Ukraine - looking back a bit

On New Year's Day this year sig other and I were invited by some friends to meet three young Ukrainian women who were staying with them. Communication was difficult, as the three did not really speak English or French. They could all understand Russian however, and one of them spoke it quite well (Ukrainians are mostly not bilingual, whatever you might have read recently), so I was recruited to speak my bad Russian and native English and aid communication. The three were from Lviv in western Ukraine, were Catholic, and were in Strasbourg for the annual pilgrimage of young people associated with the Taize community. Even then they were horrified by what was going on in their country. They were keen to be part of the EU, although when it was mildly suggested to them that they would be poor relations as new members, and quite possibly subjected to discriminatory rulings by some member states, as Bulgaria and Romania have been, they were given pause. They felt that Russia was interfering in their country. On the regions and people of the east and south of this big country, who mostly speak only Russian, these women had no view. It was another country to them. I was interested in that. (It's how I feel about Scotland).

Ten years ago, in 2004, there were three elections in Ukraine. For the first of them, in October, I was part of the election observation team. I was deployed in a village not far from Kiev, where people spoke Ukrainian and where the cows came home at night. In the distance, on the horizon, shale oil was burning. No fracking here. Nature has already done it. Kiev itself was given over to propaganda banners and displays for Yanukovych. The Orange Revolution was starting. That election was inconclusive. By then I had acquired some experience in election observation. You report what you see, and what people say in answer to your questions, not what you have read in the media is going on. There was a second election, in November, at which I was not present, and a third, on 26th December, for which I was part of the team, and was deployed to Odessa. In the south, mild weather, no snow, forever linked in my mind's eye with the Eisenstein film. Everyone spoke Russian. No sign of the Orange people. A strange Christmas it was. Of course, it was not Christmas there. That happens in January.

Back in Kiev, the streets were camped out with Orange people. A seductive movement, but it was clear to me from what was being said (I can mostly understand Ukrainian though can't speak it) and from the literature on the stalls, that the European far right were friends to this movement, that Holocaust denial was present, and that the fever-eyed young men shouting in the streets were fuelled not only by whatever uppers were available in Ukraine at that time but by a measure of Jew-hatred along with nationalism. Not a pretty sight. And not what was mostly being reported in the West at the time.

"Orange gangsters", someone at a polling station described them to me.

Back in the UK I wrote something in my column in the local newspaper, noting that the election was about the freest and fairest I had seen. Boy was I denounced. A most unpleasant fellow named Peter Shutak stopped only just short of a public death threat. He had not been there of course, but knew far better than I did what had been observed there.

A little later, a delegation of Ukrainian MPs visited the UK. Cross-party. I invited them to the constituency, and they were pleased to visit. We took them to the Loch Fyne restaurant in Reading, which they enjoyed very much, and to the Ukrainian club. Also invited was a nice Ukrainian lady called Snejana who lived in Reading and who helped with interpreting, and a Reading trade unionist and Labour Party member named Mick Pollek, Ukrainian by family origin and associated with the Ukrainian club, also a Ukrainian speaker.

The meeting at the Ukrainian club in Reading was an interesting one. Mick Pollek dashed in with some Orange banners with the slogan of the time, "Tak!" ("Yes!"). What he had failed to ascertain was that the cross-party delegation of Ukrainian MPs included no Orange members. Not one. It did include a communist, and a member of what is now the Party of the Regions, neither of whom was exactly enamoured of the Orange people. Coffee and Ukrainian snacks were consumed. Speeches were made in Ukrainian, which were not fully understood by all the delegation. Then the Reading Ukrainians began to sing nationalist songs. The communist and the Regions bloke stood stony-faced and silent throughout. How to get it very very wrong. I didn't care. I had simply offered the hospitality of the constituency to visitors from Ukraine, whatever their political complexion. Pollek and his ilk had never even asked about the make-up of the delegation, and had not put a single question to me as a recent visitor to Ukraine who had had meetings with both government and opposition. Part of the political establishment in Reading got it very very wrong.

That was ten years ago. Do we understand Ukraine any better now? Does it matter?  The political establishment then had made up its mind what was going on. They got it wrong. Ukraine was not helped by that.

I would say this to those who are in politics - go there. Go to Ukraine, go to whatever place you are minded to pontificate about. Learn its language. Read its history. Talk with those who know about these things.

How much has changed in ten years?

what would they say elsewhere, Marie-Claire?

