Digital Dividend

The airwaves - or radio spectrum - are a finite resource. Radio spectrum is used to carry mobile phone signals, radio, analogue television, freeview, satellite signals, radar and much, much more.

A large amount of this spectrum is currently used for analogue broadcasting of the five terrestrial television channels in the UK (BBC 1 and 2, ITV, Channels 4 and 5).

Digital broadcasting, like freeview, makes more efficient use of the radio spectrum. This means more channels can be broadcast in a smaller part of the spectrum.

The Government hopes that everyone will switch over to digital television by 2012. This will free up a lot of the old spectrum for new uses. This is called the 'digital dividend'.

The European Parliament's Industry Committee, of which I am a member, is currently considering some of the best ways of reusing this spectrum.

I spoke in Committee on Tuesday and said that I am keen to see at least part of this spectrum used to end the so called 'digital divide' whereby some people have excellent access to the internet and other people struggle to get connected. This is sometimes because they are in remote areas or in older buildings which are difficult to fit with the required cabling. This is particularly important for London where it's difficult to wire-up many older tower blocks. Wireless broadband could certainly help.

Access to the internet is becoming so important in everyday life, for access to the media, for internet banking, email and access to government services. We must make sure that no one gets left behind without proper access to the net.

SCIENCE V RELIGION

This appeared yesterday in Guardian G2 from the Hay Festival, I found it very interesting and would like to share it with you....

Raj Persaud, psychiatrist and broadcaster asks Professor John Barrow, mathematician, physicist and cosmologist

Q Would the universe exist if there was no consciousness available to become conscious of it? In other words, do all universes have embedded within their very existence the notion of eventual evolution of intelligent consciousness?
A We have direct evidence that the expanding universe was once so hot and dense that there was a time before which there were no minds in the visible universe. We can also easily imagine how life on planet Earth could extinguish itself and the whole evolutionary process would have to begin again. Planets are common; we expect simple forms of life on planetary surfaces to be common; but the likelihood of complex conscious life is an open question. I suspect it is very rare. We don't understand how and why it arose on Earth, whether it was a lucky accident, and whether it is just a passing evolutionary phase. Cometary and asteroidal impacts make survival difficult over millions of years. Advanced technological civilisations such as ours exhaust their resources, poison their environments and threaten their own stability. Eventually, all forms of information processing and life look set to die out in the universe as its expansion accelerates into the far future. So, although the laws of physics are such as to allow consciousness to evolve in the universe, they do not seem to require its indefinite survival.

BODY IMAGE

A report on how marketing and advertising affect equality between women and men has just been passed by the European Parliament Women' Rights Committee.

It is an important document, highlighting how advertising fuels and highlights inequalities based on gender. Since advertising is designed to influence us, its impact on sexual equality cannot be underestimated. The report drew heavily on research conducted in Germany by the European Association of Craft, Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises and the Ministry of Labour in Poland. which showed that gender stereotypes consolidate narrow gender roles, thus restricting life opportunities.

I put down amendments to the report on body image, drawing attention to a publication by the British Medical Association entitled "Eating Disorders, Body Image and the Media" which states that media portrayals of the ideal body image can adversely affect the self esteem of women, particularly teenagers and those susceptible to eating disorders. One of my amendments called on advertisers to consider their use of extremely thin women more carefully while another pointed out that advertising could be a strong tool in challenging and tackling stereotypes.

I also submitted an amendment expressing extreme concern at the advertising of sexual services in local newspapers and other publications, something I know Harriet Harman, Barbara Follett, Fiona Mactaggart and other sisters in the House of Commons are taking up.

All my amendments were passed by the Women's Committee and will now be voted on by the whole European Parliament.

DEMOCRATIC RIGHTS FOR ALL

On Tuesday I posted a link to a piece I wrote for the Guardian "Comment is Free" online section.

I received a number of responses, and I would just like to respond to a few things:

I have no problem with what people believe as long as they do not harm others. We should all respect each other, women and men, old and young, gay and straight, those with disabilities and the able bodied, black and white. We are, after all, human beings living on the same planet.

I believe democracy, and therefore other people, are harmed when MPs allow their religious faith rather than the principles of the party they represent to influence their votes in Parliament.

THE GLASS CEILING IN SCIENCE

The UK has one of Europe's toughest 'glass ceilings' that female scientists have to break to reach top positions, according to calculations by an EU report.

A report which places the UK below 20 other European countries including Portugal, Bulgaria and France for the relative chance women have compared to men in reaching a top position in science, went through the European Parliament today.

