Raoul Thomas Moat: just sad, and a need to listen....

Today at Prime Ministers Questions, David Cameron was posed a question about Raoul Moat and his Facebook fan page.

Conservative MP Chris Heaton-Harris asked the PM to contact Facebook requesting that the RIP Raoul Moat group page, which has attracted more than 30,000 members, be taken down. He described it as carrying a "whole host of anti-police statements." Cameron responded by saying that:

It is absolutely clear that Raoul Moat was a callous murderer, full stop, end of story. I cannot understand any wave, however small, of public sympathy for this man. There should be sympathy for his victims and the havoc he wreaked in that community. There should be no sympathy for him.

But a spokeswoman for Facebook later said the page would not be removed on the grounds the site encourages public debate about issues in the media.

Facebook is a place where people can express their views and discuss things in an open way as they can and do in many other places, and as such we sometimes find people discussing topics others may find distasteful, however that is not a reason in itself to stop a debate from happening. The site has measures in place which allow people to report any material they find offensive and each complaint would be investigated on an individual basis.

I have do not have sympathy for Moat, but I think that when 30,000 people join a group, it must say something that politicians can not ignore.

One of the things I think it says, is that parts of the community feel detached from the rest of society, and are so far detached they wholly decry all government institutions including the police. I conclude if you tracked where most of these 30,000 people are, then they would also live in places with high unemployment, low education, high drug intake, and where even the ambulance and fire brigade get attacked. In other words, the sort of place where Raoul Thomas Moat was born and grew up. No wonder they have sympathy for him.

In the new politics, based on coalition and proportional representation, all can get their voice heard. There is great fear from all mainstream sides of politics of the extreme right wing organisations like the National Front resultantly gaining a platform. Well if we don't listen to 30,000 people on Facebook who don't really think Raoul Thomas Moat is a hero, just one of the isolated them, then we might as well give up and take up the baton permanently.

These people don't admire Moat, they know right from wrong. They just sympathise with his isolated "what choice did I have" situation, tragic as it was for all - Moat included.

Good Luck!

Miliband v Milband is just a yawn

I'm watching Ed Miliband launch his Labour leadership campaign, and frankly: its a yawn!

Its not because I think Ed Miliband is a yawn or a bad politician, its because he's trying to answer the question: what did Labour do wrong to lose the election?

I think they lost it for three reasons: lack of delivery on promises, expenses, but mostly 13 years in power.

Now I named this blog The Duck House Legacy because for me that is the tipping point when we voters went "what are you lot up to, you are not representing us, you are just filling your boots!" Amusingly, if you think about it, the worst and those chosen as headline expense claims were undertaken by Tories: the Duck House, moat cleaning and employing family. The Labour claims were just excess, and although technically within the rules, morally outside them.

So, why did the Conservatives "win," or at least get the most votes? I think simply its because we the voters wanted a change.

So in addressing the problems that the Labour party need to address to win the next election on May 7th, 2015 - in theory - what do they need to do? I think they fought a poor and highly negative campaign. There were lots of media messages about how Labour had transformed things (yes, they had and needed to. But they got poor value, which is why our national debt is racking up at £500M per day); and how we would/should be scared of a Conservative government. Actually, so far I quite like the Conservative government, although I don't think that right wingers will be at all happy at present.

But there's another problem in defining what Labour needs to transform itself to to win power again, and its the Duck House Legacy. By 2015, we will have some form of PR in government, and that means the agenda and leader needs to be about a "core" position and proposition. PR will result in a more representative government, but also a more consistent centralist government in result: gone are the days of left or right, the Duck House Legacy is that its left and right in coalition.

Labour need a wider debate on who leads them. They need more contestants. But any of the possible candidates face the same problem: how do we get to the point where we represent the new riving centre (left) force?

Duckhouse Legacy

Welcome to The Duck House Legacy - a political blog by a UK voter