Why is the UK media so silent about the mass surveillance programmes revealed in Edward Snowden's NSA Leaks?

When I first heard about the NSA/GCHQ snooping revelations, my initial thought was: "Well duh."

Truth be told, I would have been deeply surprised if our intelligence agencies hadn't been intercepting our online communications on the flimsiest of subtexts. Nevertheless, it's always slightly alarming to have your worst suspicions confirmed.

While the Guardian's revelations seem set to keep on coming - the most recent story revealing that the US has been carrying out a large-scale bugging campaign at the embassies of its European allies - it's noteworthy that many other British media outlets seem surprisingly unwilling to report on the content of Snowden's leaks.

The central story - the creation of a mass surveillance machine by our largely unaccountable intelligence agencies, which is being used to indiscriminately cull personal data - seems to have been entirely bypassed by many publications, who are instead directing their focus on Snowden's globe-trotting attempt to find asylum abroad. I say "surprisingly unwilling", but in many ways the lukewarm response from most of the mainstream media is entirely to be expected.

So, why are the British press largely keeping Snowden's leaks at arm's length? It's impossible to give a comprehensive answer to this question, but here are a few suggestions.

1. Because the intelligence services told them to?
In case you think this sounds like the talk of a swivel-eyed conspiracy theorist, have a read of this story. The day after the NSA's PRISM programme was revealed, the Ministry of Defence issued a DA (Defence Advisory) Notice - often referred to as just a D-Notice - to try and limit the fallout from the Snowden revelations.

The entirely voluntary DA-Notice system is intended, as the official website clearly states:

to prevent inadvertent public disclosure of information that would compromise UK military and intelligence operations and methods, or put at risk the safety of those involved in such operations, or lead to attacks that would damage the critical national infrastructure and/or endanger lives.

Obviously the D-Notice system serves a useful purpose, as no journalist in their right mind would want to pen anything that presents a credible threat to national security or puts lives at risk. However, if you read the notice (as leaked by the blogger Guido Fawkes), it's not hard to see how it could have a chilling effect on journalists and serve to shut down further debate and discussion of the issues raised by the leaks.

2. Because it's not really that big a story?
Speaking on Radio 4's The Media Show last week, Daily Mail columnist Stephen Glover suggested a couple of reasons for the minimal column inches given over to Snowden's revelations. The main thrust of his argument was that the Guardian had "overblown" the importance of these leaks, a point he attempted to make by focusing on their story about British intelligence spying on our allies at the G20.

True, the idea that nation states' intelligence services spy on one another, even on their allies, does not come as a great surprise. However, if the construction of a global dragnet surveillance system is not a big story, I'd dearly love to know what is.

3. Because the media are still unsure about the narrative surrounding these leaks
This was Glover's other claim, and one which I wholeheartedly agree with. Is Edward Snowden a "goodie"  (giving up a $122,000 a year salary and a home in Hawaii to expose mass snooping by our intelligence services) or a "baddie" (recklessly revealing intelligence secrets and endangering innocent lives)?

The press, in particular the tabloids, like black-and-white morality tales, not shades of grey.

4. Because most of the media don't have access to the main source
If there's one thing sure to leave a journalist disgruntled, it's lack of access. If there's one thing guaranteed to send a journalist apoplectic, it's being scooped. While news organisations are normally happy to crib stories from their competitors, the fact that Snowden chose to work almost exclusively with the Guardian and the Washington Post is part of what drives the spite behind stories like the New York Daily News's attempted smear piece on journalist Glenn Greenwald.

5. Because it challenges official sources
Yes, some UK news titles are owned by proprietors or run by editors whose political stance prohibits active questioning of the intelligence services. But, perhaps more depressingly, there's an awful lots of journalists who are deeply impressed by power, despite it being their job to interrogate it.

6. Because it's a complex story, and hence time intensive and less easily digestible
This is a consideration that far too many people overlook. PM, the BBC's flagship evening radio news programme, ran with the Snowden story on Tuesday evening. The item began with a lightning-quick round-up of the programmes Snowden had exposed, before devoting a good 15-20 minutes to Snowden's attempts to negotiate asylum.

The focus on the man is in some ways entirely understandable - it adds a strong human interest angle to what is otherwise a very complex, detail-heavy story - but there's no doubt that it moves the spotlight away from privacy abuses and a real analysis of the implications of Snowden's revelations.

While the lack of coverage can feel maddening at times, there's no doubt that the NSA leaks have encouraged a vast number of people to start taking their online privacy seriously. Take, for example, the huge popularity of the PRISM Break website, which provides web users with a list of companies who are not currently part of the NSA's PRISM program. It's also worth pointing out that media outlets, like political parties, often follow rather than lead on an issue. If concern about online surveillance reaches a tipping point among their readers, you can guarantee there will be a whole lot more articles about it in the future.

The Left needs to stop parroting the terminology of the Right. Talk of "welfare" only fuels the scrounger myth - it's time to go back to "social security"

I've been planning for a few weeks to write about the change in the language used to describe people who claim benefits - a resolve hardened after seeing the much-shared Daily Mail front page pronouncing Mick Philpott, convicted of manslaughter following the death of six of his children, a "vile product of welfare UK".

Once my spluttering rage at the grotesque inappropriateness of equating an extreme criminal act with claiming benefits had subsided and I'd wiped my spittle-flecked monitor clean, I started to pay closer attention to the headline's wording. One word clearly took centre stage: welfare, a term known once upon a time as "social security".

