Woe, woe and thrice woe
"The huge scale of the retrenchment that the government wants to implement, and the decision to cut the fiscal deficit at an accelerated pace, will inevitably increase dangers of double-dip recession... In spite of the relatively strong recent UK performance in the second quarter, the recovery is still fragile and risks of a relapse are high.”
David Kern - economist at the British Chambers of Commerce
Prof David Blanchflower talks Balls.
Balls said Osborne's speech was wrong in its analysis of the past, reckless in its diagnosis of the current situation, and dangerous in its prescription for the future.
By contrast, he carefully laid out the historical evidence showing that austerity programmes have not worked in the past but have led to low growth, social unrest and high levels of unemployment. He argued that the coalition government is not only leaving the UK badly exposed to the coming economic storm but is "undermining the very goals of market stability and deficit reduction, which their policies are designed to achieve". I couldn't agree more.
In a challenge to Osborne, whom he calls a "growth denier", Balls said: "I would like him to point to the precedent, from British economic history, which says that, with slowing growth in our main trading partners and companies deleveraging, it is possible for public-sector retrenchment to stimulate private-sector growth and job creation." There is none. The slower, steadier path to deficit reduction that Balls has proposed is the right path.
Then came the revelation that Balls opposed Alistair Darling's plan to halve the deficit in four years, and continues to do so. For many months in this column, I have made clear the dangers of falling back into recession. I have never believed it was appropriate to set out a plan to reduce the deficit by a certain date, principally because of the high levels of uncertainty we face. Economic policy in these circumstances has to be path-dependent. Much rests on the extent to which the world economy slows and whether the banks start lending and firms begin investing and hiring again. Plus, it remains an open question whether consumers will start spending again.
It has to be said that Ed Balls has been excellent in challenging the Tories, driving home his point comparing the government's current policies with those that dragged us into the depression in the 1930s.
Oh - and
house prices fell again last month, the first drop in two consecutive months since February 2009.
Labels: economy
Don't read all about it!
Odd thing, that while the media can find pages of space to discuss the fact that an unknown advisor has resigned and a senior minister is not having a gay affair, few can find any space to mention the New York Times and their story about Andy Coulson, who remains the media supremo in Downing Street, but was the editor of the News of the World when various reporters were illegally accessing mobile voicemail for celebrities and those in the public eye. Coulson has always denied knowing anything about it, but
the New York Times claims that the paper had
...a frantic, sometimes degrading atmosphere in which some reporters openly pursued hacking or other improper tactics to satisfy demanding editors. Andy
Coulson, the top editor at the time, had imposed a hypercompetitive ethos, even by tabloid standards. One former reporter called it a “do whatever it takes” mentality. The reporter was one of two people who said Coulson was present during discussions about phone hacking. Coulson ultimately resigned but denied any knowledge of hacking...
He has continued to deny that, even to a Commons committee,
“I have never condoned the use of phone hacking, and nor do I have any recollection of incidences where phone hacking took place,”
but the NYT continues
A dozen former reporters said in interviews that hacking was pervasive at News of the World. “Everyone knew,” one longtime reporter said. “The office cat knew.” One former editor said Coulson talked freely with colleagues about the dark arts, including hacking. “I’ve been to dozens if not hundreds of meetings with Andy” when the subject came up, said the former editor, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The editor added that when Coulson would ask where a story came from, editors would reply, “We’ve pulled the phone records” or “I’ve listened to the phone messages.” Sean Hoare, a former reporter and onetime close friend of Coulson’s, also recalled discussing hacking. The two men first worked together at The Sun, where, Hoare said, he played tape recordings of hacked messages for Coulson. At News of the World, Hoare said he continued to inform Coulson of his pursuits. Coulson “actively encouraged me to do it,” Hoare said.
It is frankly unbelievable that Andy Coulson could have been unaware of what was a standard practice in the tabloid business. Tom Watson, a member of the culture, media and sport select committee
has called for a judicial enquiry with powers of subpoena to investigate this very murky affair.
Perhaps more disturbing still is the revelation that the police enquiry may have been influenced by a need to keep the News of the World on side
The police sometimes built high-profile cases out of the paper’s exclusives, and News of the World reciprocated with fawning stories of arrests. Within days of the raids, several senior detectives said they began feeling internal pressure. One senior investigator said he was approached by Chris Webb, from the department’s press office, who was “waving his arms up in the air, saying, ‘Wait a minute — let’s talk about this.’ ” The investigator, who has since left Scotland Yard, added that Webb stressed the department’s “long-term relationship with News International.” The investigator recalled becoming furious at the suggestion, responding, “There’s illegality here, and we’ll pursue it like we do any other case.” In a statement, Webb said: ‘‘I cannot recall these events. Police officers make operational decisions, not press officers. That is the policy of the Metropolitan Police Service and the policy that I and all police press officers follow."
