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CASINO BIAS FOR AUTOPLAY – SCARLET STANDARD


BALANCE, BIAS AND THE BBC

We are all biased.

Every one of us has our prejudices and our preconceptions. We are socialized
from birth in a society that feeds and waters those prejudices and helps them
grow up big and strong. I certainly have my own. I have a left-wing and liberal
take on the world. I see the world through this filter and many others (some of
which others would find considerably at odds with my assertion to be both
liberal and left-wing. people – myself as much if not more than most – are a
mess of contradictions).


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When I write, talk and think about politics, I know that I am doing so through
the frame these prejudices have given me. I am aware that I am more likely to
ascribe nefarious motives to my opponents and benign ones to my allies. Where
possible, I try to examine this and mitigate it, but it isn’t always possible.
In the heat of the moment, the heat of passion will escape. Where the Tories are
being particularly Tory, it is hard not to just get very angry.

So yes, I think everyone is biased, and this includes Nick Robinson, Political
Editor of the BBC. I also think he’s an extremely good journalist. I expect him
– far more than me and far more than most – to examine his biases and try to
think about how they might be affecting his work and the way he reports.

That Nick Robinson was once a Tory is a matter of public record. But many
journalists have a political background and are perfectly capable of even-handed
and balanced reporting. Left or right, it’s examining the facts, and doing so
while being aware of your prejudices that make for good journalism. Robinson can
be just as challenging to senior Tories as he is to Labour members, and both
Labour and Tory activists feel he is biased against them, which probably means
he’s getting it about right.

However, yesterday, Robinson make a slight misjudgment in his reporting around
the way Labour is approaching the tax avoidance of Lord Fink. His use of the
phrase “Milly Dowler moment” (a phrase which did not appear in quote marks in
his blog post, but did in the preview box at the bottom ) has led to a media
furor with the right-wing press accusing Labour of crass language around a young
girl’s death. Labour activists have responded in kind by once again accusing
both the BBC and Robinson in particular of pro-Tory/anti-Labour bias.

I don’t believe that is what happened. I think Robinson wrote up a story quickly
and used the journalistic shorthand that was possibly sloppy but had no bias or
poor intention. I believe he was later frustrated by the reaction and instead of
clarifying immediately, went into defensive mode. Perfectly natural, again we
all do it.

Robinson was clearly aware his words were being used to attack Ed Miliband’s
team in this way. He issued a tweet that sought to clarify but didn’t write a
second blog post, nor edit the first one until the next day. He has seen many a
stupid politics row blow up this way, and so he knows how these things work. All
the best advice experienced journalists like him would give a politician in the
same boat would be to get ahead of the story, apologize or at least clarify as
soon as possible. That it took until long after the story had been published in
today’s papers for him to do so made this a two-day story.

The other problem is no matter what Robinson did or didn’t do it wouldn’t be
enough for his detractors. He is daily – hourly even – rounded on by both lefts
and right on Twitter. So I suspect it took a little longer than it should have
for this one to burst through what is usually a fog of partisan point-scoring to
understand that this was genuinely an issue that deserved clarifying.

The left has cried wolf over BBC bias so often that inadvertently, it may well
have become harder for us to make the case when such bias – intentional or
otherwise – actually exists.

Ian Dunt has written a superb piece today about the misguided nature of the
attack on the BBC over their coverage of the Chapel Hill shootings. I think this
illustrates well the problems the BBC has both of reflecting both factual truth
and society. We all believe we know the truth because we all believe we are
always right. And these days it is very easy to fall into a pattern of only
reinforcing your own views. So often on Twitter or Facebook, I hear the phrase
“everyone thinks…” about issues that are divisive (and thus by their nature not
agreed upon by “everyone”). This positive reinforcement can be why neutral media
sources can feel challenging and also protective of the status quo.

The BBC is a bit too establishment at times. Its news agenda is still to driven
by the press which is not a neutral source. It cares far too much what the Daily
Mail thinks about its content and is far too defensive under the conditions of a
mass media market to take the risks it once did. But it is still a source of
powerful flagship journalism.

