On The Queen's Speech of 2016

The Queen's Speech of yesterday outlined some of the most worrying plans the Conservatives have come up with in recent years. Here are 5 key reasons why the Queen's Speech 2016 means danger:

1. They plan to replace the Human Rights Act with a weakened a watered-down British Bill of Rights.

Given how much the Human Rights Act has achieved, with the most recent example being justice for the 96 victims of the Hillsborough Stadium disaster of 1989, and the Conservatives' attitude to respect for human rights (nationally and internationally) especially whilst Theresa May has been Home Secretary, this will in all likelihood end up being disastrous in practice. We should instead keep the Human Rights Act and remain part of the European Convention of Human Rights, which Britain helped with the foundations of back in 1948.

2. They have not really U-turned on their 'all schools to become academies' plan after all.

The Conservatives and their Education Secretary, Nicky Morgan, still want to achieve a goal of making as many schools academies as possible even if they ever dropped plans to compel them to convert. Also, decisions about what constitutes an 'unviable' authority with regards to plans to convert underperforming schools in unviable authorities to academies will be clearly biased against less affluent areas and smaller councils.

3. Their deregulation of the university 'market' will mean ever-increasing fees and poorer higher education standards.

The barriers on new universities set up exist for a reason-to make sure only genuinely educational institutions can set up an accredited university and offer accredited courses to prospective students. More worryingly, allowing more prestigious universities to set fees as high as they can could create a permanent, class-based two-tier system in university terms akin to the current schools system.

4. The Snoopers' Charter is going to be pushed through, as is a dangerously broad 'Counter-Extremism' Bill.

We already have enough surveillance in our lives as it is, and this proposed Investigatory Powers Bill will allow retention of any of our private communications for investigation even when it is useless to the government. Also, the proposed counter-extremism bill could identify almost anyone involved in politics in some way as an extremist even when they are clearly not.

5. Effective privatisation of prisons is in the works.

Allowing prisons to contract in private suppliers for key areas could substantially lower effectiveness and undermine the main purpose prisons are meant to serve-effective rehabilitation of offenders who have committed serious enough crimes to be imprisoned in the first place. This could also lead to further prison overcrowding which has dangerous consequences; we instead need reform of our justice and prison systems. http://www.thecanary.co/2016/05/18/queen-just-announced-privatisation-prisons-nobody-noticed/






Comments

  1. Andi20 May 2016 at 10:19

    Hi Alan

    Good points.

    I enjoy reading your blog but I've been finding it hard to read - literally - since you changed your colour scheme. The green on green doesn't have enough contrast for me to comfortably read.

    A lot of people don't realise websites have accessibility standards which specify among other things, how much contrast is needed for the vast majority of your visitors to read your text. The contrast you've got here is about 2:1. Ideally contrast should be above 5:1.

    There's a helpful calculator here:
    http://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/

    (Your background colour is #66A189 and text is #17714C)

    All the best
    Andi

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Alan B20 May 2016 at 10:53

      Dear Andi,

      I have now changed all the text to red instead of green. Do you find it easier to read now?

      Alan.

      Delete
  2. Andi23 May 2016 at 10:13

    Hi Alan

    Love the redesign! Thanks :)

    Andi

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My analysis of local by-elections from 22/11/18

Readers, the results of this week's British local by-elections were as follows: Enfield LBC, Bush Hill Park: Conservative 1540 (52.4%, +12.7%), Labour 828 (28.2%, -8.3%), Liberal Democrats 313 (10.7%, -0.8%), Green 127 (4.3%, -6.6%), WEP 79 (2.7%), Independent (Oyaloyu) 50 (1.7%). [UKIP did not stand] Westminster LBC, Lancaster Gate: Conservative 913 (47.2%, -1.5%), Labour 684 (35.4%, -1.0%), Liberal Democrats 275 (14.2%, -0.7%), Green 62 (3.2%). Windsor & Maidenhead UA, Datchet: Conservative 525 (56.0%, -3.1%), National Flood Prevention Party 223 (23.8%), Labour 121 (12.9%, -9.1%), Liberal Democrats 48 (5.1%,-13.8%), Green 21 (2.2%). Wirral MBC, Upton: Labour 1490 (61.3%, +3.1%), Conservative 705 (29.0%, +0.4%), Green 151 (6.2%, -0.5%), Liberal Democrats 83 (3.4%, -0.8%). [TUSC did not stand] All changes are since May. The open divisions in the Conservatives, which resulted in a failed attempt to call for a vote of no confidence in Theresa May by the European Researc...
Read more

On the 2020 Serbian election: Why a boycott will only worsen things there

First of all, I apologise for the recent hiatus; however elections are still postponed or on hold in many countries, including the UK. Serbia, however, was able to proceed with its 2020 general election amidst this crisis. Its overall result proved reminiscent of Hungarian elections under Viktor Orban's tenure (2010-present), since the leading national-conservative coalition, the SNS (Progressive Party of Serbia) coalition led by Serbian President Aleksander Vucic (Ana Brnabic is the Serbian Prime Minister, and the first woman and openly homosexual person to hold that position), polled 61.6% of the vote, giving them as many as 191 seats out of 250 and a majority of as high as 132, almost unheard of in any country with proportional representation. Press freedom has endured significant curbs since President Vucic first came into power as Serbian PM in 2012 (he became President of Serbia in 2017), as have civil liberties of Serbs in general. Nepotism and corruption in the Serbian ...
Read more

On the French local elections of 2020: Vive le surge de vert!

The French local elections finally concluded yesterday, having been originally scheduled to take place on 15 March; they were postponed due to the effects of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.  The most sensational story of these elections was the many triumphs by the main French Green Party, Europe Ecologie-Les Verts (EELV). In major French cities (those with more than 100,000 people), EELV captured the mayoralties of Annecy, Besancon, Bordeaux, Lyon, Marseille, Strasbourg, and Tours. They also performed impressively in the munciipal elections for those cities as well. However, in the midst of all this triumph there was one notable setback for them: Eric Pollie, the first Green Mayor of a major French city, decided to contest the mayoral election there as an "Independent Left" (divers gauche) candidate instead. Furthermore they narrowly missed out on unseating former PS leader Martine Aubry from her post as Mayor of Lille; in the second round she held on by 227 votes, a sig...
Read more