The Liberal Democrat high command is pleased with the way their conference went. There were challenges to the leader’s position that were conspicuous enough to give the impression of a lively, democratic debate and unsuccessful enough to cement the view that Nick Clegg is in absolute command.

One policy that wasn’t much queried from the floor was the line on a European referendum. At the moment, the Lib Dem position is to be pro-EU but also pro-reform and in favour of a referendum in the event of some new treaty being signed that changes the balance of power between London and Brussels. (That also serves as a précis of the Labour position.) But will the line hold? There is some doubt in all parties that Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband can plausibly get through next May’s elections to the European parliament, still less a general election, without a referendum pledge of equivalent certainty to the one that Tory back benchers extracted from David Cameron at the start of this year.

Tim Farron, Lib Dem President, appears to share some of that doubt. I interviewed him on stage at a conference fringe event and the referendum question came up. This is what he said:

"The polling indicates that an in/out referendum – I am a fairly confident, would be won. I don’t think any other referendum on Europe would be but an in/our referendum would be won for hard, pragmatic, economic reasons. We mustn’t be overly shrill about it and we musn’t say ‘we will lose 3m jobs tomorrow if we leave the EU’ because that’s not credible’ …but you’ve already got Nissan saying we would not be in the north-east of England if you were not in the European Union."

I suggested to Farron that the pro-EU argument is constantly held back by the perception of cowardice in the face of hostile public opinion – that europhiles are seen as elitists who are afraid to ask the question in case the "wrong" people give the "wrong" answer. A pro-EU campaign can’t effectively get off the ground, I suggested, until pro-EU politicians are ready to say, in effect: "we aren’t afraid, we’ll have that referendum, we’ll win, bring it on!" Farron’s response was revealing:

"I have a lot of sympathy for that position. I spent a mere three months in the shadow cabinet when I was first appointed to it by Nick because I felt that, on the Lisbon Treaty – I thought we’d lose a referendum – but you can't tell people you don’t trust them. The party’s position is very much in favour of a referendum. I think it's right not to set a date. I think there may be some political wisdom in setting a date but there’s no practical wisdom, because you’ve given your hand away."

But that is the view now. Will the Lib Dems really get through a campaign without a referendum pledge? Will Nick Clegg get through leadership debates when Cameron is saying his is the only party that trusts the people?

"Our line is that there should be a referendum on Europe and we haven’t named a date and I think we probably need to look at that. A referendum is inevitable and we should go and win it. I don’t want to set a date for when it should be but I think we should probably consider very hard if that’s something we want to do because actually if we do that then Tories are in a really bad position. The only advantage Cameron has got is to say there will be a referendum. The minute other people say, ‘yeah there will be a referendum’, Cameron’s in a position where people are saying ‘which side are you going to vote for?’ and his party is split down the middle and they will be like cats in sack. … It’s a very tenuous position he’s in and he must realise that. I predict it won’t last."

That sounded to me as if the Lib Dem position on a referendum is very much up for negotiation.

One final thought: A Ukip source tells me the party is very eager for the Lib Dems and Labour to match Cameron’s referendum pledge. Why? Because Nigel Farage recognises the potency of Cameron’s claim that a Tory government in 2015 could be the only chance Eurosceptics get for a vote on EU membership and that could squeeze the Ukip vote in 2015. Once everyone has a referendum in their manifesto, potential Ukip voters will be freer to bring their anti-everyone, plague-on-all-your-houses instincts all the way into the polling booth instead of "coming home" to the Tories at the last minute. In that analysis, matching Cameron’s line on Europe could be in the crude electoral interests of Labour and the Lib Dems, bolstering the Ukip vote to deprive Cameron of a majority. Whether that is reason enough to do it – the cynicism would shine through and that is hardly a good look for either Clegg or Miliband – is a different question entirely. 

Twenty years ago, on 13 September 1993, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO chair Yasser Arafat shook hands on the White House lawn and signed the Oslo Accords – launching a transitional process towards a permanent peace settlement that was not supposed to exceed five years. Today this ‘interim’ agreement has ossified into an interminable situation in which Palestine remains occupied, while Palestinians face enduring insecurity, uncertain access to essential services and the downward spiral of aid dependency.

Although much has been said about the failure of the Accords to settle the key issues – including Jerusalem, the Palestinian right of return, the status of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory, and the issue of borders – the fate of healthcare in the West Bank and Gaza under the framework of the agreement has garnered little attention.

