A comfortable place

The independence of the civil service – where did it all go wrong?

2012-01-26T09:56:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we learned that the head of the UK's statistics watchdog has writtena rebuke to Iain Duncan Smith over his department's handling ofstatistics in the immigration and benefits issues that Chris Graylingtried to make headway with last week. To those of us who have beenfollowing the Welfare Reform bill, and the DWP's attempts to shove itthrough Parliament, this will come as no surprise. The Department hasa policy of deliberate, calculated and persistent misrepresentationof what they are trying to do with the “reform” of benefits.Francesca Martinez's phrase “morally disabled” was never moreapt.

SpecificallySir Michael Scholar, the head of the UK Statistics Authority,questioned the way figures on immigrants claiming benefits werereleased last week, with a pre-release briefing given by ChrisGrayling and Damian Green, making it clear that the release wasintended to whip up concern about immigrants taking taxpayers' money,without telling the full story, e.g. that immigrants are half aslikely to claim as indigenous Brits.

Acomment piece by Mark Easton adds some context to this:

“Theprofound concerns of the UK Statistics Authority at this kind ofministerial behaviour are reflected in a lecture Sir Michael gave atCambridge University last year. "There are strong forces atwork," he told his audience at St John's College, "whosenatural outcome is, I suggest, to demote rationality, analysis andthe pursuit of knowledge within government."

Referringto "a new kind of departmental minister whose consuming interestis in what the next day's press will say", Sir Michael referredto Whitehall's "diminishing interest in analysis and enquiry,and, in the field of government information, a growing interest inthe persuasive press release, with its careful selection of facts andnumbers, designed to communicate as effectively as possible somepredetermined message."

Therewas a time when we had a civil service that would give independentadvice to ministers, including the kind they didn't like to hear. I'mnot sure that that makes a great deal of difference to the ministerswe have currently at DWP. I think Chris Grayling for one would dumpon anybody he could find, regardless of any advice he got. Butoverall it does make a difference. Today's civil servants are lessinclined to stand out for what's right in the face of what ispolitically expedient. They have been trained to do what thegovernment of the day wants, and thereby I think we have lostsomething from government. It was not always like this. And I knowwhen it changed.

Itwas in the first five years of Margaret Thatcher's premiership.Labour did more to bring in “advisers”, but the fundamental movewas made by Margaret Thatcher, and it made a massive difference. Thedepartment then known as DHSS (Department of health and SocialSecurity, aka Department of Stealth and Total Obscurity, nothing muchchanges) used to (maybe it still does) run a summer school for nongraduate employees who had shown themselves to be potential highfliers. It was held over a week at a Cambridge college. It wasorganised by an academic with the help of senior civil servants. Lotsof academics and lots of senior civil servant attended, gaveseminars, took part in question and answer sessions, chatted overmeals, and generally gave the participants a magnificent experienceof academic analysis and political discourse. They had a habit ofinviting a few social workers. The employees were divided into groupsfor seminar work and each group got a social worker. Very few socialworkers in those days were interested in welfare rights. I was one ofthem and I was working in Cambridge at the time when Cambridgeshirewere invited to nominate someone so I got to go to it. That was in1979, after Margaret Thatcher had come to power but before she hadhad time to have much effect.

Thatsummer school was one of the three best learning experiences of mylife. The atmosphere was electric. The academics were people whounderstood the real world. The civil servants were absolutely topclass, bright as buttons, brilliant speakers, knew their stuffbackwards and – this is the key thing – were completely honestabout the political process and how the wheels of government actuallywork. I remember in particular two people, an academic and a civilservant, discussing the way new benefits were introduced, telling uswhat everybody knew but nobody ever confessed to. They got guidelinesfrom the treasury as to how much money they could spend and thencrafted the benefit to spend that much money. (Back in those daysthere was NCIP - Non Contributory Invalidity Pension, and a specialone for housewives HNCIP. HNCIP was brought in separately and ittested a woman's ability to do housework as well as ability to work.Yes shot through with sexism etc. They got the calculation wronghowever, and the benefit proved to be too successful so the thenminister Alf Morris laid amended regulations before Parliament totighten up who could get it. He laid the regulations beforeParliament during the summer recess so Parliament was unable todebate the change. Neat trick. Reminds me of that unsuccessfulbusinessman Lord Freud.)

Ilived off that summer school for months. In fact for years. It brought me all sorts of insights at the political level, the sociallevel, the academic level, even the personal level. It was a burst ofsunshine in what was then an otherwise quite mundane life. But thatwas it for 1979. Fast forward five years. By 1984 I had moved toSussex to continue my career as a social worker. It was East Sussex'sturn to nominate a social worker to go to the summer school. EastSussex had as few social workers interested in welfare rights asCambridgeshire had had. I was asked if I wanted to go. I said yes, ofcourse, but I've already been once, surely somebody else shouldbenefit. “Don't waste my time, you're going”, was the answer.

SoI went back to Cambridge with high anticipation. And got one of thebiggest disappointments of my life. The college was the same, theparticipants were the same, the academics were the same. But thecivil servants had changed beyond recognition. They had all been gotat by Thatcher by that time. Their job was no longer to tell thetruth, their job was to defend and justify government policy. Andthey did it so enthusiastically that nobody dared put a foot wrong.The openness, the intellectual rigour, the brilliant honesty of the1979 summer school were completely destroyed. There was an atmosphereeven of intimidation around. At the 1979 summer school, theparticipants felt completely able to say provocative things and toask potentially embarrassing questions. I say “potentially” -none actually was embarrassing because none of the senior civilservants there were afraid to tell the truth. At the 1984 school Iheard participants say they weren’t going to say anything out ofturn in case it damaged their careers or even possibly them stayingin their job. I still got something from that summer school - theacademics were just as high calibre. But my chief memory of it is thechill laid over the atmosphere by the attitude of the civil servants.

Itwas a big lesson to me in two ways. The first is that my businessnowadays is, mostly, teaching people. This was the perfect, spinechilling, illustration of how debate and the growth of ideas can bechoked at birth by a simple lack of openness, refusal to accept ideasbeyond your narrow range of acceptability, and worse activeopposition to ideas that don't chime with your own. The second ispolitical. While the civil service still claims, and tries tomaintain, some sort of independence from political authority, I haveno doubt that the quality of advice that ministers get now is not asgood, not as real, not as balanced, and, crucially, nowhere near asinnovative as it would be if ministers of successive stripes had notmade it clear what they did not want to hear. There is nothing asintellectually stifling as orthodoxy. And in Whitehall nowadays wehave a massive orthodoxy in favour of surveillance government andprivate provision, which serves nobody well apart from politiciansand captains of commerce.

Asa postscript to the business of creating benefits, I was interestedto see Lord Newton of Braintree, who introduced DLA in the 1990sdescribing the process in exactly the same way. (Look a bit more than halfway down that link.) “What we did onthat occasion was to cobble together a slightly curious constructionbased on the existing benefits of mobility allowance and attendanceallowance using the maximum amount of money I could extract from theTreasury...” I'm sure that they still do it like that today.There's nothing wrong with that process, as long as it is carried outwith fairness and with some intellectual rigour. What is wrong withthe current process is that it is being carried through with secrecy,lies and deceit, and its purpose is to save money regardless of whosuffers, and to create profit for a private company, again regardlessof who suffers.

Spartacus – what next?

2012-01-18T09:01:00.000-08:00

How best to help people make their circumstances known
There is still a campaign to run and there are things we can still win and things we can avoid losing.

Lord Freud made a number of concessions last night, and technically he must hold himself to those. But we know already that he is a master tactician and will use any means he can to get his way. I expect no less of the rest of the DWP. I'm not by any means an expert on Parliamentary procedure but I know enough to know that there are many ways to abide by the letter of the agreement but not its spirit. For instance, it is possible to lay regulations before Parliament when Parliament is not sitting. Thereby any possible debate on the regulations is avoided.

Who's with us?
Labour were in power till May 2010. Labour were responsible for the bankers contract with ATOS (whereby ATOS, like bankers, get rewarded whether they get things right or not). This government has continued and endorsed that contract. Labour started, albeit ineffectually, the strategy of identifying IB claimants as illegitimate and getting them back onto cheaper benefits. But we don't get anywhere by blaming Labour for what they did then. They are in opposition now. It is their job to hold the government to scrutiny, and they are doing that job. (You can argue about their effectiveness.) In my case I will be allying myself with my opposition, while still working within the ranks of my own party to secure a better deal for disabled people. I think, by the way, that this is part of a longer and wider campaign. The DWP has declared war on benefits. Their tactics are underhand, their morals odious, the links with UNUM which they refuse to divulge are – well, let's just say, dubious. It's no coincidence that while the Lords were trying to defend the livelihoods of disabled people, UNUM were advertising their insurance schemes on TV.

What do we do?
As I said, there are things we can win and things we can avoid losing. We know we have a deadline for consultation on PIP. We must work to that deadline. That involves starting as soon as possible and doing the following.

We should encourage as many people as possible to respond with individual accounts.
We have to be sensitive to what people are capable of doing, but I think that what is most useful at this stage is not statements of disagreement (which the DWP will just discount) but detailed statements about the effect the proposed arrangements for PIP will have. Template letters as such are a bone of contention. The DWP has admitted that they ignored the 2500 template letters they received. So would I. You don't measure template letters by the individual sentiment, you measure them by volume. If the DWP had received 100,000 template letters, they would have thought more. So the template letter as such may still have a role to play.

What might be more useful is a to offer people a template process. Disabled people should respond to the PIP consultation with the following:

a) an account of their disability and the effect it has on their life
b) if they have a fluctuating condition, an account of what they're like when high and low
c) their own assessment of what benefit they would get under the published PIP rules
d) a statement as to whether they would lose money and how much
e) a statement of the effect that would have – as specific as possible - what activities they would lose (in particular whether giving up - work might be forced on them), what opportunities they would have to forgo, exactly how their life would be made more difficult or more miserable.

The aim in my mind is to destroy the DWP's rationale that they will concentrate the benefit on what they call the most needy. If we can demonstrate with account after account that the 500,000 they plan to deny benefits are just as needy as the others, then their rationale disappears.

Anyone who does submit evidence should be encouraged to copy the evidence to their MP, thus building up a head of pressure. Any action that results is likely to be behind the scenes as much as in front. We saw that in action last night. Officially the DWP won the debate. But they had been frightened enough by the reaction and the publicity that Spartacus gained to make a number of mollifying moves in order to head off rebellion. If we apply enough pressure, if we have enough MPs whispering, look this is a bit much, then the same sort of thing will happen again. The DWP will claim massive support for the proposed measures while quietly amending them in our direction.

People who submit evidence should also be encouraged to copy it to Spartacus – for which Spartacus will need a central collection point. The aim of this is not only so that we can see what is happening, but so that we are ready to contest any claims the DWP might make that the consultation was overwhelmingly in favour of the proposals. The figures will not add up, but if DWP say they've got 80% approval from 5000 submissions, and we say, well, we've got 95% disapproval from the 2000 we know about, then they'll be in difficulties.

Timetable
We need a timetable, to work backwards from the 15 week deadline.
Last date for submission of responses
Deadline for preparing a report on our experience of the consultation process
Deadline for preparing press releases – calculating when the most effective day to release them is: it's not a day before the end ot the consultation. (I'm not criticising what has been done – I think it's great that so much was achieved, and with such effect. I just think there are things we can improve.)

Collation
Will somebody have the time, I would say around week 10, to collate the responses we see and pull out general points which can form the basis of a sort of meta-submission, or a press release?

Other issues
List the journalists who gave us favourable coverage and keep them informed of developments. We don't need to bombard them with details, but a note or two with case studies and actions so far keeps us in their mind.

The press release I saw about the original Spartacus report was great, but it was far too long. The DWP has become expert at writing press releases in such a way that its favourite tabloids can just lift the copy straight out of the press release onto the page, preferably with headline. We need to do the same. Write the press release they way you expect the paper to write it. Supporting documentation goes in notes or on web pages to which the press release gives links.

I have other ideas but I think that will do for now.

Back to the 80s: #spartacusreport

2012-01-09T14:49:00.000-08:00

ReadingResponsible Reform today was like going back to the 80s, to the dayswhen the government did its best to give a kicking to any poor,marginalised people it could think of (think Norman Tebbit). I havefelt until now that this government is better than that, particularlywith the LibDems in it to curb the worst excesses of right wingfervour. In some ways we have been pretty successful at that. We havewon some and we have lost some. Unfortunately for some of the mostmarginalised people in the country, the Department of Work andPensions (DWP) has been one place where we have failed – and it isbecoming apparent that we have failed badly.

Partlythe bad news emerging from the DWP is made worse by the fact thatIain Duncan Smith is in charge. Rightly or wrongly I have always feltthat, although he's very right wing, he is a fundamentally decentman, and unlikely to emulate the worst habits of some of hispredecessors. But that view is being rudely disturbed by the anticsof his department.

Forthe entire length of this government Mr Duncan Smith and hisdepartment have been repeating that work is better than welfare, andthat people who are in work are happier and healthier as well asbetter off than if they are on welfare. Nobody really disputes that.But they seem determined to make everyone work whether they arecapable of it or not. And they also seem to think that the way to get people into work is to take their benefits away. (And that is even more remarkably silly when there is no work to be had.)

But the rhetoric has gradually (orperhaps not so gradually) shifted into a campaign of demonisation.People who cannot work are being labelled as scroungers. The languageof the media and the language of politics has shifted subtly butdefinitely into a language of hatred. And the effects of this areevident in people's behaviour. Scope's press release last May“Deteriorating attitudes towards disabled people” shows thatpublic attitudes to disabled people have worsened and even becomemore violent in recent times.

Notso long ago the DWP were roundly criticised by the Work And Pensions Committee for issuing misleading press releases which emphasised thenumber of people being found fit for work in Work CapabilityAssessments, despite the overall figures showing increasing numbersof people being found eligible for support and not for work. MrDuncan Smith appeared to be quite unapologetic about effectivelywriting the Daily Mail's news items for it. He and his ministersclaim that they can't be held responsible for what the press write –yes they can, if they are as selective and misleading as they havebeen about the statistics and cases they report in their own pressreleases. That is bad enough but the department's behaviour hasworsened.

Thereport Responsible Reform was released today by a group of disabledpeople who used a Freedom Of Information Act request to obtain allthe responses to the government's consultation on Disability LivingAllowance (DLA) and the proposed move to Personal IndependencePayments (PIP). The move is a thinly disguised attempt to save 20% ofthe DLA bill by simply removing people from eligibility for it. Thegovernment issued its own summary of the consultation, which washighly selective about the way in which it reported the responses ithad. Responsible Reform shows just how misleading the government'spublished response was. “Misleading” is almost the most used wordin the forty page report. And we know that “misleading” isParliamentary language for “lying”.

Iurge you to read the report for yourselves. It can be downloadedhere. It may look like deathly boring statistical stuff but theaccumulation of evidence about the responses themselves and about thegovernment's systematically misleading response to the responses is,quite frankly, devastating. Forty pages takes quite a while though,so here are the main points:

the government asserts that disabled people support and are in agreement with their plans to replace DLA with PIP; analysis of the responses shows only 7% of organisations that took part in the consultation were fully in support.
There was overwhelming opposition in the consultation responses to nearly all of the government’s proposals for DLA reform.
The government claims there has been a 30% rise in DLA claims between 2002 and 2010. It uses this figure to justify the need to save money. Detailed analysis in Responsible Reform shows that this figure is entirely misleading. The government has actually admitted that it is misleading, and yet it continues to use it.
The report shows that nearly all of the recent increase in working-age claimants of DLA has been associated with mental health conditions and learning difficulties. Between 2002 and 2010, the number of working-age DLA claimants – excluding those with mental health conditions and learning difficulties remained remarkably stable
98% of those who responded opposed plans to change the qualifying period for PIP from three months (as it is with DLA) to six months
90% opposed plans for a new assessment, which disabled people fear will be far too similar to the much-criticised work capability assessment used to test eligibility for employment and support allowance (ESA)

Thereis a lot more, but what is most disturbing about the issues dealtwith here is the systematic way the DWP set out to misrepresent theresponses to it from disabled people and organisations. It is amodern manifestation of the nastiest Thatcherism of the 80s. Probably the nastiest part of the government's response has been in their attempt to find a "DLA factor". They claim that just having DLA inclines people not to work. (Find victims - then blame them.) This starts from the observation that fewer disabled people in work claim DLA than disabled people out of work. (pp13 - 15 of Responsible Reform) So in the DWP's mind that must be because they are receiving DLA. It never occurs to them that disabled people receiving DLA might be more disabled than the disabled people who are not receiving DLA. It also never occurs to them that getting a job automatically triggers a review of DLA, with the possibility that it might be taken away; the way to get rid of that disincentive is to stop automatically reviewing DLA when a recipient takes up work. There are some cases where people believe that DLA is automatically removed if they get a job - it is not. DLA is awarded for disability, not for working status. The way to deal with that is to educate people not to blame them.

ResponsibleReform has already been dubbed the Spartacus Report. Its reception ontwitter can be followed with the hashtag #spartacusreport. There is a petition to sign:

Stop and review the cuts to benefits and services which are falling disproportionately on disabled people, their carers and families.

Please let family, friends, colleagues, anyone you can think of know. Please write to your MP. Please do whatever you can.

The traditional Boxing Day hunting debate

2011-12-26T06:18:00.000-08:00

It looks as if the Boxing Day hunting debate is becoming as traditional as the Boxing Day hunt. We have conservative minister Jim Paice taking care to go on record and say the act is unworkable and needs to be repealed. From my point of view it's only unworkable because hunters insist on breaking it. (I look forward to Paice saying the drugs laws are unworkable and need to be repealed, but I'm not holding my breath.)

Meanwhile the Telegraph reports that David Cameron is pushing back the point at which there will be Parliamentary time for the debate that pro-hunters want. The headline is inflammatory "David Cameron to ditch foxhunting U-turn", but we're used to that from the Telegraph now; they've been driving standards down for some time. Cameron still hopes to detoxify the Tory party, despite the active endeavours of some of his backbenchers to retoxify it, and he knows that it will be seen as the Tory party in favour of the toffs again. Say what you like about Cameron, and I often do, he is a skilful politician. He knows what he wants, and has been very skilful and in my view surprisingly successful at heading off pressure from the, shall we say, less socially liberal members of his party. (He doesn't always get it right; walking away from the EU negotiating table was his first big right wing inspired mistake. I hope there won't be any more.) More interesting is the Telegraph's reporting that Parliamentary mathematics are against the pro-hunting lobby winning the vote, with quite a few of the new intake of MPs being anti. Good for them. They're in tune with the public on this issue, though the Telegraph has an odd way of putting it: "A poll today suggested just nearly half of people believe a vote to repeal the Hunting Act should not be a top animal welfare priority for the coalition Government". It's the other way around (I think - if I've got their complicated negatives right): retaining the ban *is* a top animal welfare priority.

For what it's worth, let us rehearse the arguments for and against hunting animals with hounds. There are three questions that need to be answered, in my view:
1. Is there a question of civil liberties?
2. Is there a question of animal welfare?
3. If the answer to the first two questions is yes, which should outweigh the other?

For question 1 the answer is clearly yes. People should be able to do what they want, even if that is distasteful to other people. if that were all there is to it, then hunting would fall for me into the same category as Morris dancing. It's not for me, but if you want to dress up in silly clothes and prance around the countryside making fools of yourselves, then I will defend to the hilt your right to do so. I will even celebrate it.

For question 2 the answer is less easy to arrive at. There is conflicting evidence about how and how much pain and fear animals feel. But one of the reasons there is so much doubt is that the hunting lobby over the years has been vociferous in supporting and parading any evidence for their point of view. They have also been economical with the truth about their own behaviour while out doing their thing. In my view the weight of the evidence falls on the side that animals do indeed suffer both pain and fear. Hunting with hounds is not designed to be cruel, but is designed with complete carelessness as to how much pain and fear are inflicted. Proponents of hunting say that other methods e.g. shooting, sometimes leave the animal wounded and in pain. Yes that's true. But here it's a question of intention. A marksman intends to kill the fox and to do so as quickly and humanely as possible. Hunters with hounds intend to pursue the fox for as long as possible, because they want to enjoy it, and they don't give a stuff about what the fox suffers meanwhile.

So in my view the answer to both question 1 and 2 is yes. In that case which should outweigh the other? It is philosophically possible to say that human liberty should outweigh animal suffering. In some ways anyone who is not a vegetarian must hold that position to some degree. And I do accept a minimum of animal suffering in order to have meat to eat. But I insist that there are clear and unequivocal rules about the amount of suffering that can be inflicted. Most of that is done for me by the law, but, for instance, I don't eat chicken if it is not free range. So for me eating meat is a fact of life (though I appreciate that that viewpoint is arguable), and a minimum of suffering is allowable to achieve that. Similarly a minimum of suffering of vermin is allowable to protect stocks and flocks. But hunting with hounds does not go for the minimum - if anything it goes for the maximum. And we do curb civil liberties for animal welfare. People like cock fighting, people like dog fighting, people like bear baiting, people like bull fighting. But we don't let them do it. In the same way the welfare of animals outweighs the civil liberties of those who wish to hunt them with hounds. If they want to dress in red and ride around the countryside, their liberty is only very minimally affected if they don't have a fox to chase while doing it.

Liberal Democrats and boardroom pay

2011-12-06T04:01:00.001-08:00

This started out as a comment on somebody else's post, but it grew and grew. Nick Clegg has signalled the possibility of government action on high pay, and Charlotte over at DigitalPolitico says he's being “worryingly illiberal”. I don't see that. I think we need to be clear about what the issue is and about what a liberal response to it would be. Then in terms of a strategy there are two questions to answer. The first is does government have a right to interfere; the second is will it be effective.

As for what Nick Clegg has actually done, this is what the BBC website says: “The government is to publish new proposals to curb "unjustified and irresponsible" pay rewards in the private sector, Nick Clegg has said. The deputy prime minister said ministers would announce plans to "get tough" on excessive boardroom pay in January and may legislate if necessary.”

And this is what Robert Peston says: “... it is highly likely that companies will be forced to publish the numerical relationship between senior directors and other staff pay.

“But I would be staggered if any Tory prime minister and chancellor - even those who have repeatedly said that "we're all in this together" - would legislate a legal maximum for bosses pay.

“As for the other two proposals, on giving investors the formal power to block pay awards and on forcing the remuneration committee to have a workforce rep as a voting member, goodness only knows whether they will be enacted or squished.”

What problem is this action answering? It is not just high boardroom pay and a growing divide between top and bottom pay levels. If it were just that, I would be with Charlotte – there is no need to interfere and no rationale for interfering. (Just tax the rich buggers more and the poor buggers less.) It is more that boardroom pay, and traders pay in the financial sector, has become divorced from performance. People are paying themselves and their friends large sums of money which they have not earned. I have no objection (and I doubt very much if Nick Clegg or Vince Cable does either) to people earning very large sums of money. What I do object to is them being paid sums that they have not earned.

Should a Liberal interfere in such a case. Well, if it were just that I find it objectionable, the answer is no. People are free to do what they want provided it doesn't harm other people – the usual liberal principle. But this activity does harm other people. It puts money in directors' pockets at the expense of employees, shareholders and customers. Logically, employees, shareholders and customers should do something about that if they really care, but the history of this recession demonstrates, if it needed demonstrating, that they are not able to (and those that are able to, namely the representatives of large investors like pension funds, have been unwilling to, probably because those representatives benefit from the same gravy train).