We can and should call out powerful journalists when they get it wrong, just as
we do with politicians. But we should do so well and wisely. It should not have
taken Nick Robinson so long to clarify what happened here. But equally, it
should not be his job to respond to endless unfounded accusations of bias.
Perhaps just as Nick should have chosen his words more wisely, so we too should
learn when to pick our battles.




FOUR REASONS LABOUR SHOULD GO ALL OUT IN SHEFFIELD HALLAM

I will be honest, a year ago I simply did not believe that Labour would have any
chance of taking Nick Clegg’s seat of Sheffield Hallam. But now, two polls have
put Labour in the lead. We have an excellent candidate in Oliver Coppard, we
have momentum and a campaign that feels lively, active, and engaged locally.

It is too late to add Sheffield Hallam to the list of Labour’s 106 target seats
and Labour centrally should probably not reallocate their already scarce
resources. But unofficially, we should all get behind the campaign.

I’m not normally a big fan of symbolic decapitation strategies. If we had little
or no hope of winning the seat, I wouldn’t want us to waste time and resources
on it just out of a sense of loathing for Nick Clegg as an individual
politician. Not while David Laws exists in the world anyway!

But there are good reasons for Labour to throw a certain amount at this seat.
Below are five of them.

1. I am a big fan of Labour winning seats. And we could win this one. In an
election that will be as close as this one, every seat will count. No seat where
we have a reasonable chance – and seats where we are ahead in the polling
definitely fall into that category – should be abandoned. We have a real chance
of gaining an excellent new Labour MP. Let’s do our best to make that happen.

2. As George Eaton has pointed out on Twitter, losing Clegg as a leader makes it
much, much harder for the Lib Dems to go back into coalition with the Tories. It
is highly likely that the next Leader of the Lib Dems will be Tim Farron who may
well prefer to try to heal the Party from opposition rather than go into a
formal deal with anyone. But he certainly comes from the more left-wing faction
of the Party making a smooth continuation of the current arrangement extremely
unlikely. So if we don’t manage an outright majority, a Lib Dem Party without
Clegg works considerably better for Labour.

3. Lib Dems are incredibly tribal. More so in many ways than supporters of other
Parties, And they hate Labour. They hated us when we were in power and they hate
us even more now we point out the ways they have failed and hurt our country
while they are in power. Decapitating their leader simply cannot make them hate
us any more than they already do. But perhaps it might wake them up to the lie
they tell themselves that it is just Labour activists who feel this way about
them. Losing their leader might be the wake-up call they need as to just how
toxic working with the Tories has been. It might help them kick start the
healing process they need as a party. It won’t feel like it on the day after the
election – but it could be the best thing that could happen to them as a Party.

4. The Lib Dems are currently running a “57 by-elections” strategy. Following
the success they had in holding on to Eastleigh after they threw everything they
had at it, they believe that this is their best bet at holding on to as many of
their seats as possible. Of course, the reality is you can’t do this very
successfully when it’s diluted 57 times. Like homeopathy, it doesn’t work. It’s
a silly lie people tell themselves to make them feel better even when their
sickness is fatal. They have lost a third of their members. They don’t have the
resources they once had. They will not take a threat to their leader lightly.
They will have to concentrate more resources on Sheffield Hallam than they had
originally planned to take them away from other seats. So even if we don’t gain
the seat, we win by stretching them thinner in other seats where we are
challenging them.

All Labour Party members should have a think about what they can do to help
Oliver Coppard win in May. At the very least, those of us who are a bit far away
from Sheffield can all donate to help Oliver get over the line. If he manages it
– and he could well manage it – this will be a political moment that will put
Portillo’s loss in 1997 in the shade.

Let’s go for it Labour. Good luck Oliver!




SOMETHING MUST BE DONE!

It is the cry of our age: something must be done!

As we are better informed than ever we seem to know more than ever what a
terrible world we live in. What a horrendous species we are. What horrors we can
inflict on each other and on ourselves.

But we retain our basic humanity, our basic decency. Our hope and our faith in
goodness, in justice, and in the fact that right can and must win.

But there are problems with knowing that something must be done. Because it is
not always clear what that something is. Something is hard. Something is
complicated. Something has consequences and we know, we know from heart-rending
and bitter experiences that sometimes something we do is the wrong thing. Our
actions have consequences too.