Later on
Scotland Yard officials consulted with the Crown Prosecution Service on how broadly to investigate. But the officials didn’t discuss certain evidence with senior prosecutors, including the notes suggesting the involvement of other reporters, according to a senior prosecutor on the case. The prosecutor was stunned to discover later that the police had not shared everything. “I would have said we need to see how far this goes” and “whether we have a serious problem of criminality on this news desk,” said the former prosecutor, who declined to speak on the record.
This story takes the lid off how our free press operates - not in pursuit of criminality or corruption in high places, where some leeway might be allowed, but solely to fill pages with drivel about inconsequential 'celebrities' and the like. We need to know if the police took their foot off the accelerator to appease News International and we also need to know if Andy Coulson, the man who shapes the message for the government, can be trusted in any way at all.
Labels: Andy Coulson, Media, News of the World
Definitely not vague
William Hague's statement yesterday, following years of innuendo and snide comment, was as unequivocal as you could want
Any suggestion that his appointment was due to an improper relationship between us is utterly false, as is any suggestion that I have ever been involved in a relationship with any man.
He is either possessed of steel cojones or is telling the unvarnished truth, for I have no doubt that the tabloids are off and running to see if that last phrase can be demonstrated to be untrue.
Crispin Blunt came out only a week ago, announcing that he was gay and was also leaving his wife and he remains in his post as prisons minister, so I would hazard a guess that the Tory party has changed sufficiently that even a very senior minister could weather that little personal storm and keep his job. What would terminate Hague's career at this level would be a lie of that magnitude - there is no offence in being gay (even in the modern Conservative Party).
His sexuality, his marriage and the revelation that his wife has suffered a series of miscarriages are all entirely irrelevant - they have no place in the political story and frankly, I don't even care if he choses to sleep in a twin bedded room with another man. It may come as a great surprise to those living the sheltered lives of tabloid journalists that two people can be in the same space and not have sex. I appreciate that they have lives packed full of innuendo and euphemism, but human beings are sometimes able to control their lustful animal instincts and just sleep. It is, to my mind, a marginal lapse of judgement.
More serious is Hague's judgement in appointing an inexperienced 25 year old Durham graduate, with a couple of years behind him acting as a gofer, to a special advisor post within the Foreign Office - somewhere entirely unsuited as a training ground. Hague took with him two experienced advisors, with considerable knowledge of the field, but felt the need to appoint a third to assist him with the non-existent workload of 'First Minister' and to advise on matters relating to the Falkland Islands. It is all extremely odd and comes on the heels of the revelation that
Lord Ashcroft had renegotiated an agreement to secure his peerage and left Hague looking like a halfwit.
I have to say that I'm not convinced that the story is yet over. I'm puzzled by the inclusion of the details regarding Ffion's miscarriages - is that being used cynically to provide an additional layer of protection against any further questioning and to generate public support? I hope not, but with Andy Coulson at the centre of the Downing Street web, nothing is impossible.
The other point to make, as Conservative bloggers and politicians alike have been wringing their hands over the slurs made by Paul 'Guido Fawkes' Staines, is that few of them were running to defend the Labour and Liberal politicians who felt the bile and poison spewed at them by that purveyor of sewage and tittle-tattle, masquerading as a political blogger. While I feel genuine sympathy for the Hagues and even some for Christopher Myers, who has lost an opportunity that many would love to have, I can't help but feel that those who helped create the beast that is Guido Fawkes are now realising that it cannot be controlled and that they can also look forward to some years of abuse from the sidelines.
Labels: blogosphere, William Hague
Creative destruction returns.
The pace of change and the complete lack of consultation is terrifying in its high-handedness, but it is also representative of a belief within the Tory party that 'public services would benefit from a period of creative destruction' - an idea proposed by Conservative parliamentary candidate Danny Kruger back in 2005. The outrage was such that he was swiftly removed as PPC for Sedgefield - hardly a likely Tory target given the then incumbent MP, some chap called Blair, if I recall correctly. Kruger didn't disappear into obscurity, though. An old Etonian, he ended up as part of the Cameron inner circle post-election before he left politics in 2007/8.
