On Coverage of UKIP vs Republicanism

Polls over the last 6 months have had UKIP regularly on or around 20%. As a result of this the party and its leader Nigel Farage in particular have had lots and lots of media coverage.

Farage is a regular on TV and radio and increasingly other senior members of the party such as Eastleigh by-election candidate Diane James and MEPs including Paul Nuttall get coverage for their views. Quite right too as far as I am concerned. 20% is a significant minority and it is right that UKIP gets the chance to regularly put its opinion across on issues, especially those closest to its founding raison d'etre of Europe and the EU.

A wish to abolish the monarchy and have a republic is also a minority view in the UK. Polls regularly show around 20% for this. Of course a majority of people in this country prefer to keep the monarchy and I respect that. But the minority view from those of us who would like to live under a different system barely gets a look in.

The mainstream media almost uniformly cover royal stories with the kind of sycophantic spaniel-like devotion you might expect in a totalitarian regime. But even this might be more tolerable if about a fifth of the coverage was devoted to discussions about what a different system might look like and how it might work. We hardly ever get this though. Just wall-to-wall coverage where the monarchy and its members are spoken of in reverential tones with virtually no substance at all and certainly no indication anyone might have a different view on all of this.

If UKIP was treated in this way just because "only" 20% of the population agree with their views there would rightly be outrage.

It's time the media in our country recognised that to run a positive story about the royal family is taking a political position on an issue that millions of our citizens do not agree with. The BBC as a publicly funded and (by charter) politically neutral organisation has a particular duty to ensure this balance in this area.

One of the problems is that the coverage ramps up when there is a particular event such as a royal wedding, anniversary or birth. At these points it probably seems churlish to devote a slice of the allotted time to a viewpoint that if enacted would have all of this pomp and circumstance consigned to history. I understand that. In which case, when we are outside of these specific celebratory times it is even more important to have more than 20% of the coverage allowing the republican viewpoint to be aired in order that balance is maintained across the piece.

Until that happens, those of us who want to see the merits of alternative systems covered are well within our rights to cry foul.

We're not being spoilsports. We just want a fair crack of the whip.

House of Comments - Episode 68 - Summer Special - Mark talks to Ian Collins

Episode 68 of the House of Comments podcast is out. It's the first in a series of summer specials where we talk one on one to guests about politics. In this episode, I talk to LBC presenter and lobby journalist Ian Collins about the current state of politics and the prospects for the next two years in the run up to the 2015 general election.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

Other podcasting software e.g. for Android can be pointed here to subscribe.

You can download the mp3 for the latest episode directly from here.

Or you can listen to the embedded episode below here:

listen to ‘Episode 68 - Summer Special - Mark talks to Ian Collins’ on Audioboo

If you are a political blogger and wish to be considered as a future guest please drop me an e-mail at markreckons@live.co.uk.

Any feedback welcomed in the comments below.


PS: A big thanks to Audioboo for hosting the podcast for us and especially to Audioboo's James O'Malley who has helped us out getting relaunched. James is also editor of The Pod Delusion podcast which is about "interesting things" and is well worth a listen too! We would also like to thank Kevin MacLeod from Incompetech.com for our theme music.

House of Comments - Episode 67 - Funding Farrago

Episode 67 of the House of Comments podcast "Funding Farrago" is out. This week myself and Emma Burnell discuss party funding in the light of Ed Miliband's recent announcement on union funding, the immigration backlog and Post Office privatisation.

We are having a break for a few weeks now for the summer holidays but we are both recording a couple of one-off specials featuring interviews with special guests which we will release over the summer.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

Other podcasting software e.g. for Android can be pointed here to subscribe.

You can download the mp3 for the latest episode directly from here.

Or you can listen to the embedded episode below here:

listen to ‘Episode 67 - Funding Farrago’ on Audioboo

If you are a political blogger and wish to be considered as a future guest please drop me an e-mail at markreckons@live.co.uk.

Any feedback welcomed in the comments below.


PS: A big thanks to Audioboo for hosting the podcast for us and especially to Audioboo's James O'Malley who has helped us out getting relaunched. James is also editor of The Pod Delusion podcast which is about "interesting things" and is well worth a listen too! We would also like to thank Kevin MacLeod from Incompetech.com for our theme music.

New Liam Byrne letter discovered

In the light of Liam Byrne's announcement today that suddenly instead of hating the idea of a benefits cap, Labour now think it doesn't go far enough a letter to Ed Miliband from Liam has been discovered.

