George Foulkes was wrong, but all political parties need to do more to tackle rape culture

Yesterday, George Foulkes caused a bit of a stooshie with this tweet:

Horsemeat in school dinners,14 year old raped in City bus & Orkney firm in administration yet all we hear from SNP Govt. is more on Indyref!
— George Foulkes (@GeorgeFoulkes) March 29, 2013

Now, one of these three events is very different from the others. Yes, we need to confidence in what our school kids eat. Yes, anyone facing the threat of losing their job is pretty awful. But the brutal assault of a child in a public place is too horrific for casual political banter. There are limits, and he crossed the line.

As mother of an almost 14 year old, I winced when I read his tweet and replied to him:

@georgefoulkes I agree that Nats ignore people's needs now to bang on about #indyref but I don't think your analogy helped make that case.
— Caron Lindsay (@caronmlindsay) March 29, 2013

What I took back from him is I think as close as an admission from him that he understands the point I was making as we're ever likely to get:

@georgefoulkes Thanks. I appreciate that. If you'd just missed out the second example, I'd have agreed with you. I've often said similar.
— Caron Lindsay (@caronmlindsay) March 29, 2013

Of course, Nationalists on Twitter were not chuffed. Foulkes, of course, loves winding them up, much more than is helpful to the debate to be honest. They didn't help themselves when they started bandying around crime stats, though. I doubt the numbers game matter one tiny bit to that poor wee girl and her family.

I would probably elbow my way past George Foulkes to accuse the Nats of failing to meet people's needs now. In fact, I wrote a bit about it on Lib Dem Voice the other day, linking to Christine Jardine's article saying the same thing. They do need to get a grip of the here and now and not just ignore it and blame all failings on the fact that they don't have the powers to do stuff. Most of the time, they do.

I got to thinking, though, that maybe we should start to talk - that's talk, not throw political brickbats about - about what we can do about the sort of culture we have, how it demeans women and how we can change things. To do so we need to listen to some of the people who are out there working with young people. Or we can have a look around social media and find some of the terrible sexism and misogyny around. Chris Glendinning has a point about what we need to do here:

If we want to actually to tackle rape, then we can’t do this just by improving the legal process for complainers. Education also has a crucial role to play. When the Scottish Youth Parliament’s Education and Equalities Committees consulted young people on PSE in schools, the results were startling. When we surveyed young people on the issue of consent to sex and relationships in February this year, 63% of respondents said that there schools didn’t do enough to teach them about the importance of consent. If we want to tackle rape as an issue, we’ve got to simply stop saying to women “don’t do these things that could get you raped” (such as dress provocatively, get drunk, show consent to any sexual conduct with a man etc.) because firstly it is simply wrong: no-one is to blame for rape but the rapist themselves; and secondly because it does nothing to tackle the rape problem structurally, and do more to say to men “don’t rape”. Campaigns, such as “This is not an invitation to rape me” by Rape Crisis Scotland and the “We can stop it” by the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland are fantastic, but they need to be rolled out on a much more widespread basis in schools, colleges and universities if we are to actually change social attitudes for the better.

There's a few things I'd like to add to Chris's suggestions. The effects of exposure to easily available internet porn which portrays women as receptacles rather than as equal participants in a relationship are being noticed by those who work with young people and in the UK Government's own review of sexualisation of young people. These articles by Ann Czernik in the Guardian also make scary reading.

We also need to look at the effects of the way women are treated in the mainstream media.Why, for example, are we still willing to put up with women's breasts being all over a national newspaper? What about the effect of pressure to conform to certain body types and an increasingly narrow definition of beauty? How does that impact on girls' and boys' expectations as they grow up?

As I say, no political party either gives tackling our victim blaming, misogynist rape cultre enough priority or tackles it properly. If we take anything from the furore over George Foulkes' tweet, it should be a determination to remedy that.

Reasonable Rennie remembers who actually matters in the referendum

What an awful 48 hours we've had in Scotland.

We should really be talking about the heartbreaking and appalling report on child poverty this morning. We should be bringing forth our ideas and listening to people who know what they're talking about on how to give kids a better start in life. These aren't just numbers. For 1 in 5 kids not to have enough food, or warmth, or clothes, or books, or toys, whose lives are so difficult they don't have that freedom, that joy of just being a child, is just awful.  Every single politician should write down these facts about child poverty on a fluorescent piece of paper and pin it on their office wall. And every day as they head home they should think about what they've done, what idea they've had to deal with it.

