PoliticalHackUK

There Goves the neighbourhood

2012-01-27T17:00:00.000Z

Mike Whitby and Michael Gove, credit: http://www.birminghamnewsroom.com/

Michael Gove disapparated in Birmingham today and even visited a school in my home ward, ruining the neighbourhood. He also had a meeting with allegedly-wannabe Mayor Whitby. Mike W apparently said

"Looking particularly at the new tools and freedoms available to us, such as academies, free schools and university technical colleges – Birmingham is saying today that these exciting forms of provision will become an integral part of our approach to school improvement."

I wonder if Mike has talked to his cabinet member for education, Les Lawrence, whose antipathy to academies is well known?

Even odder was Gove's own statement

“I am delighted that Birmingham local authority is embracing the vital reforms that are taking place in our education system"

Again - not sure that you can accuse Cllr Lawrence of embracing these reforms with anything less than a chokehold. Les certainly didn't even get a mention in the accompanying press release, still less a photo. But then Les is not numbered amongst the Govian true believers and has been accused by ConservativeHome of drinking in the last chance saloon for his lack of ideological purity.

Incidentally, Gove appears to have changed his schedule to avoid a demonstration outside the school as he appeared earlier than planned, did his photo-op and then scurried back to London.

He's also in trouble elsewhere, as the Guardian claim that he personally approved funding to the Community Safety Trust, even though he is on their Advisory Board. Now, this is a perfectly sound cause - I don't have a problem with supporting schools with particular security needs - but isn't it also a clear conflict of interest? I will note that publishing that story on Holocaust Memorial Day is a little insensitive - and there's comment here from the Jewish Chronicle. This comes hard on the heels of the stories about his SPADs moving to private webmail to avoid FoIA queries (unsuccessfully, I believe) and Gove funnelling money to the New Schools Network, run by a former advisor to run a scheme worth £500,000 that didn't apparently need to go out to tender.

(Hat tip to @paulmdale)

UPDATE....UPDATE.....

Labour MP Lisa Nandy has had a letter from the Information Commissioner with regard to the general secrecy that pervades Gove's department. She notes

At yesterday’s education questions, Kevin Brennan asked Michael Gove to confirm that he and his advisors had never deleted emails, from private addresses or otherwise, to avoid scrutiny. Visibly rattled, Gove refused to answer the question and simply asserted that he and his department had operated in accordance with Cabinet Office policy.

The Information Commissioner tells her that

“In addition to the guidance and good practice report published before Christmas, I can confirm that my office also has a number of active investigations in to these issues. I plan to conclude a number of complaints under Section 50 of the FOI act over the next few months – these will cover whether specific information requested is held for purposes of the act. I am also still considering allegations about whether individuals at the department breached Section 77 of the act.”

Section 50 is routine and relates to the Commissioner being required to make a decision following non-disclosure. Section 77 is more interesting - that relates to somebody taking steps to conceal information that should be disclosed and could mean prosecution.

Acocks Green Police Station - update

2012-01-22T14:11:00.001Z

Talking to Cllr Jones about the police station

I'm delighted that we have an ongoing commitment from the Police Authority to a policing presence in Acocks Green. This morning, I had a brief street meeting with members of the local community, Cllr Stewart Stacey and Cllr Bob Jones, the chair of the West Midlands Police Authority Finance and Resources Committee to discuss the future of the Edwardian police station in Acocks Green. A report in the Birmingham Mail this week said that Acocks Green police station - along with Steelhouse Lane and Erdington - could be under threat of closure. Despite the dramatic headline, that isn't quite the story.

Cllr Jones, me (windswept) and Cllr Stacey

Unsurprisingly, this has caused some considerable concern in the community and Cllr Stacey and I thought it was right to arrange a quick, informal meeting of interested parties to understand what lies ahead and how we can influence the decisions.

The Finance and Resources Committee has submitted a report to the full Police Authority for approval. At this stage, it only authorises further work to examine options. Cllr Jones was quite clear that no decision has been taken at this stage and in any case, the spending isn't planned in until 2014-15.

It is possible that the station will move to a different, central, high profile location within the ward - possibly co-located with another public service - and the site opened up for development as housing. There is no site proposed for relocation and it is hard to see where one could be found that would meet the demands of being central.

That is an option where we would need to be alert to the preservation of a striking building that exemplifies the Victorian/Edwardian attitude to the importance of public services. It sits in the middle of a proposed conservation area, which illustrates the growth of suburban Birmingham around the rail network. In fact, if you look at the coat of arms just below the roofline, you can see a badge emblazoned with the Worcestershire pears. The station was built as part of an unsuccessful campaign by Worcestershire council to win hearts and minds and keep the Yardley area within their county - there's a similar former police station on the Coventry Road that has now been converted to a pub and also bears a similar shield.

Around the corner on Alexander Road is a fine example of how these buildings can be preserved. The tiny fire station was surplus to requirements in the 1980s and was initially scheduled for demolition to provide additional space in the police yard. Cllr Stacey was just on the planning committee at that point and recalls that they rejected that plan, so the building is now converted for use as an architect's practice - preserving the street scene and an historic building.

It is also open to the service to refurbish the existing site, which is too large for their planned requirements, and seek additional tenants for the unused space - perhaps an NHS commissioning group or other suitable tenant could take up part of the site.

This is an issue that will remain on the political radar for some time to come and I was really pleased to get assurances from Cllr Jones that the future of the police in Acocks Green is specifically assured - we just now need to secure the future of this building.

Updated - The David Cameron Confidence Indicator

2012-01-20T15:30:00.000Z

David Cameron has full confidence in....

~~Caroline Spelman~~
Full confidence declared 28 June 2008
Replaced as Conservative Chairman 19 January 2009

Jeremy Hunt

Full confidence declared 28 June 2010
Still in office as Culture Secretary at time of going to press.

~~Andy Coulson~~
Full confidence declared 11.25am 21 January 2011
Resigned as Comms Director 11:37am 21 January 2011

~~HRH Prince Andrew~~

Full confidence declared 8 March 2011.
"Stepped down" as trade envoy 22 July 2011

Chris Huhne
Full confidence declared 16 May 2011
Full confidence declared again 2.14pm 20 January 2012
Still in office as DECC Secretary at time of going to press.

~~Liam Fox~~
Full confidence declared 8 October 2011
Resigned as Defence Secretary 14 October 2011

Theresa May
Full confidence declared 7 November 2011
Still in office as Home Secretary at time of going to press.

So far, getting Cameron's full confidence means you have a 60/40 chance of survival.

Losing friends and influencing people the Chris Huhne way

2012-01-20T13:00:00.001Z

So the Sunday Times have withdrawn their defence of the disclosure order obtained by Essex Police and the Crown Prosecution Service to take possession of emails between the Sunday Times' political editor, Isabel Oakeshott and Vicky Pryce, the former Mrs Huhne.

That was the last piece that the CPS were waiting for to make a decision on whether or not to prosecute.

It has been widely reported that Chris Huhne had leaked the rather embarrassing letter from Michael Gove in support of a new royal yacht. Michael Gove's wife, Sarah Vine, works for the Times. As the Telegraph points out, Chris Huhne has hardly been busy making alliances - not even the Liberal Democrats can be bothered to defend him any more, given his long track record of screwing over his political colleagues. He isn't even very competent at the machinations, with his every clever political move being exposed as the manipulation it is. Politicians can fear or respect a top-class political operator, but an incompetent one inspires nothing but ridicule.

There’s nothing endearing about Huhne. He has the cold, dead eyes of a political snake, hissing poison as he slithers down the corridors of power. He calls to mind a Machiavellian operator – except that his bungling would have the author of The Prince throwing his hands up in despair

Has fraternal Cabinet loyalty finally been stretched to breaking point?

UPDATE: Interesting - the Telegraph has apologised to Chris Huhne

We reported on 17th anWe reported on 17th and 18th January ("Huhne accused of leaking letter about new royal yacht"; and "All the malice of Machiavelli – but sadly none of his skill") that Chris Huhne MP had leaked a letter about the new royal yacht to journalists in an attempt to discredit colleagues. We now accept that this is wrong, and apologise to Mr Huhne for any embarrassment caused. We particularly regret the offence caused by Cristina Odone’s article

2012-01-16T07:30:00.000Z

Across the weekend, we've been inundated with Tories crowing that Labour now back the government's cuts.

This is based on a Guardian story which starts

Balls said he accepted every spending cut being imposed by the coalition

Except, that's not a direct quote and isn't what the speech says either. You can read that here. If you actually read it, he isn't accepting the cuts at all.

As we make the argument that cutting spending and raising taxes too far and too fast risks making the economy and the deficit worse not better, it is right that we set out where we do support cuts and where we would be making the tough but necessary decisions.

In education, as I have said, £1 billion of cuts – but not the biggest cuts to schools since the 1950s. In policing, 12 per cent cuts to budgets – but not 20 per cent cuts which will hit the frontline hard and see 16,000 officers lost. In defence, £5 billion of cuts – but not a strategic defence review that raises more questions than answers.

And because as progressives we believe in the role of the state and public services to do good, it is vital that we are even tougher on waste than our political opponents – whether that is the £2 billion being wasted on a reckless reorganisation of the NHS, billions being lost in tax avoidance or the waste of mass unemployment.

All of that seems entirely consistent with our post-election policy. What he does say that is new is also realistic.

we cannot make any commitments now that the next Labour government will reverse tax rises or spending cuts. And we will not. Because we don’t know how bad things will be on jobs, growth and the deficit. But we do know that the next Labour government will have to sort out the deficit where this government failed and deliver social justice in tougher times.

The brutal reality is that while we should continue to oppose a government policy that fetishises deficit reduction and sidelines growth, while we should fight against ill-thought out cuts, we also have to accept that we are on a magical mystery tour with an incompetent driver at the wheel. Labour is unlikely to have a chance to take over until 2015 and we simply don't know where we will end up by then. Starting to plot a route back from the wreckage now simply creates hostages to fortune.

Before 1997, Labour promised to work within the Tory spending plans at the time and this is reminiscent of that statement. We can promise to do things differently, to spend more wisely and tax more fairly, but we need the discipline on the front bench not to make any spending or tax promises that we cannot be sure of keeping.

No budget for school rebuilding, but Gove wants a new Royal yacht

2012-01-15T23:17:00.000Z

Although the Guardian juxtaposes the story with an interesting picture.

Forecasts for 2012

2012-01-11T07:30:00.000Z

Belatedly looking back at the forecast for 2011, I got three out of the four right. Vince Cable remained stubbornly at his post, but as otherwise foretold, there was no general election, Labour won Oldham East and Saddleworth (part of an ongoing train of by-election victories) and AV failed to get past the electorate in May. If I get the lottery numbers right, I'll let you know.

For 2012, Mystic Hack sees the mists part and the following will come to pass....

There will be no general election. Unless Dave reckons that a putative post-Jubilee and post-Olympics poll boost makes the odds worthwhile, but even then I think the economy will be so dire that it would be too high a risk and I don't think Cameron's that much of a gambler. The coalition will also survive the year, although at least one Liberal Democrat minister may not. Cable seems immovable - if the waste of energy that was the AV vote, tuition fees and the European debacle didn't cause him to use his nuclear option, you really struggle to see what would trigger Cable flouncing out of the Cabinet. Perhaps Osborne barbecueing kittens in the rose garden at the back of Downing Street might be sufficient, but even then, Clegg would be arguing that this was just necessary after Labour's poor feline stewardship. Cable will only leave if reshuffled.

I've heard different commentators putting different spins on the chances of Boris winning re-election to the London mayoralty in 2012, explaining why a win or a loss would be bad news for Cameron. Actually, I think this is a lose/lose issue for Dave. If Boris wins, he continues to have a high global profile across a summer of events focussed on London and also marks himself as a winner, even in the most challenging times for the Conservative party - something that may prove attractive for the party at a later date. If Boris loses, he can cheerfully shovel the blame onto the Prime Minister, seek a safe seat back at Westminster and prowl the corridors, biding his time until the PM falls under a bus. I think we can be assured that Boris will continue to be an irritant for some time to come, wherever that may lead. Actually, I reckon that the election will be tight in London and I think it is too close to call.

Labour taking control of Birmingham City Council is an easy one, so I'm not going to predict that. The political winds have been blowing that way for some months now and with only a handful of seats required to see the council change hands, it would take a brave forecaster to bet on anything else. This isn't premature triumphalism, just recognising the reality of the situation. And no, I will not forecast the result in Acocks Green or anywhere else in Yardley.

I am going to forecast a marginal win for the campaign to bring a mayor to Birmingham, although voter apathy and antipathy to elected politicians may provide enough help to the otherwise woeful 'No' campaign. Following that, we should have a mayoral election in November, coinciding with the Police and Crime Commissioner elections. The only thing I feel sure of with regards to that contest is that it is almost certain to be a Labour mayor - not premature triumphalism, but a recognition of the weight of Labour votes against all opponents. If you pile up all the Labour votes across Birmingham in elections over the last decade, you struggle to find occasions where another party could possibly win. The main contest will be for the Labour nomination and there are some strong candidates already declared, although I suspect that the fight will be a very close one between Sir Albert Bore and Sion Simon.

Economically, I suspect that we are very close to slipping back into a recession and, no matter how much George Osborne bleats about, much of the blame will rest upon his shoulders for a policy that has raised deficit reduction to the level of a fetish. Nobody believes that the deficit is sustainable, but the pace of reduction always carried a huge risk in the effects that public sector cuts have on the overall economy. Combined with the ongoing crisis in the Eurozone - which is a long way from being resolved - then I think it is more than likely we'll slide back into recession over the course of the year. That's not something that I take any pleasure in predicting - especially as my contract is likely to end at the end of March. (Job offers are welcome at the usual address...)

There's another election across the pond and this is also looking interesting. Romney looks to be the reluctant choice of the Republicans - if they can bear the taste of his Mormonism - and remains their best hope of removing Obama. That said, the economic situation in the US, while bleak, is showing some hints of the greenest of shoots and if that is sustained, I would expect voters to stick with Obama, so I'm going with a second term for the incumbent.

Next train.... 2026.....

2012-01-10T13:05:00.000Z

After a long-drawn out consultation period, HS2 finally got the go ahead from the Transport Secretary today. This is a long-overdue development and I believe that it will be good news for Birmingham. I just hope that the government shift to express speed in terms of development rather than the stopping service we have seen since the election. Get on and get this thing built - let's put some money into transport infrastructure and create jobs - although I'm not sure that spending extra millions tunnelling under Chesham and Amersham is worth the money just to keep Cheryl Gillan in her seat.

Meanwhile, Julian Huppert, Liberal Democrat MP for Cambridge, has been quick to declare that this is a Liberal Democrat win, as the LDs apparently called for high speed rail back in 2004. Curiously, I understand that Cameron insisted it go into the coalition agreement and Philip Hammond claims that the Tories were the first party to commit to it whilst in opposition. The fact that Labour launched the scheme and got it as far as route planning is conveniently airbrushed out of the narrative.

Julian's claim that the Liberal Democrats convinced other parties might be more powerful if he had convinced his own. His comrades in Camden lobbied Norman Baker at the 2011 conference, the Liberal Democrats in the Chilterns remain opposed and the Kenilworth and Southam Liberal Democrats are still unconvinced. They cynics amongst you will point out that this is just typical Liberal Democrat campaign tactics - saying one thing to one audience and the exact reverse to another.

Taxpayers' Alliance gets it wrong on police commissioners

2011-12-16T13:21:00.000Z

As usual, the TPA is busy pushing the Conservative agenda. Their weekly email today announces another major piece of research highlighting the cost of police authorities - the current structure for scrutiny and control of the police services. The TPA claims that

Directly elected police commissioners will replace the highly paid, but not directly accountable, chief executives of police authorities

They explain that these chief execs get paid an average of £90,000 a year, as part of the annual operating costs. In the West Midlands force area, the chief executive of the police authority (not the chairman, for the sake of clarity) gets paid £109,000 plus pension costs.

Except that the TPA have got it significantly wrong.

The chief executive will continue. As the Home Office admits (emphasis added)

PCCs will be required to appoint a head of paid staff and a chief financial officer. The head of paid staff will be responsible for employing the administrative staff and for acting as monitoring officer for the PCC. The chief financial officer will be responsible for advising the PCC about their financial obligations and the impact of their spending decisions. The PCC may appoint other staff, but all employees will be politically restricted and appointed on merit. The PCC will be required to publish organisational charts and salaries of all staff. PCC staff will be able to join the local government pension scheme in the relevant force area (this is the same pension entitlement as police staff).

Police and crime commissioners do not replace chief executives. They replace the police authority itself. In terms of allowances, that currently costs about £10 million a year (taking the TPAs own figures). The salaries of individual commissioners alone will eat up £4 million, quite apart from any additional staffing or expenses costs - the new police and crime panels to scrutinise the commissioners will consume a further £2 million. Suddenly we're up to £6 million a year as direct costs and once you account for the costs of the elections (£25-£50 million every four years, working out at about £6 million a year if you accept the lower figure) then you suddenly find out that replacing the police authority will actually cost about £12 million a year (or possibly £18 million if the higher election cost figure is right), dwarfing the current police authority member allowances cost.

Good to see the TPA supporting sustaining public sector jobs and public sector pension schemes.

Mayorday

2011-12-12T08:00:00.000Z

I'm an unashamed convert to the idea of an elected mayor for Birmingham. I believe that we need a single point of contact that has a credible mandate drawn directly from the people of Birmingham so that they can go into bat to get the best deal for our city from government and other national and international partners and investors. We need someone able to make decisions, lead on action - and to be held directly accountable for those decisions and their performance, in the way that a council leader isn't.

This isn't a party political issue, even though I remain very critical of the poor quality of civic leadership shown by the current occupants of that office. When Birmingham needed leadership over the summer rioting, Mike Whitby was invisible, pushing his deputy out instead, but the problems are systemic and not entirely Whitby's fault - he just exemplifies them.

