Faiths Forum statement on Woolwich

Following yesterday's appalling attack in Woolwich, I am pleased to see that the Faiths Forum for London has issued the following statement (http://www.faithsforum4london.org/2013/05/londons-faith-communities-respond-to-woolwich-attack/), of which one signatory is the London Jewish Forum (on whose Steering Group I sit):

"We, as representatives of many of London's faith communities, deplore the terrible attack that has taken place today in Woolwich.

"All of our religions exalt the sanctity of human life and no grievance could justify such a barbaric assault that has cost a young man his life. Terrorism has no place on our streets.

"We pray for the victim of this attack and his family, and call for Londoners to stand together at this time. We will redouble our efforts to work for peace, love, understanding and hope."

Canon Guy Wilkinson CBE, Co Chair
Leonie Lewis, Co Chair
Dilowar Hussain Khan, Vice Chair
Dr Natubhai Shah MBE, Vice Chair
Sellappah Yoga Rajah, Vice Chair
Syed Yousif Al Khoei OBE (The Al Khoei Foundation)

Acharya Modgala Duguid (The Amida London Buddhist Centre)

Ifath Nawaz (The Association of Muslim Lawyers)

Canon Guy Wilkinson CBE (Church of England)

Jasvir Singh (The City Sikhs Network)

Dilowar Hussain Khan (The East London Mosque)

Dr David Muir (Faith in Britain)

Dr Deesha Chadha (The Hindu Forum of Britain)

Sellappah Yogarajah (The Hindu Council UK)

Dr Natubhai Shah MBE (The Jain Network)

Revd Kumar Rajagopalan (The London Baptist Association)

The Ven Bogoda Seelawimala (The London Buddhist Vihara)

Adrian Cohen (The London Jewish Forum)

Yusef Noden (Al Manaar, The Muslim Cultural and Heritage Centre)

Dr Kishan Manocha (The National Spiritual Assembly of Baha'is in the UK)

Rosalind Miller (The Network of Sikh Organisations) 

Jon Dal Din (Roman Catholic)

The sovereignty of Parliament

My heart stopped when I just read the following words on BBC News (http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22605011): "In the Commons on Tuesday, MPs will vote on an amendment to the Marriage Bill, put forward by the Humanist Association, to allow recognised groups to officiate at marriage ceremonies." I didn't know that there was an MP called the Humanist Association - what party is s/he? I'm all for lobbying by groups like the Humanist Association, but MPs' role is to seriously consider such groups' competing arguments and then to reflect those arguments in proposed amendments. The reference to "an amendment...put forward by the Humanist Association" is a little blatant for my liking. I know the world, but can we not at least maintain the pretence that MPs are deciding these things independently? Lobbyists must never be seen to over-reach themselves in terms of influence. My criticism of this BBC report's language is not meant to imply criticism of the Humanist Association or of its amendment. I remain a convinced supporter of marriage equality: http://hurryupharry.org/2012/05/28/matthew-offord-and-same-sex-marriage/ and I would love to have been there to vote for it today.

Safe at School and homophobic bullying

Prior to reading Wednesday's Standard (http://www.standard.co.uk/news/education/gay-rights-group-called-in-to-advise-primary-teachers-8616681.html), I lived in ignorance of the self-proclaimed, self-appointed "Safe at School campaign", one of whose member(s) is quoted as saying: "Parents expect a school to provide an education, not subject their children to gay propaganda."

The "gay propaganda" in question is material produced by Stonewall to encourage children not to bully those other children who are thought by the bullies to be gay. It beggars belief that a spokeswoman for an organisation that calls itself Safe at School could possibly oppose the use of such material in the education of our nation's children.

I myself was subjected to such "propaganda" when the headteacher of my junior school gathered the pupils together and asked us to please stop using "spastic" as a term of playground abuse, given what the word "spastic" actually means. Would Safe at School have opposed that as well?

In asserting so vigorously what parents apparently expect, Safe at School's spokeswoman lays claim to an impressive degree of empathy. I suggest to her that she also tries to empathise with the child who is being bullied because s/he is or appears to be gay, or to be black, or to be Jewish, or to be a Christian, or to be a Muslim, or to be a 'spastic', or to have a parent who professes deeply illiberal views on efforts to oppose homophobic bullying.

Is she really saying that she opposes efforts to end all types of bullying? Does she really believe that Stonewall's efforts to minimise the bullying of children who might be gay amount to no more than "gay propaganda"? Is she saying that there are two sides to every question and that pupils must therefore be exposed not only to arguments against homophobic bullying, but also to arguments in its favour?! Her definition of "Safe at School" appears to be a little different from mine.

Litmus test for Lib Dem government

I hold no brief for the late Mr Jimmy Mubenga, who died in the midst of being deported from the UK to his native Angola after completing a two-year prison sentence for assault occasioning actual bodily harm (http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-22527987). We have rules about who needs to be deported and when, and that is reasonable. It is also reasonable for the deportees still to be alive when they reach their destination. I await the outcome of this inquest with interest. It is good that the Coalition Government includes Liberal Democrat ministers who can be expected to stand up for the rights of people like Mr Mubenga, however unpopular this may be. The more Liberal Democrats stand up for individuals' right to justice in all circumstances, the more people will understand what Liberal Democrats are for.

Ed Miliband's Thatcher apartheid hypocrisy

Well, maybe not personal hypocrisy, but certainly Labour hypocrisy. Mr Miliband today told Parliament that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher made "the wrong judgement about...sanctions in South Africa".

As a kid in the 80s, I certainly thought that she had made the wrong judgement in opposing sanctions, with her attitude summed up in a comment about "not (being) in favour of trade sanctions partly because, even if fully effective, they would harm the people we are most concerned about - the Africans and those white South Africans who are having to maintain some standard of decency there."

