Channel Four News: embedded

This is the story of today's protests about Zimbabwean asylum seekers being allowed to work.

Channel Four is ahead of the game, ahead of the BBC.

This is:

1. a public service
2. great promotion for Channel Four
3. greatly increasing the viewership for these reports

I am not just promoting this story, I am (through embedding) promoting Channel Four.

Postscript: Demonstrating my point, Sokwanele are now carrying this C4 News clip.

egov bloggers and news sources

Dave Briggs has started publicsectorblogs.org, (and included me, thanks ;] ) and had a lot of suggestions to add to the site.

These are the feeds I've got in my Reader - and Dave's post + comments following mean I have a number of others to add. (There are some sources without feeds - shock - which are in my links list in the right column).


Getting very hard to keep up ;{ I certainly have ones I make a point to check (hey Dave!) but some mechanism to float more interesting stuff to the surface is definitely needed. I can't really see a way of automating this, it needs a human editor.

This is kindof what egov Victoria does, maybe somewhere like Public Sector Forums (only not just .gov.uk accessible?) could do it sustainably? Would be terribly useful!

Our shame: official, imposed destitution

Protest by Zimbabwean refugees - the banner reads 'you take our nurses but not our wounded'

In a story buried in almost all the media, Gordon Brown has misled people on his government's attitude to Zimbabwean refugees.

According to the Press Association:

The deportation of failed asylum seekers to Zimbabwe has now been halted, Gordon Brown said.

The Prime Minister told MPs that while officials continued to deal with the issue on a case-by-case basis, no returns were currently taking place.

“No-one is being forced to return to Zimbabwe from the United Kingdom at this time,” he said.

Mr Brown, who has been under pressure to stop the deportations in the wake of the violence surrounding the disputed presidential election, said that ministers were also looking to help failed Zimbabwean asylum seekers who were unable to work.

It is noticeable that the story fails to quote press statements such as by the Refugee Council's Donna Covey.

They were not deporting anyway because of a legal challenge - it’s not news, it's not some great act of charity, source G.Brown, which might please his Minister father.

What’s desperately needed is that the Zimbabweans in the UK are granted ‘leave to remain’ so they can work.

At the moment 11,000 are officially destitute. Many are homeless and begging. All are reliant on charity. This is intolerable.

What Brown said was, frankly, a lie.

This is what the Refugee Council said:

The Refugee Council will tomorrow accuse the government of “utter hypocrisy” as its Chief Executive, Donna Covey, addresses a rally outside Parliament calling on the government to give Zimbabwean asylum seekers leave to stay in the UK and allow them to work.

Thousands of Zimbabweans have been refused asylum in the UK, yet the government admits it is not safe to send them back. They are left homeless and destitute, with no entitlement to any support or the ability to work and support themselves.

It comes close to a charade for the Foreign Secretary to applaud the courage of refugees from Zimbabwe in South Africa, while in this country Zimbabwean refugees are being left to rot.

“The current situation amounts to a policy of saying to Zimbabweans, we won’t return you but our protection will amount to you being allowed to stay and beg on our streets.

“If the government had a shred of decency it would act now, to give Zimbabweans some temporary status in this country, allowing them to work and indeed to reskill so that they are better placed to help rebuild their country when the Mugabe regime falls.”

Unfortunately we have a strong anti-refugee movement led by the media outlets which aren't covering this or quoting the Refugee Council, and this is why it's so difficult to get pressure on G. Brown to do something about the situation of the Zimbabweans.

The government hides behind blatant falsehoods about their system's supposed 'fairness' but the reality is as I explained: official destitution.

They have merely suspended deportations to Harare but only after being forced to by being taken to court.

I and many Brits find this shameful. We live in the fifth biggest economy and most other European countries - or for that matter African countries - do not behave this way. At least they let people work.

And it's not just Zimbabweans. We are now sending refugees back to Darfur. And because the system which creates this is getting no media coverage, British people haven't a clue about what's being done in our name.

Union misses a trick online: surprised?

Next week over a million UNISON members will be on strike. It's about a low pay offer, the rising cost of living and the - still - low pay of many people working in the public sector.

So what is UNISON's suggestion about how you can support them online?

Add your support for the strike to Google Earth

I'm not kidding.

Spread the word among your members and get them to ask a friend, relative, or workmate to pin their support on Google Earth.