Yet, Palestinian healthcare provides a prime example of the way in which the initial optimism surrounding Oslo has failed to translate into reality over the past two decades. Indeed, as negotiations resume once again, it sheds crucial light on some of the lessons to be learned from Oslo if there is to be any chance of a just settlement.

Following the June war of 1967, Israel was required by international law to assume responsibility for health services in the newly occupied West Bank and Gaza. Between then and 1993, health services in the occupied Palestinian territory were starved of funds and there were shortages of staff, hospital beds, medication and essential specialised services, while responsibility for healthcare passed from the Israeli Ministry of Health to the military government and then to the Israeli Civil Administration, under the Ministry of Defence. During that time, Israel aimed only to maintain standards of public health and did not attempt to build services beyond primary care. As a result, many Palestinians had to seek specialised treatment in Israel and they were often unaware of their entitlements under the Israeli Civil Administration’s health insurance programme.

Following Oslo, no sovereign Palestinian state was established so, as the occupying power, Israel remained responsible under international law for ensuring the health and well-being of Palestinians. Yet, under the framework of the agreement, Israel was able to release itself from this responsibility – and its costs.

As a result, the Palestinian Ministry of Health – part of the newly established Palestinian Authority – inherited the neglected health services of the West Bank and Gaza. Over the next 20 years, with the support of massive funding from international donors, the PA has managed to develop a health system with a reasonable spread of primary care clinics and hospitals across the West Bank and Gaza. However, healthcare services today remain fragmented and of very variable quality, while restrictions on access to care, particularly for patient referrals outside the West Bank and Gaza, have become entrenched. The PA’s dependence on foreign aid also raises troubling questions about long term sustainability. Aid from the international community currently makes up 40 per cent of the PA’s annual budget.

From the very outset, the ability of the PA to provide healthcare to Palestinians was hampered by the division of the West Bank under the agreement into three zones: Areas A, B and C. Twenty years later it remains the case that only 18% of the West Bank falls under PA civil and security control (Area A),  20% is under PA control with responsibility for security jointly held by Israel and the PA (Area B), while the remaining 62% of the West Bank is under full Israeli civil and security control (Area C).

Unequal access to healthcare in the Jordan Valley in Area C – which is home to around 60,000 Palestinians – provides one of the starkest examples of the extent to which the Accords have cemented the divide between Palestinian and Israeli services. Israelis living in illegal settlements there enjoy government subsidies and much greater access to services and local resources than Palestinian residents. While the Israeli Ministry of Health is able to freely construct and administer health clinics for the settlements in the area, the Palestinian Ministry of Health is not able to build health facilities in 87% of the Jordan Valley without obtaining a building permit from the Israeli authorities – which are rarely granted. The network of checkpoints and barriers in Area C, together with the proximity of settlements, also makes it difficult for staff and patients to reach clinics or hospitals.

The closest hospitals for Palestinians in the Jordan Valley are in Jericho and Nablus cities. The hospital in Jericho is far from many Palestinian villages and those seeking treatment in Nablus face potential delays at checkpoints. Last month, for example, a young boy who suffered a snake bite was reported to have been denied permission to pass through a checkpoint for an hour and a half by Israeli soldiers, who refused to call an ambulance. Eventually an ambulance from the Palestinian Red Crescent managed to access the area and transfer to the boy to Rafidiya hospital in Nablus, where he was said to be in a critical condition.

Restrictions on movement are also preventing or impeding referrals to medical centres in East Jerusalem and Israel. The main specialised Palestinian hospitals are, and always have been, located in East Jerusalem. Last year alone, 39,280 patients, companions and visitors from the West Bank and Gaza did not make it to the hospitals they were referred to because their permits were denied by the Israeli authorities. Even in extreme emergencies, ambulances from the rest of the West Bank are only permitted to enter East Jerusalem in exceptional circumstances, when prior approval has been given by the Israeli Civil Administration and checkpoint personnel agree. In 2012, only 9% of requests for ambulances to enter East Jerusalem were approved.

The status of occupied East Jerusalem – which was illegally annexed by Israel in 1967 – was left out of the Oslo agreement. As a result, it remains under de facto Israeli control today. While the political, economic, social and religious significance of East Jerusalem for Palestinians gets some attention, its additional importance as the location of Palestine’s six specialist hospitals tends to go unacknowledged.