Even as an aspiring council candidate, I can see the weaknesses of the current model at both ends of the spectrum. The council is very slow to change and innovation is stifled by a bureaucracy with a fixed mindset and that all too often feels happiest within the comfort zone of their silo. We know that these are difficult times - the most challenging in a century - for our city and we need local government that is agile, responsive and capable of change to suit local circumstances. Birmingham City Council likes the 'one size fits all' mentality, for that offers security and simplicity, but that doesn't fit the needs of our diverse communities.

Regionally, the council often adopts an 'Our Way or No Way' approach, which drives away other authorities that should be our partners. Why there should be a Black Country Local Enterprise Partnership and a second one for Birmingham defeats me - our futures are tied together and cross-border working is absolutely crucial to both sides of the West Midlands. We need to look beyond our borders into how we should - how we must - provide regional leadership.

Much as the other boroughs may dislike it, Birmingham remains the powerhouse and has the potential to develop global credibility that will enrich the whole region, but Birmingham's leadership needs to recognise that it has the responsibility to head a partnership, not dominate our neighbours. We really are all in this together.

For me, there are two arms to this strategy. Firstly, a yes vote next May to a city Mayor and secondly increased devolution to genuinely localise services. Here there is a political point to be made - the Tory/Liberal Democrat administration adopted the localised model that Labour offered in 2004, but failed to drive it forward as Labour intended, to bring all services right down to the lowest possible operating level consistent with efficiency. The closer you are to your people, the more responsive you have to be. That's why I'm a big supporter of the ward and constituency committee process - instant local visibility of decisions taken.

Richard Burden wrote a fine piece for LabourList a few days ago and it is certainly worth a few moments of your time to read it. Cllr Phil Parkin, a relatively sane Tory from Sutton Trinity ward, is also a supporter and makes the sound point that aside from the councillors in the Cabinet, formal councillor influence on strategy is strictly limited. A separation of executive power might actually lead to greater influence for councillors through the scrutiny system, which may find even more freedom to hold the mayor to account.

Thursday saw Nick Clegg dangle the carrot of more powers for mayors or local authorities, although he did add the caveat that these powers would be dependent on local leadership being up to the job. Whether that is code indicating the expectation that these powers will go to mayors is up for question - some think so, others think that these powers will be devolved to local authorities in due course. One thing that is clear is that central government wants to have a single point of contact when they need to talk to Birmingham and Birmingham will benefit from having a single voice, with a clear, city-wide mandate able to speak for our needs.

The No campaign is laughably poor. John Hemming is fronting it with all the charm of a bulldozer, appearing on the Politics Show to warn that the public might vote in a lunatic who could only be removed through sectioning under the Mental Health Act. At the moment, short of criminal behaviour or serious personal financial problems, we can't remove our councillors or even our MPs, no matter how consistently embarrassing they might be or how often a judge might criticise their performance.

Aside from that, it is a little insulting to the electorate - some of whom voted for Mr Hemming - to suggest that they would be taken in, over the course of a six month campaign in the full glare of the modern print, broadcast and social media, is rather hard to believe. Similarly, John worries about a 'power freak' - which is a little rich coming from someone who was in the House of Commons for a matter of months before announcing his candidacy for the leadership of his party, let alone a man who remains in tight control of his party locally and expects to be their candidate for mayor, despite his opposition to the existence of the post. Their website offers speakers to oppose the move to a mayor, but wants to set the rules of the debate in terms of the size of the panel and representation from others. There is an argument to be had about whether the mayor is a good move or not, but the No campaign isn't making it. Even the website is titled Vote No to a Power Freak - which isn't actually an option in the referendum, last time I checked.

Compare and contrast the amateurish nature of the 'No' campaign to the 'Yes' team's more professional offering, which offers a far more positive starting point to the campaign.

Birmingham is not broken. It is a city with a great history and the potential for an even greater future - we just need to make sure that we have the right people and structures to help write the next chapter. A vote for the mayor next year is a step on that road and all journeys have to begin somewhere.

Lib Dems opinions revolving

2011-12-11T09:00:00.000Z

Liberal Democrats believe that European co-operation is the best way for Britain to be strong, safe and inﬂuential in the future. We will ensure that Britain maximises its inﬂuence through a strong and positive commitment... Work through the European Union for stricter international regulation of ﬁnancial services and banking... Work with other countries... including bringing forward urgent proposals for a ﬁnancial transaction tax

Liberal Democrat manifesto, May 2010

What Clegg said on Friday morning, in the wake of Cameron's disastrous departure from the negotiating table:

"The demands Britain made for safeguards, on which the coalition government was united, were modest and reasonable. They were safeguards for the single market, not just the UK. There were no demands of repatriation of powers from the EU to Britain and no demands for a unilateral carve-out of UK financial services. What we sought to ensure was to maintain a level playing field in financial services and the single market as a whole. This would have retained the UK's ability to take tougher, not looser, regulatory action to sort out our banking system."

Aside from the utter drivel that this government would take tougher action than that likely to come out of the EU, that's Clegg supporting the PM and opening his mouth before he had the chance to understand the full implication of the utter cock-up that Cameron's decision will prove to be for the future of the British economy. William Hague - who was utterly sideswiped on the Today programme on Friday morning as he was apparently completely unbriefed on the increased role for the IMF - has said that Clegg was fully briefed and in full agreement with policy.

Hague insisted the coalition was on board with the deal as he confirmed that the Liberal deputy prime minister and the chancellor, George Osborne, had been kept abreast of developments by Cameron. He told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme that Clegg "signed up" to what had happened.

Taking us away from the negotiations is ludicrous. The 'Tobin' financial transaction tax that apparently scared the City could only be brought in by unanimity - it isn't subject to qualified majority voting - so Cameron could have retained a genuine veto over that issue. Rather than do so and demonstrate a commitment to working as part of a union with which our future is inextricably connected, Cameron has gone for the short term gain of calming his party and feeding the instant gratification demanded by the City donors. He could have stayed involved and kept Britain in the conference room - a tenet of British policy over Europe for decades under all governments, even under Thatcher - but he chose not to.

Unsurprisingly, the Liberal Democrats have been in quiet and irrelevant revolt over the past day or so and Clegg is now apparently manufacturing anger to order.

Just 24 hours after appearing to back Cameron, sources close to Clegg made clear that the deputy prime minister believed the PM had been guilty of serious negotiating failures that risked damaging the national interest, British jobs and economic growth.

Clegg's fury puts the coalition under the most severe strain since its formation 19 months ago, with Europe now seen by some MPs as a potential "deal breaker".

One source said Clegg "couldn't believe it" when he was woken at 4am in his flat in Sheffield to be told that talks on how to save the euro at the Brussels summit had "spectacularly unravelled".

Accusing Cameron of failing to play the diplomatic game effectively, the source added: "He could not believe that Cameron hadn't tried to play for more time. A menu of choices wasn't deployed as a negotiating tool but instead was presented as a take it or leave it ultimatum. That is not how he [Clegg] would have played Britain's hand."

Publicly supporting the PM and then openly briefing against him within 24 hours isn't good form. But then neither is publicly burning through all the totemic policies of the Liberal Democrats. Tuition fees were only the beginning.

Still, you can always rely on John Hemming to support his political friends.

I think Cameron was right to use the veto on changes to the treaties. It is entirely right that the 17 Eurozone countries resolve how to get greater fiscal unity which is essential for the success of the Euro and consequential success of the UK. However, that does not mean that we have to sign up to that. We should not try to stand in their way and prevent them resolving their difficulties. However, it is not surprising that unanimity amongst the 27 EU states is difficult to achieve.

Rebranding ain't gonna fix this, Nick.

2011-11-27T09:00:00.000Z

According to the Mail, Clegg has called in the rebranding experts to advise on how to make the party more popular.

Leaked documents reveal that the Deputy Prime Minister has admitted that voters have no idea what his party stands for.

And he apparently thinks that this is a bad thing, rather than a core part of the party's strategy thus far. Both Labour and the Conservatives have fairly clearly defined identities and a related tribal following, both of which the Liberal Democrats. This has allowed them to plough a peculiar furrow unencumbered with baggage, which has manifested itself in a peculiar brand of oppositional opportunism - taking a position in opposition to whichever party is in power and squeezing either the Labour or Tory vote into backing the Liberal Democrat candidate as the 'least worst' option to keep out the other side. While this proved very effective in building a good base of elected councillors and MPs, it was dependent upon the party being the 'safe' option and either being unable to make decisions that offended voters or to be able to blame others for them. Once you are a party of national government, then that option is no longer available to you.

He appears to have hired proper snake-oil salesmen too.

the ‘brand advisers’ hired by the Lib Dems have advised Mr Clegg to aim for a less principled approach towards political campaigning. They suggested that once a ‘strategic, long-term brand model’ for the party had been devised, MPs should discover ‘shorter-term themes, straplines and soundbites’ to ‘support short-term political expediency’. A presentation was illustrated by a diagram showing four different ‘audiences’, each of which should be given a different version of the ‘message’.

Anyone who has ever looked at the Liberal Democrats knows that this is exactly the model that they have employed over the years - delivering a message that the audience wants to hear and changing it to suit local conditions, even if that means delivering diametrically-opposed campaigns in different wards. The brand consultants have repackaged existing Liberal Democrat techniques and sold them straight back to the party. That's a kind of genius, really.

The problem that Clegg has is not that voters have no idea what the party stands for, but that many voters have now seen the party defined by their role in government and don't like how it turned out. Enough voters have a pretty clearly negative image of the party to render the brand toxic in their eyes - they don't have the brand loyalty. Referring voters back to the ending of slavery when the main issue in people's minds is the economy also indicates just how far away from reality Clegg is.

History teaches us that parties can only decontaminate their images once they are out of power. It took Labour over a decade to become a credible alternative choice to the Tories following 1979 and roughly the same timeframe for the Tories to clean up their public image - although their current performance is putting that transformation to the sword. History also shows that changing image also requires changing those who deliver the message - including the leader, which is why defeated Prime Ministers resign as party leader. If Clegg believes that he can reimage the party whilst he remains leader and the party remains in government, he's either going to be the first man to achieve it or he's deluded beyond comprehension.

I know where my money goes.

The myth of restrictive employment law

2011-11-24T07:30:00.000Z

We've been told that employers want to hire, but are put off by restrictive employment legislation and the constant threat of tribunals. Oddly, when Vince Cable asked Britain's small businesses what was holding them back, just 6% cited employment legislation as an obstruction to hiring and this doesn't surprise me at all. I've worked for some very large British companies and for some small ones and whenever I've been involved with recruitment - and I have hired over 200 people in my career - we've discussed business needs and costs, but I have never, ever worried about whether we could get rid of the new employee. Indeed, I call as a witness, the noble Lord Heseltine, speaking on the Politics Show on Sunday 20th.

"When you start talking about enabling people to sack people.... the sort of companies I understand don't sit there saying 'We've got to be able to get rid of people, so therefore we mustn't invest - the risks are too high.' If you're really an enterprising business, you invest because you think it is going to be a success. You might have to readjust, but you can do that"

Businesses hire because they need people to drive themselves forward and to grow.

Vince has already promised to roll back the unfair dismissal eligibility to two years, just as it was in 1999 - as if that held growth back over subsequent years. It may be that this is simply a performance to allow the Liberal Democrats to demonstrate that they are restraining the worst excesses of the Conservative Party, but perhaps that is the best case scenario.

It doesn't even make economic sense - a cowed workforce, scared for their jobs are hardly likely to consider moving house or buying the big ticket items that the economy needs us to buy. This is not a recipe for growth, nor will it create jobs. It will simply make more people unemployed and that is bad for those individuals, their families, their communities and our country. We can't afford these changes.

If you have to get rid of an employee - and sometimes, that is the right thing to do - there is a process to ensure that you do it fairly and properly, in line with natural justice. It doesn't strike me as unreasonable to treat your colleagues as human beings, rather than as mechanistic resources. In fact, it seems to me to be the ethical and progressive way to behave. Look at the German model - their economy has done rather well, despite protection for employees and even the presence of employees on corporate remuneration committees.

Show me the evidence that winding back our employment protection - protection that is hardly amongst the most stringent in the world - will generate growth or that employers are crying out for change and I might listen. Only might.

To close, another reminder of the nous demonstrated by that renowned left-wing firebrand, Lord Heseltine.

"you want to be very careful in political terms that you don't get the reputation that all you are trying to do is to make life rougher and tougher for large numbers of people who, in the end, you want to vote for you."

Hemming vs Hemming

2011-11-16T08:30:00.000Z

The other interesting event actually occurred before the broadcast began, as a minor domestic disagreement broke out between John Hemming and his estranged wife Christine. As the crew were checking for levels and getting the audience used to blokes wandering around with microphones on poles, Christine raised her hand - for she was in the audience, a couple of rows in front of John. She introduced herself only as Christine, surviving after redundancy on jobseeker's allowance of £67 a week and that she used to have a weekly bill of £100 a week at Tesco (which explains how John used to claim £400 a month for food on parliamentary expenses). At that, John raised his hand and the microphone was ceremonially presented to him, for him to point out that the woman who had just spoken was his wife and that she also received £500 a week from him (any money paid for the support of children is exempt from JSA calculations, benefits fact fans). He also said that he wasn't going to be 'stunted' by the BBC - an accusation that Stephen Nolan fiercely denied. John then went and had a chat with the producer in a quiet corner and the producer then had a similar quiet chat with Christine. I don't know what was said, but she didn't attempt to take any further part in the debate, although she did stay for most of the evening. Not sure we've heard the last of her.

Poverty Debate

2011-11-16T08:00:00.000Z

Sunday's Radio 5 Live poverty debate with Stephen Nolan was an interesting way of spending late Sunday evening and early Monday morning. It all started when Edwina Currie, who has never been afraid to speak whatever enters her mind, said on an earlier Stephen Nolan show that she didn't believe that we have people in this country who can't find money for food. Unsurprisingly, this led to an outcry and this debate was the outcome and I managed to secure a ticket. For three hours, the evidence was piled up in front of Edwina - Patricia, who runs one of the expanding number of Trussell Trust food banks; Nigel, who is opening a food bank in Sparkbrook; a CAB volunteer who knows that there will be a queue outside the office first thing on Monday and that it will include people who have to try to cope on just £5 a week for food; the eloquent community worker from Coventry who works with people who are on the very margin of society; Louise, who has to rely on family members to help buy food for her baby; or the elderly lady who is facing up to a £100 cut in her winter fuel allowance to pay for the electric heating in her poorly-insulated flat. For three hours, people bore witness to the troubles afflicting people who are clinging on to what passes for an existence in this country and for three hours, Edwina denied it all with a disregard for basic humanity not granted to many.

She has form, of course. Many years ago, as a government minister, she attended a meeting at my old university, when she was asked from the floor what she felt about the old people who would surely die during the difficult winter ahead. Her response was brutally simple 'We've all got to go sometime, dear.' Unsurprising for someone who felt that the best advice for the elderly at risk of hypothermia was to "wear woolly hats and long johns."

Her expertise doesn't just cover poverty, of course. She is an expert on HIV transmission "Good Christian people who wouldn't dream of misbehaving will not catch AIDS" and on cervical cancer "Nuns don't get it, virgins don't get it" - a comment that was actually cited as a reason why some women did not attend for a potentially life-saving smear test, for fear of being marked as promiscuous and, of course, she was the woman who nearly closed down the British egg industry and saw 2 million hens slaughtered as a result.

As I said, form as long as your arm.

Quinn Wins

2011-11-12T08:00:00.000Z

Thursday saw the conclusion of the late-autumn by-election campaign in Sparkbrook and a good solid win for Labour's Victoria Quinn and her team. There was a good solid Labour presence on the ground, a stark contrast to the limited Lib Dem presence and the gaggles of Respect members hanging around the polling stations.

The by-election was caused by the resignation of sitting Respect councillor Salma Yaqoub due to ill health and actually called by a couple of Green supporters.

Labour - 3932
Respect - 2301
Lib Dem - 395
Green - 179
Con - 133

Comparing that to the May results, that actually works out to a simple Butler swing of 6.25% from Respect to Labour. The other three parties' vote share has hardly shifted (for the anoraks, the Lib Dems and the Tories dropped by less than a percentage point and the Greens' shifted up by just under half a percentage point. It also gives Victoria a fairly thumping majority of 1631 - actually increasing Tony Kennedy's solid 969 in May. Turnout was - unsurprisingly for a grey, occasionally drizzly day in November - down from the 44% in May, although 33% turnout is quite respectable for a council by-election and higher than some of the turnouts in May.

As always, by-elections are singular beasts and this one can only be used to draw some conclusions about the likely future of Respect as a party grouping on Birmingham City Council and the future isn't a bright one. On this form, Respect will go from having three councillors at the start of May 2011 to having no councillors at all after next May's elections. The loss of Salma from active politics has hurt them badly and not even a flying visit from George Galloway could save them. Out on the ground on Thursday, I even ran into one of their former key workers who had come home to Labour after being disappointed by the failure of Respect to deliver on their grand promises for Sparkbrook.

That leaves Labour with 57 councillors (excluding the Lord Mayor) and one step closer to a majority next May.

Gordon Bennett..

2011-10-26T08:00:00.000+01:00

Cllr Matt Bennett was clearly in the wrong in sending an email to all 120 City Councillors, officers and contractors that called a fellow councillor - even a political opponent - a rather rude name. The Birmingham Mail redact the exact word, so we are left to guess exactly what he called Cllr Tony Kennedy - 'twit', possibly? Who knew that Tony was so sensitive?

The core of the problem is that Amey have sent out an email saying that despite a multi-billion, long-term contract, their 'stewards' would no longer attend routine evening ward committee meetings - meetings that are attended by councillors, officers and members of the public. It seems odd that this rule has been introduced after an attack on a member of staff last year and Amey are only now concerned about the safety of their lone workers. A blanket ban on attending ward committees seems to be an excessive step and it is interesting to see the Tories defending this case of 'elf and safety gone mad.' (And for the record, I've a fair bit of experience safely managing lone workers myself).

The cynical amongst us wonder if this is more about costs than safety.

What the Euro revolt says about Cameron

2011-10-26T07:30:00.000+01:00

Some excellent points from the Nottingham University politics department.

