Robert Hampton

Another visitor! Stay a while… stay forever!

In the News

12th November 2014

Poppycock

I’ve had a changing attitude to the Poppy Appeal. Through my childhood and early teens I always dutifully wore one. I distinctly remember floods of tears one year when I lost mine in the playground at primary school.

As I entered my twenties and increasingly became a bleeding-heart liberal, I stopped wearing one. My opinion was probably soured by seeing Tony Blair laying a wreath at the Cenotaph, at the same time he was happily starting wars in the Middle East, on dubious pretexts, with seemingly little regard for the men and women he was putting in harm’s way.

I’m also concerned at what Jon Snow calls “poppy fascism” – the increasingly-prevalent attitude that anyone who isn’t wearing a poppy somehow hates their country and the armed forces. If that’s true, then approximately 75% of the commuters on my train to work fall into that category.

Woe betide you if you’re in the public eye and choose not to wear one. ITV presenter Charlene White received death threats when she chose not to wear one. Perhaps a similar fear explains why Chris Kamara turned up on Sky Sports the other day, wearing two poppies.

After all that, I’ve come back around to wearing one again. To my mind, the soldiers fighting on the front lines should be separated out from the politicians back home giving the orders. To face the horrors of war full on is no small task – I freely admit I would hide under my bed if I was asked to fight.

There are many ways to serve your country, and not all of them involve picking up a gun and heading out into enemy territory. But for the people who do put their lives on the line, I’m happy to put a few quid in the tin and show a bit of support in return.

9th November 2014

Berlin, Take My Breath Away
Posted by at 12.18pm | In the News | No responses

Imagine you’ve just arrived in London, after getting off a train from the provisional capital, Manchester. You get on a Northern Line train (Bank branch) at Euston. After King’s Cross you hear an announcement that you are about to leave the Western Sector. The train proceeds, but it doesn’t stop at Angel – it crawls through the platform at walking pace, enabling you to peer out at the dimly lit station. It is dusty, derelict and dimly lit. You can just about make out some guards standing at the platform exit. They look bored, but the guns they are carrying are still intimidating. The pattern is repeated at Old Street, and Moorgate.

Finally, you reach a station that is open – at Bank you alight to change onto the Central line. You take a wrong turn and find yourself heading for the exit, only to find your way barred by a border guard. You don’t have the right papers, of course, so you turn back and return to the platform. This time you were lucky; you could have been arrested for trying to cross the border.

This is the daily grind that Berlin’s U-Bahn passengers faced during the Cold War. The division of the city between 1961 and 1989 sliced through the public transport network, leaving it very much a Tube of two halves.

Read the rest of this post »

11th October 2014

UKIP me hanging on

Was Nigel Farage the UKIP candidate for Clacton? You’d think so, seeing as how it’s his grinning face staring out from the front page of every newspaper and web site. Douglas Carswell was the actual candidate, and the by-election triggered by Douglas Carswell’s resignation and defection to UKIP has resulted in a historic win for the anti-EU rabble.

UKIP is still very much a protest vote, the way the LibDems were until 2010. The shallowness of UKIP’s support was demonstrated recently, when a caller to an LBC phone-in couldn’t name any policy other than “immigration”.

Meanwhile, back in Clacton, evidence emerged that the voters were not as well-informed as they could have been:-

As it stands, Thursday will go down in history as the day when voters rebelled against old-style politics by re-electing their incumbent MP – a middle-aged white private schoolboy – to a party led by a former investment banker. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose (if we’re permitted some French in this brave new world).

6th October 2014

Ranty Establishment

The European Convention on Human Rights was established in the aftermath of World War II in an effort to codify human rights in international law, and prevent atrocities like the Holocaust from ever happening again. Its backers included some obscure personality called Winston Churchill.