So do we freeze? Petrified into inaction? Or do we charge ahead? Gung ho, and
sure that our something is better than nothing? Losing our ability to do
something the next time something must be done?

Maybe what we need is a doctrine. A defining creed that overrides all other
considerations. Something that overrides all financial and practical
considerations. Or maybe we should go the other way. Bury our moral and sense of
obligations and look only at what we are practically able (and unable) to be
certain to achieve.

I don’t know the answers. This is not a column with answers. It strikes me now,
that every other column I read, by every other writer I admire has answers.

God, I envy them. I look at the horrors of war and I want to act. I want to
march in front of the guns. I want to stand between the messianic maniacs with
machetes and their victims. I want to rip the rockets from the hands of those
bombing schools and suburbs.

But I’m not going to. I am a coward. I am too comfortable in my life. I do not
have the right stuff. My morality is that of an armchair general, an armchair
tactician, God, even an armchair politician. As i have written before, I don’t
even have the courage to be the one who has to sit comfortably at home making
these life and death decisions.

And knowing this of myself, I can’t come to an easy doctrine that always
believes in British intervention. I can’t have that be my first option every
time something happens that is hideous and brutish elsewhere.

But I can’t always rule it out either. I can’t rule out sending the younger and
braver people of this country who volunteer to protect us and to police our
world into danger.

I don’t have a singular rule that says we should always or never take action. In
some ways, I think that those who do are possibly more comfortable than me.
Their certainty is their comfort blanket. But perhaps that is me passing off my
responsibilities again, passing off my own guilts for the results of the
positions I do and don’t support.

This is not a column with answers. God, I wish I had answers.

I am also aware that that was the third time I made a reference to a deity I am
not sure I believe in. As someone who has traveled in her life from faith to
agnosticism, I understand that faith itself has degrees. Faith in concepts you
were trained to question and those you weren’t.

The tradition in politics is to be wedded to answers and bend the questions to
fit them. Socialism, Capitalism, Communism, Fascism, – the comfortingly uniform
answer to a discomforting world.

This was supposed to be the summer lull. This wasn’t supposed to be a time when
we had to face the toughest questions about ourselves and our politics. This
should have been a column about sandcastles and windmills. About the fun that
politics can be.

So no, I don’t have answers. But maybe, just maybe it’s OK to admit that. To say
– as someone privileged enough to have a platform – that I don’t know what to
say. To admit that I am winging it.

Because we all are. Many with better information than me. Many with a better
understanding than me. But we are human. And as we face the worst of what that
means, we need to allow ourselves to be as open and human with each other about
how we reach consensus on what must be done.

Because let’s face it: Something must be done.




THE NASTY PARTY’S CAMPAIGN GETS NASTIER

Three days ago a group of prominent Tory women warned that the Lynton Crosby-led
negative campaign the Tories are running risks re-contaminating their party and
damaging their electoral prospects.

But since when did the Tories ever care about women and their uppity opinions?

Yesterday (30th July 2014) before 11 pm, @CCHQPress – an official Tory Twitter
account tweeted 62 times (including retweets). That seems fair enough, with all
that’s going on in the world.

Guess how many tweets were about the situation in Gaza? About Russia and the
decision on sanctions? On Ebola and the precautions being taken to protect
citizens of the UK?

None. Not a single one.

So maybe they have a great deal to celebrate? All those Tory successes and all
their many plans for the future?

Maybe not. In fact, only five of these tweets were positive. Of these three were
retweets. This meant that in total, the Tory press office could be arsed
composing a massive TWO tweets about their work and plans.

56 of their tweets yesterday were negative – 55 aimed at Labour and 1 at UKIP.

If they keep this work rate up from now to the election, they will have managed
to say a massive 560 positive things about their own side. That might sound a
lot – particularly about this shower. But it isn’t really. I’ve probably tweeted
that many times about Emmerdale. It would certainly be as nothing against the
15,400 negative tweets about Labour.

Now regular readers of this column will know I don’t always have anything but
gushing praise for everything Labour ever has done. So maybe this criticism is
justified?

