The following is a clarification of my following tweets.

@robjhicks: Anyone got a link to Cameron's explicit targeting of homosexual kisses on tv? Mail article seems a little loaded.

@robjhicks: @thisisdavid see this http://t.co/n6YVdf7 not clear if its banning erotic kisses full stop or just banning gay kisses. Thoughts?

It was written in haste and on a train upon realising that 140 characters was far from enough space to explain such an issue. I have not used the luxury of hindsight and further evidence to edit this post.


My tweet arose from this Daily Mail article and the subsequent tweets that I saw of people accusing David Cameron and the coalition of homophobia.

Alas, the Mail is often preoccupied with erronesouly blaming the perceived erosion of things that it likes with things that it doesn’t like (the sanctity of childhood and homosexuality for example) which provoked the question from me – do the government’s plans explicitly target homosexual kisses before the watershed and place them under greater scrutiny than heterosexual kisses or is this article largely indicative of the Mail’s views on homosexuality? The former is completely unacceptable, serves to undo hard-fought equality legislation won by LGBT campaigns and should be immediately condemned. You will find me standing should to shoulder with those doing the condemning if this proves to be the case.

At the time however my only evidence for this being the case was the Mail article which, for the above reasons, I was disinclined to take at face value, hence my probing for further clarification on the exact nature of the plans.

There is a case that the government could be trying to make (not one I necessarily agree with I hasten to add) that some kisses, without gender as a deciding factor, are too ‘erotic’ or over-exuberant for young audiences to view. The implementation of such a policy would be an equality minefield (and rightly so) and should be subject to intense scrutiny from those who champion equality. My point however was that as difficult as such a policy might be to implement, it is not in itself inherently homophobic and, if undertaken, should not immediately be condemned as such. Call it silly, unnecessary, an attack on TV makers’ artistic licenses if you will, but if full equality is stated in its objective (admittedly another minefield) then it should not be condemned as homophobic until it is proved as being so.

Such sensitive policies rightly make equality campaigners wary. It is to our credit that our attention and our morals are immediately alerted to areas of policy where equality might be compromised but I am of the opinion that it is always best to allow a policy or opinion to be fully explained before denouncing it as prejudiced. We do ourselves, and consequently our causes, no favours by attacking others before we are fully informed of their intentions which is why I shall wait for full details of the watershed plans (and ask the necessary questions on Twitter!) before I make accusations of homophobia.

Let us also keep this in mind - it is far more desirable for this government to be fully committed to the equality of LGBT people than for it not to be. Cathartic though it may be to attack our opposition, a liberation campaign has achieved the most precious of victories when it no longer needs to attack.

The importance of Leicester South

Labour's had plenty of reason to enjoy by-elections of late; a comfortable victory in Oldham and the embarrassment of the Lib Dems in Barnsley have bolstered the PLP with two promising new MPs whilst delivering two vital morale boosts to a party still finding it's feet in opposition after 13 years in government.

Auspicious by-election results are not necessarily precursors to a general election victory though and most certainly shouldn't be read as such. This May's by-election represents a much bigger opportunity for our party however, the Leicester South seat has a distinctive make-up precipitating ideal conditions to lead the national discourse on young people's issues.

Two large universities lie in the constituency teaching tens of thousands of students each year. De Montfort University and the University of Leicester produce tomorrow's nurses, economists, artists, doctors, lawyers and politicians and come May will be poised to jettison two graduating classes of unprecedented size into a landscape of record youth unemployment pinned onto a waning economy. Whoever triumphs in Leicester South this Spring will not be able to ignore the mandate bestowed upon them to help salvage a generation faced with an increasing lack of opportunity. Whatever the outcome the Labour Party should be leading this charge, recognising that educating, training and employing our young people represents the best investment we can make in our efforts to rebuild our economy.

It is far too easy as a party in opposition to become a party of reactive rhetoric. The situation facing the young people of this country represents an opportunity to proactively set the agenda of how we ensure education and employment are available for our young people - we should grab it with both hands, lest we stand by and let a generation drift into economic stasis.

University of Leicester in particular is continually accredited for it's work in widening participation in higher education but this work will sadly be in vain if education opportunities are not reflected in employment opportunities upon graduation. If a gargantuan increase in tuition fees didn't quite conquer political apathy amongst our youth then an indeterminate spell on the unemployment scrap heap certainly will. Whichever side of the debate of the student protests you're inclined to fall down on, the events of last November exposed two realities - our students and young people recognise when they are being served an injustice and they will fight it when they are (through violence, diplomacy or otherwise).