It seems that his Schlumpertarian views have held sway within the party since, hence the flood of proposals - not all of them manifesto commitments or even necessarily in the Coalition document - across local government, central government, health and education.
Health, in particular, is under attack. For all Cameron's professed love for the NHS, looking at Lansley's ham-fisted and untried proposals to carry out a root and branch restructuring of the NHS, which will take two years to carry out as a bare minimum and will take £2 billion from patient care in organisational costs, it seems that the aim is to remove both the national and service parts of the NHS. Targets are being scrapped and with them go the patients' guarantee of speed of treatment, the cap on private care within NHS hospitals is being removed, to make that an attractive option for NHS management, with the
outcome likely to be costs controlled by rationing and increased waiting lists. Look lovingly at the eighteen week treatment guarantee, because you won't see it again under this government unless you are prepared to pay.
I predict that the health service will be allowed to wither and the private sector providers - such generous supporters of the Conservatives - will be ready to step in to vacuum up the middle class patients who can afford insurance premiums that will catapult them to the front of the queue. Public dissatisfaction will be allowed to rise - with those middle and upper earners increasingly unhappy that they have to pay for a service that they don't use - until the government decides that the best thing will be some form of social insurance rather than a universal offering.
And the same will happen to education and the benefits system, regardless of social cost. The post 1945 welfare state, a triumph of that Labour government, is under an attack of a scale beyond the dreams even of Thatcher, all justified by a global economic crisis caused by the banking system.
As a great man once said "I warn you not to fall ill...." He was right.
Labels: Conservatives, Danny Kruger, NHS
Nasty and stupid
The government plans to scrap the NHS Direct telephone service, staffed by trained, qualified nurses and replace it with a call centre filled with agents who have had just three days' training. This is a service that is estimated to save the NHS service some £200 million a year - rather more than it costs. It also provides valuable advice and reassurance to thousands of patients every day, but none of that matters to the halfwits in government.
Nothing so demonstrates the utter ruthlessness of this Tory/Liberal Democrat government as how they are handling the lives of their employees. The fetish of slashing what the state does is more important than basic decency, let alone good employment practice, as ministers seem to believe that the media is an appropriate channel to let people know that their jobs are being scrapped - as staff at the Audit Commission can confirm.
John Prescott is on the ball, using Cameron's promise that a petition with 100,000 supporters will get a Commons debate. Time to sign it - http://www.savenhsdirect.co.uk
Pickled again...
I'm stunned that Pickles has succumbed to his own inflated prejudices and scrapped the Audit Commission. Knowing what the big firms of auditors charge for their work in the private sector, you have to wonder if this will prove to be a judgement that will end up costing more.
Or perhaps we should abandon scrutiny of local authorities and their finances. That might just be easier. Not a good idea, but since when has that stopped them?
A summer of leaks and positioning?
The swift U turn on nursery milk may be more damaging than Cameron imagined. Far from being a quick fix to avoid a political embarrassment, it has set up the possibility of a long, hot and unpleasant summer of leaks and advance spin that will prove difficult to manage.
The leak of the letter from Anne Milton has been swiftly followed by a leak from the Ministry of Justice regarding a 25% cut to their budgets. The Tories could face a long summer and autumn of having to defend a stream of specific budget cuts in advance of the spending review.
For once, swiftly killing a story may prove to be a mistake as it gives heart to others with budgets to defend. Now's a very good time to be a governmental plumber!
Labels: leaks
A new measure of spin.
No, not rpm, but the Mandelson, deployed by John Eatwell, Professor of Financial Policy at Cambridge University in
his comprehensive destruction of the Tory economic narrative. At least I hope that it is spin. If Osborne and Cameron actually believe their statements and aren't just spinning faster than Rumpelstiltskin on amphetamine, then they are even more dangerous than I first surmised.
Lord Eatwell makes a sound point about the assessment from the notionally independent Office of Budget Responsibility, highlighting forecasts that seem unreasonably optimistic, given the experience of history.
Private consumption is forecast to contribute only 1.1% of GDP growth over the next four years, compared with 1.9% in the relatively prosperous period 1999-2008. Even 1.1% is likely to be a generous estimate, as unemployment increases and real pay is cut. In its place, the OBR is forecasting that growing business investment will make a positive contribution of 1.1% to the growth of GDP, three times greater than it managed in the prosperous years. The contribution of investment in housing will be double that in the good times, and the contribution of net trade will be 1.1%, when it was negative in the earlier period.