The report addressed a number of social, cultural and other kinds of barriers that account for the under-representation of women in science. These included judging scientific capability on the 'bulk' of research rather than the quality, which discriminates against women who have taken career breaks and work part time. And removing age limits for the awarding of grants, which prejudice women who have children early on in their career.

These recommendations will now have to be addressed by all Governments across Europe, including the UK, ahead of the recruitment of an additional 700 000 additional European scientific researchers by 2010.

The UK and Europe's scientific communities are missing out big-time by failing to retain and promote women. We are losing out on countless research ideas and methods as well as drastically reducing the size of the talent pool of scientific personnel.

Today's report should be a wake up call to all European Governments to act now to stop the dreadful drip, drip of female talent out of one the world's most important industries.

The latest Women and Science statistics publication "She figures 2006" (PDF 1 MB)
http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/pdf/she_figures_2006_en.pdf

Motion for a European Parliament resolution on women and science
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//NONSGML+REPORT+A6-2008-0165+0+DOC+PDF+V0//EN&language=EN

CARDINALS' SINS

Gordon Brown has allowed his authority to be undermined by the three Catholics in his cabinet. Take a look at my comment on this for the Guardian website at this link:

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/mary_honeyball/2008/05/cardinals_sins.html

MEPs' EXPENSES

Following last week's revelations about UKIP MEP Tom Wise, you may like to see this offering on Tory David Sumberg

http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/1105_brussels_exposed_2.shtml

HOPE NOT HATE

The campaign to defeat the fascist BNP is being spearheaded by Hope not Hate, convened by the Daily Mirror and Searchlight. Hope not Hate is supported by the TUC as a whole and individually by the GMB, Unison, Amicus and Unite, in other words almost all of the trade union movement. This shows just how serious an issue the BNP has become.

We must fight fascism. It is no good backing off in the hope that starving the BNP of publicity will make them go away. This is simply not true now and never has been. We have to work hard to get rid of the fascists who already exist in local and regional government and prevent any more arriving.

Make no mistake - they are fascists. The BNP leader Nick Griffin has said:

• "I am well aware that the orthodox opinion is that 6 million Jews were gassed and cremated or turned into lampshades. Orthodox opinion also once held that the earth is flat.........I have reached the conclusion that the 'extermination' tale is a mixture of allied wartime propaganda, extremely profitable lie and latter witch-hysteria." (On the holocaust)
• "Without the White race nothing matters [other right wing parties] believe that the answer to the race question is integration and a futile attempt to create "Black Britons", while we [the BNP] affirm that non-Whites have no place here at all and will not rest until every last one has left our land." (On race)
• Adolf Hitler went a bit too far. His legacy is the biggest problem that the British nationalist movement has to deal with. It just creates a bad image."
(On Nazi leader Adolf Hitler)

The GMB union recently spoke to the EPLP about the Hope not Hate campaign. It would be a disaster if the BNP made headway in next year's European elections. As well as a toehold in local government and the Greater London Assembly, they would then have a parliamentarian. We all have a duty to make sure than does not happen.

RISING FEMALE CRIME

Crime is indefensible. Committing crime is wrong and offenders must be brought to book in whatever way is appropriate for the crime they committed, the way we view that crime and the various rules and regulations about sentencing convicted offenders. I would never agree to any criminal being given an easy rise. Having spent some time in the Probation Service before becoming an MEP, I have seen the effects of crime first hand.

It is not possible to gloss over the increase in crime, particularly violent crime, amongst young women. Crime by young women and girls has risen by 25 percent. According to a report from the Youth Justice Board the number of crimes committed by girls aged ten to 17 climbed from 47,000 to 59,000 between 2003-4 and 2006-7. The figure for boys over the same period went down slightly from 240,000 to 236,000.

The proportional rise in female crime while that for young men has decreased is worrying. Predictably the Daily Mail's resident siren anti-woman, anti-Labour voice, Melanie Phillips, has waded in, ranting on 12 May, "As a result of the feminist revolution, women have commandeered the freedoms and entitlements of the masculine world - while men themselves have now been largely reduced to sperm banks, walking wallets and occasional au pairs."

Notwithstanding the arrant nonsense of Ms Phillips's last couple of lines, her main contention - that feminism has made women more like men - needs addressing. There is no doubt that there has been a convergence between male and female behaviour. Young women now outperform young men at school. Women enter the labour market in much the same way as men. Equal pay legislation and improved childcare have allowed women to develop their careers, although more still needs to be done.

All this has helped our economy as well as providing fulfilment for women. Both men and women who are from generations younger than Ms Phillips's baby boomers, take women's participation in the world of work as a given. I doubt they would want women to stay at home tied to the kitchen sink as Ms Phillips hints at another point in her article, even if they could afford it. Interestingly Melanie Phillips herself earns a decent crust, presumably unencumbered by outdated notions of a woman's place.