Then, quite by accident, I stumbled across this excellent article by Labour peer Ruth Lister, chairman of the left-wing Compass group. Lister charts brilliantly why this change in language matters. If social security suggests a safety net to stop citizens falling through the cracks, then welfare, used as a noun, is easily associated in the minds of the public with what she calls:

a stigmatised US-style residual form of poor relief. It is all the more stigmatising because of the constant coupling with "dependency", so that in many people's eyes receipt of social security is now equated with a "dependency culture" that research does not in fact substantiate.

With the scrounger myth continuing to exert a strong hold over tabloids and public alike, it's ever-more important that the Left chooses its words carefully. In other words, it's time to stop borrowing the Right's terminology. Let's bid farewell to welfare and "benefits" (the latter carrying a vague suggestion of luxury rather than entitlement) and say hello to good old social security.

Most politicians have no idea how the less well-off live. They should be forced to find out if they want to remain our elected representatives.

In Thomas More's Utopia, a strange sixteenth century mix of fiction and political philosophy, the author floats an intriguing idea: that anyone who seeks political power should automatically be disqualified from holding it.

While that might be taking things too far - after all, we don't want to press-gang people into public office against their will - we should give serious consideration to the question: why do people choose go into politics?

For large swathes of the general public, the answer to this would be because they are all self-serving individuals out to feather their own nests. Personally I think that's overly glib and cynical, and not a view borne out by the politicians I've met in person. I'm still naive/gullible/stupid enough to believe that the majority of politicians enter politics out of a genuine desire to make a difference, but to succeed that needs to supplemented with a large dose of personal ambition.

There's also no question that the last few decades have seen the professionalisation of politics and the rise of a distinct "political class". If More's criteria were applied today, the House of Commons would be entirely empty. As the Guardian's Aditya Chakrabortty pointed out in a recent column:

In 1979, 40% of Labour MPs came from a manual occupation; according to analysis by the Smith Institute that is now down to 9%. Just 4% of all representatives in the Commons can claim a background in a manual occupation, which is roughly the same proportion as went to Eton.

Over one in four of all Tory MPs were previously employed in finance; more parliamentarians came from jobs in politics than from health, teaching, the army, agriculture and voluntary services put together. With his frictionless ascent from thinktanks to backroom Labour politics to the cabinet, David Miliband is typical of the gilded class who masquerade as our delegates in Westminster.

But while it's perhaps perverse to ban those who want to do the job, it's not unfair to say that, as a bare minimum, our political representatives should know how their constituents live and a degree of empathy for those living in less fortunate circumstances than themselves.

Fast forward then to Iain Duncan Smith. The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions experienced what many pundits referred to as his "Marie Antoinette moment" this week by claiming during an interview with the Today programme that he could live on £53 a week "if I had to". A hastily drawn-up petition asking him to do just that has currently amassed almost a quarter of a million signatures.

Yes, there is something unseemly about a Cabinet minister on £134,565 claiming he would have no problem getting by on a fraction on that. But what was more disturbing about IDS's dismissiveness was that he is one of the most knowledgeable Tory ministers when it comes to the reality of social deprivation. His issue is not that he is unaware of how people live, but that he lacks the empathy to put himself in their shoes. For the former Tory leader, the impoverished are simply not aspiring and striving hard enough.

Empathy has become a vogue subject in academia over the past couple of years but it's something that large swathes of professional politicians - and not just on the Tory benches - completely lack. Last November, Lord Freud, the government's welfare reform minister, launched a scathing attack on

the incapacity benefits, the lone parents, the people who are self-employed for year after year and only earn hundreds of pounds or a few thousand pounds, the people waiting for their work ability assessment then not going to it

When it was suggested that his background - Oxford, Financial Times journalist, investment banker, Tory peer - might prevent him from fully grasping what life was like for those living on benefits, the peer's reply was instructive: 

You don't have to be the corpse to go to the funeral, which is the implied criticism there.

Which is, of course, true. The idea that's it's necessary to have experienced something directly to understand it is the worst of all postmodern fallacies. I haven't personally been caught up in an extreme weather event, but that didn't prevent me feeling sympathy for people who lost their lives and homes in Hurricane Sandy.

There are, though, limits to this principle. In order to empathise, you have to at least make the effort to imagine your way into another person's situation. It's worth pointing out that Lord Freud has never actually been an elected  representative, which means he's never had to trundle round an estate or a tower block canvassing support from people who live there. Instead he's known the Oxford quad, the newsroom, the plush banking headquarters and now the Lords. It's hardly surprising he's not got a handle on the lives of those in Britain's low-income households.

So I'd like to propose that all Britain's political representatives spend a week living on benefits before they take office. This is not a new idea. In 1984 writer Matthew Paris, then a Tory MP, spent a week attempting to live on the benefits paid to an unemployed worker in Newcastle. He failed miserably. In 2003 Michael Portillo starred in the BBC documentary When Michael Portillo Became A Single Mum documentary (clips available to watch here). He emerged a seemingly changed man, somewhat chastened by his experience. More recently Austin Mitchell, Mark Oaten, Tim Loughton and Nadine Dorries featured in Tower Block of Commons.

You might think this all sounds like a colossal waste of time. Haven't MPs got more pressing things to worry about? My answer would be an unequivocal no. Empathy is an absolutely crucial part of the political picture. Take the Coalition's spending cuts. Without that empathy they are just a policy. It isn't until you seem the damage they have wrought up close that the human element begins to loom into focus.

Ugly business neologisms of the day #1: "Onboarding"

Welcome, dear reader, to the first in a new series.