The Convention is enforced by the European Court of Human Rights. Countless times, the Court’s judgments have helped advance the case for minority groups. Recently, Pink News highlighted six times human rights laws helped LGBT equality. Decriminalising homosexuality in Northern Ireland; allowing gay people to serve openly in the British army; equalising the age of consent – all thanks to ECHR rulings.

In 2000, the Labour party introduced the Human Rights Act which codified the articles of the European Convention into British law. What has the Human Rights Act done for you? Quite a lot, as the Mirror article linked there proves. Gary McKinnon, British soldiers, rape victims and more have all been helped by the Act.

And now David Cameron has decided he doesn’t like it and wants to get rid of it. Predictably, most of the right-wing tabloids lined up to cheer him on. As a nation, we are in a very bad place when the mantra “human rights are bad” is being met with approval from significant chunks of society.

The poster boy for the anti-human rights campaigners is Abu Qatada, whom the British government spent much time and money trying to deport, only to be stymied by human rights objections. Theresa May described the situation as “frustrating”, but that’s exactly as it should be. It’s an inconvenient truth that human rights apply to everyone, even the people “we” don’t like. Otherwise, as David Allen Green puts it:

The Tories propose that the Human Rights Act be scrapped and replaced by a “British Bill of Rights”, which would require people to “fulfil responsibilities”. It all sounds reasonable enough on the surface (although, how “responsible” do you need to be to be protected against torture?) but it’s easy to foresee a future government suddenly deciding that trade unions, protest groups, the unemployed or other “undesirables” are not fulfilling their responsibilities and happily diminishing their rights to please the majority. It’s truly scary stuff.

Hopefully the election next year will the Tories tossed out of office and this nonsense forgotten. In any case, I’m concerned enough that I’ve joined Liberty. I thought about signing up in the past but current events have given me the final impetus to join – thanks for the motivation, Dave!

Final thought on the matter:-

7th September 2014

Yes, no, maybe / I don’t know / Can you repeat the question?
Posted by at 11.38am | In the News | 2 responses

We’re less than a fortnight away from the Scottish Independence referendum (indeed, postal votes have already been sent out) and the latest opinion poll has shocked a lot of people.

A poll by YouGov for the Sunday Times sent shockwaves through the political establishment north and south of the border as it showed the yes camp had 51% to 49% for no, excluding the don’t knows.

Of course, it’s only one poll (others show No still ahead), but there does seem to be a swing towards “Yes” in the final days of the campaign. It’s a far cry from the situation just a few months ago, when a No victory was thought to be a foregone conclusion by all concerned.

I’ve followed the campaign from outside with interest. I watched the TV debates (except the first one because the stupid STV player didn’t work) and have been impressed with how engaged ordinary people have been with the process. Turnout is expected to be very high, perhaps 80%. It’s a far cry from the typical British election, where a lot of people simply can’t be bothered.

I can empathise with the Scots who want to break away. From my vantage point in the glorious north of England, London looks increasingly remote and disconnected from the rest of the UK. It’s a giant vacuum sucking in the wealth, jobs and talent, at the expense of towns and cities elsewhere. Our political leaders, meanwhile, are increasingly out of touch with life outside the Westminster bubble – Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg have never had a job outside politics, while the main entry on David Cameron’s CV is the hardly impressive “PR for Carlton Television”. I don’t think any of the three main parties properly understand the problems of ordinary people, and the less said about UKIP, the better.

That’s my feeling, living in Liverpool. Scotland is already a separate country within the United Kingdom. There’s a line on the map, signs on the roads and everything. It has its own legal system, banknotes and parliament. If I feel disconnected from London and its institutions, that feeling must be even greater north of the border.

Read the rest of this post »

12th August 2014

Robin Williams
Posted by at 6.49pm | Films, In the News | No responses

Terribly sad news about the death of Robin Williams. Everyone will have their favourite film. He was amazing as the Genie in Aladdin, of course, but my personal favourite is the underrated Jumanji – many happy memories of seeing that in the cinema.