Marie-Claire magazine is where I often turn for interesting notions about the issues of the day.  Their readership is female, working, relatively well educated, and I would say 30-40 something, so I am a little old for them.  But I do read the magazine, and have done for many years.  I like their feature articles on women around the world.  This month, for instance, the magazine has a piece on the women of Fukushima in Japan a year after the tsunami, who chose not to leave.  This is the French Marie-Claire I am talking about.  Some years ago, when I was an MP, I sent copies of an article from the British Marie-Claire to a large number of constituents who had contacted me to say that "we" should not interfere in Iraq.  They were taking the view that bloodthirsty totalitarian dictatorship and the slaughter of a whole bunch of brown-skin Ay-rabs was just fine by them.  Although I don't suppose they thought of it like that.  Anyway, the article was called something like "I Married A Suicide Bomber",  and featured interviews with the widows of men who had blown themselves up, mostly in Palestine.  The article didn't make much of it, but I was very struck by the photographs of ceremonies at which the widows received financial compensation for the loss of their husbands, in the form of envelopes of money with pictures of Saddam Hussein on them.  It was enough money, the widows said, to put their children through school.

Imagine the reaction to this mailing.  Can you?  Howls of outrage from quite a number of men, who were disgusted that I had sent them a "women's magazine" article.  Howls, too, from both men and women, who said that I had no business sending them "third-party" material, but should have given them my own views.  Well, I had already done that, which was why they were outraged in the first place.  But I did at least vote in accordance with the (interventionist) views I had expressed, rather than say I had voted against the Iraq action when in fact I had abstained, as one M. Salter did.  However, that is another matter.

This month's French Marie-Claire has interviews with all the main candidates for the French presidential election, the first round of voting in which is on 22nd April.  They were all asked the same questions.  One of these questions was (my translation) "A number of abortion centres (IVG in French, "interruption volontaire de grossesse") have closed.  What would you do to ensure greater respect for the right to abortion?"  Francois Hollande (Parti Socialiste) said that hospital restructuring too often meant the loss of an abortion clinic.  He would ensure that every public hospital contained an abortion clinic. Nicolas Sarkozy (UMP) said that access to abortion was a basic right for women, and that he believed in it very strongly, and that his record as President showed that a number of inequalities in access to abortion had been removed across France.  Marine Le Pen (Front National) said that she would prefer investment in health services to be put into fuller reimbursement of elderly people for the cost of their medication, rather than into abortion services, because abortion is avoidable, except in cases of rape.  Francois Bayrou (MoDem, sort of LibDem-ish) said that he did not think the right to abortion was under threat in France.  He knew though that many doctors were not happy performing abortions, and that these services were not well enough remunerated.  And Jean-Luc Melenchon (Front de Gauche) said that the closure of abortion clinics had to be stopped, and a step towards better protection of the right to abortion would be to ban the demonstrations which sometimes took place outside the clinics, against health professionals who performed the abortions, and especially against the women having the procedure.

My reflection is this: I do not think it is likely that such a question would be posed to UK political candidates, and that if it was it would not be couched, or answered, in these terms. Agree?  And as for the USA, well, even asking the question would probably get you killed.

in mourning this morning

after the killings apparently by the same person, of three soldiers (of north African and Caribbean heritage) and a young rabbi and his two children at a Jewish school in south-west France.  Le Monde puts it this way:

Après qu'un raciste a abattu ses militaires, tué ses enfants, la France saigne. Chacun peut répéter ces mots de notre président, ne serait-il pas son candidat : "La haine ne peut pas gagner. La République est beaucoup plus forte."


election campaigning has stopped for a time, and Sarkozy and Hollande attended a Jewish memorial ceremony yesterday.  But what now?

the man who wasn't there - again

There was a somewhat bizarre piece by Cllr Jan "Goody gumdrops" Gavin, called "A Day in the Life of a Labour Councillor" - as if anyone cared what time a Labour councillor gets up in the morning.  She says that a group of Labour MPs visited Reading that day to campaign for the increasingly desperate fine team of Labour campaigners in Redlands and Katesgrove.  But, bizarrely, she doesn't name any of them, or use any pictures of them.  She does however use a picture of M. Salter with a couple of bearded gits from Redlands, to my certain and evidenced knowledge stooges bought and paid for a long time ago.  The picture she uses is taken in Katesgrove, but there are no identifiable Katesgrove members in it.  This is undoubtedly because Katesgrove members are refusing to campaign, having taken the view that a candidate has been imposed on them.  They are bonkers to take this view.  Rose Williams is excellent.  However the only pictures of Rose I have seen have been of her alone in an empty street -just the way a candidate should never be pictured.  A message not very thinly disguised.  Katesgrove members probably wanted to select a bearded librarian who thinks members of the public are moronic.  They are plenty mad enough for that.