As strong as the student vote could be in Leicester, parliamentary elections are rarely won solely off the back of these issues - many other issues will contribute to the success of the future MP for Leicester South. Beyond polling day though the constituency is the perfect spring board to reach out to our students and our young people and offer them an alternative to this Tory-led government that is offering them no solutions to their impending difficulties.

Gove's Baccalaureate Battle

The reason Michael Gove’s English Baccalaureate is proving to be so toxic is the sheer plurality of views on the subject, a diversity that neatly reflects the vast range of learning methods, areas of interest and talents that any single representative cross-section of school pupils will reveal.

The notion that a whole country’s school-age population can be satisfied, fulfilled and lifted to a level of achievement from a solitary system of academic hoop-jumping is naïve at best and is arguably both grossly negligent and condescending.
It fails to address the vast talent pool that is the youth of this country and instead seeks to push our children through a tight gap of attainment: it is the equivalent of attempting to push a square shaped object through a circular hole, it is a fruitless activity that ignores the raw material (if I may be excused from using such an industrial term) and the reams of evidence available on how to get the best out of said material.

The problem is our children are not square shaped or circular, they are star-shaped, they are triangular, they are oval. They are every shape imaginable. No one hole is ever going to accommodate all of our shapes.

Gove’s ambition is usually admirable and his rhetoric has noble elements to it. I agree whole heartedly that we have a duty to our children to impart upon them core life skills such as literacy and numeracy but disagree that they must be taught through the same academic vehicles that this country has used for centuries.

We have a plethora of vocations in this country which contribute vast amounts to our economy and our society and most of which require and teach the literacy, numeracy and other core skills that we are currently seeking to disseminate through our dog-eared textbooks. It goes without saying that a child naturally disposed to more practical activities will be more motivated and open to learning in activities that harness these practical, even non-academic, tendencies.

Where our real duty in this debate lies is in ensuring that the children of this country have an education that motivates, inspires and advances. A degree certificate alone is no longer the golden ticket into employment that it once was and this country is a better place for it. Let’s build our education system around those who it will educate, not around out-dated conceptions of academic box-ticking.

AV Referendum

There are many good reasons to vote for AV just as there are many good reasons to not vote for AV. There are also many bad reasons, for and against; Labour may want to derail the possibility of Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats redeeming credibility off the back of a successful yes campaign, staunch Conservatives may seek to exert some superiority over the liberal factions in their coalition whilst seasoned electoral reform advocates may turn their noses up at the tepid compromise that AV represents to some. A referendum may also represent an extra playground in which to throw mud at our political opponents, a rhetoric free-for-all bereft of the parliamentary responsibility imposed by the normal decision making process. In succumbing to the temptation of any of these however we are failing to realise the true potential that this referendum offers us.

As proponents of the concept of democracy as a tool with which to govern we have a duty to enhance the system as and when we can, to ensure we are operating with the most democratic procedures as we can. As subjective as debating the nuances of democracy can be there are still areas of objectivity that should inform the nature of the AV conversation. If you’re reading this then chances are that you are a member of the engaged minority: an anomalous group who have taken up a personal interest and responsibility in the running of this country. You may also be a member of a political party. Let me then place you into a hypothetical situation; a new voting system has been designed and is unanimously agreed as being the most democratic system, it also decimates the number of MPs one of the main political parties would gain if a general election was called immediately. How would the members of that party vote? It is probably fair to say that they would vote against. I would take issue with this decision.

Setting the hyperbole of the example aside there are lessons to take away. If the most democratic voting system does not translate into elected members for a certain political party the system should not be immediately rejected, no past successes or reputation entitle a party to an election win. It is most likely the messages and policies of the campaigners that have failed to win votes and not the system which has failed to represent voting intentions. As voters, activists and leaders we have an overwhelming responsibility to protect and develop the democratic practices of the country; I would rather be a singular voice in a country of proud democratic practices where the power rests with the governed than the leader of a national party that draws success from a system where the opinion of the electorate is not the main guiding force of the government.

May’s referendum offers us a rare opportunity to reassess our voting system whilst receiving a direct mandate for implementation from the electorate. We would be wise not to sully the decision making process with our own party political biases but instead to construct a conversation informed solely by the democratic values of the voting systems on offer.

Happy campaigning.

Musings on the Browne review

I’m rarely idealistic but allow me for a second to impart unto you one truism that I shall always hold dear; that education is the most powerful weapon we have in our fight to better ourselves.

