Jeremy Sare's Political Blog

All My Pretty Chickens

2012-02-15T18:48:00.001Z

The arrests on Saturday morning of a few more senior Sun journalists has really got the whole news room spooked.
With the sister paper (more like detested stepsister) News of the World suddenly being disbanded by the Murdochs, there is understandable fear the same fate awaits the Super Soaraway. It prompted political editor, Trevor Kavanagh (pictured), to write a

snarling attack on News Corp bosses, any other time a sacking offence. But what does Trev have to lose? He may yet regret admitting payments were "standard procedure" and his belief there was "nothing illegal" about it.

This of course is not phone-hacking but allegations of payments to police officers and other officials which threatens to draw in federal investigators in the US. It could be a lot more costly to the organisation than merely shutting the gates on a 150 year-old paper.
Defenders of the Number One are scarce. Newsnight dug up the dismal Nic Ferrari who whined like an adolescent about the manner in which his chums were arrested and how many officers were on the Elveden investigation as if the other guests were of the same intellect as the average Sun reader.
"This is just a smokescreen. The question is 'was there a crime'?" bellowed Murdoch biographer Michael Woolf.
Ferrari, previous defender of the humiliated cop Andy Hayman, moaned on about the dawn raids but it was left to Tom Watson MP to point out the bleedin obvious about the NI journalists and edtitors previous obfuscation and flat denial. " It is News International's behaviour that is to blame for police having to devote immense time and resources to establish the facts. By deliberately lying to the police and trashing evidence they have made the job far more complex and expensive than it should have been...the notion that the police might politely ring up to make an appointment to see a Sun journalist for a civilised chat is far-fetched. It takes some nerve for News International, in the form of Kavanagh, to be accusing the police of wasting time and resources."
Today's front page picture of the late Whitney Houston's bath where she died shows the Currant Bun has lost one of its ghoulish zeal. But its dependance on its pre-eminence status is not just in doubt, these could be the final editions. But in that case the hacks would expect a little more sensitivity about the recent demise.

I Can Put it into Three Words - DIY

2012-02-10T16:52:00.002Z

The Health and Social Bill has already been amended in over 130 clauses, something of a modern day record. The Government has resisted about 1,000 more.
One fairly important one was to ensure the Secretary of State was still responsible for the NHS. Lansley, for it is he, had wanted to palm off accountability to some Commission Board. So whenever a hospital closed or people started dying in droves on waiting lists, he would have been able to say to any Parliamentary Question "Not me Guv, ask the Board of unelected officials."
The founder of the NHS Aneurin Bevan (above) would have not been surprised by the Conservative plans for opening the door to private sector on health. Bevan's greatest achievement was banishing the unaffordability of healthcare for most people - under the guise of bureaucracy busting, Cameron is letting it in again.
It would be one thing if the department were robustly confident in the provisions but clearly there is huge anxiety in Whitehall. The routine matter of publishing the Bill's risk register has been resisted to the point of legal challenge. A Commons debate on it next week should be a pivotal point for the Grand Architect Lansley.
The fear among senior sources is it will say something like "tens/hundreds of millions of pounds of public money will almost certainly be sucked out by private enterprise."
The Bill also allows for services to be opened out to European law like any knicker factory. It means an ambitious private healthcare provider could takeover a region's provision for say, X-Ray at a loss, ruin the opposition then bump up the prices later.
There are dark murmurings in the corridors of Tory HQ about this being another poll tax and indeed it could be on that scale of unpopularity once its full potential is realised. One difference is the Tories put the poll tax in their manifesto. This colossal upheaval has not even got a mandate.
Overall it is simply asking too much of doctors who predominantly want to care for patients rather than project manage all the area's primary health care. As Dr. Clare Gerada, of Royal College of GPs put it, "Doctors are like the pilots...they just want to fly the plane, not build it as well."

What, really?

2012-02-06T12:42:00.004Z

At the next European conference on climate change, British Ministers will have explain to their counterparts, the absence of Chris Huhne as Secretary of State.
It would amusing to see their faces when it is revealed he resigned for allegedly declaring his wife was driving so to avoid a speeding ticket ten years ago. In politics this must amount to being the smallest scandal ever.
A Guardian survey showed around 300,000 people have committed this 'easy' offence so it should be stressed a custodial sentence must be very unlikely. The Mail suggested two years in jug was usual for conspiring to pervert the course of justice. So it is, but it is also usually associated with witness intimidation. This is hardly the same.
In fact Keir Starmer, the DPP perhaps should perhaps have not brought this prosecution at all as it barely seems to be in the public interest. Of course it is technically an offence so Huhne can only scowl privately about how a petty media campaign driven by Telegraph and Mail has led to his resignation. But the biggest joker of all is his ex-wife who certainly caused him no end of stress in revealing some collusion but now finds she too will be in the dock.

The Race is Run

2012-02-02T11:23:00.004Z

The previous England captain to be charged with a criminal offence was Bobby Moore (left) in 1970. It was an obvious stitch up to make old Mooro look like a shoplifter in some jewelry store in Bogota and was meant to disrupt the team's preparation of defending the World Cup.
A more honest leader of England you could not find. Bobby Moore stood as a model of professionalism and integrity.
Not so the current holder of the post, the somewhat less respected John Terry. Putting to one side some of his family's criminal behaviour and his infidelity with a team mate's wife, Terry has defiled the post by his being charged wth racially abusing QPR defender Anton Ferdinand. He has pleaded 'not guilty' to the charges and his trial is now set for July 9 having got dispensation from the court to lead England in the European Championship this summer.
Why has he not been suspended? Is there no moral dimension to the national game any longer? Reading the columnists this morning it is hard to find a supporter for Terry. But nothing has changed in essence since November when he was first charged. He should have been dropped from the team then and if Chelsea had any honour he should be dropped from his club too.
It is hard to see him resigning and Capello (to his discredit) hasn't commented so it is up to the FA to be decisive. Because, as Liverpool FC have found, if you don't condemn racism unequivocally, you just encourage it.

Less for the Least

2012-02-02T10:09:00.000Z

There is scene in Alan Bleasdale’s ‘Boys from the Blackstuff’ when a world-weary DHSS manager (Jean Boht) advises an aggressive colleague from pursuing a prosecution against two unemployed builders, “We’d just be taking from people who have got nothing.”

The same could be said of the current Government plans to set charges on single parents for using the Child Support Agency. They would have to forego 12 per cent of their money; most are paid less than £20 a week.

The House of Lords inflicted a miserable defeat on the Government of 270 to 128 and so sent the unequivocal message that it would have to be amended. But then came brutally terse response from DWP, “We are disappointed the Lords seem content to leave in place a system which has consistently failed children...we will seek to overturn this in the Commons.”

Such defiance in the face of a decisive Parliamentary vote looked like pointless arrogant posturing. The rebels were led by former Tory ministers Lords Mackay and Newton. Even Brian Mawhinney voted against which should suggest a tactical retreat is called for. The Government’s position was to compel couples to seek voluntary agreements. The Child Support Agency was established because voluntary agreements we not workable. To charge the poorest of the poor for a dismal service amounts to a new low in the Victorian patriarchy of the DWP led by IDS and Chris Grayling (pictured).

The substantial defeat was simply ignored by invoking the little used "financial privilege" which was established in 1911 to prevent the peers rejecting Budgets. It can be used on a wider basis, subject to Speaker's agrement, but is a 'nuclear option' necessarily undermining the authority of the upper House. Clearly they don't care.

Don't Call me Brother

2012-01-16T11:42:00.001Z

Perhaps the recent criticism of Ed Milliband's leadership has been unfair. At times the media acts collectively to pour poison into the public's ear about some party leader, think of Michael Foot, Hague and IDS.
But just when the neutrals were forming a negative opinion, Ed then decides to estrange his entire core support.
It was bad enough conceding to Tory policy on freezing public sector pay for five years and presenting the false capitalist choice of decent pay or jobs. But then he conceded the entire deficit reduction plan.
So what is Labour for now it supports wholesale decimation of public services and soaring unemployment and poverty? By capitulating to the Coalition Government's pernicious policies, Ed has given up the game before it has barely started. His gauche imploring with empty hand gestures wasn't working with the public before - now he has handed over the only weapons he had. No sign of KBO here.
The party rules on selecting a new leader support the incumbency. I would not favour a defenestration usually becuase division leads inexorably to election defeat but I would support any new candidate who set out his opposition to cuts in benefit for the disabled, to sky-high tuition fees and an obsolete nuclear deterrent. And I suspect I am not the only one.

Sweating It

2012-01-16T09:47:00.004Z

I thought politics was the "art of the possible" (Bismark). Have the English politicians learnt nothing of the Scots over 300 years to know edicts from Wesminster invariably cause an equally opposite reaction?
Cameron, Clegg and Osbourne's artless attempts to force the Scottish people to accept their version of a referendum is doomed to fail. And Alec Salmond is riding that wave of antipathy to the 'auld enemy' with consummate ease.
The two main conditions they wish to impose is on timing - by end next year - and the format - a simple yes/no without an option to extend Holyrood's powers.
In neither case can they point to some grander democratic principle other than "we think we can fix it so you don't leave."
I am a fierce advocate of the union, I am very much British before I am English, But we have to recognise the Scots have every right to self-determination and if that is what they wish to vote for it can only be antagonistic to try and dissuade them with baseless fears of economic meltdown.
The main tactic deployd appears to be to change the question; it would looks likely they would vote for Devo-Max which has no similar scare story to independence. So Cameron and gang talk as if Devo-Max doesn't exist as an option.
I am not convincd the timing, to co-incide with the 700 anniversay of Bannockburn, will sway it for the SNP. But Robert the Bruce's (pictured) story is quite extra-ordinary and he did re-establish independence. But it is Westminster's superior manner over the troublesome Celts will certainly stiffen the resolve of the die-hards and force the hand of many neutrals.

Let it all Hang Out

2012-01-06T19:59:00.000Z

Blair did it. And Brown tried to do it. Cameron seems a natural. I mean writing entirely pointless OpEd pieces “full of sound and fury...signifying nothing.”

Cameron’s target in yesterday’s Evening Standard was the illusory Health and Safety culture, largely the invention of tabloids, “which has become an albatross around the neck of British businesses.”
He even referred to pupils wearing eye protectors to play conkers when it has long been exposed as a stunt by a Headteacher. The article was full of empty rhetoric such as seeking “the real pioneering, risk-taking spirit” and making it “the time our country really goes for it”. It read like a master imploring his boys in the school magazine to really get stuck into helping out at the next Arts and Crafts show.
Except this is the Prime Minister’s growth theory. This level of laissez faire is unheard of even when Keith 'Mad Monk; Joseph (pictured) and Geoffrey Howe sat in the Cabinet wishing Liverpool would just fall into the sea.
The piece was written with barely any examples, figures or supporting quotes. Presumably the word of the PM should be enough to be convincing.
He showed he had a laughable expectation about the outcome of his dreary visionary zeal. “I want 2012 to go down in history not just as Olympics year or Diamond Jubilee year, but the year we banished a lot of this pointless time-wasting from the economy and British life once and for all.” Has a PM uttered anything so silly since Blair wanted to march vandals to the cash-point?
He referred to Lord Young’s investigation into the compensation culture “an expert in his field”. However the noble Lord found, “The problem of the compensation culture prevalent in society today is, however, one of perception rather than reality.... fuelled by media stories.”
The Health and Safety Executive was established to allow individuals protection from unscrupulous and negligent employers. The sub-plot of Cameron’s text is the ‘Employer is King’ and the individual, a nuisance.
It was interesting that on the same page of the Evening Standard was a warning about a potentially dangerous baby’s high chair which had failed Health and Safety Regulations and caused several injuries. Cameron may find it annoying for businesses to abide by these pesky burdensome rules but I think manufacturers should be compelled to ensure their product doesn’t allow babies to fall on their heads.

You Don't Know What You're Doing

2012-01-04T20:36:00.000Z

I am quite staggered by the crassness of the once fine club, Liverpool FC, in the Suarez/Evra race affair.

By his own admission Suarez used the word ‘negro’ to Evra and so breached the FA code of using a word agressively to another player specific to his skin colour. We usually call that racism.
For Liverpool to whinge and carp about it’s all being “subjective” is patent nonsense. The FA clearly expected this infantile and angry response and so deployed sufficient resource to draw up a bomb-proof account of the testimony and its judgement. An eight match ban was about right.
Suarez himself hardly helped his defence by flicking a finger at the Fulham crowd last week, thereby underlining his petulance and crudeness.
It is of no significance whatever if racism in Uruguay has been tackled to such a pitiful degree that ‘negro’ can be used in a “commonplace” manner. This is not Uruguay and our rules on racism stand for this country.
But it is also extremely arrogant for the club to mount its self-defeating defence of this boorish behaviour on the day the country was focussing on a court case of the long awaited justice from racism.

The Banality of Evil

2012-01-04T19:52:00.001Z

Some years ago, I heard a girl at a party say she was from Eltham - I immediately thought of the Stephen Lawrence case.

I had recently worked in an official capacity at Eltham police station when the Macpherson report was first published. But I thought, maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned it as the chances she had any connection were pretty slim. When I mentioned the murder, she said, “Actually, I went to school with Gary Dobson...I can’t imagine him getting involved in anything like that.”
“Well I bloody can, “ I replied angrily. “He didn’t come out of that surveillance video too well did he?”
The moment clouded the whole evening and I remember thinking the discomfort and awkwardness was all for the good. In the 80s such a line may have just passed because of the intractable embarrassed fear around British racism. To challenge a racist comment in a pub was as good as an open invitation to violence. But finally, years after the death of Stephen Lawrence, we have become able to confront it and so diminish it.
The Home Secretary at the time, Jack Straw, can take some credit for the transformation of dealing with race issues, particularly in institutions such as the Home Office and Met Police. It required leadership to tell the police their partiality on grounds of race amounted to being unprofessional and Straw had the political courage to do it.
I was recruited by his private office to work in a team of Government Liaison Officers at Eltham nick. There was not much to do but observe the coppers, drink tea and read the whole Macpherson report. I was pretty surprised the language of the officers was peppered with words I had only heard on the Sweeney, such as slags (criminals), Toms (prostitutes), nonce (sex offender) and blag (robbery). The canteen culture was clearly very strong, even the WPCs effected a pretty nauseating macho outlook.
But the other disturbing aspect was the area of Eltham itself. There was an overt, menacing atmosphere. The examples of hate mail sent to schools, shopkeepers and individuals was intrinsically violent in the extreme. It felt alien to me as part of London, like somewhere locked in the early 70s. It was shameful and despicable.
That won’t have changed a great deal and I am sure there are many households across the capital and the country where the convictions of Dobson and Norris will have been derided in the foulest terms. And with their kids listening.

Not Descended from Fearful Men

2011-12-22T19:55:00.002Z

A friend of mine sent me a link last week to an old interview of the finest cricket commentator, John Arlott, in conversation with the erudite former England captain, Mike Brearley.
Just before I indulged in some cricket nostalgia, I finally got round to viewing the Youtube hit of the racist outburst of foul and bitter woman on a South London tram. Her rambling diatribe culminated in the very essence of ignorance and racial intolerance, “You’re not British: you’re black.”

I am not sure there could be a greater contrast on the spectrum of human intelligence and understanding than between that harridan and the gentle rythmic prose of John Arlott.
He was an old-fashioned liberal with a generally conservative outlook but also with progressive views on the need for social progress in Britain on class and colour. His unyielding stand against the hateful values of apartheid, tied to the principles of cricket and fair play, during the D’Oliveira affair pricked the conscience of the nation. Britain had to decide in its post colonial era whether it was acceptable to judge people by the colour of their skin and being mainly a people of discerning outlook, we chose to reject discrimination.
Of course, prejudice will never be eradicated but John Arlott was a voice of rare eloquence and persuasiveness at a pivotal moment in our history.

Simple and Plain

2011-12-20T20:27:00.003Z

Home Secretary, Theresa May, wrote in the Mail on Sunday about the “lessons I have learned” about the August riots. She needn’t have bothered.
La May was, I guess, obliged to attend the LSE/Guardian conference ‘Reading the Riots’ last week which demonstrated plenty of evidence of police harassment and deep poverty of opportunity which is fuelling inner city anger. Once unleashed it allowed mass looting and civil disorder to take place.
However, what we discern from Ms May’s sour article is, she only saw looting. She closed her mind entirely to the notion there could have been any provocation which lead to all this theft, burglary and arson, “they were thieving pure and simple.”
Her response to serial discrimination by police stop and search policy described by one interviewee as “causing us hell” was to say coldly, “good.” These glib words are aimed to encourage the police and the panic-stricken commuters of the home counties she is on their side. But a good Home Sec should not take such pleasure in being so divisive. It is facile to just condemn the criminality: she should have the political guts to admit the police can do wrong and their methods do need modifying from time to time. We already know they search proportionately ten times more black youths than white.
Willie Whitelaw listened to Lord Scarman when he reported on Brixton 1981 and exerted his authority on the police to reform their practices. So did Jack Straw with MacPherson. Theresa May’s trite response demonstrates an unwillingness to learn about the daily urban experience of the young and a reticence to consider them of equal human value to others.
Her example of the good things in society such as the “Royal Wedding” showed a certain remoteness. The idea the deprived in the inner cities should look to the aristocracy to gain a sense of national identity and purpose is beyond absurd..

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Up With This We Shall Not Put

2011-12-09T09:32:00.001Z

Mayor of London Boris Johnson is considerably more adept at getting under Cameron's skin than anyone else including the leader of the Opposistion.
The clear intention of his serial undermining of the PM is establishing himself in the party's mind as Cameron's natural successor. It's working.
He wasted no time this week putting into eloquent terms the visceral hatred of the right wing backbenchers over the rushed plans to fix the Eurozone ("we are in risk of saving of saving the cancer not the patient.")
However, Boris's fundamental point in opposing this closer fiscal union of the 17 was right:: it is just not democracy, dear boy.
The Euro was a political experiment which glossed over significant economic flaws. It rumbled along pretty well while economies showed sustained growth but has now began to unravel as tough times have persisted
It is not pride which is forcing Merkel and Sarkozy into this ill-starred amalgamation of sovereign states: they don't know what else to do. It seems amazing to me that France, a fiercely independent and defiant nation are going to allow their mighty Republic to be subsumed into a super Euro nation.
Maybe they won't, Sarkozy faces an election next year and any candidate settng himself against the plan would have a favourite's chance. Similarly, Angela faces electoral defeat in a few months.
So amusing as it is to see the PM treated like an ineffectual fag by 'school bully' Johnson, it is a petty domestic drama in a Europe close to political meltdown.

J'accuse!

2011-11-30T19:07:00.001Z

To the Leveson Inquiry and on the stand the much maligned Alistair Campbell.

He offered some poignant examples of the Machiavellian arts of the press while he was Tony Blair’s press secretary which subsequently shed more light on Campbell’s ‘war strategy’ for New Labour. It reminded me of the film 'The Untouchables' when grisled vice cop Sean Connery explains the facts of life to principled flatfoot Kevin Costner. “He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue!”

Campbell, appeared as the Professor of Spin. No-one has seen the media quite the way Campbell has. Except spin is not the original sin here. It is a ploy for turning a story on its head or getting a narrow aspect to be the common focus but its creation was to counteract the deceit, invention and intellectual corruption of the tabloid press.

Naturally he had a vast amount of strong examples. The best, on the theme of invented quotes, was a Mail on Sunday piece on the recent appael court verdict of the Amanda Knox trial in Italy. Clearly the hacks had been told to prepare for either eventuality but had miraculously inserted reaction quotes. This much suspected practise was exposed when the wrong version went on-line by mistake.