Cameron seems to be living his premiership on fast forward - he's managed to spark the biggest Tory rebellion on Europe, losing by more than John Major ever did. Tony Blair took six years to lose a vote by a comparable amount and he had a larger majority to play with. Pretty much half of the Tory parliamentary party not on the government payroll or ladder decided to vote against their leader and it is very interesting that over half of the rebels were not old sceptics, but new boys and girls with just over a year in parliament under their belts.

Rebellion is addictive - once you've done it and burnt your ministerial bridges (at least under this Prime Minister), what's to stop you doing it again? For all Cameron's protestations that he has no problem with the rebels and that the matter is closed, he knows that this particular wound is very far from healed. As Tim Montgomerie points out in the Guardian, there is real distrust of this PM amongst his troops - he is seen as being too close to the Liberal Democrats. He wasn't helped today by Nick Clegg's ill-timed promise to fight against any move away from Europe, when internal government order would have been best served by silence on Clegg's part. It is a pretty solid rule in British politics that the electorate does not trust divided parties and the Tory party is divided three ways - the Euro-sceptics who understand the realities and are in the government; the Eurosceptics who stand on their principles and speak for most grassroots Tories; and Ken Clarke.

Montgomerie also raises another issue that has implications for government - that of Cameron's personal work ethic. This government has raised laissez-faire to an art form, but there is a point where you wonder whether it is an attempt to let a thousand flowers of chaos bloom or just laziness on the part of Downing Street. Some of the appalling management over the past year or so - Gove's BSF debacle, Spelman's trials over forests, Gove's books debacle, Lansley's reversals over the NHS and any of the range of avoidable ministerial disasters - all would have benefitted from closer attention from Number 10. Gordon Brown may have been too focussed on the detail personally to see some of the bigger issues, but Cameron appears to be at the opposite end of the spectrum. With the economy in dire straits and our trading partners in Europe on the verge of panic, now is not the time for the captain of the ship to be resting.

It isn't a question of if, but when the next revolt occurs and unless Cameron takes demonstrable control rapidly, he will find himself on a course for the rocks. Of course, the party can be brutal when it needs to - will they drop the pilot before the next election?

Why Ed is spot on in handling the EU referendum vote.

2011-10-24T07:30:00.000+01:00

Sunny Hundal reckons that Ed Miliband is making tactical mistakes by whipping Labour MPs to vote against a referendum vote in today's debate in the Commons. I think he's wrong and that Ed is spot on.

Whilst it is true that there are different views amongst Labour MPs - Kate Hoey and Graham Stringer are both known as sceptics, they are nowhere near as bad as the headbangers in the Tory party and there are real gains to be had in supporting the government on this.

Firstly, we should argue strongly that whatever the views about the case for or against a referendum, now is not the time. The focus of the government, business and the political class should be solely on the economy. There is little else of any significance other than steps to economic growth and diverting attention to a political argument. Even more ludicrous is the idea that the European leaders would entertain Britain attempting to renegotiate our position at a time when they are focussed on keeping their countries functionally solvent. We can argue we are acting in the country's best interests, not working out our obsessions at a time when the country can least afford it.

Secondly, there is a tactical reason why backing the government is a good thing on this occasion - it frees up Tory MPs to vote against their leader's wishes and drips further water into those cracks within the party. If it can spark further resignations from junior levels of the government, that just adds to the tactical value. Being able to say that Cameron only held the line as a result of Labour support would be a tremendous victory.

A referendum would put the issue to bed for another generation and I'm convinced that it would be won. With businesses, trade unions, the government and most of Labour (oh, and the Liberal Democrats) lined up in favour of Europe against the massed ranks of the flapping white coats.

So, on this occasion, Sunny, I think you're wrong. Ed is exactly right. Vote with the government this time and enjoy the ongoing squirming.

Calm down dear

2011-10-22T09:00:00.000+01:00

So far, the Tories are working overtime to alienate their traditional supporters. They've battered the police, accused the National Trust of being radical left-wing wreckers and now even the Women's Institute, the keepers of the nation's jam, have had enough.

“The way they engage with women is not terribly good,” she said. “I don’t know if they listen to us really, quite frankly... We seemed to speak more with ministers a couple of years ago. I have not had as many meetings."

That's 210,000 women alienated over legal aid for domestic violence divorce cases, cuts to public services, cuts to childcare and the scrapping of the 40 year old National Women's Commission, which was established solely to feed the views of women into government.

Just a quick quote

2011-10-17T13:12:00.001+01:00

"If individual parliamentarians think it appropriate to act as one-person tribunals of appeal from judicial decisions and without troubling to read the evidence, it may not be the end of civilisation as we know it, but it can lead to a little constitutional untidiness round the edges."

Mr Justice Eady to the Young Bar law conference, 8 Oct 2011. With reference to Hemming, J.

Sorry I've not been writing of late - just no time. I've been missing a stream of great stories though....

Emptying your bins at 80 mph - the ongoing failure of evidence-based policy-making

2011-09-30T09:55:00.001+01:00

Commissar Eric has been all across the media this morning, pushing the policy announcement about his plans to restore and protect our human right to have the remains of our curry collected from our bins once a week. I'm not sure that it quite qualifies as a human right alongside the right to life, but that's hardly relevant. Indeed, it isn't relevant that there is no evidence to support the Pieman's ludicrous claims that it will prevent rat infestations or increase recycling. The fact that all the studies demonstrate quite clearly that fortnightly collections actually push people to recycle more and that there is no demonstrable link between rats and fortnightly collections isn't important. Perhaps the most amazing thing is that Pickles has managed to find some £250 million - from departmental savings, or so he claims - to support waste collection authorities who want to restore this service. It isn't clear if this is a one-off payment, ongoing support or even what percentage of the cost that this will cover for cash-strapped local authorities.

Equally, Philip Hammond will be delighting the Clarksons of this world by promising an 80 mph speed limit on motorways (although that's out to consultation, so not actually a definite change yet). Apparently, this is going to have an economic benefit by allowing people to get to business meetings faster. The evidence for this is equally poor - in fact, we'd be better off encouraging teleconferencing and we know that the faster you go, the more fuel you consume. Indeed, we'd probably be better off with more variable speed limited stretches of motorway - getting there at a constant, if slower speed, is often faster than travelling at high speed for short bursts before running into a traffic jam. Even the AA - hardly a bunch of leftie treehuggers - reckon that travelling at 80, rather than 70, will use 25% more fuel than the lower speed, increasing CO2 emissions, cost and dependency on fuel imports. If you struggle to see the economic benefit, you'd be right, but you would also miss the point.

The point is that the Tory conference is next week and Pickles and Hammond are throwing some morsels of red meat to the membership. Yes, we know that higher speeds will mean more accidents and more environmental damage, we know that the £250 million found for bins is 70% of the Arts Council budget or a quarter of the scrapped Future Jobs Fund, but at least the Tory members can feel that they've got something.

Evidence is for wimps.

Poop Poop!

Birmingham syndrome - or denial is not just a river in Egypt for the Liberal Democrats

2011-09-22T18:49:00.000+01:00

If you happened to see the debate on Newsnight on Monday when Paxman faced an audience of conference-going Liberal Democrats and tried to get them to confess their sins, you would have been struck by their unity of purpose and self-belief that they had no choice but to go into coalition with the Tories, that they were doing the right thing and that the electorate would come to understand this in due course and might reward them at the next election. Of course, some of this is hardly surprising - most of those who choose to go to any party's conference are true believers in their party and any doubts are generally kept for the more private meetings. However, their denial of the obvious, that the party is teetering on the edge of an electoral precipice, is remarkable - Kevin Maguire was the only voice of sanity in that discussion. Perhaps this is a form of Jerusalem syndrome.

The Liberal Democrats aren't accustomed to government and the compromises that this brings - they are attuned to being the party of eternal opposition, the safe place to put your vote knowing that it won't do much damage, the centrist party that disaffected Labourites and Tories can swing towards to keep their eternal foes out of office. For years, that has been a very successful election ploy - hence the 'two horse race' graphics that are a feature of every Liberal Democrat campaign, promising that one party cannot win here, so making it safe for supporters of that party to vote Lib Dem to keep the other side out. Make no mistake, having your party in government is very seductive - power is the only way to get things done and most Labour supporters would agree that Labour over 14 years did achieve many things in line with Labour ideals and principles, as well as making mistakes along the way. The same would be said by Tories about Thatcher and Major. Governmental records are always imperfect in the eyes of their party activists - it is the art of the possible, not necessarily the home of the idealist. As an aside, that's why I've always believed that Labour supporters struggle when we are in government - we attract idealists by the coachload who believe in an imperative to improve life for the many and get disappointed when we fail to build a new Jerusalem by the end of the first term.

If we look ahead to the next election, then one of two narratives seem likely and both revolve around the economy, which is likely to remain the most pressing issue for most of the decade.

In the first - the government ideal view, perhaps - two years of pain and grief in cuts are resolved by 2013/4, there is growth in the economy, people start to feel more secure as private sector jobs replace the ones lost in the public sector and perhaps Osborne is able to offer some pre-election tax cuts in the 2015 budget, just as the government goes to the country. The public are relieved that they can see the sunlit uplands ahead, accept that the service cuts were necessary and have adjusted to the new reality, so are prepared to give the government another chance. Given that the Tories will be able to paint the economic revival as their doing - after all, the Liberal Democrats opposed swingeing cuts in 2010, as did Labour - Cameron and Osborne will come out fighting, expecting their just rewards as the economic saviours of the nation.

The Liberal Democrats will be left to trumpet their supporting role, hoping against hope that their two horse strategy attracts Tory voters desperate to keep Labour out of office in Labour/LD marginals, but they will quite likely be deserted by many of their soft-Labour supporters, risking the LD/Con marginals falling to the Conservatives. In reality, Labour will remind the electorate at every opportunity that the Liberal Democrats voted with the Tories on controversial legislation and by the nature of things, some of that legislation will have caused problems in services that people hold dear. Even if you think that the government has it right on education, health, defence or crime, something is bound to go wrong with implementation and the Liberal Democrats will be held jointly responsible. The likely outcome here is a Tory majority, with a rump of Lib Dem MPs, some of them new and untested, but probably no more than half of the number that they currently have.

In the alternative view, which is likely to gain ground as the juggernaut of depression looms large on the carriageway ahead, the economy stagnates, unemployment rises and inequality grows further. Any tax cuts from Osborne are perceived as desperate bribes or the plans are postponed. Perhaps the Tories throw their friends to the wolves and say that if they had been allowed a free hand, rather than being restricted by the Liberal Democrats, then they could have resolved things better - there are bound to be a few green shoots by that point. The plaintive cries from the Liberal Democrats about what they achieved in government, that they have 75% of their manifesto enacted, will be drowned out by Labour reminding them that the Lib Dems voted with the Tories and pushed through the failed economic plans that cost jobs and didn't encourage growth. Perhaps some of the Tory/LD marginals will be saved, as Labour voters hold their noses and decide that an impotent Lib Dem is better than a Tory, but the Labour/LD marginals will fall apace and return a Labour majority, with again, a rump of Lib Dem MPs numbering no more than 25.

However you look at this, the Liberal Democrats appear to be stuffed. If the economy recovers, the credit will go to Cameron and Osborne. If it tanks, the Liberal Democrats will be seen by the electorate as equally to blame - the voters are cruel masters and will brook no whimpering from Clegg or his successor. In the meantime between now and 2015, the Liberals have a number of big local election days to come and the historic experience is that being in government is toxic to your local chances. 700 councillors disappeared this May and we can surely expect similar results on upcoming election days. For all some Liberals were excited about a handful of council by-election wins, those are irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. This will erode their activist and councillor base and that will take time to rebuild - look at the experience of Labour or the Conservatives. It took each of those parties a decade to recover from their beatings in 1979 and 1997 to the point where they regained campaigning credibility and realistic momentum.

The suggestion being touted is that the Liberal Democrats will engineer a divorce at some point late in the coalition and probably replace their toxic leader - although none of the other potential candidates appear particularly attractive and Chris Huhne's speech was positively soporific, given that he has piloted the Green Deal through parliament (a Labour policy, I will note). Whether this will allow them to put some clear water between them and the Tories sufficient to allow the public to tell them apart is questionable. Even if the split were to be engineered over a 'point of principle' - the 50% tax rate currently looks like a prime candidate for the cause - will the public forgive the Lib Dems? I'm very far from convinced.

None of this is helped by the boundary changes, which - if they come to pass for 2015 - are likely to cost the Liberal Democrats about a third of their current English MPs before a vote is cast. Nick Clegg sacrificed their electoral chances for a badly-timed referendum on electoral reform, one that they were always doomed to lose and thereby put electoral reform off the public agenda for a generation - indeed, I'd be surprised if I see it return within my lifetime. He and his colleagues threw away the one totemic policy that has survived since the days of the SDP and in return, they are colluding in a shameful attempt to fix the electoral system to deny any other party a sniff of government.

Putting my party hat back on, the real lesson for Labour is that we need to train our fire on the Tories. They will be the only other party in the game come 2015.

Hemming - he feels your pain

2011-09-21T18:53:00.001+01:00

"It's obviously very sad when people lose their jobs, but they need to understand why it's in everyone's interest"

John Hemming MP, BBC News 21 Sept 2011

Can anyone think of somebody else who should lose their job and it would be in everyone's interest?

Welcome to Birmingham

2011-09-19T13:39:00.000+01:00

This poster is almost directly opposite the Liberal Democrat conference venue - a reminder of another broken promise as they celebrate their success in government.

George Osborne's admission of failure

2011-09-16T12:00:00.002+01:00

2009

"George Osborne has warned that the Bank of England’s strategy of quantitative easing is a “leap in the dark”. The Shadow Chancellor described the decision to effectively print more money as a “last resort”, necessary because of the “complete failure” of Labour’s other measures to tackle the recession. He told BBC News, "I don't think anyone should be pleased that we have reached this point. It is an admission of failure and carries considerable risk.” He stressed, "Let us hope that this approach taken by the Bank of England does lead to an easing of credit conditions.” And he warned, "This is a leap in the dark and we will see whether it works."

2011
"George Osborne has opened the door to new forms of quantitative easing by the Bank of England as concerns mount in the Treasury over the state of the economy. Speaking to journalists in Marseilles, the chancellor made it clear he saw no barriers to a second round of quantitative easing – creating money to pump into the economy – if a request came from the Bank, and raised no objections to the possibility of the Bank extending its purchases to assets other than gilts"

Pushing the boundaries

2011-09-13T07:00:00.000+01:00

Proposals to change the parliamentary constituency boundaries leaked within a couple of hours of them being released to the denizens of the parliamentary estate. Based upon the leaks, here's some thoughts on what it means for Birmingham.

Aside from the big news that commas have been abolished from parliamentary constituency names, it has some interesting effects on the Birmingham parliamentary landscape, given that the commission has a new mandate to cross borough boundaries in an attempt to equalise the size of constituencies within 5% of a national average.

The headline is that Liam Byrne's Birmingham Hodge Hill is rudely dismembered and disappears. While Selly Oak also vanishes, there is still a constituency that is a recognisable replacement as Birmingham retains seven constituencies entirely within the metropolitan boundary and two that reach out into other boroughs. We also have several wards that belong to Birmingham only at local level.

Here's a quick guide with some very quick and dirty views on the notional winners of last year's election on the new boundaries. I tweeted some other figures last night, but I've refined them to take into account conversion of council votes to parliamentary votes and the willingness of voters to vote for two different parties at parliamentary and local level. I have genuinely tried to be objective in my views on the likely outcome for each new seat, but the discussion is open. Of course, these notional majorities are based on the figures for the last general election and we know that the political landscape has changed massively in 18 months, so this is, as Peter Snow used to say, just a bit of fun. Don't bet your house or your career on these figures.

Birmingham Northfield - Lab HOLD
This retains the current Northfield wards of Kings Norton, Longbridge and Northfield, but brings in Bournville from Selly Oak. Notionally, Labour has a majority of just around 1800 votes in this seat, but the Lib Dem vote would be decisive here. My first pass over this constituency actually gave it an 1100 vote Tory majority, but I've revised my calculations.

Birmingham Perry Barr - Lab HOLD
Handsworth Wood, Lozells & East Handsworth and Perry Barr, but now with added Aston from Ladywood. Sure to be a rock-solid Labour seat, with a majority even on last year's figures in excess of 11,600 - over double the runner-up Lib Dem vote.

Birmingham Yardley - Lib Dem HOLD
This keeps Acocks Green, South Yardley, Stechford & Yardley North, but exports Sheldon - a solid Lib Dem seat, even this year - to boost Lorely Burt's chances of hanging on in Solihull. To maintain the size, it acquires Bordesley Green from the defunct Hodge Hill constituency. Notionally, this is now a 1200 vote majority for the Lib Dems, but I would posit that this is incredibly vulnerable given local shifts in the vote and - even trying to hold back my partiality - would expect this to go Labour under the new boundaries. Losing Sheldon will hurt.

Sutton Coldfield - Con HOLD
Shock horror here. Sutton Four Oaks, Sutton Vesey and Sutton Trinity stay at home, while Sutton New Hall plays away in Erdington. Joining the party is Kingstanding, but this still leaves it as a safe Tory seat with a 12,300 majority.

Birmingham Erdington - Con GAIN
A previously solidly safe Labour seat now crosses the floor, as the safe Tory wards of Sutton New Hall and Solihull's Castle Bromwich join Erdington, Stockland Green and Tyburn to create a notional Tory majority of around 3000 votes. Yet again, though, you would have to question what happens if the Lib Dem vote collapses. Gareth Compton, the former Tory councillor and chair of the local party seems happy with the outcome, as well he might. This could be the first seat to send an Alden to parliament. And not the one you'd expect.

Birmingham Edgbaston - Lab HOLD

~~Whilst Deirdre Alden is crowing about Gisela's apparent imminent downfall~~, ~~I'd question that logic~~. Only Edgbaston ward survives in the new seat, which is really the new Selly Oak as it has the peculiar combination of Moseley & Kings Heath and Sparkbrook rolling in from Hall Green as Selly Oak loses its eponymous constituency and jumps into the mix as well. I'm predicting a 4400 Labour majority here - possibly more as the Respect vote collapses in Sparkbrook and comes home, as well as the problems for the Lib Dems in Moseley.