One of the English language's great strengths is it's adaptability, the sense that it is constantly shifting and evolving, borrowing words from other languages, fusing words, their meanings altered as they are adopted by new subgroups of speakers. Most of the time this is evidence of the vitality of the language, something celebrated by writers from Shakespeare to Joyce to Walcott. 

And then there's the world of business, where words and phrases are created in order to lend an air of gravitas to concepts that would be easily-graspable by your average six-year-old. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, I give you...

Ugly business neologism #1: Onboarding

Onboarding, also known as organizational socialization, refers to the mechanism through which new employees acquire the necessary knowledge, skills, and behaviours to become effective organizational members and insiders. Tactics used in this process include formal meetings, lectures, videos, printed materials, or computer-based orientations to introduce newcomers to their new jobs and organizations.

Example usage: "He spent a week with us at corporate so we could quickly onboard him into the company culture."

Just no.

Media organisations relying on unpaid content reinforces elitism. So should journalists refuse to write for free, or is it a necessary evil?

Should journalists ever write for free? It's a knotty question.

Freelance journalist Nate Thayer sparked an intense debate this week when he published an email thread between him and the global editor of The Atlantic asking if he'd be interested in "repurposing" one of his recent stories for their website. All in all, it sounded like a relatively cushty commission. The catch? She wanted him to do it for free. 

I think we can all agree that a for-profit news organisation asking a veteran journo to provide free copy on the basis that it will boost their exposure ("We unfortunately can’t pay you for it, but we do reach 13 million readers a month") displays a fairly staggering level of cheek. But how about lesser-known writers?

My gut response is that if we want high-standard content, we need to pay for it. Yes, it's possible to quickly churn out a blog or a reaction piece to unfolding events, but in-depth journalism takes time and research. And relying on free content, as with unpaid internships, means journalism is only accessible to those with a financial safety net. As Gawker's Cord Jefferson put it:

These people are right to be concerned about the homogeneity of media, a problem that worries me as well.

But it's then incumbent upon all of us to recognize that this is the culture we breed when we offer to pay writers nothing or next to nothing, thereby immediately eliminating anyone who needs a paycheck in order to feed themselves and keep a roof over their heads.

In other words, porfessional journalism becomes largely the preserve of the well-off. That said, I do think there are some occasions when it's okay as to write without expectation of payment, which I'd broadly summarise as:

• When you're writing for your own personal satisfaction or to air your own views (this blog would be an example). 
• When you're writing on a specialised or arcane topic that you're passionate about but there isn't really any money in. This could include writing for a non-profit alt periodical, or one with no freelance budget.
• When the exposure - for example having a piece published by a well-known news organisation - is genuinely going to add to your CV and increase the chances of having work published by other sites. 

Google glasses: just another cool accessory, or the first step towards a sinister, tech-driven dystopia?

The evil masterminds at Google have just released a new video showcasing their Google Glass project.

All of a sudden the last episode of season one of Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror is looking less like a dystopian nightmare, and more like a particularly prescient episode of the Gadget Show...

Amid all the rejoicing about the passage of the gay marriage bill through the Commons, shouldn't we spare a thought for the rights of bigots?

As MPs debated the gay marriage bill today, the above tweet caught my eye.

The bill passed through the Commons by 400 votes to 175, a majority of 225 which should be enough to get it through the Lords this year.

However, there have already been mutterings from MPs such as Matthew Offord, the Conservative member for Hendon, that this represents a slippery slope which could lead to marriage being redefined to include polygamy. And picture the old school Tory constituency party members across the country fretting that this will inevitably lead to people being able to marry their pets or inanimate objects like their bannister. For them, I offer this:

You can read the rest here.

Billions of dollars wasted, thousands of communities ruined, but one simple fact about the "War on Drugs" remains: it doesn't work

If you missed The House I Live In, a brilliant documentary about the colossal failure of America's so-called "war on drugs", shown on BBC Four last night as part of the Storyville strand, I urge you to watch it (you can view it on iPlayer here).

Directed by Eugene Jarecki, the film's take-home message was simple: while hard drugs ravage communities, the war on drugs finishes them off. If you've ever watched The Wire and wondered if it was over-egging the pudding, Jarecki's film made you realise it was virtually a fly-on-the-wall documentary (the show's creator, David Simon, popped up as a talking head discussing his time on the streets of Baltimore as a journalist observing the results of current drug policy).

The film contained some fascinating insights. For example, while Nixon is credited with launching the war on drugs, his hard-line rhetoric was actually offset by some relatively progressive policy ideas, with two third of the money spent on treatment for addicts and only a third on tougher policing.

Best of all, Jarecki also took the time to talk to young men - mostly poor, black young men - who dealt drugs or had been convicted of doing so. He dismantled the idea that drugs were simply a matter of personal choice. As Simon pithily put it: history shows that if you take a company town and remove the company [or rather outsource all its jobs to China], new illegal industries will spring up to fill the vacuum. In some places becoming a drug dealer is the only logical career choice.

In case you think that sounds like bleeding heart left-wing cant, the film featured interviews with judges, law and order-loving prison officers - check out, for example, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) - and weary-looking drugs cops, all saying pretty much the same thing. The war on drugs not only isn't working, it's actually exacerbating the problem.

Surely if everyone agrees the war on drugs is ineffective, things are set to change? If only it were so simple. For one thing, only a tiny minority of US politicians are prepared to put their head above the parapet on the issue - most, perhaps rightly, assume that anything other than a hard-line stance on drugs would be electoral death.