It's difficult to believe, and the National Institute of Economic and Social Research doesn't believe it. In its July report, Prospects for the UK Economy, it finds that government spending cuts will reduce potential growth in every year from 2011 to 2015.
So how are we doing?
Retail sales grew by just 0.5% in July and while we may see some improvement in big ticket items in the run up to Christmas, January will be tough as the new VAT rate kicks in. We simply aren't seeing the short term boost expected. Even the internet has not been the powerhouse of growth to which we have become accustomed - the recent 20% growth levels have slipped back to 11%
RICS report falling house prices for the first time in twelve months - the ultimate big ticket item now facing the
additional threat of higher rates for borrowing, despite record low central bank rates. Those appalling lefty chartered surveyors know where to place the blame, as one practice in the heart of socialist Shropshire puts it
The market is the worst it has ever been. The government's determination to balance the books has undermined confidence
A similarly left-wing surveyor in Lincoln adds
The large number of redundancies expected has had a negative impact on the market
You may recall that it was suggested that we might follow the example of Canada, with swingeing cuts being countered by massive boosts to exports. This should be helped by lower exchange rates for the pound, but as that environment looks to be coming to an end,
it simply hasn't happened for us. Amazingly, the government may also be considering cuts to the organisation dedicated to helping exports and stunningly, although it has been three months since the election, we still don't have a Trade Minister to argue the corner.
Increasingly, it is looking like the spin is all we have. There's no policy to support it.
Labels: economy, recession
Tax needs to be taxing
The Tories need an enemy and as the unions don't want to play ball and stage massive national strikes this autumn, Dave has glanced at the Big Boys' Book of Soft Targets and is going after
benefit fraudsters. Obviously, I'm not going to defend those who decide to rook the system, but are they the best targets?
I've always held the view that in any system, there will always be inefficiencies and while we should seek to minimise them, eradicating them is well-nigh impossible, just as the perpetual motion machine that overcomes friction is merely the preserve of fable. A system that did pretty much remove inefficiency and fraud would probably be so complex that it would collapse under the weight of administration and delivery costs, even if it did manage to pay anything to anybody. This is not defeatism, just realism.
Do we want a system that makes claiming benefits so difficult that people prefer poverty to making a claim? We already find that pensioners aren't claiming some £4 billion to which they are entitled and I'm prepared to wager that the government won't be deploying resources to deal with that injustice. Instead, we have Cameron kicking off a campaign that will have the consequence of deterring legitimate claimants and tarring all with the same brush.
It is also worth pointing out that of the £4-5 billion overpaid each year, most of that is wrongly paid because of errors on the part of the bureaucracy. About £1 billion ends up going into the pocket if fraudsters - too much, I know, but no government has cracked this tough nut over the past three decades. The blunt truth is that investigating fraud often costs more than is recovered. Clearly, that is not a reason to ignore it, but we have to be clear that real fraud prevention won't offer net savings of £1 billion and it would be unrealistic to suggest that.
Bur what if there was another target? A chance to take a share of a pot of money removed from the tax system estimated at £30 billion each year? Even nibbling at that will offer better returns than stopping benefit fraud completely. I'm talking about
avoided or unpaid tax. It is odd that the same sort of person that will regard successful avoidance of tax as a sporting triumph will have nothing but contempt for those who drain a little from the system at the other end, when the reality is that both should be held in equal opprobrium. Yet
, we find that HM Revenue and Customs plan to cut the number of tax collectors - a job that has been demonstrated to bring in more tax than it costs to run.
Not paying your fair share is as much an offence against society as trying to take money to which you are not entitled. Let's hear Mr Cameron say that and follow it up with action against tax fraudsters. Then we'll know that this isn't simply the Tories rounding up their usual suspects for PR value.
Measuring the cost of domestic violence
Last week, the Indy ran a story about Teresa May scrapping a trial of a new police power to ban suspected abusers from their family homes - a trial that had previously been given cross-party support, but is now being scrapped because
"...in tough economic times, we are now considering our options for delivering improved protection and value for money."
I wondered just how much a limited trial in two force areas could possibly cost and meant to look into it, but
Unity got there first and has dissected it very thoroughly over at Liberal Conspiracy, showing that the maximum cost of the trials to be borne by the Home Office is likely to be around £700,000, a drop in the ocean of costs caused by domestic violence nationally.