Gaza is also of particular concern. Although the Accords declared that Gaza and the West Bank would be one territorial unit, this has proved far from the reality - not least because of the political divisions between Fatah and Hamas.  Gaza has experienced some of the most severe restrictions on healthcare in occupied Palestine, with healthcare services deteriorating steadily in recent years. The political split between the West Bank and Gaza has certainly contributed to this. But the major factor has been the land, air and sea blockade on Gaza since 2007, which has eroded healthcare infrastructure, exacerbated shortages of medicine, rendered some medical equipment useless due to a lack of spare parts and impeded patient transfers.  Constant power cuts and the degradation of water supplies and sewage disposal are seriously affecting the safe and efficient operation of hospitals and clinics. In 2012, important infrastructure such as waste disposal systems and utilities to provide essential healthcare services were lacking in as many as 63% of primary healthcare facilities and 50% of hospitals. Unless immediate action is taken, a recent UN report has stated, water, electricity and health problems will have become so bad in the coming years that Gaza is set to be unliveable by 2020.

The justification always provided for Israel’s occupation policies – such as the blockade of Gaza, the separation wall, checkpoints and the permit regime – is their need for security. Both sides, of course, have a right to security. But too often this has become an excuse for practices that have nothing to do with security, such as the ongoing building of illegal settlements, and for avoiding their responsibilities under international law, including Israel’s obligation to safeguard the health of the civilian population in the territory it continues to occupy.

Against this background, there is widespread scepticism amongst Palestinians as to whether the current talks – continuing with the framework for negotiation established by Oslo – could ever succeed. The persistence of Israeli violations of international law during peace talks raises serious questions about the basis of the current negotiations, the role of the international community and the different forms of leverage available to ensure that international law is upheld. The international community has a clear responsibility to ensure that peace negotiations do not continue to provide Israel with the cover to pursue with impunity its illegal colonisation of Palestinian land, which is not only a major obstacle to the health and dignity of Palestinians but is also deepening aid dependency.

1. My advice to Labour: be of good cheer, be bold, stop jumping at shadows (Guardian)

 Forget the Wallace and Grommit jibes, says Polly Toynbee. Leaders are the embodiment of their policies – and Ed Miliband's can win him the election.

2. Cameron has an inspiring message, so let's hear it (Daily Telegraph)

With the rise of Ukip, it is crucial that the PM makes the argument for a Tory government, says Fraser Nelson.

3. Syria deal holds a lesson – talk to Iran (Financial Times)

After all the mistakes with Damascus, the US has a chance to put things right with Tehran, writes Philip Stephens.

4. The Blair-Brown war cost the Labour party dear (Guardian)

When Labour returns to office, Ed Miliband must ensure that the errors of the last generation are not repeated by his, writes Benjamin Wegg-Prosser.

5. The Bedroom Tax: The Tories’ idea of fairness that could yet return to haunt them (Independent)

So is the bedroom tax the new poll tax, asks Donald Macintyre. The wording favours the critics.

6. Labour’s salvation? The hated Lib Dems (Times)

Fear and loathing of Nick Clegg’s party runs deep on the left, but wooing them is the way back to power, writes Philip Collins.

7. Who do you think you’re kidding, Mr Schauble? (Daily Telegraph)

The eurozone may have avoided calamity, but all the underlying problems are still there, says Jeremy Warner. 

8. How Labour's lies and spin poisoned politics (Daily Mail)

The revelations contained in Damian McBride's memoirs drag New Labour's reputation to even lower depths, says a Daily Mail editorial.

9. Fed gets it right but says it wrong (Financial Times)

It will now be harder for markets to trust the central bank, says an FT editorial.

10. Italy needs this to be the end of Berlusconi (Independent)

Can this disgraced man really even believe what he is saying, asks Peter Popham. 

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), which is 81 per cent owned by the British government, intends to sell 300 million shares worth about £630m ($1bn) in general insurer Direct Line Insurance Group to institutional investors.

After the sale, RBS will have about 427.4 million shares in the insurer, or a 28.5 per cent stake. The sale is said to have a minimal impact on the capital position of RBS.

RBS said that the offer price will be determined by means of an accelerated book-build offering process that will begin immediately. The shares are expected to be placed at a discount to closing price of 218 pence on Thursday, reported Reuters.

As per the European Union (EU) ruling, the banking group should sell all of Direct Line by the end of 2014 to repay financial package (bailout) of £45bn it received from the taxpayer at the peak of financial crisis in 2008.

In October 2012, the banking group disposed a 34.7 per cent stake in the insurer, while in March this year it sold a further 16.8 per cent holding. The latest sale of 300 million shares will represent about 20% stake of Direct Line.

The banking group, which committed not to sell any more shares in the insurer for at least 90 days after completion of this sale, has reached  agreements with Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, RBC Europe and UBS to act as joint book-runners and placing agents.