If you listened closely whilst eating your cornflakes on Tuesday morning you could probably have heard the champagne corks popping in Oxbridge as the details of the Browne Review finally emerged. Both Oxford and Cambridge have long extolled the benefits of allowing universities to charge higher fees for undergraduate degrees and it is with open arms that both the institutions, and no doubt countless others, will welcome the latest government commissioned review into the sector’s funding.

The government, hardly averse to cutting public services, will no doubt also welcome the findings, happily accepting increased student contributions as a green light to decrease higher education spending. It’s important here however to separate what may happen to the higher education sector from the deficit reducing cuts this country is experiencing; these moves are not budget balancing knee jerks but an ideological shift on the government’s part to move the responsibility of paying for education from the state to the student and is a shift that, when considering my opening gambit, I wholly disagree with.

An abundance of rumours had circulated in the build up to the release of the report with most sources estimating a fee between £7,000 and £10,000 as the recommended upper limit for a year’s worth of undergraduate education. Browne’s suggestions, however, go even further and allow for fees upwards of £12,000 per annum although they do include stipulations that a percentage of any tuition fee charged over £6000 is given to the state in lieu of increased lending to students.

Hypothetically a basic 3 year undergraduate degree could saddle a student with £36,000 worth of debt, an astronomical amount of money to ask a 17 year old to commit to burdening himself/herself with. This is before we factor in maintenance loans and any personal debt the students may incur during their studies which could easily add on another £10,000.

Bearing in mind that since top-up fees were introduced in 2006 there has been no quantifiable evidence that the students paying these extra fees have received any form of vastly improved experience during their time at university, the decision to move the onus to pay from the state to the student becomes increasingly clear. Vince Cable’s statement to the House of Commons on Tuesday afternoon that “the government is going to invest in higher education” is, quite bluntly, not true and is a complete falsification of the direction in which the Browne Review seeks to send the sector.

Telling also of the way Browne would see our higher education sector function was one particular passage of the review, namely the heavy handed notion that funding should be pulled almost entirely from “less economically important” subjects. Whilst not alluding directly to ‘Mickey Mouse degrees’ its not difficult to extrapolate from the report that Browne sees arts and humanities as serving a less important role in the country and as such evolving to become a privately funded pursuit. A dangerous vision for the future indeed.

Thankfully the recommendations protect the guarantee that education should be free at the point of entry; Browne’s model continues to provide students with loans covering the whole cost of any tuition fees incurred. Welcome also is the proposed increase from £15,000 to £21,000 as the earning threshold for paying back one’s student loan.

I’d add to this that I’m proud to live in a country where, in practical financial terms, higher education tuition fees cost nothing up front but we can go further; these ‘deal-sweeteners’ do nothing to address the deterrent effect that a high cost education has upon people from lower socio-economic backgrounds wishing to learn.

It’s much easier to take the decision to take on thousands of pounds worth of debt if your parents have the capital to bail you out if all goes wrong or if you have the savings to pay your fees up front in the first place. Education should always, without exception, be afforded to those with the ability to learn and never denied on the lack of an ability to pay.

Until the government can produce quantitative data that opportunities for students from poorer backgrounds are in no way jeopardised by increased tuition fees, the Browne review should not even be considered. It is morally unjust to play fast and loose with the futures of our youth especially when based almost solely upon an assumption that a loan will placate any financial anxieties a student may have.

In these choppy economic times I have often found myself advocating investments over cuts but I find no example more suited to this ethos than the future of our education system. Increased debts and inaccessible courses are not the way to encourage learning and advancement and as such are not the way to creating a highly educated, working economy. To these ends, the Browne review should be rejected at all costs.

Claudy and 9/11

The United States of America, land of the free, the city on the hill, a shining beacon of liberty. Unless of course you're a Muslim, in which case (in the eyes of some leading Republicans) you don't qualify for such privileges.

Opposition to the 'ground-zero mosque' this week is almost unfathomably narrow minded, not least because no-one has actually proposed to build a mosque at ground zero of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The proposed building work under scrutiny is for an Islamic community centre to be built a good 2 blocks away from where the World Trade Centre once stood. Specifics aside however, the premise behind the argument against the new building is that Muslims were responsible for the 9/11 attacks therefore allowing an Islamic building close to the site of the attrocities is unacceptable and insulting to the families of those who lost their lives that day. Right. Noted. Understood.

But what have we learnt this week? A catholic priest played an active role in the 1972 bombings of the small Irish town of Claudy which took the lives of 9 people. Although they happened 29 years earlier and saw a significantly lower amount of people lose their lives, the Claudy bombings are comparable to 9/11 in one hugely poignant way; both were perpetrated by evil attempting to justify itself on religious grounds.