The implications for these editors obsessing about subjects could have more disturbing consequences. The teenage like gasping about MMR and its non-existent link to autism was fuelled by the Mail and the Express and led to a huge drop in vaccinations. Not just idiotic but “dangerous to public health,” he said. Blair’s refusal to engage with the media about his son Leo’s jabs led to headlines implying it was proof there was something suspect about MMR. Tabloid hysteria can often trump scientific fact as we have seen for many years with drug policy in UK.

Campbell’s submission was a more like a treatise setting out eloquently the history and process of the descent of the newspaper industry into the "culture of negativity". It hinted at times at a diagnosis of the flawed psychology of the tabloid editor.

But ultimately it was a depressing and disturbing picture of the evolution of the press desks of Murdoch Dacre and Desmond into news machines seeking to forge the nation’s consciousness into one based on fear, xenophobia, jealousy and contempt.

How Very Dare You

2011-11-21T19:49:00.003Z

I still don't like Hugh Grant much as an actor but he continues to play a blinder in the hacking inquiry.
His insinuation of hacking by Mail on Sunday (and in time other papers) was inevitable. I expected their response to be somthing like, "Associated Newspapers deplore any suggestion of hacking of public figures by individual members of the organisation. The circumstances of the case raised by Mr Hugh Grant will be fully investigated. We continue to co-operate fully with the Leveson Inquiry."
But no. That's it would have said if the company lawyer wrote it. But I get the impression it was pennd by someone senior in the editorial department when they gave Grant both barrells accusing him of "mendacious smears driven by his hatred of the media."
Grant has been shown to be pretty formidable at putting his case and has done so in good-humoured yet robust way. None of his assertions have yet to be disproved and it is extremely hard to see why a reasoned individual with a firm grasp of the facts and the processes would suddenly and maliciously invent pure lies before a legal inquiry. The MoS also "utterly refutes .... they got any story as a result of phone hacking."
Permit me to reserve judgement on that one - like Leveson will.

Something for Nothing

2011-11-07T08:07:00.003Z

There was something just not quite right about the suspension of the Head of UKBA, Brodie Clark for relaxing border controls. Why would a career Civil Servant defy all his instincts of caution and take unilateral unauthorised action.

The whispering Govt source, usually a SpAd from the HO, told the Telegraph that is exactly what happened. "They broke Ministerial instructions. They had specific Ministerial instrucions not to do what they did."

Now the whistleblowers have emerged to tell various papers the changes were sanctioned by at least Damian Green, the imigration Minister. Green asked for a range of options to be presented to him in July to cope with the huge queues at the borders following stringent cuts in staffing and budgets. The idea that Departmental spending can be slashed without any impact on service standards may have finally reached its nemesis.

Theresa May (for it is she) will be making a statement to the House today and will no doubt bat off these accusations. Unless there is proof of Ministerial authorisation, they will be able to hold their officials up as their human shields.

Yer man, Brodie Clark, is likely to have access to the specific communications which would show where culpabilty lies. But as he is sipping coffee in his conservatory so he cannot show it. In any case there is often a code in these situations where senior officials fall on their swords silently for a quick settlement and a future quango post.

Unless some document with Ministerial paw prints emerges before Ms May's appearance before the HAC on Tuesday the HO Ministers will be home free.

At least this incident may serve to remind them that the claptrap paraded to the media of huge savings from bureaucracy without any effect on services has its limits in reality.

Meddling Kids

2011-11-01T08:03:00.003Z

The measures, announced last week, to remove discrimination against Catholic marriage in the Royal family were a welcome correction to a peculiar anachronism of the British Constitution.

But a few days on we discover the almost unheard of Queen's, and by extension, Prince's Consent to legislation. Any Bill which may have some impact of Charles's £18m income from his vast Duchy estates have to be agreed to by him first.

The Guardian discovered Ministers had on 17 occassions since 2005 written to Clarence House and begged him to to oblige them his approval. It would seem this 'power' was granted to Edward III's son in the 14th Century and was not rescinded even by Cromwell.

There can hardly a more outrageous example of the right of privilege over the democratic will of the people. But it depends rather on what Charles's reaction has been. Either he always let the Bills through unquestioningly and slightly annoyed at the fuss. Or he took the opportunity to express his misgivings, concerns or outright opposition to various measures on planning or employment law.

The Royals and No 10 are saying nowt and looking at such questions with disdain (How dare they be so impertinent?).

A quick denial of any interference would have killed the story but silence breeds suspicion that he acted in character and stuck his nose where he had no right to do. There were over a dozen Ministers from Labour who wrote out to Charles. At least one of them must have enough Republican spirit left to drop Charlie in it.

A Foul Taste

2011-10-20T06:12:00.005+01:00

I was listening idly to Five Live last weekned and unfortunately caught Edwina Currie talking about her footling existence.
She was a bit down following her eviction from Strictly Come Dancing but confessed to consoling herself with lashings of smoked salmon and champers.
However, she showed she has lost none of her brass neck by querying the sincerity of a carer who dared to say some people in Britain are going hungry. It seemed amazing to much of the public who then phoned in, that a senior Conservative had no idea that many people are forced to chose between heating and food. It must be a long time since Edwina worried about the size of a gas bill, if se ever did.
"No-one is starving in the UK," she said so shifting the question. The Government who doubts the genuineness of the poverty it is responsible for is doomed to look heartless. Unemployment is already up to 1994 levels when La Currie last clutched a Ministerial brief. The Guardian report from Consett yesterday was a graphic portrayal of a desperate life on the edge. www.tinyurl.com/24tz5vw.

The calls continued into the next evening and like a damned fool Currie rang in to continue her ill-advised judgement on the working classes.
"Presumably you own a phone as you are using it to phone this show, "she deducted with her familiar Victorian spite. "You should spend the money on buying food."
Those unable to provide for their families must feel a deep sense of shame and despair and should be spared the icy pontification of this wealthy Matriarch.

Doctor, Heal Thyself

2011-10-09T18:10:00.002+01:00

You recall when Peter Mandelson was forced to resign from the Cabinet for the second time. He had broken the Ministerial code by being overly helpful to an Indian businessman, Mr Hinduja, in gaining a British passport. Although it was an avoidable crisis, Mandy had no option but to be 'resigned'.

His error of judgement looks as nothing compared to Dr Liam Fox and his intense friendship with Adam Werrity. There has been no suggestion Werrity, 34, has any level of security clearance yet an FOI request shows repeated visits to the MoD. The Guardian's video of him attending a meeting with President Rajapaska of Sri Lanka is damning enough but there are many more, each of which would be sufficient to force Fox out. He also appears to have fed unreliable information to MoD press officers who have had to issue corrected statements; that won't go down well with other officials who may be tempted to leak further details.

Fox felt compelled to issue an non-apology apology today where he regretted the "impression of wrong-doing." It was a pointless exercise ahead of tomorrow's MoD/Cabinet Office investigation. By some wonderful coincidence it is Defence questions tomorrow afternoon in the HoC although odds may be offered on Fox having been denefestrated by then.

William Hague also jeopardised his career by his refusal to give up his friendship with a young adviser. At least Hague appointed his woefully under-qualified chum; Fox appears to have let his friend access to power without status and with barely any constraint.

With no official qualification or appointment, the first question which needs answering by Werrity is "Who are you?"

Isn't that Lovely?

2011-10-06T17:50:00.003+01:00

I read David Cameron's speech yesterday. "What is this about?" I thought.

The only actual theme to emerge was 'come on, we can do better. We are British you know.'

I find myself saying "Not even Thatcher..." a lot these days. For if she had read that draft she would thrown it back. She may have had the same laissez-faire policy but she would at least have wished to show some leadership.

The best Dave could do was to remove the much leaked section about the nation's salvation coming from paying off our credit cards. For a millionaire cabinet to be lecturing those on squeezed middle and lower incomes, that would have been something, Not even Thatcher...

Cameron clearly decided a 'hand-sitting' speech was called for. The country was probably expecting some tangible ideas about growth which could even be loosely described as a policy. But apart the usual guff about freeing up small business and bashing the health and safety rules there was nothing.

Other notable lowlights was IDS's fantastic claim the Tories were the party of the poor unless he meant there are more when the Cons are in power; George Osborne whining about unions and employement tribunals; Theresa May going rogue over the Human Rights Act and spouting utter piffle about how asylum seekers can avoid deportation by buying a cat. Jeremy 'space cadet' Hunt, managed to summarise the media without mention phone-hacking at all.

The Conference was a display of contemptuous complacency with hints of the old nastiness returning. It was entirely managed to cater for their own's supporters prejudices but what did the public think of them? You know, the voters.

Win The Crowd

2011-09-30T11:11:00.003+01:00

You would expect some crowd pleasing initiatives around the time of party conferences. The Tories were always more prone than Labour to put Ministers before a conference with a section of their speech which began, "That is why, conference, I am proud to announce today a new yada yada....".

So that is the context we should put yesterday's deliberate leak about a consultation on raising the speed limit on motorways to 80 mph. It will appeal to the bar room bores and the tea party headbangers but not to anyone who knows much about road safety.

The only problem is that the fools look like they are actually going to do it. Transport Sec, Philip Hammond said the limit was , "out of date" because of "huge advances in safety and motoring technology".

Britain has the safest roads roads in the world, a better record than even those reckless Swedes. The numbers of fatalilties on the road has fallen from 12,000 in 1965 to 3,000. The Conservatives appear to be doing their best to reverse that trend - they have swallowed years of bitter reactionary Mail editorials about speed cameras and the war on the motorist as rational argument. The objective of all these measures was to save lives. Road deaths are expensive, about £1.5m each.

According to Hammond the total has plummeted because brakes are better now. The very successful drink-driving campaign run by COI (abolished by Tories) can take plenty of credit as can speed cameras (being shut down) and much improved road engineering, signing, education...

Hammond's horror struck officials have not even done anything more than take a cursory look at it and cannot demonsrate any of the Ministers justifications have any relevance whatever.

One lesson the Cons should have learned from the Blair years is that yielding to the Mail does not actual gain you votes - it just loses you credibility.

-----------------------------------------------------

Hammond's fawning to the Mail brigade was easily eclipsed by Theresa May telling the Sunday Telegraph she wanted to repeal the Human Rights Act. There are annoying cases on the edges but the HRA is the cornerstone of our post war civil society and has allowed us to overcome many prejudices and gross inequalities. But what should be a source of pride is simply shameful and infuriating to the self-centred little Englander minority.

Absolute Beginners

2011-09-17T12:05:00.002+01:00

Bernard Hogan-Howe (left) has only been Met Chief for a few days and already he's put his foot in it.

His agreement to prosecute the Guardian journalists under the Official Secrets Act shows an extra-ordinary level of thick headedness. Nick Davies may be in the dock the same day as he picks up the Journalist of the Year award - and for the same reasons.

BHH announced himself in various newspaper interviews and before the Police Authority as a no nonsense, straight-talking zero tolerance kind of guy. That may appeal to the politicians at a gut level but we have learnt in recent years policing also requires more diplomatic qualities with a little more political vision.

The prosecution under OSA is doomed to fail and in the lead up to the expensive collapse of the case the Met will gather up plenty of bad press. The case rests on frustration at the top of the plodshop about leaks from the Operation Wheeting team to Guardian particularly on the Milly Dowler case. Met lawyers have decreed these leaks were "not in the public interest" when I can think of few leaks which were more so. They have certainly overcooked the seriousness of the leaks by calling them "gratuitous". Essentially they are saying the whole Milly Dowler story which caused this media earthquake was in fact illegal and should not have happened.

The relevant provisions they are deploying (sections 4 and 5) were designed to prevent malicious and even treasonous leaking of material which would necessarily be "damaging". If the Met were to be successful then unauthorised chats to journalists would cease and the police would be impervious. If Bernard thinks this is a desirable society for Britain then he can think again.

The Met should have simply sought out the 'leaker' through a disciplinary inquiry. Bernard's attempts at justifying this vindictive prosecution will turn to ashes in his mouth.

If Only

2011-09-05T16:46:00.008+01:00

Any candidate in a party leadership election may struggle to establish a distinct message from the others standing. Murdo Fraser, seeking to succeed the formidable, nay redoubtable Annabel Goldie as leader of Scottish Tories has certainly made his mark with his brilliantly simple plan. If elected he will er...disband the party.

Before all other parties starting ordering champagne chasers with their pints of heavy, we should realise this seemingly drastic suggestion is simply an exercise in re-branding.

Scottish Tories are indeed a dwindling rump of support. In the fifties, old Harold SuperMac, held a majority of Scottish seats in the heady days of 'One Nationism' .

But Mac's nemesis, Thatcher, used the Scottish people as lab rats on some of her more grand socio-economic experiments such as the 'poll tax'. The loss of nearly all Scottish heavy industry in a few short years underlined an ignorance in Westminster of the value of a long heritage of industrial knowledge and skill suddenly considered obsolete by stockbroker Ministers from the Home Counties. They've got long memory north of the border.

So when the Conservatives finally got their judgement in 1997, the answer was political wipeout. Even in 1992, the Tories still held 11 seats on a quarter of the vote and even gained one seat from Labour (Aberdeen South). Since the annihilation in '97 the maximum they have realised is just one seat. So a radical plan is merited however futile the exercise may appear to be.

The new name is the critical issue. Before 1965, they were simply Unionists and that would make some sense in establishing identity by opposing the SNP's creep toward an independence referendum. However, there are English Tory supporters and MPs who would be happy to cut the Scots out, so this approach would lack the neccessary unity between Holyrood and Westminster.

The rise of the SNP looks more than a little temporary and has prevented the Tories making any progress with the electorate's general disenchantment with Labour. The people are simply not attracted to them and it will take more than a new political deodorant to change that.

The Game's Up

2011-09-04T16:21:00.008+01:00

Karl Heinz Rummenigge (left), former German international, is head of the little known European Club Association (ECA). Few would realise he wields comparable power in football as his old rival Michel Platini as head of UEFA.

But Karl's emerging plan will revolutionise the club game and wrest control from the moribund UEFA and the basket case that is FIFA.

The most wealthy clubs in Europe are bound by UEFA/FIFA until 2014 when there will almost certainly be calls for a breakaway European League. "After this, we are not bound by FIFA refgulations, "said Rummenigge with suitable teutonic brevity.

I was going to describe FIFA boss Sepp Blatter as the footballing equivalent of Ceaucesu, oblivious to his power draining away until Karl Heinz himself deemed Sepp as "Mubarak".

The clubs have grown too tired of FIFA expecting players to be released for pointless international friendlies for which they gain no income and take all the risk.

Many of the new billionaire owners in the Premiership are from the US and they simply cannot fathom why their clubs (franchises surely?) are playing Norwich and Swansea every week and not Madrid and Inter. Neither are they sympathetic to the dwindling number of traditions of the game.

The new league will dispense with relegation, Saturday afternoon kick-offs and nearly all away fans. To be a hugely successful enterprise they will probably need viewers with any TV package to be able to purchase any game for £10 so swelling the clubs' massive incomes even further.

It will be a vast cartel with many players earning well in excess of £10m a year. No modest club will be able to come from obscurity and win a trophy any more.

Some old romantics may regret the passing of the people's game but in reality it was taken from them years ago.

From the General to the Particular

2011-08-17T06:38:00.007+01:00

The last day before my holiday, I read an article about a shooting in Tottenham and it seemed a classic case of the Met protesting too much.
A few days later I was recieving texts including words such as 'riots', 'wildfire' and 'anarchy'. So I feel, on returning, to have missed the whole event, just now witnessing the criminal justice 'mop up'.
I heard a spat between Gove and Harman where she spoke in general terms and he seized on the particular to justify extra-ordinary draconian measures. It all seemed very reminiscent of the shock of Brixton '81 but then there was a more experienced Home Sec in Willie Whitelaw who would have shuddered at the tought of pinching the credit of restoring order from the police. Equally, he would have considered imposing curfews as a huge failure of his office (http://tinyurl.com/4xelcvb)
Now we also see the strong reactionary elements of the judiciary being unleashed - long considered guidelines being abandoned in a thoroughly emotional response by the beaks.
Look no further than the Facebook trial in Chester. It is still a mystery to me how a full trial can be heard at Crown Court, less than a week since the original charge, and resulting in a four year sentence.
The level of punishment of writing incendiary posts on Facebook, for a riot which didn't happen, is just bizarre particularly as the (idiot) defendants pleaded guilty and had no previous convictions. In their Youth Offender Institution, they will be mixing with some serious criminals many with violent histories. And shorter sentences.
In 1981, there were similar calls for 'hard labour' and 'bringing back the birch' but were thankfully resisted by wiser heads. The Scarman Report, which followed, exposed huge tensions between police and community and showed the long-term effects of neglecting the people of the inner city. And people they are.
There appears little appetite for speaking of civil liberties but this is hardly the first time a stupid but inconsequential remark on social media has led to a wildly disproportionate response from police and courts. There was a time when we would gasp at these kinds of court decisions in China or Burma or even Singapore. The difference is they've got a paranoid, over powerful police force. Isn't it?

Sound of Silence

2011-07-25T09:22:00.003+01:00

Sometimes news can be just unbearable. I find I cannot engage with the coverage from Norway, when I did, briefly, I felt consumed by rage and despair at such loss of young innocent lives. The assailant is in court today and has prepared his foul, fascist manifesto in which he intends justify his murders to a shattered nation.
Democratic zealots say he has every right to make this speech. He does not. He has absolutely rejected all the principles of democracy by his actions and so has forfieted his right to have his free speech protected by it. To allow it would be to trample on the memories of the dead.

You Cannot Be Serious

2011-07-23T12:38:00.006+01:00

In the phone-hacking scandal, there has been an assortment of farcical reasons given to cover outrages and crimes. From the Murdochs's ignorance of most of their companies' matters to Andy Hayman's dining with those he was investigating.

But No.10's reason for not seeking the apt level of security clearance for Andy Coulson on the grounds of expense is the clear winner. Any civil servant knows DV clearance is the minimum for anyone working in a private office, even junior staff for a nobody DEFRA Minister. The very idea that cost was prohibitive factor for the PM's head of Communicatons is simply mocking people's intelligence.

From the Cabinet Office, run by the Tory Gus O'Donnell (pictured), we have only learned the higher usual level of security for Coulson was not sought. Until any papers are released by FOI, we can only speculate that he was likely to fail. Papers will also reveal it was almost certain Coulson was copied into papers more sensitive than his clearance allowed.
Although there has been a slight lull in the intensity of revelations in the last day or so, there will be many more to come. The story has seeped deep into business, police and politics. The law is next. The cops are considering the evidence Coulson gave under oath in the rancorous libel case which saw former MSP Tommy Sheridan jailed for perjury.

Although our Tom's lifestyle appeared dubious and jail beckoned he may have played a master card in getting Andy to testify and may be smelling the heather again very soon.

Then, the case would be altered.

I am I Said

2011-07-18T12:00:00.009+01:00

When former England football boss, Graham Taylor, resigned from his job at Aston Villa, he began with a long eulogy of his own achievements. So long, in fact, one sport hack interupted him and asked, "You resigning or what?"

Sir Paul Stephenson's farewell yesterday was even longer. I missed this latest huge news story as it broke, which wasunderstandable having not watched the headlines for two hours. All sorts could happen in that period of time on a Sunday afternoon.

So a tedious self-justification was to be expected. And even wishing to have the cake and eat it on his own "integrity". But what was not expected was his reasoning for not informing the PM about his employing of hack, perhaps even hacker, Wolfman Wallis. Not wishing to "compromise" Cameron should be translated as, "the PM is actually implicated in this too by hiring Wallis's boss, Coulson. "

The political tide has washed away Rebekah Brooks, the takeover deal and the NotW itself. The scandal has now forced the Chief Commissioner to resign and maligned other senior cops. We now turn to the third side of this triangle; the politicians. Many have confessed their general regret at cosying to NI. But only Cameron hired one of them and continues to defend him even after his arrest.