Earlier this week, the UK Financial Investments (UKFI) said it will sell about 6 per cent of placing shares in Lloyds Banking Group held by HM Treasury, marking the beginning of the bank’s privatisation process. At the peak of financial crisis in 2008, the UK government pumped in £20.5bn into Lloyds.

JP Morgan Chase has agreed to pay $920m to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve, and the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK for settlement of charges related to ‘London Whale’ trading debacle.

The financial services giant will pay a penalty of $200m for violating the US federal securities laws and $220m to the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for serious failings related to its Chief Investment Office’s (CIO) trading incident.

The bank will also pay a penalty of $300m to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and $200m to the Federal Reserve.

FCA said that the bank violated its 2, 3, 5 and 11 Principles for Businesses in connection with the $6.2bn trading losses sustained by CIO in 2012. The fine imposed on the bank is the second largest by UK regulators.

George Canellos, co-director of division of enforcement at SEC, said: “JPMorgan failed to keep watch over its traders as they overvalued a very complex portfolio to hide massive losses.

“While grappling with how to fix its internal control breakdowns, JPMorgan’s senior management broke a cardinal rule of corporate governance and deprived its board of critical information it needed to fully assess the company’s problems and determine whether accurate and reliable information was being disclosed to investors and regulators.”

Tracey McDermott, director of enforcement and financial crime at FCA said: “We consider JPMorgan’s failings to be extremely serious such as to undermine the trust and confidence in UK financial markets.

“There were basic failings in the operation of fundamental controls over a high risk part of the business. Senior management failed to respond properly to warning signals that there were problems in the CIO.”

Last month, SEC charged two former traders at JPMorgan with fraudulently overvaluing investments in order to hide massive losses in a portfolio they managed.

With another hung parliament looking ever more likely in 2015 (Labour's lead stands at just one in today's YouGov poll), the question of whether Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg could ever work together is being asked again. At one point, it looked doubtful that Clegg would lead his party into the next election, but the Eastleigh by-election, the economic recovery and the wane of Vince Cable's star have combined to create an unlikely political rebirth. 

In interviews at the Lib Dem conference, Clegg, unsurprisingly, left the door open to a partnership with Miliband: "If the British people say that the most legitimate outcome of the next general election would be a Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition, of course I would be prepared to play my part in that."

But what of Miliband? Back in 2010, when hatred towards the Lib Dems ran raw, he suggested that, just as Clegg insisted on Gordon Brown's departure, so the Deputy PM's head would be the price of a Labour-Lib Dem coalition. He told the New Statesman: "Given what he is supporting, I think it is pretty hard to go into coalition with him."

Asked again, "so you wouldn't work with Nick Clegg?", he replied: "That's right. No."

But when David Dimbleby reminded Harriet Harman of this on last night's Question Time, she replied: 

I'm sure that must be a misquote? I mean, he's worked with him on, for example, tackling the problems of all the phone-hacking and the Tories trying to rig the boundaries, so actually when we've put forward a proposal that the Lib Dems are prepared to support then they do work with us. But we want an overall majority. 

A misquote, as my former NS colleague Mehdi Hasan stated on Twitter, it was not. But it is striking how Miliband's rhetoric towards Clegg has softened since 2010. Last summer, for instance, he told the Independent, "I would find it difficult to work with him", which is some distance from the unambiguous "no" he offered two years before. 

Much will, of course, depend on how great the Lib Dem losses are and how close Labour is to a majority. But judging by Harman's words, it seems the party has decided that it no longer afford to go into the election ruling out any deal with Clegg. 

Foxtons soars on stock market debut (FT)

Foxtons made a strong stock market debut on Friday, providing further evidence of a recovery in both share offerings and the residential property market in the UK.

India raises rates amid inflation worries (FT)

The Reserve Bank of India on Friday confounded market predictions and raised its key interest rate by 25 basis points, citing the threat of rising inflation.

John Lewis fixed price of sports bras, claims OFT (Telegraph)

The Office of Fair Trading has alleged that bra maker DB Apparel and retailers John Lewis, Debenhams and House of Fraser agreed to fix the price of its sports bras.

One of the formative experiences of my life was spending the third year of my undergraduate degree in West Berlin, as an “Assistant” at a Gesamtschule (the German equivalent of a comprehensive school) in 1987 and 1988.

Having recently been back to visit the country, I was reminded of the implications of living in a divided city, where the presence of one wall split a single culture into two. One of my strongest memories is running back to Checkpoint Charlie – the border between East and West Berlin – to meet the midnight deadline for re-entry to the West, having enjoyed a fabulous evening of Brechtian theatre at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm followed by some heady Berlin beer.