Birmingham Harborne - Lab HOLD

Colour me surprised - and Deirdre needn't get excited either. She gives this a notional Tory majority, but I think that's wrong. My initial figures also gave this a 2000 Tory majority, but refining them reverses that to a 2100 Labour lead. This new seat is made up of Bartley Green, Harborne and Quinton from Edgbaston with the addition of Weoley from Northfield and Old Warley from Sandwell, which imports a net 400 or so Labour votes. I've classed this as a hold, as this really replaces the current Birmingham Edgbaston, but I think that this one could absolutely go either way and is a classic marginal. As with many, the Liberal Democrat vote will be crucial and if Gisela were not to stand, then the loss of the incumbent personal vote could wipe that majority out at a stroke. Realistically, this one is in play.

Birmingham Ladywood - Lab HOLD

Holding on to Ladywood and Nechells and bringing in Hodge Hill and Washwood Heath, this should have a virtually indestructable Labour majority of over 8000 - assuming that the Lib Dem vote is maintained. Which it won't be.

Birmingham Hall Green - Lab HOLD

This keeps Hall Green and Springfield, but brings in Brandwood and Billesley from the disappearing Selly Oak. I'm giving this a 5500 Labour majority, but there's a notional 10,000 Lib Dem votes up for grabs here, so again, if they transfer to another party, they could be decisive.

So, Liam Byrne will be looking for a new seat, whilst all the other Birmingham MPs should be able to shuffle round a bit without too much of a fist fight. Of course, Liam has an option - he just needs to follow Bordesley Green and look to Yardley, raising the possibility of an entertaining bout between him and Hemming. I know where I'd put my money. Additionally, the loss of Erdington to the Tories leaves Jack Dromey in trouble.

And of the wards that drift off into other orbits? Sheldon goes to Solihull, which might help Lorely Burt, but I rather doubt it, given the general mood of the country. Some of the southern Solihull wards now slope off into an elongated Kenilworth & Dorridge seat, bringing it up to the borders of Birmingham in Shirley. Shard End drifts off into a peculiarly revised Meriden seat, which I suspect could be rather closer for the Tories in future than it is now. Soho moves over to a Smethwick seat and Oscott goes to Walsall South.

This whole proposal is dependent on the single round of consultation and a final vote through parliament. Given the axe that will fall on a number of seats - Chris Huhne, Nick Clegg, Tim Farron and John Leech all look very vulnerable to these changes and even Vince Cable could find himself fighting Zac Goldsmith - there is no guarantee that it will be put into place in time for the next election, so this might yet prove to be a colossal waste of time. Rumour has it that some government supporters are already looking for something to sweeten their parliamentary retirement in return for a vote for Christmas.

UPDATED: Adjusted position on Harborne slightly and corrected an oversight on Erdington - I forgot that the safe Tory seat of Castle Bromwich crossed the border.

UPDATED AGAIN: I may have misread Cllr Alden's post on her not-a-blog site.... She's added another one now *waves*. I haven't checked the rules on boundary moves for sitting Labour MPs, but I don't think she's far wrong. She does make the assumption that all MPs currently sitting will be seeking re-election - it is quite possible that Roger Godsiff may decide to call it a day and Steve McCabe would actually seem to have a reasonable claim on Hall Green, as it will contain two of his wards, rather than the one that falls into Edgbaston. Oddly, Roger would have a reasonable claim Edgbaston only contains one of his. Don't let the names confuse you. She has a point about why Edgbaston continues to be called that, when it only contains the Edgbaston ward and bears no real relation to the makeup of the current constituency although I don't think University is an awful lot better. You could say the same about a number of constituency names, in fairness.

Send in the clowns....

2011-09-12T08:00:00.004+01:00

Don't bother, they're here....

Musicians and clowns pictured here in advance of ArtsFest.

Cllr Martin Mullaney has been fulminating lately and claiming that the local press are biased against him and his Regressive Partnership ilk. I can remember similar arguments being posed in private by Labour figures before we lost power in 2004 and the truth is the same now as it was then.

The Birmingham Post and Mail aren't biased against the Tory/Lib Dem coalition because they are operating under instructions from a left-wing cabal running Mirror Group. They are simply going where the stories lead them and that usually means in the direction of money and power, which points them squarely towards the local authority and its political leadership. With the current problems at the heart of the authority, there is plenty of fuel for these stories. Martin would be better focussing on his job, rather than on imagined media bias.

For more than six months, the higher echelons of the City Council have been of the opinion that the current coalition will lose control in May 2012 and I fully expect that by the end of 2012, the Birmingham Post and Mail will be infuriating the new Labour majority leadership as Paul Dale and the others hold them up to the light.

Tax principles?

2011-09-12T07:30:00.000+01:00

With Vince Cable apparently threatening the nuclear option of resigning if the banking changes aren't carried through, perhaps more interesting is the apparent fight over the future of the 50p tax rate.

Chris Huhne is quoted as saying

If the cut in the top rate of tax is just a way of helping the Conservatives' friends in the City to put their feet up, then forget it. They are simply not going to get the votes in the House of Commons.

And Danny Alexander added that

Our priority is to reduce the tax burden for people on low and middle incomes. I think the last thing we need at a time when everyone in the country is feeling the pinch, where we are asking people across all parts of the economy to help contribute to those efforts to deal with the economic problems, to have a focus on the tax burden for the wealthiest.

All this follows on from Vince Cable's comments last month, which proved the opening salvoes of this little battle

I and my Liberal Democrat colleagues have always made it clear that if there is scope for cutting taxes and, there isn’t a great deal for scope at the moment, the priority is cutting taxes for people on low and middle incomes

Clearly, they are quite right. Cutting the top rate of tax at the moment would send all the wrong signals, despite some of the wilder claims from the right, who appear to think that we should incentivise the rich by cutting taxes, but challenge the poor by cutting their income. On the one hand, this is a restatement of Liberal Democrat principles, but on the other, it is ideally placed to deflect some of the discontent that is to be expected at this week's party conference right here in Birmingham. More broadly, it also puts some clear water between the Tories and the LibDems, thinking ahead to the general election campaign of 2015, when that gap may be the difference between electoral annihilation and the survival of a rump of MPs. It might even provide an opportunity to engineer a political separation prior to the election as the sense self-preservation becomes overwhelming.

Whether anyone actually buys this political posturing as an example of principle is a different matter and on the current attitudes of the electorate towards the Liberal Democrats, few will.

An open letter to my MP

2011-09-05T15:27:00.000+01:00

Dear John,
While there are many things on which we disagree politically, I'm writing to you as a constituent, using a service provided by 38 Degrees, to ask you to stand up for a service that has been vitally important to my family and to the lives of your constituents, as well as being perhaps the greatest innovation in British healthcare - the NHS itself. Without it, I would not have a daughter, a mother or both of my parents-in-law.

I know that Lib Dems are planning to meet in Parliament tonight to talk about the NHS reforms.

These changes weren't in anyone's manifesto and certainly not detailed even in the Coalition Agreement that you and your party agreed to.

As you may be aware, 38 Degrees has sought legal opinion that indicates that competition law will apply to the NHS, risking long drawn-out and expensive legal arguments over contracting of services. The cost of the restructuring will directly impact on front line services to patients - we're already seeing waiting times rise and this will get worse over the coming years.

The bill will remove accountability for the NHS from the Secretary of State and transfer it to local, unaccountable commissioners and will create a massive, confusing postcode lottery.

We even found out over the weekend that the government is already discussing opportunities for foreign healthcare providers to take over NHS services on a for-profit basis. The government is intent on selling off one of the most cost-effective healthcare systems in the world, despite opposition from every level within the medical and care professions.

Don't be a part of destroying the National Health Service. Make our voice heard in tonight's meeting and stand up for the NHS and your constituents. Make the right decision, John. You won't be alone.

Hemming's Law II

2011-08-24T09:00:00.001+01:00

A while back, I wrote about a case in Doncaster where John Hemming used parliamentary privilege to raise a very difficult family law case. As I wrote at the time, this was a very difficult case involving allegations of child abuse made against a father by his former wife. The case reared up again this week, as the President of the Family Division took a rare decision to name all the adults involved because of the lengths that the mother and her unqualified 'investigator' went to to put these 'scandalous' allegations into the public domain, in clear breach of court orders. He wanted it to be clear that there was absolutely no credibility to the allegations about the father, having reviewed the evidence - the third judge to do so and the third to find no evidence against the father. Indeed, it was felt that the mother's behaviour in coaching the daughter to repeat the allegations against the father actually caused significant harm to the child.

"These proceedings have had a serious effect on the life of the father and have threatened the stability of the child. Her mother's actions are wholly contrary to her interests. The father is entitled to tell the world, and the world is entitled to know, that he is not a paedophile, that he has not sexually abused his daughter and that the allegations made against him are false."

The 'investigator' and 'child psychologist' Elizabeth Watson apparently referred to herself as 'Elizabeth of the Watson family' - an indicator that she may adhere to the delusion of the 'freeman on the land' brigade, who decline to accept jurisdiction of the law courts on anything other than their own terms, which are needless to say, entirely at odds with centuries of public jurisprudence and based on rather peculiar interpretations. This may go some way towards explaining why the judge lost patience with her and jailed her for 9 months for contempt of court - that and her insistence on breaching court orders. Indeed, the judge nearly ruled her to be mentally ill.

John Mann, the redoubtable Labour MP for Bassetlaw - and whose constituent Vicky Haigh was at the time - is furious and has called for Hemming to resign as he is unfit to hold office following his abuse of parliamentary privilege.

Liberal values?

2011-08-24T08:00:00.000+01:00

Oh for the good old days when you knew what the Liberal Democrats believed.

Way back in 2003, Liberal Democrat spokesman for children, Paul Burstow spoke in a party conference debate on banning the smacking of children.

"It is a terrible indictment of our society that, though smaller and more vulnerable, children still have less protection under the law...We are not pleading a special case for children, just equality and the freedom to grow up without violence... What changing the law does, as we have seen in Sweden, is it provides the backbone to the educational campaigns by sending out the message as a society that it is not OK to hit a child."

Speaking in support of the motion, Baroness Walmsley added,

"Learning from Europe, we should scrap this archaic law to discourage hitting children and help us promote positive and more effective forms of discipline.The law educates and sets standards in all spheres of society, including how we behave in the home."

In less than a decade, we now have John Hemming MP - a man increasingly indistinguishable from the Tories - calling for parents to be allowed to hit their children, against the policy of his own party. Perhaps even more shocking is that the Daily Express described him as a senior Liberal Democrat, when he is clearly a loose cannon on the gun deck and irresponsible at best.

The inquiry into the riots must look at the way in which the state undermines parental discipline. Smacking children rarely does any long-term harm.

Well, that's not what assorted charities believe and not what the research shows. It doesn't work and it raises children to believe that violence is the right response. Let's ask Miriam Stoppard:

Scientists from Canadian and American universities have found that smacking kids, instead of using non-physical punishment, such as time outs, actually defeats the purpose. It leads to poorer discipline among the kids who are smacked. They may comply with rules in the short term to avoid being smacked but in the long term they fail to understand the reasons behind corporal punishment. The researchers have also found that it reduces a child’s emotional intelligence.

The NSPCC are also quite clear on it - it is never a good idea - and I would tend to believe them rather than Mr Hemming's peculiar views.

Parents may believe there are occasions when only a smack will do. For example, your child is really cheeky and disobedient; your toddler runs into the road; one of your children bites a playmate. It can be tempting to think a smack sorts out these incidents quickly, but it does nothing to teach your child how you want him to behave.
Instead, it:
gives a bad example of how to handle strong emotions

may lead children to hit or bully others

may encourage children to lie, or hide feelings, to avoid smacking

it can make defiant behaviour worse, so discipline gets even harder

leads to a resentful and angry child, damaging family relationships if it goes on for a long time.

'Slugger' Lines gets tough on the causes of crime at home

2011-08-23T08:00:00.006+01:00

Predictably, Cllr John Lines is eager to throw his weight around to demonstrate his right wing disciplinarian attitudes.

"We have 65,000 council houses and hundreds of these looters will be going before the courts, so I am quite positive that many of these criminals will be council tenants. I have thousands of decent law-abiding families queuing up for council houses and will waste no time getting rid of these scum of the Earth."

As we know, when it comes to violence and anti-social behaviour, Cllr Lines is something of an expert.

While I have no time for tenants who make their neighbours' lives a misery or those who consistently disrupt their neighbourhoods, I'm concerned that eviction isn't used excessively to punish families for the offences of a junior member - I'd ask if that is likely to build broad faith in the system or perhaps set up further problems down the line as a result of disillusionment now. Some of those policies that may make the right wing disciplinarians feel all powerful may have unforeseen consequences ahead as they cause further disconnection between people and the community - exclusion is rarely the answer. The alternative, support and intervention, is far more challenging, but potentially far more effective.

The next big issue

2011-08-13T09:00:00.022+01:00

I've noted before that the Tory party has historically been perceived as the party of law and order - capturing that ground was key to Labour's victory in 1997 and when we left office, crime was falling and we had more police officers than at any point in our history. Although Thatcher was no friend of the public sector, she ensured that the police were properly paid and reasonably resourced. Politically, law and order is always a top line subject - consistently towards the top of people's concerns - and is, after all, at the heart of what the state should prioritise, the protection of its citizens. The police are also a service that is consistently trusted by the public, far more than politicians or the media.

All of that makes the current government's attitude to the police all the more surprising. Previously, it has seemed to be labelled in the same way as the rest of the public sector and ripe for 'reform' or 'cutting' as it is better known. The result has been predictable and the government seems to have lost the confidence of the dressing room, with the police staff associations lining up to express dissatisfaction and concern.

16,000 sworn officers are to be released through recruitment freezes and forced retirements. To put that into context, that is the same as firing every officer in the West Midlands, Warwickshire, West Mercia and Staffordshire. To add to that, there are a further 16,000 civilian police posts to be removed and we can expect many of those roles to be filled by officers, taking still more away from frontline policing. No sane person can expect this to leave the quality of policing untouched - although the Home Secretary maintains that it will. 16,000 is also the number of officers from across the country deployed to London to quell the looting that has scarred the capital. Indeed, despite the assurances from the Home Secretary and Nick Clegg, more than half of the British public believe that the police are already under-resourced, despite the best efforts of the chief constables. As Hugh Orde puts it
Chief constables have minimised the impact on the frontline. We will have to have some very honest, straightforward conversations with government in years three and four. We have to understand what sort of service we want and what we want it to do, and not do
That does not sound like a service looking forward to working with tightened budgets, although it should be said that they felt able to work with Labour's planned 12% cuts, but not with the 20% promised by the government.

The scrapping of the world-leading Forensic Science Service has also been criticised as ham-fisted and rushed, as it has forced police services into unexpected and truncated tendering processes with various private providers in what is an experiment in the almost total privatisation of a vital function of our justice system - other countries keep that firmly in public hands. The service may not have been a money spinner, but then the legal system is supposed to administer justice, not turn a profit.

The disorder will put funding of the police straight back on the table - it seems impossible that the police service will be required to cut as deep as the government demanded, so we can surely expect the government to review the situation urgently. If they do not, then it is a fair question to ask if the police would be able to respond to this sort of issue if it were to happen once they have finished their budget cuts. With the security-hungry Olympics only a year away, can Britain afford to risk a repeat of the past few days? Once ministers see the bill for riot damage that will be presented to police services across the country over the next couple of weeks as insurers and others seek redress for their costs, then the reality will finally strike home. This is a massively destructive electoral liability for the Tories - lose this one and they have lost a cornerstone of their political genetic blueprint. The fact that, thus far, the Tories are facing down the police and promising that the cuts must continue is intriguing and will prove to be a political mistake.

That is not to say that the police should not be looking to raise their game. In recent weeks, the News International saga has take a number of police careers and looks likely to take more before it concludes, as vast quantities of previously concealed dirty washing is laundered in the glare of publicity. The Duggan shooting last week typified a mendacious approach to the truth from the police when faced with potential controversy - they spun a story in the favour of the police in the sure knowledge that the fastest story sticks. Whatever the outcome of the investigation, many people will only remember that when stopped and challenged by armed police officers, Duggan opened fire, leaving a bullet embedded in a police officer's radio. The fact that he didn't fire and that the bullet has now been demonstrated to be police issue is indicative of the spin to which the Met press team have been used to putting on a story. Remember the story spread about de Menezes following the shooting - he wore a bulky coat, he ran from police, he vaulted barriers at Stockwell underground station? All untrue, but all stuck in the popular memory, despite being later overtaken by the facts revealed by investigation, but all pushed to friendly correspondents in an attempt to minimise damage to the Metropolitan Police.

But, just as this past week has shown some of the worst and best elements of society, the police have risen to the occasion, after a shaky start when they lost control of parts of London, simply because they were outnumbered and unable to respond fast enough to flashmob disorder, blossoming in one part and then fading away to appear somewhere else. Have a read of Inspector Winter's fine account on his blog and in the Telegraph, an anonymous officer caught up in public order policing away from his day job in specialist surveillance.

The criticisms of the police that I have heard have made me angry.
When you have 20 or 30 officers facing a crowd of hundreds, many of them armed with bricks and petrol bombs, and you know you have to obey the limits of the law even when your attackers are not – well, solutions are just not as simple as critics would have you believe. We were outnumbered, encumbered by our equipment and drained.

Would water cannons and baton rounds have helped? In practical terms, water cannons take time to deploy and the riots were so fast moving that they would have been quickly left behind. Also, their presence would have ramped up the aggression. As for baton rounds, we would immediately have faced an outcry from the usual complainers.
We have trained and trained for this. But in the situations we’ve found ourselves, with riots kicking off all around us, another three starting almost as soon as we had contained one, there was simply no viable way to take back the streets at a stroke.
I have maintained throughout this week that the more repressive forms of crowd control were not the answer to this disorder, both for operational reasons and because they would fundamentally shift the relationship we have developed with a police service that operates with our consent. The correct response was what developed over the next few hours and days - overwhelming numbers of police out on the streets with the mobility to respond and intelligent deployment to flashpoints. That has been followed up by an unprecedented number of suspects being arrested, charged and placed before a court within a matter of hours. Indeed, Inspector Winter revealed that he'd been on a warrant execution where the suspect had slept through the noise of his door being battered down and was awoken by the police, allowing Insp Winter to utter the immortal line 'Get your trousers on, you're nicked' - something he has been waiting fifteen years to do (although we assume he followed it up with the formal caution).