It goes wider than that as well. This is not just a matter of distribution of spoils between a few people directly concerned with specific companies. These practices led to, or at the very least contributed to, the recession from which the majority of us are now suffering. This is actually a market failure, and it has become a prolonged and persistent one. In an efficient market, people get paid what they're worth. If people are paid more than their worth, their business loses competitiveness. The company loses market position, or those people lose their jobs and more effective managers come in. But this is not what is happening. People were being paid vast sums of money for poor performance before the crash – Fred Goodwin one of the most notable examples. (I would really enjoy being able to drive my company off a cliff and walk away with a pension pot the size of his.)

Generally speaking such a crash would be seen as a wake up call, the directors responsible for the bad decisions made that led to the various crashes around the world would lose their jobs, with little compensation, and new managers would come in and would manage better. But that is not what is happening. Directors are still getting paid very large sums, with little evidence that they have earned those sums. Directors pay in the UK went up 50% on average in the last year. The companies they work for are not performing 50% better than they were a year ago. You might argue that actually seeing 50% increase in profits is unreasonable in a recession, and what these directors have been doing is helping their companies ride out the storm better. I have not examined the figures in detail, but I will take a bet that if you compare companies that have given their directors large increases with those that have given their directors small increases, you will not find any difference in performance. No, they have not suddenly become 50% more valuable than they were last year, they have just waited for a decent interval before turning back to their old ways. The market has not worked in this case and is not working.

We often forget that markets actually rely on governments. Without government rule making, markets would not exist. Without the enforcement provided by national and international law, nobody would be able to trust that a contract would be honoured. Excessive rule making squeezes markets; effective rule making enables them. When markets fail, governments not only have a right to intervene, they actually have a duty to intervene, to enable the market to work again. The rules by which directors pay are set have become ineffective and unsustainable – they are very sustainable for directors, but not for the rest of us. And they need to change, so that the people to whom the money belongs, primarily shareholders, get the primary say in who is paid what.

So Nick and Vince are proposing changes to the rules. They are not proposing legal caps on directors' pay, which would be illiberal and ineffective. But they are proposing to change the balance of power by three possible measures. This summary comes from Robert Peston's blog quoted above.

to make shareholder votes on remuneration packages for directors binding, rather than advisory (as is the case now);
to force big companies to include an employee representative on the committee that sets directors' pay (the remuneration committee);
to force companies to publish the ratio of senior directors' pay to the typical or median pay in the company, and even (perhaps) to prohibit pay rises that bust a mandated threshold for that ratio.

These measures seem to me to be eminently sensible and liberal. I hope all three get enacted. I hope they will be enough to bring boardroom pay under control, and to see that directors earn what they are being paid. Boards, though, have been so careless and intransigent throughout the recession that I fear they will need their heads knocked together before their behaviour will change.

The carelessness of government

2011-10-20T02:37:00.000-07:00

I have broadly supported this coalition through all its vicissitudes so far. As a Liberal Democrat I have had to swallow hard over some issues – student fees, the NHS, the enthusiasm for cuts, particularly to services for the vulnerable, the continued velvet glove treatment of those responsible for the economic crash. But I have regarded all of these as a necessary price for providing the stability of government that the country desperately needed to get out of the hole that the bankers and Labour between them put us in. Particularly on cuts to benefits, I do not like them, I do not regard them as necessary, but I recognise that there is a limit to what we, as the minority party in government, are capable of enforcing.

But there is one issue that has given me cause to hesitate, and finally to decide that LibDems in government have not served well themselves, their party, their country, or one particular individual. That is the case of Gary McKinnon.

Let us be as clear as we can about the facts. Gary McKinnon has Asperger's Syndrome. This was only diagnosed in 2008. He is an expert in computing. He also believes that the US government is holding data on UFOs that he thought should be made public. In 2002 he began tracking down computers in the US military system, and discovered that many had very poor password and firewall protection. So he found his way in (it's hard to call it hacking when it involves getting into a Windows computer with inadequate protection). He found his way into dozens of computers and networks. He was eventually identified and arrested by the British authorities. That, I remind you, was in 2002, nearly ten years ago. The US authorities soon demanded his extradition to face trial there, despite the fact that he carried out all his activities on British soil, using British equipment and British connections. He faces a penalty of up to 60 years in prison in the USA. The USA may count as one of our more civilised allies, but when it is prepared to do what it has done to Bradley Manning, one can only be cynical about the prison conditions that Gary McKinnon might face. In addition, as a sufferer from Aspergers, Gary would be so disturbed by life in prison that suicide would be a real possibility. (Simon Baron-Cohen’s Report.)

There is a lopsided extradition agreement between the UK and the US. The tests are for the US authorities they only have to say what the alleged crime was, what the punishment can be, and who they suspect. They have to provide no evidence. But for the British authorities to extradite an American citizen from the US they have to demonstrate that they have good reason to believe that the suspect is the guilty party. They have to show evidence. The Baker report released this week states that there is no unfairness in the actual implementation of the agreement between us and the USA. There's something very unjoined up going on in our public processes at the moment if Baker felt it was necessary to consult the Americans over what to put in his report. And he may be historically accurate in so far as British citizens have not so far been unjustly treated, but the tests remain lopsided, and it is possible that British citizens may be unjustly treated in the future.

Perhaps this government was delaying on its response to the McKinnon case in the hope that Baker would get it off the hook. But Baker is actually irrelevant to the treatment of Gary McKinnon. The political noise coming from the other side of the Atlantic is that, in his case, our decision will be respected, and will not cause a problem between our governments. (I leave aside the issue that if I were the US government I would, far from wishing to prosecute McKinnon, be very grateful that he had shown up how pathetically inept US military security was, and enabled me to knock heads together to get it improved.)

The various legal issues about the treatment of vulnerable people are outlined very well here, and I need not go into further detail. The tools are in the hands of our government to take the decision and draw to an end the ten year – I repeat that, the ten year – limbo of a sick man. And yet we still delay.

So far, McKinnon has been treated as an object of a bureaucratic machine. Bureaucracies do not care for individuals. Bureaucracies are not designed to respond to the desperate needs of a lone person. Instead bureaucracies slowly and efficiently over long periods of time squeeze that individual round peg into a square hole. They have no humanity. That is not a criticism of bureaucracies. They do what they are designed to do - administer efficiently. But it is a criticism of governments, which represent the people, if they do not rescue individuals from the slow torture of bureaucracy.

It is over issues like this that governments lose their soul. It is not in the big policy decisions and announcements, crafted for party conferences, or news conferences, that the temper of a government is truly discovered. It is not in the well practised, monotonous cut and thrust of Commons debate, or the pas de deux of Newsnight or Sky TV interviews. Still less, Heaven forfend, in the cloyingly ritualised tangos of Question Time. It is in the effect that governments have on the treatment of individuals by an administration that is not built to care for individuals. At the moment the temper of this government is wanting.

Both Nick Clegg and David Cameron spoke about McKinnon's case when they were in opposition. They are quoted here.

David Cameron - “It should still mean something to be a British citizen – with the full protection of the British Parliament, rather than a British Government trying to send you off to a foreign court”….(July 2009)

Nick Clegg - “If he boards the plane to the U.S., it is almost certain he will never set foot on British soil again, doomed to pass out the rest of his days in shackles on a foreign shore. This is nothing short of a disgrace” ….(August 2009)

And yet they still do nothing.

Nick Clegg in August this year, now in government, compared Britain to Libya. Libya has in fact shown us the way. The Transitional National Council has made it clear that al-Megrahi, convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, will stay in Libya. There is no question of him being returned to the UK. They do this because he is a Libyan citizen, and they stand for all Libyan citizens. Yet we still do nothing for McKinnon.

In the same article Nick Clegg says: “those who need to make use of human rights laws to challenge the decisions of the authorities are nearly always people who are in the care of the state: children's homes, mental hospitals, immigration detention, residential care. They are often vulnerable, powerless, or outsiders, and are sometimes people for whom the public feels little sympathy. But they are human beings, and our common humanity dictates that we treat them as such.” Gary McKinnon has not been in the care of the state, but he has been under its thumb for nearly ten years. He is vulnerable and powerless. With every day that passes without Gary McKinnon being told he will stay in the UK, the government that Nick Clegg represents loses another piece of its soul.

One rule for people on benefits....

2011-10-19T01:37:00.000-07:00

... and another rule for everybody else.

In one corner, the government plans to remove benefit from claimants with a spare room. They will lose up to £11 a week in housing benefit.

In the other corner, there is a proposal to give tax breaks to older people to downsize their housing. The government's response is given by housing minister Grant Shapps: "Whilst this report makes interesting reading, we do not agree that people should be taxed or bullied out of their homes." Perhaps he should talk to Lord Freud, who is pushing through the housing benefit plan.

I'd also be really interested to know what on earth his next sentence actually means: "Instead we will work with families to ensure that housing becomes more affordable over time." As far as I can see, his only plans are to take over the green belt and / or to trash the economy enough to cause a crash in house prices.

Is there a liberal case for not raising the speed limit?

2011-10-13T16:25:00.000-07:00

When Philip Hammond announced that he was in favour of raising the motorway speed limit to 80 mph, my instinctive reaction was “That's stupid”. The immediate reaction was based on his reasons for doing it, the most prominently quoted of which, at the beginning at least, was that so many drivers on motorways exceed the limit anyway, that we may as well raise it. On that basis I look forward to him repealing the law on using mobile phones in cars and also voting for the legalisation of cannabis. No? No, I didn't think so.

His other key reason makes marginally more sense in that both cars and roads have become safer since the limit was set. Both fatalities and serious accidents have reduced significantly and steadily over a long period, and so it makes sense to look at whether the limit is still appropriate. So I thought I should, rather than nurturing my own prejudices, look at what the liberal arguments are for and against raising the speed limit.

One of the issues I think is that the argument for raising the speed limit is quite simple, whereas the argument against has to be put in a more complex way. The argument for is that people should not be prevented from doing what they want to do unless it harms someone else. If it does harm someone else then in order to come to a decision on what to do, you have to consider the relative harms of restricting the rights of person A, the doer, or person B, the done to. The main issues you have to deal with are that people get killed and that there is a cost to the environment. The figure for last year, 2010, is that, with our modern safer cars and roads we managed to kill 118 people on our motorways. Even if you accept the argument that speed kills (lots of people don't – but more of that later) presumably those 118 were killed by a probable maximum of 113 perpetrators (there were 113 accidents). These figures are from the DfT. One might say that the other millions of motorists should not be prevented from doing what they want because of the consequences caused by a very small number of people. On the environmental issue, you either ignore it or you try to come up with an argument that says the gains in time saved etc are worth the environmental costs. I don't plan to spend much time on the environmental argument, because I'd like to concentrate on the human angle and the rights angle.

To look at the other side – the case for not raising the speed limit, I think there are two key issues. First of all the principle of freedom is clear – if I want to restrict other people's freedom I need a good reason. Secondly, the reasons should be based on evidence rather than doctrine. Problems arise of course when the evidence is equivocal. Then the skills of weighing it and interpreting it come to the fore.

So, first of all, let us visit the evidence. The debate is about freedom versus life and limb (leaving the environment aside for the moment). My right to travel at what speed I like against other people's right to remain alive and unharmed. So the evidence must show how many people are killed and injured, how many of those accidents are preventable, and whose fault they are.

In terms of deaths and injuries on our roads, the trend has been firmly downwards for many years. To take a sample year pretty much at random, in 1990 5217 people were killed and 60,000 injured seriously on our roads. In 2010 the corresponding figures were 1850 and 20803. (Note: 1850 is a revision in the latest version of the 2010 figures released by the DfT.) The collection of these figures has been challenged in that a study in 2006 found discrepancies in police reporting and hospital admissions, suggesting that the method of police reporting, on which the official figures are based, was reducing the actual number. This is now acknowledged in the DfT's annual summary. But the reporting effect is minimal. So, yes, our roads are a lot safer than they were. Does that mean they are safe enough? In the announcement something was made of the fact that our roads are among the safest in Europe. That claim has been examined by fullfact.org and shown to be broadly correct, if a little disingenuous. Now, that is not an evidential claim. It's a comparative claim, and it is open to us to say “So what?” I'm not that impressed by the fact that our roads are safer than Romania's. I'd rather they were safer still. The fact that our roads are safer than other people's means nothing when we still managed to kill nearly 2000 people on them last year. So I'm discounting that comparison for the purpose of deciding what a liberal response should be.

Part of the context of this is that motorway driving is considerably safer than driving on other roads. Motorways make up less than 1% of our road network, yet take 19% of the traffic. Even so, 5% of last year's fatalities happened on motorways. So by comparison with other roads, they are very safe. But that still does not necessarily mean that they are safe enough. The next thing to check is whether speed is a contributory factor in deaths and injuries on the motorways. The evidence here needs to be divided into two parts. Does speed contribute to accidents happening? And does speed contribute to the severity of the consequences if an accident does happen? The evidence for the first question is that it makes a limited difference. There is a problem here in that the safety of cars has increased in such a way that people get the impression that they're perfectly safe to drive at high speeds because the car will protect them. Road, tyre and braking technology have also increased to the point where it is much more rare for a driver to lose control of a car at high speed. But that does not mean that it does not happen. A significant number of deaths are in single vehicle collisions – in other words, a vehicle colliding with a tree or failing to negotiate a bend. I have no data for the proportion of such accidents on motorways as opposed to other roads. It is almost certainly a lot less, but equally certainly it does happen. The safety of new cars and roads is only relative. The higher the speed, the longer the reaction distance needs to be to allow for safe braking even with new technology. And driving at least two seconds apart is an activity that seems to have escaped a lot of British drivers. (I will come back to driving habits later.) Overall the WHO estimate that 1 km/h decrease in travelling speed would lead to a 2–3% reduction in road crashes.

Looking at the consequences of accidents the evidence is much stronger. Many studies demonstrate that increases in speed cause great increases in severity of impact. The WHO paper referred to above estimates “For car occupants in a crash with an impact speed of 80 km/h, the likelihood of death is 20 times what it would have been at an impact speed of 30 km/h.”

It seems clear from this evidence then that raising the speed limit from 70 to 80 would cause a small increase in accidents and a significant increase in the proportion of fatalities and serious injuries resulting from such accidents. This is admitted by the DfT, whose initial analysis indicates a 1% increase in deaths, according to the Guardian.

This still leaves open the question of what we should do. Millions of motorists used our motorways in 2010. Only 113 of them, at most, killed somebody, and only 668 caused serious injuries (injuring 798 people). Does a few people getting it wrong give us reason to restrict everybody's liberty? I think that there is an argument for that. Here we leave evidence behind and move into the realm of consequence, principle and practice.

A lot of people assume that those who cause fatal and serious accidents are different. They are idiots, bad drivers, unlike the rest of us who are good drivers. But there is little indication that those who cause such accidents really are different – they are not boy racers, they are not serial offenders, they are not all travelling at egregious speeds that nobody sensible would ever consider. They are ordinary drivers, just like most of the rest of us, but their luck ran out. We might more legitimately think that some are a bit sillier than most of us, but even if we assume that, can we assume that the way we behave has no effect on them? We have in this country a culture of driving badly. We do not recognise it as such, but if you consider the common driving behaviour, it is difficult to escape that conclusion. Most people do not think of speeding as a crime, far from it. Large numbers of people think that they have a right to break the speed limit. This applies to people who regard themselves as law abiding in every other way. I once said to a room full of pensioners that we are all law breakers. There was instant disapproval. I asked for a show of hands of people who had never broken the speed limit. “Oh, that's not the same thing”, they said. I have one eye on Question Time as I'm writing this. The usual audience – the kind of solid upstanding citizens who are actually interested in politics. Good people, who think through and about issues. If I asked in that studio right now how many drivers could, hand on heart, say they had never broken the speed limit, I doubt that any would be able to do so. It has become routine; it is part of our driving culture. We assume that speeding is OK, which is one reason why Philip Hammond is raising the issue – he assumes it too. In his case, I think he has an idea that, given that people are travelling at 80 now, if you raise the speed limit to 80, they will continue to travel at that speed. I think their perception is not that they are travelling at 80, but that they are travelling at speed limit plus 10%. If the limit is raised, then the limit plus 10% will be raised commensurately.

Another indication of the kind of driving culture we have in this country is the way use our car horns. The meaning of sounding a horn, in the Highway Code, is “I am here”. The meaning of the horn, as used by most of us, is “I am angry with you”. The overall culture is one of a general selfishness, and a great carelessness. We work on the basis that we can get into our cars and then not pay attention till we get to our destination. We do not value awareness of what is going on around us. This is why so many of us think it's OK to use a mobile while we drive. “1/5 of UK motorists admit accessing social networking sites on their mobile phone while driving.” and many more will phone or text with. Many of us will travel at the fastest speed we can, or for the law abiding, at the stated speed limit pretty much regardless of the weather, road or traffic conditions. Varying our speed to suit the conditions does not come naturally to many of us. The culture will not change because the speed limit is raised. All it will do is assimilate the new limit into its way of thinking. (Work carried out in the United States confirms this.)

My general point here is that the driving culture is made by all of us. When people get killed on the roads most of us can quite rightly say we did not kill anyone. But it is wrong to draw from that the conclusion that we can escape responsibility for the cumulative effect of the things that we do. We determine and preserve the culture that enables the few who drive so carelessly and at such speeds that they do kill people. The speed limit as such isn't the problem: it's the way we drive that results in so many deaths and so many serious injuries. But the speed limit is a factor, because it is part of the equation people use to determine the speed at which they will drive. I doubt that the way we drive is going to change (I would like it to, very much, but I am not optimistic) so any decision made about speed limits has to take that into account.

In summary, my argument is:
- evidence shows that increasing speed causes small increases in the likelihood of accidents happening, and significant increases in the consequences of accidents, in terms of deaths and serious injuries.
- life has value, although we drive as if it does not - although the bulk of motorists are not directly responsible for deaths or injuries, the majority of us maintain a culture in which people are encouraged to drive selfishly and carelessly
- it can therefore be justified, on a liberal basis, to restrict everybody's freedom to drive at speed, in order to allow as many people as possible the freedom to live.

A more positive liberal approach would be to work on educating people about good habits of responsible driving, awareness, and the need to protect the environment. An even more liberal approach would be to get them out of their cars and onto more frequent and more reasonably priced trains and buses. But I only meant to discuss the speed limit.

Tottenham, the stadium, a letter to Daniel Levy

2011-08-07T10:23:00.000-07:00

Dear Mr Levy

We have not met, so let me first establish my credentials as a fan. I am a lifelong Tottenham supporter since around 1960, though I have never lived locally to Tottenham. As I was becoming aware of football, the Nicholson era was in full swing. For me there has never been any other club and never will be. Over the last couple of years I have been a reluctant agnostic on the issue of the stadium. While much preferring my club to remain in Tottenham, I could see that there might be a business case for a relocation. I must say I was pleased when the decision on the Olympic Stadium went to West Ham, and disappointed when Tottenham continued to pursue it.

Last night's events in Tottenham have changed the game. There could not be a better time than now for Tottenham Hotspur to commit itself to Tottenham. It is possible that last night's events were just a flash in the pan and do not speak to some deeper malaise in the area, but the scale of violence and destruction suggests a level of deprivation and disengagement that needs to be dealt with. The police say that relations have been good since the 1985 riots, but that really only hides deeper issues. Guns are still easy to obtain, gang culture is rife. Tottenham Hotspur has a part to play. By committing to rebuilding the stadium at White Hart Lane the club will be saying – we will bring regeneration, we will bring jobs, we will bring infrastructure, we will bring new opportunities, we will bring back respect, we will play our part in bringing the streets back to ordinary people to help them live their lives without fear.

I appreciate that a football club is a business, and that decisions must be made on a sensible businesslike level. But perhaps last night has changed the business environment. If you play your cards right, you now have Haringey and the national government over a barrel. Times are tight, there are cuts everywhere. Indeed, some are already saying that Haringey's 75% cuts in youth services have contributed to the disaffection that is now on display, as young people have nowhere to go but the street. But we can apparently afford £30 billion for a high speed rail link. We should be able to afford a few million for infrastructure round White Hart Lane. It seems distasteful to suggest profiting from a riot, but you have been given a card, Mr Levy. You should play it.

Finally, a football club is indeed a business, but also more than a business. A football club has a soul. If you lose the soul, the business will suffer, possibly not immediately, but inevitably as the years pass the soul will wither, the passion of the fans, rooted in their identity, will diminish. Tottenham Hotspur's soul is in Tottenham. Please don't desert it.

Buteyko

2011-07-13T02:35:00.000-07:00

Following the post in which I confessed to bearing joint responsibility for the financial ills of the NHS, I have taken up Buteyko.
Buteyko was a Russian physiologist, trained in scientific method, which was the first thing that made his ideas more attractive to me than some of the less scientifically based ways of doing things. In the course of his work he noticed that people with a variety of chronic conditions all had low levels of CO₂ in their bodies. He devised a breathing method which he hoped would help people elevate their CO₂, and he discovered that when it worked properly, people's conditions either disappeared or at least ameliorated. So it's now a method taught by practitioners in various places around the world. The Wikipedia article on Buteyko is quite high quality.

Like all these things they have a long list of conditions that they claim to have success with. Among them were high blood pressure and cholesterol, so I thought what the heck let's give it a go.

The treatment involves five two hour sessions spaced over five days, and then a month of follow up by telephone. The follow up is genuine - I know other people who have done it and who have had hours of conversation on the phone to sort out what they are doing. A one off price covers all that and a reunion meeting after the month is up, and participants can do the course again free of charge. Again, that sounded like a very fair deal, unlike some who will charge by the hour for an unlimited number of sessions, and leave you with the feeling that it's your fault if it didn't work.

An interesting feature of the course is that it is run by a woman who lives locally, Martha Roe, but backed up by a man who lives in Thailand, Christopher Drake. He joins the sessions via Skype video, and will also do telephone calls to people with more complex problems than Martha feels able to deal with. Hooray for new technology. They share a website, and Martha has her own as well.

The method involves breathing less. It sounds, shall we say, counter intuitive, but there is a logic to it. We use only a proportion of the oxygen we breathe in, so if we breathe in less, we don't starve of oxygen, we just use more of what is in each breath. We breathe in air with approximately 21% oxygen in it. We breathe out approximately 17% - 19%. If we didn't, mouth to mouth resuscitation wouldn't work (that's my excuse anyway). And if we breathe less, we lose less carbon dioxide. It's all connected to the brain's respiratory centre, which is what controls the feelings we get when we need to breathe according to the level of CO₂ it perceives, and the idea is to retrain it to trigger the breathing response only at higher levels of CO₂.

To do that we learn what are called pauses, and very shallow breathing (VSB, there had to be a TLA in there somewhere). The pauses can be quite unpleasant, and you look a right tit when doing them. A pause is holding your breath for a specific length of time, and as the length gets longer you do distractions - these are bodily movements which have the function of distracting the mind from the need to breathe. Sounds stupid but it works - I can add up to 20 seconds to the length of the pause by jerking up and down. Not something to be done in public. I got a very quizzical stare from the cat last night after a particularly flamboyant set of distractions.