Except that comment wasn't made by Margaret Thatcher, it was made by the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson, soon after his government had reneged on its full-throated support for sanctions upon taking office in 1964.

The same happened again when Labour governed from 1974 to 1979, when it did absolutely nothing to bring in sanctions against South Africa.

Of course, the very minute Labour entered opposition in 1979, it started campaigning romantically for the same sanctions that it had itself just spent five years not-introducing; throughout the 80s Labour adopted a principled posture that, while it enraptured a generation of teenagers, sat ill with the reality of a Labour government whose leading lights (Denis Healey, Michael Foot, Tony Benn) had themselves done nothing to impose sanctions on South Africa.

Labour's myth is that it heroically fought apartheid while the wicked Tories didn't, and its record in government shows that it is just that, a myth. If Margaret Thatcher was wrong to oppose sanctions, then so was Labour, but don't expect Labour to admit that today.

But then what else does one expect of a party that, in 1968, stripped thousands of British citizens of their citizenship (http://www.runnymedetrust.org/histories/race-equality/38/commonwealth-immigration-act-1968.html)? Reminds me again why I'm Liberal, not Labour...

My next step politically

I am very excited and fighting to win.

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Will BT plumb banks' depths of loathing?

On 25 January, I rang BT to say that I was moving and would no longer be a BT customer. I was told that I owed big fees for cancelling my services near to the start of a new contract. I explained that I had not started a new contract; what had actually happened is that BT had mistakenly disconnected my phone line in September, and immediately re-connected it when I complained - that is not 'starting a new contract'. They offered me six months' free broadband (or something like that) in lieu of proper compensation and I said No  to that, and I then I think they actioned it anyway - if that supposedly entailed the start of a new contract, then I never wanted it, never agreed to it, and obviously should not be charged a fee for now cancelling a service that was only given to me in the first place as compensation for a previous error - think about it! The attempt at compensation is now costing me money. 

So the guy on 25 Jan agreed with me that I owe no cancellation fees. I confirm in February that this is the case, although, typically, it turned out that BT had made no record of what had been agreed on 25 Jan, so I had to go through it all again. The guy I spoke to in Feb promised me written confirmation of the call and even gave me a reference number for the call (which I then mislaid), but, of course, no written confirmation ever came. After several weeks in which BT's website had said that my next bill was due in April, a new bill went up on 5 March (is that April?) including cancellation charges totalling £175, and with me apparently owing them £144 that must be paid by 11 March - take off the £175, and I believe that they owe me money, rather than vice versa. 

In an online chat, BT agreed on Monday to listen to the recording of my last phone call and come back to me within 36-48 hours. That did not happen, of course. Complaints about that led to my receiving an email last night saying:

Hello Harris, 

Thanks you for contacting Live Chat support about the line rental charge. 

I have listened to the call dated 04/02/2013 and I found my colleague said they there is notes on the account you would not incur cancellation charge I have spoke to the refund team removed the cancellation charge. you can keep this email as confirmation.

By BT's standards, that email is clearly telling me (Harris, which is how they choose to address me - thanks for that) that the cancellation charge (or charges) is to be removed from my bill. Of course, my bill (due to be paid by Monday - will this fiasco affect my credit rating if I don't now pay these non-existent charges?) still shows the charges as being owed, so the cancellation charge has not been removed. It is anyway, two cancellation charges, not one. A further live chat simply led to a person at BT saying "I see that there is a £144 bill outstanding..."; I explained the situation, and he went to look at my file, told me that the system was not working and kept me waiting with no response for several minutes, so I ended the chat, and he then rang me up and (if I heard him correctly), asked to speak to Harris Matthews; he certainly said: "Is that Matthews?" I asked to speak to someone in the UK (if I lived in India and got through to a UK call centre, I'd ask to speak to someone in India); he said that he was doing that, and I understood that he was ringing someone in the UK, explaining the situation to them, and then putting me through, but No, he was instead simply putting me in the queue to speak to someone at the call centre and start again from scratch, so after a few minutes of listening to music, I gave up.

In August or September, I used BT's automated system on the phone to say that I would pay my bill by 30 September. I did this because I was starting a new job on 10 September, in which I was due to be paid on the 24th of each month. Despite my having done this, BT disconnected my phone without warning on 28 September because I hadn't paid the bill (the bill that I had agreed to pay by 30 September, and which was therefore not yet late when they disconnected me). When I rang them on 29 Sep, they apologised and said that they often have problems with that automated system - in which case, why keep it going? 

Of course, BT has since denied that they said any such thing, so I advise them to listen to recordings of my calls to them on 29 September 2012. Given the amount of time and aggravation that this disconnection had caused me, I refused BT's offer of £25 standard compensation for a disconnection, and also refused the offer of not paying for broadband for six months, which I was told was worth £94 - I said that I would just like the £94, not £94 taken off my notional future bills. Actually, I was so angry that I asked for £200. A circular series of conversations then ensued, in which BT denied that much of what their staff had said to me on 29 September had ever been said, and then refused to escalate it any further, instead telling me to contact the ombudsman, sparking the farce that I previously detailed here (after which the ombudsman did ring me while I was at work to ask if I wanted to re-submit my complaint, but I haven't since made time to do that).

I do not owe these charges and have been emailed to say that the charges have been removed, and yet they are still there on a bill that I am now expected to pay on Monday. If BT wants to become as hated as much as banks were hated during the crash and MPs were hated during the expenses scandal, then they are going the right way about it. I am fed up to the back teeth of having to mess around and devote time to this stuff. And for every person like me who writes about it, how many others are there who are unable to make their complaints public in this way? The situation for BT's customers has become intolerable and Ian Livingston needs to take responsibility, apologise and sort it out.