It is a mark of how fractured the relationship between the government and the senior ranks has become that there is a very public spat ongoing between them over who can take the credit for bringing the situation under control, given that the PM, the Mayor of London and the Home Secretary were all on holiday when it kicked off and by the time they returned, plans were already well advanced. The acting commissioner of the Met, Tim Godwin acidly observed, even as senior government members are prowling the riot-hit communities to demonstrate that they care, that

“I think after any event like this, people will always make comments who weren’t there.... The issue around the numbers, the tactics – they are all police decisions and they are all made by my police commanders and myself”

Theresa May has been pushing the line that she ordered the redeployment of numbers of police and a shift in tactics and Sir Hugh Orde has joined the fray

That politicians chose to come back is an irrelevance in terms of the tactics that were by then developing... The more robust policing tactics you saw were not a function of political interference – they were a function of numbers being available"

The Home Secretary yesterday very pointedly praised the front line officers for their efforts in quelling the riots - ignoring the senior officers who made the whole thing work. Intriguingly, a source is suggesting to the Independent that Cameron had to be talked down from putting the army onto the streets, a decision that would have had dramatic consequences for this government and the police. That seems credible, given Cameron's wild promises to deploy water cannon at 24 hours' notice that followed, but is rather disturbing in what it indicates about Cameron's leadership and crisis management skills.

Aside from the lunacy of their plans to cut police numbers - something that nobody outside government believes can possibly leave front line policing unaffected - there is also the ongoing issue of the next Commissioner of the Metropolis. On current form, it seems unlikely that either Godwin or Orde will be in line for the job, although Orde is probably the best one to take on the role of leading a service in crisis at the top command level. Cameron has this whacked-out idea that he wants to appoint an outsider, Bill Bratton, the former chief of police in both New York and LA and credited with turning round both those forces. Frankly, this seems an insult to senior British officers - that not one of them is deemed capable of doing the job and that we should have to turn to someone with no experience whatsoever of the culture of British policing. Ironically, it looks as though Cameron's plans may founder on immigration grounds, but Bratton is to be invited over to consult on riot control. Again, Orde weighs in
The leadership of this service understands policing. We all started where our brave officers were the other day. We start at the bottom, we move up and we learn and we move on.
And through all this, nobody has yet raised the imminent spectre of the elected police commissioner, who would have been the centre of blame for the unrest and disorder, despite having no operational control over the police service in their care. The police are being politicised and it is to their credit that the senior officers are fighting a rearguard action against it. For all their faults, we need an independent police service that is professionally run, not one at the whim of an elected official.

This government is eroding the ability of the police to do its job, it is eroding the political independence of the service and it is demoralising the men and women that we rely on to deliver it. They have lost confidence in their political masters and that should worry us all.

Personnel Issues

2011-08-08T07:45:00.001+01:00

We've had the news that Mirza Ahmad will leave Birmingham City Council as his post was deleted and then came the surprising news that the man in charge of the slow car crash that is Business Transformation (which will produce different savings depending upon which day of the week you ask the question) is also to leave the council as part of another restructuring of the change team.

Glyn Evans, the grandly titled Corporate Director of Business Change isn't actually leaving, he's being seconded to Warwick Business School, with a vague assurance that he will find some funding from somewhere to cover his wages. I have to admit to struggling with the idea that the council, busy at it is trying to fill various black holes in finances and cutting grants to charities providing frontline support, can fund a senior manager to toddle off for a year on a paid sabbatical. Even more curious is the assurance that - despite the doubts of many - the business change is now so well embedded and the savings so guaranteed that the management team can be dispersed. Add to this the fact that the council is expected to change political control next year and go through a period of redirection and upheaval and you have to wonder why he's being allowed out at such an important time.

Unless of course he knows something that others only suspect about Business Transformation. Do we really want to pull back the curtain and destroy the image?

Speaking of confusion over personnel issues, Cllr Rudge spoke damningly of the 'moveable feast' that is HR legislation, which is apparently being made on the fly by tribunals on a monthly basis. Which it isn't. What is damning is the series of poor decisions that have been taken to defend utterly indefensible cases against counsel's advice.

The coalition has brought these problems on itself - many councils resolved them without half the troubles that Birmingham has faced and this is largely down to the appalling way that the city has treated its employees. Cllr Rudge should be utterly ashamed of the situation, but he prefers to try to shift the blame onto others.

Interesting that many council employees face thumping cuts in their pay, but the senior managers share their pain by losing their free parking spaces and suffering - suffering, I tell you - a cut in mileage rates. Shall we have a whip round for the senior grades to ease their grief?

We're all going on a summer holiday...

2011-08-07T11:00:00.001+01:00

I don't think that anyone honestly believes that any national leader is out of contact whilst on holiday - the full panoply of electronic communications ensures that Cameron is in touch with home base and his senior colleagues. Gone are the days in the 1950s, when the control links to the PM for nuclear launch relied on the radio network of a motoring organisation, but that doesn't mean that we don't need a senior figure around on the spot and not rely on being able to drag the PM out of an Italian coffee shop or off the tennis court to try to look in touch and reassuring.

This week has been another serious failure in the government's communication strategy, as they have given the appearance of not being in control. Whilst it is true that governments are pretty much at the mercy of events, it isn't wise to remind the electorate and the markets that this is the case, otherwise you open yourself to claims that you are in government, but not in power.

I can't imagine that it has happened in recent years that so many senior government members have been allowed to disperse across the globe at the same time - imposing a genuine communications problem with the different time zones. Certainly, under Labour, the PM/DPM were never both unavailable and there was always a planned ministerial team available to manage issues and provide a public face if required and I suspect that things were similar under the last Tory government.

The problem now is that bringing the Chancellor or PM back to the UK now looks like panic - something not calculated to ease the volatility of the markets. It just looks like the business of government is appallingly badly managed and it also demonstrates the utter irrelevance of Clegg as deputy PM.

And next time, don't forget to get someone to look after the cat.

Down the market

2011-08-01T07:30:00.001+01:00

After five years of promising a future for the Birmingham wholesale market, in return for them relocating and freeing up a valuable site for development close to the city centre, last week, the city council shamefully pulled the plug on the project to relocate to a site in Witton. Apparently, they've just realised that the loss of Advantage West Midlands - which is putting staff on garden leave as I write - will cost them co-funding and they can't afford it themselves anyway.

They've promised to help the traders relocate - although the traders will now need to find their own private sector market operator to establish a site by February 2013, when the council will want the site to redevelop.

Essentially, blame for this seems to lie with the council, who have not moved fast enough to tie up the deal and secure the funding through AWM - there are a number of projects that will progress separately to the death of the regional development agency. The government aren't excused though, as they have ensured an economic environment that is entirely unsuited to this move and have cut the council budget.

Stephenson's Rocket

2011-07-18T07:30:00.001+01:00

If the now former head of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Paul Stephenson, was trying to resign his post in a way calculated to avoid embarrassment to the government, he has failed spectacularly.

His statement contains some very thinly-veiled criticism of the Prime Minister - essentially stressing that he hired Neil Wallis for some consultancy work for around a year and that Wallis had at that point not been fingered in any inquiries into the hacking scandal. This clearly contrasts with Cameron's appointment of Coulson when he was already tarnished by rumour and the subject of direct allegations from various sources. Ironically, Wallis was hired specifically because of his contact with Coulson in the hope that this would give the Met a direct lobbying line to Downing Street, but it is hard to mark Stephenson too hard over the Wallis contract, although the whole earlier investigation by 'Yates of the Yard' happened on Stephenson's watch and that debacle has yet to be fully played out.

Adding to that parting shot is the timing. Not only did the Met only give Downing Street 30 minutes notice of the announcement - on a Sunday - it was also timed to coincide with Cameron's departure for a planned visit abroad, leaving him unable to respond in all but the most general terms.

Indeed, the timing of that foreign trip is looking awkward. It puts Cameron out of the country as the hacking scandal continues to mount and just as Brooks, the Murdochs and Stephenson are all scheduled to be questioned by parliamentary committee on Tuesday. Rather than looking the statesman, bestriding the world stage, he looks to be on the run from bad news. Just as Ed Milliband has had a good scandal, so Cameron's experience and performance has been lacking over the same period. He is undoubtedly on the ropes - his judgement in appointing Coulson despite advice to the contrary and despite the evidence of common sense is deeply flawed and the Stephenson resignation draws unwelcome parallels between a leader taking an apparently honourable stance to resign and Cameron, clinging on despite worse failings in judgement.

For as countless dictators will tell you, it is when the leader is out of the country with his acolytes that the real mischief is done - that's when coups happen. But we don't have to look to a tin pot dictator for a lead - remember that a Cameron predecessor, Margaret Thatcher, was fatally damaged by her absence in 1990 at a European conference in Paris. She was unable to rally her backbenchers and her lieutenants were asleep while her support crumbled. Will there be disgruntled Tories plotting in the back rooms of Westminster over the next few days? While Cameron is down, he is not yet out, but it is no longer madness to talk of the crisis claiming him as a victim as the scandal spreads. The rumbling isn't going to go away any time soon and Cameron is looking like badly damaged goods.

Clegg the bullet catcher

2011-06-15T08:30:00.001+01:00

If you listen to the Liberal Democrats, the changes in the NHS bill have been wrought by the influence of the Liberal Democrat ministers in the heart of government. Quietly, some might mention the spring Lib Dem conference that demanded change. Nobody wants to remind Clegg that he signed off on the original bill (apparently without reading it) and was joined in that support by Danny Alexander and the loyal Lib Dem MPs who voted for the unmodified bill thus far. From the Tories, Cameron has been equally firm in stressing that the changes are all his own work and nothing to do with the Lib Dems at all. Nobody wants to mention the fact that this has seen huge anger and remarkable unity of opposition from the NHS workforce, fed up with continuous reform and not wanting to waste any more money on a pointless and expensive restructuring rather than spending it on patient care.

Of course, what Clegg has done is put the Lib Dems squarely in the firing line over the NHS, so when a nurse drops a bedpan in Tredegar, it will not only echo around Whitehall and Andrew Lansley's office, but round every Liberal Democrat MP's constituency (Bevan's aphorism no longer applies, as the NHS in Wales is devolved). The NHS is a third rail in British politics - touch it and you risk political death. Thus far, the blame has rested squarely with the Tories - the Liberal minister being largely irrelevant in the public mind. But now, Clegg has again used his party as a sandbag to absorb some of the damage that will be thrown at the government and to protect the Tories. In that unfair way that the public have of apportioning blame, the truth of the matter will be irrelevant. Errors and problems will be as much Clegg's fault as Cameron's and with Clegg's popularity non-existent, he'll take the brunt of it for backing these reforms.

Perhaps the Lib Dems genuinely believe that the public will reward them for moderating the Tories wilder instincts. I think they're wrong. The public will continue to punish them until after the next general election. If the policies are perceived as good, then the Tories will take all the credit. If bad, then the Liberal Democrats will take the blame for not stopping them - moderation isn't enough.

The underground resurfaces

2011-06-15T08:00:00.001+01:00

Back in the mists of time, when I started this blog, I wrote about the Mike Whitby Vanity Project, where the Dear Leader flushed £150,000 of public money down a huge hole of a study into whether a Birmingham underground was a practical option. Pretty much what I wrote in December 2004 and thereafter duly came to pass when the report was finally released. Essentially, it would be ruinously expensive to build and maintain, take decades to deliver and may actually be all but impossible to build in any case.

All of which puzzles me, when I read that Sir Albert Bore is reported to have revived the idea as part of a more general review into transport in the city. It was a bad idea in 2004 and it is a bad idea now.

On the other hand, a transport policy would be something worth having. We're getting a revived New Street, it looks like HS2 will happen and there are even plans to bring the Kings Heath and Moseley freight line back into passenger use, running heavy rail services out to those suburbs. We need to continue progress with either the Metro or consider alternate light rail systems to extend it out from the centre into the rest of Birmingham. The government should urgently extend bus regulation powers to all elected mayors - London has it, so why not Birmingham? We also need to improve facilities for cycling in the city, with more cycle lanes isolated from other traffic, secure lockers in the City Centre. That's a back of the envelope transport policy.

If Sir Albert meant that his independent transport commission is to have a completely free hand to consider any options - including a Birmingham underground or even hoverboards - that's one thing, but the underground has been given an unduly high profile as it rises from the dead.

Brave new world

2011-06-14T23:27:00.000+01:00

Congratulations to Birmingham City Council for getting something right - they live-streamed the full council meeting this afternoon. Laugh a minute it was not, but it is an important step in opening up the proceedings of the council to genuine public scrutiny. It isn't important whether it is watched, just that it can be watched by those who want to see our elected members in action. The presentation is basic in the extreme, the video quality patchy, but that isn't the point. Top marks to the Birmingham Council media team and to the councillors who finally made it possible. All a far cry from Wales, where they do things differently there.

Nadine Dorries - still talking rubbish

2011-06-04T12:30:00.008+01:00

On Any Questions this week, Nadine Dorries gives a stellar performance. Genuinely unmissable. Apart from the fact that she she starts the programme by answering the second - as yet unasked - question first (and we all thought the panellists didn't know the questions in advance...), she continues in a generally confused vein throughout. Classically with Nadine, she counters the appalling story this week about the abuse of adults in the care system by revealing a personal anecdote about visiting an A&E department and having to face a nurse with piercings and tattoos, who didn't carry out tasks requested by a doctor within 15 minutes. Quite how this compares to violent assaults on patients that are now the subject of criminal investigation, Nadine doesn't make clear and nor does she explain exactly how many private hospitals operate an A&E department for comparative purposes. They don't, because trauma care is fiendishly challenging, ruinously expensive and impossible to schedule. Indeed, in most private hospitals, if the wheels really come off during your treatment, you will be bluelighted to the nearest NHS hospital to get the full range of emergency treatment that they can offer, not just the cherry-picked care that the private provider chooses to sell.

I'm still trying to work out why the Tory party allows her out on her own - although delighted at the quality of work she does in making the argument for Labour.

One of her finest moments is when she sallies forth on the issue about drug legalisation, quoting 'facts' she has gleaned from a cursory reading of the website of the National Drug Prevention Alliance - not one of the big players in the drugs field, it has to be said. They don't appear to commission much in the way of research, rather they try to act as a well-meaning resource page. Anyway, here's Nadine:
"...they startled me when they told me that the 'cut' of cannabis that teenagers are smoking now... is actually 50 times more potent than it was even a year ago, because of the different drugs that are coming in and being put into it and it only takes the teenager one 'spliff' or one 'joint' or whatever they refer to it now to smoke and they will never reach their full academic potential, because it is so dangerous..."
The problem with this is that it is utter cobblers, hysteria reminiscent of Reefer Madness.

With regard to one joint ruining lives, the NDPA's own website makes this comment, dating from 2002 (emphasis added)

On only one joint a month, mental ability may be compromised. Even this level of usage could possibly result in lasting impairment.50% of THC (the main psychoactive ingredient) is still present in the brain cells 5 or 6 days later, and 10% after a month. This badly disrupts the normal functioning of the brain. Few children using cannabis, even occasionally, will achieve their fill (sic) potential.

A rather different view from Nadine's simplistic mispresentation. As for her claims about the rocketing strength of cannabis, I'm not sure how NDPA would be aware of this, as they don't carry out the analysis or research themselves. The most recent major study was for the Home Office in 2008 and it revealed that the most common form of cannabis on British streets was domestically-produced sinsemillia, which had a median potency of 15% THC (the active component), compared with 13.98% median potentcy for a similar study in 2004. Although this is significantly higher than the imported resin (5%) and herbal cannabis (9%) which used to form the largest part of the market, this hardly marks a 50-fold increase in a year. Earlier studies suggested that rumours of a super-strength version dominating the market were incorrect - just 4% of samples had a potency over 20% and the highest sample tested hit 24% THC content.

Making objective comparisons with drugs used 30 or 40 years ago is impossible, as detailed records of strength simply weren't maintained then, so comparisons are based on anecdotal evidence at best. Even using THC content is flawed, as it ignores the effects of CBD, which is also present in cannabis and actually moderates the effect of THC. It is probably reasonable to extrapolate that as domestically-grown cannabis now dominates the UK market and that it has a higher THC content than resin or imported herbal cannabis, then it is likely that the strength has increased over the decades as imports have lost market share, but figures of 50 times are simply unsustainable claims, even over the decades, let alone over the past year.

I'm all in favour of an open discussion about how we deal with drugs, their effects and the associated criminality, but it needs to be had on the basis of sound data, not the utter drivel that spews from Nadine Dorries' mouth. Simple scare stories don't work with young adults, they just serve to make parents and other authority figures look out of touch with reality and that just destroys credibility. I'm not making an argument for or against legalisation - just for the application of fact to discussions.

Fortunately for Nadine, her credibility is already laughably low.

TPA don't get it

2011-06-01T17:00:00.000+01:00

The TPA celebrated 'Tax Freedom Day' - the point at which you start working for yourself, rather than ~~paying your contribution to an ordered society that supports its people~~ working for the government - by issuing a begging letter of its own to their email list.

Meanwhile, they also celebrated their invitation to the unveiling of a statue of Ronald Reagan - the man who apparently defeated communism, but also initiated the largest tax cut in history. What the blinkered fools at the TPA fail to mention is that over the course of the 80s and early 90s, Reagan and his successor, Bush Sr, worked very hard to increase the US national debt - quadrupling it, in fact. Given that the TPA have been vocally critical about the UK's national debt, it seems strange that they are lionising a US President with a very loose grasp of economics. Indeed, it is a strange fact that under every Republican President since Ford, the US debt has risen - even Bush Jr managed to almost double it. Democrats Carter and Clinton cut the national debt, although Obama has seen it rise so far.

