Britain has slipped ignominiously out of the top 50 nations for women’s political representation, strengthening calls for all-woman shortlisting (AWS).

All political parties have had the option to use AWS following the the Sex Discrimination (Election Candidates) Act 2002, but only Labour has taken this up. Consequently, 77 per cent of female MPs are from the Labour party.

High levels of female and other descriptive elected representation are associated with reduced corruption, reduced bureaucracy, and spending priorities reflective of the community being represented. So why have Davids Cameron and Davis refused to consider AWS when outlining their visions of the future of the Conservative party?
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Eagle-eyed regular readers will have noted the day (Thursday) the time (nearly lunch already) and will be wondering what’s happened to our Thursday rant this week. For everyone who hates it: I’m sorry, we haven’t decided to kill it (yet). But it is having a week off, mostly because I was going to have a crack today and I’m too busy. On stuff that feeds my two-year-old, not my ego, that is.

However, we are looking for more Ranters. The rules, remember, go like this:

1. Open to anyone, blogger, commenter, whatever. Even journalists.
2. 350 words maximum.
3. Any subject at all, as long as you have an opinion. Not that there’s a shortage of those here usually… We won’t censor it, beyond the usual caveats.
4. Links or short quotes are fine, as long as they’re just to illustrate your point, not to make it for you.

We give you the floor and a chance to promote your blog or opinions here. Of those we’ve run already, I’ve especially enjoyed this and this. But feel free to rant about whatever you like — they have all attracted lots of readers and even occasionally sparked off decent debate in the comment boxes. The next couple of weeks are spoken for already, but after that we have openings. Leave a comment below or email me at fairvote AT gmail DOT com to book your place in the sun.

The US military has raided an Iraqi Interior Ministry building and found evidence of torture and maltreatment of prisoners:
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On Friday, Chris Dillow asked: are suicide bombers rational? It’s a fine question, which he partly answers with reference to this new paper by Eli Berman and David Laitin (pdf):

Suicide terrorism, they [Berman and Laitin] say, is rational if you believe terrorism will be rewarded in the hereafter, or if you are altruisitic and believe your death will benefit you family and compatriots.

But there are (at least) two questions of rationality here. Who exactly are we asking if suicide terrorism is rational for? Read More

TV eats itself on a regular basis. Not just through the regular diet of talking head clip shows, but through the process of every good idea being repeated ad infinitum across every channel until its been flogged to death and then thrown out for twenty years until someone re-invents the wheel and the whole process begins again.
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After two weeks of rioting in France, the country’s attitude to minorities has come in for some criticism. France has never officially recognised cultural or religious minorities. The French government does not keep data on the ethnicity or religion of its citizens. It is illegal for organisations to hold such information on their employees. By contrast, in the US, companies over a certain size are legally obliged to monitor the ethnic makeup of their workforces. In the UK, while not compulsory, ethnic monitoring is considered good practice and can count in an employer’s favour when fighting claims of racial discrimination

In France, though, if you are French, you are French, that’s it. Ethnic minorities have no official status. There is no French equivalent of “African-American”, when you become a French citizen, you are expected to leave your old identity behind. Uniquely among the major western countries, the French government has no idea how many of its citizens are from ethnic minorities. This means that there can be no affirmative action programmes, no government grants for cultural activities and no community leaders filing into government buildings to be consulted on policy. Read More

Regular readers of The Sharpener will remember that back in the spring I dedicated numerous column inches to the arcane issue of the West Lothian question: How can it be justified that Scottish MPs have the right to vote on English issues that do not concern their constituents, while English MPs do not have the same right to vote on Scottish issues?

In my previous posting I argued that, personally, I did not think that the West Lothian question was so big an issue that it required further constitutional change. Very many disagreed with me. Some pointed to an English parliament as a workable (if, in my view, hugely expensive, complex and disruptive) option tied to UK-wide federalism.

A totally unworkable solution, one betraying a deep ignorance of and contempt for the British constitution, was the one chosen by the Tory party at the last general election. This is how I described it then: Read More

Nick Barlow writes:

Given that The Sun today includes William Hague in its not-at-all-ridiculously-hyperbolic list of ‘traitor MPs’ who dared to vote against the Blessed Tony desire to keep the streets safe and free from people who look a bit shifty, I assume that means he’ll be sacked from his News Of The World weekly column?

After all, surely no one at News International would be willing to employ a traitor, would they? I mean, one could imagine a lesser company – one run by, say, someone who’d abandon his nationality and take another one just to own a television station – taking part in a such heinous of employment, but not News International.

Hague is not a traitor, he is an MP who is doing the job he was elected to do, by protecting his constituents’ liberties.

But, if News International think he is a traitor, and they are nevertheless willing to continue employing him, then clearly News International is a nest of treason. And in these days when terrorists are on the loose, we can’t be too careful. Consequently, senior figures in News International, including Rupert Murdoch, Rebekah Wade (editor of The Sun) and Andy Coulson (editor of News of the World) should immediately be arrested, held for 90 days without charge (of course), then be charged with treason and if found guilty, imprisonsed for life.

And life should mean life.

This week’s ranter: Ken Owen blogs at Militant Moderate, and his chief interests are cricket, constitutions and controversy. Occasionally he even has something amusing or relevant to say.

Motivations, motivations, motivations

Tony Blair made a big thing of “education, education, education” in 1997, yet his record has been unimpressive. Let’s leave aside that the massive increases in spending haven’t achieved remotely proportional returns. Because the real disgrace behind Blair’s record is his continued manipulation of the educational system to suit his political ends.

Why does he want 50% of young people to go to university? Is it because he thinks that a university education is desirable for all? No, it’s because he knows that, in the UK at least, getting to university is considered an objective standard of a good education. Never mind if the real standard of universities is dropping – if more people are getting into higher education, the government must be doing something right. Right?

The same principle lies behind the means used to ‘encourage’ the top universities to take a higher proportion of state school students – the most notable one being continued threats of withdrawn funding. A simple statistical argument doesn’t hold up; A-Levels are not the ideal form of training for university entrance, and when 20% of students are getting A grades then making arguments on such a basis is perverse. Of course, they wouldn’t want to introduce A+ or A++ grades at A-Level, because then the private schools would come out on top.

Fiddling the system this way is like making up your bank balance – it might make you feel better, but at the end of the day it doesn’t help much. Sure, manipulating the education structures gets you a nice headline (and boy, wouldn’t Blair want one of those today?), but what does it actually achieve? Pupils aren’t better educated; the reputation of our universities flounders; millions of pounds are pumped into educating students who would be better off doing something else. If the education system is to improve, we need to stop fiddling the figures, and actually make state schools work.

I don’t know if he’s doing it just to piss Cameron off, but Basher Davis has started spewing out policies like a man who’s just downed a bucket of Blue Bols. We’ve had the policy to join the Ligue communiste revolutionnaire in sticking it up Brussels, the policy to entrench inherited privilege forever, and the policy to throw weed-smokers into a pit of poisonous snakes. Or something like that. Now, we’ve got another one for the clients. The big one: Bring Back The Grammar Schools. (Or even, create 60 more secondary moderns.)

There’s a lot of it about. The logic of the critique of comprehensives is simple: they’re a sham. Read More