The division of Berlin and its subsequent consequences has made me acutely aware in my adulthood of the need - whether economic, social, professional or personal - for a well-informed understanding of different cultures.

Fast forward to Sao Paulo two weeks ago, which I visited to set up a new office for De Montfort University (DMU) in the British Consulate and make arrangements for our exhibition “They Can Play” about the impact of Brazilian footballers on European football. There, I delivered a lecture to the Sao Paulo Football Federation about the vagaries of supporting QPR in the English Premier League (which was due to last for an hour but, such is the passion of the Brazilians for football, extended to three).

After the lecture, a dapper and intellectual elderly Brazilian gentleman came up to me with a photocopy of a British newspaper article.

“Is it true,” he quietly asked, “that a van is driving around London telling immigrants to go home? What do the British people feel about that?”

You can probably imagine my embarrassment.

But where could I stand on the issue, being as I am a lecturer and not a politician? While the political football of immigration gets kicked back and forth between BIS and the Home Office (one day Vince Cable rebukes Theresa May for her supposed rhetoric; the next, May cites her arguable need to meet a manifesto commitment), universities need to continue to do what they do best: stimulate intellectual debate to promote greater understanding of different cultures and contribute to the GDP of UKplc by recruiting international students.

DMU has chosen to go further. Drawing on our collective passion to demonstrate to the world that Britain is not an insular country (particularly in the light of the looming in/out EU referendum), as well as my own personal beliefs in cultural exchange, we are launching the #DMUglobal project this year.

#DMUglobal has a very simple premise. We want to offer up to 50 per cent of our students an opportunity for an international engagement during their degree programme at DMU. In actual numbers, this means that eventually we want to send 11,000 DMU students overseas.

International engagement can be anything from a four week study tour to Germany to enjoy intensive German language courses, appreciate German culture and visit the Audi factory in Stuttgart as part of a business course, to a year-long internship negotiated with our network of global business partners; it can be a four week placement during next year’s World Cup working with FIFA on international property rights, or a three month academic engagement with our partner university of Santa Maria in the south of Brazil.

Appropriately enough, we will be funding #DMUglobal from the additional international student recruitment that we have achieved over the last two years. It’s a financial policy that makes sense and an international engagement which will become more and more important for institutes of education in the future. I hope it will make instances like the Home Office’s notorious ‘racist vans’ less and less likely to occur.

Meanwhile, the elderly gentleman of my Brazilian anecdote was gracious enough to spare my blushes, and quickly turned the conversation to the scandal of Brazilian international Julio Cesar becoming second choice keeper at my championship club QPR.

That was, of course, an easier question to answer than why those vans were driving around Hackney – which is a question that all of us in higher education must urgently act and reflect upon.

Professor Dominic Shellard is vice-chancellor of De Montfort University

The Tories have long counted down the days until the serialisation of Damian McBride's memoir in the Daily Mail in the hope that it will provide them with plentiful ammunition to hurl at Ed Milband in the run-up to Labour conference. But judging by the extracts published today, it could prove less helpful than they'd hoped. 

If there is one word that David Cameron has sought to associate with Miliband in recent months it is "weak". But rather than a feeble, spineless character, the Miliband who emerges from the pages of Power Trip is a strong and ruthless figure. Here are three notable examples from today's extracts. 

1. McBride confirms that Miliband "effectively threatened to resign from the cabinet" over the planned third runway at Heathrow, a move that successfully torpedoed the policy. He adds that Ed Balls was angry that Brown "had been made to look weak" in front of his cabinet by "having to kowtow to a supposed ally". The story of how Miliband defied the PM and his political patron hardly suits the Tory narrative. 

2. We are also reminded of how Miliband dared to stand against his brother, long considered Brown's heir apparent, for the Labour leadership. That might not seem significant but the Tories have recently stopped referring to how Miliband "knifed" his brother out of fear that it undermines their framing of him as "weak".

McBride also writes insightfully about how Miliband's loyalty to his father's socialist ideals may have prompted him to run against David:

It’s hard to listen to any of Ed Miliband’s occasionally tortured, over-academic speeches without hearing his father’s voice, especially when he talks about recasting the capitalist model and re-shaping society through the empowerment of ordinary people. 

And that’s not just about Ed’s politics; it’s also undoubtedly central to how he explains to himself and to the rest of his family why he challenged his older brother for the Labour leadership.