Well, that’s up to everyone to judge for themselves. But one thing is
indisputable – they didn’t have 55 different things to say about Labour. In
fact, four of those tweets were a twisting of a quote from an Ed Balls quote
during an LBC interview. And a quarter – a massive 15 different tweets were
accusing Labour of plans to impose a “death tax”.

Yep, Death Tax. Those words lifted straight from the Tea Party movement in
America. Because what’s really needed in these difficult times is the politics
of Sarah Palin. Not.

There is room in politics for pointing out the flaws of your opponents. Let’s
face it, this post is hardly a beacon of positivity! And I’ve had a problem with
Labour going too negative in the past, yet I have slagged off the Tories before
and will do so again. And again and again. Because they are deserving of
criticism. They stalled the recovery with austerity economics that have failed
to pay down the debt. They are punishing the poor and vulnerable with measures
like the Bedroom Tax (and no more bloody “Spare Room Subsidy” nonsense from any
party who tries it on with “Death Tax” if you please). They have failed to
rebalance the economy leaving wages low and employment insecure.

But I will always try to balance that. Try to ensure that the majority of my
output is on what Labour’s offer is and why electing a Labour government will
make a difference to the lives of people in real, significant ways that matter.

Because ultimately the country has a choice. Between a Labour Party that is
offering a strong positive policy offer and a Tory Party unable and unwilling to
shake off their nasty image. A Party with so little left to offer they have to
resort to that image as their best chance. Not to win, but to beat the other
guy.

We’re a better Party than that and ultimately we’re a better country than that.
We sent Lynton Crosby that message the last time he masterminded this kind of
morally bankrupt Tory campaign in 2005. Let’s make sure we send the same message
again.




WRONG AFTER WRONG AFTER WRONG



Today there has been an apology in the continuing saga over the fallout of Lord
Rennard being accused of sexually harassing several women.

Was the apology to the women for the way in which the Party left them exposed
and unsupported? No.

Was it for the fact that some of those women have felt so unsupported within
their own party they have had no choice but to leave? No.

Was it for the fact that despite the women being described by the late appointed
over-seer of their discipline case as “credible” Rennard was let off through the
byzantine loopholes built in to protect the power within their party? No.

No today’s apology was – incomprehensibly – to Lord Rennard himself.

Now admittedly, it is clear that the processes of the Lib Dems need a great deal
of work to make them able to properly deal with the kind of behaviors we are
talking about in this case. And it is not just the victims who suffer when such
cases are so badly handled, but the accused too. Byzantine processes may have
meant that Lord Rennard has been let off the hook, but they equally mean that he
has been found guilty is.

No one has been satisfied by this dog’s dinner. But some people have been
deeply, deeply hurt by it. Some women and their families have been forced from
their party. Many others have been given the message that the establishment will
circle their wagons around your abuser as long as he’s one of them. Once again
the subtle message has rung out: Women in politics – know your place.

Reading the story in the Guardian, it is quite clear that Lord Rennard may soon
be reinstated to the Liberal Democrats. The only outstanding charge is of
bringing the Party into disrepute through “criticism of party processes”. The
stampede for the door if that holds up will be enormous. Who of us – in any
party – don’t occasionally criticize its processes?!

So it seems to me like Rennard will be back soon. And according to certain
Parliamentarians, this is a good thing. They have been expressing fears that the
Party is suffering because of their lack of “campaigning expert” Rennard.

That they are willing to express this – even anonymously – shows how far in
denial the Lib Dems are about their standing with the electorate. Like all they
really need is the right campaigning expert. It’s an astonishing lack of
self-knowledge about what their real problems are. How badly they have let down
those they promised something so very different too. How little they are trusted
and liked.

One campaigner is not going to make the difference. But being so blind as to the
damage you have done to your female activists might well do. Once again the Lib
Dems have proved themselves unworthy as a national party. Once again they have
let women in their own party down. Once again the political establishment has
protected their own at the expense of the less powerful. A less “liberal” or
“democratic” state of play is hard to imagine.

Over the last few years, I have been pretty open-minded about the potential of a
future coalition. Politically, I can see both sides of the argument. But how
could we have a working relationship with a Party so willing to throw their
female activists under the bus? How can we leave our women in situations where
they might not feel – or be – safe from harassment?