Coulson's appontment was challenged from day one, by opposition parties and some grey beards in the Tory party. This could be very tough on Cameron, depending on what comes out in the next few days. His defence of saying Wallis was a "quite different" case because he was at the Met where the criminal investigation was taking place is paper thin. Coulson in Downing Street had access to highly sensitive material including Top Secret which hardly makes it a risk-free appointment. How was he security cleared exactly?

Dave's style of premiership seems quite different from his political mentor, Blair. Although Tony was safe in terms of his Commons majority, he was always very conscious of vulnerabilities from scandals, bad judgements, and sheer events. Cameron has arrived into No.10 with a false sense of imperviousness, borne of his privilege.

The recall of Parliament this week is unavoidable but there is nothing in it for Dave but serious questions on his judgement and even idle thoughts of his life expectancy.

I am Satisfied with my own Integrity

2011-07-15T19:29:00.007+01:00

So said Chief Commissioner of Met Police yesterday, after it was discovered he had hired Andy Coulson's deputy editor, Wolfman Wallis, as his personal Comms adviser. Wallis is currently on bail suspected of ordering phone-hacking.

I always thought having integrity, like being a gentleman, was a quality which was for others to judge on. It is not an attribute which can be wholly self-declared.

Sir Paul Stephenson was very much on the defensive, being grilled by the pesky Met Police Authority (his employers) having avoided declaring this monumental conflict of interest to the MPA, the Mayor, Home Sec, Parliament, PM and wider media.

While the relations between press, police and MPs became laid bare, arrests made, execs sacked, a five billion dollar deal floundered and even a major title folded, Sir Paul sat on this embarrassment like an anxious teenager with an STD.

Wallis's appointement makes Andy Hayman's chumminess with NI bosses look quite mild, just a few days on. Hayman's performance was jaw-dropping and hilarious in equal measure, his misplaced casualness borne from his intellectual inferiority.

There is still one last Committee day before recess and Sir Paul will face withering criticism, his familiar Lancashire robustness will not do here. And only two weeks ago he was said publicly he wished his officers working on Operation Wheeting were out there solving real crimes.

Also on Tuesday but just down the Committee corridor will be Rebecca Brooks and a couple of geezers called Murdoch also giving evidence on their part in this farrago. They were the first Select Committee witnesses to be receive a summons for about 50 years and looks like their testimony will be under oath. Just to avoid any doubt, that means telling the truth.

The theatres of London will not be able to compete with these extraordinary afternoon matinees.

Nostalgia Deficit

2011-07-10T11:24:00.010+01:00

When Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian, was asked whether he was happy the News of the World had closed he replied, "No".

I would guess he was commenting more on the capriciousness of newspaper proprietors and the fate of the sacked workers than on the salacious content of the 'screws' over the last 40 years.

When Steve Coogan was asked on Newsnight if it was a good day, he said it was a "wonderful day for journalism...a small victory for decency and humanity."

Now the moment has come, I side with Coogan. I feel no sadness at NotW's demise at all. Its final cover was a mosaic of old famous front pages many of whom were contemptuous. For example, the 'Naming and Shaming' of paedophiles (above) was an unmitigated disaster; wrong individuals were named and intimidated and gangs of semi-literate vigilantes were inspired to march the streets of Portsmouth. There was even an attack on a paediatrician's surgery. We know 'stranger danger' is very rare but inducing such fears in our nation took away a little more of our peace and innocence - just for the sake of their circulation.

One edition, I recall, was stoking fear and hatred of sex offenders, then over the page there was an article which in essence said "Corrr, Peaches Geldof may be only fourteen but what a stunner!"

Inside this final edition, there is a mendacious piece about "fat-cat" public servants' pensions when the majority of these wokers actual retire into poverty. No, I shall not miss their poison, bigotry and cheap patriotism. Nor its obsession with celebrity trivia, its reactionary soul and its bare-faced hypocrisy.

There is no denying today is highly significant. The omerta of News International has been broken but not fatally. There are still pervading attitudes in the tabloid end of the business which will never change.

This was perfectly encapsulated when Steve Coogan barked at former hack Paul McMullan he was "morally bankrupt". McMullan's shrug of pure indifference to this charge said it all.

Yesterday's News

2011-07-07T20:47:00.010+01:00

What is the news angle from hacking war widows exactly?
Other equally illegal and amoral acts were carried out by News International staff. The aim was always for NotW to reign as the prurient supremo which included creating endless spirals of gossip about any issue in the public domain. Here there was no material difference between sportsmen, celebrities and tragic cases of terrorism, murder and abduction.
That is bad enough but war widows are just that. There was nothing to be gained and now all is lost.
Clearly hacking became as an essential tool to the editorial staff as a laptop and a mobile. More than that, it allowed breath-taking hypocrisy to be added to the list of charges hurled at the News International. Their blunt, crude patriotism was fatally undermined by the British Legion's withdrawal of support and leaving the Head of armed forces, "speechless with anger."
No-one had called for the News of World to close but perhaps it was the only option left once CEO James Murdoch had found the courage to look 'Ad Profundis'. The illegal collusion with corrupt police officers, the hacking of the innocent victims and bare-faced lies told to Parliament and the courts must have made him despair.
So in an attempt to salvage the BSkyB take-over, he took the decision to simply shut a long-established and world famous title. It is like a shipping baron of the 1920s closing the gates of a yard for wider business reasons, with no regard for the work force remaining.
News International's defence over the last five years or so has been highly legalistic until now when business bottom line became dominant. The rub is that their biggest liability is Rebekah Brooks and she is still employed presumably maintaining her comical role of investigating the extent of hacking even under her own editorship.
Cameron chose to defend Andy Coulson on his resignation in April - Coulson faces arrest. Milliband has chosen his lines of attack well but both parties are mired in mud from years of courting Murdoch.
Perhaps only one face to emerge from the nuclear fission of tabloid media we have witnessed this week is actor High Grant. He has shown a tenactity and intelligence which sailed far above all his known acting skills. He has surprised his opponents and the wider country by his knowledge and articulate challenge to the status quo. He also had the final reposte to a hack, now unemployed, when he said, "You're an intelligent bloke, why not try your hand at journalism?"
The next round of revelations we can expect will centre on the other titles who did the same. What we have learned may be the tip of the iceberg, but there are other icebergs.

Look both Ways

2011-07-01T09:09:00.011+01:00

Strikes Part II.

When writing an article, a journalist should be clear what the piece is about. Yesterday's Evening Standard wanted to portray the public sector strike as highly damaging to hard-pressed families but equally say the strike had little effect. So pretty serious and at the same time not at all serious.

No.10, now crossing the line into unjustifiably overt political statements, deemed the closure of 6,000 schools as having "minimal impact".

The Conservatives and their Liberal Conservative colleagues had their message of austerity strengthened by an alliance of propagandists led by the Sun, the Mail and the Times. Through those papers, Francis Maude appealed for volunteers to help out in the spirit of "Dunkirk" implying the strikers were at least unpatriotic if not actually "the enemy within."

Clearly there is a war of ideology going on here and, judging by the slightly too hysterical messages from the Govt and media, they are feeling under pressure. Cameron's big line about pensions system being close to bust is not matched by the figures from the Govt's own report. The cost of public pensions is already falling a percentage of GDP and will fall 25% by 2050. The main reason is there has already been a huge overhaul of public sector pensions carried out by Labour in 2007.

The Sun did not need to deal with such trivia when it could focus its efforts on ludicrous character assassination. The portrayal of mild-mannered Christine Blower, head of the teacher's union, as a Scargillite was like a parody of news media. They alleged she is a "hate-filled extremist" driven by her "twisted politics." The Mail gave their estimates for those "on strike" but substituted the phrase "on the picket line" instead, implying they were all hardened, loony-left activists warming their hands over burning oil drums.

All those papers were disappointed there was no violence although some scuffling outside No.10 was somewhat enlarged by the Mail into something quite threatening and seditious. They reported all police leave was cancelled to deal with these nutters but the truth was thousands of police civilian staff were on strike so officers were needed as cover.

I wandered through the crowds in Westminster on Thursday, spotting just one anarchist type who looked very disheartened by the jolliness of the beard and sandles brigade, marching politely through the streets.

Cameron has tried the big bluff which seems to be failing. He has tried to show teachers and public servants as a group distinct from the hard-pressed taxpayer. Firstly, they are taxpayers too but second, the plight of the teachers is not something going on in the distance. Parents know their children's teachers and mostly recognise they have been treated poorly. Cameron's problem is he preceives people to be as remote from each other's day-to-day problems as he has always been from the wider world.

Mainstream Militants

2011-06-27T10:03:00.008+01:00

It is worth reminding ourselves, employees do have a right to strike. According to several Coalition Ministers there seems to be some doubt. Or if workers do exert their right, there may be changes in law to prevent them doing so in future.

Putting to one side the fundamental rights of an employee, strikes are at a record low so there is hardly a compelling case at present. But this week will see the first big public sector disputes. Michael Gove told Andrew Marr in a thoroughly didactic manner, the teachers who were determined to strike amounted to a "militancy" who must be stopped by "public demand". His plan for an army of mums (without CRB checks) to take over is as pitiful as it is unworkable (no mention of dads).

In any event, the public seemed to be in support, as they recognise the teachers are not making a greedy pay claim but are simply trying to protect pensions based on low-pay. It does not help the Government that discussions over MPs' pensions changes, easily the most generous, are being held in secret.

The NHS consulted this year on pension options and asked staff to commit to different plans. Then Danny 'Beaker' Alexander ripped the whole package up when he pushed up retirement to 66 leaving many employees having made the wrong decision based on the wrong information.

In the 1980s, there were elements of 'Militant' as part of the far-left wing of the Labour party who relished drawing battle lines with Tories. The world is wholly different now and for Gove and his peers to paint teachers and civil servants as extremists treats them with more contempt and can only increase resolve among the strikers.

Incidentally the geeky type circled in the picture is one Michael Gove manning a NUJ picket line in the 80s. What was he thinking?

If you Think Education is Expensive, Try Ignorance

2011-06-24T19:08:00.005+01:00

The Central Office for Information or COI had performed a vital role since 1946 in creating important public messages as diverse as drink-driving, AIDS and smoking. The bottom line of their balance sheet over the years has been thousands of lives saved and countless families' prospects improved and strengthened.

They were effectively the Government's advertising agency. To the new coalition, advertising and marketing is deemed a luxury and so with a crassness which rivals the dumping of the highly successful National Film Council, they have just abolished the COI.

The decision was taken by Francis 'Crocodile' Maude who deems such work "unnecessary". Andrew Lansley said the same prior to an outbreak of bird flu and felt compelled, against his political instincts, to reverse his decision when presented with the simplest of cost/benefit analysis.

Not so Maude. He commissioned a report from senior civil servant Mark Tee who recommended reform, restructuring, and re-naming. Maude abolished instead.

The decision prompted a nostalgic look at old campaigns starring Jimmy Saville, Charley the Cat and Alvin Stardust. But little backlash at the idiocy of it all.

The Govt is all about savings and has centralised Departments' HR and finance functions to save many millions. The disbanding of COI is the reverse and functions will be devolved to individual Departments so losing all economies of scale, together with strategic advantages and a huge skill base.

There is no information on timing or terms for the civil servants affected just a terse press release which fails to acknowledge any of the successes of COI which have been considerable.

COI was like an 'invisible' Department because it did its job so well. The public don't realise what an impact it made on their lives, But for many it saved them.

Backbencher Overboard

2011-06-24T11:59:00.011+01:00

When David Cameron became PM, he supported a new politics where backbenchers would be able to regain some of their authority as well as autonomy and so enhance the integrity of the House.

Yesterday, Mark Pritchard MP (Con) spoke on a motion to ban animals from circuses and found he had, for reasons hard to discern, incurred the wrath of No 10 for arguing against the Govt's line on licensing. Politically speaking, circuses are the smallest of issues imaginable but Pritchard's determination inspired HQ to engage the kind of control freakery which only Gordon Brown would have thought was merited.

The whips were on to him offering him a (non) job, probably a PPS to a junior in DEFRA. When that failed, No 10 rang to put the frighteners on him. The strategy rather backfired when Pritchard blurted out these conversations during the debate so signalling his own political death.

How dismal to commit career suicide on such a tiny point. There are just 39 animals in circuses in England and no doubt they would all enjoy a better life elsewhere from the big top.

The only more pitiful member was Andrew Rosindell who chose to defend the indefensible and support the 19th Century practice of caging wild animals then parading them around a ring.

His arguments were novel and desperate. He suggested the animals were actually better off, didn't know any different, were always treated kindly. He said MPs should forget emotions and just deal with facts and then presented none. He would not give way to Pritchard even though it was his own debate.

The tirade of scorn which rang around Rosindell's ears was deafening. He will fight another day whereas Pritchard's had his wake last night.

Ordinary People

2011-06-20T15:09:00.005+01:00

Here is Philip Davies MP for Shipley. Looks an affable sort of chap. He's keen to make a mark and his latest suggestion for the disabled to 'opt out' of the minumum wage has certainly done the trick.
It is no more than logical to say the disabled or women or young black males may be able to get employment easier, if they sell their labour for less than the statutory minimum. Or even give it away for free. But Davies, probably willfuly, misses the entire point. The minimum wage was instituted here, in the U.S. and many other countries because there was a consensus on what was an acceptable living wage and where employees could be protected against discriminatory and exploitative employers.
The principle of the strong protecting the weak does not resonate too well with this Government despite the Lib-Dems' influence, such as it is.
Ed Milliband achieved a rare, resounding victory over Dave at PMQs by exposing his ignorance about the removal of benefits from about 7,000 people recovering from cancer. He must have won well because Quentin Letts of the Mail called it a "score-draw". Another Government may have agreed to iron out this wrinkle in IDS's great Benefit Reform Bill. But later that day No.10 insisted they would "press ahead" - political arrogance trumping humanity.
And to what end exactly? Are these stern measures necessary to stem the rising tide of workshy cancer patients?
Phil Davies can live with being despised in fact it qualifies him for a promising Ministerial career.

Born the Day Before Yesterday

2011-06-13T11:01:00.010+01:00

Jacob Rees-Mogg MP may have been one of the most fortunate beneficiaries of the national swing against Gordon Brown at the last election. He defeated a good incumbent in Dan Norris despite being the most footling of upper crust Tories.
He receives an ovation of ironic cheers from the Labour benches every time he speaks in the Commons. He represents precisely the kind of Tory Cameron wishes the public to forget: remote, privileged, snobbish. He famously took his nanny and his bently round Fife for his first campaign election. Jacob RM may have gone to Eton but he gives the impression he was too posh even for that place. Certainly posher than the Queen.
Last Friday, rather than listening to his North Somerset constituents about their problems, JRM decided to spend his time making a string of fatuous remarks in a Commons debate about roadside drug testing. Here the world of scientific expertise came up against his inordinately superior instincts based on a wafer thin set of irrelevant anecdotes.
He sought to ridicule the very idea of testing someone for drugs. He began quoting from Colerige's Kubla Khan and proceeded to argue coffee itself was an hallucinogen. Someone really should have found the appropriate Parliamentary language to say, "Oh shut up you fool."
But on his ploughed his lone furow of irrelevance. It may be easier to simply list his absurd remarks such as how more people were addicted to illegal drugs than alcohol and how gin and tonic can be prescribed by a doctor, but I fear the article would be inordinately long.
Mogg actually doubted whether these devices would even work as designed and implied those middle class scientist chappies would benefit the fruits of his classical education. Those boffins had, up to point he rose to speak, probably never considered putting safeguards in place to prevent samples from becoming contaminated.
He managed to insert his archetypal expressions of 'whizzo' and 'bingo' a la Berty Wooster as he suggested testing everyone on leaving a "dance club".
I can't really discern the point of Mogg, save as a reminder of how fogeyish the Tories are beneath the PR. "You shouldn't judge people by their class and where they went to school, " they cry back. They used to say that about people wo had been to comprehensives. Mogg is far from a victim of circumstance. And far from the ghastly world of ordinary worries at all.

Storm in a Thimble

2011-06-13T07:54:00.003+01:00

The Miliband family must, in lighter moments, be laughing their socks off at the ludicrous coverage in the Mail and Telegraph over the last few days.

The 'exclusives' are far from revealing; David was disappointed at not winning the leadership, we learn; Ed looked up to his brother for years, apparently. It just paints a picture of what we already know just written in painfully dramatic prose. None of the quotes I have read are attributable; some are not even quotes. Friends of, insiders say, a confidante reports are the familiar tools of lazy sensationalist journalism. It's not even that; it's what I would call hackcraft.

The Telegraph tied to elevate this invented fraternal tension ("treachery!") to the level of a Brown/Blair feud by releasing leaked papers from Ed Balls' Government days at DoE (Tory Ministers beware in a few years time). These dismal revelations have been poured over already in books by Andrew Rawnsley as well as diaries by Campbell, Mandelson and Blair himself. It focuses on events in 2005 - so long ago David Blunkett was still Home Sec.

The Mail on Sunday article was as Lord Falconer put it "pretty thin gruel" even exposing the shame that Ed, at University, did not take drink and drugs. Today's Mail has extended this invention as far it can go (shurely?) by claiming David is planning something of a coup against his brother. Putting to one side the strict constitutional Party rules which forbid it, David has left the shadow Cabinet and has no power base. There is also the absence of any suggestion he would want to as well as any MP or peer even considering it as a realistic prospect.

The inspiration behind this string of transparent stories would appear to be the publication of a book and unsuprisingly the authors thought to embellish rather than dish out the boring truth. In a difficult few weeks for the PM the newspaper editors have simply embellished the embellishments.

True Grit

2011-06-11T09:46:00.004+01:00

A Government's resolve is invariably tested as it approaches
mid-term. PM Dave's recently handling of the Coalition has seen some distinct policy wobbles over the NHS and education which hints at a growing soft-centre. Perhaps his inexperience is coming to the fore again.

Ken Clarke's long-telegraphed penal reforms were carelessly dumped this week. Clumsy old Ken had made a good case for turning away from New Labour's inspired 'punishment first' criminal justice agenda. For a country where crime has fallen for a dozen years, it is more than an anomaly for prison numbers to be constantly at a record high. Slashing the numbers of pointless custodial sentences and the 11,000 needlessly put on remand anually, would also go along way to saving the £2bn demanded to sate the Treasury machine.

Dave sat Clarkey down this week and told him 'no dice' - the power of the right wing media and backbench headbangers was too strong. So the Coalition's sole progresive policy was binned in favour of reactionary prejudice. If Cameron want to achieve status of a PM with a bold vision then this is a mere political molehill compared to the mountain he has yet to climb. This policy triangulation typified Brown's premiership where No.10 evetually reached a state of paralysed fear of upsetting anyone.

Ken is back at the drawing board and must be wondering what his place in the Cabinet is for. Cameron's special advisers must be whispering the same.

Break the Silence

2011-06-06T08:24:00.008+01:00

I am not sure of the scale of Richard Branson's wealth but beyond his music business he also owns a train line, an air line and is in the process of acquiring 440 of Lloyd's bank branches. So undeniably successful.

However, according to his interview with the Guardian on Saturday, Mr Branson is an occassional cannabis user.

In response, the Home Office trotted out its familiar line about drug use simply bringing, "misery to communities." How do we reconcile this? The fact is, Government spokespeople, when referring to drugs, invariably paint the picture of heroin addiction which amounts to quite a small amount of drug use.