House of Comments - Episode 66 - Falkirk Fallout

Episode 66 of the House of Comments podcast "Falkirk Fallout" is out. This week myself and Emma Burnell are joined by Liberal Conspiracy's Sunny Hundal to discuss the fallout from the Falkirk selection debacle, how Ed Miliband's proposals to respond to this might affect the future of the Labour Party and the further recent discussions about an EU referendum.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

Other podcasting software e.g. for Android can be pointed here to subscribe.

You can download the mp3 for the latest episode directly from here.

Or you can listen to the embedded episode below here:

listen to ‘Episode 66 - Falkirk Fallout’ on Audioboo

If you are a political blogger and wish to be considered as a future guest please drop me an e-mail at markreckons@live.co.uk.

Any feedback welcomed in the comments below.


PS: A big thanks to Audioboo for hosting the podcast for us and especially to Audioboo's James O'Malley who has helped us out getting relaunched. James is also editor of The Pod Delusion podcast which is about "interesting things" and is well worth a listen too! We would also like to thank Kevin MacLeod from Incompetech.com for our theme music.

The "War on Drugs" is killing our citizens

During prohibition in the USA in the 1920s many people were poisoned and died due to alcohol that had been produced in sub-optimal conditions and in some cases had been adulterated with various chemicals. It was an obvious consequence of the fact that the trade in a substance that millions of people wanted had been driven underground.

People like to describe this sort of thing as an "unintended consequence". Their argument is that they are trying to stop the trade in substances they have decided to outlaw and that they do not intend people to die as a result.

In recent weeks six people in the west of Scotland have died as a result of taking what they thought were ecstasy tablets but in fact contained a dangerous toxic stimulant.

Since the "War on Drugs" started in the early 1970s there have been countless thousands of people who have died due to taking what they thought was one substance but was in fact another. Or they thought it was of a particular concentration but it turned out to be much stronger than they had realised and by the time they did it was too late.

Imagine if you went down to a shop to buy a bottle of alcoholic beverage and instead of it being labelled "Wine" or "Whisky" or "Vodka" along with a clear ABV percentage (e.g. 13.5% or 40%) instead there was no label and you had no idea what was in the bottle. It might be something that is around 10%. It might be 40%. It might be 80%. There is no way to tell. Also, you think it contains an alcoholic drink but it might instead contain something that if ingested even in small amounts would kill you.

That's analogous to the sort of situation that people who take drugs in this country regularly face. Most of them get lucky. But some of them do not.

The simple fact is that exactly like they found in the USA, prohibiting a substance drives trade underground and quality control goes out of the window. By 1933 the US had learned the horrible lessons that prohibiting alcohol had caused far more problems than it solved and reversed the law in short order. But we are still to learn the lessons regarding drugs more than 40 years on from their prohibition.

There have been so many deaths like those in Scotland recently that I am no longer willing to accept the term "unintended consequences" to describe them. I would not go so far as to say our politicians want these people to die but it is clear that they see them as some sort of collateral damage in the "War on Drugs". They are not collateral damage. They were human beings with thoughts, feelings, friends and family exactly like you and I.

It is nonsensical to declare war on a substance. The "War" if it exists at all is on our own citizens, particularly our young and often very vulnerable citizens. They bear the brunt of the poison they put in their bodies due to lack of any sort of quality control. They serve the time in prison if they are caught with "controlled substances" and have their future prospects utterly ruined.

It is time to recognise that criminalising substances that people want to put into their systems simply makes the problem worse. Much worse.

It only took 13 years for the Americans to realise this in relation to alcohol. I really do wonder why it  has taken more than three times as long (and counting) when it comes to other substances. Because the problem is exactly the same.

The phrase "those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it" has never been more apt.

House of Comments - Episode 65 - The Spending Review Review

Episode 65 of the House of Comments podcast "The Spending Review Review" is out. This week myself and Emma Burnell are joined by Conservative liberal campaigning organisation Bright Blue's Kate Maltby to discuss the spending review and the related fortunes of the parties in its wake, the double dip that never was, royal spending, ministerial no shows and violent porn.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

Other podcasting software e.g. for Android can be pointed here to subscribe.

You can download the mp3 for the latest episode directly from here.

Or you can listen to the embedded episode below here:

listen to ‘Episode 65 - The Spending Review Review’ on Audioboo

If you are a political blogger and wish to be considered as a future guest please drop me an e-mail at markreckons@live.co.uk.

Any feedback welcomed in the comments below.


PS: A big thanks to Audioboo for hosting the podcast for us and especially to Audioboo's James O'Malley who has helped us out getting relaunched. James is also editor of The Pod Delusion podcast which is about "interesting things" and is well worth a listen too! We would also like to thank Kevin MacLeod from Incompetech.com for our theme music.