Williams had discussed his depression in the past. A lot of ignorant comment has appeared online already, demonstrating (as Jake Mills discusses in the Liverpool Echo today) the need to talk about depression more.

Some of the funniest appearances were on talk shows. Here are some clips I’ve found online, spanning a 20-year period from Johnny Carson right the way through to Graham Norton.

Read the rest of this post »

13th July 2014

Thorpe Lark
Posted by at 8.00pm | Gay, In the News | 2 responses

Finally, a Michael Parkinson interview that’s actually worth watching:

After years of denial, swimming champion Ian Thorpe has revealed he is gay in an exclusive interview with Sir Michael Parkinson. The five-time Olympic gold medallist and Australia’s most successful Olympic athlete to date, has revealed his sexuality in an interview to be aired on Australia’s Network Ten on Sunday night.

As ever, people are queuing up to declare that it was “obvious” and they’d always known. I would disagree that it was obvious, not least because in his 2012 autobiography Thorpe said, “For the record, I am not gay and all my sexual experiences have been straight.”

Thorpe now says that it is only recently he felt comfortable telling even close friends and family. “I’ve wanted to [come out] for some time. I didn’t feel I could. Part of me didn’t know if Australia wanted its champion to be gay.”

It’s perhaps understandable that he felt this way. Just this week, an Australian sports commentator has been criticised for referring to a player as “a big poofter” on air. The world of sport still has a way to go.

Thorpe has suffered from depression, which he attributes to the stress of hiding his sexuality for many years. I can well believe it; from personal experience, trying to deny, hide and suppress your homosexuality only leads to misery in the long-term. There are many factors to weigh up when deciding to come out of the closet, but I honestly believe most people are happier out than in.

So, well done Ian Thorpe. I’m sure gay Australian men will be only too eager to welcome you to the team… especially when you look like this:

10th July 2014

Drip feed
Posted by at 6.30pm | In the News | No responses

Hmm…

David Cameron and his Liberal Democrat deputy, Nick Clegg, have unveiled emergency surveillance legislation that will shore up government powers to require phone and internet companies to retain and hand over data to the security services.

The “emergency” is apparently a European Court of Justice ruling that was handed down in April. Not sure why they have waited three months since then to unveil this. The Government claim that the bill simply “clarifies” existing powers, but clause 3 apparently allows the Secretary of State to make further regulations at will:

The bill contains a “sunset clause” which will force it to be further debated by MPs by 2016. The Guardian reckons this is good news. I’m not so sure.

Further reading: Open Rights Group | Liberty

21st May 2014

The Love Vote

Tomorrow there are European and local elections taking place across the UK. Here follows my usual entreaty to my readers, imploring them to make the effort to go the polling station. I don’t consider military service or standing for the national anthem to be a required civic duty, but voting is definitely something that every adult should do willingly.

Never mind the guff about “fighting two world wars for this freedom” (although that’s certainly worth considering) – when voter apathy sets in, the only winners are the extremist candidates whose supporters always turn up. This is why the North West currently has Nick Griffin as an MEP. This time round, UKIP are hoping to benefit from dissatisfaction with the main parties. While I understand the many issues people have with the Tories, Labour and Lib Dems (especially the Lib Dems), voting for Nigel Farage and his rabble of narrow-minded, ill-disciplined fools is not the answer. Do some research online; examine the candidates standing at the election, find out what they and their parties stand for. In the age of the internet, there’s no excuse for ignorance.

Again (with the caveats above) I say: please go and vote; it’s quick and easy to do and is an essential part of a healthy democracy. As long as you’re on the electoral register, you don’t need the polling card (or any ID at all) to vote. If you’re not sure where your polling station is, contact your local council or see About My Vote for more information.

16th May 2014

Farage-o

Finally, some people in the media are actually challenging Nigel Farage and UKIP to proper scrutiny. Here is James O’Brien of LBC from earlier today. Break out the popcorn for this one:-