Branson was not just indulging the journalist, he was promoting his role in the Global Commission on Drug Policy. There has not yet been such an august group of senior policy-makers from around the world who have lobbied for change on UN drug laws- including former Presidents of Mexico, Brazil, Kofi Annan and chaired by George Schultz who was Secretary of State under Reagan.

These respected figures cannot be dismissed as reckless radicals nor could they be accused of political naivety. Yet their modest recommendations were condemned strongly by the US drug czar Gil Kerlikowske, reverting to language of fear, he said, "Drug addiction is a disease...."

The reactionary politicians had an ally in most media who sought to trivialise or demean this worthy attempt at reform. At the same time a group of peers, MPs and senior police wrote to the PM asking for a review of the equally obsolete Misuse of Drugs Act. The open letter was also signed by Mike Leigh and Judi Dench so was dismissed as "Luvvies for Legalisation."

The War on Drugs, set in motion by Richard Nixon, is a hopeless failure. Ian Birrell in the Observer put it succinctly when he portayed its supporters as WWI generals unable to change tactics and oblivious to the human cost.

King of the Twits

2011-05-21T20:34:00.011+01:00

The extra-ordinarily famous, philandering footballer who was exposed by disgruntled Tweeters, has now, incredibly sought to bring a case against a journalist who also mentioned his name. It is rather unlikely the hack in question was the first, as thousands of tweets have included the player's name - that medium seems to talk of little else.

These issues are not just gossip; they touch on Parliamentary sovereignty, privacy law, press freedom. But ultimately it is all about money. The footballer is not a callow youth and should know the game is up on protecting his children about his infidelity. His huge weekly wage, spent on grateful lawyers, cannot resolve it. Not even the most gifted silk can promise his client he can actually reverse time or eradicate the new media.

But this striker must have been somewhat encouraged by Lord Igor Judge who gave an extra-ordinarily assessment of injunctions on Friday, exposing his antiquated knowledge of modern communication. "Are you really going to say," inquired Judge Judge, " that someone who has a true claim for protection, perfctly well made, has to be at the mercy of modern technology?"

The answer to his poser appears to be, emphatically YES - partly because the protection this Welsh player insisted on was only possible given his wealth. It was not instilled against outside forces but deemed necessary given his sexual conquests despite being a family man. When the Judge berated websites "peddling lies" the same could be said for the famous left-winger who seeks to perpetuate the myth of his honesty as a husband and father.

The Judge also took a swipe at Parliamentarians who chose to use absolute Parliamentary privilege to expose the most absurd injunctions such Fred Goodwin's (no doubt his media ban was deemed "a claim for protection perfectly well made".) Without their actions which are fully allowable under the Contempt of Court Act 1981, we might not have learned very much about these Kafka-esque machinations in the High Court.

This player from a big club in the north west of England has, very foolishly, instructed lawyers to act against Twitter itself and threaten a prominent BBC journo with jail. Firstly, British law does not apply in San Francisco and Twitter Execs would be well advised to respond with a bemused, declining response. Second, the journo can just wait. By the time any case came to court, the footballer's identity will be even further in the public domain. Any case would have to be tried anonymously which opposes the guiding principle of open justice. In fact any case brought by the footballer would almost certainly mean he would be compelled to identify himself. We are close to the legal madhouse now.

As you may have noticed, throughout this article, I have scattered enough clues to make a 'jigsaw' indentification of the player. But I am not very fearful. The information is small currency now. It's even on Wikipedia and the front of Scotland's Sunday Herald.

In an ideal world, the connection between him and Ms Imogen Thomas (also being sued) would be made very public through crowd chants at Saturday's Champions League final, which is another clue. Perhaps then he would question whether it was practical to sue 35,000 Barcelona fans for revealing the knoweldge which is now already widespread.

* Apparently his name was reverberating around Old Trafford yesterday thanks to thousands of Blackpool fans. Tough gig.

With a Stain on Your Name

2011-05-17T07:51:00.003+01:00

The case against former Met Commander Ali Dezaei lacked a certain robustness from the start (See blog entry March 2010 'One Way or Another').

His release from custody this week is not the end of the story. Although the main witness in the trial was found to be thoroughly unreliable (using a false name in court for a start) he still faces a re-trial.

For that reason I am unable to say much more in view of the law on Contempt of Court. But it was astonishing Mrs Devaei was easily able to uncover the witness's deception when the investigating team did not.

Can You Hear Me at the Back?

2011-05-17T07:34:00.002+01:00

The British Tea Party still has some way to go. I trundled down through masses of tourists on Saturday morning to witness the rising of the new Right but failed to spot it.

In Old Palace Yard, opposite Parliament, were about 250 Pro-Cut protestors, John Harris in the Guardian described it as, "not so much a crowd, more of a long queue". The sound system was very poor so not a word culd be heard above the buses and taxis. The Counter demo was one crusty and only five coppers stood around looking at their watches.

From small acorns to mighty oaks? No. This is going nowhere if they can't pull in their own supporters. And politically inept - one sign said curiously "Abolish the Bank of England" and another, rather artlessly "Socialism is Rubbish."

I was asked to sign some anti-trade union Early Day Motion (only MPs can do that). When I refused, assertively, the two sweaty guys in bad suits got rather antsy. The crowd were generally like them, all blokes, all white, upper middle class who looked like they had got lost on their way to the Proms.

Fear not, the future does not belong to them.

Back to Basics

2011-05-08T18:06:00.003+01:00

I never really rated Alex Salmond as a politician. He always seemed to over or understate every case and make Nationalist politics of any issue whether justified or not. Now by luck and design Salmond has won an overall majority for the SNP in Holyrood.

Whether he is bumptious and arrogant, it matters not, Salmond could teach Nick Clegg a thing or two about politics. On the issue of a referendum, Salmond is aware of the golden rule - only hold won when you know you are going to win.

Clegg's hamfisted handling of the local elections and AV vote expose him as extraordinarily naive. Cameron has shown he is politically smarter on strategy than before but he was fortunate to have a fall guy to push under the train in his place. He made the most of it and showed his "ruthless" skills. Clegg now is trying to re-assert some authority over the NHS reforms, like a jilted wife insisting she is not going to clean her fiance's shoes.

Ed Milliband's gain of 800 council seats was offset by a bit of a disaster at the hands of the SNP. But the regions are not really the business of Labour HQ, the bare fact is Wales had Carwen Jones a leader with great charisma and authority. Scottish Labour had Ian Grey who is so dull he makes John Major look like Jack Kennedy.

Slowly the Tories are gaining strength. If Clegg doesn't realise he is just a conduit to a longer more established Tory Government you would have to wonder what he really knows about politics at all.

Destroying Democracy

2011-05-06T07:40:00.004+01:00

It was certainly overstating the point when David Cameron made a last minute plea to the nation that adopting AV would "destroy" Britain's democracy. It is hard from any perspective to see how this minor shuffling of votes would have any significant change on Parliamentary democracy.

But Dave's hysteria looks shallow and puerile when we witness what democracy under a frontal assualt, like in Syria now. The scenes of massacre against unarmed protesters reveals the brutal regime of President Assad and the extraordinary bravery of the people who oppose him.

Today is expected to be the bloodiest once marches start after Friday prayers. Assad would have had an allay in suppressing democracy in Osama Bin Laden. But his killing this week has again changed the prism through which we view Middle East politics. Bin Laden, although an advocate in the annihilation of individual freedoms, would also have denounced Assad for his western dress and the modernisation of Syrian society where girls are permitted some level of education.

It is still fairly astonishing Bin Laden had the following he did when his vision was to regress to a pre-Medieval utopia where the Koran was the start, middle and finish of every day and where women were mere doormats and all Christians, Hindus and Jews were worthless infidels. This religio-fascistic society could hardly be more opposed to democratic freedom.

Democracy is often banal even boring but for the people of Damascus, Misrata and Bahrain, a life and death struggle.

Makes me Gag

2011-04-21T17:58:00.004+01:00

It is getting slightly more difficult to trace the identities of various 'celebs' who have won injunctions to prevent news coverage of their adulterous affairs. But it still can be done on the net in matter of seconds.

These stories have been published in the press for longer than I can remember and so long as they are true, it should be just tough luck on the philanderer. His nemesis is his own arrogance not the tabloid press. It is extra-ordinary for a judge to grant a total blanket ban on revealing the identity of the Scottish actor who booked the same escort as Wayne Rooney. Other judges did not accept the defences of Rooney or Terry so why for the actor?

But the issue of injunctions is more serious than a few affairs and children losing all faith in their lovely daddies. The courts' acceptance of the right of privacy over freedom of expression has also included super-injunctions, some obtained by corporations. Here the media are prevented from revealing the existence of the injunction itself let alone the parties involved or any detail of the case. The terms of one hyper-injunction meant the accuser was prevented from even speaking to his MP which is where court rulings can now restrict basic democratic rights.

The slightly eccentric John Hemmings MP has raised the issue in Parliament so has absolute privelege and I have the legal right to report what he said. The case actually goes back five years and revolves around accusations toxic chemicals leaked from paint into ship's water tanks. I have no idea of the validity of the claims but there at least seems to be a fairly strong 'health and safety' public interest here.

I was chatting to a lawyer recently whose firm has sought and been granted injunctions in the past. He said the law was like a pendulum; it was swinging one way at the moment (in favour of privacy) but it was just as likely it would swing back. Let's hope so, I am not often on the same side as the Daily Mail.

The most succinct analysis of the danger of injunctions came from Max Clifford (above) who said," What we've got now is a privacy law that wasn't brought in by Parliament but the judges have decided they want. Sometimes the privacy of the rich and famous - or anyone - does deserve to be protected. But only the rich and famous can afford this, so it is only a law to protect the rich and in a democracy that's not right."

Lessons of on democracy and Government from Mr Clifford should tell us we are certainly in a strange place.

Better it Were Done Quickly

2011-03-28T17:51:00.002+01:00

Saturday morning and the international press pack are bored rigid in their Tripoli hotel. They have been promised yet another trip to see examples of Gaddafi's 'utopian' society and the population's unceasing devotion to their leader.

Then into the lobby burst Iman Al-Obeidi (pictured above). She made claims of rape and torture by Libyan militia and denounced the regime for what it was: despotic and despicable. Naturally the press, suddenly awaked, were already be escorted by various Government henchmen. Despite the obvious worsening of the impression it would give, they seized the vulnerable young woman violently. Any member of the media who attempted to help was threatened or assaulted. Sky News had a side arm pointed at them for daring to continue to film.

The Gaddafi thugs then dragged her off into the street; they physically put their hands over her mouth as she exposed the ruling power's vicious lies, rank hypocrisy and murderous intent. She was defamed as drunk, mentally ill, a prostitute. Even if she were any of those it should not alter her human rights. But she was then bundled away into a waiting car and it must be highly doubtful she will be seen by her family again.

For all the plotting over campaign maps and adjustments to the UN backed counter offensive, here is one human example which illuminated the desperate struggle for freedom and free speech which is everyday life in Libya. We do not know what leadership will follow but for now this brutal fear must end.

Shameless

2011-03-07T08:27:00.007Z

We had no transport yesterday and the little ones wanted to go to the cinema. To my great dismay, I found the County Council had recently dispensed with all Sunday buses from our relatively prosperous town. To me it was just an annoyance - to the elderly it is cutting off a lifeline.

This is just one tiny example of how public services are being lost despite the boast we are the fourth largest economy in the world.

At this weekend's Conservative Spring Conference, Cameron had a chance to show his master strategy of how he intends to lead us boldly out of recession.

His plan is.... to have no plan. His "only strategy" is to pray for a few entrepreneurs and "go-getters" to create a utopian business culture.

Cameron will help business by beating up those officials who insist on pesky planning applications and ensuring health and safety standards for employees. Eventhough they are simply abiding by the law of the land, these damned "bureaucrats" are the "enemies of enterprise" apparently. However I would have thought the banks continued refusal to offer credit was easily business's greatest enemy.

This pointless vituperation was in part warm-up to the Con-Lib budget to be delivered in a few days by Osborne and his compliant Chief Secretary, Danny Alexander (above). The Chancellor used a revealing phrase when he said the budget would be "unashamedly pro-growth" as if a growth strategy could ever be a source of shame. It could only be so when the stronger instinct is simply to cut tax for the wealthy.

As Polly Toynbee said last week in the Guardian, this Coalition's economic experiment "is one last chance to prove Herbert Hoover was right and FDR and Keynes were wrong."

So it would seem the recovery is to be placed in the hands of unfettered capitalism. Even if it yields some success eventually, I can't see much capital incentive for the entrepreneurs to restore the lost public services.

Still no buses, then.

The Naked Truth

2011-03-02T19:53:00.003Z

"I agree with the Governor of the Bank of England". I admit I do no use these words terribly often. But yesterday Mervyn King, addressing the Treasury Select Committee, acknowledged the savage cuts hitting Britain's public services were ultimately the fault of the City.

He added, using words more usually associated with someone like Ken Livingstone, "the price of this financial crisis is being borne by people who absolutely did not cause it."

So next time a Cabinet Minister blames a pernicious cut back on the "appalling mess we inherited from Labour," remember's King's words.

The latest area of policy to take a hit to the solar plexus is law and order. Home Secretary, Theresa May, suggested in a bright, hopeful manner, the rank and file of HM's Constabulary should take a substantial pay cut. Never mind their mortgages and cost of their children's education.

The interesting timing was to announce the outcome of a consultation on pay a week before it was completed. It's like the referee awarding the game to the home side, as 'they looked like winning anyway'.

Cameron, at PMQs, also justified these destructive cuts to the police by glibly declaring the entire service as "completely inefficient." How to win friends, eh?

At every turn we see the pillars of a civilised and balanced society eroded in the name of wiping out the bank-driven deficit. The crisis may be portrayed as the cause of reckless spending by Labour - but in King, at least we have one Conservative who let slip the great untold truth.

Fools Rush In (Again)

2011-03-01T16:46:00.005Z

Conflict is, by nature, hard to predict. Over the years the Tories

appear to have made some extraordinary decisions on defence, presumably based on some prophetic sense beyond the powers of other mortals.

In 1981, senior Chiefs warned the cuts to the defence budget by the Conservative Government of the time, would have a direct effect on Britain's capability to engage militarily. Unless it was a nuclear war, of course.

If Argentina's General Galtieri had invaded the Falklands in 1983 rather than 1982 then the Navy would never have been able to construct any kind of 'Task Force' to defend the islands.

There are so many parallels between 1981 and 2011. Already we have seen the pitiful sight of the modern warship, HMS Ark Royal, decommissioned for scrap, a fleet of new Nimrods dismantled and 170 pilots sacked immediately prior to completing their four year's training. That is £4m of investment per pilot just abandoned.

Yesterday, David Cameron was going full throttle on establishing a 'no-fly zone' over Tripoli despite clear US reservations. Such a military strategy needs enforcing with aircraft and personnel but today the MOD announced a further 2,700 RAF redundancies and the loss of two squadrons of Tornadoes. We face the perverse outcome of some troops returning from Helmand getting their service medals together with their P45s.

Afghanistan aside, there is a wider strategic issue - these cuts mean the UK will not be able to respond to many, as yet, unforseeable conflicts. If Kosovo were to have happened now then we would not have been able to contribute let alone lead.

For a party which constantly drapes itself in the flag, the Tories have funny way of showing they are patriots.

Bad Medicine

2011-02-25T15:15:00.002Z

Page two of the Guardian today was an advert from British Gas to explain why it was "good for our customers" they increased profits by 24 percent to £724m.

Pointless supporting statistics included the £700m paid by their employees in tax which translated into English means " we employ a lot of people and like everyone else they pay tax on their income." Hardly a boast.

But there is a wider problem than the mere profiteering during a recession and a hard winter. Fuel prices are feeding inflation which means interest rates are bound to rise in the near future. Other inflationary pressures are coming from food where speculators have found a whole new market to play with.

A raise in interest rates would be corrective action to dissaude over-spending. However gas, petrol and potataoes are not luxuries we can easily dispense with. Spending in these areas would be largely unaffected if rates went up one, two or three points. But households' disposable incomes would be severely hit and would drive the economy faster and deeper back into recession.

Osbourne as Chancellor has a strong 'laissez-faire' instinct and would not seek to rein in the capitalist zeal of complanies like British Gas. In fact immediately prior to the big crash he was calling on banking regulation to be cut. But it is the irresponsible profiteers of industry and the City which is driving the economy into the ditch and George is just letting them do it.

Pour Encourager Les Autres

2011-02-20T10:18:00.007Z

I have yet to hear one journalist or political analyst claim they had long predicted a wave of revolutionary protest in the Arabic world. What started in Tunisia has swept through several countries in North Africa and the Gulf; it is hard to imagine it would even be possible before the internet.

The violence prior to the overthrow of Mubarak in Egypt was relatively minor given the intransigence of the President and the pivotal role of the army. Mubarak must have been conscious of how violent repression broadcast to the wider would be ultimately self-defeating.

Libyan despot Gaddafi has no such qualms. All foreign journalists are banned and would have a very short life expectancy if they dared enter Libya. The state media promised a "violent and thunderous" response. Murderous would have been a more appropriate description. http://bcc.in.fsecvd/

There are now reports the army have been using mortars on protestors around Benghazi. Hand-held cameras show marchers walking into a hail of bullets.

Whether this erratic dictator is remotely concerned with the reaction from other African countries it is imposible to say. The West has zero leverage, certainly. He overthrew King Idris in 1969 and how the people would yearn for a regime such as that again.

Usually the state propaganda blames "foreign influence" for inspring the protests. Gaddafi has been forced to deploy mercenries to quell the protests killing scores of innocents. One doctor said there 200 bodies at her hospital alone.

Under the threat of a massacre, the people have every right to arm themselves against this brutal unyielding suppression.

This is Total BS

2011-02-11T15:20:00.005Z

It must be at least a year since Cameron has been bringing up the Big Society like some obsessive. And still he cannot find the few words of narrative to explain to the public what it is, let alone how it works or how does it mean for me?

Ed Milliband has slowly improved in the weekly duels with PM and it helps him that the only clear linking issue for the BS is the huge cuts in community funding. Manchester Council announced this week how it would save £109m this year - by closing 36 Sure Start nurseries, 20 youth centres, sport centres, swimming pools and also five libraries.

Cameron, on the issue of libraries, blithely ignored the 25% reduction in central funding for LAs and said such cuts were "political motivated by Labour Councils" adding "I see no reason why they should not continue a well-funded network of libraries." Milliband knows every LA, whatever their politics, will face these impossible decisions, if he keeps his calm the political momentum will just come to him.

On Newsnight on Monday night, the BS Minister, Francis Maude continually let all other members of the panel interupt him. His newly discovered good manners was simply because after his short brief ran out he had nothing left to say. His exhausted response of blaming Labour is wearing very thin, especially when new figures revealed the cost of the bank bailout to us, the taxpayer, was £131Bn. That is the reason we are losing our public services and why we will have a shrinking society.

___________________________________________________-

About five years ago, my employer was making a big push on volunteering as something of a forerunner of PM Dave's big idea. I had missed the main presentation but was compelled with another colleague to attend a second meeting. After half an hour's Powerpoint about fishing shopping trolleys out canals, we had the Q and A. The young, super keen presenter asked us both what we might contribute. I said I had three children aged between one and eight and that took all my spare time. The other chap said he was sole carer for his 90 year-old mother who suffered with dementia.

The eagerness from the presenter dried up instantly. I confess I rather enjoyed his discomfort and the silence which followed.