If Lord Rennard resumes his role in the Lib Dems it doesn’t just irreparable
taint them. It taints anyone who says “We’re ok enough with that to do business
with him”. I cannot support Labour being that Party.




CONSENSUS NOT CONSERVATISM




Four years ago, when I first joined the NPF, I didn’t really know what to
expect. I had heard stories of course. That is was a talking shop, a stitch-up,
an irrelevance.

My first experiences were not good. First in Gillingham and then in Wrexham, my
hopes of having a constructive role to play in the policy formulating process of
the Labour Party were comprehensively dashed and abandoned. Then came
Birmingham. Things had changed. We had meaningful discussions. We had a sense of
purpose. We had a belief that this was an important thing to do. That our time
was not being wasted, but that we – as members – were going to have a say in how
our policy was formulated.

Reading back my post from that time, I was skeptical that we would get things
like the policy submission and discussion website. I was wrong. Your Britain has
been a resounding success with something like 200,000 submissions coming to it.
As a Socialist Societies representative on the Stronger Safer Communities policy
commission, I was emailed every time there was a submission to our section. I
got a lot of emails. It was great to read ideas from members and supporters all
over the country. Many of those ideas are now encapsulated in the final
documents that have come out of not just this weekend, but the continuing
iterative process that came from allowing every member of the NPF to sit on a
policy forum.

So by the time, we came to this weekend and the so-called “Warwick process” I
was feeling substantially better. But I was also wary. I knew the proof of the
pudding would be in the eating. I know our party’s tendency to try to control
everything from the center. I wondered how much strong-arming, bribery, and
blackmail would be involved in achieving consensus.

The answer was very little. Ok, I wasn’t in the negotiations on the really
contentious issues – Trident, Rail etc. – only those who have submitted or
seconded amendments on the issues were part of the separate processes
negotiating final wording, and none of mine were on those topics (mine ranged
from housing to local government finance, Research and Development in health to
Science education – the joy of being a Socialist Societies representative is the
breadth of topics we get to cover).

But the openness and good-natured approach from the staff and the Shadow Cabinet
made these negotiations easy, pleasant and most of all fruitful. More than once
I was told, “I want you to go away with something”. There was a genuine desire
to ensure that delegates’ views and priorities will be reflected in our policy
offer. If and when Labour gets into government next year, I will be able to
point at things we do and say “I did that. I played a small part in the grand
collective that is our party in making that happen”.

That’s quite a humbling feeling.

That desire was reflected back to them by the delegates. This was a process that
treated us like grown-ups so we behaved like grown-ups. The word of the weekend
was the consensus. That we achieved it around a program that is both radical in
its scope but also deliverable is nothing short of extraordinary. We have a
blueprint now for a new Britain. A new type of society in which it is power and
opportunities that are redistributed – meaning there is less need for money to
be spent on interventions that happen too late. Now we need to be relentless in
pitching this to the nation. It is exciting, but our challenge now is to excite
others.

This was an incredibly hot weekend. Tempers could easily have frayed but they
didn’t. If someone had told me when traveling home from Wrexham in 2011 I would
be so excited by a National Policy Forum meeting I would have given them a few
choice words. We have come so far in such a short space of time. We achieved
what few thought we would back in 2010. We are a party united behind a new offer
– one quite unlike anything we have had before. That we have is a testament to
the incredibly hard work of Angela Eagle, Jon Cruddas and Ed Miliband and to the
dozens of Party staffers who worked so hard to make this the success that it has
been.




IS ED MILIBAND A VICTIM OF EVERYDAY SEXISM?



I am currently reading the brilliant book Everyday Sexism by Laura Bates. It is
a powerful account of the way society treats women and girls differently in our
expectations of them from cradle to grave. The examples given are heartbreaking
and moving – all the more so because most of them come from women and girls who
are not in the public eye, but yet are expected to permanently live as is
expected to live up to the standards expected as subjects of the male gaze. It’s
essential reading – especially for those many commentators who are the first to
comment on any piece here and elsewhere about the supposed iniquity of “positive
discrimination” measures.