The other thing that keeps drug reform off the agenda is perhaps even more disturbing: America's prison industry. At present the US has 2.3 million citizens incarcerated, the highest in the world, and there is a burgeoning industry with a vested interest in building more prisons, which means more prisoners are needed to fill them. It should come as no surprise that these corporate interests are lobbying hard for a continuation of the status quo.

Is it possible to have a rational debate about drugs? Films like The House I Live In would suggest it is. But until politicians truly commit themselves to evidence-based politics and lobbyists are challenged, the war on drugs will continue to destroy lives and communities across the globe.

As we bid farewell to the welfare state, it's time to get on board with the latest development in lefty anger: "Coalition rage"

After reading Aditya Chakrabortty's brilliant obituary for the welfare state in today's Guardian, I coined a new term: "Coalition rage". It's that seething, uncontrollable anger you feel when you read about yet another example of the Government's wanton disregard for Britain's most vulnerable.

I initially scoffed when I heard people earning £55,000 boo-hooing about the loss of their child benefit - or part of it, at any rate - but I actually think Chakrabortty is right to say that removing the benefit from Britain's richest has two negative effects. Firstly, it turns it into something that can be dismissed as "for the poor". And that means only one thing: that it can be reduced further in the future without raising the ire of pushy middle-class parents.

He also points to interesting research in the piece which backs the idea universal benefits (i.e. benefits that everyone gets, regardless of income) are more efficient and actually cheaper than means-tested ones.

Food for thought.

Are burglars really "cowards"? Or was Judge Bowers right to say housebreaking requires courage?

A Crown Court judge caused a media hurricane-in-a-teacup back in September for claiming, during sentencing, that burglary required "a huge amount of courage". I remember thinking at the time that saying that aloud in open court itself required a fair degree of bravery.

This week Judge Peter Bowers was issued with a reprimand by the Office for Judicial Complaints for his comments, which he made as part of his justification for sparing the defendant a custodial sentence. Back in September op-ed writers threw their arms in the air in outrage and magistrate's son David Cameron duly took to the Daybreak sofa to froth self-righteously and declare from on high that "burglary is cowardice". Thanks for clearing that up Dave.

But few pundits at the time bothered asking: was Judge Bowers was right? At this point, it's worth looking at his actual wording:

I might get pilloried for it … it takes a huge amount of courage, as far as I can see, for somebody to burgle somebody's house. I wouldn't have the nerve. Yet somehow, bolstered by drugs and desperation, you were prepared to do that.

Firstly, it's worth saying that we have no evidence that this was a dearly held belief judge Bowers had been dying to share with the world for years. Maybe he spoke without thinking, or maybe he was suffering from postprandial somnolence. But let's suppose for a second that he meant what he said: that burglary requires balls.

Now let's look at what burglary entails: the brazenness to walk into someone else's property, knowing that if you get caught you face arrest or, if you're an American housebreaker, the possibility getting shot. Yes, it's an incredible violation of other peoples' personal space. And yes, offenders should be punished. But notice that at no point did Judge Bowers say "I think burglary is, like, totes jokes" or "people who have been burgled should just shut their mouths and just suck it up."

To say that burglars are cowards is to play into the conventional narrative that criminals turn to illegal activity because they are too lazy to make it straight. Which simply isn't true. Watch this video of an interview with an American burglar, and listen to the phenomenal level of detail he puts into the planning. Read about drug gangs or mafia bosses expanding their empires, and chances are they are working longer hours than your run-of-the-mill workaholic CEO.

While Judge Bowers was pilloried for his remarks, I think his real crime in the eyes of the tabloid press was compassion. He concluded his sentencing that day:

I think prison very rarely does anybody any good. It mostly leaves people the chance to change their own mind if they want to. I don't think anybody would benefit from sending you to prison today. We'd all just feel a bit easier that a burglar had been taken off the streets.

After all, to claim, even for a second, that criminals are anything other than worthless scum is to treat them as human beings, which opens a very complicated can of worms indeed.

Is the UK set to become part of the "post-developed" world?

Britain's politicians and business bosses like to paint our country as a "world leader": a thriving, socially-progressive First World hub of technological  innovation and ruthlessly efficient public services.

But the other day, as I sat at my computer writing a story about the cut to local councils' road maintenance budgets - further reducing their ability to patch up our ever more pockmarked roads - it occurred to me that a new term was needed to describe Britain's socio-economic status.

Just as we use the term "post-industrial" to describe a society that has moved beyond heavy industry and instead employs people to make flat whites and work in "creative design agencies", web start-ups and investment banking, we need a fresh phrase for a country that is dismantling its national health service, savagely cutting social care and even reducing weekly bin collections.

My friend, a fiendishly clever policy wonk (think Data in Star Trek) who works for a local authority, suggested "post-developed de-developing countries," which, while not particularly catchy, captures it quite nicely.

But while my friend and I were being light-hearted, the implications here are far from funny. Think this is just petty scaremongering? What the majority of people don't realise when talking about "the cuts" is that most of them haven't happened yet (as my friend put it: "we've only eaten a polo mint so far, but the main course is on its way").

Plotted on a graph, you can see local authorities budgets plummeting just as service demand from Britain's ageing population is set to sharply spike - and that isn't taking into account the extra demand created by the cuts to services (for example, cuts to adult social care will mean a rise in pensioner hospital admissions).

The satirical news site the Daily Mash ran a story this week headlined: "Britain to probably have some electricity in 2014." The scary thing is, I wouldn't have been that surprised if it had been genuine.