The idea of the legislation is to allow a senior police officer to take action where they have good cause to believe that domestic violence is taking place, but where they may not have sufficient evidence to actually make an arrest. They would be able to issue a short term - 48 hour - exclusion order to the alleged perpetrator, which allows time for the victim to get their case before a court to consider a more long-term order, the provision of which is aso supported within the legislation. Clearly, there are civil liberties issues attached to this, but the whole point of a trial is to see how the legislation is applied and whether it has any effect in tackling this problem - which is notoriously difficult to deal with.
Cancelling this trial is a mistake and will leave women and men at additional risk from their abusers. Given the costs that Unity identifies, it seems unlikely that this measure would fail a cost/benefit analysis, let alone any assessment on the basis of common humanity.
Labels: Conservatives, Crime, cuts, domestic violence
Got Milk? Apparently so.
"The complete withdrawal of free milk for our school children would be too drastic a step"
Margaret Thatcher, Secretary of State for Education, 1974
Last night, it was revealed that the Tories were thinking of scrapping free milk for nursery children, when Anne Milton wrote to her counterparts in the devolved governments that she was considering the status of the last remaining element of the 1940s Welfare Food Scheme - a step too far even for the Iron Lady herself.
Within twelve hours, a government that previously promised not to be dictated to by the twenty-four hour news agenda had responded to a building wave of opposition across the media and reversed a policy that had not yet been set in stone. The U-Turn was so swift that they didn't even give a warning to Two Brains Willetts, who started his appearance on the Andrew Marr Show this morning defending a policy that was changed beneath him as the interview progressed - it was left to the stand-in presenter to let Willetts know that the policy had shifted.Labels: Milk Snatcher
Homes less?
Francis Maude said in a Guardian interview at the weekend that this government was more radical than Thatcher in 1979. How true and how terrifying that statement is. Thatcher was restrained in her first term because of a narrow majority and worries that she might lose the following election. It was not until the post-Falklands landslide that she was able to cut loose of the restraining moderates within her own party and to safely ignore the remaining rump of the Labour party.
Cameron and his more radical acolytes appear to be determined not to waste their opportunity and are setting about the elements of the post-1945 welfare state with abandon. The state education system is being prepared for a free market injection and increasing centralisation, the NHS is about to be subjected to a massively expensive gamble of a restructure - against a pre-election commitment - that will leave local GPs in the thrall of central government like never before and now the beady neo-con eye has lit upon the social housing sector.
Just as the centralisation is cloaked in the vague language of localisation, so the restriction of choice is framed in the language of freedom. People will cheer as Grant Shapps, the shining knight of the council housing revolution, releases them from the chains of their homes. It is a peculiarly Tory belief that the provision of a home by a local authority is some form of restriction of freedom, rather than a valuable level of social support. Perhaps we should also look forward to hundreds of thousands of civil servants being freed from their jobs - they are not unemployed, but time rich.
Cameron's proposal to time-limit new council tenancies was first floated before the election when the Tories went to great lengths to deny that any such plans existed. It marks the end of council housing as a service to society and instates it solely as a safety net of last resort for the unemployed and those too old or sick to work. It raises the joyous spectacle of people having to justify the continued occupancy of their home on a means tested basis, a proposal that could actually militate against social progression and trap people within low paid jobs or on benefits, for fear that they will be forced out of their council property and into the private rented sector or struggling to find a deposit to get onto the mortgage ladder.
This compares with the recent proposals over changes and reductions in Housing Benefit, which will force people out of their homes and into cheaper accommodation - away from their social and family networks, schools and jobs.
These proposals reduce people to commodities and their homes to mere storage units. While Cameron is talking a good - if currently nebulous - game over the Big Society, much of the Conservative/Liberal Democrat government seems happier following the Thatcher truncated line of their being no such thing as society and demonstrating a heartless relish in driving these policies through.
They are also missing the central point over housing. It isn't that there are hordes of pensioners blocking access to family homes, nor that stockbrokers and barristers are sitting pretty in affordable council property, the problem is that there simply isn't enough affordable housing in the social rented, private rented or mortgage sectors. With the demise of the regional spatial strategy which set down plans for building new houses to serve the demand, the removal of requirements to build affordable homes and the promise to give planning powers to NIMBYish local groups, there seems no prospect that this will be resolved.
Far from creating a Big Society, these proposals will contribute to a fragmented society, with social mobility even further impaired. The coalition are setting and dangerous and destructive course and we can only hope that they see the error of their ways before too much more damage is wrought. Family homes are not ideological playthings.
A great LEP forward? Or backwards?