Does it work? it can take a long time, but I did my course last week, and I've been doing the method for ten days now. I have seen two things happen. From the first day I did it, I have been sleeping better. I've been unwell for the last four months, and for the whole of that time my sleeping pattern hasn't changed, but I've been waking up feeling completely unrested, having great difficulty forcing my body out of bed, and taking at least an hour after getting up to get my brain in gear. But since day 1 of Buteyko, I have woken up feeling as if I've had a night's sleep. That alone was worth the price.

Has it had an effect on my blood pressure? I bought my own monitor a few days before starting Buteyko and so far I have detected a very slight downward trend since starting the course. It's difficult to tell at the moment, partly because I have been using the monitor experimentally - after coffee (adds 10 points), during indigestion (adds 20 points), after exercise (ye gods), and so on, and I haven't tracked it under stable conditions. But there is a hint of downward movement, which I hope will continue. Maybe I'll be less of a burden to the NHS in a while than I am at the moment.

Among other things we've been told that Buteyko can change the way you breathe when you sing, and can change the way you use your voice. So we are considering a Buteyko choir, Buteyko ventriloquism, and of course, the Buteyko dance, which would be a kind of punk / Goth rendition of the distractions. I can see it being a big hit at the Brighton fringe next year.

And, on a more serious note, evidence based medicine should be taking a good look at Buteyko. The evidence is that it works. It doesn't work for everybody, but neither do pills. A properly conducted scientifically based study should show that many people can avoid long term costs and long term invasion of their bodies by drugs and other techniques. Maybe the NHS will come to embrace Buteyko. On my limited experience so far, that would be a good thing.

The routinisation of corruption

2011-07-05T02:51:00.000-07:00

The worst aspect of corruption is its routinisation. It can become so normal, so taken for granted that those who practise it no longer have any idea that they are doing anything wrong. Rebekah Brooks, in charge of NotW when the Milly Dowler hacking took place, and now chief executive of News International, says she knew nothing of the newspaper's illegal and immoral activities while she was in charge. She further says that she therefore has no reason to resign. In my view she has every reason to resign, although she won't.

We don't know, and quite possibly never will know, the truth of who knew what at NotW. But not knowing does not always absolve managers of responsibility. Two things are clear. Firstly that people at and around the NotW had completely lost their humanity to the extent that they took no account of the pain and suffering they might cause to a family in the mist of incalculable distress, and secondly that they were able to interfere with a police investigation into a murder (or, as it was then, a potential murder) with no thought that they might have been doing anything wrong, or might have prevented a killer from being caught. That level of corruption is not benign, not forgiveable, not ignorable. It eats the soul and taints everything it comes into contact with.

Secondly, that kind of behaviour had become so routinised that it had come to be regarded as normal. Possibly one of the most shocking indicators of the state of affairs at the time was the admission by Surrey police that they knew something was going on, but there was so much corruption and interference happening that investigating this one example seemed pointless. It had become routinised, accepted as normal behaviour, even by those who are supposed to guard us against it.

Whether or not Rebekah Brooks knew anything specific is beside the point. Even if she (incredibly) did not know the facts, the air at NotW must have been foetid. The fact that she could breathe it, let alone not notice the stench, indicates that she is unfit for any office which requires a moral compass. Apparently Rupert Murdoch, in his own corrupt judgement, intends to keep her. That is his privilege. But I hope that our government now has the balls to say that his empire should not be allowed to extend its tentacles any further into ownership of either print or broadcast media. It would not be in the public interest to let an organisation capable of such cavalier corruption to expand. It's quite painful to have to say that that is the best I can hope for.

The hamster in the NHS waiting room

2011-06-11T09:04:00.000-07:00

Some of my friends, with whom I have been debating the rationale for the coalition have referred to the NHS as the elephant in the room. I think it is that, but not in the sense they mean.

What they mean is, I think, this:

- both parties had policies for the NHS in their manifestos. The LibDem manifesto contained proposals for greater democratisation and accountability, and the Conservatives' for more efficiency, with a hint of privatisation. At the same time David Cameron was very clear in his promise that there would be no top down reorganisation. I read a blogpost which very helpfully set out the contents of the manifestos, but I can't find it now; I'll link later if I can find it.
- then Andrew Lansley came up with a radical set of “reforms” which suggested wholesale privatisation that went beyond either party's manifesto.
- the narrative is that the LibDems were bounced by this in a typical piece of right wing privatising Tory skullduggery. To an extent I think that is right, but he also bounced a lot in his own party. He bounced everybody in fact, not just the LibDems. The LibDem hierarchy was perhaps slow to respond in full measure, though in my view they've made up for lost ground since.
- although retrenchment is promised after the “listening” exercise, there is still a perception that further ambushes may be lurking round the corner.
- and there is a fear that the LibDems will get the kicking for this as we did on student fees, and will come out of it worse off.

But there is an entirely different set of issues which are really at stake, and nobody is actually talking about them. I want to deal with those and then deal with what I consider to be, in the scheme of things, a little local and temporary difficulty about this particular attempt at reorganising the NHS.

There are three key features to healthcare in this country at the moment. The first is that it is very expensive; the second is that the amount we are prepared to spend on it is limited; the third is that we are prepared to do very little about it. Neither of these is limited to the UK.

Western medicine is in the most expensive phase it has ever been in, and probably the most expensive it ever will be. We have much to be proud about. We are very good at major trauma and very good at keeping people alive. But our record on actually curing things is patchy to say the least. We cannot cure even things as simple as the common cold; what we do is deal with the symptoms until it goes away. We cannot cure AIDS, we cannot cure Parkinsons, we cannot cure Alzheimers, we cannot cure malaria, we cannot cure MS. I know, at bitter personal cost, that we don't have a clue about ME/CFS. We cannot even cure cancer – we can cure some cancers some of the time. The list goes on and on. What we do is keep people alive, often very expensively, often for decades, in greater or lesser degrees of comfort. Now, I expect and hope that as medical and biological knowledge advance, particularly at the quantum level, we will find ways of curing many of these conditions, or better ways of preventing them, and then we will all be leading better lives, and the average cost of care over each person's lifetime will go down. But for now we have to bear the cost. There's not much else we can do.

The second issue is what I regard as the actual elephant in the room – something nobody, least of all politicians, is allowed to talk about. We could undoubtedly keep more people alive, and keep them in less misery or greater comfort if we spent more money. I have no doubt that every hospital administrator in the country would efficiently and effectively spend an extra million doing good for a lot of people. But that million would come out of people's taxes, and the fact is that we – the public, you and I – are unwilling to see our taxes rise. So in the end it is you and I – not politicians – who decide who lives and who dies. But of course politicians are not allowed to say that; it would be taken as the worst faux pas imaginable if Andrew Lansley were to say “Actually people are living in misery, or dying, because you won't spend more money on their care”. But that is the truth of the matter. All the reorganisations in the world will not undo that truth.

There's another, although much smaller elephant, which is what we do about our own health. This is dealt with much more in public, although with not nearly enough effect yet. I speak as one of the villains here. I have just started taking blood pressure pills – yet to find the right combination or dosage. I am no doubt going to cost the NHS a fair bit over the rest of my life. This is largely due to the last ten years. I was fairly fit till around 2000, but since then I have sat too much, exercised too little, eaten and drunk too much and not the right kinds of food. My condition was avoidable, as are many of the conditions we are paying the NHS to treat. The difference that makes to the overall cost is staggering, but, despite great efforts by government and healthcare professionals, we are slow to get the message. In 2009 we topped a million alcohol related hospital admissions. That figure itself is staggering – I'll just say it again – over one million hospital admissions in 2009 were alcohol related. All but a few of those admissions were avoidable. I have not found any studies of what better personal health care might do for the NHS bill (if anyone has, let me know), but just let me put some very broad figures into the frame. The NHS costs approximately £2000 per person per year. (I'm using that as a very round figure for ease of use here.) That means that a village like this one, around 5000 people, is going to cost, or pay, whichever way you look at it, around a hundred million pounds over ten years. The effect of reorganisation on that (I'll talk more about reorganisation in a minute; this figure is for comparison) would be minimal, to be honest. If we were very lucky, we might save 10%, though I doubt if we'd ever see those savings materialise – see more below. But consider the possible differences if we lived “properly”. Our share of those million a year alcohol related hospital admissions would be avoided. My blood pressure pills – and those of most of the other other people in the village with blood pressure problems would be avoided – and I intend to live for a good thirty years more. I'm plucking a figure out of the air here, but I would not be surprised if the cost of treating us were halved by us living properly. Fifty million pounds over ten years, five million a year saved easily. And that's just one village. But we don't do it.

That sort of figure puts reorganisations into context. I think organisation is a very good thing. We need to make sure that the services we get are organised as effectively as possible, and, as conditions change, so the means of effectiveness change and reorganisation is a part of the process of ensuring that. But the NHS is over-reorganised. It has had major reorganisations in 1974, 1982, 1990, 1994, 1997, 2002 and 2007. Now they want to give it another one. Part of the rationale is that we won't be able to afford it without the intended reorganisation. I doubt that very much. I also think that the theme of not being able to afford it is, for some people, an excellent rationalisation for a doctrinaire determination to marketise the NHS. But I also think that politicians get sucked into using this language because they're not allowed to use it about the elephants in the room discussed above. If we don't change our lifestyles, and if we don't accept that we are actually ourselves daily making life and death decisions about the facilities available to other people, then indeed we will not be able to afford the healthcare we need. But they're not allowed to talk about our spending at all, and not allowed to talk about our lifestyle enough, so the theme gets exported onto the issue of efficiency. Now it may be that whatever set of reforms eventually goes through will make the NHS marginally more efficient. I doubt that, because reorganisation is itself a costly process, a very large sunk expense, and usually results in a great deal of changing the position of the furniture without actually effecting any radical change in effectiveness or efficiency. But we shall see.

I note that there were three reorganisations under Labour. I also note that Labour is being castigated for having thrown so much money at the NHS. Some of that money was wasted and some of it was used to boost salaries rather than add to service. But do please think back to the state of the NHS in 1997. We now have a guaranteed maximum waiting time of 18 weeks. That would have been inconceivable in 1997, and in my view the road from there to here was paved partly with reorganisation but largely with money.

Bringing some kind of market disciplines to bear is one thing. There is a trick to doing that without making the NHS market led, a very difficult trick, but nonetheless an achievable one, I think. Ruling the NHS by market forces is a very different thing, and in my view is pernicious. I call the USA as my witness – a market led system, in which they spend nearly twice as much of GDP as we do, for outcomes that are only marginally different. The NHS is founded on the idea of equality and markets thrive only where there is inequality; to subject the NHS to market forces would be to build in inequality. Some will say we already have inequality; it is just masked by the current system. That is indeed true, but I suspect that inequality rises as market penetration into the system increases.

Anyway this reorganisation will make some sort of difference, I am sure, but not much. It is much more important to politicians than it is to the NHS. It will be a big political football over the coming months and years. It will make the careers of some politicians, maybe, and it will ruin the careers of others, most likely. It will be a massive political issue, but its effect on the outcomes of healthcare in this country will be minimal. That is why I regard this, big though it is for Tories, LibDems and Labour, as a little local and temporary difficulty in the NHS. It is a hamster in the waiting room by comparison with the two elephants discussed above. At last we've arrived at the title of this piece. Compared to our willingness to pay and our willingness to look after ourselves, it really is hamster sized. And that is why I am content to talk about it as a strategic and tactical issue for the LibDems, rather than something of genuine importance to the nation.

As for the strategy, I think it is quite simple. It's much easier for us than tuition fees. It is evident that this is a Tory thing, not a LibDem thing. We will be excoriated by some just for being in the coalition that is proposing this (they always will, regardless of how illogical it is), but for most people in the country, it is identifiable as a Tory issue. It is noticeable that the overall perception of the Tories as not safe for the NHS is still strong, despite David Cameron's best attempts to decontaminate. PoliticsHome's poll on this issue makes interesting if complex reading. Their conclusion is that the public still don't trust the Tories, despite apparently liking some of the ideas. They conclude that there is still more danger in it for Clegg than for Cameron; there is some truth in that. It may be perverse, but that's the way voters are, and it illustrates the need for LibDem strategy to illustrate that our power is limited, but that this is not in itself a condemnation of coalition, that we are different from the Tories in terms of our strategy for the NHS, that we have been instrumental in mitigating the Tories' worst ideas,and, above all, that coalition actually works. Tactically this calls for subtlety in handling, demonstrating the difference and the benefits of having LibDems in government, while not making relations so difficult as to prevent us doing the job we're there to do. Our leadership is capable of that.

The tools we use to implement those tactics are up for grabs, but just as a last note, it might enable us to resurrect Mark Pack's lost idea “community politics”. While I can appreciate our government's wish to foreground the big society idea, I think we can do ourselves some good by keeping the theme going, indeed emphasising it, that there are differences – notably that we've been on the ground of community politics for a long time, unlike Dave's relationship with his new Big Society idea. And we can also emphasise that what we want for the NHS is absolutely in keeping with the principles of community politics – giving genuine power to the people rather than trying to hand over responsibility without power.

Short reasons to be cheerful

2011-06-09T14:09:00.000-07:00

One of my readers said he read my post “Reasons to be cheerful” right through to the end, but “the reality of modern politics is that very few will get to the end, so having summed up your thoughts very nicely, how about summing them up in a pithy slogan? “ I wasn't sure about that, to be honest. I don't know about blog reading habits in general, but certainly, in terms of my own habits, I read my way through some hefty posts if they grab my attention. And I have many of the characteristics of the butterfly when it comes to concentrating. But I took his remark as a challenge. So here is a short version.

I haven't thought of a pithy slogan yet: "LibDems in grown up government action shocker" is the best I've come up with.*

I've also thought of "Still LibDem, still working for all the people, still sensible, now with long term vision".

But here is a summary:

- going into the coalition was a viable action politically
- going into the coalition was also morally right; the country needed stable government and no other option offered the possibility of such stable government
that disconcerted a certain proportion of LibDem voters, many of whom were actually “none of the others” voters
- but it left us with the opportunity to appeal long term to sensible, liberal minded voters
- the party leadership's strategy is a sensible long term plan to demonstrate that we can govern and that coalition works
- we are getting some new experiences – being kicked because we are in government is one of them
- we still get some familiar experiences – the media still heap s*** on us; they always did
- the left and the right, particularly the hard right, will continue to heap bile upon us; they always did
- we have a joint programme with the Conservatives to rescue the economy which will take time to work
- but we are different from the Tories and we claim success in moderating some of their destructive tendencies
- we will eventually get the credit for all of that
so, although now is squeaky bum time, we have to hold our nerve, and...
- to keep working, because where we work we win

Those who have short attention spans can stop here.

A couple of additional points. I know we've been stuffed by a couple of setbacks that may or may not have been our fault – student fees and the NHS cock up. We make mistakes. All parties do. Maybe student fees was one. I say “maybe” - it is becoming received wisdom that it was a big mistake for our MPs to sign that pledge. I'm not so sure – it is difficult to see what else we could have done, given our official policy. If all our MPs had refused to sign, great play would have been made of that by Labour and Tories, and we might have been distracted from the main task. I also think we didn't manage the fall out as well as we could. It's been stencilled into the public perception as a broken promise. It was not. You break a promise if you are in a position to keep it and decide not to. We were not in that position – never were. We might have worked more effectively to mould that perception.

Some things will go against us – the point I made in my first post, that we have one sixth of the seats the Conservatives have is a very important one. They bounced us, as well as the rest of the country, with their ill thought out and doctrinaire plans for the NHS, which were not in their manifesto, and in fact run contrary to David Cameron's pledge that there would be no further top down reorganisations of the NHS. Maybe we need to be more tactically astute over the NHS than we were over student fees, and make sure that if anybody gets blamed it is the Tories, whose idea it is, and not us.

*Daily Mail version "LibDems governing sensibly shock; cause cancer".

Reasons to be cheerful

2011-06-06T05:51:00.000-07:00

I've had a couple of conversations with local LibDem colleagues lately who have been looking rather down in the mouth – poor results on May 5th (despite good results here), doubts about the coalition, doubts about the future. I found myself saying to them that I feel strangely cheerful, and then had to enumerate the reasons why. They are a combination of ethical and political issues.

The first reason is the fact that we're in the coalition in the first place. I think more and more firmly that the party leadership made the right decision – not just the right decision for the party but for the country. The country needed (and still needs) a stable government to get us through this economic crisis. That government is being provided by the LibDems in concert with the Conservatives. It felt unlikely when it was first mooted, but it has happened as it has by and large governed well. The fact that we are able to argue about things like voting reform and the precise nature of changes in the NHS shows that we have done the hard things reasonably well. We need to think in terms of long cycles as well as short ones. Nick Clegg's strategy was to position us to take the credit as much as the conservatives if we are in a good position in a few years time. We are still on course to do exactly that. It's a different experience being in government. When you're in government, people kick you because you're in government. That's a different experience from being kicked because we're Libdems, which we're used to, and it works on a different logic. People often register short term resentment at polls between elections, but give the party credit, albeit grudgingly, at election time. If we hold our nerve, that prize still awaits us. I was very pleased to see Tim Farron say much the same soon after the elections: "Enough doom and gloom, we have the greatest opportunity in the history of our party".

We were even more under pressure a couple of weeks ago with the sharks doing their best to circulate around Chris Huhne. But a week is a long time in politics, and a fortnight even longer. Chris may not be quite out of the woods yet, but he is last fortnight's news – last week's news was Andrew Lansley. And we've even moved on from him – modern politics moves fast.

The sniping will go on. We are viable targets for the media – not just LibDems, but Libdems IN GOVERNMENT, shock horror. Those who loved to hate us still do. The level of bile against us on ConservativeHome remains just the same. Go there and see the comments on... well, on pretty much any post. That's politics. They were spitting just as much bile at us before last year's election and it didn't stop us getting our message across – it won't next time either. And we will get it from the media as well. Last week's Observer's cheaply hostile editorial about the NHS rehashed the old meme “It's all Nick Clegg's fault”. It was mostly about Cameron and the NHS, and it followed a standard, for all papers, editorial line, of declaring that Mr Cameron now has a dilemma between softening the bill and displeasing his right wing or driving it through and thereby displeasing everybody else, thereby attempting to sound weighty and statesmanlike without having to come up with a solution. The LibDems are reduced to an opportunistic bit part, changing our tack because we are concerned all of a sudden for our survival. What do you expect after the setback we've just had? Sail on merrily towards the iceberg? “To change course would be unprincipled”? No, we steer round the iceberg and them resume our intended course when we are able to.

But what I like most of all is that, despite all the pettiness and meanness directed at us, we are showing how grown up politicians can be. And not just politicians in general, but Liberal Democrat politicians. The old excuse that a vote for the LibDems is a wasted vote because they'll never get in to power is shown up for what it is – nonsensical. Being grown up has its downsides of course, not least missing the Short money that gave us a budget with which to oppose. It is perverse that there is no similar budget to allow us to govern, but that is the case, and we must make do – and by and large we are making do. There was another report this week which examined the role the LibDems are playing in government, and was spun by the media to say we're not doing it well. The idea of putting a minister in every department spreads us thin. If we'd chosen a smaller number of ministries to go into we could have concentrated our power and had more of an effect in those departments. No shit, Sherlock? What annoys me most about post-coalition debate is the assumption that, because we haven't got everything we wanted, we have therefore failed. It's a peculiarly British assumption to do with the nature of power. We tend to think that power is a zero sum game and people either have it or don't have it. The concept of shared power seems to be alien to British thinking. Maybe that's why the idea of coalition is so difficult for some people to accept. The assumption behind much media reporting is that because we don't get everything we want, we must have failed. No, we haven't failed. We have one-sixth the number of seats the conservatives have.* On that basis we should get one-sixth of the results, and on the whole we've done better than that. The Guardian's headline, by the way, reads: "Deputy PM's office ineffective, report on coalition government finds. Document says most decisions reached through informal channels rather than formal coalition machinery". In the Guardian's view it's clearly a bad thing, if you read the rest of the article. But I find myself wondering in what way that constitutes a bad thing. I know it's a problem to journalists who can only think in binaries, but governments work on the basis of informal relations as well as formal relations. Nick and Dave get on well, so they're using that. Why should they not? In what way is that somehow unconstitutional or ineffective?

We continue to have to put up with misreporting by media who are perhaps not biassed against us, but just need conflict for a good headline. Vince Cable comes in for more than most. He was headlined as "Cable attacks 'ruthless' Tories" when he called them "ruthless, calculating and thoroughly tribal". In the interview, which you can listen to on that last link, he said it in a perfectly affable tone of voice, and he went on to say, immediately, in the same sentence, "but that doesn't mean we can't work with them". They're at it again today: "Vince Cable warns GMB against co-ordinated strikes". He is getting a simplistic knee jerk reaction from the GMB, who clearly don't understand coalition politics either.Fortunately, cooler heads area round to give a truer picture. Paul Waugh on PoliticsHome, Why Cable's no Tebbit, points out that Cable is giving the unions the political reality. Cable has no wish to crack down on unions, but there is a very strong body of opinion within the Conservative party that does. A wave of strikes would give them motive and opportunity. Cable counsels wisdom, not quiescence. The media are not helpful to us, but then they never were. We just have to continue to work.

The left wing don't like us, because we're not left wing. Those who used us as a convenient protest vote don't like us because we've grown up. The right wing loathe us because, well, because we're human. We are definitely doing something right. But we need to connect that again to what voters want. Politics is a tough business and it will go on being tough. The rules have changed because we are now in government, but the nature of the game hasn't. It's still true that where we work we win. Besides working we need to hold our nerve, something we have not had to practise so much in the past, and we need a narrative, aversion of events that holds true for us and that we can sell on the doorstep. that narrative is taking some time to emerge, but the bones are there in place:
- coalition does work (and we are proving that)
- we do do a lot of good for the less well off (which again we can prove)
- we have moderated a lot of Conservative policies into sensible ways forward (and we have blunted the glaringly socially authoritarian wing of the Conservative party (something I am delighted about, and so should everybody be who is not a glaringly socially authoritarian Tory. For a glimpse of why see here. I suspect, by the way, that Dave is monumentally pleased that he has the LibDems to lean on and not his own right wing.)

So, to sum up:
- we are still Liberals. That's absolutely clear from the policies we are putting in place and the policies we have prevented from being enacted.
- the media are not helpful to us, but they are no less helpful than they have ever been.
- we need to find, and will find, a new constituency of voters. Those who voted "none of the others" don't have that easy option any more, but there are plenty who will vote for a liberal and capable government in the UK.
- and this time we have a time scale, a long one. It won't matter if we're still unpopular in a year's time, as long as we are building, in policy achievement and in campaigning, towards a sustainable recovery for the country by 2015, because I am as near certain as I can be that that will mean a sustainable recovery for the LibDems. It will be hard work. It always was hard work being a LibDem. But we mustn't lose our nerve.

*Despite having two thirds of their votes. (FPTP is *such* a fair system.)**

**For those unable to detect irony, that was ironic.

Do right wing Christians actually need to lie?

2011-06-06T05:46:00.000-07:00

A question I've been pondering for a day or two. I heard Nadine Dorries on Any Questions. She's really bad for my blood pressure. Among other gems was the statement that skunk cannabis as sold on the streets today is 50 times more powerful than traditional cannabis. I know of no scientific basis for that statement. I'm not an expert - there might be one, but I doubt very much if I'll ever get the reference from Nadine. If anybody does have a reference to a scientifically valid demonstration, please let me know. That of itself is just a minor issue, a fantasist trying to portray the world how she wants it to be rather than how it is. But what struck me most about it is the ease and facility with which she lies. I've no idea whether she actually believes what she's saying, but she admits to lying quite readily - her blog, she said, is 70% fiction, designed to paint a picture for her constituents, presumably with the aim of getting them to vote for her again. But why, as a Christian, does she feel that that is appropriate behaviour? A trawl through the pages of the bible would rapidly suggest that lying is not seen as a Christian activity.