In a time of sad statistics...

2011-06-01T15:00:00.000+01:00

This one affects me more than many.

In a previous life, I had to visit people in their homes and was always quietly saddened by the number of homes that had no books visible - tidy though they often were. They've always been a much-loved part of my and my family's life - I can't imagine being without them and despite my attachment to electronics, the very idea of a Kindle leaves me cold. Even our very youngest loves to hold a book, although his current understanding is limited to looking and pointing at the pictures. We don't have a room in our house without at least one book, so our children are lucky enough to have grown up in an environment where we are always wondering where we can fit the next set of shelves.

A child without a book is a deprived child.

(Hat tip to Tim Harford)

Ooof.

2011-05-24T13:52:00.001+01:00

"The honourable member for Birmingham Yardley - and I use 'honourable' in broadest possible sense."

John Cryer MP

(Hat tip to @politic_animal)

Short Memory, Deirdre?

2011-05-21T09:00:00.000+01:00

The Birmingham Mail has revealed that 740 acute beds are likely to be cut across hospitals in Birmingham. Cllr Deirdre Alden, chair of the City Council health scrutiny committee, has 'hit out,' saying that that "members of the public are going to be disengaged because a year ago, we were all promised no cuts to the NHS and that's clearly not the case." Not just a year ago, Deirdre, the Tories are still promising that NHS spending has been protected. Sadly, the reality on the ground is rather different.

Deirdre omits to remind us that last year, as a Conservative candidate, she was helping to spread the lie that the NHS was safe in Cameron's hands. Glad to see that the scales have fallen from her eyes. What took you so long, Deirdre?

In other news, it appears that the petition backed by the Tory candidate in Solihull to keep the local maternity unit has failed and it will change to a midwife-led unit, with difficult births transferred across the border into Birmingham's Heartlands Hospital.

Cameron claims to love the NHS - they say you always hurt the ones you love.

Flying the flag - Pickles tackles the big issues of the day

2011-05-16T13:44:00.000+01:00

As councils across the country slash their spending - closing libraries, scrapping youth services and cutting adult services - Commissar Pickles goes after the really big issues that are causing distress up and down the country. And Daz Wright is there to report on Eric's attack on petty regulations about flying flags.

Eric said

"If people want to celebrate something that is important to them by flying a flag they should be able to do so without having to fill in forms or paying town hall officials for the privilege. We will make it easier for people to celebrate their allegiance to a cause, a county or a local organisation if they choose to do so... Local and national flags unite people of every creed, class and colour. Community cohesion is strengthened - not undermined - by flying the flag."

Fine words from the Secretary of State.

But hang on a second, the DCLG press release points out that there is already no need to seek permission to fly flags of any country, county, the EU, the UN, the Commonwealth or any saint associated with a county. So, you have to wonder if, as Daz suggests, this is an attempt to support the pirate community in this country or whether this is just Pickles ranting for cheap publicity.

It must be the pirates.

Labour rampant in Birmingham

2011-05-10T08:00:00.001+01:00

Whatever else the press may say about Thursday, from the point of view of Labour in Birmingham, it was a damn fine day - and we've not had too many of those in local elections over the past decade. I think the general view prior to May 5th was that we would do quite well - the wind is with us and the Liberal Democrat national polls are awful, but it is hard to translate national opinion polls into local results, as there are so many factors that get in the way. Before the election, I forecast that nine seats would change hands and I think that this was reasonable - at the start of the year, I wondered if it could be as few as four or five, as the cuts have yet to bite deep. I don't think anyone thought that fourteen would be on the cards - still less that we could have taken another three or four with a little more luck on the day.

Comparisons between years are interesting - 2010 was unusual in that a parliamentary election coincided with a city council election and that resulted in a higher turnout, so perhaps forms an unreasonable comparison with a 'normal' election year. Perhaps a better baseline is 2007, which is the last year that these seats were contested in the election cycle.

In 2007, Labour accrued 32% of the city-wide vote, the Liberal Democrats managed 21.5% and the Tories 27.1%. The depth to which the Liberal Democrats have sunk are revealed when you realise that Thursday saw the Liberal Democrats' support drop to just 14.7% as Labour rocketed to a vote share of 48.5% - a massive net 11.7% swing (Butler swings of 10% are rare). The Tory vote held up and actually slightly improved - rising imperceptibly to 27.3%, rises in safe seats masking drops in others. Turnout was slightly up across the city, from 35% in 2007 to 37.6% this year, with the additional numbers largely going to Labour, boosted by 14,000 voters switching allegiance from the Liberal Democrats. That's the story in a nutshell - angry Labour voters turning out and disaffected Liberal Democrats switching allegiance. This may mark the beginning of the end of a carefully-constructed Liberal Democrat electoral base and the return of two party politics. Certainly, the vote share for Labour is huge - my figures go back a decade and I have nothing similar. 132,000 people voted Labour, as compared to 81,000 in 2007, with the Tories also gaining a few voters - 74500 over their 68700 of the previous campaign, but within their typical range around the 70,000 midpoint. The Liberal Democrats reduced significantly - down from 54600 to 40100, their lowest in a decade and a long way away from their 72,000 votes in 2004 in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion.

Overall, the Liberals were defending ten seats and lost seven, holding the others with severely reduced majorities - one went to recount and another could have been lost with a little more luck. The Tories fared better, defending 16 and losing six, although three were retained with ultra narrow majorities - Weoley with just 12, Edgbaston by 21 and Northfield by 54 and could easily have gone the other way.

Some of the swings are truly seismic. Acocks Green (my home ward) was previously considered a safe seat with a majority of 1620 when it was last contested by the incumbent Penny Wagg, which was utterly destroyed and converted to a 941 majority for Labour's Stewart Stacey this year. The seat has been a solid Liberal Democrat ward since the 1990s, apart from a brief period when a by-election coincided with a general election in 2001 and there was a solitary Labour councillor for a year. Feeling on the ground was positive and we felt confident of running them close, with a chance of a narrow win, but it became apparent during the day on the doorstep that something was afoot, although the scale of the win surprised us. The swing here was a whopping 21.1%. Just across the way in South Yardley, we took out veteran councillor David Osborne with a 14.8% swing.

Hall Green was one of the most intriguing wards, uniquely for Birmingham, a genuine Tory/Lib Dem contest. Aware that reports from the ground said that the Liberal Democrat vote had evaporated, I assumed that some of that would slide to Labour, but it would leaving the Tories in the box seats. The reality - spotted by some other seasoned observers late on in the campaign - was that there was a key opportunity for Labour to come through the middle of this division, which they duly did to take a seat that has not been Labour's since 1945, with a massive swing of 23% to Labour. Essentially, disaffected Liberal Democrats crossed the floor en masse.

Something similar happened in Moseley and Kings Heath, one seat that always felt would shift to us with the demographics and which came across with a 14.8% swing as those soft-left Liberal Democrats realised what the party had sold them and decided that they couldn't stomach it, evicting Emily Cox - John Hemming's mistress.

Hodge Hill was a racing certainty as a Labour gain and the Liberal Democrats understood this quite early on - they captured it in 2007 as the Labour vote was split by an independent campaigner and it came home to us this year with an 18.5% swing. Selly Oak saw the student vote exact their revenge upon the Liberal Democrats as they voted Labour to overwhelm a broadly static Liberal Democrat voter base. Perry Barr was rather similar - the Liberal Democrat vote remained static, but the Labour vote jumped massively. Sheldon was a little different, as it witnessed a 12% swing, not enough to unseat the deputy leader, but sufficient to halve his majority.

Another intriguing example of a possible demographic shift came in an unusual place - the Tory fortress of Sutton Coldfield, where doughty campaigner Rob Pocock has kept the red flag flying despite a tide of Tory blue around him. Against all the odds, he wiped 1000 votes from their massive majority, cutting it to a merely substantial 746. Amazingly, the 3000 votes he accrued would have secured him a council seat in most wards in the city, but were good enough only for second place in Sutton. I'm going out on a limb here and say that Labour will have a councillor in Sutton Vesey by the end of the next electoral cycle in 2016.

Across the city, Tory councillors were removed by a rise in the Labour vote and Liberal Democrat switchers. Billesley, Quinton, Brandwood, Harborne, Kings Norton all fell to this devastating combination - that also threatened Edgbaston and Bournville. Longbridge went Labour because of improved turnout of Labour voters, who have perhaps realised the importance of voting in local elections. This is indicative of an increasingly effective Labour operation across a number of wards and constituencies and the progress in Edgbaston builds on last year's tremendous campaign to return Gisela Stuart as MP. Taking Quinton and Harborne, with Edgbaston on a knife edge is a magnificent result.

The Tories held onto Erdington with an improved vote share as vote swung away from the Liberal Democrats in both directions, but in neighbouring Kingstanding, the young Gary Sambrook continues to make the Labour incumbents nervous and achieved a remarkable 19 point improval in vote share over 2007 and a 9% swing to the Tories, despite a contest marred by questionable leaflets on both sides - not least the rather crass leaflets from Labour having a go at Gary's generous proportions and his predilection for the council tea.

As for the minor parties, the BNP failed to run candidates in the vast majority of Birmingham wards, a far cry from their peak years in the middle of the last decade, only pulling a quarter of the vote that they attracted four years ago and a mere 1.8% city-wide vote share. The Green party mustered a reasonable slate, but can only realistically hope to be the environmental conscience to trouble the main parties in this city. Their performance was comparable with previous numbers, as they mustered some 12,000 votes for a 4.5% vote share.

These are historic times - the Liberal Democrats appear to be a failing force in Birmingham politics and - even with my analytical, apolitical head switched on - I can't see a way back for them over the course of this parliament, which will encompass a complete electoral cycle, with elections to come in 2012 and 2014 before the 2015 combined local and general election. They are too tightly enmeshed with the Tories and continue to harp on that they are merely working in the national interest, bravely sacrificing their councillor base for the good of the nation. Whether that is sustained when they take a similar beating next year and the party continues to reel from the loss of the Short money (paid to opposition parliamentary groups) and the increasing loss of the tithes paid to the party by councillors remains to be seen. Just as importantly, they are losing a generation of councillors unlikely to make a comeback and are also haemorrhaging activist supporters, the lifeblood of any party. Abandoning the coalition isn't an option for them at the moment - a general election would see them wiped out as a political force for a generation or more - and defenestrating Nick Clegg seems pointless at the moment.

In the early hours of Friday, I was with a small group of councillors in the Labour Group office in the Council House in Birmingham. We were cheerfully - far too cheerfully for 5am - applying coloured stickers to a wall map showing the 40 Birmingham electoral wards to indicate the political colour of the councillors. We ran out of red, but had plenty of yellows left unused.

Challenge of Leadership

2011-05-09T14:45:00.000+01:00

After last Thursday's stunning Labour success at the polls, I'm told that there may be a few clouds gathering, in the shape of freshly-minted councillors Tony Kennedy (Sparkbrook) and John Clancy (Quinton), who are rumoured to be challenging Albert Bore and Ian Ward for leadership of the Labour group.

That didn't take long.

Lib Dem catching the bullets for the Tories

2011-05-09T14:40:00.000+01:00

With the sure-footedness of a greased fish on an ice rink, Clegg leaps to the defence of the NHS and puts his party squarely between the Conservatives and the combined ranks of the health professionals and the general public - who are waking up to the meaning of the Tory plans for the destruction of the NHS.

Even as he points out the problems inherent in the Tory plans - following on from a Liberal Democrat conference resolution - the Tories are coming out in defence. John Redwood was smoothly sliding a stiletto between the DPM's shoulder blades this morning on the Today programme, silkily pointing out that when the programme was first put forward, Clegg, Burstow, Cable and Alexander all signed off on it, so it is a bit rich for them to complain now. He is, of course, spot on. Either the Liberal Democrats were asleep when they agreed to it - always a possibility - or they are now trying to curry favour with a public that has fallen spectacularly out of love with Nick and his gang.

The effect is that the Tories have shifted the focus onto the Liberal Democrats rather than the detail of the proposals, leaving the Liberal Democrats yet again providing human shields for the coalition leaders. Genius.

A few predictions

2011-05-03T08:00:00.001+01:00

I've stayed clear of predicting specifics in local elections, but I thought I'd break tradition this time round. As it currently stands, Birmingham council is made up of 45 Tories, 41 Labour, 31 Liberal Democrats and 3 Respect councillors. It is elected by thirds and we are in the second year of the cycle, with councillors elected in 2007 retiring, giving us 40 wards to play with. Some of them are rock solid safe - Labour isn't hoping for a surprise victory in any of the Tory Sutton Coldfield wards, much as it may disappoint the doughty fighters in that CLP, but I suspect that we are likely to make solid gains this year. It is mathematically possible for Labour to take the seats required to regain control of the City Council this year, but rather unlikely, unless the Regressive Partnership electoral base melts down.

The national polls for the coalition partners aren't brilliant - although YouGov shows a slight revival in Liberal Democrat fortunes, with a high of 12% and the Tories holding firm on a creditable 36% against a solid Labour lead of 41% - but this isn't necessarily relevant to a local election, although voters usually use these elections to give a kicking to the parties in national government. It is very hard to match that across to local performance - Labour voters have typically been more reluctant to come out in local elections, while the Liberal Democrats have been highly efficient in mobilising their supporters to get out the vote.

So, what do I predict for May 5th?

I think we'll see 9 seats change hands to Labour - Hodge Hill, Springfield and Moseley from the Lib Dems (outside chances are Perry Barr and my own home ward of Acocks Green, in both of which I expect Labour to run them very close). Then we can perm some from a selection of Brandwood, Kings Norton, Quinton, Longbridge, Billesley, Weoley, Bournville and Northfield. I'm also expecting Hall Green to fall to the Tories from the Liberal Democrats. That should leave us with 3 Respect, 27 Liberal Democrats, 40 Tories and 50 Labour members.

Then we come back to retake the city in 2012 - albeit with a temporary Tory mayor.

Shameless Birmingham Lib Dems accuse Labour of scaremongering

2011-05-02T08:00:00.007+01:00

"We need to look at Manchester, where Labour are cutting and closing down services, in Birmingham, we're keeping them open."

John Hemming, Liberal Democrat MP for Birmingham Yardley

BBC Politics Show West Midlands, 1 May 2011.

"These cuts will have an undoubted impact on all frontline council services including care services to the vulnerable.... Rather than assist the country’s recovery by making savings to the public in a way that can protect local economies and the front line, the cuts are structured in such a way they will do the opposite."

Cllr Paul Tilsley, Liberal Democrat, Sheldon (part of Birmingham Yardley)

Letter to the Times, February 2011

I have been passed a letter that is currently being hand-delivered to voters in Acocks Green in Birmingham from our Liberal Democrat council candidate and it has been signed off by another senior Liberal Democrat councillor - it may well be doing the rounds of Yardley, possibly even Paul Tilsley's Sheldon.

The letter makes the interesting claim that
"[Labour] deliberately exaggerate or invent statistics to frighten voters. So do not be fooled.... Labour are guilty of misleading you with false figures and blatant untruths about every attempt to reduce costs."
The sheer gall of any Liberal Democrat accusing any other party of misleading people astounds me. The local Liberal Democrat MP signed a pre-election promise to vote against any increase in university tuition fees, a promise that he unashamedly broke within months. The party campaigned against any hike in VAT or sudden package of cuts, but has acquiesced in them in government - selling out their voters for a few ministerial cars and seats on the government benches. Oddly, nowhere do they detail these false figures or untruths. I read on.
"All over the country, it is Labour councils that are closing facilities instead of tackling red tape and inefficiencies. Liberal Democrat councils are cutting costs and retaining services.

Here in Birmingham NO libraries, leisure centres, schools, swimming pools or public toilets are closing."
This councillor has swallowed the Eric Pickles-approved Kool Aid in industrial quantities. The whole point about the cuts to local authority funding this year is that they are not gradual, but sweeping cuts frontloaded into the first two years of the government and cuts that indisputably hurt deprived areas most. It is simply impossible for a council to make cuts of the level expected by tackling 'inefficiencies' - Birmingham has been working on 'efficiencies' for a number of years (if we ignore the appalling sums paid to consultants), but is still having to make thumping cuts (£300 million). Indeed, as Cllr Paul Tilsley agreed back in February
The local government settlement will take a major hit in this coming financial year and further, smaller, cuts in subsequent years. This front-loading means councils do not have the lead-in time necessary to re-engineer services on a lower-cost base and ease staff cuts without forced, expensive redundancies.
Curiously, this exposition of the facts fails to mention the cuts detailed in their own budget - the massive and damaging cuts (£118 million) to adult services, which will see 4000 adults with 'substantial needs' lose all services, as only those with critical need can hope to retain support from the local council. Acocks Green has a substantial elderly population, so can expect to be disproportionately affected by these cuts - choices made by the local Liberal Democrats. The minor fact that these choices were made without consultation and were subject to a judicial review, where the decision was declared unlawful is also missing from this letter. Here are some other inconvenient facts.
The four people, who cannot be named for legal reasons, include an elderly woman with severe learning difficulties who receives 24-hour care in a home paid for by the council, and a 25-year-old man with a rare genetic disorder and severe learning disabilities who receives overnight respite care, also council-provided. Both would have been left without funded care.... The Council's actions would impact thousands of vulnerable people, and were described by disabled rights groups as "heartless" and "irresponsible", as well as illegal...
Libraries aren't closing - but they are having their opening hours reduced and staffing will be limited. Leisure Services is taking a 17% budget cut this year, heavy cuts are being made to Childrens' Services - a department already failing is facing a restructuring designed to save money. Youth services across the city are essentially being scrapped and replaced with a website (I kid you not). 7000 jobs are set to go, with huge knock-on effects across the Birmingham economy. But still, these Liberal Democrats bury their heads in the sand, ignoring the cuts that they voted for and try to deceive voters that nothing is happening, as Andy Howell wrote about weeks ago. We've already seen crime rise in the West Midlands police area and they have forcibly retired dozens of highly experienced officers to meet demands from the coalition government for cuts that affect our force deeper than most.

