex marriage.

I know that she is still little but that does not mean that she can not be taught.

*This is not the same thing as a boy playing with a baby doll.

The comments are mostly massively homophobic, for instance:

She's 4 years old! She doesn't know that it's wrong. Let her have a imagination, she's just playing.