Now that women go to work and may take part in our society more or less on a par with men, we are finding that there is a downside - female crime is going up. This is obviously not desirable and we must all work to reduce crime. The Daily Mail blaming modern feminism does nothing to help.

Is UKIP trying to bankrupt the EU?

UKIP have always said they wanted to bring the EU down from the inside.
They obviously failed, but are they trying to bankrupt the EU instead?

http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/1105_brussels_exposed.shtml

Pro-lifers must protest at Mail and Dorries' insult to women's intelligence

This week, in the run up to the second reading of the human fertilisation and embroyolgy bill, anti-abortionist campaigners have used the Daily Mail as a soap-box for their liturgy of guilt and condemnation on women who have foetuses aborted between 20 and 24 weeks.

Fortunately commonsense has prevailed through comment pieces in the Guardian and news of a report published today by the British Medical Journal. Both have sought to assuage the speculative and highly subjective use of facts, figures and general hearsay used by the pro-lifers with more substantive and objective research.

The BMJ study of all premature births in one region, Trent, shows that life expectancy for babies born before 24 weeks are poor and have not improved since the last review of this bill took place in 1990.

In the face of clear cut objective medical research Nadine Dorries MP, who is leading the cross party group launching the "20 Reasons for 20 weeks campaign", has shown her true colours with her ludicrously subjective statement in today's Guardian:

"I think this report insults the intelligence of the public and MPs alike. No improvement in neonatal care in 12 years? Really? So where has all the money that has been pumped into neonatal services gone then?" She called the study "the most desperate piece of tosh produced by the pro-choice lobby".

Comment pieces by Zoe Williams and Polly Toynbee have cast also cast aspersions on Dorries and the Mail's sensationalist use of facts and figures this week. Some of the most powerful myths they have dispelled I think are:

Myth:
Two-thirds of GPs support a reduction in the time limit.

Fact:
At the last British Medical Association vote on the matter, 77% voted to keep the time limit as it is.

Myth:
Foetuses can feel pain at 18 weeks.

Fact:
This myth is based on just one study from the University of Arkansas. But the consensus in the mainstream medical community is that the neurological development necessary for pain is more like 26 weeks plus.

Myth:
The abortion of foetuses between 20 and 24 weeks is commonplace in the UK.

Fact:
Only 1.45% of abortions happen after 20 weeks. Of this small per cent one woman was just 14-years-old and arrived at a clinic when she was 23 weeks and five days pregnant: her periods had become irregular but she had not realised she was pregnant until a school nurse referred her just in time. (Some women are caught out by having periods all through pregnancy, a trick nature plays.) Another was a 27-year-old who arrived at just over 22 weeks' gestation. She already had a 10-month-old, a five-year-old and a six-year-old, all of them in foster care. She said the next baby would go straight into care, because she was a drug user. In a chaotic daze, she had left the abortion to the last minute. Then there was the woman who arrived at 22 weeks and four days, who had been drinking heavily and taking large doses of cocaine, unaware she was pregnant. The one rational choice these addicted women were fit to make was to know they were not fit to be mothers.

Myth:
Foetuses are being aborted late in the pregnancy because women are being too lazy to sort it out before this time.

Truth:
If campaigners really wanted more abortions to take place earlier in the pregnancy, then they would work towards improving access to terminations on the NHS. Conversely, this campaign is all designed to stigmatise abortion, castigate women, lionise the foetus, and make the whole debate so emotionally charged that it no longer matters whether the argument has any factual basis at all. Never mind the insult to women.

Sad truth:
This week some Labour MPs may be taking fright. They have been sent lurid DVDs of abortions: last time they were sent plastic foetuses. Bombarded with letters from their local churches, some may reckon that voting to cut a few weeks off the time-limit won't matter much. But it does. And unfortunately the pro-choice lobby has no pulpits to marshal its troops.

New research on baby survival rates stokes abortion limit row
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/may/09/health.medicalresearch

Fact, fiction and foetuses (Zoe Williams comment)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/may/07/gender.health

Resist the medievalists. Women's right to abortion is a private matter (Polly Toynbee comment)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/may/09/health.health