Why do we need elected police commissioners? Don't be fooled, this isn't about devolving power to local communities, it's a chance to shift the blame

After election fever comes the comedown.

As those days and nights spent sweating over the prospect of a Romney victory, watching Karl Rove's mathematical meltdown, and wondering whether Obama really could take Florida dissipate into the cold reality of "fiscal cliffs" and "grand bargains", elections junkies the country over are being forced to go cold turkey. The  psephologists have crawled back to their academic lairs and Nate Silver has been returned to his magic box.

But just when it seems nothing could top the thrill of seeing Romney vanquished and Obama re-elected as only the forth Democrat President to win two terms since 1900, a new election hoves into view. And this one you can actually vote in! Yes, that's right dear voter, this Thursday is the elections for England and Wales' 41 police and crime commissioners (PCCs).

Except, inexplicably, it seems the rest of the UK isn't exactly radiating with enthusiasm. Large numbers are completely oblivious to the fact it's even taking place, with voter turnout expected to dip below 20%, a record low for a national UK election, while the vast majority of people are unable to name any of their local candidates.

All of which suggests this was not a burning issue for the UK electorate. So why exactly is it happening? And what will the new commissioners actually do? According to the Home Office website, the PCCs will have influence over key areas like CCTV, street lighting, graffiti and tackling gangs, but their central purpose is to

ensure the policing needs of their communities are met as effectively as possible, bringing communities closer to the police, building confidence in the system and restoring trust.

In other words, it's all about local democracy: "Bringing more of a public voice to policing and giving the public a name and a face to complain to if they aren't satisfied."

Which is convenient, because with a 20% cut to the police budget in the pipeline and the loss of 15,000 officers by 2015, one would imagine there's a whole lot of people about to feel very unsatisfied. Notice a rise in anti-social behaviour or a drop-off in police response times a couple of years down the line? Don't bother the Government with your quibbling, your PCC clearly just hasn't been doing their job properly. Off with their head.

The idea that this is a genuine exercise in localism just simply isn't credible, because the Coalition is only interested in devolving power to two sectors: the private and the voluntary. If you want to know what Cameron and Osborne really think of local government, go and count the number of empty offices at council buildings across the land.

While I'm sure the individual PCCs will, once elected, work hard for their local communities, they ultimately look set, as Polly Toynbee put it in Dogma and Disarray: Cameron at Half-Time, to be "squeezed into insignificance between an interventionist Home Office and the private contractors lined-up to take over large slices of policing." This is, after all, a Home Office determined to decide where and how the money is spent like never before. Ironically, it's with the privatisation of the police that the PCCs could have the most - indeed, a worrying amount - of influence. As shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper pointed out in a piece for the Guardian:

The new commissioners will face serious decisions on the future of policing and private contracts. A strong push is under way both from Tory government ministers and from private companies to contract out large swaths of public policing, yet there has been no debate about the risks or the safeguards needed.

The introduction of PCCs also further politicises our police force. While the founder of the modern police force Sir Robert Peel's claim that the police should act "in complete independence of policy" was always a pipedream - the Battle of Orgeave, anyone? - there's no question that the PCC system has the potential to turn policing into a microcosm of party politics.

But let's not be pessimistic. My hope is that individual PCCs will use their position to hold central government to account: speaking up on swingeing cuts, vehemently opposing further privatizations and loudly voicing the concerns of their local communities. They might have been intended as political window dressing, but who's to say they can't make their voices heard?

A personal, last-minute letter from Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney to the American electorate

Dear America,

I think 47% of you are feckless types dependent on Government handouts. As a hedge fund manager I destroyed hundreds of thousands of jobs and my people skills are so poor that I actually told an interviewer I preferred data to people.

I look forward to your vote.

Yours,

Mitt

Class, a new left-wing think tank, can help craft a coherent response to this Government's cruel indifference to inequality

Last Wednesday I attended the parliamentary launch of the Centre for Labour and Social Studies (Class), a new think tank set-up by Unite the Union to act as a lightening rod for left-wing debate and discussion.

There was a packed turn-out in one of the Commons' beautiful Committee Rooms to see speeches by, among others, Independent columnist Owen Jones, TUC deputy general secretary Frances O'Grady, and Professor Richard Wilkinson, co-author of the brilliant The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone.

The parliamentary launch centred around the release of Class's recent publication Why Inequality Matters (available to read online here), which draws heavily on the ideas of The Spirit Level. For those that haven't read it, the central thesis is simple: the larger a society's income inequality, the more devastating its social problems.

Whereas Peter Mandelson famously said that New Labour were "intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich" as long as they paid their taxes, The Spirit Level empirically shows that material inequality actually leads to higher rates of mental illness, obesity, teenage pregnancies, and even murder, while severely limiting social mobility, trust and life expectancy.

Owen Jones rightly pointed out that a think tank can't single-handedly save the world, but the launch of Class is genuinely important as a means of helping the left present a coherent response to policy planners and journalists. As someone tweeted to me recently: "While the left thinks about things deeply, the right acts." And you know what? They're spot on. As right-wing economist Milton Friedman wrote in 1962:

Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable. [my italics]

And that's precisely what a think tank can do: float ideas in the pubic sphere ready for when they are needed.

Take, for example, the banking crash in 2008, a time when the "politically impossible" certainly did become "politically inevitable" - large swathes of the UK banking system were nationalised in order to prevent the entire global economy going belly-up, something that even those on Labour's far-left could hardly have dared dream of.