And then today I was reminded by a tweet from Andrew Page of the existence of Conservapedia. It was about their page on atheism. I'm not going to link to it, because it's down there with the Daily Mail in terms of gutter, vitriol, and sheer blatant untruth. It would be hilarious if they didn't mean it. If you want to, google it and go and read. Marvel at the section on the three way link between atheism, lesbianism and obesity. I am staggered again at the volume of complete falsehood. And presumably they know what they are doing. So what is it about these Christians that lubricates such consistent telling of untruths.

Please note I'm not being "anti-Christian" here. I am a Christian. I'm trying to figure out how someone who in name shares the same principles that I do can feel that such wholesale lying is justified.

Lightmare

2011-05-11T14:27:00.000-07:00

I've been bothered by new style "HID" headlights ever since they were introduced. I've always thought they were brighter than necessary, and I find being on the other end of them a real trial. It's worse being in front of them than behind them. They wobble about like anything and they have a way of flashing up and down that delivers a laser like burst to all three mirrors at once, blinding you to anything ahead of you. They are horrible. I didn't realise how many other people felt the same way until reading "Campaign launched over 'dazzling' HID car headlamps" on the Beeb this morning.

I thought the most provocative bit in the report was the po faced response from the industry rep. "High intensity lighting [headlamps] have been solely developed to improve road safety - they are part of what is a quite sophisticated lighting system." No hint of acknowledgement that they might cause a problem to other road users. He's clearly never driven in front of one.

Apparently drivers who have them like them because they can see more. Maybe so, but they have to take some responsibility for their effect on other road users. Trouble is we don't do that sort of thing in this country - actually taking account of other road users. We don't like slowing down either, so I dare say any suggestion that people who need really strong headlights in the dark could try driving a little more slowly will be met with unnecessary derision.

If you feel like me, do go and sign the petition.

Not shedding tears for AV

2011-05-07T10:28:00.000-07:00

I'm really not too sad about losing the referendum on AV. Nick was right – AV is a miserable little compromise, better than FPTP but not hugely so. I am more sad about losing the opportunity to get a proper debate a vote on voting reform that really works.

I am also very sad about the losses of councillors we suffered yesterday. My own district council, having been LibDem run for some time, and well run, is now Tory. Oh boy. But we live in the real world, and I think Tim Farron got it right yesterday – this is our first experience of being in government, and now it's our first experience of being in an unpopular government. It's downright unpleasant, but it's what happens. The reaction from some is also what happens – Nick Clegg is finished, the party is finished, we've been outfought, outfoxed, etc, etc. In the Independent yesterday. Mary Dejevsky called our some of voters “naïve and disgracefully fickle”. She's right. But again that's reality. We have to work to reacquire those voters and to show that we can govern. Right now, I still feel that we have done the right thing all the way through the last year. Maybe some decisions and some tactics could have been marginally better, but I don't think anybody could have put us in a better position than Nick and the party leadership have done. OK. We've had a kicking. Live with it.

I think it remains worth remembering, and reminding people how we got here.

We went into the last election facing a massive public sector deficit and a world in recession. The recession was not Labour's fault, but their continuing to spend when the money was no longer there, and their insistence on maintaining light regulation of the baking sector were the cause of it being deeper and more painful in this country than it would otherwise have been. Dealing with the deficit was going to be the major problem for any new government. All three parties had different strategies for dealing with it, but there would have been pain under any of them.

After the election all three parties had choices. Ours was to go into coalition with the Conservatives, go into coalition with Labour or sit on our hands. The Conservatives' was to go into coalition with us, or to try to govern as a minority party. Labour's was coalition or nothing. We and the Conservatives found we had things to talk about which enabled both us and them to make coalition government a reality. Labour were clearly not serious about negotiating (whatever they say now) and in any case, coalition with Labour was not nearly as palatable as coalition with the Conservatives looked at the time, and has turned out to be since. And, yes, I know what I just said.

Coalition with Labour. Leaving aside the practicalities of governing a rainbow coalition, we'd still have Gordon Brown, that great clunking fist dominating everything. And ID cards; would Labour have given those up; I doubt it, with the control freaks in charge.

We chose coalition with the Tories and they chose coalition with us. We got a lot of our manifesto in to the coalition agreement. There were some things we were never going to get – free university tuition was one of them. It's only actually a broken promise if you are capable of doing something and don't. Given the electoral maths, we were not capable of delivering free tuition under the coalition agreement. I do not regard that as a broken promise. I know other people do, and that is a political reality. But maybe we could work harder to change the way people see that decision. I also think – if we're going to talk about broken promises – I think about all the students who said they were going to vote for us and then broke their promise. We know that fewer students actually voted than any other demographic in the UK. Just consider what the position might be if they had voted: we might have a lot more seats than we have now, the Conservatives fewer, as well as Labour. The dealing around that negotiation table would have been very different. So I accept it's a reality, but I do find it a bit hard when people talk about being betrayed.

What “do” we have? 75% of our manifesto being delivered. That's not bad. I am so glad to be rid of ID cards and all that database state paraphernalia that went with it. And we actually agreed with the Tories on that, and disagreed heartily with Labour – something that ought to give any tribal leftwinger in the party pause for thought. What else have we got?

A crackdown on tax avoidance and evasion; equalising capital gains and income tax rates, a substantial hike in personal tax allowances, with plans to head for £10,000, restoring the link between pensions and earnings, got a fair deal for Equitable Life pensioners, we have a commission looking at breaking up the big banks, we've got the banks agreeing to lend more, we have delayed the decision on replacing Trident, we are reducing red tape with a one in one out rule, we're supporting superfast broadband, we are expanding the market for green products and technologies, we have extended flexible working, we've introduced the pupil premium, we're improving SEN educational provision, we're reviewing the National Curriculum to make it slimmer and more flexible, we are strengthening guidance to head teachers on combating bullying, including homophobic bullying, work is being done on integrating health and social care, we have increased the priority of research into dementia, we have increased funding for counselling, we have introduced controls on low price alcohol sales, we are maintaining free entry to museums and art galleries, and we are making putting on live music easier for small venues, we are increasing spending on early years education, and on respite care, we are ending the compulsory retirement age, we have created an entire new Green Deal, including energy company obligations, created a Renewable Heat Incentive, we are investing more in plants to build wind turbines, we are working with others to establish a system for reducing emissions from deforestation, we have been influential in the EU wide ban on the import of illegally sourced timber and timber products, we are reviewing the restrictive terms and conditions of employment for police officers, we have a new strategy for hate crimes, we are moving towards prisoners contributing to financial reparation for victims.

I could go on. And on and on. But I think I've made my point – after only a year, we have record we can be really proud, and even if we do go into oblivion – which I don't think we will – we have done things we can look back on with pride.

We have also had a valid and valuable effect in keeping Tory headbanger policy off the agenda. We have been instrumental in forcing the “pause” on Lansley's ill judged NHS reforms, with the prospect of genuine changes in what is being proposed. We have kept the loonier rightwing ideas about benefits and Europe off the agenda. That is something to be quietly pleased about even while we nurse the wounds of May 2011.

The realities of political life on the street are different. The public has chosen to give us a kicking. That's what happens. We need to keep working, keep our nerve, keep an eye to eye with the ruthless, calculating and tribal Conservatives, and keep communicating with people who we know we can serve better than the Conservative or Labour parties can. In that regard I think Nick Clegg is doing well; this is what happens when you're in government. I hope he carries on doing well. If the economy comes right, which is looking a decent prospect at the moment, we will also prosper.

The Metropolitan Police, G20 and Ian Tomlinson: the culture of policing

2011-05-04T07:28:00.000-07:00

So Ian Tomlinson was unlawfully killed. From what I have seen of the evidence, that was the right decision to come to. The officer who struck him changed his version of events during the inquest, and accepted under examination that what he saw on video of himself and Tomlinson was not as he had recounted it himself. He may or may not be telling the truth, he may or may not be deluding himself. His case is now under consideration by the CPS, as it should be. He is also to be subject to a gross misconduct hearing, which will be held in public. Whatever conclusion either the CPS or the IPCC come to, it would not be sufficient for the matter to end there.

While PC Harwood is responsible for his actions, it would not be right for him to take the blame for events individually and outside a deep examination of the culture of the Metropolitan Police that allowed things to get to this point. The whole attitude of the Metropolitan Police towards the citizens of London, particularly those exercising their lawful right to demonstrate peacefully, really needs to be examined and put right.

In a nutshell, it appears from the evidence we have that PC Harwood became over excited and liable to over-react precisely when he needed to exercise great self restraint. Although he was at some points isolated, he was also with his colleagues at other times, and it appears that their influence on him did not restraint him either. That is a cause for great concern, not just in terms of one man's reaction, but the tenor of the overall police presence.

A particular example is the hiding of badge numbers, for instance, was a common practice up to that point. Since then the Commissioner has issued an instruction that badges must be visible, but that is not enough. It was the case beforehand that they were supposed to be visible. An instruction does not necessarily change the behaviour of individual officers while on duty. It ought to be a matter of pride to every police officer that their badge is visible at all times. It clearly wasn't, and as far as I can see, still isn't. That's not about instructions, that's about culture, and it's been drifting for far too long.

The Metropolitan Police have been re-examining their tactics in the wake of criticism about their handling of the G20 demonstrations, and other events like the G20 Climate Camp and the anti cuts demonstrations. The report “Adapting To Protest” contains many significant recommendations, but in my view, they do not go far enough. They appear to be discussing how to make their tactics work better, rather than examining the culture behind the tactics, one which assumes an opposition between police and demonstrators that gives an aggressive officer free rein to lose his temper. That needs to be brought to a full stop, a shuddering one if necessary, if the police are not to imperil the consent which gives them their mandate to control the streets.

Nil nil

2011-03-10T13:09:00.000-08:00

The best 0-0 draw in Spurs' history without a doubt. I wish I'd been there; the crowd were awesome, and Tottenham's maturity as a football team was evident for all to see. It's very nice to see today how matches like that bring out the best in commentators. Prose that is a pleasure just to read, almost lyrical in places.

From the Guardian, 10th March 2011.

Phil McNulty on the BBC: "The demolition of holders Inter Milan on a thunderous night was a demonstration of Tottenham's threat but Redknapp may take even more satisfaction from the way Inter's neighbours were sent out of the tournament.... Who would have thought erecting a defensive wall of defiance would deliver such pleasure and provoke such scenes of jubilation?

"So it proved as Spurs survived a Milan performance that carried much of the pace and intensity absent from the first leg. As time ran out and Milan became even more desperate, the obstacles in front of keeper Heurelho Gomes grew bigger in stature and number by the minute....

"Life was lived on the nerves from first minute to last, with Redknapp standing sentry in his technical area almost permanently and joined on a regular basis by trusted lieutenants Joe Jordan and Kevin Bond. It was not a night, nor an atmosphere, for sitting serenely in the dug-out."

Steven Howard in the Sun: "FIRST, the agony. And then the ecstasy. It was another one of those rollercoaster nights for Tottenham fans. The agony of enduring 90 minutes where it seemed that at any moment the dream of attempting to match the historic exploits of the Glory, Glory boys of the 60s could go up in smoke...

"...the greatest sound of all was the final whistle. After four straight home wins and 14 goals, finally a goalless draw. And it tasted just as sweet. Spurs were through. Arsenal were out. And Spurs supporters were still in one piece. Just."

Jason Burt in the Telegraph: "There are still moments in the storm. There are moments when the release of tension simply results in a desire to stand motionless. Henry James Redknapp was a study in such behaviour on Wednesday....

"“Life is a roller-coaster,” Redknapp said when asked about how he would celebrate. “I’ve had my ups and downs”. And sometimes the ups lead to a more sober response than the downs - it’s a mark of many leading managers, including Carlo Ancelotti - and he followed that mould last night. In a quieter moment hopefully he also afforded himself a smile for he has transformed the fortunes of a club that was bottom of the Premier League table when he arrived three years ago. He deserves the praise....

"Spurs didn’t play particularly well, they weren’t allowed to, and maybe that is what caused Redknapp’s irritation. If so, it smacks of a professionalism also. Everyone is talking about the need to avoid Barcelona. But those left in this competition will also be privately whispering another team they would be keen not to face. No-one wants Spurs. No-one wants to face Redknapp."

Shaun Custis, in the Sun again: "Spurs' job has traditionally been to entertain and lose gloriously while Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United get on with the serious stuff. The times they are a changing. Redknapp claimed Spurs were not built to defend but he is conning us all. They have learned how to do it and they do it very well."

Richard Williams in the Guardian: "For Harry Redknapp there have been many big occasions in football but none, for a real football man, bigger than this night. Milan, seven times winners of the European Cup, under the floodlights at history-soaked White Hart Lane, confronted by the white shirts of the descendants of Blanchflower, Smith and Jones. A match with Brazilian artists, Dutch magicians, a Croatian wizard, stalwart Englishmen....

"Redknapp paced the technical area with his usual preoccupied air as a more purposeful Milan made the best chances of the half, drawing sprawling saves from Heurelho Gomes, watchful leadership from Michael Dawson and a clearance off the line from William Gallas. Against this barrage in a game of ceaseless movement and clattering energy, Spurs could point to little more than Rafael van der Vaart's bar‑skimming 30-yard free-kick.

"Milan huffed and puffed but by the end they were, in the words of the original Harry Hotspur, no more than dust and food for worms. Hotspur was dying at the time. Redknapp's Spurs could not be more full of life."

Prose to fit a sumptuous occasion.

Poppy burning

2011-03-10T03:08:00.000-08:00

I can't say I agree with David Cameron on this. A member of Muslims Against Crusades burned two plastic poppies during last November's Armistice Day ceremony. Yesterday he was fined £50. In my view he should not have been. The act was outrageous to some; indeed it was intended to be. But outrage at such acts is the price we pay for freedom of expression, which is still one of the key characteristics that distinguishes this society from many others. In this particular instance we actually lag behind the United States where flag burning, despite Americans' veneration for their flag, is a constitutional right. You can't say that about many things where genuine freedom is concerned.

While we are right to pay homage to those who have fallen fighting for our freedoms, we also have to acknowledge that some of those who fell, particularly in recent years, have given their lives in much less morally certain ventures, and while their bravery should be saluted, the cause in which they fell should not. Opinion is genuinely and deeply divided on the merits of some of our recent wars. Outrage may be genuine, but, if outrageous acts are stifled through the use of the law, it only serves to block moral debate and make equally outrageous ventures more likely in future. We are currently considering whether and how to use force against Gaddafi's regime. A week ago Cameron was all too eager to commit our forces again in a gesture which would have made them risk death, being burned, maimed or humiliated and most likely given Gaddafi a perfect foil for uniting his people on his side. Reminders of the moral ambiguity of such ventures, as well as the possible human cost, serve to prevent them happening unnecessarily. I hate what Emdadur Choudary did, but he should never have been taken to court, let alone fined.

The Pope is coming to Britain: two dilemmas.

2010-09-06T11:54:00.000-07:00

The Pope is coming to Britain, which causes me two dilemmas. I doubt he cares. I don't figure on his radar. But he does figure on mine.

I don't think he should have been invited. I don't think he should be invited to anywhere in the world until he has put the hierarchy of the Catholic Church completely to rights over the issue of sexual abuse. For the record, I don't the church has done anything more than it has been forced to do by publicity and the horror of the outside world. I don't think they have changed their basic view that the reputation of the church (reputation - ha!) must be preserved by all means, and if that means ignoring law breaking and the most disgusting and immoral behaviour then so be it. I still think they see this as a PR exercise, not a moral one, and I find that just as disgusting as the original crimes.

Recently evidence has been put forward in defence of the current Pope that in more junior days he tried to do something about one priest in particular, but was thwarted by higher authorities in the church. That doesn't cut it for me. Faced with gross abuse like this, "obeying orders" is not a defence. He let them stop him doing anything. The deliberate and persistent covering up of these crimes over a long period of time still haunts the church, and will continue to do so as long as they remain so secretive. A good deal more transparency is necessary.

The church has now said that such crimes, if committed nowadays, should be reported to the police. But it has not met with universal agreement. Apparently bishop Grings of Brazil responded by saying that he thought it should still be a matter for internal church discipline. And that has received no reaction from the Pope. The reaction should have been swift and loud: "If you ever fail to report a case of child abuse to the police, you will no longer be a bishop". But no, we have had nothing.

You can't actually stop people abusing children. I have had my own brush with the issue. When I was a social worker in Cambridge, I sent children regularly to an assessment centre, the head of which was given a twenty year jail sentence in 1997 for having abused the children in his care. (As far as I can ascertain, none of the children I sent there were abused.) It took a while for suspicions to harden into action, but the County Council eventually did something about it. The Catholic Church on the other hand has had to be pushed all the way. And it's still pushing back.

Taking an opportunity to put the whole affair behind him, the Pope managed to make it clear just how archaic the thinking of the church hierarchy is. It speeded up the process for investigating priests accused of child abuse, but, crucially, did not make it obligatory to report such crimes to the police. Which century do they think they're in?

And it is notable that they did not give the issue of child abuse by priests its own declaration, which it surely deserved, but included it as part of a decree in which among other things,they upgraded the sinfulness of trying to ordain a woman to a "more grave delict", a tastily ancient phrase for saying it's one of the most horrible things you can do. And putting that in the same document is a slap in the face to every choirboy that's ever been felt up by a randy Catholic priest, not to mention the pain given to the female half of the world's population by the Vatican's misogyny.

So it's pretty clear where I stand. The Pope should be given a raspberry wherever he goes, till he does something that says the church is taking this as seriously as it deserves. But that brings me to my two dilemmas.

The first is that I want to protest when he gets here. I want to go somewhere where my presence tells him that his presence here is contemptible. But the only organised protests that I can find are those beholden to the National Secular Society, and others', alternative agenda. I'm a Christian and I do not want to be associated with those who would tar all religious with the same brush. But the response of religious bodies who disagree fundamentally with the Pope's actions seem to be too wishy washy by half. They have criticised the secular protests for being too confrontational (I agree) but they do not appear to have organised an alternative. Can anybody tell me different?

And my second dilemma is with regard to my Catholic friends. I have several, all good people. I have debated the issue with them before. I have always been absolutely clear that I have no problem with Catholic people as such, but I do have a problem with the structure of the church and the vindictively patriarchal nature of some of its hierarchy. But with most of them I find it very difficult to get this distinction across. They do not see a distinction at all; an attack on any part of the church is taken as deeply wounding to them personally. They're all nice people and I do not see how to take this forward, because I cannot in all honesty think of the Pope and some of his underlings as anything but contemptible.

Lewes Cycle Challenge

2010-09-06T09:24:00.000-07:00

I'm taking part in the Lewes Cycle Challenge. Organisations take part, and the idea is for them to get their employees on to bikes, if only for ten minutes during the period of the challenge, which is 10th to 26th September. I was going to upload a picture of me holding a cupcake, but my image button has gone awol. Not sure what the cupcake has to do with it, but it tasted very nice.

We're going to be making our major effort on Septenber 20th, which is the day after International Talk like A Pirate Day, so we're pirate theming it. Look out for photos, if that button has come back by then.

Inglorious and a bit fishy; and a question

2010-09-03T04:30:00.000-07:00

Inglorious refers to media (both social and commercial) treatment of William Hague over the last few days. What has been done is not only inglorious but shameful and unhelpful. The story has concentrated on the salacious details of sexuality which has served to hide a more pertinent question. The more pertinent question is now being expressed but largely overlooked in the wave of reaction that follows his personal statement.

There are three features to the story - sexuality, privacy and judgement. Homosexuality should not be news, but it is, largely because it sells millions of newspapers to the mentally challenged half of our country. I don't give a stuff whether Hague is straight, gay or a bit of both. I also don't care if he has cheated on his wife: that's an issue for them, not for the rest of us. He says he hasn't. Fine, let it be.

It is shameful that Hague has now been driven to making a statement that reveals his and his wife's private - I emphasise that word, private - grief. I know that there are a lot of people who have put them in that position who unfortunately won't feel the slightest remorse. Politicians lives will always be public, but somewhere there is a limit and we have strayed beyond it here.

But underneath all that froth, and the somewhat sanctimonious response when the true details of the Hagues' situation came out, there is a genuine and serious question. It may not be a big question, but it is a question. Is Hague's judgement as good as we thought it was? At the time of the hotel incident he was shadow Foreign Secretary. He is now Foreign Secretary. He is an important enough person for us to ask small questions about.

He admits now that it was an error of judgement to share a hotel room, because he did not think through how it would look. That's a minor issue. As has been said, if you really are having a secret affair, the last thing you do is share a hotel room. It's how it *looks* that escaped Hague's notice. To me that incident is a cause of puzzlement more than anything. It seems to be generally accepted that sharing a hotel room is a normal thing to do. In some classes and for some purposes that will be true. People share at conference time, for instance, because of the lack of affordable hotel space. But you can bet your life Hague won't be sharing at conference, and never has since he's been an MP. It was a campaign trip, I understand, so it wasn't a hair shirt issue about saving public money, which some people have suggested it was. Hague is one of the Conservatives' biggest guns; he spearheads their election campaigns because he is so popular. They look after him. They plan his trips really carefully. He was also, if I remember rightly, one of the best funded opposition politicians of the last government. So why on earth did they not book enough rooms to go round? Maybe somebody will tell me that this is normal for high status, high value politicians. I don't see it, though. Which leaves a question mark over how on earth did it happen that Hague ended up sharing a room. That is, in the end though, probably more likely to be in the "of interest to the public" category than the "in the public interest" category.

What is in the public interest though is how Chris Myers got his job as a special adviser. He became Hague's third when everybody else was limited to two. Being driver to the shadow Foreign Secretary is one thing. Being special adviser to the actual UK Foreign Secretary makes you one of the most powerful people in British politics. To get that job, and to get it specially created for you means that you should be somebody really special. But Myers' qualifications, while not as poor as some have suggested, don't appear to be stellar. So it is legitimate to ask Hague to justify his judgement. It is legitimate to ask how he arrived at the conclusion that Myers was the person best suited to the job, and how he got dispensation to create the post needed for the appointment. Because our Foreign Secretary has a tricky and demanding job to do and we need to know that he has the judgement for it. But that has been buried, and is likely to stay buried among the slop that the media, including the social media, have poured over the episode.

Cavity wall insulation - a cautionary tale

2010-07-07T14:24:00.000-07:00

I see the government is giving more priority to home insulation, and in fact diverting money from other forms of saving to boost insulation. We had cavity wall insulation done a few months ago in the depth of winter. The insulation is fine, I would recommend it. It makes a noticeable difference in some parts of the house. But the experience of the installation was not, and my experience of that leads me to say, if you have cavity wall insulation done, don't use Mark Group. There are plenty of alternatives around: here's a place where you can find loads, if you don't want to take up offers from your energy suppliers.

The reason why is as follows. When the salesman from Mark Group came to visit us, he told us that it would be necessary to install a vent in the living room as we have a fireplace which is still in use. We were concerned about this and asked for more information. He gave us two specific reassurances. The first was that the vent operated mechanically in such a way that it was shut to the outside cold unless it was needed when the fireplace was in use. The second was that the vent was covered with a mesh fine enough to prevent slugs from getting in.