As a UNISON member I'm annoyed. No banner I can stick on my blog. No petition I can sign + link to. No video I can help go viral.

None of the tried'n'tested basics for online campaigning.

It's irrelevant, disconnected and - laughably - useless.

Canada's genocide

Canada's "dirty secret" - the planned genocide of aboriginal people in church-run Indian Residential Schools - and a clergyman's efforts to document and make public these crimes. An excellent, extremely moving and educative film.

• Another apology - where is Britain? where is Miliband

Web power: From the Zimbabwe underground to the G8

Two days ago the Zimbabwean civic organisation Sokwanele published this photo on their blog.

It is of the mutilated and burnt corpse of Joshua Bakacheza, MDC driver for Mashonaland West and discovered late on Saturday. Many people apart from the 103 confirmed dead are also missing. It had taken his family two weeks to find it.

Joshua and another MDC supporter, Tendai Chidziwo, had been assisting murdered MDC activist Tonderai Ndira’s wife to move her furniture and personal belongings as she no longer felt safe at her home in Mabvuku, a sprawling township on the outskirts of Harare.

Their truck was ambushed by 16 Zanu-PF thugs, leaving Tonderai’s widow and her two children standing by the roadside, trembling from fright and crying.

Joshua and Tendai was taken to a torture centre and tortured and then shot. Tendai miraculously survived, he directed the family to where the corpse might be found.

Sokwanele have a Flickr page which hosts this photo and many others, and a Google Map, as well as the blog, where they are documenting the terror campaign.

Yesterday Gordon Brown used this photo at the G8 summit to convince his fellow leaders of the need for action against Mugabe's murderous regime.

The meme is that he was producing it from his back pocket. (It was also mentioned on his Twitter feed).

From determined family to Sokwanele to the G8 - this is an amazing moment in web history.

I have read many comments on Sokwanele's blog about whether their documentation is worthwhile, whether people elsewhere can make any real impact. Today showed that they could and the web is enabling this; this is worth noting and I am amazed that none of the news reporting about Brown's actions have sourced the photo back to the web and the heroic people behind Sokwanele.

Postscript: What is more, well, amazing is that in my correspondence with Sokwanele they do not care if credit is given.

These people are my heroes.

Music: Shoot the dog

Great politics, great bassline. Fabulous.

"I have strong opinions on Britain's current situation & I feel that in a time when public debate is being suppressed even something as trivial as a pop song can be a good thing. Shoot The Dog is intended as a piece of political satire, no more no less, & I hope that it will make people laugh & dance, & then think."

He was crucified for this in the US. You go, girlfriend.

Animation by 2DTV.

Unnatural

We're doomed I say, doomed ...

"[Pringles] has a shape not found in nature, being designed and manufactured for stacking, and giving a pleasing and regular undulating appearance which permits comfortable eating."

Potato based content = 42%

Less taxes for us them!

... I draw attention to various George Monbiot columns about the DOOMED nature of us westerners carrying on like this ... as well as the results of eating their 'low-fat' variety (think Olestra, think "anal leakage") ...

Zimbabwean exiles abandoned, left destitute

One image from the terror campaign: More

Cross-posted from LGBT asylum news also on Wardman Wire

The UK Prime Minister is currently in Japan lecturing people about doing more to oust Robert Mugabe.

At the same time his government is doing everything it can to oust the opposition to Mugabe from the UK.

This week 11,000 Zimbabwean refugees received letters asking them to return to a country described by the same government as undergoing a campaign of terror orchestrated by a military cabal. No opposition is brokered and activists are being hunted down and killed.

These refugees are being denied a right to work or any official support (because they are 'refused' to return because they are terrified and do not have 'leave to remain') so they are - officially - destitute and many are homeless and some beg to survive. This is the practice adopted by the UK government to force people to return.

It is hypocrisy of the highest order. Many poor African countries have accepted thousands more Zimbabwean refugees, in South Africa millions. Yet the fifth richest country in the world refuses basic support to the very same people it is praising in Zimbabwe - Mugabe's opposition.

The sole reason is because the UK government is beholden to a few media proprietors who propagate lies about asylum seekers to make money from populist fears.

The government has been trying for some time to forcibly send people back to Zimbabwe - there was a court case which highlighted the unreported issue this week.