Back to the letter to undecided voters.
"The truth is, Birmingham are investing in extra classrooms, a new central library, two new swimming pools, building 700 homes for rent and freezing council tax this year.

Nationally we have taken 1.1 million low paid out of tax, investing £23 million extra this year in Birmingham schools, increased pensions and relinked them to inflation."
By the way, those low paid will see their tax savings eaten up by inflation and the rise in VAT. The extra classrooms were originally funded under Labour because of a forthcoming bulge in the school-age group. The central library and the pools are funded by borrowing (anyone know if the funding black hole has been filled yet?) and the council tax freeze is funded by central government.
"These are the facts you will never read on a Labour leaflet or in the Birmingham Mail (owned by the Mirror group of newspapers."
It is perhaps a mark of the desperation that is affecting the Liberal Democrats that they use an election leaflet to sling mud at the local press, unaware that the Birmingham Post and Mail tend to attack whoever is in power (Labour got the short end of the stick in the early part of the last decade and I'm sure they will get it again once they regain power over the next few years). To suggest that they are biased in favour of Labour is laughable.

Having opened with a warning about Labour misleading with false figures and blatant untruths, the letter concludes with a blatant untruth of its own.
'Fact A Labour Council will increase your Council Tax by Twice the rate of Inflation'
I'm pretty sure that this is not part of Labour's plan for Birmingham this year. I'd like to see the evidence to suggest that it is. Or is this just deliberate exaggeration to frighten voters? How does this compare with the views espoused by Cllr Tilsley back in February? Which Liberal Democrat is actually telling the truth or are they just desperately trying to claw back votes? Answers on a postcard to the usual address, please.

If you want a fact pulled out of thin air - how about that Liberal Democrat metropolitan councils will cost you 13% more than a no-overall control one like Birmingham and 11.9% more than a Labour council? Check out the figures from the House of Commons Library, referenced by Birmingham University's Chris Game, a fact conveniently ignored by this letter (which is relying on historical statistics irrelevant to the current situation and without reference to the funding regime at the time).

Acocks Green is a tough one for Labour to win this year - we've a huge majority to overturn, but I really hope that the voters aren't fooled by this last ditch pile of rubbish and see it for what it is. Believe me, this is one that the Liberal Democrats deserve to lose.

Hemming's Law

2011-04-27T21:00:00.001+01:00

Increasingly, it is looking as though John Hemming may be the last person you want helping you with your legal problems.

When he spoke out in parliament, only to be slapped down by the Speaker over a point of order, my first thought that he was doing the right thing in response to what appeared to be a manifest injustice and oppressive use of the law by a local authority against a pregnant woman. I have agreed with him publicly on a a number of these issues and my instincts placed me in support again, but I should really know better by now and should dig a little before I leap to judgement. To save me the trouble of doing the research, the ever-reliable Unity at the Ministry of Truth has been scything through the undergrowth to get to some facts about the case. A degree of caution is advised on this subject as, while reporting parliamentary proceedings is protected, comment around them is not. As in a previous posting of mine about John's adventures within the family law system, there will be few jokes and I'll avoid cheap politics - this is too serious for that.

This wasn't about breaching a superinjunction obtained by a wealthy man - for they are usually men - to silence an inconvenient woman's approaches to the press, but a very difficult case from the family courts. This is no great surprise, as cases that reach this level within the judicial system are typically the most difficult and this one is no exception.
From this alone, it should be clear that this is a problematic case, not one best suited to brief exposure by a publicity-hungry MP or to indelicate scrutiny by the media.

Carl Gardner - Head of Legal - adds fuel, by pointing out that Hemming's actions raise questions about his use of parliamentary privilege in discussing a case that is arguably still sub judice, matters that are by agreement not raised in the house for fear of prejudicing active cases. It seems that this case is very much still active - long drawn out, to be sure, but certainly active, from what few facts are known. Further, the local authority seem to believe that it is and are not being drawn to comment. Sometimes, things are kept secret to conceal wrongdoing, but sometimes, secrets are there to protect others. Surely, professionals may be incompetent or, sometimes, corrupt, but much of the time, they are just trying to do their best by their clients or their patients.

Carl also refers to an earlier case, where Hemming seized upon another difficult case in his defence of the right of constituents to talk to their MPs without hindrance, in particular with regard to a case where a person had given an undertaking (not under an injunction, but a voluntary matter) not to talk to the media or to his MP. The Head of Legal suggests that the earlier case, detailed here, may have fatally damaged John's status within the court system to the point where his involvement with a case may be a seriously negative influence.

all sides in the case felt Andrew France’s disclosures to John Hemming MP were not in the interests of his child.

Carl reminds us, rightly, that

There may be injustices and unfairness in some or even all of the cases John Hemming raises; we don’t know. Injustices do happen in court cases. But John Hemming’s saying so doesn’t mean we should automatically think so too.....

Hemming seems to discount the possibility that the professionals involved may actually be genuinely trying to do what we pay them to do – protect young people like this. What he did in the debate was to “scatter allegations of professional impropriety and malpractice” to use Wall LJ’s words – in this case, suggesting there may be a council cover-up of sexual assault allegations. Given what seems to have been his conduct in RP, might it be reasonable for some other party to this other case to want John Hemming to butt out, and to want the family to stop talking to him? Might it be reasonable in Andrew France’s case, too?

Reading back over last week’s debate, it’s clear that John Hemming repeatedly complains about social workers – a classic easy target – and other professionals who have important responsibilities to children and their often vulnerable clients. None of these people will find it easy to answer these sometimes very serious allegations, bound as they are by obligations of confidentiality. John Hemming, on the other hand is free to make whatever allegations he wants, safely sheltered by Parliamentary privilege.
It’s important to add that, in addition to these family law and Court of Protection cases (some of which may well involve injustice; I’m not saying that can be excluded) he mentioned in the debate a civil case about toxins in which apparently what he calls a “hyper-injunction” has been ordered, barring someone from disclosing anything about the proceedings to an MP. There may well be something very wrong here. I don’t know. It sounds extraordinary, and on the face of it raises serious questions that need to be answered. But all we know at the moment is what John Hemming has told us.

And that is starting to look like unreliable evidence.

These cases involve people in appallingly emotionally painful situations, typically at the very lowest and most difficult points in their lives, it involves the future of children and people who deserve the protection of society, not to be held up to close public scrutiny for the entertainment of the masses. Yes, there are serious issues being raised in these cases and there may - or there may not - be wrongdoing, injustice or malpractice involved, but it looks increasingly as though John isn't the best route by which these people can get justice and may actually prove to be an obstacle, so damaged is his credibility. I will stress again - this is not a political attack on John occasioned by my Labour Party membership. I think that he is wrong headed in what he is doing and may not be helping. I still don't believe that he has grasped the meaning of s1(1) of the Children's Act 1989, which says

the child’s welfare shall be the court’s paramount consideration

It isn't about the parents, the courts, the local authority or the psychiatrists. Still less is it about an MP or a handful of bloggers. These are issues of child protection and deserve the most serious of consideration, not cheap politics and showboating by anyone. Lives and emotional sanity are at stake here and that's too big a gamble - these cases all have at their heart a human tragedy and we should look to help, not take advantage.

What can reliably ascertained is that this is a particularly complicated, unpleasant and acrimonious case which arose, initially, out of the breakdown of a relationship which gave rise, to begin with, to a dispute over a father’s access rights to a single child. What elevates the case far outside the norm is that the mother who, to begin with had custody of the child, sought to deny the father access to the child by way of levelling a series of damaging allegations against the father, the most serious of which accused the father of sexually molesting the child. Following a series of investigations and hearings in the family court over a period of five to six years or so, the current state of play in this case appears to be that the child is now in the custody of the father but still subject to a care order or care plan put together by the local Social Services department (this is not entirely clear due to certain issues with the source material I’m working from here that will become clear in a moment), while the mother has no access to the child at all, having been served with a non-molestation order by, seemingly, the Local Authority. Precisely why this should be the case is, perhaps, best illustrated by the finding of fact handed down following a hearing early in 2010:

1. [The child] has not been sexually abused by the father, or at all.
2. The allegations of sexual abuse were made first by the mother, not by [the child], they were false and the mother knew them to be false.
3. As a result of inappropriate pressure and prompting, [the child] came to make and believe the allegations.
4. Once [the child] adopted the allegations, the mother may have deluded herself that they were true.
5. [The child] suffered actual and significant emotional harm

First fruits of the LEP - the Birmingham Enterprise Zone

2011-04-22T08:00:00.001+01:00

The map of the new Birmingham Enterprise zone hit the Birmingham Post today - it was hardly clear along the northern edge because of the clever 3D mapping (sometimes, 2D is just easier to grasp folks), but we are getting a peculiar loop zone, which forms a ring around the city, with the largest chunk of real estate in the Digbeth industrial sector. It takes in New Street Station - a £275,000 sweetener for John Lewis to site a new store there; runs round to Alpha Tower and the Hyatt, then along the outer edge of the Queensway to Snow Hill, with another small industrial quarter just to the east of that, bounded by the canal, then round through the Aston Science Park, Millennium Point - including the proposed HS2 Curzon Street Station, before running back round to Digbeth, encompassing the Beorma island site by the BullRing, a site that the City Council looks likely to compulsorily purchase to assist the developer.

The zone takes in a range of likely business sectors - professional services, retail, transport and light industrial - so that has to be a positive mix, but the overall plan appears rather peculiar. The Department of Communities laid down some guidelines on Enterprise Zones - indicating that
The Government therefore envisages that Enterprise Zones will generally be based on ‘clean’ sites with little or no business occupants. Targeting such sites will reduce the risks of simply favouring incumbent businesses with little added value to the economy of the area.
This certainly does not describe the area laid down - this is a very mixed area including established businesses of a range of different types and can in no way be described as clean. The guidance also clarifies
Evidence suggests that single ownership of land could have had a significant effect on the success of earlier Enterprise Zones.
I can't believe that this ring of land falls under a single common owner - there must be dozens, if not hundreds, who must be persuaded to work together for the common good. The evidence also suggests that Enterprise Zones greatest success lies in relocating jobs rather than attracting new ones and this looks to be Birmingham's greatest hope. If you are an employer occupying premises just outside the zone, the offer of up to £55,000 a year for five years in rebates is a very attractive one, especially if you only have to move your business 50 yards.

You have to wonder why somewhere like Pebble Mill or Longbridge wasn't considered - where you have contiguous parcels of land ripe for redevelopment, often under common ownership. Surely, this was an opportunity to use the land bank in the hands of the former RDA, Advantage West Midlands - and the DCLG suggests exactly that.
Local enterprise partnerships may also wish to consider the potential to use public sector land assets to support Enterprise Zones. This might include former Regional Development Agency or other central Government assets for example...
The barrier to that is the insistence that the RDAs sell their land at commercial rates, not simply transfer them across to their 'successors' in the LEPs, to allow continuation of development plans - something proposed by the RDAs in their asset plans, but denied by DBIS on Treasury instructions. Further, to avoid flooding the market, the land will be sold off in tranches, so we face the prospect of sites remaining derelict or undeveloped for some years to come, waiting for a serious uptick in property values. Ironically, Vince Cable seemed largely unaware of this when questioned in parliament, suggesting that he is not just semi-detached from government, but barely in touch with his own department.
Mr Cable seemed unaware of this position, and told MPs that some assets could still be transferred. “The process is being carefully worked through at departmental level, and it will produce a sensible outcome that remains supportive of local initiatives through the LEPs,” he said. This is not what the department’s statement said - or what the RDAs are now saying too.

You have to wonder if the department is really being run as an arms-length body from the Treasury, rather than by St Vince. AWM recommended retention of the Longbridge development site in public ownership and this would have been a classic Enterprise Zone opportunity - brownfield ripe for redevelopment as a hi-tech business park, with good road links and potential for improved rail links.

There is an exception to this 'fire sale' ruling and that is the London Development Agency, which is gifting all the assets - and liabilities - to the Mayor. It is a key question, particularly since we have a Liberal Democrat/Tory council, which should have good connections to both sides of the coalition government, why they proved singularly unable to negotiate suitable terms for Birmingham to acquire some of the RDA sites. Sion Simon makes a sound point that this is unfair and short-sighted and indicative of the weakness of the civic leadership of our city.

I wish the Enterprise Zone success, but I fear that there are too many obstacles in that path and some have been created by the LEP themselves. It remains to be seen whether the zone will really generate new business or just shift employment from elsewhere in the region. It will also be interesting to see whether the zone meets the requirements to allow it to leverage in support from the European Regional Development Fund, which the government intends to align with the Regional Growth Fund. I have a suspicion that this zone may not be the promised land which others seem to foresee.

Democrat love rat rats on rats

2011-04-19T16:06:00.000+01:00

Actually, for one of those rare occasions, I'm going to say something nice about John Hemming - through fearsomely gritted teeth. He's promised/threatened to use parliamentary privilege to name celebrities who have obtained super-injunctions to protect their love lives from exposure. John, of course, has tremendous form for publicising his own marital wanderings - even nominating himself as love rat of the year - and will doubtless be making some friends among the tabloids for promising more grist to their celebrity grinding mill. Now, I don't really care about celebrity love lives - nor do I care much about John's, entertaining though it undoubtedly is to observers of his complicated personal relationships - but I do care about the courts being used to grant the super-rich a level of personal secrecy that is unavailable to others.

Of course, it would be nice to see John using valuable parliamentary time to deal with other evident injustices - his government's effective silencing of litigants through withdrawal of legal aid is one example and I hope he can be relied upon to support root and branch libel reform, but these protective injunctions are unfair and inherently unjust. We saw how Trafigura attempted to protect their name by indefinitely silencing opponents through use of a similar injunction, only broken by a similar use of parliamentary privilege and it would be a bad day for democracy and freedom when we surrender entirely to the rich and the corporations. We would regret it if an attack on public prurience restricted the public interest.

Toxic substance sighted in Birmingham suburb

2011-04-16T14:36:00.001+01:00

My man on the Coventry Road reports that Nick Clegg paid a flying visit to the office of Liberal Democrat MP for Birmingham Yardley (lease expiring in 2015) this lunchtime. He was greeted by a crowd of 18-20 Lib Dem activists and employees and disappeared inside to meet the local candidates.

Given that this man is the party leader and deputy Prime Minister and we are a fortnight away from local elections, this is stunningly low key. Security cannot be an issue - I've been to events with Labour's former DPM, John Prescott organised at short notice and I can't imagine him only drawing a crowd of a couple of dozen. There are 40 Lib Dem candidates in Birmingham alone and others locally who should be clamouring for a quick photo with their party leader.

Unfortunately, he is just too toxic to the battered brand, hence his disappearance from leaflets across the country and even from those in his own constituency. Given that last year, everyone was agreeing with Nick, the fall from grace has been dramatic.

Now, he has to rely on the charity support of an MP desperate to curry favour in pursuit of a junior government position. The other, more terrifying option is that Hemming actually likes being in bed with the Tories. It has suited the local Lib Dems to prop up a Tory administration since 2004 and they have cheerfully voted with their Tory masters at every monthly council meeting since then. We now get glossy leaflets from the local councillors claiming that this is a Liberal Democrat council - a fact at odds with the reality of their third place in the council chamber. Still, if a Lib Dem council wants to take credit for scrapping the social care to 4000 adults across the City or for cutting the opening hours and staff of our libraries or effectively abolishing council youth service provision across the City, then that's fine. They must be very proud.

Punchbag, Doormat or Calamity?

2011-04-09T08:00:00.004+01:00

Nick Clegg has been all over the place this week. Newsnight broadcast a difficult interview conducted by Gavin Esler, focussing on the social mobility agenda, an agenda for which Clegg has seemed rather ill-suited, given his background. Granted, this is less privileged than Osborne or Cameron, but he is still the product of money, of a private education and a leg up the ladder from a family friend. To be fair, he can't be blamed for his parents' actions - who wouldn't want to help their child? That said, the narrative doesn't hang very well around him. The interview wasn't his finest hour - although nowhere near as battering as the assault on Danny Alexander the following morning on the Today programme, when Evan Davis left Alexander a spluttering heap on the studio floor. One of the most commented upon elements was the curiously shiny, sweaty appearance of the Deputy Prime Minister and it was hard to work out whether this was a product of stress, poor lighting or dodgy make-up.

As is becoming a regular element of the Clegg narrative, we were treated to another insight into his private life through an interview with Jemima Khan in the New Statesman -
he worries constantly that "what I am doing in my work impacts on them emotionally, because my nine-year-old is starting to sense things and I'm having to explain things. Like he asks, 'Why are the students angry with you, Papa?'
I note that he apparently
tries to pick his children up from school... at least two or three times a week

Khan also picks up on Clegg's new, Nixonian image
"Pale-faced, pale-eyed and so tired he appears taxidermied, he looks like he could do with a holiday, except he's just had one... Clegg arrives two hours late.... and looks corpse-like with exhaustion... He suddenly looks very, very sad. A week later I glimpse him on television, on the front bench on Budget Day. Cameron sits to his left, looking ruddy and shiny, straight off the playing fields, ready for an interminable life of "Yeah, yeah, yeah" in the Commons. Clegg, by contrast, looks like he's in black and white – lost and out of place.

This defence by public emotional release is fast becoming a regular event in the Clegg narrative - last October, he was interviewed in Esquire magazine and revealed
...people are very angry. You don’t have to tell me. I’m getting dog excrement through my letterbox. People are spitting at me.

Although the Daily Mail didn't find anyone to corroborate this.

The truth is that the Liberal Democrats are finding this new focus upon them very difficult. Previously, of course, they were able to rely on pure oppositionalism and hoovering up votes from whichever bandwagon happened to pass by. Being in government makes life rather more difficult. Every decision carries with it the risk of offending somebody, which is not the natural stance of the LDs - they thrive on being fluffy and harmless. Power isn't harmless and comes at a price. You can see in interviews that Clegg and Alexander, in particular, become very short tempered when challenged - they simply aren't used to having to defend unpopular political positions.