Unregulated free-market capitalism was shown to be profoundly knickerless, but the financial system has largely carried on as if the whole thing was an unfortunate blip  thanks to the lack of a coherent left-wing response (I recommend reading Class's "think piece" on the effects of the crash, a brilliant summary of the idiocy of free market dogma: not only is it profoundly unjust, it's also economically unsound).

Faced with high unemployment, a rapidly vanishing welfare state and a shocking lack of social housing, Britain in 2012 is calling out for some fresh ideas. Let's hope Class can help deliver them.

Multinational organisations like Apple and Facebook regard tax avoidance as a moral imperative. Isn't it time we made them pay up?

In the midst of the Jimmy Carr tax avoidance scandal earlier this year (in case you were holidaying off-planet that week, Carr was left rather red-faced after it emerged that his accountant was channelling the comedian's earnings into a Jersey-based tax shelter), the BBC carried a fascinating interview with accountant Ronnie Ludwig. Yes, that's right, a fascinating interview. With an accountant.

As you might expect, Ludwig drew a firm distinction between tax evasion (trying to avoid playing tax by illegal means) and tax avoidance (attempting to mitigate the amount of tax you pay). But what most interested me was his answer to the question "Is morality part of your business?"

No, it isn't. We do not sit in judgment of our clients' moral values, nor do we preach morals to them. What we do is give advice based on the law. 

Pushed about whether a tax avoidance scheme designed to circumvent the intent of the law would bother him, he replied: "Probably, on a personal level, yes. But I'm there to advise on the legality of it, and if this particular scheme would work, and that is it." I have no doubt that Ludwig's stance is standard practice in most areas of professional life.

Jimmy Carr at least had the decency to be embarrassed once his tax arrangements became public ("I now realise I've made a terrible error of judgment"), but yesterday a gem of a press release landed in my inbox from Nigel Green, the chief executive of the deVere Group, the world’s largest independent financial advisors. Written in response to David Cameron's comments in parliament last week that he was "unhappy" with the level of tax avoidance by large corporations operating in Britain, Green retorts:

Mr Cameron is slamming companies who take legal measures to minimise their tax liabilities.  Of course businesses try and mitigate their taxation as they have a responsibility to their shareholders to turn as large a profit as possible, which is both honourable and economically responsible as profit creates jobs and wealth. 

That word "honourable" really leaps out - and not just because I've italicised it. Green and his ilk appear to believe, entirely sincerely, that tax avoiders are performing a morally laudable public service. This despite the fact that the "wealth creator" argument has already been comprehensively dismantled (for a quick overview, I recommend this brilliant column by the Guardian's Aditya Chakrabortty or this article by Salon's Michael Lind. For a longer view check out Matt Taibbi's long profile of Mitt Romney in Rolling Stone).

Better yet, Green goes on to say in his press release that the Prime Minister having the audacity to refer to massive corporate tax avoidance constitutes "demonising corporations" and could "incite protest groups to employ ‘direct action’ tactics against major brands". David Cameron: anti-corporate rabble-rouser. It's certainly a novel approach. 

Trying to frame a rational response to this level of brazen brass neckery (dictionary definition: "someone with no sense of shame about what they do") is extremely difficult. All we can say for certain is: Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more. The global financial elite is operating in a mirror world, one in which black is white and up is down and being asked to pay your full tax bill is not only a gross imposition, but as Green makes clear, to do so would be a gross dereliction of duty to your shareholders.

Appeals to corporate conscience or the public good are now worthless. The only way to clamp down on tax avoidance is regulation that honours the spirit of the law and an aggressive approach to closing loopholes.

But the problem with closing loopholes, as Amy Rosenbaum pointed out in reference to VP nominee Paul Ryan, is that it requires standing up to the special interests that benefit from them. In August there were calls for Google bosses to be hauled in front of the Treasury Select Committee to explain why they paid only £6m tax on UK revenues of £395m in 2011. 

This is, just to be clear, the same Google who it was reported in May had met with Tory ministers at least once a month since the last general election. Unless the cosy relationship between UK politicians and multinationals is severed, the prospect of getting large corporations to pay their full tax bills seems a distant blot on the horizon.

The court interpreting saga continues as Capita's £300m Framework Agreement with the Ministry of Justice is branded "unsalvageable"

As the old adage goes: if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Yesterday the Justice Select Committee (JC) held its first evidence session into the £300m court interpreting contract awarded to private translation firm Applied Language Solutions (ALS) by the Ministry of Justice (you can watch the evidence session here).

It's fair to say the contract, which came into play on February 1 this year, has been an unmitigated disaster (I co-authored a piece for The Guardian in March this year, one month after the new contract came into affect). Morale in the court interpreting community is dangerously low, with many highly-qualified and experienced interpreters drifting away from the profession in protest at slashed pay rates and what they see as a dangerous decline in the standard of court interpreting.

Back in March I also interviewed Mirela Watson, a Romanian translator with 15 years experience of court interpreting, who told me she was "extremely unhappy" with the new arrangements and that the standard of interpreting in some cases was so bad that a major miscarriage of justice was only a matter of time.

Rebranded as Capita Translation and Interpreting earlier this month, ALS's catalogue of errors is far too long to list exhaustively, but has included no-shows, providing interpreters with no court experience, and non-existent criminal background checks, with one man managing to register his cat as a qualified interpreter. While Capita insisted these were the inevitable "teething problems" encountered at the start of a new contract, the firm is still filling only 95% of bookings more than six months after the contract began.