What better reason than needing to achieve his father’s vision and ensure David Miliband did not traduce it? An act of supposed disloyalty to his brother becomes transformed in his mind into the ultimate act of tribute to his father.

3. At PMQs in 2012, David Cameron mocked Miliband over claims in the Daily Mail that he used to fetch coffees for Ed Balls when the pair were both Treasury advisers to Gordon Brown. He said: "Apparently, he still has to bring him the coffee. That's just how assertive and butch the leader of the opposition really is."

This fits with the Tory narrative of Miliband as a put-upon junior to Balls, Brown's star pupil (a relationship, they suggest, that is unchanged). But McBride scotches this account: 

At the Treasury, the two Eds were a double act. The idea Miliband was ever made to feel subordinate to Balls is baloney, along with the myth of him bringing Balls his morning coffee.

Jason Allemann, who has previously treated the internet to such lego-related delights as his Steampunk Walking Ship and the Rolling Ball Clock, is back with a new bit of mechanical wizardry.

This time, it's a sinister-looking black box with a red switch protruding from it. It looks very innocent, until you try and turn the switch off. Take a look:

As Jason has explained on YouTube, the machine has got six different responses for turning the switch off, as well as two evasive manoeuvres to prevent it being turned on in the first place. Cunning, eh? If you want to try your hand at beating it, he's even posted the instructions on how to make your own machine on his website.

Yesterday was China’s Mid-Autumn festival, a national holiday in the country that is marked with the giving away and eating of mooncakes. The mooncake tradition offers interesting insights into two trends affecting China’s economy at present: corruption and the environment.

The trial of Bo Xilai on charges of embezzlement, corruption and abuse of power has highlighted a broader malaise within China’s political establishment. His is the most high-profile corruption case, but one local government official nicknamed ‘Mr Watch’ was sentenced to 14 years in jail earlier this month after bloggers noticed the mismatch between his official salary and his impressive watch collection. Concerned at the rising public outrage, the government has attempted to clamp down on corruption and as the BBC notes, this is having an impact on mooncake sales.

Whereas in previous years deluxe boxes of mooncakes made with shark’s fin, bird’s nest, abalone or even gold or silver have been purchased by those keen to buy favours, this year mooncake sales are down, with shoppers opting for more modest mooncakes.

Another big challenge facing China is environmental damage and pollution. In January this year the air pollution in Beijing reached 40 times the limit the World Health Organisation deems safe. The World Bank estimates that environmental degradation is costing China 9% of its GDP, dragging down growth. Faced with public discontent, the Chinese government has decided to take action. This week it announced it would publish a list of the top 10 worst and best cities for air pollution each month.

A clampdown on political corruption could also have a surprisingly large impact on the environment. According to The Atlantic, the elaborate packaging on mooncakes accounts for one third of China’s waste a year, or 40 million tonnes. If this year’s anti-corruption drive really does result in a decrease in sales of elaborately wrapped mooncakes, this could have a considerable impact on the country’s overall waste production.

Should the Chinese government succeed in making long-term changes to China's mooncake eating habits, this would be a powerful indicator of its ongoing political might. No one likes making concessions when it comes to festive traditions.

This piece first appeared on newrepublic.com.

It’s a sign of how cramped the public image of the Roman Catholic Church has become over the past 34 years that Pope Francis’s comments in an extensive interview with La Civiltà Cattolica could spark such a rapturous response from progressive Catholics. Yes, Francis said the church has become “obsessed” with denouncing abortion, homosexuality, and contraception. And yes, he called for a “new balance” in the church’s teaching so that it doesn’t lose “the freshness and fragrance of the gospels.” But however much those remarks signal a shift from the rhetorical style of popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, progressive Catholics need to understand that the change is, and is likely to remain, a matter of words. 

Consider what the pope did not say. He didn’t say that homosexual acts are morally permissible. He didn’t say that abortion can be morally acceptable in certain (or any) circumstances. He didn’t say anything to indicate he was interested in revisiting Pope Paul VI’s 1968 reaffirmation of the church’s ban on artificial contraception. He didn’t imply that he’s interested in revising the church’s strictures against married priests. He certainly didn’t indicate an openness to permitting the ordination of women. The interview contains no sign that the pope is willing to budge on any of the items on the progressive Catholic wish-list of reforms. 

What the pope did say, in effect, is that in recent years the church has been focusing too single-mindedly on policing sex. He didn’t say anything to imply that he disagreed with or hoped to change any of the church’s sexual teachings. He just wants to place them in a broader context. Catholicism preaches a gospel of human dignity and salvation—that, and not a creepy sexual surveillance, must come first. This is especially true if the church hopes to enjoy any success with a “new evangelization” of the Western world.