It hasn’t been a good week for those who try to claim that sexism in politics is
a thing of the past. Cameron’s reshuffle – one that was heavily briefed by his
own team as a reshuffle for women – has been lackluster at best in the gender
equality stakes. Women now make up a whopping 29% of the cabinet.
Whoop-de-flaming-do. The new female leader of the Lords was due to earn £22k
less than her male predecessor until number 10 was shamed into a quick step
reversal on the pay. Her position it seems remains downgraded. Meanwhile, we
hear tales of Tory MPs acting like sexist morons as a woman is photographed near
them. Women having their image captured can only be doing so for your gaze,
right lads? (Wrong lads).

Meanwhile, the coverage in the press, be it the lamentation of the loss of the
middle-aged white men or the Downing Street Catwalk, has made sure women are
told exactly what their role is in political life. Sure you can be a Secretary
of State, but what really matters is your hemline. The snappers were all but
chanting “get them out for the lads”. The headlines have been so unsubtle, they
may as well have.

So as I started to read Everyday Sexism on the day my weekly LabourList column
was due, I was pretty sure I knew what my likely topic was going to be. And I
wasn’t wholly wrong.I am writing about sexism in politics. But there was a line
in the section of the book that jumped out at me. After a series of quotes and
examples of the way women are discussed in politics, the author poses the test
“try to imagine the same quotes being included in articles about David Cameron
or Nick Clegg” and – as anticipated – I couldn’t. But there is a name
screamingly missing: Ed Miliband. And now I think about the way Ed’s opponents
in politics and in the press like to portray him, it is quite obvious why.

The number one word Ed’s opponents like to use against him is “weak”. It’s an
odd attack when you think about it. What is weak about standing up and saying
“Despite the obvious personal cost I feel I am the right person to lead my
party”? What is weak about standing up on issues that really matter to real
people, such as the Bedroom Tax, the cost of living, and the skewed way our
economy is managed? If this were the easy option don’t you think we’d have had
an easier time of it? It is because these are the tough questions, and because
Ed refuses to act like simplicity is the answer – despite siren calls from left
and right for a more simple and comfortable answer – that he is called weak.

Since becoming leader, Ed has endured not just the additional scrutiny that all
who are thrust into the limelight must undergo, but a particular flavor of
derision, one that is very familiar to women.

Ed has been told he is “too ugly” to be Prime Minister a common trope used to
keep women down. Remember the outrage about the horrendous “Women who eat on
Tubes” crap? Wind forward a few months and we have the insanity that was
“baconsandwichgate”.

The harder of thinking among you may now believe that this is the time to start
cheering the death of sexism. “Yay,” you might be thinking, “If this is
happening to a man too, then we truly live in an equal society”.

Well, no.

Firstly there is no anti-sexism campaign in the world whose aim is for us all to
reach the lowest common denominator no matter how hard our detractors may try to
paint it that way.

Secondly, I think it’s more complicated than that. The press is hunting in their
pack and they are after Ed because they believe they see “weakness”. They
believe they see “weakness” because he is not behaving like their outdated
version of an alpha male. The tropes they use to attack him are used to
highlight his perceived womanliness and attack where they know a woman – in
their experience – can best be wounded.

As long as our images of “strength” reside in desperately outmoded and
old-fashioned ideals of manliness then women will suffer in comparison. But so
will men. Men who do fit that mold and men who don’t. The key point about sexism
and gendered stereotypes is that they force all of us into boxes that constrict
us. They force our dialogue onto boring tracks when we should be freewheeling.

Is Ed Miliband a victim of everyday sexism? On a conscious level, I think I’ve
made a case that he might be. Our politics have defined roles for women and men
and if you don’t fit your stereotype you will have to pay for that. The Tories
and their press acolytes have decided to treat Ed as a “not-leader” and one of
their ways of doing so is to treat him those others they see not fulfilling
their predetermined set of leadership characteristics: women.

But the real point is this: of course, Ed Miliband is a victim of everyday
sexism. Because he lives in a society that is daily harmed, traduced, and
twisted by it. Ed is a victim because we all are – boys and girls, women and
men, perpetrators and victims alike, we are stuck with the consequences of this
demeaning, narrow, and constricting culture.

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