Divided We Stand

2011-02-05T10:35:00.004Z

It is still not entirely clear to me what drove David Cameron to make such a provactive speech in Munich today.

Generally, PMs, as statesmen, are expected to promote social unity and reject divisive rhethoric. This sounded more like some tired and emotional junior minister going"off-script" than a PM's prepared text.

To declare multiculturism as a total failure, is a bewildering statement which cannot realistically be based on fact, only ideology. In Britain in 2011 we have distinct communities of Poles, West Indians, Irish, Somalis, Jews, Chinese, Indians, Pakistanis and many more. Is it all such an abject failure?

In most parts of the country the diversity marked by mutual peaceful co-existence is a source of pride not fear nor resentment. Of course there are residues of intolerance and hatred embodied by groups such as English Defence League (pictured) and it was abysmal timing for Cameron to bark out his ill-advised speech when the EDL was simultaneously intimidating the residents of Luton with their agressive racial message.

When Cameron tried to provide detail about what he meant, it was clear his 'attack' was restricted to British Moslems and nobody else. He cited the 'soft left''s tolerance of outrages like arranged marriage. Popycock. Labour introduced legislation on just that issue, set up units in Home Office and Met to uphold women's rights in these communities. Where there is a lack of integration, it is often poverty and a dearth of social opportunity which strengtens isolation not a particular religious culture.

Having warmed to his theme, Cameron then took the logical leap of suggesting this apathy and moral cowardice of the left had allowed terrorism to thrive. Bit of a jaw-dropping moment that. It gave the impression this was what he wanted to address all along and the rest was just a preamble. He hung the whole speech on an absolutist quest to restore British 'values' into every house and every street in the land. These values are not proscribed so are always in some way subjective. In the end, it amounted to the PM declaring too many Muslims to be, on the whole, not very British and, frankly, we've just about had enough of it .

He used a curious phrase, calling on more "muscular liberalism". The least tolerant in British society will be encouraged by the PM's speech, they may not be familiar with liberal aspect but they are all to eager to deploy the muscular.

Blow, Wind Blow

2011-01-28T11:49:00.002Z

Chancellor George Osborne blamed the weather on Britain's much predicated tilt back into recession. The ONS figures suggest much of the 0.5% 'negative growth' was a sharp contraction in the construction industry. The drying up of orders coincided with the cancellation of the Building for Schools project by Michael Gove, deemed like all Labour projects facing the axe, as "wasteful and beauracratic."

This orthodoxy of cutting public costs regardless of strategic, economic or social need leads to bizarre and perverse outcomes such as the destruction of the brand new fleet of Nimrods (pictured).

There is certainly enough time between now and the election to declare full responsibility for the stewardship of the econmy on the Coalition. Osborne, in Opposition, always selected the political rather than economic argument - his ideology and inexperience are dragging the country back into recession quite unneccessarily. There is little mentioned about growth these days, rather the package of painful austerity cuts is sold like some psychological guilt about the prosperous era under Labour.

To be defined as a recession the economy would have to be below zero growth again next quarter. No bookie would take odds on that. The VAT increase looks like guaranteeing it. The next quarters will inculde the first impact of the huge cuts so there could be no end for a little while. And all despite desperate assurances from George that it was the weather. Certainly it was economic weather and Capn George is down below biting on his finger wishing the waves away.

It Tolls for Thee

2011-01-23T13:05:00.003Z

Andy Coulson's resignation was almost as long coming as Gordon Brown's. Rather than adding my own analysis, I thought I would simply include a few quotes which capture the story (so far).

George Osborne, "Andy... was a patriotic servant of this country."

John Prescott, "An editor not knowing the sources of his stories would be incompetent."

Andrew Neill, " the approach by the police is unfathomable."

Tory backbencher (quoting Napoleon.), " the graveyards of France are full of indispensable men."

"Hacking phones became the default position for getting stories." Andrew Neill again.

Max Clifford, "A lot of very powerful people won't want any of this coming out."

Alistair Campbell, "I have always got on perfectly well with Andy Coulson."

And finally Coulson himself, before a Parliamentary Committee, " I do not remember...I do not recall... I have no evidence...as to whether or not this is correct...I don't know. I know as much as you do, you may know even more."

Racial Profile

2011-01-23T12:46:00.002Z

This is a picture of Kasey Gordon. By all accounts he was very popular and talented student before he was stabbed to death outside his school in Tottenham last week. He and some other friends appear to have been trying to protect school girls from being intimidated by a local man. Kasey died at the scene and three others were injured.

I was somewhat amazed to read of this tragic event on page 21 of the local paper, the Evening Standard. The national media have been barely interested.

This coverage is in contrast to Jo Yeats whose death has been barely off the front pages for about a month. One could say her murder was more of mystery but if one were only interested in the sensational aspect, the Kasey Gordon killing has plenty of drama about it. The only conclusion one can sensibly draw is the senior editors of media organisations place wildly different significance on deaths depending on the skin colour of the victim.

Remember Stephen Lawrence's death was similarly treated as just another black youth death in the inner city until another big organisation, the Met, was shown to be institutionally racist.

Shabby Intentions

2011-01-19T15:13:00.003Z

There is certainly the beginnings of a concerted whispering campaign against the Speaker, John Bercow in sections of the media. The Mail and the Telegraph are printing any comment about him and maximising the negative. Former Speaker, Betty Boothroyd, regretted JB's decision to dispense with traditional gaiters. Hardly a newsworthy event. The Mail said this was the latest "humiliation" and implied she considered him "scruffy", a word our Betty did not actually use.

He look scruffy to you?

In recent times he has been criticised for simply declaring to a constituent his opinion on fox-hunting as if he had broken the seals of his office. Grumpy Health Minister, Simon Burns, felt emboldened to call him a "sanctimious, stupid dwarf." Then apologised to dwarves everywhere.

The Tory backbench mafiosi are equally vocal in their quest to bring down the Speaker. Deputy Chair of 1922 Committee, Mark Pritchard, is picking fights with Mr Speaker like some garrulous playground tick. After a recent spat in the chamber, Pritchard found he was in the way of the Speaker's entourage and seemingly expected the Bercow make way for him. "You're not f-ing royalty," he bellowed.

"And a good morning to you, sir" responded Bercow, maintaining dignity under duress.

Executing the role of Speaker is vital to an effective Commons. The Tories may not like it when he upbraids hopeless Ministers, like Gove, on procedures and courtesies, but that is his job. Bercow is proving to be a very able speaker - his excellent lecture on comparing 1911 and 2011 Governments showed he has an acute historical perspective on Parliament too.

And history shows there have been many foul and even murderous campaigns against various Speakers so he should not be unduly worried. We have rather got into the habit of considering the Speaker to be a kindly Uncle Bernie Weatherill or cosy Aunt Betty B.

Even they had their confrontations. But little would compare with this encounter with Tory Chief Whip, Patrick McLoughlin who feels able to openly challenge the authority of the House.

http//www.youtube.com/watch?=yd2YyZP0b8

Bercow showed he understood when to dispense with charm and turn his full ire on the big bully, calling him back from "scurrying from the chamber."

Ultimately these tribal attacks from the right of the party will not succeed. Like the man in the fable, the lashing of wind and rain only makes this Speaker hold onto his mantle even tighter.

And Your Point Is?

2011-01-16T16:42:00.003Z

Andrew Lansley presents the Health and Social Care Bill on Wednesday for its Second Reading. Rather than the usual questions on the level of funding or the degree of tax burden, the main question for this Bill is, "what exactly is it for?"

Although there is naturally some disconnect between GPs and Health Trusts in assessing any particular patient's needs, it seems small reason, indeed, to turn the whole health service upside down to make the GPs the drivers of nearly all decision-making. When Lansley has found time to try and explain his 'philosophy' such as it is, he immediately get aggressive and demands, "do you not trust your GP to make the right decisions about your health?"

The answer is simply 'no'. Not unless he has particular expertise in project management and accountancy. Last time I looked they weren't modules at medical school.

The NHS Federation has also queried the lack of "a compelleing story why the reforms are necessary" and assessed them as "extraordinarily risky". Just how risky, you may ask? Well, of course those hard-pressed officials at DH have been scratching over the figures and projections and analysing the likeliness of success.

Labour Health Minitser, John Healey wondered why these considerations had not been shared with Parliament, as is the tradition. A blank response from Ministers elicited an FOI request. The Coalition which decried the previous Government's lack of transparency actually refused the request on the grounds to do so would interfere with officials "space in which to develop thinking.. and may deter candid discussion in the future. "

Ministers would have a point if the question was to give a verbatim account of all meetings with senior officials. But it wasn't. I guess they just didn't dig what the results were. Healey called this Soviet style secrecy "disgraceful" as their plans for the NHS "affect the lives of everyone in England". So it would seem the next big plan is unclear in purpose, hard to discern whether it is worthwhile and they won't tell us when we ask.

Across the Line

2010-12-23T18:15:00.003Z

When interviewing a public figure, anything said "off the record" should be dealt with the utmost care by the journalist. Whatever follows can inform future articles, give another better context or corrrect false impressions. What is clear at the time is there is a contract of understanding between the politician and the writer.

Not so at the Daily Telegraph who sent undercover reporters to entrap various Lib-Dem ministers to complain about their end of the Coalition deal. Vince Cable disclosed most and rather rashly, to what he thought were young mums from his constituency. Even so he asked them not to repeat his words "outside."

Revealing his zeal to declare a "war on Murdoch" necessitated removing media regulation from his portfolio and would in any other case have deservedly earned a thorough sacking.

However it was not the Telegraph who broke the story but Robert Peston of the Beeb who had been gifted the scoop by someone at the paper who thought the corporate media group was determining editorial decisions. It is easy to see how that impression was made. It looks more like the Torygraph did not lead with this explosive quote about BSkyB takeover because it did not suit their wider interests for Vince to hand the decision to a more lassez faire Tory like Jeremy Hunt.

Perhaps the paper will learn its lesson about undercover reporting. It is totally proportionate when exposing criminal behaviour or corruption. But if it amounts to bugging in person to embarrass then it is shabby, disreputable and threatens future frank disclosure which until now made the worlds of politics and journalism go round.

Also when you deceive you can't manage what information comes out and it may not, like this case, be in your own interests.

Anyhow, without lifting a finger, Murdoch, as ever, is the winner.

You Know that I Know that You Know

2010-12-06T11:24:00.002Z

It fell to Home Office Minister, Julia Goldsworthy (left) to do the press on the Government's Equality Bill. You would have thought under a female Home Secretary in Theresa May, it was a good opportunity for the Coalition Government to show their committment to equal pay in the workplace.

Unfortunately, the resultant media release was a new low in transparent nonsense from a Lib-Dem Minister where she appeared to convince herself of the entire opposite of her lifelong views. The policy measure actually belonged to Labour. It was a power in the old Equality Bill which forced companies to publish their emloyees pay rates if it had been shown they had perpetuated gaps in salary between the sexes.

During the Bill's passage Ms Goldsworthy lobbied Labour to expose those negligent companies, arguing, quite rightly, a "voluntary audit is hardly worth the paper it is printed on." Now in Government and following intense lobbying from City businesses, Julia has decided to not commence section 78 of the Act although it had already received Royal Assent.

She said in a rather supine press release it was now "arrogant" to think "Government knows best" and it was "absolutely the right time to make voluntary pay reporting work." In defence she claimed, contrary to all evidence, "we live in a differnt world from two years ago." Yes, a fantasy world in your case. She knew before what a farce such a voluntary scheme is and how business will flick two fingers at such futile gestures to equality.

It actually is a different world in the public sector. The vertitable Eric Pickles, SoS for Local Government, is forcing all Councils to reveal senior officers pay, setting a limit, tied for arbitrary reasons, to the PM's salary. Pickles lambasted CEOs for their pay rates describing it as a "football transfer market."

Not only does this policy expose the Tories traditional hypocrisy over public and private earning, it will only encourage the best public administrators to join the private sector where their higher earnings can remain a secret.

And I Don't Commend it to the House

2010-11-30T18:22:00.007Z

Vince 'Vinny' Cable has had to perform some extra-ordinary political backflips in order to maintain his status as Secretary of State for Business. But the latest volte face, U-turn, flip-flop call it what you will, could be something of a first in British political history.

Vince's department has a policy to ramp up student tuition fees and the Tories have graciously allowed them to abstain given that every Lib-Dem MP signed a pledge to do so over their dead body. Conservatives could see an interesting dilemma occuring where whatever way Lib-Dem Ministers voted make them appear mad, bad or sad.

Clegg must have taken the political gamble that the students would swallow their medicine just like before as British young people are apolitical and apathetic. And yet they are not. The eruption of anger from the campuses has taken everyone by surprise not least the hapless NUS president, Aaron Porter who tied himself in knots and didn't even attend the last protest.

The control freakery of the police is fuelling the anger as is the cutting of the £30 a week allowance for poor sixth formers, a needless and pernicious 'saving'.

The Scottish and Welsh Parliaments are ensuring their countries' students are not exposed to such huge liabilities which just underlines how avoidable the policy is.

Vince may end up not supporting his own bill, but in any event Lib-Dem support among students is below sea level.

You're an Embarrassment

2010-11-30T08:13:00.005Z

FIFA President, Sepp Blatter (left), did not feel moved to open any level of inquiry when the BBC Panorama team made allegations of corruption by senior board members.

Blatter answers to no-one. To be FIFA President is to be annointed into business royalty where usual business standards do not apply.

FIFA Vice-President, Jack Warner had already been caught flogging $1m worth of tickets to agencies and touts in 2006. His punishment was to be asked to repay the money. It would appear being caught did not deter him from doing it again this year.

Putting to one side these grave allegations, Andy Anson head of 'our' bid committtee called Panorama "an embarrassment to the BBC."

The wrath of many media organisations, particularly owned by Rupert Murdoch has been to lay into the Beeb accusing them of "sabotage" just before the decision on whether Britain should host 2018 World Cup. Was it not the Sunday Times who first revelead delegates taking 'sweeteners'?. Anyway, it would hardly be in the BBC's interests as they would get to broadcast the World Cup where Sky would not. In any case it was good to see old-fashioned investigative journalism infuriating these remote sporting despots.

The conditions set by FIFA on any World Cup bid are sickenly restrictive. The host country must agree to allow FIFA to protect its Amazonian like revenue stream by making temporary changes to tax and commercial law. We saw this in South Africa where all street sellers were cleared out within a mile of the stadia. During wet matches fans were only allowed to use FIFA umbrellas and not their own.

Suddenly our bid looks less favourable then the Russians. FIFA may yet regret getting into bed with Putin et al who are not so pliant as we would have been. To Sepp it is a mere detail.

Too Much Too Young

2010-11-19T15:45:00.004Z

David (Lord) Young's indiscreet restaurant burbling about the "so-called" recession sounded rather like some Harry Enfield character or at least a scene from 'Yes, Minister.'

Amid the reassuring sound of fish knives on fine porcelain and claret glasses nudging together, Young poured out classic Tory indifference to the hard-pressed and unemployed.

As an adviser to the PM on business, he felt he did not have to accede to the Coalition's transparently false mantra of "we're all in this together." He scoffed at rising unemployment and cuts in public services as a lot of "fuss."

His best line was probably when he compared the level of public spending for 2010 being broadly similar to 2007, omitting to mention the tens of billions sucked out to support irresponsible banks. "Now I don't remember being short of money in 2007". Young wasn't short of money even in 1957, he was born into wealth and was able to thrive unlike "most people".

Once exposed, by the Telegraph of all papers, he immediately began distancing himself from his own remarks, like a footballer who has just been sent off, decrying needless fouling. Cameron had shown ruthless qualities previously and should have sacked him on the spot but instead showed he was really jolly angry at the old fool. Young did better by resigning a few hours later.

Labour frontbenchers could hardly contain their delight in having so many lines gifted to them which they can quote back to Cameron ad nauseam. The old image of Tory complacent aloofness is starting to return because the old detachment from the common man's plight had never really gone away.

Breeding Contempt

2010-11-18T08:41:00.005Z

I am not sure I would agree with David Cameron the announcement of a Royal wedding in a few months amounted to, "a great day for Britain."

But Republican tendencies to one side, the new focus on the Royal family was a great day for tabloid editors and semi-redundant society watchers.

Prince William comes across as an amiable chap and Katherine Middleton seems a canny lass herself but their obvious difference in class will be exploited by the media with relish. There are few articles more nauseating than the adopted superiority of society commentators making terse remarks about perceived lapses in protocol.

Ms Middleton, unlike William, struggles to trace her family back to Edward II. Like practically all of Britons she only has to go back a maximum of four generations to find working class roots. To some of us, it is a source of reassurance of our equality and shared national heritage. To the snobby hacks, it will be a rich vein of bile and viciousness which will be mined to exhaustion.

It is beyond doubt her family will have pure lies told about them. Every relative looking a bit blurry-eyed in the back of a taxi will be presented as a huge story with a 'screamer' headline. Some will sue for damages and win. They will be compelled to take on heightened security and will wonder whether it was all worth it.

The first to be attacked looks to be Katherine's mother, Carole, who according to the gossip columns, works for a living, chews gum and uses the word 'toilet.'

It would be appropriate to offer the young couple every happiness yet the misery has hardly begun.

Just Read the Book

2010-11-16T09:15:00.003Z

George Bush Jnr, or good ol 'W', once bet his political strategist, Karl Rove he could read more books in a year.

This detail emerged from Bush's autobio published last week. I think Rove won the bet but W still consumed almost 100 himself. That would not really matter if he hadn't been President at the time and not a first year undergraduate.

Surprisingly some were rather intellectual, which reminded me of that line from the film 'A Fish Called Wanda,'

"Monkeys don't read philosophy."

"Yes they do. They just don't understand what it means."

As expected, in Bush's memoirs we have the justification of Iraq war as well as torture through water-boarding. He rather glibly said it was perfectly alright as he had checked with lawyers and delivered the line as if we all knew the high levels of virtue advocates work under. These lawyers would also have had some encouragement from Veep Cheney to provide 'suitable' advice.

On the rounds of interviews for his book, one brave journo dared press him on the issue by asking the simple question (in so many words), "Ok, Bud, if this is not torture, are we OK about foreign police or army doing this to American personnel?" Bush shifted in his seat and gave his universal answer: "Just read the book."

But since then, some poor commentators have ploughed through this simplistic, Texan drivel they have found lots of false and proxy memories. I guess the editors did not dare to cross check if Bush was always there to witness all the conversations he had detailed. But it seems he has probably inadvertantly lifted sections frm other books (like Bob Woodward's). So he comes across as a rather dim, confused, self-conscious, adolescent who just used to be President.

Instant Karma

2010-11-08T09:15:00.001Z

The British may be somewhat bemused to see a slightly known former Minister effectively kicked out of politics for telling lies about his opponent.

On closer view we see exactly while Phil Woolas's political career has come to a dramatic halt. Phil approved of his campaign literature asking questions of his Lib-Dem opponent, Elwyn Watkins,"Why are the extremists urging for a vote for Watkins?" Woolas also insinuated there was some murky foreign funding going on and that he was probably gay.

Such campaigning may be fairly commonplace in US. But not only are there limits to their acceptability over here and there is also a law which punishes candidates who dish out deliberate mistruths. Woolas was supported during the case by Labour and it cost them £400k in fees. Harriet Harman made clear there is no more funding for pointless appeals. When she said the party was accepting the judgement and would not put up candiates who had been found to be "telling lies" Woolas should have known he was toast.

He is attempting a judicial review which seems the wrong legal avenue - if any appeal is heard it will just lose him his house.

After his grubby and distasteful performances defending the deportation of ghurkas and locking up children at Yarl's Wood, it is hard not to feel a little shadenfreude at his rapid descent into oblivion.