As I recently argued, rhetoric is important in the history and life of the church—especially when it takes the form of a rebuke of outspoken lay and clerical critics. (Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence, Rhode Island, spoke for many conservatives when he recently described himself as “a little bit disappointed” that the new pope hadn’t addressed “more directly the issue of abortion.” Today’s interview is Francis’s response to this view.)

Still, words remain mere words when they are unaccompanied by action—and this is something progressive Catholics need to keep in mind as they respond to the new pope. Francis hasn’t changed a single doctrine or dogma of the church, and he’s exceedingly unlikely to. By all means, reform-minded Catholics should rejoice when the pope changes the rhetorical emphasis of the Vatican. But a “revelation”? Get a grip.

Damon Linker is the author of The Theocons and The Religious Test.

This piece first appeared on newrepublic.com.

I am a doctor working under siege in Homs, performing surgical operations in a basic hospital set up in an underground basement. The conditions in this field hospital are very bad, and it is especially hard to keep the hospital sterile. We have only basic surgical equipment and expired anaesthetic medication to treat the wounded. Patients who need blood transfusions are given blood directly from donors, and it is transfused without medical screening.

It has been five hundred days since a siege was imposed on Homs by Assad’s forces. Over 500,000 people have fled or died, but 3,000 people are still living here. Among the 400 families still here, most of the remaining family members are women, children and old people, and the injured who cannot move. These thousands of women, children, elderly and wounded survivors of this war are being denied access to the basic necessities of life.

For the past year and a half, this has been our life here: we have to drink from polluted wells and wash in sewage water. Food is restricted to lentils and bulgur wheat, and has been for months. There is no flour or milk or any kind of meat because of this siege.

We eat leaves and rotten rice. We have had no electricity for 500 days. We don't even have baby milk due to the siege. I see babies’ mothers who cannot breastfeed them due to stress and malnutrition: infants who should be healthy are starving and dying.

As for my job as a surgeon, we must transport patients through gaps in the walls across the neighbourhood because there are snipers outside. People move between neighbourhoods through underground tunnels. Many of the injured have died because it has been impossible to reach them. Our small medical facilities are frequently targeted, which has forced us to move our operations many times. 

Of the patients we see and treat, many initially improve after surgery but then die a slow death during recovery because of poor nutrition and the lack of serums to keep them hydrated. Those who do survive often experience poor wound healing as a result of medical shortages. 

Homs, my city, was one of the first places in Syria that hosted a UN delegation before the siege. The people of Homs gave them their best hospitality. My people stood in the streets risking their lives, all to get their voice heard. They are still waiting, five hundred days later.

We need to get this important message out and call upon the world’s media, the UN, NGOs and politicians to help break this slow killer, this inhuman siege. If you keep Assad in place, do not bother about withdrawing chemical weapons because at least, given the alternatives I see, it is a merciful way to die.

Please help us. Get us the deliveries of food and medicine that we need to survive, this is our basic human right. Does anyone hear the screams of women and children or feel the pain of the injured? Your brothers and sisters in the besieged neighbourhoods of Homs are right now screaming for your help. I hear them all the time. Isn't there any reply?

Dr Mosab is a surgeon in Homs. We have not used his full name to protect his identity.

Politics matter and political parties matter. What they say and do matter. How a political party operates, raises money, recruits members and select candidates matters. Why? Because it gives us a lodestar, a set of values and guiding principles on how to deal with things.

Just chatting to my constituents, meeting them in the streets, or seeing them in my surgery, I know what ordinary people are facing on daily basis - a cost of living crisis that’s unprecedented. Prices have risen faster than wages in 38 of the 39 months that David Cameron has been in Downing Street. The average worker is around £1,500 worse off under this government than under the last Labour government. At the same time, David Cameron has cut taxes for people earning over £150,000 whilst hiking them up for everyone else.

David Cameron and George Osborne boast about fixing the economy, but ordinary people in Britain don’t feel it. Yet it’s no surprise that they are so out of touch with ordinary people.

The membership of the Tory Party is dwindling; they are funded by cash from their friends in the City, bankers and hedge fund managers. They listen to their big donors, the corporate lobbyists, the richest and the most powerful. That’s why we say David Cameron is not only out of touch with ordinary British families, he is always standing up for the wrong people.