We only discovered once the vent was installed that neither of these things is true. The installers told us in fact that the vent is legally required to be left open, and to be without a fine mesh so as not to interrupt airflow. The result is a constant flow of cold air into the room. But they confirmed that the vent was a legal requirement if insulation was added to a room with a fireplace in use.

The effect on our living room was dramatic. It did not help that this happened during one of the cold snaps last February. The living was the warmest room in the house and it became the coldest. Ours is a small semi-detached house. Downstairs we have a kitchen and a living room. We live in the living room. If the salesman had been truthful about the nature of the vent, we would in all probability not have gone ahead with the purchase. As it is, our living room has been made completely unsuitable to its purpose at some times of the year due to the misinformation clearly and deliberately given to us by the salesman.

I wrote to Mark Group to complain, and got a visit from a technical expert who confirmed that the vent had been properly installed. I mad it clear that that was not the problem. The problem was the mis-selling. So he went away and said he'd talk to somebody else.

It took a couple of phone calls to remind them that somebody else was supposed to be doing something. eventually I spoke to the next person, and we had a decent conversation. I was already clear in my mind that there was nothing practical they could do. The only way the vent could be legally removed would be to block up the fireplace, and thus lose one of the major amenities of the house, or to suck all the insulation out of the walls again, neither of which was appealing. So the only obvious route was for them to offer us a reasonable amount of compensation. The main thing was for me to be convinced that they had taken my complaint seriously. They did admit in writing to what they called a training issue with the salesman, which was OK. But I gradually came to think that they were not taking me seriously, as each stage in the process had to be kicked off by me reminding them with a phone call that I hadn't heard from them for a while. I began to think that in fact they might be deliberately taking things lowly in the hope that I would get fed up and forget about the complaint.

In the end they offered me £50 compensation. This is for making my living room not fit to live in for a portion of the year. In a second letter they made it clear that £50 was their final offer. I rejected it.

I don't mind about the money. I do mind that a company can employ a salesman who quite deliberately and wilfully misrepresents the product they're offering, they can understand that that action has foisted on me and my family an insoluble problem, and then they still think that the best way to deal with the resulting mess is to take a long time and then offer the least they think they can get away with.

So, do get insulation if you want. Just don't use Mark Group.

Mind you, my experience with them is nothing compared to this couple's. Note the same technique, a final offer of a derisory sum by way of compensation.

Is it possible to change the way people do things

2010-07-04T14:04:00.000-07:00

Not when it comes to driving apparently.

The BBC reported last week on Britain's most dangerous roads, as enumerated by the Road Safety Foundation. As one might expect, half of Britain's fatal accidents happen on one tenth of our roads. The answer to this, according the Foundation, is to spend money making the roads safer. It never occurs to them to make the drivers safer. A particularly telling point is that "most crashes happened at weekends during the summer in dry, daylight conditions" which kind of suggests that the roads themselves are not at fault. They may be twisty, they may be narrow, they may be bumpy, but there is nothing dangerous about them if the drivers on them would just............. slow down a bit. And keep their eyes open. So many of us seem to think that there is no need to concentrate on the road while driving as fast as we can possibly go; the radio, the mobile - even if handsfree, the conversation of passengers and, for heaven's sake, looking at the scenery all rank more important than actually looking at what is happening on the road in front of them.

I have two suggestions, which would be a lot cheaper than the improvements suggested by the Road Safety Foundation. The first is to erect large signs all the way along the dangerous roads: "If you drive here the way you usually do, you are twenty times more likely to have an accident".

That of course relies on drivers being sensible, which is unlikely. So my second suggestion is signs that say: "If you drive here the way you usually do, you are twenty times more likely to find your insurance going up."

Neither is likely to do the job. It would be nice if one of them did though.

The Road Safety Foundation also responds to what I am tempted to call "Parsons' law of monetisation", which states that the more widespread any phenomenon is, the more likely its financial cost is to be reported, and the less likely its human cost. There is no mention on the Eurorap report page of twisted bodies, mangled limbs, orphaned children. But there are several mentions of the cost of the suggested changes and the potential savings to the Exchequer.

Perhaps I'm being unfair to the RSF. It does report its purpose as being to reduce road casualties by acting on all three components of the system - roads, vehicles and behaviour. But there's no mention of behaviour in this report. Shouldn't there be?

Nuclear power - thanks but no thanks

2010-05-30T04:32:00.001-07:00

Interesting that Chris Huhne makes it clear that he is not ideological on nuclear power. I have always been not ideological on nuclear power. I think the balance of effort needs to be much further toward the renewable end of the spectrum than it has been. And I also think we need to do the unthinkable =- actually change our lifestyles rather than continue to produce more and more power to feed it. But politicians aren't allowed to say that kind of thing.

I feel more comfortable with the idea of nuclear power stations being built with no subsidy. But I can't get my head around how it might work. Let's take an example.

My company, (greenpower inc, or some such name) decides to build a power station. Sets up a new company to do the job (ourfuture inc, or something like that), floats it on the stockmarket with lots of shares, gets in loads of cash, borrows from the banks at silly rates because the government is telling banks to up their lending.

I open my power station with plaudits from the Prime Minister of the day whoever that is, but it will be male, white and not quite middle aged, with good hair and teeth.

I make lots of power and even more money. (I donate some to various political parties.)

I become a Lord, (Lord Green of Much Unwitting or something like that).

I make lots more power and lots more money. ourfuture inc shares do well. I reschedule the debt, share prices rise even further and I am hailed as a business genius. I am probably brought in to head a government task force on waste or something like that.

As the power station nears the end of its useful life, rumours emerge about the financial health of ourfuture inc. Shareholders take their profits and the price dips.

My pension fund is doing nicely.

When the time comes, I pull the plug on the power station and send the staff off to the next one I'm building (under a different company).

On the day I send in the new set of decommissioning staff, I discover, to my shock and horror, that there is no money left in ourfuture inc. I regretfully and with much protestation of innocence, have the company put into administration. I am punctilious in informing the government of what needs to be done to make the plant safe, and hand over all the blue prints.

I give up my lordship, convert my tax status to non-dom, and swan off to some Caribbean island, leaving the government to find upwards of £30 billion for the decommissioning and making safe.

What else would any sensible business person do?

David Laws, Lord Laidlaw and newspapers

2010-05-30T04:05:00.000-07:00

David Laws' resignation is a cause for deep regret. I did not want him to resign. I am dismayed that he felt the need for secrecy over his sexuality, and I am equally dismayed at the newspaper treatment of it, which demonstrates that his felt need for secrecy was well founded, despite what other gay people may say. I think it would have been possible for him to carry on. There are certainly suggestions that David Cameron thought so. Nevertheless I feel proud that Laws has done what would in a less febrile atmosphere be called the right thing. I am also sure that he will return when the dust has settled, and that that will be the right thing too. The price of politics is high. I am sure that Laws knew that already, but it has now been reaffirmed for him. He is a tough man though, I have no doubt of that, and our politics will be better run when he returns to office.

Many are saying that the coalition has been weakened. I do not believe this is so. The coalition has been wounded, but I think it will emerge from this episode the stronger. The media narrative has already formed around Laws being pivotal to the growing understanding between Conservatives and Libdems with the implication that it will all start to unravel “coalition in turmoil” is a headline in the Observer today. I doubt that. The unexpected is the stuff of politics. “Coalition takes first blow, flesh wound, no stitches required, will survive” is more like the truth, but that doesn't sell newspapers. Laws is an unusual talent, but there is plenty of other talent on both sides, as well as willingness to do the job. And in any case, I am sure that Laws will still be there in the background providing support and advice as far as he can.

Meanwhile another item of news is far more important for the long term future of British politics. Lord Laidlaw, substantial donor to the Conservative Party, has resigned as a lord in order to maintain his status as a non-dom. Well, good riddance. This is the man who made a specific written promise in 2003 that if made a lord, he would become a UK taxpayer. He welshed on the promise, and, it has to be said, the Tories let him. Every day he continued as a Lord, living a lie, was another day in which the old politics could still outshine the new. There is plenty of old politics still around, as this headline shows, (I note there is no suggestion of Conservative party misdoing here) and much still needs to be done to sort out party funding. But at least we have one liar less in the Lords. Laws will be back, Laidlaw, I very much hope, will not.

The manner of publication of Laidlaw's decision says a lot about our press. The Times headlined the article: (read it now before it goes behind the paywall) "Sex addict peer gives up seat to save non-dom status". I don't give a stuff about Laidlaw's sexuality, and neither should anyone else. It says a lot that the Times leads with the "sex addict" bit, when this is possibly a fundamental moment in the move to change the way in which British politics is done, far more important in the long run, I think, than the question of David Laws' resignation. And I thought the Times was interested in politics.

Perhaps the Times is vying with the Telegraph for cheapest broadsheet headline of the year. The Telegraph headlined their article about David Laws expenses (I apologise here and now to David Laws for bringing this up again, but my purpose is to outline the cheapness of the Telegraph's editorial stance): "MPs' Expenses: Treasury chief David Laws, his secret lover and a £40,000 claim". No doubt "MPs' Expenses: Treasury chief David Laws, his £40,000 claim" would not have sold enough copies. This is the paper that brought us: "MPs' expenses: Jo Swinson submitted receipts for tooth flosser and eyeliner", for which a true headline would have read: "Young woman spends own money on inexpensive makeup, shock, horror". Perhaps the Telegraph wants to be the first broadsheet to join the Daily Mail in the gutter of British journalism. It's got a long way to go to get that low, to be honest, but it's heading there fast.

The current scene

2010-05-08T05:18:00.000-07:00

I've just sent most of this to balancedparliament at libdemvoice.org

To my surprise I find I'm less bothered about facilitating a Tory government than I thought I would be. I worked through the 80s and 90s when almost every day brought more examples of Tory viciousness and Tory sleaze, and we still see evidence day to day that many of the party grassroots haven't changed a bit. I still think that if they get into power the right wing will come out of hiding and try to blast Cameron into submission to their way of thinking. For what it's worth,. I don't think Cameron himself has a political anchor. He doesn't really believe much of what he's been selling to the British public over the last couple of years. But also I don't think he's actually as right wing as the 2005 manifesto that he wrote. He is a supreme salesman. If he believes in anything, he believes in privilege. But his political position has no weight, and he is therefore vulnerable to being knocked rightwards by the blasts that will come at him from the Tory roots.

But we strive to be democratic, and as somebody said grown up politics involves sometimes having to work with your enemies. I think we have already put ourselves into a good position by being consistent – the party with the mandate to govern should govern. The Tories have that is both votes and seats, so they get their chance.

Yes, we could prop up Brown, and his offer on electoral reform is probably more soundly based than anything we'd get from the Tories, because he knows it's his last chance. And, OK, many of us are instinctively closer to Labour than to the Tories. But I don't think the voters will forgive us in the end for keeping Gordon alive. And after all he has form – 13 years in power, not one step on electoral reform till he's on his political deathbed. Grown up politics sometimes means not working with your friends, when your friends have turned out not to be real friends.

At the same time we have to be clear about how much power we have, or rather don't have. We can do what we can, but it's limited in the face of a Tory party that hold most of the cards.

I don't think we should ally with them. It's a political calculation of costs and benefits. I do not believe we will get any great benefit – electoral reform in particular will be manoeuvred out of the way. Even if Cameron was half inclined to deliver it, any move in that direction would cause his troops to march him behind the bike sheds for a mock execution. Followed by a real one if he went any further.

So to my mind the resource and supply idea is probably our best bet. The key thing is for us to both act and present ourselves as acting for the good of the country and for the good of democracy. We must strive not to be saddled with responsibility for Tory actions that we really disagree with, and we must strive to present our arguments in favour of those actions that we do agree with. It will call on our Parliamentarians to be extremely well organised and extremely nimble to keep on top of all the political and procedural manoeuvrings that will take place. My MP is Norman Baker, and I know of nobody who works harder than he does, but he and all our other MPs will have to work even harder. All our new MPs will need to learn very quickly when to act and when not to act, and they will need immense support from our seasoned campaigners.

Along with that, we will need to take a good long look at all the party's resources, and rearrange them if need be to provide the best support we can to our MPs and our spokespeople over the next few months. Making sure that they get the support they need to make the right decisions, and making sure that the message gets out about how and why we are doing what we are doing is more important now than ever, so at some point soon, the powers that be in Cowley St and the regions need to have a good hard look at how our administrators and support staff can be best utilised. That is also part of the stuff of politics.

I have a couple of other minor observations about the current political situation. Firstly, there has been some talk of us being able to manoeuvre George Osborne out of the way and get Cameron to replace him with Ken Clarke. Much better idea for the country. But we have to get real about the amount of power we have. See the execution scenario above. The idea of a pro European in charge at the treasury is even less to the liking of the Tory grassroots than PR. So we're stuck with Sixth Form.

And secondly one of my biggest fears about a Tory majority was the social repression that might follow in its wake – votes on the hunting ban, and an all out assault on our abortion legislation, in particular. Those now seem much less likely with the Tories in a minority. I haven't looked at the balance of the new Parliament on those issues in detail and I have no idea how the numbers stack up. There will definitely be some people calling loud and long for them, but they will not get their way nearly so easily.

Stroud vs Stroud

2010-05-05T03:58:00.000-07:00

Philippa Stroud has hit some headlines, though notably not those of the Murdochracy, or of the BBC, which is apparently too frightened of the Murdochracy to run it. The nub of the issue is her practice of praying for homosexual people to be released from the demons which so obviously infect them.

The response so far has been fourfold:

a) a denial from Ms Stroud that she believes homosexuality is an illness. Which is an accusation nobody has put to her.

b) silence from her on the issue of whether homosexual people are possessed by demons.

c) a rapid disappearance of Philippa from Twitter and Facebook, presumably in case people press her on these issues. Wonder what she's got to hide then.

d) a concerted defence from various Tories, including, bless him, Iain Dale, that this is old news, something she did ten years ago. With the carefully not spelt out implication that things might be different now.

There has been little coverage of whether she is still a member of the church she founded, which holds among other relics of tub thumping patriarchy, that the man is the head of the woman and she must submit to his authority.

Now we find that Mr Stroud, said authoritative husband of the above mentioned, has signed a declaration intended to put the views of socially conservative Christians, the Westminster Declaration, so he's still around and still very right wing. (Update: it's been fisked by Ekklesia, thank goodness.) So this is a live story, not a ten year old one. Given that she's standing for Parliament, and given that this is still a democracy, her potential constituents have a right to know:

a) does she still hold to the tenets of the church that she founded?

b) in which case does she still believe that homosexuals are possessed by demons?

c) does she hold that she is subject to the authority of her husband?

d) in which case whose conscience will decide her votes if she gets into Parliament and exercises that vote on behalf of her constituents - hers or her husband's?

PS as a Christian I resent the presentation of the Westminster Declaration "Declaration of Christian conscience" as if it speaks for all Christians. They speak only for those who very selectively quote bits of both Old and New testaments to assert that dinosaurs never existed, except for those who still believe that they have a right to control everything their womenfolk say and do. They most certainly do not speak for me, but they try to claim that theirs is the only truth. They should meet the Pope when he comes over; they'll find they have a lot in common.

Signs of a coalition?

2010-04-28T07:07:00.001-07:00

Could these signs mean something???

Actually the most significant thing about this picture is that by no means all of the fields round here are voting Conservative. That may reflect the mood of only a few people, but in terms of the change in thinking necessary for it to happen, it's seismic.

Nick Clegg and privilege

2010-04-20T03:02:00.000-07:00

I think Nick Clegg (and the rest of us Liberal Democrats) are letting the media, and the other parties, get away with stabs at his privileged background. You're just the same as Cameron, they say, privileged background, posh school. And they get a defensive and faintly embarrassed response.

But that's not the point. You don't get to choose your parents. You don't get to choose where you're born or (rarely at least) where you go to school. What matters is how you react to that when you get to the age and stage where you do make choices. And there the difference is clear. Cameron has chosen privilege. He believes in it; it oozes from every pore. He thinks he is part of the elite who he thinks deserve to run the country. Clegg has chosen the British liberal way, to regard every citizen as being of equal merit. Cameron has chosen the elite, Clegg has chosen everybody. He should say so.

Peter Oborne never spoke a truer word

2010-04-20T03:00:00.000-07:00

From the Mail today: "Voters scored him [Cameron] very low indeed for cherished assets such as honesty and charisma - and alarmingly high for slickness and poshness." The rest of the article is the usual tosh.

The honest truth

2010-04-18T02:44:00.000-07:00

This is a series of musings brought on by quick flicks through the ash cloud of coverage we've had of the leaders' debate and the subsequent polls. Somewhere in it, I think there is a coherent narrative, which is about how much easier it is to tell the truth - hence the title.

Let's start with David Cameron's stories. They've been thoroughly covered (taken apart) in many places, such as in the Guardian. Now, using stories, including fictional ones, as a communication technique has a long and honourable history. Reagan and Ted Kennedy in particular were masters of it. One of Reagan's favourites - you can tell it was a favourite because he repeated it so often, was "One for the gipper" where a crewman in a stricken warplane told his mates "One for the gipper" as the plane crashed and they all died. Self evidently a fiction because of its ending, and strangely amorphous in its purpose (something to do with heroism for the cause) yet very effective at rousing the campaigners and voters. Cameron's mistake was to get details wrong, which resulted in a thorough media wide fisking. Even though the incidents are true, in that they happened, he manages to get the details dreadfully wrong because he is trying to use them inauthentically.

Jane Merrick and Brian Brady in the Independent point out that Clegg used stories too. But presumably he got the details right. I haven't checked any of them, but I have no doubt that some of the fresh faced youth in the Tories' rebuttal team have been working feverishly on them, and are currently biting their knuckles because of their inability to find anything to critique. (If they had found something it would undoubtedly already be in the Mail and the Telegraph.)

That, in my view, is the main difference between Clegg and the Terrible Twins. His performance looked effortless and natural, because he basks in the luxury that we have for years fought, worked and campaigned ceaselessly for. He is telling the truth. When he says we're different from them, it's true. When he says that our tax and spend plans are fully audited, it's true. I loved the bit in Matthew Ancona's piece in the Telegraph where he reports George Osborne saying that our policies will come under the scrutiny that we've been avoiding for so long. Pray, George, when exactly have we been avoiding scrutiny? Nick went straight on to the Paxman show for a Paxo grilling on his policies, unlike Cameron, who, like Brown, has had to be dragged there because they now know they can't avoid it. For years we've been begging the media for more time, more time, more time. It's not us who've been avoiding it, George, it's your friends in the newspapers and the TV stations who haven't had the gumption to look at us properly.

There's another thing I like about Matthew Ancona's piece. It's the complete disjunction between the narrative Ancona attempts to put across with the facts that he actually uses. Ancona's piece is entitled "David Cameron must sweep aside the impostor who stole his act". He wants to position Clegg as the impostor. The trouble is that nothing in the piece he then writes lends any credence whatsoever to that narrative - it's all about Clegg winning because he's telling the truth, and Cameron having to find ways to adjust because his dodgy "honest, guv" strategy is failing badly. Cameron himself has always been an impostor, and he's being found out.

Ancona's blindness to the realities of life is evident in his belief that Clegg stole Cameron's act as the "insurgent". That he can genuinely believe that Cameron, who oozes privilege and his belief in it from every pore, can be an insurgent, suggests that he is on a prolonged course of happy pills, and shows no sign of coming off them in the immediate future.

One final thing I like. Andrew Neil on his BBC blog says "A growing group of influential Tories want "Cameron to be Cameron" in the next debate." Please, please, let it be so, that's all I ask.

Vince

2010-04-16T08:13:00.001-07:00

First Tory leaflet

2010-04-11T03:15:00.001-07:00

The first Tory leaflet of the campaign has just been delivered by a little old lady in a hat and dark glasses. Perhaps she didn't want to be recognised.

Same old Tories

2010-04-11T02:31:00.000-07:00

So the boy George says the Conservative Party has changed over the last four years (in a Times article, get it while you can, fifteenth paragraph). It's such a pity that the party and its supporters keep reminding us that it hasn't. Today the star turn is Henry Angest, who donates millions to the Conservatives - £7 million in donations and loans in the last nine years, including a £5 million loan last November which helps to bankroll this election fight (not that Dave needs it with all the free flights he gets from his rich mates). Meanwhile Mr Angest also funds UKIP, various climate change denial organisations and fiercely anti-EU groups, among others. He's quite a clever chap, Mr Angest, reportedly worth £45 million, despite all the millions he's given away, so we must presume that he knows what he's doing. Which means that in his view the Tories, UKIP, the climate change deniers, the EU sceptics, all stand for the same thing, and are equally worthy of his patronage. Sorry, George, try pulling the other one.

It's good being a Liberal Democrat

2010-04-10T12:49:00.000-07:00

I was at Norman Baker's adoption meeting last night. He was introduced by Lord Oakeshott who told us what we knew already – that Norman has been a fantastic MP both in the constituency and in Parliament, and will continue to be a fantastic MP if he is re-elected. Lord Oakeshott had some words for us about not letting the Tories in on the back of dislike of Brown, replacing one bad lot with another. I particularly liked his line about not wanting to have a Chancellor on work experience (an original Oakeshott line, though one he's used before). To get Norman back in we have to overcome the standard Tory tactics of throwing money at a seat. Despite not having Lord Ashcroft's money, this not counting as a marginal, we are up against a very well funded Tory candidate with over £200,000 raised in the last two years. We compete with enthusiasm, good people, good policies and endless foot slogging.

It feels better than ever to be a Liberal Democrat at the moment. I have a wonderful MP, now candidate, to campaign for. I have an excellent set of policies to sell to voters on the doorstep. I can talk about genuine fairness, I can talk about properly thought through and funded tax proposals, I can talk about decent proposals for schools and hospitals.

I can talk about a great team. Nick Clegg as the leader, Vince Cable for Chancellor, Norman Baker himself on transport with many excellent ideas for getting Britain moving better, Chris Huhne's great common sense in the Home Secretary role, Ed Davey as Foreign Secretary, Simon Hughes on energy and climate change, where do I stop? Nick Clegg doesn't mind which of them gets photographed with him, unlike Gordon Brown who is photographed with his whole cabinet in the hope that he will sink into oblivion among them, and David Cameron who is photographed with none of his in case they remind people what they're really like.

And I can talk about a great record. Our consistency over the last few years is one of our strongest selling points. Consistent opposition to the Iraq War - fully justified by subsequent events ( and one that goes hand in hand with a realistic and hard headed defence policy for the future). Consistent opposition to the whole waste of money on ID cards. The fact that we heralded some of the problems brewing in the recession years before either Labour or Tories had a clue. A record on MPs expenses and other abuses that cannot be touched by Labour or Tories. Norman Baker began his campaign to reveal MPs' expenses with a Freedom of Information request in 2005, and his filibuster was crucial in 2007 in preventing Tories and Labour uniting to exempt Parliament from the Freedom of Information Act (reason alone to be proud of him). We proposed rules on lobbying in 2006 which were thrown out by the combined forces of the gravy train, Tory and Labour again.

So I can talk about a history of genuine honesty, fairness, consistency and principle. Yes, it's good to be a Liberal Democrat today.

Michael Caine

2010-04-08T06:25:00.000-07:00

Michael Caine appears for the Tories. He says it's non-political and it's on behalf of the forgotten youth of today. Presumably that was part of the "great ignored" theme that the Tories have now apparently ditched. So what's going on there, I wonder.