Dishonest Toil

2010-11-08T07:44:00.002Z

When the Archbishop of Canterbury is informed he has incurred the wrath of the Murdoch press this morning (Sun called him a "chump") he may be reassured he is on the right track.

Rowan Williams's fairly gently critique of IDS's plans to coerce the long-term unemployed into £1 an hour 'jobs' deserved to be much more robust. He only said those on benefits were not necessarily "wicked, stupid or lazy." The plan is a kind of 'pub wisdom' or crackpot suggestion from the Young Conservatives usually dismissed by more experienced members of the cabinet. This looks destined to be instituted, meaning it has approval from the very top.

It is far from clear what economic benefits it will serve. If there were huge amounts of vacancies unfilled then a more convincing justification could be made. But there are at least 5 jobless to every post. IDS says it will instill a work ethic an so furthers his impression of a rather batey and remote Latin prep master devising fiendish punishments for the lower fourth.

But at least the Coalition concede it is punishment for being unemployed. Danny 'Beaker' Alexander, admitted the policy was a "sanction" perhaps he did not realise it means the same as a penalty. We'll see if there is as much enthusiasm for making unemployed managerial staff pick litter for £30 a week.

Under Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights, work can only be compulsory if in prison, as part of military service or in a case of national emergency. I would have thought a legal challenge could defeat this odious plot to chain gang the unemployed.

Time to Man Up

2010-11-05T07:25:00.003Z

Minister for Universities, David Willetts (left), could be more honest with the British people. But he showed he was determined to portray the Coalition Government's radial marketisation of Higher Education as equitable and designed to help poor families.

The bare facts are that undergraduate teacher funding is to be cut by 80 percent and the gap to be funded entirely by the students themselves, paying between £18,000 to £27,000 for a three year course. Giving graduates an easier way of paying hugely inflated fees does not amount to being "progressive" as Willetts claimed in a rather nauseating manner.

The sub-plot was revealed just after the election when he suggested young people should "set their sights a bit lower." Know their place, I guess is another way of putting it.

This privatisation will only save HM Treasury about £1bn so is economically idiotic. But what is shown to be hard-headed economic decision making is more ideological in reality.

Willetts could easily find warm words for sending boys up chimneys for fourteen hours a day. He would say, "We accept for some there will be a slightly longer average working day and but I feel sure many will thrive in this challenging work environment. It is not the role of Government to hold back young enthusiastic workers who chose to provide for their families in this exciting new enterprise. We already know many of the more ambitious 'sweeps' gain a valuable insight into the world of business and in that sense it could not be a more liberal policy..."

Tory families will feel the impact soon and it may yet shake them from their reverie. Lib-Dems have all woken with a start as the photo-ops of their MPs signing a pledge to oppose lifting the cap are repeated on their local TV news.

But if Ministers like Willetts really dared speak the truth it would start, "The Lib-Dems are taking most of the hits. So that's alright then."

Clinging to the Raft

2010-11-03T11:19:00.003Z

Despite a poor night in the mid-term elections, President Obama can count himself lucky he did not yield both Houses like Bill Clinton in 1994.

The situations have strong parallels; a young, inspiring Democrat President takes the top job just as the economy starts 'tanking'. Naturally he gets a disproportionate degree of blame. It makes Obama's task as progressive a whole lot more difficult having the Democrat majority in the lower House overturned. Nancy Pelosi's tenure as Speaker is certainly over and she has handed to Republican John 'Perma-tan' Boehner (above).

But the Senate was not lost. The surging tide of the Tea Party stopped at Nevada where the rather grey but totally solid Harry Reid fended off the extraordinary challenge of the eccentric Sharron Angle. Reid's narrow win was pivotal in keeping a Democratic majority and also symbolic in defeating the shrill disaffected voices of extreme politics.

Angle ran, by any standards, a disreputable campaign. She showed a poor grasp of the subject matter which was exposed by the simplest of media questioning. Her response was to no longer engage with the media except at arms length photo-ops. Perhaps that lost her the final momentum. In an ideal world her loss would have been caused by a backlash from her endorsement of somewhat racist camapign ads where Latinos were pictured busting through border fences to terrorise white communities. Nevada has no border with Mexico.

But some other Tea Party favourites are to be elevated and their mysterious view of modern America will have a greater voice. It is odd from this side of the Atlantic to see middle and lower income voters rush to support candidates like Rand Paul (Kentucky) and Joe Miller (Alaska) who argue about withdrawing the provision of medicare and even the minimum wage.

Paul in his victory speech said, "We've come to take our Government back," which implies a presumption to govern and a certain contempt for democracy. Many millions of dollars poured in anonymously from a small group of corporate heads to fund the Tea Party campaigns eventhough one of their few uniting principles is fighting against these powerful and hidden elites.

We are now at the phase where both sides make futile gestures toward bi-partisanship then retreat to plot bloody murder. The test will be whether the strengthened Republicans still wish to make good their commitment to continue with Bush's colossal tax cut for the top two percent of earners. To do so would mean abandoning from the outset any ambition to significantly reduce the deficit let alone balance the budget.

There is a battle going for the soul of the Republican Party and the old guard will have to ensure Sarah Palin does not make it as their candidate in 2012. Esteemed journalist and speechwriter to Bush Jnr, David Frum, warned fellow Republicans there was no future in simply portraying President Obama as "some kind of Kenyan interloper," if they wanted to see a more substantial support for conservatism.

But Boehner has already said he wants to "reverse" Obama's healthcare reforms. The system of voting in the Senate may be obscure but if they try and dismantale his achievements at least the Constitution gives Obama the biggest of all trump cards: the veto.

Cut Along Now

2010-10-29T08:32:00.002+01:00

They say Cameron and Johnson don't get on these days. Part of the reason may be the public recognise the Mayor with a little affection as 'Boris' but the PM as Cameron not Dave.

The PM will not ever gain that level of popularity as the masses will suffer plenty of hardship in his 'reign' and although some may pull on the forlock and admire their 'betters' the majority have a bit more dignity and self-respect.

'Bonkers' Johnson has plenty of political courage and is not phased by defying the part line. So he did not hold back when unleashing his views on DWP's intention to take a machete to housing benefit. It is not being a deficit denier to question why someone who has been looking for work for 12 months should qualify for a cut in housing benefit too.

Johnson knows politically his chances of re-election would be very limited if the capping of benefits engineered a series of homogonised wealthy communities purged of the working classes.

But he gives the impression he really beleives in it and has, in his time as Mayor, got a genuine feel for the people and wants to protect a London "where rich and poor can live together. " That's the politics of community and it is welcome to hear a Conservative say it. He went further, "On my watch you are not going to see thousands of families evicted from the place where they have put down roots."

Cameron will have none of it and predicatably his press has talked of Johnson being "slapped down" (yawn). The emphasis has shifted to the over the top language he used about "ethnic cleansing". In fact it was Labour's frontbencher Chris Bryant who coined the phrase earlier in the week prompting Dave's ridiculous claims of housing benefit claimants getting £50,000 a year. If such payments even exist they are very exceptional and should not be portrayed as typical.

But Cameron gave the game away when he said these people didn't deserve to live in houses "they couldn't possible dream" of owning. Simon Hoggart of the Guardian said it showed, like many of the upper classes, the PM expects "the poor to lead disagreeable lives".

At least one the 'hoity-toity' is prepared to stand up for them and Cameron will find, given Johnson's greater political ambition, he will be hard to quell.

The Narrowest Shoulders

2010-10-21T07:41:00.002+01:00

Politics is not economics. George 'Gideon' Osborne has always conflated the two.

It used to be make him appear simply gauche, underlying his very shallow experience of economic matters. Now he is wielding power, it is far from a joke just for the columnists. His tenure at No. 11 will bring misery to millions and threatens to pull the whole economy into a nose dive.

During yesterday's Spending Review statement, Osborne (and Cameron too in PMQs) declared tritely, the UK was "out of the danger zone". Saying it, doesn't make it so.

Taking £81Bn out of the economy at the precise moment it is emerging groggily from the recession is a huge gamble with the highest of stakes. For all the yarns about huge benefit pay outs and massive capital projects, this amount is still much less than we, the taxpayer, paid out to prop up the banks.

In any event it was, as Alan Johnson pointed out, at least distasteful to see the Government benches cheer with delight at impending hardship for the least advantaged. Housing will no longer be built by Government and council tax rents will rocket. Housing benefit will be slashed. Osborne portays the recipients of this benefit as dole-ites who are making a pretty penny from the sweat of our brows. They don't actually get to keep the money which goes to the landlord, they just get to stay in their home.

Buried in the headlines was the announcement of a US style 12-month limit to those on sickness benefit. This pernicious policy will punish about a million people for living with the misfortune of having mental or physical problems which prevent them from seeking work.

Quite what happens when their time is up is not clear, short of destitution. But even if a few made an extraordinary recovery, they may not find jobs that easy when competing with four million others.

We knew the exact forecast of 490,000 public sector job losses from the couldn't-be-more-independent Office for Budget Responsibility because Danny 'Beaker' Alexander let the press read his briefing notes (above). The Lib-Dems complicity in this is pretty sickening - they are like the annoying ticks who pick on even smaller boys to please the school bullies but still gain no credibility.

Of course, throughout the catalogue of punishments came the soapy word 'fairness' to which Cameron nodded sagely like a benign Lord of the Manor. But I heard none of it, the child benefit cut for higher earners appears to be the only truely progressive measure and has already been shown to be uneven and unfair.

We've been here before, of course. This is 1980-1 all over again but even harsher. The social division from that era is still evident in many areas particularly the industrial ghost towns of Yorkshire, Tyneside and Lancashire. We also had civil unrest and riots then.

To think, the last Tory Prime Minister, John Major, sought "a nation at peace with itself."

Una Sola Familia

2010-10-14T09:07:00.003+01:00

The story of the 33 miners trapped half a mile under the Atacama desert since early August may not have much of a political edge. But it was a fully global media event, the first other than sport, since 9/11.

Thankfully the themes here were not chaos, terrorism and retribution but courage, defiance and triumph. It was only the same old human story of men who work underground; now and again we are reminded how dangerous and intensely stressful this work is. Often the miners are struggling with company officials on applying minimum safety standards which really are a matter of life and death.

The emotional peak was reached when the second miner to emerge, Mario Sepulveda, celebrated with his colleagues and rescuers. They chanted 'Viva Chile' singing loud and from the gut. Amid all the misery and turmoil we have for once a great story of inspiration and pride. Viva.

The Impossible Dream

2010-10-13T12:56:00.002+01:00

During the General Election campaign, Nick Clegg, did a Vlog for students in an honest bid for their votes. He could say with hand-on-heart only the Liberal Democrats had the policies on tuition fees which students would vote for. He looked down the camera and said raising the cap was "wrong."

Five months later and the Lib-Dems are doing another political pirouette where the old sage Vince Cable (above) is compelled to adopt a laissez-faire approach to higher education. He has accepted wholesale the report from John Browne, former BP Chief Executive whose adherence to pure free-market solutions is hardly a surprise.

If it passes it will allow the BIS to cut University tuition funding by 80 percent so effectively privatising higher education. That's a pretty shameful legacy for anyone seeking to proclaim the achievements of the Liberal cause.

There are rumours of 30 (that's half) of the Lib-Dem MPs are willing to vote against it which with Labour support could actually defeat the Government. Such is the political turmoil at the heart of every Lib-Dem, they will be distraught whatever the result.

George...Don't Do That

2010-10-05T14:53:00.005+01:00

'Brilliant' Chancellor George Obsorne, got his first feel of a British political backlash yesterday, after he announced child benefit would no longer paid to the top 15 percent of earners.

For the public, it was quite an unpalatable measure, particularly as exactly a year ago Osborne had promised unequivocally, "we will preserve child benefit."

These cuts would raise a measly £1Bn but they hold a greater symbolic significance by making the first blow against universal benefits. No-one could now accuse them of being 'liberal' again. But instead of introducing a means test, George simply attached identical tax disbenefits to those in 40 percent tax bracket because of the "need to reflect the British sense of fair play. "

Admittedly a means test would have been a worse option, as it puts off many people claiming who are in genuine need. But the outcome of George's little weeze is an obviously unbalanced policy, unfairly punishing families with only one good earner. Families with a dual income of up to £87K will keep child benefit: families with single income of £44K will lose it. Dave said he would try and find other ways of helping, "stay-at-home mothers". So much for the new men of the Tory party.

George and Dave obviously weighed up this 'anomaly' to those little middle class folk and judged it were preferable to a messy system of assessment. Not so, say Middle England (short hand for the Daily Mail) who are thoroughly put out at the unfairness and suggestion that £44K amounts to a wealthy household after mortgage, utilities, council tax, food and clothes are paid for.

Already, Dave has begun to wobble and promised there could be tax reilef for married couples but that does not fill the hole felt by all the 'Mr-and-Mrs-plus-2.4-kids' who voted Tory. The PM may yet learn constantly repeating he is driven by a sense of "fairness" is not enough to convince people who are struggling to pay the bills.

"In the end, politics comes down to guts," said Dame Shirley Williams. This Government's first flirtations with unpopular cuts may be too much for the Tory backbenches who are calling for "compensating measures". The policy could yet be slowly killed through the 1922 Committee.

Unfortunately next time, I fear, George will be determined to make us meet our pain. It won't be long.

Police? I Would Like to Report A Breach of Trust

2010-10-01T08:03:00.002+01:00

Putting to one side my inaccurate predictions over David Miliband, attention is turned to the real divsion in the cabinet over the scale and scope of the proposed defence cuts.

Dr Liam Fox, for it is he, made a robust and mostly persuasive case for maintaining levels of funding for troops and their support functions, especially as we are still engaged in our longest war since Napolean.

The media image of handing redundancy notices to heroes from Helmand is at least unedifying. Fox pointed to the "grave consequences" and "political damage" to the PM in a private and throughly leaked letter.

Fox's decision to call in the police to investigate the matter perhaps underlines his Department's guilt in wishing to publicise Treasury dominance on the country's strategic defence capability. But the police?

The Conservatives were suitably outraged when Home Office neurosis over a few leaks, led to an invasion of anti-terrorist police into Parliament and also the arrest of one of their frontbenchers, Damian Green. But now they are in power they can't resist but press the plod button at the first opportunity.

Sky News reported thirty (!) flatfoots pounding around MOD's Main Building pulling out hard-drives and drawing up mobile phone records. I am sure the leaker knows it only takes someone to photocopy a letter and post it to a newspaper to make it completely untraceable.

Let's just say they find it was young Toby from Liam's Private Office. What are the police actually going to do with him other than wag a finger? There is no criminal offence here unless they chose to proceed with the Official Secrets Act. The letter was about budgets not nuclear codes so that would be a dead end.

But what a dramtic loss of dignity. One day Fox looks a solid chap, standing up for his Department (unlike Hunt and Spellman) and the next he looks as mealy-mouthed and reactionary as Old New Labour.

And in the end, we all know the Treasury will win.

Political Wilderness, Civil War then Death

2010-09-27T09:05:00.004+01:00

One of the most encouraging signs for Labour, following Ed Miliband's narrow win in the leadership election on Saturday, has been the rabid over reaction from the Tory press.

Red Ed, indeed.

The Sunday Times, perhaps getting a steer from its prodigious owner, put out a preposterous editorial about how Labour's 'lurch to the left' would leave them in the political wilderness. Turn the page and columnist, Martin Ivens, was talking up the actual death of the Labour Party.

I remember the early 80s when Labour did arrive at a state of unelectability. They had a weak, eccentric leader in Michael Foot. Ranks were sorely divided, in fact a significant number had defected to the bright and hopeful SDP. The miltant tendency was actually running cities like Liverpool. And the party's policies included huge liabilities like withdrawal from EEC, unilateral nuclear disarmament and the wholesale nationalisation of entire industries. To draw close comparisons to that episode of severe political turmoil in the party is frankly laughable.

Of course, our old chums at the Mail are happy to exorcise those ghosts again by trying to conjure up some great division, this time between the two Milibands. This is not spin; it's pure invention.

This morning's effort by Tim Shipman contained all the familiar phrases of an article where an editor has instructed the reporter to make mischief out of thin air, such as "insiders say" and "sources close to. " Contrary to all we know about the genial and genuinely affectionate brothers, Shipman was compelled to construct the basis of a potential civil war with factions ready to tear the party asunder.

"Some of Milibands closest friends, " he speculated, unconvincingly, "want him [David] to walk away because they fear his every public utterance will be viewed as a plot to oust his brother as Labour Leader." Be assured David will stand in next week's Shadow Cabinet elections and emerge with a very senior post.

I guess those editors who simply detest Labour are getting their revenge in early and are just thorougly piqued about how united HM's Opposition is. But they not building on a reality which people recognise; papers can exploit and exaggerate the public's perceptions; they cannot simply create them.

David Milband may have made a better leader in the long run but even this "vanquished sibling" knows the next election will be a straight fight between the two main parties. Labour, even suffering a "disastrous" defeat under Brown, is still only fifty seats behind. The right wing commentators are snapping but it's not fierceness but fear which is driving their anger.

Enough Already

2010-09-20T18:02:00.003+01:00

No-one could accuse Labour of not being thorough on consulting the membership and wider public on the election of a new leader.

Since May, they have held dozens of meetings, many of them must have been almost identical. The BBC allowed them one last re-run of old slogans for Question Time on Thursday.

Of course, many who are voting have their old allegiances and new prejudices against former Ministers. But any neutral could see David Miliband stands head and shoulders above all candidates in stature, record, debating ability and even personal charm.

It seems frankly amazing his brother Ed has managed to make this a two-horse race. Besides sounding like (according to Rory Bremner) Tony Blar with a cold, he struggles to demonstrate any kind of heavyweight support. His boast of having endorsements as far and wide as "Frank Dobson and Frank Field" would have impressed no-one outside the Labour party and very few in it.

Diane Abott has carved a place in Parliament, is a good speaker (gave a a belter on 90 day detention) but her campaign has been lacklustre not helped by her pinning the cliched "heir to Blair" badge on Miliband (D) constantly.

Ed Balls has had a good summer. He gave Gove a good kicking on free schools and has got some meaty aphorisms into the media reminding what he's good at swinging. But that will earn him shadow chancellorship this time. His soft-spoken, nice guy act cuts no ice with people who really know what he's like behind closed doors.

Poor little Burnham could hardly get a word in on Thursday and Dimbleby, forgetful at the best of times, kept passing over him. When he did get a chance to speak he barked how he was the only candidate equi-distant politically from Blair and Brown. Hardly the most inspirational of qualifications.

By Saturday afternoon David will take up his post and soon cleave to mould of leader. The party needs one badly. The country could do with an Opposition too.

Fair is Foul, Foul is Fair

2010-09-16T18:37:00.006+01:00

The Lib-Dems have not changed their party's name for several years now.

After the failure of the old 'Alliance' to make the big breakthrough in 1983, they adopted many nomenclature but retained essentially the same political identity. Even when they were briefly the LSDs, they can't have been in greater confusion in their political creed than they are now.

Just a few days before conference, Nick Clegg has refined his definition of liberal. It has shifted markedly since those TV debates in the Spring and is now does not resemble anything the Great Grandad of the party William Beveridge (above) would have recognised. Clegg takes it to mean, less sympathetic more self-reliant, less egalitarian in outcomes more materially ambitious.

In his Times article today, the DPM said of the forthcoming benefit cuts including for the disabled and elderly were "profoundly liberal". He went on, "welfare needs to become an engine of mobility...rather than to compensate the poor for their predicament." That could have been Keith Joseph speaking.

And what of the poor and their 'predicament' and those who are too old and infirm to acheive social mobility? If the Liberal side of the philosophy can be transformed what of social democracy?

