Rob Shorrock

The number of measles cases has risen to its highest level since 1995. According to the Health Protection Agency there were 1049 cases in the first 10 months of this year alone, and there are fears that this could rise further as a consequence of parents failing to have their children vaccinated during the MMR and autism scaremongering of a few years ago.

It has been demonstrated that any link between the MMR vaccine and autism cannot be proven, yet given the nature of the vaccination programme some parents have either now forgotten or are unwilling to admit to their failure to protect their children properly. Hence the rise in the outbreaks of this virulent and rather nasty virus.

I have always questioned how a matter of public health protection could be so easily hijacked by an irrational mob that the issue of child immunisation became a matter of individual choice. Immunisation and its benefits do not work that way and it should be as compulsory as requiring children to be educated from the age of 5. In fact, one MP has gone so far as to suggest that children should not be allowed to start school until they have been immunised, which I have some sympathy with.

However, some sections of the media still want to plough the furrow of uncertainty. Only this month the Telegraph reported on attempts to continue to promote a link between types of autism and the volume of vaccination, complete with the actor Jim Carrey's beliefs that his son has been 'vaccine  damaged'. That phrase made my whole rationalist being shudder.

Yet there is a bigger issue here; to what extent does the state have a right to intervene to protect children from the irrational behaviour of their parents?

In last Friday's Guardian, Jenni Russell argues that the left needs to take a principled and honest approch to a welfare system that fosters dependency.

This is a difficult issue but needs to be addressed. Jenni's original article asked some hard questions of the left about certain principles, namely if people are able to work should they be compelled to do so, and how do we ensure that the system of benefits does not act as a deterrent to work? It cannot be right to continue to use IB as a mechanism to instrumentally reduce unemployment figures as the Tories did in the 90s. We have to believe that the bulk of people don't want to be on IB but actually want to be in work. If we believe that all human beings have potential then we should be looking at ways in which we can support that, which includes a wider interpretation of work, including voluntary work and ensuring that this does not have a perverse impact on key benefits as it does currently.

The key ambition must be that people have a stake and a role in their communities and wider society. The left can't escape this. We must be asking people who are unemployed what they want to do in the long term and what they can offer to wider society now, rather than forcing them into low paid, casual labour and the endless form filling associated with this.

Obama's victory speech to the jubilant masses in Chicago sends out key messages: 'democracy, liberty and opportunity..', 'peace and security'. A key priority is to improve Americas standing in the international stage.

On taking office he needs to do three tangible things to make his words a reality. First, he must shut down the unlawful disgrace of Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Secondly, he needs to hand the detainees over to the International Criminal Courts, and by doing so subscribe to the principle of this. Third, he needs to initiate discussions to reform and revitalise the UN and in so doing ensure that this body has the will and the means to intervene to support peoples oppressed by unlawful governments and dictatorships.

By doing these things he will send out very clear messages that the USA is willing to be a genuine international partner. 

Politics in the US is at a level of ferment that was undreamed of 4 years ago. Less than four years ago western democracies were wringing their hands about democratic disengagement, low voter turnout and the whole democratic process was placed  in a kind of anxious, nail-biting intensive care. As democrats in the wider sense, we remembered the feelings of marvel and joy at the election ques in S Africa and in more recent times those in Iraq, never dreaming of their replication in of all places the United States of America.

But the election lines are a reminder that politics is about struggle and challenge and standing in line is in a very small way part of that. In the back of many a voters minds is that calamity of 2000 when many black americans realised that they could, after all,  have made a difference to the final result.

The Republican assault on Obabma has failed and also ensured that some measure of political and intellectual enlightment has a place in the country.  In many ways Obabma is the contradictions inherent in the system - a theist and rational intellectual. His real task for the future is to rediscover the founding fathers idea of a project built on secular humanism rather than superstition and the grand claims of monarchs and preists. He needs to rediscover the best ideas of this time, and those that have followed, and attempt to make them real: progressive taxation, a welfare state, justice and equality and the big prize - universal, high quality health care and education.

If the people of the USA are ready for a Obama they are ready for this. It is a time to be bold.