No-one blames the whole of the catholic church for the actions of Father James Chesney, so why is it justifiable to punish the whole of the Islamic faith because of the actions of a few Al-Qaeda members?

Lets put that in practical terms. Does Father Chesney's contribution to the Claudy bombings preclude any churches from being built in the town? Would doing so "stab hearts" Ms Palin? No, I didn't think so.

Kenyan Democracy: New dawn or false dawn?

Disappointingly a hugely fractious issue has been largely ignored in the British press but it is one that underpins the struggles of a nation with a Christian majority but with a significant Islamic community. Furthermore it helps us to better understand some of the motivations behind the ‘No’ camp.

The issue I’m alluding to is that of the exclusively Muslim kadhi courts and the state funding they will continue to receive now the proposed constitution is all but passed. The courts exist almost exclusively on Kenya’s largely Muslim east coast and survived through British colonisation and independence purportedly as an accord made with the Sultan of Zanzibar during his secession of the coastal strip to the mainland country. The courts rule mainly on issues of inheritance, family and succession and although they will remain subordinate under the superior courts of Kenya the issue of central government funding being put towards religious activities is a contentious one and has roused much opposition from Christian leaders. A panel of 3 High Court judges implored MPs earlier in the year to reconsider the provision for the courts on the grounds of constitutionality but the appeal was met with petty accusations of the judges acting beyond their remit instead of any credible justification for the courts’ inclusion. In principal using state money to fund activities only accessible to a certain proportion of the country is unfair and discriminatory and sets a dangerous precedent in a country with a history of fractional fighting, albeit more recently in a tribal rather than religious nature.

As a British citizen (and a self-confessed liberal) used to more progressive human rights laws I was also shocked, as my eyes wandered across the draft bill of rights I picked up from my Daily Nation last June, to spot a glaring omission. Perhaps unsurprisingly to some, a person’s sexuality is not provided for in any way in the document that many will champion as a great step towards providing protection and equality for Kenya’s citizens. Far from being churlish enough to think achieving reform of such magnitude is like ripping off a plaster I can’t help but feel that introducing legislation designed to protect citizens’ rights is the perfect time to begin correcting this great injustice and failing to address it completely is a huge missed opportunity. Homosexuality remains illegal in Kenya, punishable by up to 14 years imprisonment. The ‘moderate’ view of one leading Christian pastor that homosexuals “should not be killed but removed from society” gives us some indication of how far Kenya still has to come on some equality issues.

The removal of some powers from the presidency (most importantly, in the new constitution the president will become impeachable for the first time) and the devolution of powers to local authorities are reforms that seemingly unite many Kenyans behind the ‘Yes’ camp but further contentious issues abound. Land reforms may very well leave some residents of the Rift Valley, the crucible of much of the 2007 violence, bereft of land to which they once laid claim to whereas the Christian community refuses to back down in its fight for tougher laws on abortion.

Idealism aside however we must not ignore the successes that have been achieved during this referendum. The vote on the new constitution has been the biggest democratic event since the bloody presidential elections of 2007 and could not seem much further removed from the fighting that left 1000 Kenyan citizens dead. One thing that struck me during my time in Kenya in the lead up to the referendum was the huge effort being made to educate the populace on the content of the constitution to encourage debate and allow citizens to make an informed decision. Draft copies of the constitution were readily available from the country’s print media and electoral commission stations were dotted sporadically throughout even the most rural areas, this is certainly something that Kenya can take great pride in.

As a resounding ‘Yes’ seemed increasingly inevitable one of the leading protagonists of the ‘No’ campaign, higher education minister William Ruto, backed down respectfully proclaiming that “the majority had their way, we had our say.” Importantly however he added that “we are now proposing immediate consultations”.

This view from the upper echelons of the Kenyan ruling elite seems also to be one echoed by the country’s electorate. Peter, an IT specialist from the small coastal community of Makongeni told me of the importance he places in the way the referendum was conducted. “It has been vital for this country to vote on the constitution without it being overshadowed by bloodshed like the 2007 elections.” Like Ruto though he acknowledged that this is by no means the end of reform in the country adding that “we must now look at the areas we disagree on and deal with them democratically as we move forwards.” Pragmatism and a great desire for peace seem to be winning out amongst many Kenyans.

On the surface the referendum has achieved peace, stability and a respect for democratic values but before we count our kukus let us ask ourselves this; do we accept an imperfect document as collateral for achieving a peaceful democratic process or are we merely ignoring the issues and leaving the door open for more clashes further down the line?