Following the election, the Conservatives set about dismantling bits of the state established by the Labour government. In particular, all aspects of regionalism were sent to the scaffold - Government Office of the West Midlands, most of Business Link, the Regional Spatial Strategy all ended up on the funeral pyre. Most controversially, Advantage West Midlands joined the rest of the Regional Development Agencies in the queue for abolition, with the clock ticking away to final closure in 2012. The axe fell despite
a hugely positive report from the National Audit Office, indicating that AWM's activities generate £8.14 for each £1 spent by the agency.
Of course, there are functions of the RDA that need to continue and even as Vince Cable did the dirty work dispatching AWM, they are to be replaced with Local Enterprise Partnerships, which are run by businesses and the local authorities, with the commercial sector providing the chair. Curiously, for a localist agenda, the workstreams on innovation and skills are being removed from the region and centralised in Whitehall, a short-sighted view that restricts the ability of the regional partnerships to influence key drivers for the future.
So, rather than a single organisation with a unified vision across the entire region, we will be left with a number of disparate units, bidding for funding from a national pool. The current proposals seem to indicate that there will be six LEPs across the region. Coventry and Warwickshire will form one, with Herefordshire, Shropshire, Telford and the Wrekin making up a second and both of those make some sense in terms of their size and industrial and political makeup. Staffordshire is slated to form a third, although the local authorities are in discussion as to whether North and South would be better off as separate LEPs - an unwise move. Worcestershire is under the impression that it can go it alone as a LEP, rather than doing the sensible thing and joining with the western rural arc of counties. Worst of all, though, the local authorities in the Black Country don't want to join a LEP with Birmingham and Solihull, fearful that Birmingham would abuse its power and take control of the partnership. This was always likely to be a problem in the Midlands, because of the unique issues with the size of the City of Birmingham, but the councils need their heads banging together, as this should be one region and dividing it will weaken both sides, given the interdependency of these sub-regional economies. Given that the LEPs are supposed to be led by business, the time has come for business to genuinely take a lead and form a single Birmingham, Solihull and Black Country LEP, daring the local authorities not to get involved.
None of that takes into account the hangover of AWM's assets, worth some £170 million, nor the need to retain the knowledge and skills of the West Midlands Regional Observatory, a treasure trove of useful economic data. There needs to be a legacy regional organisation to handle these assets and maintain the regional services. Additionally, the European Union likes to work at a regional level, not national or sub-regional, so some sort of regional co-ordinating body will have to exist to liaise on that level. I fully expect the LEPs to resolve themselves down from six to three or four over a couple of years and it will only be a matter of time before the idea of a regional organisation returns to prominence.
Central government has been exceptionally unclear as to what they want from the LEPs, which is helpful, as they are expecting firm expressions of interest placed by the start of September. It has to be said, that the LEPs won't fully replace the RDAs until 2012, so there is still time to iron these things out, but the middle of a recession is hardly the best time to reform the system, leaving eighteen months to two years with confusion over responsibilities and legacies. Yet again, we find ourselves in the middle of an experiment by the coalition government and yet again, it is the workers of the Midlands who are the guinea pigs. Ironically, they are the ones unrepresented on the LEPs. If this doesn't work, then we're all going to suffer.
Labels: economy, RDAs, West Midlands LEP
Vinnie Nicholls and the Big Society
Apparently, the Archbishop of Westminster is in favour of the Big Society.
I particularly liked his comment
"The last government was too overarching. In attempting to create a state that provided everything, it ended up losing touch with the people it was trying to serve."
You should remember that this is the leader of the Catholic Church in England speaking - the same Church that forbade members from even discussing the matter in public. A vocal supporter of female ordination was the leading theologian Lavinia Byrne, who left her religious order in 2000 after being pressured by the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith to publicly affirm support for the Vatican's position on women priests, married priests and contraception. By the way, the Prefect of the Congregation at that point was one Cardinal Ratzinger, who has done rather well for himself since then.
This is also the Church that has wilfully and knowingly relocated child abusers to protect the good name of the Church and to conceal them from the authorities. This is the Church that recently insisted that ordaining a woman as a priest was the spiritual equivalent of child abuse. The Pope has described homosexuality as an 'intrinsic moral evil.' This is the same Church that opens the doors to married clergymen from the Church of England, simply because they cannot bear the idea of women as priests or bishops, not because of a genuine conversion to the tenets of Catholicism.
Matthew, 7:3-5, Cardinal.
He also feels that this government will listen more - which translates into 'listen and do what we want' - after Labour signally failed to alter legislation to permit religious adoption agencies to continue to discriminate.