Much of the Parliamentary Party don't believe this and there is very deep unease among the grey beards of Steele, Ashdown, Kennedy and Campbell. So far only the solid principled Bob Russell (Colchester) has had the courage to speak his mind. On Monday, he challenged Osborne's casual remarks about how so many benefit claimaints were just following their 'lifestyle choice' known more commonly as being idle bastards.

There are many more from the old 'Sandle Brigade' who will re-state the reason they joined the party all those years ago. I would expect their voices to be heard next week, for all their recent Government experience even the Liberals could not suppress all dissent like the last Government.

Demolition Man

2010-09-13T14:35:00.002+01:00

Political nerds love conference season. This autumn's round of composites and resolutions will be different not least having Tory and Liberals unable to attack each other. And to top it all the climax of the Labour leadership contest.

But traditionally we start with the TUC and the familiar barking of rotund unions lads and lasses. The tone this year is nothing short of seething anger. Even the mild-mannered Chair, Brendan Barber, described Tory Britain as a "dark, brutish more frightening place" and adding the coalition was more like "a demolition."

Of course RMT chief, Bob Crow, is well experienced in unleashing bilious anger at Conservatives. But Bob is a bit underrated intellectually, he seems to have softened his style a little and his words are beginning to resonate as quite sensible. Can it be true? When the cuts in public services are felt personally to millions in the ensuing months he may find himself almost liked. Even Boris Johnson agreed with Bob ("he's got a point") that the crisis was borne of reckless behaviour at the top of most of our banks.

The most striking theme about the speeches today was the lack of comment by the media about the role of banks and how the public had been mugged into thinking the annihilation of many vital services was in some way necessary pain. Perhaps there is something masochistic in the British nature. But at last we heard the genuine voices of the ordinary men and women who have had a stomach full of Coulson fed stories about "benefit scroungers" and "gold-plated public pensions."

The gap between the media misrepresentation and the rights of workers to protect their jobs was caught perfectly when Andrew Marr was asking Bob Crow about NOTW calling unions threat of strikes as "industrial suicide".

"That newspaper would say that as it doesn't recognise Trade Unions," a sticky pause ensued.

However even co-ordinated action from all parts of the membership will not reverse the disaster to come as one leader said, Thatcher started the attack on public services, "this lot mean to finish the job."

Shouting Fire in a Theatre

2010-09-09T18:02:00.003+01:00

Unfortunately, the Terry Jones who has planned on burning a stack of the Koran on Saturday is not the one attached to Monty Pythons. Even if Python were at times equally controversial, they were never so artless and crude.

The Rev Terry Jones. a Pentecostal preacher from Florida is currently defying all denominations of the American churches, the whole of Congress and the Government, General Petreus, the Vatican and Nato by his desire to contront "extreme Islam." As the General in charge of the 100,000 US soldiers in Afghanistan put it, this act of idiocy and extremism would "incite violence and put our troops in danger."

It is pretty poor the Republicans have sought to make some political capital out of this highly tense situation. Rather than condemn it outright for the outrage it is, Boehner and Palin have equated it as equally "unwise" as building a Muslim Centre in Manhattan.

At any rate Jones is unmoved. He does not appear to be the usual kind of media whore. It's possible he really means it. Certainly the only way he will alter his memorial to 9/11 by burning holy books is by "praying" and seeking divine intervention. Give me strength.

In America everyone respects Jones's right to freedom of speech, even if the cost is tearing up all the mediation built between Islam and Christianity in recent years. At least in this country we draw a line on what is unacceptable as a protest.

Of course the British police can go too far and use powers to quell legitimate protest. But if Jones were in London he would stopped as it was considered anti-social behaviour, unconducive to the public good, a breach of the beach or a simple public order offence. Or they just go down and put the frighteners on him.

Rights should be balanced against responsibilities but in this situation the world can only wait for God to locate enough of Jones's few brain cells to get him to chuck it in.

Or with any luck strike him down.

Use Your Illusion

2010-09-06T15:28:00.003+01:00

This is the image of the most senior drugs official in the United Nations, Antonio Maria Costa, Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

He was persuaded to write a response to the slew of Observer articles in favour of reforming the UN's ancient and obsolete drug control laws. His opening line underlined his mastery of obfuscation, deflection and deceit.

"The debate between those who dream of a world without drugs and those who hope for a world of free drugs has been raging for years. " The simple truth is, no such debate exists between these two utopian positions.

A world without drugs is an impossible goal because mankind has always sought some degree of intoxication and always will. It is not a dream but an illusion. It should not be the starting point of discussion when it has no place in reality.

Equally misleading his Costa's characterisation of reformers as people who would like a free-for-all on drugs where anyone is able to get as blitzed as they wish anytime. The drug reform lobby may hold differing opinions on the appropriate levels of controls but the shared objective is to reduce the harm from drugs. No serious organisation advocates abandoning all control and regulation.

So Costa's initial premise is wrong and what follows is a path through tortuous logic, with highly partial use of statistics and general points about human nature which defy all sense. Costa argues reforms would "unleash an epidemic of addiction". He asserts cocaine production over the last 10 years has stabilised omitting to mention 28,000 murders in the cocaine trade in Mexico in the last four years.

Recently in UK, there have been some encouraging signs from establishment figures like Sir Ian Gilmore and media outlets (Independent) who have declared an end to the fallacy of 'controlling' drugs as anything other than a disaster. Unfortunately the Government's latest thinking on a Drugs Strategy is as idealogical as the UN with great emphasis on abstinence not treatment. They even suggest "whole family intervention" where all the relatives of a drug user arrive at a pre-arranged place and surround him. No doubt it will be God's love that doth save his soul.

One big problem with Costa's and IDS's perspective is the assumption taking drugs is all about addiction. Most drug use does not involve dependence. Ten million people in Britain have tried cannabis but levels of addiction are present in only a few thousand. Ecstasy is not addictive, even most cocaine users can take it or leave it.

There seems to have most anxiety, in recent years, about cannabis in the country prompting cross party support for increasing penalties on a drug Gordon Brown called "lethal." It is perverse that cannabis use has plummetted since 1998 falling by 45%. It seems astonishing the long line of drug Ministers have not sought to trumpet this success. But this war on drugs is more like the perpetual war in Oceania in Orwell's 1984. For the war to continue Governments must continue to fight and fail.

Staying Power

2010-09-04T12:13:00.007+01:00

Last July, I wrote about the curious news cycle surrounding the story of NOTW phone tapping.

It was no surprise News International papers did not touch it but then neither did the Telegraph or the Mail. The BBC ran a sensational story about Rebekah Wade being bugged which immediately disappeared.

Now the issue has been rejuvenated following an interview in the New York Times of former Screws hack, Sean Hoare. And we see the pattern repeating itself with certain titles scrupulously not reporting this major story.

The papers probably have different motives; editors in the Murdoch stable are more anxious about accusations of illegality and denials of journalistic malfeasance by their sister paper NOTW. Others simply don't wish to expose the PM's Comms supremo Andy Coulson and formr editor of NOTW, to any more damaging allegations.

We already know hundreds of prominent people had their mobile phones tapped illegally. Some like Max Clifford and PFA chair Gordon Taylor were paid off handsomely. John Prescott was a highly likely candidate for being bugged but finds the Met Police won't tell him whether he was or not.

If they think for a minute JP's loss of Ministerial status in May has diminished his ability to get to the airwaves and embarass them, then the Plod are very much mistaken. The entire behaviour of senior Met officers in the context of this inquiry has been bizarre.

They appear to be covering for the unsatisfactory level of scrutiny they applied to general journalistic practise at NOTW following the conviction and imprisonment of former hack Glenn Mulcaire. It must be at least doubtful he was the only one carrying out all the phone taps so others higher up still have questions to answer about how much was authorised, by whom and to what level. The unfortunate impression the Met are giving is protecting the Tory's press secretary.

The police and No 10 all point incessantly to "no new evidence". Tory Minister, Alan Duncan, listed all parties who agreed there was nothing more to investigate including the less than impartial "News International lawyers."

The words of Sean Hoare to the NYT were dismissed out of hand because of his previous problems with drink and drugs as if he were still drunk and stoned now. I heard him interviewed and he sounded quite lucid and I don't think he was hallucinating when he said he was expected to access celebrities' voicemail.

Labour have not gained much political capital from some of the Cons policy slip ups but here is a golden chance to get at Cameron's cabal. Prescott means it when he says he will initiate a judicial review if the matter is not progressed. That's what this scandal needs, a proper court case when Coulson can be put on the stand under oath.

Everybody Out

2010-09-02T18:05:00.003+01:00

It would take a quite an extra-ordinary circumstance for me to volunteer to share a (twin) hotel room with a male work colleague. And I would never chose to do so if the company was going to pick up the tab and I had several million in the bank anyway.

So to do so "occassionally" could be described as somewhat eccentric behaviour during the election campaign by the shadow Foreign Sec. Now he is First Secretary of State, he should be a little more circumspect about his associations as a married man.

The blogger, Guido Fawkes, has made a series of perfectly legitimate observations based on an FOI request and journalistic inquiry about Hague and his close friend, adviser and colleague, 25 year-old graduate Christopher Myers.

Fawkes described Hague's statement detailing his wife, Ffion's difficulty in conceiving as "nuclear". Certainly a well-chosen word, for very rarely, if ever, is BBC's Nick Robinson lost for words like he was last night.

The Evening Standard suggested today he drafted this personal statement, stressing his heterosexuality, after taking advice from the machiavellian George Osborne. A tangled web indeed. At least George did not, seemingly, advise a photo op of little Hague playing rugger and relaxing after with a plate of rare roast beef and pint of frothy Yorkshire bitter.

The commentators, who have been around related stories for nearly twenty years, have failed to attack Guido and have instead considered Hague's other friendship with Sebastian Coe.

Hague has clearly pinned his entire political career on that statement; it was more of an instruction to media organisations to cease speculating but seven front pages ensued. As Max Clifford said, "it turned a small story into a big one."

Ever the one to support the "normal" MP, Norman Tebbit described Hague as "naive at best, foolish at worst." It wasn't quite clear whether he meant sharing a room with another man or denying its significance.

A Bit Rich

2010-08-21T09:51:00.006+01:00

Many of Labour's most equitable achievements were hardly publicised. The massive home improvement overseen by John (now Lord) Prescott passed without barely any acknowledgement. The same could be said for the Supporting People Budget administered by the National Housing Federation.

The million or so people the fund helped to be housed are pretty close to the most vulnerable in society - the homeless, those recovering from mental illness, those who have escaped from trafficking gangs and severe domestic violence. Ths is the kind of work a compassionate Government carries out quietly and its returns are only measured in knowing they did the right thing in protecting the weak and oppressed.

Coalition plans to lump 40 percent off the NHF budget are no surprise. These Ministers have quickly got out the habit of making any judgement on the human worth of current spending projects - their determination is to continue reducing the deficit without regard to the social and economic catastrophe which will ensue.

When it comes to identifying these areas of wasteful spending, who better then Billionaire retailer Philip Green to tell Ministers where to wield the axe? Green certainly can be relied on to dispense with sentimental affectation.

Cameron's decision to use Green as a kind of Whitehall troubleshooter is just the worst idea for achieving what they laughably call "fair and equitable savings". Green cannot have the first idea of the value of social services to the poor and elderly. He would hardly be likely to casually pick up that knowledge in between massive takeovers of retail firms.

One hopes it is a gimmick but I am sure he will be allowed at some point to express his judgement on the undeserving poor. The only hope is the counter culture to commercial success aka the Civil Service, frustrates him at his every turn.

Resistance is Low

2010-08-05T18:17:00.004+01:00

I suppose you can't exactly blame David Cameron for pressing on with such boldness on his plans to slash frontline public services. He has faced such little vocal opposition, he may yet have convinced himself there is something of a consensus for the imminent steep rise on the country's levels of poverty and joblessness.

By his recent suggestion, Council houses should be leased, implies he views social housing as one stage of a family's property needs before they go onto own more substantial dwellings; here he confuses the safety net for the trampoline.

The Tory Government has fallen into the ideological trap of considering the economy of the nation as no diferent in principle from that of a household. Cameron said just yesterday, "We cannot live beyond our means," as if the lower income groups had been recklessly extravagant in recent years. But when he spills out this drivel, there is barely a murmur from the opposition and media in reminding us the huge debt derives from the six elephants in the room: the bailed out banks which cost us the taxpayer about £100Bn to support their profligacy.

Of the five Labour leadership candidates, it pains me to say, only Ed Balls has barked back at any discernable volume. On the considerable risk this sixth-form economics experiment will tip the country back into recession, Balls said, "Cameron is ...wrong to say the most urgent priority for Britain is to slash the deficit..[it] should be to secure Britain's economic recovery by boosting jobs and growth."

And yet it falls to the oldest radical of all, Tony Benn (above) to organise the "resistance". His article in the guardian today (www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/Aug/04/time-to-organise-resistance-now) sets out in cold anger what those who oppose the Tories should be doing. His new group already has substantial intellectual support, now its aims need to be considered by the wider public as mainstream view. After all it's only our future.

Opposites Attract

2010-07-29T20:33:00.004+01:00

In 1812, Governor Gerry of Massachusetts (left) carved up the constituencies of the State in a shameless attempt to rig his re-election. The term 'Gerrymander' derives from the fact one seat was drawn so unwieldy, it somewhat resembled a salamander.

History lesson complete, the final row of this Parliament on the final day before recess concerned the proposed referendum on moving to the AV system for elections or a "pathetic excuse for a voting system" as Clegg used to call it.

Although Labour was the only party to include a committment for AV in its manifesto, it has no option but to oppose the bill as it has all sorts of Tory electoral fixes bolted on to it. The drive to equalise the constituencies, although worthy in principle, will have to defy existing county boundaries and make some rural one bigger than whole counties, making life effectively impossible for the sitting MP.

As Comrade Straw alluded to at DPMQs, it will mean making a hybrid constituency, half made of some of the Isle of Wight and the remainder a chunk of Hampshire. The Cabinet Office drone, Mark Harper, answered that point rather dimly, "we are not proposing to move anybody who currently lives on the IoW". Neither are they proposing to allow them to have their say as that pesky local consultation thing would inevitably delay the process.

Clegg has still not explained why it is neccessary to reduce the number of MPs from 650 to 600 although one suspects it is part of the math in stitching up the constituncies. The saving of £12m is not remotely proportionate to the loss of democratic representation. MPs are already overwhelmed by constituency inquiries and now they will volunteer to add ten percent to that workload.

The Cons also are living under a strange dichotomy, they will fight to the death to allow the Lib-Dems their little referendum to take place then at the actual vote, oppose it.

The Bill should still pass, the referendum will probably be delayed past the proposed 5 May but will be almost certainly lost. It's a classic three card trick from the Tories. The defeat of electoral reform will be a sad indictment of how politically inept the Lib-Dems are proving in Government.

Vandals at the Gate

2010-07-27T19:09:00.008+01:00

Thatcherism, as a brand of economic and political philosophy. was borne out of a fundamental re-appraisal of policy by senior Tories following their two electoral defeats in 1974.

The main architects were Keith Joseph and Enoch Powell who fundamentally rejected Keynes in favour of a Monetarist approach. It proved to be a highly divisive and transformative force for change in UK. But at least, you could say it was intellectually coherent.

The current Coalition Government appear to be acting with no such higher strategy other than tearing down any constructive organisation established under Labour by labelling them "wasteful" or "bureaucratic". Each day seems to bring another crass decision of incredible ineptitude. In many cases the organisations to be abolished are, by any measure, revenue-raising for HM Treasury and not remotely a burden on public finances.

The decision by that gormless, grinning buffoon Jeremy Hunt to scrap the National Film Council defies any sense whatever. Established in 2000, the Council has invested lottery money in about 900 films and has repaid its original money at about a ratio of 5:1. The Chief Executive, John Woodward, was not even consulted to present his case for defence to these Ministers.

The Sustainable Development Commission is a smaller operation with a budget of only £3m but has shown to be highly effective in identifying huge areas of savings in fuel, water and waste particularly by Government. Again scrapped, without evaluation, by the stroke of a pen. By these standards, the intended investment in sporting prowess for the London 2012 Olympics looks extremely vulnerable. Presumably the message which needs to be sent out to athletes is that Gold medals are only truely earned if by an entirely free-market approach.

Certainly this Government is acting swifter and more ruthlessly than Thatcher's first Government of 1979-83. But its manner is haphazard, capricious and at times just plain self-defeating.

History and politics can always surprise us but by their unneccesary perniciousness this Government now makes the Iron Lady, Thatcher's look quite amenable and sympathetic.

War on Safety

2010-07-26T17:37:00.002+01:00

If you believed every word of our cynical press, you would never consider Britain to be top of any world league at all. But the almost total uncelebrated fact is Britain's roads are the safest in the world, beating notoriously cautious and sensible nations like Germany, Sweden and Japan.

The remarkable achievement is owing to the successful introduction of technology, enforcement and advertising over a sustained period. Although every new measure, like the breathalyser has been fought fiercely by a small vocal army of reactionaries, successive Governments have resisted their unscientific claims and spurious appeals to a personal right to liberty.

Until now. Step forward the Coalition Government's prize fool, 'Road Safety' Minister, Mike Penning. His mindless boasting of the new Government's intention to be rid of most of the country's speed cameras will start to reverse 45 years of steady reduction in road deaths, from about 8,000 in 1967 to less than 3,000 last year.

Said Penning, "This is another example of this Government delivering on its pledge to end the war on the motorist." Or, to put it another way, this is another policy entirely based on plainly disprovable nonsense derived from Daily Mail editorials.

A third of road deaths are caused by excessive speed and speed cameras save lives by the most efficient means. There is no study which can disprove that. Leaving aside the human cost of a road death, each one costs the country's emergency services and NHS about £1m, so cutting £50m from road safety budgets will prove to be actually more expensive if the numbers of dead motorists, cyclists and pedestrians grow by just a four or five dozen.

As previous Home Secretary Alan Johnson put it, the Tories have adopted "a saloon bar view." I wonder what hope there remains for plans to lower the drink-drive level in line with the EU average. Looking pretty bleak, I fear.

Other comparably developed countries look jealously at the huge savings Britain makes through road safety where Italy has double the proportion of road deaths and the US treble. Only the most short-sighted, small minded Government would contemplate conceding effortlessly to the road hog lobby. These Ministers do not appear to be fully in control of the vehicle.

Got him.

2010-07-23T09:24:00.002+01:00

Shadow Justice Secretary, Jack Straw did pretty as a stand-in for the opposition at PMQs on Wednesday. He focussed much of his questions on the idiotic decision by school bully Osbourne to pull a vital loan for Sheffield Forgemasters, one of only two companies in the world to produce specialist equipment for nuclear power stations.

Besides being a symptomatic example of 80s style false economy from the Tories, the company is located in Clegg's constituency so was also exposing him to acute political embarrassment. The South Yorkshire press are really after him and with good reason.

But Clegg as DPM did quite well too. I mean 'well' in the sense he dodged every question and batted back the same old guff about Liam Byrne's joke note about no money being left. At the final exchange, little Nicky forgot where he was for a moment and felt emboldened to kick out at Straw's role as Foreign Sec in the Iraq invasion. "Perhaps one day he will account for his role in the most disastrous decision of all: the illegal invasion of Iraq."

Illegal, you say. Neither the current Foreign Secretary nor Defence Secretary has suggested as such, let alone Dave. No.10 press office found this quite a tough one to square with spin and suggested when the DPM speaks on such matters it is his "long-held" and "personal" view. Sir George Young, Speaker of the House continued this drivel when told the House, "It is not unprecedented for Ministers speaking at this dispatch box...to make their personal views known."