I think Michael Caine, non-political or not, is a bit of a coup for the Tories. I've seen a few tweets about the Tories getting a 76 or 77 year old tax exile to front a campaign for the "yoof". Born 14 March 1933 according to Wikipedia, so it must be true, which means he is actually 77. The tax exile thing I can see as a good thing for the opposition - another example of the only people who the Tories actually appeal to. But the 77 year old thing is a red herring in my opinion. Chronological age as a determinant of appeal has always been a non starter. I remember Matthew Parris writing a column about this when William Hague became leader, and there was a lot of talk about the Tories electing someone so young to lead such an elderly party. Parris wrote that it made perfect sense. His theory was that people had a natural age, which had nothing to do with their chronological age. Hague's age was around 50, and always had been. That is why his later adoption of the baseball cap was such a failure.

Michael Caine's natural age is about 15, about the same as mine, though he does it much better.

I assume that the Michael Caine thing will simply wither and die, rather like Cameron's idea of a volunteer army will wither and die. The Brits just don't take to being that organised. If he tried it in Switzerland it would go down a storm.

But if Caine doesn't go away, I reckon we can see him off by showing clips of any scene from Secondhand Lions in which he speaks. I love that film actually, for two reasons. One is the ending, which I won't spoil. The other is Caine's attempt at a southern US accent which deserves cult status. It is so cringingly awful that a few renditions will embarrass him into taking a sudden holiday somewhere else.

Phone taps and Andy Coulson

2010-04-05T14:51:00.000-07:00

Today's Guardian "Police 'ignored News of the World phone hacking evidence'" shows how the police restricted the scope of their investigations into the News of the World phone bugging scandal under Andy Coulson's stewardship. Peter Black has covered this in detail already. I will just consider the figures. Whereas the police have been saying all along that only a handful of people were victims of the NoTW's illegal behaviour, they in fact had, according to the Guardian, "4,332 names or partial names ..., 2,978 numbers or partial numbers for mobile phones and 30 audio tapes which appear to contain an unspecified number of recordings of voicemail messages". The behaviour of the police themselves, exacerbated by their obstructiveness over responding to the FOI requests which finally unearthed these figures, is questionable to say the least. But the most interesting political facet is whether David Cameron's press chief is going to find himself becoming the story just when he is supposed to be running a general election campaign. Andy Coulson has always denied all knowledge of these goings on. But when they get to this scale, his story begins to look rather thin.

Liberal Democrats pledge biggest rail expansion since the Victorians

2010-04-05T14:36:00.000-07:00

Norman Baker launched a Liberal Democrat plan for massive rail expansion today. He said, “High speed rail is hugely important, but it is only part of the 21st century rail network Britain needs. Our plans will reopen thousands of miles of track across the country and make our railway great again... The Liberal Democrats will transform the railways with the biggest expansion since the Victorian age."

The plan is to create a Rail Expansion Fund of nearly £3bn from which councils and transport authorities can bid for money to pay for rail improvement and expansion projects. The reaction from the motoring lobby was immediate and predictable: according to the BBC "the RAC Foundation said it would be a waste of taxpayers' money when only 7% of UK journeys were made by train, compared to 90% by car". Maybe more routes and cheaper fares will make a difference to that proportion.

Some of the plans include, again from the BBC, "the electrification of lines from Manchester to Liverpool, Leeds and Preston; from Birmingham to Bristol and Basingstoke; and between Leeds and York. New or reopened stations could be funded in Ilkeston, Kidlington, Wantage, Corsham, Tavistock, Middlewich, Ashington, Blyth, Washington and Skelmersdale. New lines could link Southport with Preston, Bournemouth with Ringwood and the Midlands main line with the Birmingham-Derby route. And track could be reopened between Exeter and Okehampton; Tavistock and Plymouth; Penrith and Keswick; and Galashiels and Carlisle."

No sign of the Lewes to Uckfield line in there, but maybe, maybe...

Update 6th April
The plan does include reopening the Lewes Uckfield railway. Norman says: "The reopening of the Lewes - Uckfield line is something I have campaigned for locally for over twenty years. It is vitally needed, not just to link the two towns again, but also as a key building block in providing an alternative to the heavily congested Brighton main line."

Not such a great story for Easter Day

2010-04-04T14:04:00.000-07:00

For some time now I have felt very sorry for my various Catholic friends at the way they have been let down by the hierarchy of the Catholic church over the issue of child abuse. It's not the fact of abuse, it's the way the church has reacted, and continues to react. They continue to keep secrets and to say anything they can that will get them off the hook without them recognising that things really have to change.

They reached the pits, I think, with the Pope's preacher saying that the abuse the Pope had received over this was akin to the collective violence suffered by the Jews. He obviously doesn't do much arguing, or he would know that the first rule of arguments is that whoever compares the other side to Nazis has by definition lost the argument. But, that aside, it indicates just how far the hierarchy of the Catholic church has strayed from the message of Christ.

I am myself a staunch Anglican, and yesterday I was happy for a few hours when I read of Rowan Williams' words to the Catholics. He said the church in Ireland "has lost "all credibility" because of its poor handling of the scandal of paedophile priests [and] the child sex abuse scandal that has engulfed the Catholic church had been a "colossal trauma" for Ireland in particular."

I thought briefly maybe we have the best archbishop I have known in my lifetime, one who is prepared to speak the truth in love. He was prepared to say to his peers in the Catholic church that they need to travel miles and they have hardly been prepared to budge an inch. And heaven knows they're not listening to anybody else. Every step they have taken has been forced out of them by public opinion.

And then he went and apologised. And blew all that good work out of the window. And the Catholic church hierarchy go on in the same old way. They are not going to be "swayed by 'petty gossip' about child sex-abuse allegations". Only a Catholic cardinal could call well founded questions about the role the Pope himself played in covering up these scandals "petty gossip".

And the good old Anglican church is back to faith, hope and niceness, and the greatest of these is niceness. Jesus must be weeping.

A great story for Easter Day

2010-04-04T14:01:00.000-07:00

From the UK Department for International Development's website - women clearing land mines in Sri Lanka:

"The work is hard, but I don’t mind as I’m helping my family. I don’t get scared. I just want my children to be able to go to school and live in peace."

Girl with the dragon tattoo

2010-03-21T15:00:00.000-07:00

I got to see The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo this week at a cinema in Chichester - the nearest to me that was showing it. It was worth the journey. Nice cinema apart from not having the sound properly calibrated, so the environmental sound and sometimes the music came from some very odd places some of the time.

I've read the books, and enjoyed them greatly. If you haven't read the books, you will want to know that the film thoroughly deserves its 18 rating. It has a rape scene, a torture scene, several assaults and several sets of crime scene photos that would make CSI blush.

It was a thoroughly professional production. It had three good things going for it. The first was Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander. Nobody else should be allowed to play Salander now. Especially anybody in the inevitable American reproduction. She gets the look, the attitude and the motorbike dead right.

Second is the scenery. The cameraman really enjoyed himself filming this. The locations are stunning and the film makes the most of them - luscious forest, water and snow. Even the three minute segment set in Australia manages to find sensational and not typically Australian scenery.

And thirdly, and most impressively, the screenplay. The writers knew what they were doing. They remained faithful to the novel, but they concentrated on the main story. In the novel there is a lot of backfilling, giving us backgrounds to the main characters that Larsson obviously felt necessary for the story and for his intended purposes in subsequent parts of the trilogy. There are also several subplots, mostly involving Blomquist's active sex life. For the film the writers have stripped out all the subplots and nearly all the back story, and left just the lean stripped down story of the investigation. And it works beautifully.

Can't wait for the next one. (In Swedish.)

Is that what it's all about, then?

2010-03-01T11:55:00.000-08:00

So Lord Ashcroft finally admits to being a non-dom for tax paying purposes. Now we have left, right and others slagging each other off about you've got more non-doms than us. For me whether or not he is an non-dom is a non-issue. It's legal. Get over it. It may be that it's undesirable, but it's only just come to seem so in the wake of the whole expenses scandal. Is that what all the fuss was about? Well, not really - I'll come to that in a minute.

The most immediate impact of this saga is on the Conservative Party's competence and reputation. All they needed to do at any stage in this whole process is admit the less than shameful truth that Ashcroft is a non-dom. Instead of doing so they seem to have gone out of their way to make themselves look shifty when questioned about it. Their nadir, I think, was William Hague managing to look spectacularly shifty by repeatedly squirming out of answering Andrew Marr's questions. They have raised for themselves the question: if this is what they're like now, is this what they'll be like in government? Judging from Boris Johnson's repeated, continuing and mounting attempts to avoid any kind of scrutiny so far as mayor of London (see Boriswatch, passim) the answer seems to be yes. So much for transparency and reforming politics. Whenever Cameron talks about that over the next three months there should be a sound track of hollow laughter.

Not only do they look shifty, they look as if they have no idea about political judgement. They have not been able to see that the image of shiftiness they have given themselves was more trouble than the secrecy was worth. Now, negative qualities are not necessarily bad things for politicians to have. Bullygate seems - I emphasise "seems" because we need to see more polling over the next few days - to have done Gordon Brown some good. In 1968 the USA elected Richard Nixon as president not just in spite of but because of his reputation for skullduggery. They wanted a streetfighter to take on the Russians, and they got one. But they did not elect a man who did not know when to fight and when to run away, when to dissemble and when to be honest. The Conservatives are demonstrating, almost daily, that they do not have that judgement, that competence, which is the first requisite of those who would govern us.

But all that stuff about Ashcroft being a non-dom is not what it's about. The real issue is the promise made by the Conservative party when they lobbied for Ashcroft to become a peer. We now have his version of that promise, that he promised by the end of the year to become a resident for tax purposes, and that he clarified that that meant becoming a long term resident, which apparently means that he can still live in Belize (where the heart is, apparently) as long as he spends a few days a year in Britain. Leaving aside the supine stance of the honours office (as far as I'm concerned, if he wanted to be a peer, he should, like the other Conservative foreign funder and recusant Lord Laidlaw, bloody well have become a resident first), that whole thing also leaves the Conservative party looking shifty. They look shifty because they *are* shifty. They could have been open and honest about the promises made right from the start, instead of which they have obfuscated and prevaricated. So much for transparency, Dave.

It's not over yet, of course. We have yet to see the material that is to be made public soon by the Cabinet Office. Then we can judge exactly how shifty the Tories have been.

Train ticketing troubles

2010-03-01T09:15:00.001-08:00

I rarely book train tickets. For all I know what follows may be a normal experience, but for me it was more than a bit over the top.

I wanted to book tickets for a trip in the early summer. One from Lewes to Alnmouth, returning a few days later, and one for Kings Cross to Alnmouth for the same days and times. I spent a couple of hours on various websites yesterday checking different options and prices, and seeing if I could book seats to travel together. It might have been possible for a more intrepid traveller, but I, being definitely trepid, decided to go to the station and get them to make the bookings on my behalf. It seemed like a sensible idea at the time.

I spent an hour - you heard it - an hour at Lewes station while the ticket clerk valiantly tried to get me the trains I wanted. Getting to Alnmouth was not a problem, though even that took ten minutes and various tries before the programme condescended to do what the clerk wanted. I noticed that she was working on single ticket prices all the time, not even bothering to try a return ticket. I saw yesterday that the return prices were in every case a lot more than twice a single. If someone could explain the logic of that one to me, I would be grateful.

Anyway she found the train I wanted for the return journey, and spent a while printing out the details. Then she tried to book seats and that where we really came unravelled. After a few tries the programme told her that there was only one bookable seat left on an 11 a.m. midweek train from Alnmouth to Kings Cross. I find that hard to believe, but it wouldn't budge. So the clerk tried alternative trains but the programme refused to find two tickets for the same train (and we hadn't even got to the seat booking stage at that point). The best it could do after several tries was one ticket going via York and one going via Wakefield.

I really didn't want a later train as that would dump the passengers back in London just in time for the rush hour. But there didn't seem to be an alternative. So she found a train an hour later, and found two places on it. The price for the ticket back to Kings Cross was cut by half. The price for the ticket through to Lewes stayed the same. Logic: by this time I expected none.

Now for seat booking. We are given strong advice to book seats, so I tried. Of course, being together, the two passengers would like to sit together. When I looked on websites yesterday it seemed possible to stipulate various types of seat - window, aisle, facing forward, facing backward, in a quiet carriage, etc. But when it comes to actually booking seats it seemed the options weren't available, and seats were randomly chucked out on the Kings Cross to Newcastle, and then the Newcastle to Alnmouth stretches. Several different tries produced no better results. For one stretch the seats are in the same carriage and might possibly be in the same block. for the other, and for the return journey, they're three carriages apart (assuming the alphabet works).

One of the justifications we're given for privatising things is that the private sector is so much more efficient than the public sector. If this is an efficient private sector operation, I'd hate to see an inefficient one.

"Britain's teens dropping babies EVERYWHERE"

2010-02-15T01:28:00.000-08:00

After the thorough dismantling of the Tories' "broken Britain" claims by the Economist (and I can do no better than quote ChieferMadness here: "Trotskyist rag The Economist perverts fact of BROKEN BRITAIN with 'analysis' and 'statistics'"), you'd think that the Tories would be a bit more careful with the figures they publish. But no they go and plonk both feet in it with a stratospheric claim about teenage pregnancy. From the Guardian: "It claimed – three times – that women under 18 are "three times more likely to fall pregnant in the most deprived areas compared to the least deprived areas. In the most deprived areas 54% are likely to fall pregnant before the age of 18, compared to just 19% in the least deprived areas.""

Derision has focussed rightly on the idiocy of the Tories' 54% claim. OK, it was a typographical mistake but nobody anywhere in CCHQ had the nous to think "Hang on a minute, that looks a bit high, even for the kind of sink estate I'd never let little Jolyon have a friend from"....

But there must be another dodgy stat in there as well. Overall, the figure was supposed to be 5.4%, more like one in twenty than one in two. But they quote the figure for the least deprived area as being 19%. Now you might, possibly, if you were feeling very charitable indeed, forgive them for not knowing what's going on in the parts of Britain that they never visit, but if they don't know what's going on in Notting Hill, they are truly clueless. Either that, or the people who live where Dave does are breeding like rabbits. I think we deserve to be told.

The difference between Lord Ashcroft and Lord Paul

2010-02-14T09:02:00.000-08:00

Lately the Conservative Party have been defending their position on Lord Ashcroft's tax status by claiming that it is a private matter, and that there is no difference between him and the Labour donor Lord Paul.

But there is, in terms of the way in which they were made peers. When Lord Ashcroft was made a peer, it was on the basis of a promise from the Conservative Party that Ashcroft would become a UK tax payer. The issue is not his actual tax status so much as the fact that a promise was made which the Conservative Party is refusing to make good on. They cannot claim that it is a private matter, because they need to demonstrate that their promise has been kept. No such promise was made about Lord Paul, so far as I am aware.

There is another Conservative lord and promise dodger, Lord Laidlaw, who gave a specific written undertaking to become resident in the UK when he became a lord, and now some seven years later still resides in Monaco. Also, coincidentally, he is a substantial donor to the Conservative Party.

Cameron's been saying lately that governing is about character. These episodes demonstrate the character of the Conservative Party - people who make all sorts of promises in order to get what they want with the firm intention of weaselling out of them. I wonder how much of their manifesto we will be able to believe.

MP expenses: Conservative Party has such a short memory

2010-02-05T08:11:00.000-08:00

PoliticsHome reports the resignation of Lord Hanningfield from the Tory front bench. A Conservative Party spokesman says: "The Conservative Party has led the way in dealing with the MPs' expenses scandal". And to be fair they did their bit once the scandal broke. Quicker off the mark than the Labour Party certainly.

Of course, if the spokesman's memory had gone back a bit further, he would remember the disgraceful attempt by David Maclean (a Conservative MP) to exempt MPs from the FOI Act with the Freedom of Information Amendment Bill. If that bill had succeeded the whole scandal of MPs' expenses might never have come to light. And the bill was supported by a large majority of Conservative MPs, as well as Labour, but not by Liberal Democrats. It was Norman Baker (a Liberal Democrat MP) who talked the bill out on its first presentation, to hoots of derision from those Conservatives. And when a way was finagled to reintroduce the bill and get it through the Commons, the Lords showed their worth when not one could be found who was willing to sponsor it in that House. Pity the Conservatives have such a short memory.

How seriously should we take Avatar?

2010-02-03T08:38:00.000-08:00

"Avatar" is on my list of all time favourite films. I don't think it's the greatest film ever made, and to be honest I wasn't very taken with the 3D effects. But you don't need 3D to be immersive.There's been a lot of stuff around in education recently about immersive worlds and what they can or can't do for education. The less reflective writing tends to assume that places like Second Life are unproblematically immersive and other environments are equally unproblematically not immersive. But SL isn't immersive if it doesn't engage you. You can be there, and your avatar can be stunning and you can be talking to and interacting with other people, but you can still be aware of the world outside the computer, and you can still be bored, and you can still be checking when the tutorial is going to end, and it is not being immersive in the slightest. By the same token a plain bog standard class in a plain bog standard classroom can be totally immersive if the teacher gets it right. People seem to forget that.

By the same token I found Avatar a totally immersive experience, and that was without the 3D specs on most of the time (because I found them uncomfortable). I thoroughly enjoyed it. I forgot the passing of time. I identified with the characters. I didn't want it to end, and I felt slightly bereft when it did, just like I always used to feel as a kid when I walked out of a cinema.

This is partly about fit between film and viewer. As a viewer, I am very happy to be entertained. I don't need to be thought-provoked in order to enjoy a film. I don't need a deep message. My ever shifting and ever expanding top one hundred contains a lot of films that would make other people wince. They're not in my top one hundred because I think they're great films, but because I like them. I think there are two reasons why I like Avatar. The first is the special effects. Everything works beautifully. Interestingly, the world of Pandora and the Na'vi works better than the rude mechanicals - the diggers, helicopters and firepower - which you might think would be easer to model. And the second reason is the story. Stories don't have to be big and complex in order to succeed In fact very often the simpler the better. And here we have two very simple stories interwoven - boy meets girl and culture clash. Boy meets girl is the simplest of all. Boy meets girl, boy conquers obstacles in the way, boy wins girl. Culture clash is marginally more complex but not much. Boy meets alien culture, boy is attracted by good side of alien culture, boy confronts bad side of own culture, boy and aliens unite to defeat bad side. And that's all there is to Avatar. The green message is there but it's part of the conflict that's there to make the story work, not because James Cameron had a message. So for me it's great entertainment and the right people win.

The question arises of how seriously to take the film. I have to say I don't take it very seriously, though in some circumstances people are right to take it more seriously (see below). James Cameron himself is quoted in the Telegraph: "It's about how "greed and imperialism tend to destroy the environment," he said in a recent interview. "It's a way of looking back on ourselves from this other world."" But this should not necessarily be taken at face value. It is a press interview with a man who knows all about putting bums on seats. I don't believe he really takes the politics of the film all that seriously. And neither do I. It has a "green" message, but the message is there for plot functionality and because it resonates with the market demographic.

I'm now finding other people's reactions to the film very interesting, and wondering whether I need to re-evaluate simply because of the number of people it has upset. The first upset is, I think, badly founded, and based on a misinterpretation of what happens. Progressives are upset at the racist subtext that shows a "primitive" tribe needing a white man to save them. You could read it that way if you wanted to, but I don't see it. What I see is our hero Jake growing through his contact with the Na'vi in such a way that he becomes a different creature. The hero who returns to lead the Na'vi is a synthesis of the best of Jake with Na'vi beliefs and ways. So it's not about western capitalist superiority at all. If anything it's about its limitations. I had a similar dispute once with someone over Tootsie. It's surprising what a ding dong we got into over such a slight film. (It's not in my top one hundred; it would probably be in my top three or four hundred.) The story is difficult and currently out of work actor Michael Dorsey (Dustin Hoffman) dresses up as a woman to land a short part in a soap, is surprisingly successful, so they extend his contract, leading to the dilemma of how to get out of it, which is eventually resolved. My friend thought it was deeply sexist because it showed a man being more successful as a woman than women could be. I thought it showed that becoming a woman made him learn about the female viewpoint, confront his own masculinity and anger, and emerge a better and stronger person. Hence again it was not "being a man" that made the difference. It was "learning about the opposite". So, although, quite a lot of people have picked up on this idea of Avatar being racist, i don't buy it.

I'm more impressed by the fact that Avatar has upset the American right, the Chinese Communist party, and the Vatican. Any film that can upset those three must have something going for it.

The American right don't like it because of fairly overt references to both the Vietnam and Iraq wars in the context of asking the audience "to root for the defeat of American soldiers at the hands of an insurgency. So it is a deep expression of anti-Americanism-kind of" - John Podoretz, in the ABC News link above. OK, but if you're going to get upset about it, try being a little less imperialist when you do go to war in places like Iraq.

The Chinese don't like it because the theme of forced migration is too close to home for a regime that regularly shifts people off places it wants to dam up or build on. I don't know if the film has actually sparked protests, or just that they have moved pre-emptively to ban it. They've been quite clever though, taking it out of 2D cinemas while allowing it to remain in 3D. That way they can say they haven't actually banned it, just that it wasn't doing well in the 2D cinemas. I assume that there aren't that many 3D cinemas and they are located away from potential trouble spots. It's a very good illustration of the dance of power that the Communist party in China is constantly engaged in with its own people. While remaining quintessentially authoritarian, in fact downright repressive in outlook, it is realistic enough to know that it can't upset too many Chinese too often.

And finally the dear old Vatican. Some headlines say the Vatican hates Avatar. Here is what Osservatore Romano actually said: "It has a great deal of enchanting, stunning technology, but few genuine or human emotions.... Its significance is in its visual impact rather than in the story, and in its messages, despite the fact that they are hardly new... The plot descends into sentimentality... and "a rather facile anti-imperialist and antimilitarist parable which doesn't have the same bite as other more serious films." But it ended by saying the spectacle was worth the price of a cinema ticket. All that from the Telegraph. There's not much there that I would disagree with, apart from thinking myself that there's nothing wrong with going to see a film just in order to be entertained. At least they haven't ordered the flock to boycott the film with missionary zeal as they try to turn the world back the way they think it should be - medieval. So basically the Vatican isn't being as reactionary about Avatar as it is about many things.

Conservative competence?

2010-01-27T02:09:00.000-08:00

One strength that the Conservative party prides itself on is that it knows how to do things, how to govern. If you don't like their policies, you at least get competent government, they say. But that kind of competence seems to be in worryingly short supply nowadays. The airbrushed David Cameron posters, for instance, were an own goal waiting to happen. And it looks as if they could be a long term millstone round his neck. I particularly like "Tough on jobs. Tough on the causes of jobs."

But the inspiration for this post today is Boris Johnson. He is stepping aside as chair of the London Police Authority. It was always a bad idea for political and managerial reasons, although we never expected such issues to cut much ice with BoJo. But the reason he is giving up is, the BBC say, because "he was finding it difficult to devote enough time to the job." Should we not expect a greater level of competence than this? The country's most senior elected Conservative is incapable of figuring out beforehand that the demands of that job and the mayoralty will be too much. Was he too incompetent to notice that they are two very demanding jobs, which each require the utmost attention? Yes, he was. Londoners are beginning to find out what kind of fool they elected.