So, a photograph of the "campaign" in Katesgrove and Redlands which includes neither candidate and no-one from Katesgrove.  High-profile MPs give up their time to campaign in Reading and are ignored.  But we do see Gumdrops Gavin, M. Salter and a couple of bearded gits gurning for the cameras.  Hmmm.

Meanwhile, we are told that M. Salter has been spending a lot of time in Parliament lately, giving evidence to select committees and so on in his role as a paid lobbyist for the Angling Trust.  We also know that he has been spending time gurning for the media in Reading East.  So what has changed since he was an MP?  Not much, except that he spends a bit more time in the House of Commons now than he did when he had a place on the green benches.

M. Salter, paid lobbyist for the Angling Trust.
M. Salter, paid consultant for Thames Water.
M. Salter, paid chairman of a Whitley charity.
M. Salter, a teacher (so he told us a while ago, haven't heard anything about that lately).

What a busy boy.  Pity about the Katesgrove campaign.

update: the gun porn is back!  Coupled with mentions of someone called "Dave Sutton", not a name I mentioned in the post, still, if the cap fits... none of them bothered to explain why the MPs were not named or pictured, and why neither candidate was named or pictured either, they were over-excited by the guns and fanny shots, clearly.  Is there anyone from Reading Labour reading this blog who is over the mental and emotional age of 14 please?  and some of you might be dangerous.  Much more of this and Her Majesty's Police might have to be involved, eh messieurs?

incumbency effect

This is from a paper by a US researcher called Fernando Ferreira. Just saying. What are the consequences of electing a female leader for policy and political outcomes? We answer this question in the context of U.S. cities, where women’s participation in mayoral elections increased from negligible numbers in 1970 to about one-third of the elections in the 2000’s. We use a novel data set of U.S. mayoral elections from 1950 to 2005, and apply a regression discontinuity design to deal with the endogeneity of female candidacy to city characteristics. In contrast to most research on the influence of female leadership, we find no effect of gender of the mayor on policy outcomes related to the size of local government, the composition of municipal spending and employment, or crime rates. While female mayors do not implement different policies, they do appear to have higher unobserved political skills, as they have a 6-7 percentage point higher incumbent effect than a comparable male. But we find no evidence of political spillovers: exogenously electing a female mayor does not change the long run political success of other female mayoral candidates in the same city or of female candidates in local congressional elections.

who will be queen o'the may

local elections of course, dummies, what did you think I was talking about?  Personally I shall be rather more focused on the presidential election here in France, the first round of which is I believe is on 22nd April, and I will be very surprised if there is not a second round (one candidate has to get over 50% for that to happen).  Angela Merkel was here yesterday campaigning for Sarko for talks about the eurozone and the economy.  Francois Hollande (Parti Socialiste) is high in the polls,, and the third placed, Marine Le Pen, Front National, is currently struggling to get the 500 nominations she needs from elected individuals.  She is coming to Strasbourg on Sunday - a great deal of Front National support is in Alsace, fortunately not in the city of Strasbourg, but in the villages.  She ought to speak to them in Alsatian, but I bet she can't.  Even I can manage a little.  Even Miss France (who is from these parts) spoke the language when she was crowned.  The fourth placed is Francois Bayrou, who is some kind of LibDem and thus doesn't count.  And then there is the Front de Gauche, supported by the communists and by the unions.  Only 7% of the French workforce belongs to a union.  Currently the airlines are on strike.  And the Greens, who will do quite well.  I like Eva Joly of their ilk, who is blonde, wears red glasses and is Norwegian.

Anyway, readers, what will happen in Reading?  Labour of course have a minority administration.  I can make better predictions for the wards in the Reading East constituency than for the West.  Because, er, you know,  constituency boundaries matter, in democratic terms.  Don't they?  Oh, please yourselves.

 Grn gain Park from Lab.  Lab gain Redlands from LD.  Lab gain Katesgrove from LD.  Con hold Church.  Con hold Caversham.  Con gain Tilehurst from LD.

The Katesgrove result is not a certain one, because Cllr Matt Rodda (Lab) was caught lying to the public a while ago, and the electorate don't like that kind of malarkey.  But it seems the LibDems are demoralised.  There's still time for them to grow a backbone though.

Minster?  Others?  Dunno.  Give me your predictions, readers.  Surprised to see so little on Facebook from Reading, other parties around the country have a great presence there.  I would single out Plymouth in this respect.