CAABU is the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding. Never has it been more needed than NOW.
In the Arab Spring, or Uprising, we have seen three Arab dictators overthrown, and major reforms in two Arab monarchies, while in Syria and Iraq the future is uncertain.
CAABU is urgently needed to interpret the Arab world to Britain, and vice-versa. Western-style democracy may not be the first choice for many Arabs. It is, however, clear that almost all Arabs want systems of government that respect personal and family dignity. Almost anything would be better than tyrants, who imprisoned and tortured as they saw fit.
Each year it costs just over £250,000 to keep CAABU running. This covers work in Parliament, the media, universities and schools, as well as the organizing of exchange visits and training courses. Please contribute as generously as you can, to an organization costing a tiny fraction of the smallest war. CAABU’s address is 1 Gough Square, London EC4A 3DE – www.caabu.org.
I have just returned from Ankara. The total number of prisoners in Turkey more than doubled between 2005 and this year, from 55,000 to 130,000. Many are held without charge, pending eventual trial, often under the Terrorism Law. 175 persons per 100,000 population are now gaoled. Turkey imprisons about twice as many journalists as either Iran or China, and also a significant number of lawyers.
In spite of the the above, and of the still unresolved Turkish/Kurdish conflict, some commentators describe the authoritarian Turkish state as “an Islamic model of democracy for the Middle East”!
The Easter Act is there somewhere
I have previously written about having a fixed date for Easter. Parliament enacted the Easter Act 1928, but it has never been brought into effect because its commencement was based on the churches reaching agreement. Various readers identified problems with stipulating a fixed date, but I see no reason why we should not separate the date of Easter from a fixed date for the ‘Easter’ bank holidays.
We thus avoid the difficulties of trying to reach agreement on a fixed date for Easter, but have the advantage of knowing when the bank holidays will take place.
There is, of course, the separate issue – highlighted by the recent study of the cost of bank holidays – of the grouping of holidays and the case for spreading them a little more across the year. There is also the issue of the number itself. Germany has more public holidays but a better productivity rate than the UK. The correlation may, of course, be coincidental than causal. I’m not sure I would be more productive if I took more holidays…
I have been somewhat distracted by writing commitments, so apologies for the delay in setting the latest quiz. What I think will prove difficult questions do not always turn out to be that difficult for readers, whereas some I think are straightforward turn out to be problematic. This quiz question is, I think, a difficult one, but we shall see. This time it is just one question and the first reader to supply the correct answer will be the winner.
The question is: which politician -a leading post-war socialist – wrote the following?
“Nor is there any more validity in the case for an elected second Chamber. If the second Chamber shares power with the first there is always the problem of resolving differences between the two. Delay is the inevitable result… Allocation of distinct and separate functions to each Chamber is no solution. Lines of demarcation are not easy to define, especially in the days when, for instance, foreign affairs are inextricably bound up with economic questions. Tensions between the two legislative bodies would inevitably arise as to the decisions of the one impinged on the functions of the other. In any case, such expedients are not congenial either to the size of Britain or to the genius of the British nation. Our present political institutions are adequate for all our purposes.”
A clue: it wasn’t Michael Foot, but there is a link. Feel free to have a guess.
Women were first admitted to the House of Lords in 1958. It is amazing that it took so long and yet now women are very much to the forefront of the business of the Lords. In fact, I think I can say that the House is the most egalitarian of the institutions I have worked in, both in terms of numbers and attitude. Attitude is especially important. There is absolutely no sense of difference in the House between the respect, role and friendship of the men and women. It is most refreshing. The current Speaker is Baroness D’Souza, her predecessor Baroness Hayman. Baroness Royall is shadow Leader of the Lords; there are women peers distinguished by achievement in sport, charity, education, science, law and medicine, and they form about 25% of the House. Not enough, but not bad compared with industry and some professions.
I was prompted to write this after reading this morning that President Obama has voiced disapproval of US golf clubs which restrict membership to men. He is of course right because a golf club is not just about playing golf, but about business, networking and prestige. We have an issue in this country about the Pall Mall clubs. There are a few that are for one sex only, which is fine as long as they are purely social. But take as an example of one that was not, the Oxford & Cambridge Club. At a time when the two universities were going completely co-ed, and striving to give the message that women students were treated equally with men, the O&C Club in the 1990s resolutely stuck to a men only policy, and women associate members, whether Oxbridge graduates or female relatives of members, were relegated to the basement and told to stay there. The protest against this policy culminated in the resignation from the club of both vice-chancellors and nearly every head of the colleges in both universities, but it took from start to finish several years to get the club to change its rules. If its essence was graduation from Oxford and Cambridge, and those two universities treated men and women the same, then the club could do no less.
The outstanding issue of lack of balance is women on the boards of companies. Only 14% of places on the FTSE boards are held by women. Headhunters, often themselves women, advise that unless one has extensive experience in business, one cannot aspire to a non-exec position. Women’s roles, which they hold in great numbers, in running public organisations, hospitals etc. with budgets of billions, count for nothing in the competition. Not that one would want to do it, but the female perspective in business would improve its success, I venture.