We're not concentrating on that, though. Certain of the political elite are kicking lumps out of each other on an issue on which there is actually more agreement than they would like to let on - the legalities of the forthcoming referendum.

David Cameron's inept, ill-advised and imperious interview on the Andrew Marr show on Sunday just struck all the wrong notes. He should have been locked in that tartan lined cupboard I wrote about a few months back.  Sometimes I wonder if he wants to the Union to survive or not.

It could all have been so different. You see, everybody knows that the Scottish Parliament doesn't really have the powers it needs to hold an unchallengably legal referendum. The SNP's chief strategist Stephen Noon knows it. Amid all the bluster in his post yesterday, you can see that he does. He talks about mischievous people with deep pockets challenging the legality of a referendum. If he can see that it's on dodgy legal ground, then you can bet your life Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon are well aware of the fact. Nationalist blogger and legal genius Lallands Peat Warrior knows it too and you'd be well advised just to take his word for it when it comes to the law.

Now, the UK Government could just have left the SNP to deal with all the legal challenges from the people with the deep pockets. That would just have been a total waste of time and money when actually the destiny of Scotland is something that should be decided by the people in the ballot box, not by judges in a courtroom.

Either that, or they could have waited for the SNP to ask for the power to hold the referendum to be devolved. It's funny that they haven't, cos they've demanded every other power under the sun. But they understandably haven't wanted to admit the reality of the situation and the thought of asking Westminster for any favours would not have sat easily with the First Minister.

So, an offer by the Westminster Government to give the power to hold this referendum actually gets the SNP Government out of a big hole. And they know it. You might think they'd be more appreciative.

Of course, rather than have a grown up dialogue about this, Cameron decided to go throwing his weight around, Nicola Sturgeon made hyperbolic accusations of dictatorship,  Labour peers try to give the vote to Scots who live in England for no other reason than they think it strengthens their cause and Tom Harris went into his most annoying mode on Twitter. Seriously, by the end of yesterday, I would happily have locked Harris, Sturgeon, Cameron and George Foulkes ina room and made them watch Celebrity Big Brother on giant screens until they could learn to play nice.

How much better would it have been if the powers had been offered and that offer discussed in an atmosphere of mutual civility and respect? Is it really too much to hope for that politicians behave like grown ups?

Actually, no. Because Nick Clegg, Mike Moore and Willie Rennie get it. They have been pretty reasonable. Rather than get in on the bunfight yesterday, Willie was reminding us all who mattered - the people, and how important it was that Scotland's future should be decided in the ballot box, not the Judge's chambers.

“It is in everyone’s interests, including the SNP, that the referendum is legally sound. Scotland’s future should be determined by the voters, not the courts. “I accept the SNP have a mandate to hold a referendum on independence but they have failed to recognise the clear legal issues that arise from the Scottish Parliament holding a constitutional referendum. “To avoid the strong possibility of a legal challenge some cooperation with Westminster is essential so that a referendum has the legal force and effect necessary to be seen as legitimate. “We do not want a situation to arise when this issue of vital importance to the future direction of Scotland is finally decided in the courts rather than at the ballot box.”

On Good Morning Scotland this morning he continued with his fair and reasonable line:



In just over half an hour, Mike Moore will make his statement on referendum issues to the Commons. I don't expect that he will be anything other than reasonable. It simply isn't in his DNA.

Where Cameron waded in with all the subtlety of an elephant who'd been on the cooking sherry, Mike, Willie and Nick Clegg, it appears, have been trying to clear up the mess. The Guardian reports that the Liberal Democrats were less than happy with Cameron's efforts and made sure that the 18 month time limit was kicked into touch. This is another good example of how effective we are within that Coalition.

I'd be surprised if there wasn't some sort of time limit - this power is presumably being given for this referendum only. A temporary devolution of a power by definition has to have some sort of expiry date. For me that date would most sensibly be at the end of either the Westminster or the Holyrood Parliament in 2015 or 2016.

The idea that the Electoral Commission, which is good enough to oversee every other poll on these shores should be side-stepped for the referendum, is utterly ridiculous. We don't need another Commission set up by Salmond to run it. That does not seem right or fair in any way and it looks dodgy even if it isn't.

Anyway, I shall come back to this one much later after the statement. I wish they wouldn't put these things on at School Run time.