Nothing to fear, nothing to hide

2010-01-24T12:21:00.000-08:00

Government mantra as we know. So, if the government has nothing to hide, why is keeping secret the post mortem details on David Kelly for seventy years? Norman Baker's assertion that it cannot have been suicide is looking more likely with every new turn the case takes.

Land raise

2010-01-24T11:33:00.000-08:00

A lot more detail about East Sussex's proposal to dump land raise sites around Ringmer and the Weald can be found at:

No To Land Raise
and the No To Land Raise blog.

The blog includes a report of the meeting held at Hailsham on January 23rd.

And an illuminating post about zero waste alternatives. The answer is no, they've just stuck us with an incinerator and the possibility of artificial hills all around, slowly subsiding as they release methane and who knows what into the atmosphere.

What a waste

2009-12-30T14:29:00.000-08:00

In this part of Sussex we face a waste crisis. LibDem controlled Lewes District Council would like to recycle more of its waste than it does. But it's not allowed to. Conservative controlled East Sussex County Council has used its power to limit the amount of recycling that the District Council is allowed to do. Let me repeat that, just in case it is so counter intuitive that you didn't take it in. The County Council is using its legal powers to prevent the District Council from recycling.

Why would this be? The answer is massively obvious if you live here. The County Council is pressing ahead, against united local opposition, with building an incinerator at Newhaven. And for incinerators to be profitable, they need lots and lots of waste to burn. And it has to run at a profit because of course it is going to be privately run - by Veolia. I particularly like the part on the Veolia site where it says "Did you know? In the UK we only recycle 30% of our household rubbish." Not in Lewes - we're only allowed to recycle 27%, because the County Council wants to make sure the incinerator makes a profit. (To be technically correct, it's all to do with credits. The County Council gives the District Council credits for 27% of its waste recycled, but not for more. Which means that, without the credits, it's too expensive to recycle more.)

And there's more. The County Council, having run out of other options, now proposes to use land raise to store all the rubbish it won't let us recycle. It has identified several sites around Hellingly, Halland, a woodland site near Laughton and other places. They don't want to think about anaerobic digestion, for instance, and they certainly don't want to think about recycling more, so they're going to have a jolly good go at wrecking our countryside.

Meanwhile, local Conservative Parliamentary candidate Jason Sugarman provides his own unique spin. Being a Cameron Conservative he has to pretend to be green, so he takes a pop at Lewes District Council: "in the Lewes district ... the Lib Dems have left us with one of the worst recycling results in Sussex". Yes, Jason, perhaps more recycling would happen in Lewes if your friends on the County Council let us recycle more. Perhaps you could have a word with them? But I suspect you're more interested in maintaining a piece of spin of which David Cameron would be proud.

Thanks, Dave - best laugh I've had all year

2009-12-28T14:04:00.000-08:00

David Cameron tells us that there is little difference between Conservatives and Liberal Democrats nowadays. Now that I've finished laughing, I'll just point out some of the differences. He thinks both parties are "motivated by pretty much the same progressive aims: a country that is safer, fairer, greener and where opportunity is more equal". If only the Conservatives were.

Fairness: Liberal Democrats want to take millions of the poorest British people out of tax by increasing allowances. Conservatives want to increase inheritance tax allowances for the richest people in the country.

Liberal Democrats want a voting system that more fairly represents people's intentions. The Conservatives want none of it. In fact Cameron was self contradictory in his message. He said he wanted to work together, and then he said that coalition government would not work - he wants to be the only party in power.

Fairness also includes openness. He could start by clearing up the issue about the tax status of his chief funder, lord Ashcroft, whose money he is using to buy the next election. He could also clear up the issue of the precise origin of all that funding. But he won't.

Fairness also includes keeping your promises. The Conservatives made promises about Ashcroft's tax status when they put his name forward for a peerage, and those promises have not been kept.

Fairness: Liberal Democrats want a fairer, better NHS. Cameron is content to head a party whose representatives go around saying that the NHS is a sixty year mistake.

A fairer Britain with opportunities for all is not in the mind of at least one of Cameron's candidates, who refers to everybody not fortunate enough to have gone to Oxford or Cambridge as "potted plants".

No, David, I do not believe that you want a fairer, greener or safer Britain - except one where it is safe for the elite to make more money. You worked in PR before and you're still working in PR now.

Hunting

2009-12-28T12:49:00.000-08:00

Boxing Day always reminds us of the issue of hunting with dogs. Sara Scarlett, in Liberal Vision on Boxing Day, called the ban on hunting with dogs illiberal. I don't agree with that. I see the issue as split into two parts. One is about human rights and freedom. The other is about animal welfare. If it were just a question of freedom, I would have no problem at all. Hunting with dogs would be to me like Morris dancing. I have absolutely no wish to do it, but if you want to dress up in funny clothes and parade around the countryside flaunting your silliness, I will defend and indeed celebrate your right to do so. But it is not just about freedom, it is also about animal welfare, and there we have a problem. Nobody has a right to be cruel to animals - in my opinion. Other people might think they do, in which case that has to be debated. As it stands we have a long tradition in this country of legislation to prevent cruelty to animals in all sorts of ways. Hunting with dogs cannot be exempt from that tradition. It is, of course, open to debate as to whether hunting with dogs is cruel or not - many maintain that it is not. For me a pursuit designed to take as long as possible (otherwise it would not be any fun) is designed to cause maximum fear in the animal pursued. I'll concede that it is debatable, but that is where I stand. And I will not for a moment accept that an argument so based is illiberal. The animal kingdom is part of our concern as well as the human.

Sara raises some other powerful issues, notably the issue of rural poverty, and the issue of unintended consequences. Both of them are valid and deserve our attention. Sara suggests that in terms of animal welfare the act has been counter-productive. The claim is disputed in the comments, but let us accept it at face value for the moment. She also claims that jobs have been lost and the rural economy has suffered. The claim is again disputable, but let us for the moment accept it. Both these issues are not the result of the act per se, but of the way in which it was couched and implemented.

The Hunting Act stands with reform of the House of Lords as showing up Tony Blair at his worst. Not in terms of class war, or in terms of doctrine, but in terms of ability to get things done. Blair's ability to bring people together and to forge a consensus was one of his greatest political strengths. He did a brilliant job on the Labour Party. He was undoubtedly very good at it. His weakness though was that he *needed* to find a consensus. He failed to recognise with both hunting and the House of Lords that there were people who would make a point of disliking any move for reform, and he failed therefore to move as quickly or as decisively as he could have done.

The fact that the Hunting Act was never accepted in some quarters is not Tony Blair's fault (though some of its weaknesses are), but that fact is at the root of the issue of any backlash on animal welfare. Rather than accept the spirit of the legislation, those responsible resort to indiscriminate tactics such as poison, while failing to look at control measures in a professional and calm sighted manner. Perhaps the Act could have provided funding for better methods; that might have prevented some of the current cruelties. But my point is not that the Act should not have happened, but that it should have been better drafted.

The issue of rural poverty is, I think, a non sequitur in terms of animal welfare. If rural poverty is an argument against preventing hunting with dogs, then urban poverty ought to be an argument against preventing bear baiting, or dog fighting. It isn't. If a loss of jobs was demonstrable at the time of the Act, then that situation could have been ameliorated by funding for rural improvement, either in the Act or by other means. Again, the issue is not that the Act should not have happened but that it should have been better implemented. In any case, either way, Liberal Democrat policy to lower taxes for poor people, whether urban or rural, is better and more coherent policy than either Labour or Conservative offerings. It is a far better way to move against rural poverty than bringing back hunting with dogs.

Avatar

2009-12-24T12:15:00.000-08:00

Avatar has hardly any plot, and what there is has as many holes as a good Gruyere. Characterisation is thin, in fact the word cardboard would come to mind if they weren't all electronic. The 3D adds little enhancement, certainly not enough to outweigh the disadvantage of having very heavy solid plastic specs slipping down my nose throughout. The half arsed green message just about keeps itself above being ridiculous.

Having said all that, I loved it. It's just a great simple story, with magnificent effects, and in places some pretty decent music. It's all about the effects, and if that's what you go for, fine. If you want something a bit highbrow, don't even think about Avatar - that's not what it's for. If you want a rip roaring ride, go for it. I did - it was great.

Carter Ruck and Trafigura do their thing again

2009-12-16T10:16:00.000-08:00

It really is a very clever viral marketing campaign, making sure that lowly unpaid bloggers like us do their work for them, ensuring that Trafigura's activities around the world get a lively and informed audience.*

Watch and weep.

and

then read this pdf of the original story.

*Just in case you hadn't noticed, you needed your irony button switched on to read that first paragraph.

Things that happened this week: nothing to hide, still a lot to fear.

2009-12-13T15:00:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Durham police for clearing this one up. Having your DNA taken could harm your prospects even if you're an innocent person. A police person was quoted this week on the issue of mephedrone, a substance which it is legal to be in possession of. "In Durham police have taken a stance and anyone found with it will be arrested on suspicion of possession of a banned substance.... They will be taken to a police cell, their DNA and fingerprints taken and that arrest, depending upon enquiries, could have serious implications for example on future job applications". This revelation comes courtesy of the Register.

Things that happened this week: Tories do not disappoint

2009-12-13T14:50:00.000-08:00

Every time Dave tries tot ell us the Tories have changed, yes, we have, honest, guv, his own party conspire to undermine him. And he helped himself dig his own pit this week.

Are the Tories competent? Not competent enough to avoid using phony information at Prime Minister's Questions. Tory claim on Islamic school dismissed.

And has he stopped them being nasty? Not if Lord Monckton is anything to go by, Persistently and loudly comparing a young Jewish man to the Hitler Youth. Climate denier unmasked: Tory peer calls Jewish climate activists "Hitler Youth".

Still incompetent, still very nasty.

Things that happened this week: you couldn't make it up

2009-12-13T14:43:00.000-08:00

The police stopped and questioned a photographer going about his business in London: Photographer quizzed by "armed" police near Bank of America. Nothing unusual there as Britain#s finest have so little to do nowadays other than harass innocent snappers.

But then an ITN film crew went to do a story about that event - and they were stopped too. ITN film crew stopped while covering photographer story.

And that was after ACPO reminded police this week that taking photographs is not illegal.

BBCQT and balance

2009-12-08T03:24:00.000-08:00

So let's get this right. I have had the same jobsworth letter as other people in response to my complaint about them dropping Jo Swinson from Question Time. Part of it is as follows:

"... reflect a change in the prominence of some of the issues due to be discussed on the programme and in order to facilitate debate by having representatives willing to question the central political consensus on these issues, of which the Liberal Democrats are a part"

It is quoted in full elsewhere - Stephen's Linlithgow Journal and Mark Reckons.

So the programme was in Scotland and contained a few Scottish issues. So the BBC dropped one Scottish person, Jo Swinson, for another, from the SNP, while retaining two English right wingers, David Davies and Melanie Phillips. That's what they call balance.

And what issues were discussed. Well, predictably - because that's what we were complaining about - the Iraq War was discussed, as the Chilcot inquiry started that week. The Libdems are the only mainstream party to have consistently opposed the war right from the beginning. if that does not give us a distinctive edge, what does? We are certainly not part of any "central political consensus" on that one.

What other things did we discuss? Well, the banks getting away with more. Hmmm, don't we have a distinctive position on that one. Let me try to remember, oh yes, we have Vince Cable who was telling both the other parties that things were going to go wrong while Labour tried to ignore all the signs and the Tories were too clueless to notice. And then we have Vince Cable telling them how to put it right with Labour tacitly admitting he was right by adopting his policies and the Tories desperately trying to forget their predictions that the remedy would make things worse. If there is any kind of central political consensus there, it is because we made it.

What else? The only really Scottish thing on that I remember now was the SNP's policy on alcohol on which we have a clear difference of opinion with them, and an alternative policy. What a good opportunity it would have been to have two Scottish people debating a Scottish issue. But no, we had to listen to the English right wingers David Davies and Melanie Phillips instead. If that's what the BBC call balance, they're living in a tilted world.

Man U fans

2009-12-01T13:53:00.000-08:00

Hearing the Man U fans shout "Freak" every time Peter Crouch went anywhere near the ball reminded me how cheap they are.

St Andrews Day

2009-11-30T08:38:00.000-08:00

Is it just me, or is there something ironic about the Foreign Office commemorating St Andrew's Day just when the SNP want a referendum?

Raising a glass

2009-11-28T09:27:00.000-08:00

When I was reminded that today is the anniversary of Margaret Thatcher's resignation as Prime Minister, my first thought was "How do we celebrate?" And I will be raising a glass tonight in memory of having finally got rid of her as PM. But overall I think it's occasion for a more sober and reflective reaction. Because although we got rid of her, we didn't get rid of her legacy. We didn't then and we still haven't now.

She did some good things - freeing up the economy in general was a good thing. She went too far in this. An example is the licence given to bankers to drive us into recession by not giving a damn about prudence. Her opposition to Communism was a good thing - and eventually vindicated - but again she went much too far in vindictiveness towards any philosophy that didn't chime with hers. Women's rights didn't get too far under her reign.

But overall the worst part of her legacy is one we have hardly escaped at all, and it doesn't look as if we will in the foreseeable future. That is the pernicious poison that entered the nation's soul - a philosophy that greed was good as long as you could find a way of dressing it up, a view that the only person that counts is "me" (while all the time pontificating about family values, as long as they were for other people - remember Cecil Parkinson and his secretary). The sheer nastiness and hypocrisy of her reign was mirrored in the actions and activities of thousands of others, and was worked out in the enrichment of half the country at the expense of the other, poorer half. That viciousness is still alive in the attitudes of many people in this country today - not just Conservatives, though sadly many of them seem to echo those ideas and nonprinciples.

I will raise a glass to the end of Thatcher's reign, but unfortunately not to the end of Thatcherism.

Darwin, climate, DNA and ID cards

2009-11-24T09:32:00.001-08:00

Darwin's Origin of Species was apparently published 150 years ago today.

Our ability to understand science hasn't increased by much since then judging by the cranky arguments put forward by climate change deniers.

On the other hand the British public is showing an admirable sense of scepticism about ID cards - only 538 early adopters have signed up for one so far.

But then they probably have your DNA anyway.

Mobile phones in India

2009-11-19T07:43:00.000-08:00

India is apparently set to pass the one billion mobile phones mark in 2015. That's a lot of phones.

Think how many customers' data T-mobile could sell if they were active there. I still haven't had a reply from T-mobile to my email asking whether mine had been sold.

I think I agree with Anne Widdecombe

2009-11-09T14:01:00.000-08:00

And I don't often say that. I heard her on the radio, so I don't have the exact words, but she was saying that the Kelly recommendations on expenses are basically a dog's breakfast and will get changed the next time somebody has a sensible look at them.

The one that I find particularly illogical is the ban on employing relatives. It may turn out to be politically necessary, given the mood of the public, and the determination of our political leaders to be hairier shirted than thou, but I don't think it is administratively necessary or sensible. Leaving aside the reductio ad absurdum about where you draw the line, I think it is a bad principle. OK, some MPs have abused the position, but it's those abuses that should be dealt with, not the entire system. People break the speed limit every day but we don't ban cars because of that. The case everybody remembers is Derek Conway, whose action in paying his son a full time wage out of public funds to do nothing was frankly fraudulent and should have been the subject of legal action. If it couldn't be, then the accountability and enforcement of the system needs to be changed, not the system itself. People paid with public money should be subject to rules of accountability, like timesheets, and rules of enforcement, like spot checks, carried out of behalf of their employer, the public. If they're not prepared to put up with that, then they can get jobs elsewhere. If they want to take public money for the job they do,m then they should be subject to scrutiny. Proper scrutiny rather than banning the whole practice is the sensible and proper answer here.

How to make William Hague look shifty

2009-11-09T13:56:00.000-08:00

Ask him about Lord Ashcroft's tax status.

Watch him wriggle on the Andrew Marr show. And then ask yourself why the Independent, of all papers, is suddenly being nice to the Tory party with the headline: "Tories finally come clean on Ashcroft tax status"

It quotes William Hague as saying: "My conclusion, having asked him, is that he fulfilled the obligations that were imposed on him at the time that he became a peer." He added: "I imagine that [paying taxes in the UK] was the obligation that was imposed on him." And they call that coming clean.

The exchange, as I have it, starts at approx 1:16:20 and goes like this:

Marr: Do you know whether he pays tax in this country yet?
Hague: er ummmmmmm I'm sure he fulfils the obligations that were imposed upon him at the time he became... a peer...
Marr: So does he pay taxes in the UK?
Hague: I have... I have asked him, and my conclusion having asked him is that he has fulfilled the obligations laid on him at the time.
Marr: That's not quite the question.
Hague: As far as I...
Marr: Have you asked him?
hague: I have asked him, because I've been asked whether I've asked him before and my conclusion having asked him is that he fulfils the obligations that were imposed upon him at the time he became... a peer.
Marr: so does he pay tax here?
Hague: well, that, well....(that pause there is very telling) I imagine that was the obligation that was laid on him at the time...
Marr: So you think he does.
Hague: So I think he has fulfilled what was asked of him .... You can't expect me to know the details of somebody's tax affairs, but I have asked him and he has.
Marr: You must have asked him - it's a yes or no.
Hauge: I have asked him and he has fulfilled the obligations, which include...
Marr: So he could be your foreign policy adviser to you and there would be no problem as far as you're concerned.
Hague: Well, I'm not in the business of appointing foreign policy advisers, we haven't been elected yet.

Andrew Marr goes down in my estimation, by the way, for letting Hague off that hook so lightly. Why does Hague "imagine" - why doesn't he know? "You can't expect me to know the details of somebody's tax affairs", he says

Well, actually, yes, I can,

- when that somebody is the Tory party's primary bankroller
- and the party is using his money to buy the next election
- and the question has been asked consistently and dodged consistently for several years
- and your leader promises to be honest

then, yes, I do expect you to know precisely the tax status of the guy whose jets you borrow.

But he didn't answer the question. He did the time honoured politician's thing of sticking to a formula that he had learned in front of the mirror, and then saying that that answered the question. And he didn't do it very well. And, frankly, if a politician with the experience and front of William Hague sounds embarrassed about the answer he is giving, there is still a question that needs to be answered.

Drug policy remains a truth free zone

2009-10-30T11:12:00.000-07:00

So with the sacking of David Nutt drug policy remains a truth free zone for Labour, and also for the Tories, as Chris Grayling says it was inevitable. Solutions aren't easy, but our politicians are paid to deal with difficult issues, and they're just dodging this one.

Motion sensitive lights

2009-10-22T09:04:00.000-07:00

Theoretically I'm in favour of motion sensitive lights. Very good energy savers. But, now that I work in an office building that has them, I realise that they are work control devices. You're just settling down on the bog for a good read and the light goes out. You wave your hands around, but you can't turn it on again from inside the cubicle.... You have to go back to the office.

Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "motion sensitive".

Trafigura travesty

2009-10-13T02:05:00.000-07:00

In case you missed it, the Parliamentary question that the Guardian is not allowed to report on:

61 N Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme): To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of legislation to protect (a) whistleblowers and (b) press freedom following the injunctions obtained in the High Court by (i) Barclays and Freshfields solicitors on 19 March 2009 on the publication of internal Barclays reports documenting alleged tax avoidance schemes and (ii) Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura.

One rule for them...

2009-10-12T15:26:00.000-07:00

From the Telegraph:

"Last night, the Lib Dems, who are confident that they avoided the worst excesses, stepped up pressure on the Conservatives by calling on George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, to pay an estimated £55,000 in capital gains tax which they claim he avoided.

"Lord Oakeshott said: "George Osborne's catchphrase at the Tory conference was 'We're all in this together'. Perhaps he should make that 'except Conservative shadow chancellors and founder members of the Cameron club who flip their million-pound properties to dodge a £55,000 capital gains tax bill.'"

Alan Grayson on American healthcare

2009-10-01T01:35:00.000-07:00

With a hat tip to Next Generation Front Left, Alan Grayson deserves every minute of airtime he can get.

Pickles

2009-09-23T10:16:00.001-07:00

The Beeb offers Eric Pickles insight into politics (timed at 16.30), as his reaction to Nick Clegg's closing conference speech. He says only the Tories offer the chance of "a progressive, liberal government."

Sorry, mate, but what the Tories offer is a Tory government, Eton bred and Eton led, not remotely progressive, not remotely liberal.

Michael Martin gets his peerage

2009-08-28T09:24:00.001-07:00

Hat tip to Conservative Home for this one, which hat tips in turn Nigel Fletcher.

Michael Martin's elevation to the peerage was slipped out in the London Gazette this morning.

Perhaps that'll give somebody the impetus to get on and reform the place properly.

CCTV - wrong method, wrong purpose?

2009-08-25T07:27:00.000-07:00

I'm no great fan of CCTV. But neither am I a great fan of sloppy reporting or sloppy debate. We are told that CCTV cameras are an expensive waste of time because they don't help solve crime - except in one case per thousand cameras.

There are two things wrong with this analysis, if I can call it that. The first is that the evidence reported suggests it's not the cameras themselves that are failing, but the way they're being used. If the cameras don't take pictures, as is reported, and if they're being examined by untrained people (though I suppose we should be grateful it's being done here, and not outsourced to somewhere like the Philippines or Iowa), it's not surprising that things slip through.

And secondly, solving crime is not the only purpose of CCTV (I assume). Part of the purpose must be the prevention of crime. I have not found anywhere in the current reporting any evidence of whether areas with CCTV suffer less crime. In fact I don't know of any statistical evidence about this, so if anyone can point me to some I would be grateful. The only evidence I know of personally is a chat with a town centre car park caretaker one day a few months after cameras were installed in his car park. He said that prior to installation he used to have to sweep up glass from car headlights daily. Since their installation that had ceased to be part of his job because people didn't vandalise car headlights any more. So, has crime in CCTVed areas gone down, or do we have a particularly insouciant class of criminal in this country that continues to commit crime despite the probability of getting themselves recorded doing it?

On climate camps and policing

2009-08-24T03:39:00.000-07:00

This is great. (Hat tip Chickyog)

The best bit is why they don't trust the police: "because every time we hold a protest, the police turn up and start hitting people".

Prison, compassion and civilisation

2009-08-20T07:33:00.000-07:00

Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, was freed from jail today. The BBC reports the words of Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill:

"Mr al-Megrahi did not show his victims any comfort or compassion. They were not allowed to return to the bosom of their families to see out their lives, let alone their dying days. No compassion was shown by him to them.

"But that alone is not a reason for us to deny compassion to him and his family in his final days.

"Our justice system demands that judgement be imposed, but compassion be available. For these reasons and these reasons alone, it is my decision that Mr Mr Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al-Megrahi, convicted in 2001 for the Lockerbie bombing, now terminally ill with prostate cancer, be released on compassionate grounds and be allowed to return to Libya to die."

I believe he got that decision completely right. The grounds for it are the same as the grounds for the release of Ronnie Biggs, which I believe was also completely right. The background to the reasoning is different in the two cases, but is founded on the same principle.

In my view the consistency of the government's treatment of Ronnie Biggs goes back to the point at which he started moves to get back to this country in order to receive treatment on the NHS. There were people at that time saying he should not be allowed it, he should rot, etc, etc. But the decision to allow him back and to give him treatment was a supreme example of the British way of doing things. Ronnie Biggs was, and unfortunately still is, idolised by some because he beat the system. Newspaper pictures of him sipping champagne and pretending to a lifestyle that he rarely actually attained fed this delusive stance. When he returned to this country, he received his right, as a citizen of the UK - any citizen, whatever their moral or legal status - to treatment on the NHS. And in doing so we demonstrated that the system was then and always had been immeasurably better than that failed criminal and morally bankrupt person.