It’s the way the Tory Party operates. It’s in their DNA. The Labour Party is very different. We want to govern in the interests of all the people and not just a narrow elite. We are a One Nation Labour Party that aspires to be a One Nation Labour Government.

But for us to truly to be a One Nation Party we need to reform and strengthen our party. We are proud that our members are ordinary people who come from all walks of life. Another great source of pride – and strength – are our links with trade unions who represent shop workers, bus drivers, office workers - the backbone of our economy. We are proud those ordinary workers are a part of the Labour Party, but we want them to play an even greater role in the party. Not just at edges but right in the centre.

And yes we are ambitious, we want to see a mass party – and yes we want to have ordinary Labour Party members in every street in Britain. It means members of trade unions, who are now affiliates, becoming full and active members. It will mean a stronger Labour Party.

So we have begun a process of talking and consulting with ordinary members, trade unionists and supporters to ask how we can strengthen our party. Headed by Lord Collins, our former general secretary, we are going to work out how we can really change our party structures, processes and finances to build a modern 21st century Labour Party. Ordinary members will get their say and will vote on the final proposals at a Special Conference in March.

This is an exciting time for us in the party. Exciting, because we know that by changing our party and processes, we will be changing how we do politics and so help make politics more relevant to ordinary people.

We are doing this because politics matter and political parties matter. We are doing this because we want to change the Labour Party to be ready, in less than two years' time, to be Britain’s One Nation Labour Government.

Phil Wilson is Labour MP for Sedgefield

A favourite maxim among George Osborne's team is that "you can never be too tough on welfare". By this they mean that the public will always side with the government over claimants when a benefit cut is introduced. But in the case of the bedroom tax, they've been proved wrong.

A new poll by ComRes for the National Housing Federation (NHF) shows that 59% of the public believe the policy should be abandoned, up from 51% when it was introduced in April. Four-fifths of Labour supporters (79%) favour its repeal, along with 65% of Lib Dems and 34% of Tories. And one doesn't have to look far for evidence why.  A survey by the NHF of 51 housing associations found that more than half of those residents affected by the measure (32,432 people), fell into rent arrears between April and June, a quarter of those for the first time ever. 

Ministers have defended the policy, which reduces housing benefit by 14% for those deemed to have one 'spare room" and by 25% for those with two or more, on the basis that it will encourage families to downsize to more "appropriately sized" accommodation. But they have ignored (or at least pretended to ignore) the lack of one bedroom houses available. In England, there are 180,000 social tenants "under-occupying" two bedroom houses but just 85,000 one bedroom properties available to move to. Rather than reducing overcrowding, the policy has largely become another welfare cut, further squeezing families already hit by the benefit cap, the 1% limit on benefit and tax credit increases (a real-terms cut) and the 10% reduction in council tax benefit. 

For these reasons, the moment that Labour pledges to repeal it is drawing close. At the National Housing Federation conference yesterday, Liam Byrne said: "We have got to have this tax dropped now. If people are in this much debt five months in, then heaven help them come Christmas, and heaven help them come the next election."

Asked whether Labour would promise to scrap the measure, he replied:

"We're determined to see and find a way to get this dropped."

He added: "So what we have to do is show where the money will come from in order to reverse this  iniquitous and vicious tax and we have to prove that it is costing more than it saves."

There are whispers that Ed Miliband could pledge to repeal the policy as early as tonight. 

Having presumably decided that a catalogue of other offensive speeches (most notably the one in which he referred to the fictional nation of ‘Bongo Bongo Land’) weren’t enough, Ukip MEP Godfrey Bloom has attended an event at the Ukip conference in which he hit Channel 4’s Michael Crick with a brochure and referred to women as ‘sluts’.

Bloom was carrying a copy of the Ukip conference book which promises to ‘change the face of politics’, despite being noticeably adorned with only Caucasian faces. Crick questioned this lack of diversity, only to be smacked over the head with the offending article and told that he was a ‘racist’ for bringing up skin colour. ‘You disgust me,’ Bloom added, before making a swift departure.

The ‘slut’ comment is perhaps more easily forgiven, being as it was connected to a comment about cleaning fridges rather than sexual liberation ('This place is full of sluts!' in response to a woman commenting that she never cleaned behind her fridge.) It seems likely that Bloom was using the old-fashioned term for slovenly people who don't dust properly, admittedly one that fell out of common usage for untidiness a fair few decades ago. Then again, we can safely assume from Bloom’s political opinions that he never did quite catch up with the twenty-first century (or, indeed, the 1980s) in the first place.

Enjoy this delightful gif of the incident, courtesy of Tom Phillips (@flashboy):