"There is a fresh attitude on the part of the Government that seems to respect the integrity of what a faith group wants to do, and respect its language, so that a faith community coming into cooperation with others will not have to sing from their hymn sheet. It marks a shift from the last government, which required a high degree of conformity to its own theories. And if they clashed with those of a faith community then either the partnership came to an end or the faith group had to conform.”
And if you cannot perform your duties without regard for equality and human rights, then you should not be allowed to perform them under a public aegis. Sorry Cardinal, but that's the way things should be.
Labels: Catholic Church, Vinnie Nicholls
Gove - evangelical in a hurry
Further to my post about the danger that is Michael Gove, he told a meeting of a handful of secondary head teachers that he was 'evangelical' about bringing the market to education. 'The days of local authorities are numbered.... I've only got two or three years to deliver on this and I will not be diverted from my path.'
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Hail to the Chief
You know, I'm almost tempted to put my name forward to be a candidate in the first election of a commissioner of police for the West Midlands. Except that it just seems to be a pointless elected post at a time when additional costs make no sense.
In the US, of course, elections for district attorney or sheriff are quite commonplace, but that isn't what we're supposedly going to get over here, where the elected chief officer won't actually have operational control, so there's rightly no room for the force to be politicised. Or so they claim.
It would seem that this should prevent your elected official using the police to harry opponents, but what happens when it comes to broader strategic issues? If the commissioner tells the chief constable that the most important priority is tackling motor vehicle crime in Sutton Coldfield or burglary in Moseley - because as a politician, they will have an eye on their electorate - rather than a difficult project to deal with gang violence in Aston (or vice versa, for that matter), will the operational chief constable be able to do much about it? Similarly, much research shows that putting uniformed officers onto the beat is very ineffective when it comes to putting criminals away, but very popular with the voting public, so what happens when the elected and operational officers disagree?
I fail to see how you can actually separate off the operational from the strategic tasking elements. Both feed into each other.
The anonymous police authorities - actually committees of local councillors and lay members - will also go, to be replaced by committees of local councillors who will hold the police commissioner to account. I'm not sure I can see a huge change there, to be honest, other than the addition of an extra layer of elected bureaucracy and cost. I don't see how one person in charge of a force like West Midlands can hope to be more in touch with the needs of Wolverhampton or Coventry or Birmingham than a local councillor who also serves on the police authority. Then we have the question of the public appetite for another election campaign in 2012, probably running alongside metropolitan council elections, which typically attract low turnouts - under 30% is common.
These proposals seem designed to politicise the police in a most insidious way, to create a local head of blame, who will have to impose his mandate upon a resistant police service in order to retain his post. This risks the fatal corrosion of the principle of policing by consent that has been the basis of British policing since it's inception.
Right to build?
Just been listening to Grant Shapps put forward his policy to allow small communities to decide on planning matters without recourse to local authorities.
Firstly, I can't let the inconsistency pass - most of the time, we hear that the Tories like local, democratically elected authority, but when it matters, we are told that the councils either don't care or aren't competent - schools are looking to opt out of local, democratically accountable control and take on direct funding from central government. Planning authorities 'don't care about developments if five houses' according to Shapps, so we'll pass that down to the local community instead. My experience is that they do care very much about small developments. Yet local authorities are apparently great at banding together to create smaller (less well-funded) regional development agencies - despite fears in the Midlands that this will lead to total domination by Birmingham. Eric Pickles scraps RDAs even as Ian Duncan Smith over at DWP announces regionalisation of employment support. You could be forgiven for confusion over Tory policy.
Rather like the proposals for free schools that make the council's job of planning educational infrastructure impossible, this threatens any concept of a local spatial strategy - backed by local democratic accountability. What it does is hand planning over to small local cliques and potentially into the control of dedicated NIMBYs or those more easily influenced by local builders. Given that Caroline Spelman won votes as a result of opposing construction work near Meriden by a group of gypsies who had bought their own land and given that the Tories up and down the land have opposed back garden developments and anything that might impinge on the sacred green belt, this seems an odd decision and one potentially fraught with unfairness and inconsistency across the country. That isn't to say I'm opposed to localised decision-making, just concerned about the pitfalls that I know lie ahead. As with much curent policy, devils lurk within the detail.