The fact that bookings have levelled out at 95% - the MOJ's contract with Capita actually specifies they will meet 98% of bookings - is interesting in itself. Madeleine Lee, director of the Professional Interpreters' Alliance, suggested at the JC evidence session that, in cases that involve a long journey due to the lack of an available local translator, Capita bosses may be actively choosing to save money by paying the penalty fee for missing a session rather than stumping up for large rail fares.

While the number of bookings met has increased, serious problems remain. At the evidence-gathering session, the Law Society's criminal law committee chairman Richard Atkinson told of an arrested party with no prior criminal convictions being remanded into custody on three separate occasions as no interpreter had arrived to explain his bail conditions to him. 

Eventually police were forced to give up and release the man with no bail conditions set. Atkinson also told of a crown court trial delayed for a day, at the expense of thousands of pounds to the taxpayer, because no Albanian interpreters had been sourced.

All of which begs a simple question: why was the change made in the first place? In July a spokewoman for Capita told the Guardian:

The Ministry of Justice awarded the contract to ALS to address the weaknesses, lack of transparency and disproportionate costs of the previous service.

The idea that the new regime has fixed any of these factors is a joke. While John Fassenfelt, chairman of the Magistrates' Association, admitted the old system was far from flawless, he said he struggled to think of a single way it had improved since the Capita contract came into force. 

As for a lack of transparency, the new system has created a sizeable conflict of interest, with the same company now responsible for training, assessing and providing court interpreters. And as for "disproportionate costs" - the MoJ agreement has led to the collapse or delay of hundreds of trials, which will cost the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of pounds.

So what was the drive behind the switch? The truth is that it seems to be yet another case of outsourcing on ideological grounds. The political credo of our times is clear: public sector, local, piecemeal = bad, private sector, multinational, overarching = good. It emerged last week that senior MoJ officials had failed to even read the credit report they commissioned, which warned ALS was too small to handle the full MoJ contract and should be given no more than £1m a year of business.

The decision to hand over the court interpreting contract to Capita is simply yet another example of the bull-headed belief that subcontracting out services to private firms always leads to a sleeker, more efficient service. The recent failures of ALS, back-to-work firm A4e and private security contractor G4S would suggest otherwise. Up in front of the Justice Select Committee next Tuesday is ALS founder and former CEO Gavin Wheeldon (pictured). He could be in for a bumpy ride.

Farewell then Andrew Mitchell. Now Labour need to capitalise on David Cameron's week from hell.

It has not been a great week for David Cameron. The PM has lurched his way through seven days which might inspire a soupçon of sympathy in even the reddest of hearts.

In a turn of events straight out of a The Thick of It script brainstorming session, Cameron announced at Prime Minister's Questions that he would be forcing energy companies to offer all customers their cheapest tariff. The only problem being that he'd not mentioned this proposal to energy secretary Ed Davey. Cue armies of flustered aides frantically briefing to the press that, um, this had been the policy all along, except, er, if it wasn't.

Chief whip Andrew Mitchell became former chief whip on Friday after sustained pressure from the 2010 intake of Tory MPs, while walking cadaver Lord Tebbit popped up today in the Observer to lambast "this dog of a coalition government." No, that's right, it appears he's not a fan.

The cracks in the coalition appear to be showing. The Observer reported that the cabinet were split on whether Mitchell had to go, with Teresa May apparently to keen to get rid, and Michael Gove in favour of letting him stay on. Now the question is simple: after Ed Miliband's barnstorming conference speech, can Labour capitalise on disarray in the coalition?

Can Mitt Romney make it to the White House on the back of the largest lie ever told by a U.S. President?

Whenever the cries for higher top tax rates, an end to astronomical bonuses, or demands for tighter regulation on finance become too loud, a Government minister will unfailing pop up to tell us that we can't be too hard on the rich, otherwise they'll all fly their private jets to a tax haven like Switzerland or Monaco on a permanent basis.

Ignoring for a second the moral appropriateness of allowing the super-rich to dictate the terms on which they're prepared to stick around, The Golden Latrine is taken with the idea of emigration as a means of expressing dissent. Thus, if Mitt Romney win the U.S. election race, a move elsewhere in the solar system is on the cards. Possibly Mars, although I hear Io is quite nice this time of year.

In a brilliant (if very long) piece in Rolling Stone magazine, Matt Taibbi looked at Romney's attempt to portray himself as a financial "turnaround artist" who has "saved" millions of regular Americans' jobs. As Taibbi writes:

By making debt the centerpiece of his campaign, Romney was making a calculated bluff of historic dimensions – placing a massive all-in bet on the rank incompetence of the American press corps. The result has been a brilliant comedy: A man makes a $250 million fortune loading up companies with debt and then extracting million-dollar fees from those same companies, in exchange for the generous service of telling them who needs to be fired in order to finance the debt payments he saddled them with in the first place. 

That same man then runs for president riding an image of children roasting on flames of debt, choosing as his running mate perhaps the only politician in America more pompous and self-righteous on the subject of the evils of borrowed money than the candidate himself. If Romney pulls off this whopper, you'll have to tip your hat to him: No one in history has ever successfully run for president riding this big of a lie. It's almost enough to make you think he really is qualified for the White House.

Those last two sentences are prefect. This is presidential politics as call-my-bluff and you can't help but admire the sheer shininess of Romney's brass balls. Given that a major news station like CNN was happy to wave away a number of outright lies by Romney's running mate Paul Ryan and instead spout some platitudes about how photogenic he looked on stage with his family, the chances of Romney pulling this off are not as remote as some liberals seem to think.