To my mind the same logic applied when it became apparent that he was terminally ill. (I am assuming that he actually is and hasn't been able to pull a Saunders.) There are rules that apply, and prisoners who are terminally ill are released from prison provided certain criteria are met. Biggs met these criteria so he was released, and I'm very glad that Jack Straw accepted the recommendation to release him and didn't try to do a Daily Mail. I am not glad for Biggs; as far as I am concerned he is contemptible. But I am glad because Jack Straw demonstrated again that the system that we have in this country is one to be proud of.

There is an argument that, because Biggs counts as a sort of celebrity prisoner, perhaps some political criteria should apply and he should perhaps be treated differently. It is a respectable argument but, without going into details, not one which, to my mind, applies in this case.

Now to al-Megrahi. (I will work on the basis that he is guilty, though I accept that there are arguments that he might not be.) The same two issues apply. Is he being treated according to the normal criteria? And are there arguments for saying that the normal criteria should not apply because of the nature of the case?

As far as I can see, he is being treated according to the normal criteria. These dictate that in his current state of health, he should be freed. Being free, he is then free to travel wherever he wishes. British law, quite properly, does not detain free people within these shores.

Should he be treated differently? Two reasons might apply. The first is that his crime was so heinous that he must be singled out from other criminals. The second is that political considerations might dictate that, in the fight against terrorism, it is legitimate and practical to apply different rules.

As to the first, I do not believe that a crime becomes more heinous simply because larger numbers are involved. Any murder is a terrible tragedy for the victim, for their family and for their friends. The fact that it has happened to 270 people instead of one does not make it materially different. On that basis it was quite right that al-Megrahi was treated according to the normal criteria.

The second issue is more complex. Many political issues may come into play. I take the view that any "political" element to the decision should be based on the classical practice of looking at what is in Britain's interests at this particular time and in these particular circumstances. Much will then depend on what one's view is of Britain's interests. One view weighs large for me. It is that, at this time it might be in Britain's interests to demonstrate to the world in general, to our own people, and to many in the Middle East, that we do things properly. Even when people blow planes out of the skies over our territory, we will not be pushed away from a path of consistent and civilised behaviour. We may change minds. Even if we don't, it was the right thing to do. I have no idea if political considerations came into play here, and if they did, I have no idea if this particular principle was among them. If it was, we have demonstrated again that our system is better than the criminals and others who seek to subvert it, and I am proud of that fact.

Pot and kettle?

2009-08-18T13:00:00.000-07:00

The Financial Times takes a pot at political blogging today (hat tip Tim Montgomerie).

This is one of their introductory sentences: "Readers can, if they so wish, live within a bubble where they are presented only with streams of evidence that support their prejudices. This is a particular problem in political blogging, where the effects of this tendency are intensified by writers' habit of linking mainly to like-minded..."

I believe that I can improve the accuracy of this sentence with one change:

"Readers can, if they so wish, live within a bubble where they are presented only with streams of evidence that support their prejudices. This is a particular problem with newspapers, where the effects of this tendency are intensified by writers' habit of linking mainly to like-minded..."

Violent crime, The Mail and Harriet Harman

2009-08-05T05:07:00.000-07:00

The Mail says it's wrong to teach boys not to hit girls. Dressed up in the usual plicrecknessgummad verbiage and attacks on Harriet Harman. I think they mainly don't like it because it was her idea. The Enemies Of Reason has done a very good job of fisking the whole thing. But there's just one small feature I would like to comment on. Part of the Mail's argument against teaching boys not to hit girls is that girls hit boys too. Here's their quote (suitably illustrated) "Police figures reveal a massive rise in the number of women arrested for 'violence against the person' offences which more than doubled from 37,000 ten years ago to 88,000 last year." So the immediate question is what proportion of all violent crime is that. Well, the Mail, to do it credit, does give us a proportion. In the previous paragraph it says "A quarter of all violent assaults in England and Wales are carried out by women". So the fact that three quarters of assaults are carried out by men is not a reason for teaching them not to, apparently.

And of course statistics are always murky. I've had a quick check through the crime figures on the Home Office's Research Development Statistics site. The latest figures for overall violence against the person (visible here in an Excel file) are 81% carried out by men, 14% by women, and 5% by both. The domestic violence figures are close to the Mail's so that, I assume, is the one they're using. That is 74% by men, 24% by women, and 2% by both.

Either way a massive preponderance of the violence is by men not by women, and something needs to be done about that. A summary of the report which sparked this "Saving Lives. Reducing Harm. Protecting the Public." is available here - and the full report can be downloaded from that page - it's a 1MB pdf.

Sounds like the Chinese are just like us then

2009-08-04T06:54:00.000-07:00

From the BBC: China 'trusts prostitutes more'.

The article is better reading than the vacuously incomplete headline. I particularly appreciate the placing of real estate developers near the bottom.

My overall reaction, though, is "Are we surprised by anything on this list?" Answer: "No".

Bletchley Park

2009-08-04T02:33:00.000-07:00

I often wonder how I can celebrate being English, and indeed being British, without idiots like the BNP thinking I'm on their side. But it's no good keeping quiet just because *they* happen to be waving *my* flag. So I thought I might state from time to time things I'm proud of, without any implication of scorning other peoples and what they might be proud of.

Now here is something to to be very proud of. I've been to many, many stately places and national monuments, but few made me feel the way Bletchley Park did. British codebreaking and British computing genius played an inestimable part in winning the war against Nazism.

The Bombe, designed to test Enigma rotor settings.

Alan Turing's office. Looking into a very ordinary office with a sense of awe because I was in the presence of greatness.

Colossus. In the presence of more greatness - in two ways. Not just the awe inspiring original, but also the dedication of the amateurs who have spent more than six years recreating it.

View from the American Garden across the lake to the huts.

The sad state of some of the buildings today, which illustrates why Bletchley Park needs help with funds. These Paypal and Worldpay links enable you to donate to Bletchley Park online.

There's more on what you can do to help at Saving Bletchley Park.

Downing Street on Twitter

2009-07-21T15:04:00.000-07:00

I've been looking around the various government sites that are on Twitter. The first one I found was the Foreign Office. Then I found Communities. Downing St has an account, all about Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson. I've decided to follow FCO - it looks interesting. I thought about following Sarah Brown, who looks quite interesting, but I didn't feel up to it.

The FCO has currently 5745 followers, and is following 5452. Communities has 3829, and is following 3896. Downing St has 1,016,522 (good for you, smashing the one million barrier, Downing St), and is following ... wait for it... 499,931. Well, good for you again Downing St, for using Twitter the way it's meant to be used, as a two way channel. And whoever does the actual tweeting sounds like a pleasant helpful sort of person (go have a look). But I do wonder about the mechanics of following half a million people. His twitter stream must be scrolling at ninety miles per hour.

Or is there maybe another explanation? Maybe all those tweets are being fed in to a computer somewhere, so Downing St can build up "a picture". Maybe it's a cunning ploy to bring the database state in through the back door. Just a thought.

Mr Call Me Green

2009-07-17T17:06:00.000-07:00

Dave call-me-green Cameron went to Norwich today for a meeting on biofuels.

He went by helicopter. For a twenty minute meeting.

What a complete charlatan he is.

Hat tips to Andrew Reeves and Liberal Burblings.

Armed Forces Day

2009-06-27T06:12:00.000-07:00

It's Armed Forces Day today. I didn't know about it till today. I don't know if that means I haven't been paying attention or it hasn't been very well advertised. It certainly should have been advertised. I don't think our armed forces get enough appreciation from either the government or the public. I remember, though I don't have links to them now, various stories in recent months about soldiers being advised not to leave their barracks in uniform because of the prevalence of abuse. That shouldn't happen; our forces should be respected for the job they do for us, regardless of what we think about the political decisions that lead to their engagement.

My daughter has just told me they announced it at Wimbledon before start of play, which was nice.

Stephen Hester and RBS

2009-06-22T14:35:00.000-07:00

Bankers must have heaved a glutinous sigh of relief when the MPs' expenses row came along and took the spotlight off them. But, swings and roundabouts, as soon as the MPs get their heftily holed ship just about on an even keel again, bankers go and put themselves back in the spotlight. And it doesn't look as if they've changed a bit.

It looks to me as if noses are still well in troughs, and the troughs are still gargantuan. RBS will be paying Stephen Hester close to £10 million if he gets things right. Getting it right will involve upping the share price and keeping it there for a while, so that the government can recoup some of their investment on behalf of the taxpayer.

After a bit of thinking, I've decided I'm not against huge sums of money being paid to people providing they earn it. Will Stephen Hester earn his? There are some interesting questions about that. I'm afraid I'm not persuaded by the argument that the board, led by Sir Philip Hampton, are paying a truly exceptional sum for a truly exceptional talent. They might be for all I know, but that argument has been discredited by being used too often of the mediocre talents, like Fred Goodwin, that got us into this situation in the first place. I have no way of knowing if Hester is a truly exceptional talent.

The exceptional talent argument is also suspect in its basis. Does an institution as massive as RBS really rely so heavily on the talent or otherwise of one person in one position? Does it not also rely on the talent and commitment of thousands of others, right down to cashier level - you know, the ones who, occasionally at least, actually meet the customers? Should they not also be rewarded commensurately?

But, OK, for the moment, let us accept that one man will make so much difference that it is worth trolling out £10m for him. Even so some questions still spring to mind. The answers to the questions I still have may be available, but I haven't been able to find them. There seems to be a lot that we still don't know about exactly how things are going to work.

The package is £1.2m in salary, £2m in annual non-cash bonus payment (what can you get that's non-cash and is worth £2m?), and up to £6.4m in bonuses if he achieves certain objectives, which appear to be nearly all, if not all, reaching certain share price thresholds. The share and stock options will be made in the 2009 pay package but can only be redeemed in three years' time. Also the bank retains the right to claw back the incentives if they don't believe that the share price has been raised by sensible decisions.

Now in essence, that seems like the beginnings of a sensible scheme. There is actually a series of tangible targets, rather than the directors just signing on the bottom line of a silly deal that gave the CEO squillions of pounds of the shareholders money regardless of success or failure. And the targets are for the future, not for now, so decisions have to be made that will have long term effect. And finally, there is a get out clause for the directors, that enables them not to pay if the decision making process that leads to the targets being met is seen not to be sensible.

But to my mind there is one big weakness and one big absence in what has been reported so far. The weakness is that the system is still in place where the corporate directors all fill each other's pockets in one big merry go round. What will happen if we get to three years' time and the share price has got to 70p, but it is obvious that it has been got there through a process that has done the bank no long term good? The discretion lies with the directors as to whether to withdraw the bonuses. Will they? Or will they allow them knowing that not to do so, to show some backbone about it, would put them out of kilter with all their friends on the corporate gravy train. Will those directors be kind to Stephen Hester because they know that if they are not, corporate doors will suddenly start closing on them all over the UK, and their gravy train lifestyle is suddenly put in jeopardy? The system, the elitism of the inner core has not changed, has not even been dented. I doubt if they will have any wish or any motive to rock the boat.

And the missing bit is any word about what will happen if he fails. If the share price still bumps along at about 35p, if lending does not pick up, if new business does not come in, he will still have been paid over £1m for a year's non-success. What happens if the share price drops? What happens if the unthinkable comes to pass and the directors decide he needs to go? Will they sack him, or will they let him resign? How many months salary in lieu of notice will he walk away with? It ought to be none - on a salary of £100,000 a month, he ought to be able to put a bit aside. But I'll bet that in the details we haven't been told yet there will be a nice comfy parachute. Not as gross as Goodwin's, even RBS don't have the face to do that again. But will there still be a pension for him? There is no word on that, yet, and I do not think that is a good sign.

Did you want this computer?

2009-06-19T13:28:00.000-07:00

Well, you can't have it.

Paint It Black

2009-06-19T08:34:00.000-07:00

I see expenses and I want them painted black
No colors anymore I want them to turn black
I see homes walk by flipped in their summer clothes
I have to turn my head until my darkness goes
I see a line of MPs, they're all painted black
With moats and islands never to come back
I see committees turn and quickly look away
Like an old Speaker it just happens every day
I look inside myself and see my heart is black
I see my Telegraph and it's been painted black
Maybe they'll fade away, refuse to face the facts
Its not easy facing up when your whole world is black
Etc

With apologies to the Rolling Stones

It's only one step

2009-06-18T05:55:00.000-07:00

But it's a very significant one. The Home Office has delayed awarding the big contracts on ID cards until after the next election, the Register (my favourite techie source, reports. (Hat tip Costigan). I wouldn't say, like Costigan, that the battle is over. Far too much can happen between now and then - even the possibility that the Conservatives could get into power and then find a reason for changing their minds. Stranger things have happened than a Conservative government finding a sudden liking for things that centralise power. And stranger things have happened than them saving the necessary cash by axing a few wards and blaming somebody else. So a step has been taken but we need to maintain vigilance and pressure.

The Telegraph and the eyeliner story

2009-06-03T13:21:00.000-07:00

So I've had a nice letter back from the Telegraph in response to my complaint about their treatment of Jo Swinson. They say it was written "with care and in a way that will (sic) be readily understood by our readers". Written with such care that both the BBC and the Guardian (mislaid the link) misunderstood it.

They also say the facts are not in dispute.

They end by saying that there was no breach of the PCC Code of Practice.

In other words, they haven't done anything wrong and they haven't broken any rules. Does that sound familiar?

The Observer half endorses us, Rawnsley doesn't

2009-05-31T04:45:00.000-07:00

I have decided that I am no longer going to be grateful for small mercies.

It is a small mercy that Andrew Rawnsley has said very nice things about us in the Observer today. He says the LibDems alone are truly serious about electoral reform. He skewers Cameron for his non-credentials on the issue. He excoriates Brown for his puny record on constitutional reform and his opposition to voting reform. He says quite correctly that the Liberal Democrats are the only party that has been consistently in favour of transparency about expenses. (How David Cameron must wish for a bit of Stalin's power to rewrite history so that he could forget the Conservative attempt - abetted by Labour - to exempt MPs from the Freedom of Information Act). He says if you want serious constitutional reform you should vote LibDem. And then he says - "This is not an endorsement of the Lib Dems." I'm sorry, Andrew, but why can you not bring yourself to give us an endorsement? Where is the logic in saying all that you have just said, and then saying that you are not going to give us your backing? You have just become a microcosm of the self defeating political behaviour of this country. Yes, we're great, you say. Yes, we are the party with the consistent policies on green issues - which you like. Yes, we are the party with the consistent policies on the economy - which you like. Yes, we are the party with the consistent policies on poltiical reform issues - which you like. Yes, we are the party - the only party -with the consistent policies on transparency issues - which you like. Yet, you are still not going to endorse us. Why not, Andrew? Why not? We are the party with the answers you like on environmental issues, on reform, on transparency, on Europe, miles ahead on the economy. Stop being so mealy mouthed. Put us in power and give us a chance to show you what we can do.

It is also a small mercy that the Observer has editorially endorsed us for Europe on Thursday. That's nice. Here's what they have to say.

"On the environment, on civil liberties and on the mounting debt bubble, the Lib Dems were quietly but consistently ahead of the Westminster curve.

"Likewise on transparency. In 2007, they opposed the Conservative move, tacitly encouraged by Labour, to exempt Parliament from the Freedom of Information Act. The Lib Dems alone took a party line for openness.

"That is worth recalling as Mr Cameron and Mr Brown engage in an unseemly scramble for reformist credentials."

And yet despite being accurate about our policies and our consistency on major domestic and international issues as well as Europe, they have only endorsed us for the European elections. They haven't said a word about the local elections happening on the same day. Why ever not? We have a great record on local government as well as all the nice things they said about us in their editorial. But still only half an endorsement. I said it to Rawnsley, so I'll say it to the Observer. We know we can do it. You know we can do it. You've just given all the reasons why we can do it. Give us your backing and give us a chance to do it.

Dorries is back

2009-05-27T13:17:00.000-07:00

I'm very glad that Nadine Dorries' blog is back up. She should never have been taken down in the first place. But, my, what a pile of self pitying drivel.

Meanwhile on the duck island front

2009-05-23T10:25:00.000-07:00

Hampshire's Daily Echo has an article on how you can build a duck island just like Peter Viggers' for £20. Read it here.

Hat tip: I spotted this on another blog, but I regret to say that I have lost the link now. (Got carried away writing letters of complaint about the treatment of Jo Swinson and Nadine Dorries.) Whoever it was, if you let me know....

Nadine Dorries

2009-05-23T10:15:00.000-07:00

Nadine Dorries' blog has been taken down at the request of the Daily Telegraph. This is quite shameless behaviour by the Telegraph. They started out doing us a service by publishing a lot of detail about MPs' expenses that might well never otherwise have seen the light of day. But they have really taken their eye off the ball since the first few revelations. They must have about 200 decent stories to tell about moats, duck houses, flipping and mortgages, but they have started to fabricate stories around the flimsiest evidence. To be fair, they have published a few saints as well as the many sinners, but it seems they are more interested in finding more sinners than in telling the truth. Their treatment of Jo Swinson, dipped in sexism and innuendo, demeans them, and so does, now, their treatment of Nadine Dorries. Dorries is a Conservative, a fairly right wing one, and I am a Liberal Democrat. I disagree with practically everything she says. But I defend absolutely her right to say it. The Telegraph have used an imbalance in the law to compromise freedom of speech. They should be ashamed, but I doubt they will be. They are now flirting with gutter politics as well as with gutter journalism.

Who said, and when?

2009-05-22T11:34:00.000-07:00

Who said "It is difficult to think how much lower our collective reputation might sink" and when?

It was Frank Field, in January 2008. The quote is from a BBC report at the time. (Hat tip to Liberal Vision for that one.) The occasion was the outing of Derek Conway's little scam. For more details of that, go to A Man For All Sleazons, and scroll down (you'll have to scroll a fair way to get past all the other Tory crooks.

The matchless Anthony Steen

2009-05-21T14:59:00.001-07:00

Tory MP Anthony Steen reckons it's all the wretched government's fault for introducing the Freedom of Information Act, because otherwise he wouldn't have been caught. Listen here - it's priceless. When the election comes this deserves to be played over and over again.

The hope, the despair

2009-05-14T15:45:00.000-07:00

So, after all the hype and the preparation, all the promises and the optimism, all the hopes of glory, the UK bows out once again before the semifinals, beaten by the likes of Russia, China, Belarus and even weedy North Korea. Yes, Cryptohippie's "Electronic Police State - 2008" gives us a mere fifth place in the world rankings. No doubt some among us will try to save some vestige of self respect by noting that we are the top non ex-Communist state in the rankings, and no doubt some of us will be heartily cheered that England and Wales did so much better than the pusillanimous Scots (a pathetic thirteenth place). But, frankly, what is that worth? After all the time, money and effort we have poured into this, after all the promises of turning us into a centre of excellence, a world leader in the business of spying on our own citizens, all the investment, all the assurances that we would recover our greatness in the world, our position as a leader among nations, we still end fifth, behind a bunch of ex-Commie panelbeaters.

Of course they started with an advantage. Not so long ago, we were a relatively free state. The Commies were light years ahead of us in intrusion, surveillance, detention without trial, setting husband against wife, father against son. To be fair we've made up a lot of ground since then. We can give them a run for their money on CCTV any day; in kettling we are world leaders, and on ID we are making significant inroads. And we can be proud of the efforts our police are making to break down community cohesion and make sure that nobody trusts anybody else. But the fact is that we are still less professional than they are, less ruthless, less unforgiving, less perfectionist about the little things that really matter.

Take this example - the police try the professional approach of getting surveillance data on anybody doing anything, and some bumped up bureaucrat tells them off. That's not the sort of attitude that wins world titles, is it?

And this case, where the Met did their job, tightening the screws on all forms of learning and self-expression, and then when they had it in the bag, they actually let themselves be manoevred into removing the boy's data from their database. You wouldn't find the Russians or the North Koreans doing that would you?

The moral is clear - we have to raise our game, if we are to take our rightful place at the head of the world ranking for electronic surveillance.

Readers of this post who cannot understand the concept of irony might like to look it up on Wikipedia.

The joys of a silent keyboard

2009-05-14T14:02:00.000-07:00

I went to a conference recently on Technology for Health Systems Strengthening (THeSyS). Not a huge conference, about 30 people altogether. (Great conference - really enjoyed it.) There was the usual request to turn off mobile phones, but I noticed that several other people didn't so I didn't either. That suited me because I was able to use my WAP connection to twitter and text from the conference to various people.

This post is partly about manners, partly about psychology and partly about technology. Manners first. I knew I was OK in a sense because my phone is set not to make any noise. Texts arrive silently, and phone calls are set to vibrate. Other people don't have that, and apparently don't know how to set their phones to silent for the duration of the conference, so we did get a couple of interruptions from quirkily individual ring tones.

I continued to work on the assumption that my phone was OK, and I sent a series of tweets during the two days of the conference. You can find them in my Twitterstream.

I was recently at another conference where one of my fellow delegates was using his computer to microblog from the conference. Fair enough, but he said afterwards he thought it was acceptable because he was typing quietly. I was sitting four seats away from him and the noise of his keyboard was enough to distract me from what the speakers were saying (combined with poor acoustics and speakers who mumbled a fair bit...) He seemed to take exception to being told that. I think part of the issue here is that people don't hear their own noise - what's quiet to the creator can be quite a nuisance to somebody else. But it points up the need for an etiquette of conferencing.

I noticed by the same token that once I was using my mobile phone this way, I became a lot more tolerant of other people's. When other people's go off in meetings I usually find it a complete wind up. In fact I don't go into the quiet carriage on train journeys, because they're never actually quiet. There is always a succession of idiots who don't care what noise they make or haven't noticed that it's a quiet carriage, and that makes my blood boil so much that it's not worth it. Not all phone users are like that, but there is a sufficient minority who really don't care about other people to make it difficult for all of us. But this time I minded a lot less. I almost completely forgave the mangled sound of REM. I guess that it was infrequent enough and gentle enough not to interrupt the flow of the conference. And I was involved as well, so not only could I not complain, I didn't actually want to.

Those two experiences have set me wondering about what to do next. I was intending to buy a netbook to do my mobile computing on. I had thought I might continue to use my phone for conferences, but it's quite clunky. Its chief benefit is that using it is silent (as opposed to just "quiet"). But texting takes an age. I have an HTC TyTn, with either a stylus or a full, but minute, keyboard. I can use either with facility but both take a while. And connectivity is often a pain. I lost count of the number of times I rebooted it at THeSyS just to try to get a connection again. This may have distracted me from the business of the conference - I don't think it did much as I have 13 pages of notes. So I have begun the search for a computer with a silent keyboard. Not many of those about - maybe there's a gap in the market there.

Gurkhas

2009-04-26T09:15:00.000-07:00

You can fight for us. You can die for us. You just can't live here. Says Labour.

"Tory MEP's expenses..."

2009-04-24T07:57:00.000-07:00

Himmelgarten Café exposes in detail the huge scale of sleaze in the case of Tory MEP, Den Dover, outlined in less detail in my previous post.

I think it is very important in these days when the focus is turned on Labour sleaze, not to forget what the country might end up replacing them with. It would be very definitely a case of out of the frying pan into the fire.