Philip Davies is a pompous ass
The Tory MP for Shipley decided last night that the best possible use of public funds was for him to try to talk out a proposal for the Youth Parliament to occasionally use the Commons chamber when the House is in recess. This seems fairly uncontroversial and indeed, the Youth Parliament sat there last year without leaving chewing gum under the seats or tagging the woodwork, so you might imagine that this would be a no-brainer. Cue Phil D, for whom 'no-brainer' effectively describes his capacity. He seems to think that letting the Youth Parliament sit upon the green benches somehow compromises the name of the mother of parliaments, in a way that any number of MPs with their snouts in the collective trough clearly do not. He complained about the cost, drawing a figure of £30-40k from a rumour that he had heard. Davies filibustered for quite some time, drawing snide comments from both sides of the House, before he was silenced by a closure motion that deferred a substantive vote until 11:30 this morning. It is to be hoped that wiser heads will silence Mr Davies and let the vote pass without obstruction, as this is a worthy cause that is helping to inspire young people to think of political discussion as positive and to take an interest in the future.
Misleading statements.
You will recall that the government chose to scrap an £80 million loan to Sheffield Forgemasters, a company that wanted to purchase equipment to allow it to enter a niche market for mouldings for nuclear reactors, a market currently only served by two suppliers in South Korea and Japan. When challenged on it at DPM questions,
Clegg answered thus...the new owners have been quite open about why they sought a Government loan-because, as they have publicly stated, they felt the terms they were receiving from banks were not good enough and because they did not want to dilute their own shareholdings in the company. Do I think it is the role of Government to help out owners of companies who do not want to dilute their own shareholdings? No, I do not...
Since then, it has become apparent that the owners were happy to dilute their shareholding, but not to the degree required to obtain the loan - they would have had to become minority shareholders. Accordingly, they have announced today that they will not be seeking to obtain private finance any further, so that puts an end to the plans to create more jobs, to double the firm's revenue within four years and to help contribute to Britain's export deficit by manufacturing a quality product for a niche market - exactly the kind of thing government should be enabling for the future.
What is worse is that
Clegg knew that the owners were content to offer equity in return for cash investment
Graham Honeyman, Forgemasters’ chief executive, has told the deputy prime minister he was willing to dilute his share, something Mr Clegg has since admitted in a private letter to the businessman. Mr Clegg wrote: “[You] made clear to me your own willingness to dilute your equity share.”
Should he have to apologise to the House for misleading them?
Labels: misleading parliament, Nick Clegg, Sheffield Forgemasters
Dancing on the edge
We've been told repeatedly that the current economic strictures are actually all Labour's fault and that these cutbacks are essential to keep us from facing the Greek nightmare.
But what if Osborne has got it all wrong? How much will the Tories be blamed for dragging us back into recession?
Sunny Hundal over at Liberal Conspiracy reveals that the fiscally-tough budget appears to have caused industry confidence to drop - by the largest amount in the fourteen years that it has been conducted. Bear in mind that that means that it is a larger fall in confidence than that following the 9/11 attacks or the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
CIPS CEO David Noble said:
June’s data painted a worrying picture for the UK services sector as confidence suffered a serious blow following the government’s emergency spending cuts. Purchasing managers voiced grave concerns that budget cuts and VAT rises will tip the scales and amplify the likelihood of the UK slipping back into recession.
And here’s Paul Smith, senior economist at Markit,
While we continue to look for a 0.4 to 0.5 per cent rise in GDP for Q2, this may well already represent a peaking in the recovery cycle. Confidence declined to the greatest extent in 14 years of data collection in reaction to the government’s austere emergency Budget, with concern expressed that the fiscal tightening could push the country back into recession. Indeed, the less positive outlook appears to be already affecting decision-making, with some clients reportedly reluctant to commit to new business at the present time.
We also know that bank lending to businesses is £100 million down on the same time last year, investment is down and we have a widening trade deficit, which prevents the Canadian solution of exporting our way out of recession. The pound has dropped 25% over the past couple of years, but even that isn't sparking the export market. To further sweeten the pill, the housing market is also struggling, with
Deloittes promising falls of 30% by the end of the year and
PWC reckoning that the market is screwed for the next decade.
And the credit agencies
have just downgraded Ireland from the valuable - and cost-saving - AAA rating, although it has to be pointed out that Ireland has significant problems with recapitalising the AIB bank and was also very badly hit in the construction and financial services sectors, rather disproportionately. Direct comparison between economies is always dangerous, but if we have people continuing comparing us to Greece, then pointing out that vicious retrenchment may not prevent a ratings downgrade.
The more I see of this, the more I fear that Osborne has got it massively wrong. I just cannot see that the circumstances exist whereby these cuts will stimulate the growth that he expects.
As Larry Elliott points out, there is no plan B. Things look bleak.
Labels: economy, George Osborne
