Win The Crowd

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 Transport Sec, Philip Hammond said the limit was , "out of date" because of "huge advances in safety and motoring technology".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.

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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

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

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

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

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

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

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.