It might be time to start thinking of emigrating. Now where to go? Is the moon far enough away?

Winner takes it all: Is second place really just the "first place loser"? Or should Team GB athletes be proud of their silver and bronze medals?

Failure, it goes without saying, is a relative concept. For most of us mere mortals, failure is the feeling that creeps over you when you realise you've spent the entire day by yourself on the sofa, eating a whole packet of bakewell tarts and watching Jeremy Kyle reruns.

Olympic athletes, though, are cut from a different cloth. On Saturday afternoon British rowers Zac Purchase and Mark Hunter secured a silver medal in the lightweight double sculls final despite an engineering fault with Purchase's seat which forced a restart. Purchase was physically out on his feet after the race, and had to be propped up by Hunter, so I initially attributed their inconsolable demeanour in the post-race interview to exhaustion. But in his Guardian column, Purchase wrote:

I've never felt so totally and utterly gutted. We were there to win gold, nothing else. Even though I'm holding a silver medal, it still feels completely heart-wrenching. [...] I cannot imagine ever being able to derive any consolation from the race outcome. The whole point about sport is that you have winners and losers. It's important for people to keep that in mind. Getting medals for taking part is not what it's about; it's all about getting medals for winning.

The most obvious echo here is the famous sporting line, often attributed to NASCAR racer Dale Earnhardt: "Second place is just the first place loser". This is sport as Nietzschean struggle, inspired by Pierre de Coubertin's Olympic motto ("Faster, Higher, Stronger") rather than the Olympic creed, which begins: "The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part." The winner takes it all, as Abba put it. The loser takes nothing. 

This was clearly a dictum taken to heart by British 400m sprinter Christine Ohuruogu. After forfeiting her Olympic title to the brilliant Sanya Richards-Ross on Sunday night, Ohuruogu said:

I was stunned, I was heartbroken actually. To lose your title like that was tough. I just wish I’d held on to my title — I really wanted to and I fought hard. She didn’t get an easy ride completely, at least I hope I made it hard for her. I always came here for one thing and one thing only and that was continuing my reign so I am disappointed. [...] I know I should be pleased but I’m just stubborn. I’m very stubborn.

In many ways such monomaniacal drive is commendable. Do we want to see British athletes just happy to be there, or do we want to see them win? The anxiety felt during the first couple of days while we waited for a goal medal at London 2012 suggests the latter. But is Earnhardt's line really true? Is second really just the first place loser? Isn't it possible to perform brilliantly but still only finish second or third when pitted against the world's best athletes? 

The answer, surely, is yes. In an athletics world of incremental improvement, where diet and training routines and sports science are constantly being refined, there's no shame in finishing second or third. As Liz Nicholl, the chief executive of UK Sport argued, commentators who aren't close to the high performance system think Team GB should be in the mix for every gold, but while we're progressing, so is the rest of the world.

This is what Rebecca Adlington articulated so eloquently in her interview poolside immediately after losing her 800m freestyle crown to 15-year-old American Katie Ledecky. Refusing to play the victim, Adlington said: "I am so proud and pleased to get a bronze medal – it's nothing ever to be embarrassed about. Swimming is one of the hardest sports to medal at. It is so, so difficult and I hope the public realise that."

However, perhaps the fact that Adlington was content with her two bronze medals at London 2012 isn't that surprising. Stanford University professor Bob Sutton blogged this week about the joy U.S. swimmer Brendan Hansen displayed at snaring a bronze in the 100m breaststroke. While Hansen's euphoria was partly down to his age (he was only the thirteenth swimmer to win a medal over the age of 30), Sutton also mentioned a 1995 study for the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, which suggested strong evidence that athletes are happier with a bronze medal than a silver. Whereas bronze medalists are happy to have made it on to the podium, silver medalists are prone to counterfactual thinking, constantly beating themselves up about how close they were to gold.

As Sutton put it: "silver medalists see themselves as the first loser, while bronze medalists see themselves as the last winner." While that speaks volumes about the mindset of our elite athletes and their relentless desire to win, in the end Adlington was surely right. Silver and bronze medals aren't first and second place for losers, they're a reward for exceptional performance, a reminder that you are among the best in the world at what you do.

How can the "flabby" public sector possibly compete with such ruthlessly efficient three-letter acronyms? All hail our private sector paymasters!

If the dignified, level-headed way G4S has handled London 2012 security has taught The Golden Latrine anything, it's that subcontracting out services that would normally fall under the public sector's remit to private 3-letter acronyms always leads to a sleeker, more efficient service.

While cynics carped about the army and police having to be drafted in in their thousands to make up for shortfalls in the number of security guards provided by G4S, in a rational world the private security firm (sorry, "word's leading provider of security solutions") would have been applauded for allowing our brave boys to get in on the Olympic action. Yes, CEO Nick Buckles admitted that perhaps not all of the security guards provided by G4S would be able to speak English, but as the old adage goes: the baton is mightier than the vocal chords.

Likewise A4e, who did such a bang-up job in ushering our jobseekers back to work (and surely the point of work is the inherent dignity of labour, rather than actually getting paid?). And who could forget Capita-owned court interpreters ALS, whose minor "teething problems" in fulfilling their £300 Ministry of Justice contract have compassionately handed our nation's criminals a moment of respite when their trials collapse.

What else can the flabby public sector do when faced with such ruthless competency but genuflect in admiration of our corporate paymasters. God bless the private sector! May its efficiency savings be a shining example to us all!