Archive for May, 2011
Sharon Shoesmith and ‘Accountability’
Posted by diarmid in Business and Society, Politics on May 28th, 2011
Sharon Shoesmith is accountable for the cruel and tragic death of Peter Connelly. Government ministers are accountable for serious events that occur in their area of responsibility. But what do we mean by accountability? Does it mean that we expect those in ultimate charge to immediately take poison or be summarily executed when things go wrong, whatever they might or might not have done personally to prevent them? As far as Shoesmith is concerned that is exactly what many, including Ed Balls and Kevin Brennan MP writing on LabourList, appear to think. Read the rest of this entry »
Let’s AV it for the voters!
It’s the last week of the AV referendum campaign and time for the politicians to butt out and let the voters take over. In fact in this particular campaign they should always have been taking a back seat. We know their views, and they are not a surprise. Among MPs, if we assume there are no closet AV supporters among the Tories, we have 335 out of 650 supporting the status quo and only 144 clearly supporting AV. Politicians don’t reach power by cutting their feet from under themselves. Read the rest of this entry »