REQUEST FOR ACTION

The question – ‘What is your religion?’ – in the 2001 Census led to deeply flawed results. The British Humanist Association (BHA) is now working to make sure that the question or questions about religion in the 2011 Census give an accurate picture of religious affiliation in the UK.
At least 15.5% of the population is non-religious according to the 2001 Census, making this the second largest ‘belief’ group in the UK, being two-and-a-half times as numerous as all the non-Christian religions put together. By any sensible reckoning this figure is far too low. The Office of National Statistics admits that the leading nature of the ‘religion’ question meant that many people, especially those with a loose (for example, merely cultural) affiliation to a religion, would have identified themselves as religious when they are not. This is particularly true of those who identified themselves as ‘Christian’. A large proportion of those people who identified themselves as affiliated in some sense to a religion in fact have no active involvement.
Apart from the inaccuracy of the data collected on religious affiliation, there are real, practical problems with the use of this data. The Census data on religion says nothing about the actual religious practice and involvement of the population. However, both central and local government use this data in resource allocation and for targeting equality initiatives.
The figure stating that 72% of the population are ‘Christian’ has been used in a variety of ways, such as to justify the continuing presence of Bishops in the House of Lords, to justify the state-funding of faith schools (and their expansion), to justify and increase religious broadcasting and to exclude the voices of humanists in Parliament and elsewhere.
The Office of National Statistics has written to the BHA claiming they have done some testing of the question and that their results show that the 2001 Census question on religion should be used again. In light of how the data has been misused, this is a highly irresponsible decision. In order to strengthen their case, the BHA needs evidence that demonstrates the difficulties created by the 2001 Census question.
Please would you look out for information in your locality, which justifies ‘faith-based’ practices by public bodies based on Census results. Examples of this may include making funding decisions using this data or changes in service delivery or justifying the allocation of resources on the basis of Census data on religion.
If you have any pertinent examples, please let the BHA know so that they can build up evidence showing the misuse of the questionable 2001 data. All information should be sent to Naomi Phillips, BHA Public Affairs Officer, naomi@humanism.org.uk. Contact Naomi for more information, by email or on 020 7079 3585.
I very much support the BHA on the matter. They need evidence, so please contact them if you have anything they may find useful.

KEEP THE 24 WEEK ABORTION TIME LIMIT

Zoe Williams makes some very telling points about abortion time limits in Guardian Comment in Free today.
This is the link

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/may/07/gender.health

IS THIS "NORMAL"?

Late yesterday evening I watched "Am I Normal", introduced by psychologist Dr Tanya Byron, on BBC2. (I get BBC2 in Brussels on cable).

The programme looked a sexual behaviour and attempted to define normality. Much of it was disturbing, not least the sequences dealing with paedophilia and the sexualisation of children, usually girls.

Dr Byron spent some time examining lad mags such as "Loaded", interviewing the editor of one such publication and the female models who posed for the photographs. I was struck by the way both the young women and the equally young male editor thought the subject matter - a certain portrayal of women and a certain view of male sexuality - was quite OK, nothing out of the ordinary, just what we all do, and why not make some money out of it.

The "Loaded" approach dehumanises both men and women. It views sex as a commodity to be bought and sold via its soft porn pages. I recently read that, according to one survey, something like forty percent of teenage young women aspire to be glamour models. In my time it was air hostesses. At least there was, and still is, dignity in being an airline steward.

BAD DAY FOR LONDON

There is no getting away from it - Thursday 1 May was a bad day for the capital. Ken Livingstone has done an extraordinarily good job on our behalf. His most striking achievement, the congestion charge, was one of the boldest moves I have seen in my thirty odd years in politics. It took a very special politician to embark on a course of action which, while beneficial for the city as a whole, upset many vested interests and invited the wrath of the capital's only newspaper, the appalling Evening Standard. Many would say "it was the Standard wot won it" thanks to the paper's relentless and uncritical campaign for Boris Johnson.

As a London representative resident in the capital's centre, I was very aware of the real improvements made by Ken. Since there are many more buses I now use them in a way I did not eight years ago, and I have found my Oyster card immensely helpful. Ken is a true Londoner and worked tirelessly on behalf of the people of London.

My congratulations to the Labour members of the Greater London Assembly who were returned: Nicky Gavron, Murad Qureshi, Val Shawcross, John Biggs, Jennette Arnold, Joanne McCartney, Len Duvall and Navin Shah. I know they will keep up Labour's good work.

VOTE FOR KEN

Londoners go to the polls today in one of the most important elections we will ever have.

Ken Livingstone has turned London into a world class city. During the past eight years Ken has reduced pollution by introducing the congestion charge and improved public transport by investing the proceeds in buses. He also gave us the very successful Oyster card.As a central London resident I have really noticed the difference. There is less traffic and the air is better. Gratifyingly, I no longer have to wait half an hour for a bus then have three come at once.Ken has fought tirelessly for Londoners. We must not let his efforts go to waste in the dubious hands of bonkers Boris Johnson. Johnson has never run anything. He is MP for Henley, not a real Londoner like Ken.

Vote Livingstone today.