Donna Covey, Chief executive of the Refugee Council said:

“The legal ping pong over the removal of Zimbabweans is now becoming farcical. The Judges in explaining their decision today said as much, making the point that the test case going through the courts is more than a year old, and based on even older evidence, while the situation in Zimbabwe is clearly deteriorating day by day.

“It’s now time for the government to drop the legal action and do the decent and sensible thing. It should give all Zimbabweans a temporary right to stay in the UK until the situation in their country improves markedly. This would allow the Zimbabweans, many of whom are well qualified, to work to support themselves and to carry on making plans for rebuilding their shattered country once the Mugabe regime falls.

“The current situation, where brave Zimbabweans who have stood up for democracy and human rights are left homeless and destitute in the UK, having been refused any protection, is a disgrace.”

Sir John Waite, co-chairman of the Independent Asylum Commission, which has just published a report on the asylum system in the UK, described the situation as a source of shame.

He said: "We heard testimony from many Zimbabwean asylum seekers and we were shocked by what we found - Zimbabweans sleeping on sofas, in parks and launderettes, reliant on charity and prevented from working."

He added: "Our nation's leaders have loudly condemned the Mugabe regime, but perhaps we should also look a little closer to home, to the thousands of Zimbabwean asylum seekers who have been left in a harsh legal limbo - unable to work, deprived of welfare and unable to return home. If the British people had heard what we have heard from destitute Zimbabweans, they would be troubled and perhaps even ashamed."

A march and rally is due to be held in Westminster on Friday, to ask for asylum seekers from Zimbabwe to be given status and the right to work. It will begin in Parliament Square, outside Westminster Abbey, at 1.30pm.

It will be preceded by a special service at St Margaret’s Church Westminster Abbey, led by the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu.

• Home Secretary Jacqui Smith's website
• Foreign Secretary David Milliband's blog

• The Still Human Still Here Campaign
  Dedicated to highlighting the plight of tens of thousands of refused asylum seekers who are being forced into abject poverty in an attempt to drive them out of the country.

It's also about the money

Several colleagues have blogged about David Lammy MP’s speech to the Fabian Society, in which he drew inspiration from Barack Obama's internet-led campaign and internet-empowered base. Comparing with Labour, Lammy said:

This is light years away from the caution that can come either from the long shadow of opposition in the 1980s, or the straightjacket that being in office can feel like.

--
It has put together a web strategy premised on connecting activists and supporters to one another, not just pushing out tightly controlled messages from campaign HQ.

Suddenly in the US the web is being used to connect people with politics again – at a time when people are using it to circumvent politics in the UK.

And the huge lesson for us is that the technology is neither particularly complicated, nor especially expensive or labour-intensive to run.

Obama’s web strategy is focused solely on making the vital work which goes on in town halls and on doorsteps work better.

The lesson is that internet campaigning should also be about giving supporters the tools they need to get their own message across in their neighbourhood or local area.

However both Simon Dickson and Dave Briggs echo Lammy's talk about web tools being 'cheap, often free, and easy'. They are but the ones Barack employed aren't cheap (e.g. phone banks) , infact they are the legacy of marketing industry tools first deployed by Karl Rove in 2000, and the advisors who created the online campaign come from several years experience (and probably aren't cheap). Plus the traditional marketing spend - TV ads - outweighed it many, many times over. See my post Turning web buzz into votes: how Obama does it for more about the tools the campaign employed.

How they did it was new, in contrast to Hillary there wasn't the normal degree of top-down messaging during the primaries - although this may well change as we get closer to the general election and the 'netroots' is already squirming about that.

And they didn't get everything right - Hillary did better and earlier online marketing - plus one really big lesson is that email remains the killer app.

Plus US politics is very different to UK politics. Plus the US is 6x bigger - scale matters. Plus the campaign is oppositional (one reason why the right are bigger online in the UK).

In short, Barack's campaign is very inspiring but very open to picking up from it the wrong lessons.

Here's some for Lammy:

1. once November is past, Labour should go hiring
2. he should be arguing for a shift in party spending to online
3. (and this was the meat of his speech) - he should also look at how Labour can adapt to become less top-down and encourage and empower the base (but this goes against the actions of the last twenty years or so).

And I think those points are in decreasing order of likelihood.