Claptrap, said the increasingly busy Speaker Bercow. It seems astonishing senior Parliamentary figures need to be reminded of the basics of House convention. At the Dispatch box, you speak as a Minister of the Government and represent Government views alone.

Now it would seem the wooliness of the Coalition on Parliament is the least of their problems. One of Forgemasters main rivals, businessman Andrew Cook, had lobbied for the loan to be withdrawn. It would seem it would have prevented Cook from "investing" in Forgemasters which sounds rather like a takeover bid. His other role as one of the Tory party's main donors introduces this bunch of amateurs to a new yet familiar charge: sleaze.

Rules of Engagement

2010-07-20T12:57:00.003+01:00

Every new Government has the right to challenge the accepted procedures and institute new rules to help maintain a fairly efficient Parliamentary democracy. So long as Ministers are even-handed in their decision-making and chairs of Select Committees like, Tim Yeo (left) keep their independence.

But the new Coalition Government, in their haste, seem able to rid themselves of even these tiresome burdens of accountability.

This week Yeo published a dismal pamphlet 'Green Gold' on climate change. His suggestion all motorways should be privatised and all road users compelled to pay for their use was on the radical side. But his 'report' is the kind of material his committee is supposed to assess, he appears to be lobbying himself on this one.

Any body with evidence presented to counter his free-market ideas already knows how this previously unbiased committee will now respond. (It was also staggering to see the matter-of-fact way the Mail reported Yeo's brainchild -when the most modest regulations were brought in under Labour, mostly for the sake of road safety were deemed a 'war on the motorist'.)

IDS, as Sec of State for DWP, is delighting in his ability to judge and condemn whole strata of society which displease him for their apparent fecklessness. At the same time his Centre for Social Justice keeps churning out reports on social issues including, this week, on the management of drug dependence.

Drunken Smith (teetotal) did not pass comment when the CSJ advocated abolition of the pragmatic National Treatment Agency to be replaced by a more ideological Addiction Recovery Board. A few days later the NTA had performed a Damascene-like conversion to setting time limits for allocating methadone to heroin addicts. His meddling in DH and HO business would usually prompt a call from Chief Whip to keep to the brief but IDS seems free to pour his evangelical scorn on the drug user with impunity.

This blurring of roles may not be very good for Government but if he gets his way it may prove, perversely, quite lucrative for dealers in heroin.

In Whom We Trust

2010-07-14T19:01:00.004+01:00

It seemed like Andrew Lansley had been shadow Health Secretary throughout Labour's three terms in office. Certainly he's had a huge amount of time to devise the rationale behind the massive health care changes he wanted to see under a Tory Government.

So it is something of a surprise to hear his plans for 'reform' now he is in office; they sound ill-considered and entirely reactionary. First, he said Jamie Oliver's programme for healthy school dinners was "lecturing" and "nannying" and was largely "a failure". Although there is nothing to support those arguments, such as they are.

"Ministry insiders" hinted heavily on Monday, the Food Standards Agency and would be abolished and in its stead would be an inert Ministerial sub-Committee chaired by Andy himself. The food giants must have wept with joy over that one. Let us not forget the FSA was established following the BSE outbreak where big business's lack of moral scruples led to the extermination of the entire national beef cattle herd. Over 1,500 people in the UK have died of CJD.

But these issues are piffling compared to Lansley's plan for transferring four-fifths of NHS budgets to 5-600 consortia of GPs, as "doctors know best how to manage treatment for patients."

This facile philosophy is applied by Tories to schools too, "where parents know best how their child should be educated." This is patently idiotic. We are not the experts and GPs can't be expected join up all the right decisions and gain the full economy of scale for the health service.

But when pressed on the point by Martha Karney on Newsnight, Lansley opted for an ad hominem argument, "Don't you trust your Doctor to make these decisions?"

It takes seven or more years to train to be a GP and yet there are still no modules for financial management nor strategic planning. Trust is not the point: it is simply about competence and managerial capacity. These plans rather treat GPs as some sort of homegenous group with consistent outlook and skills. It would have been advisable to canvass their views first but these vast changes appear ready to be implemented without consultation nor piloting.

The purpose of this dramatic structural change is to rid the NHS of "bureacracy". The term is used in place of many inefficiencies and red tape. But huge organisations rely on a level of bureacracy to function at all; they provide the levers to pull. LAnsley beleives there are 68,000 managers carrying out superfluous duties.

Lansley and Cameron sound like those Leninists who attacked the agrarian "management" of kulaks. The ensuing chaos may not be quite so tortuous as Soviet Union in 1920s but the judgement is almost as dubious and prejudicial. It is a huge gamble and Lansley has not even started to explain why it is necessary.

But Are You Experienced?

2010-07-09T17:34:00.005+01:00

It may be a bit previous to call for Michael Gove's resignation over the school building programme list fiasco.

But Gove would be as well to locate the slim vestige of humility he may still possess, if he is to learn anything from this unneccessarily embarrassing episode.

The original route of this idiotic cock-up was Gove's determination to proceed wth his purely ideologically 'free' school initiative. In order to release the necessary funds, he had to first cancel large parts of the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme this side of recess, in order to have some flagship free schools in place for September term. A lawyer might call such huge shifting of resources in a period of a few weeks as "precipitative haste."

But that had no influence over Gove's amateurish and shambolic release of information cancelling hundreds of vital school building projects. His entirely inept performance would have shamed a sixth-form debater let alone a Secretary of State.

Speaker Bercow allowed Gove to run way beyond his usual time allowance of ten minutes. His statement was delivered with the usual Aberdonian briskness but was all outlandish rhetoric where measured tones would have been more apt. But on the list of schools affected, he omitted to deploy the vital phrase, "and copies are available from the Vote Office." Because they weren't.

First Speaker slapped Gove across the chops for not answering questions, "he's not supposed to be reading out a previously written script." He underlined the seriousness of Gove's misdemenour calling it, "unprecedented."

Mikey said, yeah thanks, but took no heed and carried on banging on about "scandalous" Labour waste, yadda, yadda. Mr Speaker then metaphorically held him against the wall saying, "Let me say to the Secretary of State, the assurance of his gratitude is of no interest to me; adhering to my ruling is."

Members then naturally probed him for news of their own constituencies. Gove had plenty of detail at his fingertips and wasted considerable Parliamentary time effectively reading them out one-by one. He then conceded he would write to every local authority and each Member. His Private Office must have exploded at the prospect of drafting 750 odd letters.

The dusky Caroline Flint was able to scoff at Gove's hapless handling when she said simply, "it would have been better to have provided that information, before the debate rather than during it." The effect was Gove casually divulging dramatic and devastating news to one community after another, like he was flicking peas off a table.

When it was finally over, which Mr Speaker described as, "an unwieldy process, to put it mildly," it emerged, via Ed Balls, that the elusive list had been circulated to the media prior to the debate. Members were now beside themsleves and even Speaker called it, "rank discourtesy." The car crash continued; Gove failed to take responsibility and said he didn't know if Balls was right even though precise timings were provided.

Speaker had to throttle Gove again reminding him he had Ministerial responsibility and ignorance could be no defence, "the Secretary of State should be aware". It was getting toe-curling now and could not possibly get worse could it?

But once MPs began verifying details of the cuts, they found a huge number of inconsistencies - in Sandwell in the West Midlands, nine school building projects which appeared to have been saved were actually for the chop after all.

But despite this comedy of errors, Gove was the very picture of arrogance on Newsnight and showed not an ounce of chagrin about his school boy handling of the cancellation of £55Bn worth of school building.

Even after he was compelled to apologise in the most abject terms on Wednesday, what was still missing, as Glenda Jackson said in the House, was, "any concern at all for the future of our children."

C'est La Guerre

2010-07-05T19:07:00.003+01:00

Mark Serwotka (left), the eloquent head of Public and Commercial Services Union, is already a hardened campaigner against public sector cuts.

For all the Tories' talk of finally bringing discipline to public accounts, it ignores the several assaults Labour made on reducing welfare and the benefits to the civil service.

As soon as Ministers start using isolated examples of big payouts to mandarins you know the service as a whole is in for a battering. The reality is rather different. Most civil servants retire on a fairly pitiful small pension, the terms may be better than some areas of the private sector but the pay rates have been poor for so long, they could not really be described in any way as "generous".

Pensions and staff levels are being targetted for colossal reductions. Just at the point the economy is starting draw breath again the Coalition overnment is aiming a blow at its solar plexus. Serwotka rightfully described the forthcoming job losses as, "economically illiterate." The public sector, according to the more conservative Treasury figures is facing at least 600,000 job losses which rises to 1.3m when adding private sector. Add these numbers to the existing 2.57m unemployed and a total in excess of 4m is, to borrow a term from Osborne, "unavoidable."

It rather makes a nonsense of pulling 10,000s off disability benefits to give them a bigger incentive to find work. Each graduate position now receives 70 applications. Quite how students are expecting to pay off huge debts may be a mere detail to Ministers like Gove but a source of huge stress to countless families.

The Government is preparing for a huge rise in poverty, IDS's Work and Pensions Department are developing plans for issuing of food stamps. This is the undignified future for many, unemployment, no job prospects, reduced benefits, living off handouts.

What did we actually do to deserve this? Did millions of civil servants, low paid and benefit claimants spend extravagantly in the last few years? Or did the vast national debt pile up on bailing out TSB/Lloyds, Bradford and Bingley, RBS and Northern Rock?

The banks' share of pain is a derisory £2bn transaction tax which even the IMF has suggested should be at least four times higher. Soon they'll be back earning their super profits while the bottom sixth of society sinks to a new level of 'underclass'.

This is what you voted for.

Sound the Alarm

2010-07-02T11:52:00.005+01:00

Assistant Commissioner at the Met, John Yates (left) heard Home Sec, Theresa May's speech on Tuesday and, like the rest of us, realised huge cuts to our police forces were inevitable.

She said quite unequivocably, "cuts will fall on the police as they will on other public services, " they would be expected to, "make sacrifices" and mirror the "ruthless cutting [of] waste" in the Home Office.

The projected cuts are staggering; not just down to the bone but effectively removing limbs.

Yates, anticipates his budget on counter-terrorism to be slashed by £65-87m and I think it was his duty to reflect how this would impact on the overall policing capability of keeping the country safe from terrorism.

Step forward the old crocodile, Francis Maude, Secretary of State in the Cabinet Office, to give Yates a public dressing-down for daring to speak the bleedin' obvious. Maude savaged Yeats for, "alarming the public" and "shroud waving." Well it was hardly Yates's idea to shift counter-terrorism from the category of 'necessary' to that of 'preferable'.

The first aspect this febrile spat reveals is the Tories' wholly different attitude to the police service. While Labour was rather fawning and genuflecting, Tories expect deference from mere "public servants."

Secondly, the need to slash public spending to pay for the banks' economic crash is now considered beyond question. Anyone who doubts the sense of reducing what yesterday we thought as essential public services, can expect vilification.

Five years ago tomorrow were the 7 July bombings in London where 52 people were murdered.

At the time, I would never have thought it possible any Government, even a Tory one, could consider measures to prevent such carnage and bloody killings should be just like any other budgetary issue, like whether to build more laybys on the A12.

Fool me Twice

2010-06-24T13:29:00.003+01:00

Picture poor old Vince Cable shuffling home to his Twickenham semi after another hard slog in Whitehall, looking forward to a glass of bitter shandy and a glimpse of the evening's play at Wimbledon.

Perhaps he sits in silent company with his wife, unable to express his anguish of what he finds himself carrying out in Government. He should be totally sickened as his progressive and redistributive instincts are confronted with the daily menu of vicious cuts in welfare and public services.

George Osborne and his work trainee Danny Alexander presented a vile, despicable budget on Tuesday. The message came through clearly: the recklessness of the banks will be paid for by the struggling majority. The slashing of welfare payments by £11bn was certainly breathtaking and back to the old Tories of the early 80s which Cameron kidded us had been consigned to history. "We're all in this together," said Osborne, the millionaire son of a Baronet, on slashing housing benefits and so guaranteeing big rises in homelessness.

Compounding Vince’s misery must be the biggest economic questions about whether £40bn worth of fiscal savagery, at a time where recovery is so fragile, risks knocking Britain back into recession. There is also the small matter of regressive measure of putting VAT up to 20 percent which Vince railed against throughout the election. That just can't be spun.

The Departmental cuts of a quarter or a third look, er, impossible to implement. Some Ministries like Transport can put a moratorium on all building projects and save a few billion but take a Department like the Home Office where the commitment to community safety could not be viewed as luxurious indulgence. Cuts that deep will mean we have decide if we no longer monitor sex offenders, discontinue providing home security to the elderly or make do with 50,000 less police officers.

Cameron said to Andrew Marr a few days before the election, “Any Cabinet minister, if we win the election, who comes to me and says 'here are my plans and they involve front line reductions' will be sent back to their department to go away and think again." That claptrap was about as convincing as George Bush senior when he promised, “no new taxes.”

Vince is central to this odious deceit, kidding the country the severe hardship and steeply rising unemployment and poverty is “unavoidable”. But ultimately he’s kidding himself his heart is in it at all.

A Scroundel's Refuge

2010-06-20T08:11:00.004+01:00

The oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico looks about the worst man-made environmental disaster since Chernobyl. Its cause appears to be risky well management from the lead company BP and the American population has rightfully poured barrels of scorn on them.

It hardly helped the corporation when it massively understated the scale of the daily flow and one of its execs described it as "tiny" ccompared to the size of the Gulf.

However BP has recently found an allay in the Daily Mail who has taken exception to President Obama bashing 'British Petroleum' as a swipe at our entire nation. Mail columnist Amanda Platell (above) said on BBC's Question Time, the "anti-British" sentiment was seriously harming the relations between Washington and London to the extent we should consider withdrawing our troops from Helmand.

The Mail often rages against Europe in this little Englander manner (although Platell is Australian) so it is unusual to lay into our oldest ally the US. But the only way the Mail can make this story run as if Obama and the US media had broadened their anger to any other aspect of Britishness or Britain. The plain fact is they haven't.

Platell and other polemicists seem to expect us to take this leap of logic. Their approach is more akin to Fox News where the extreme edge of a story is placed as the mainstream.

And in the end the Mail looks like they are defenders of a company whose reckless decision-making will cause long-lasting damage to 1,500 miles of coastline. And not forgetting 11 rig-workers were killed in the initial explosion.

It's rather like sympathising with a bully who has hurt his hand beating an old lady.

Circles of Hell

2010-06-03T14:22:00.002+01:00

This is a picture of Gary Purdham, farmer’s son, Rugby League player and father of two small children. He was murdered, quite without motive, by gun-owner and part-time taxi driver Derrick Bird in Cumbria yesterday. Gary Purdham was helping his uncle carry out the annual hedge-trimming on his farm near Gosforth, when Bird drew up in his taxi and shot him point-blank.

Bird appears to have 'flipped' like other gun-owners and had taken out his simmering paranoid frustration on the innocent community. He felt he could, because he owned and had inherited a stack of rifles and shotguns. In some people possessing a lethal weapon lends them a sense of imperviousness, of hidden power over their seemingly inferior peers.

Like all mass-shootings, the assailant comes to realise exerting power of life or death over strangers is finite and their suicide is a common feature to all firearms massacres. And as usual the weapons were legally owned. The ban on handguns between 1996-8 meant the mass-murderers favoured weapon, the pistol, is no longer easily available and the ammunition is now very hard to come by. So it is a surprise, Bird could murder so many with a shotgun and a .22 rifle.

The law is probably not the best solution here. But independent scrutiny of firearms licensing is long overdue as police seem to simply dish them out to their old mates with little consideration for their mental health. Thomas Hamilton’s licence was approved eventhough the assessment could have not been more explicit in raising potential dangers of letting him have his gun back.

But better policing is no compensation to small boys waking up today to find their Dada still gone. Bird’s acts of evil consign him to the same ignominy as Ryan and Hamilton, fitting testament to other quiet, loners who carried out unspeakable horrors with legal guns.

Literal Fools

2010-05-31T12:09:00.007+01:00

What is a museum? I rather thought it was a building containing historical artefacts which trace the various stages of evolution of mankind and the wider world. Curators are all essentially historians who present factual information to the interested public and their bored children.

Visitors to Ulster Museum have, for over 180 years, been able to study archaeology, ethnography, treasures from the Spanish Armada, local history, industrial archaeology, botany, zoology and geology.

But NI culture Minister, Nelson McCausland, is far from satisfied. He wants museums to be, “reflective of the views, beliefs and cultural traditions of the people,” including exhibits setting out the thoroughly unscientific ‘intelligent design’ theory of the universe.

Many scientists have a degree of faith in a creative force and few would object to acknowledgement of this fact. However, McCausland takes a literal interpretation of the bible. I guess it is rather hard to reconcile the story of Noah’s ark with a large collection of dinosaur skeletons.

Old Nelson claims, “I’ve had more letters from the public on this issue than any other.” Although this barely credible claim does not mention how many were pleas to keep religion and superstition firmly in church.

McCausland is not a lone Creationist voice in Government. His buddy Mervyn Story is an Antrim member of the Northern Irish Assembly, whose constituency includes the Giant’s Causeway (above). Those awkward geologists have found, contrary to the cultural views and beliefs of many in Ulster, the cooling of volcanic lava leading to the hexagonal blocks of basalt occurred about 60 million years ago.

Damn. How can that be possible when the earth is only 6014 years old? It must be the Devil’s work.

Proper Charlie

2010-05-30T10:11:00.010+01:00

It was not surprising to learn the toxicology tests from those Scunthorpe boys, who had reportedly overdosed on Mephedrone, found, er, they hadn't. The drug is an amphetamine which is rarely the cause of drug death even when combined with heavy drinking. However, it was surprising to find no trace of the drug at all in their systems.

Turn your mind back two months and we had Govt Ministers and their shadows making tough "whatever it takes" statements to control the drug and enforce the law "to avert such tragic consequences occurring in the future." Chief Inspector Mark Oliver of Lincolnshire police held a press conference on 16 March and told the world Mephedrone had killed those lads. He set in motion the full media hysteria which led to its control just four weeks later.

One would have assumed the police investigation had uncovered identifiable traces or wraps or some connection to a Mephedrone supplier. Apparently not, Oliver's wild assertions sound like they were based on hearsay evidence from someone who doesn't know the difference between Mephedrone and the opiote substitute Methadone.

If ever there were a case for taking the Misuse of Drugs Act out of the police Department of the Home Office and transfered to Health, this is it. The police have no more qualification to start pontificating on essentially scientific matters than the febrile politicians. It is a source of national shame we have come distrust the scientists' analysis on drugs and rather adhere to the words of inept and impotent officials who simply panic with fear.

Previous Home Secretaries like Jacqui Smith hardly helped; she was able to misrepresent scientists like David Nutt as eccentric and out of touch with the real concerns of worried parents. What utter hogwash. For a start scientists are often parents too, but their intellectual discipline has allowed them to separate their individual anxieties with a rational view of the level of risk which can be moderated by credible educational messages.

The Government's reaction to new threats is hugely exaggerated and their attempts at education are woefully inaccurate. TalktoFrank's current campaign on cocaine features a drug mule/dog Pablo. There can be very few users of coke who would associate the drug with a cuddly puppy being sliced open in a dingy basement as Frank would have us believe.

The fast-track 'banning' of Mephedrone was based on a clearly false premise. Drugs policy has a false founding principle that it is the illegality and threat from the flat-foots which is the best way to deter drug use. That doesn't mean the answer is legalisation. But the current approach is ineffective to the point of being delusional.