Just like his focus on internships misses the point of social mobility, this repeated referral to how tough his life has become is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. It doesn't work as self-flagellation - in the way that Blair's post-Iraq media tour was about him taking public humiliation and punishment - and nor does it work to raise sympathy, when other people are worrying more about whether they can pay their mortgages, not what they might do when they leave politics.which is something of a luxury - most people in normal 9-5 jobs never get that luxury and you wonder how the deputy prime minister could possibly find the time with what should be a full workload. Unless he has so little of substance to actually do that he can spare the time to collect the kids from school, but I digress.

Lines' head in the sand endangers lives

2011-04-05T07:00:00.006+01:00

Last week, Cllr John 'Slugger' Lines was in volcanic mood, fulminating at Labour politicians and misdirecting his anger. Firstly, he was kicking off and blaming Gisela Stuart for interfering with an independent report from the Audit Commission, which looks set to reduce his housing department down to a single star and fair status - just one step above a Billy No Stars failure.

Then, he decided that the best thing to do, faced with an evident failure in his department to handle emergency housing requests for people threatened by domestic violence, was to attack Cllr Ian Ward (Lab) for politicising the issue. This even ties in with the concentration of homeless support services into just four offices across the city - Northfield, Erdington, Small Heath and Newtown - making it difficult for homeless people (who, by their nature, are least likely to have the cash necessary to trek across the city to suit the convenience of the local authority) to get the support they need. The neighbourhood office system is to be left to wither on the vine and will probably shortly be withdrawn for lack of interest - I understand that at least one office is to be reduced to offering services just three days a week. Most of them are already appointment only - leading to the sight of more than one customer standing outside the security door calling the contact centre to book into a fortunately spare appointment slot just five minutes away.

But what we have now is a genuine risk to life and limb. Sorting out a genuine case demanding urgent action as a result of domestic violence should not be a challenge to an authority like Birmingham, but I'm aware of one incident where it took a caseworker a whole day chasing round Birmingham in a vain attempt to get help, only to resort to another housing agency which was able to do the job that the city council signally failed to perform. The cases cited by Cllr Ward are not the exception. That is an appalling indictment of the state of the housing department under Councillor Lines.

Perhaps if they had not been spending up to £500 a day for six years to employ one consultant in the housing directorate, who was taking away over £118,000 a year based upon his day rate, they could deal with this rather better. I have often stated my view on consultants - they are ideal when you need to bring in people to fill a short-term skills gap, but longer term needs should be met by recruitment or upskilling. Six years for one consultant is simply unacceptably wasteful - that's someone who has become essentially an employee on a very generous salary and this happened only on John Lines' watch.

Perhaps he should spend some more time fixing the problems rather than inventing conspiracies to try to shift the blame away from his department. Perhaps he should not be calling for opposition councillors to resign for raising legitimate issues which should be concern to everyone in the City. Perhaps he should be considering his own position as leader of a department that is clearly starting to fail, after several years of improvements fuelled by generous settlements from a Labour government.

The buck stops with you, Cllr Lines.

Stay classy, Birmingham

2011-04-01T07:00:00.004+01:00

Apparently, Bob Warman is mulling a bid for the Birmingham mayoralty, if it comes to pass following a referendum. He's been approached by an unnamed group of local businessmen who would like him to run. Whether that means that they don't expect to get the level of pliability or support they expect from the mainstream candidates. Apparently,

They want to see Birmingham move ahead, they don’t want to see it bogged down in politics

and Warman will present himself as a non-political independent figure.

Why this is a qualification, I'm not sure. The moment you step into the political arena - and make no mistake, running for the leadership of the largest authority in Europe is an intensely political post, potentially bringing a national profile to the office holder - pretending that you won't be political is at best naive and at worst, downright disingenous. If you are a serious candidate for the office, you need to grasp now that winning will take politics, not a quiet backroom deal with a handful of Birmingham business people with their own agenda, an agenda as yet unscrutinised by anyone.

Typical, you wait for local TV to focus on local politics and it takes a career opportunity for them to notice it.

West Midlands Police forcibly retire a millennium of experience.

2011-03-30T07:00:00.003+01:00

Sworn servants of the Crown cannot be made redundant, but under a little-used regulation A19, they can be forced to retire once they have completed 30 years' service. Over the course of this year, almost a thousand years of experience and policing knowledge will be removed from the West Midlands Police Service. Yesterday five of these officers, due to leave within a few days, spoke to the BBC.

DC Tony Fisher said,

"I use the analogy, West Midlands Police are being a bit like the Villa, going down and very quickly... You can even see now the front-line policing is affected, burglary detection rates, robbery detection rates are down, robberies and burglaries are going up and to be honest it's been quite soul destroying to see these changes."

Oh and Warwickshire have confirmed that 150 of their officers (about 8%) will be pulled from frontline roles to fill admin posts vacated by civilian staff made redundant to cut costs.

No wonder that decent coppers like Response Plod, an anonymous officer in the Met (who will doubtless be exposed and silenced by the national press in the public interest) feel moved to comment about his day policing Saturday's march
I met people who are in the same boat as us. Facing an uncertain future, facing massive cuts and exploitation by a government that not only are threatening our very existences, have lied to us all. I met a family with their young Son on the way there who had travelled a hundred or so miles to show their support for everyone of us facing cuts be them doctors, nurses, teachers, fire brigade even Union of boilermakers... I spoke with them for some time and they thanked us for helping them demonstrate safely and that they know we face an uncertain future but cannot demonstrate with us. To those I did manage to speak to I thanked. I thanked them for demonstrating a worthy and just cause and to prove that us decent hard working people will not just go gently into that good night. I thanked them because I could not join them. They were our voice today too and they did us proud
Kudos to the officers who have spoken out, still serving the public and the police service even as their careers come to a premature end. That's 20,000 years of policing gone. What was that about not hitting the frontline? A strong contender for the 2011 award for Keeping a Straight Face While Saying Unbelievable Things (won in 2010 by Nick Clegg for the Lib Dem manifesto launch) is the unnamed WMP press officer who wrote

the loss of 649 officers and their combined experience over the next four years does not mean service and protection to communities will suffer.

Shot at by both sides

2011-03-29T07:00:00.019+01:00

George Osborne has managed to inspire almost nobody with the budget, perhaps because pretty much everything was trailed so far in advance that there were no headline surprises. The morning after, the Sun ran with the 1 penny cut in the duty on fuel and the Daily Express was similarly upbeat, but other papers were far more negative. Even the Daily Mail headlined the duty cut with a 'Shocks Under the Bonnet' qualifier and the Telegraph promised potholes ahead - in tribute to the £100 million fund set aside to fill some of the post-winter holes in the road.

There was a small bounce in the YouGov tracker poll carried out between budget day and the following evening, with the government closing the gap with Labour to just four points, their best figures in months (although Anthony Wells does point out that the budget bounce is a mythical beast in recent years, demonstrating that where it exists at all, it affects government polling for a very short period).

Even the editor of the Tory-friendly Spectator magazine, Fraser Nelson, runs through the reports and picks out some of the problems ahead - noticing that the much-vaunted OBR rejects Osborne's claims about growth, debt interest (some of which is RPI inflation-linked), wages falling in real terms, high earner tax receipts not matching expectations and additional costs for welfare reform and military expenditure. And this from a right-winger. If he carries on like this, I'll send him a membership pack.

The proof of any budget is how well it survives the analysis, not how the initial spin works (or doesn't) and this budget appears to be under attack from both sides. The right don't see sufficient radical post-Thatcherism and the left are still creating merry hell about the cuts, although Anthony Wells shows that sticking to the Conservative script on cuts is getting a consistent message across to the public. Part of the problem with the budget from the point of view of the ordinary voter focussed on the pound in their pocket is that a 1p per litre cut in fuel duty is largely irrelevant. For all the Chancellor's trumpeting that it would be in place from 6pm on Budget Day, the reality is that the duty is paid when the fuel is delivered into those huge storage tanks underneath the garage, not when you actually fill your car. This means that garages have already paid the higher price until that fuel is replaced and the margin on vehicle fuel is actually quite slim, so only the big supermarket operators could afford to show the price cut swiftly - and even there, there are reports that prices went up on or just before Budget Day and then dropped back again as the price change kicked in. To be fair, I should point out that the garage operators don't seem to make similar arguments when duty goes up - the price goes up immediately, even though no more duty is paid on fuel already delivered (which is why garages like to go into Budget Day with tanks topped off). Meanwhile, the oil companies are screaming that they don't want to have to pay the windfall tax imposed by the Chancellor and it will cost tens of thousands of British jobs. The Liberal Democrat MP Malcolm Bruce has apparently taken up cudgels on behalf of the employers, along with other Scottish MPs, fearful that jobs will not be created in their constituencies.

Mr Bruce was also angered that the Chancellor appeared not to have consulted with oil experts before announcing his plans that will see oil companies being taxed between 62 per cent and 81 per cent of their profits. "I believe this completely undermines the objective of saying this is a budget for growth," he said. "We were expecting substantial new investment in the North Sea and much of this could now come under review"

Ah yes, growth. This is apparently a budget for growth. Growth matters more than anything else - as Ed Balls pointed out, the deficit was not caused by spending on schools, hospitals or the police, it was caused by a collapse in tax revenue from the financial services sector, which has been a huge part of the economy for decades. While cuts are required to close the gap from the top - through reducing expenditure - growth is the only way to make the huge gains required. Yet strangely, the Office of Budget Responsibility has downgraded its forecast of growth, having considered the effect of the new budget and a number of observers consider those forecasts as generous. Osborne offered us a resurrection of the 1980s Enterprise Zones, which were demonstrated to offer little net economic gain - they just saw businesses relocate from other areas outside the zone, and he also made much of the forthcoming changes to the planning regime, as if this is all that is holding back UK plc.

The following morning, much time was devoted on the news programmes to the news that WPP, the advertising and marketing company, was to relocate their executive headquarters from Dublin to London, once the various tax changes planned in and around the budget were in place. They decamped to the shores of the Liffey a couple of years ago to take advantage of the Republic's low corporate tax rates and have been tempted back by a new tax regime that won't tax profits earned outside the UK (90% of WPP's earnings) and will progressively cut the corporate tax bill in the UK. So, what will UK plc gain from the return of Martin Sorrell's WPP? Sadly, the company's main headquarters has remained in London all the time, with a handful of staff relocated to Dublin to support the board meetings that are held there so that the company can legitimately claim Irish tax residency. As WPP's Richard Oldworth said of the move in 2008,

"The presence here will be a very, very tiny part of the operation...The only physical change will be that some board meetings will be held in Dublin... A handful of people, probably from the financial area of the business will be based there."

WPP handles the media buying for government advertising, so the announcement provided some free campaign work in support of government policy.

Osborne has failed to satisfy the bloodlust for tax cuts from the right of his party, just as he has managed to rouse the ire of the left. You wonder how long he can sit on this fence, taking hits from either side. He may have made his name as the man who loves to be hated, but the recent spin in a number of press outlets indicate that somebody, somewhere is making the unlikely case of Osborne being the next Tory PM.

Ever had the feeling that we've been here before?

Time to get the popcorn, settle back and watch the arguments start to highlight fault lines.

GP criticises Tory plans for NHS. She's also a Tory MP.

2011-03-20T09:00:00.001Z

Writing in the Telegraph, Dr Sarah Wollaston makes some trenchant criticism of the NHS restructure - a policy that she did not campaign for as part of the Tory manifesto and one that did not form part of the coalition agreement. Indeed, Andrew Lansley promised in opposition an end to top down reforms of the NHS. In government, he's delivered nothing but that.
And if that wasn't enough, NHS quality monitors remind their management colleagues that

I wonder if Lansley or Cameron will quote those next time or if they will keep trotting out their misquoted claims of support from John Healey, the Labour health spokesman (who has now written to the PM at least twice asking for an apology for the persistent misquotation). Funny thing is, Cameron never bothers quoting from the rest of the speech, which certainly isn't supportive of the direction of travel.
these are the wrong reforms at the wrong time, “blunting the ability of the NHS to respond to the Nicholson challenge” to improve services to patients and make sound efficiencies on a scale the NHS has never achieved before

modernisation plans will leave few parts of the current system untouched and past experience and lessons from elsewhere shows that any period of structural change can put quality and safety at risk

It is one thing to rapidly dismantle the entire middle layer of NHS management but it is completely unrealistic to assume that this vast organisation can be managed by a commissioning board in London with nothing in between it and several hundred inexperienced commissioning consortia. In reality the reforms manage to be both 'top-down' and 'bottom up' but we could end up with the worst of both worlds. Stripping out primary care trusts (PCTs) and strategic health authorities is as top down as it comes....

...without some experienced guidance and continuity, the consortia are doomed to fail and will have to hand over their commissioning to the private sector. An organisation responsible for over £100billion needs people who seriously understand accountancy and, trust me, GPs do not.

Bearing in mind that the NHS Commissioning Board in London will be responsible for commissioning every GP practice, pharmacy and dental surgery, it is clear that they will need some regional presence. I cannot see that it makes sense to foot the bill for redundancies for the entire middle layer of NHS management only to be re-employing many of them within a couple of years. Commissioning consortia will be overwhelmed trying to adapt to their new roles. Someone needs to get a grip or we will continue to haemorrhage the best staff as a result of intolerable uncertainty and pointless morale-sapping denigration. It all risks going 'belly up' rather than 'bottom up'

Libya

2011-03-19T09:00:00.024Z

As I write this, the West is engaged in air and missile strikes against Libyan targets in support of the UN Resolution 1973 passed earlier this week. While I wish our aircrews safe returns and hope that civilian casualties are low, I'm concerned about the reasoning behind the operation and the intended destination.

Our record in the Middle East is hardly stellar of late (if it ever was) - aside from a record of backing dubious regimes, the invasion of Iraq was wrong-headed and hugely misguided and while our intentions in Afghanistan were in support of our NATO commitments and loyalty to our American cousins, we seem to be stuck in a morass with no apparent path visible to the exit. This is perhaps the precedent that worries me most.

Hillary Clinton has already laid down the aim of the operation - the removal of Gaddafi - but the question has to be asked, what happens if he isn't removed by his own people or decides that discretion is the better part of valour and takes a private jet out of the country? How long are we prepared to stay the course? Once we've flattened his air defences and obtained complete air supremacy - which will probably be completed in all practical purposes within a few hours - what happens then? We can assume that supply convoys or vessels heading for Benghazi or any other conurbations within the no-fly zone will be interdicted - French aircraft are reported to have carried this out already - but what else is on the table, given that we aren't allowed or are willing to deploy soldiers on the ground in what will be an asymetric conflict? Gaddafi has already shown a determination to hang on beyond the point where other dictators would have got the message, so it remains to be seen if the actuality of an air attack will have the required effect.

However humanitarian our intentions may be towards the Libyan people, who have demonstrated a desire to shape their own future and seen the first flowerings of that threatened, the law of unintended consequences will intervene. If successful, will the people's revolution be tarred by the involvement of the West? I note that Gaddafi's recent speech has referred to the 'crusaders' - perhaps a late conversion to Islamism, a path already trodden by Saddam in the decade after the Gulf War?

For the sake of our troops and the Libyan people, I hope that this is over rapidly and bloodlessly and that the Western countries will prove as swift and effective with their humanitarian relief as they have with their military intervention. I fear that we might be getting involved far more deeply and for longer than we currently realise or intend.

Free schools bite the dust

2011-03-19T09:00:00.016Z

Remember the promise from Gove that parents would be encouraged to open schools? Looks like that's fallen by the wayside, as Toby Young reports in the Telegraph. From here on in, the old system where a group would simply have to prepare a short brief, pass an interview and then receive funding for support to develop a proper outline business case for the school (covering the key technical points about the operation) has been scrapped. Instead, all applications will now need an outline business case from the outset, which will need considerable expertise - expertise that it is unlikely that a parent/staff group will possess and which will have to be bought in from one of the specialist companies that are springing up to run these schools.

I've never backed the free schools concept - it has always struck me as an inefficient and ineffective solution to the problem of poor quality education as well as flawed in far more significant ways - but the populist aspect of it was perhaps the only remotely attractive element. Young also notes that at least one parent group has already handed over their proposals to ARK, who will be opening the academy in their own image. Making it more difficult will simply force parents to call in the specialist providers - much in the same way that GPs will call in specialist consultants to run their commissioning processes.

It isn't clear why this change has been brought about - whether the quality of applications has been poor, whether there are concerns about policy presentation or if there has actually been a problem in finding enough parent/teacher groups prepared to do the hard graft of setting up a new school and this move is simply Gove hoping that the private sector will leap in to save his flagship policy. I predict that within the year, Gove will remove the ban on free schools being run for profit, as he starts the race to the bottom in education provision. Incidentally, while the schools currently aren't run for profit, there's no reason why providers of services to those schools can't make profits and there will be plenty of those waiting to dig their knives into these fresh little barrels of pork.

Whatever the reasoning behind this DfE decision, it is another nail in the coffin of the 'localism' agenda from the government - an unsustainable claim in any case, as academies and free schools are stripped from the local education system (democratically accountable through your local authority and the elected councillors, as well as through governors from the local community and the parents) and placed under appointed governing bodies funded directly from central government. What this does do, beyond any doubt, is encourage still further the creeping privatisation of our public services, without any evidence that the changes will actually improve outcomes.

Not even Thatcher tried selling off the schools, but - just as Lansley is in healthcare - Gove is intent on destroying the system and replacing it with an untried model that will be very difficult for a future government to reverse.

Why are Midlands Liberal Democrats obsessed with cats?

2011-03-11T17:47:00.000Z

Well-known Liberal Democrat Mike Dixon is to start a 16 week sentence for battering his family cat to death with a stick, just a few days after Dixon was defeated by Richard Burden in the Northfield parliamentary election. While this is a pretty horrific attack on an animal, it has provided an exemplary quotation from the local party, who have summarily sacked Dixon and commented on his political future thus

He could stand again but no-one wants to be represented by a man who beats his cat to death with a stick.

Compare and contrast

2011-03-10T07:45:00.001Z

Watch as the Daily Mail warms over a BBC story from 2003 as news.

Compare this with this.

Same quotes, same source.

Daily Mail March 2011

Dr Fox said one doctor ended up in court and was asked by the judge to explain the abbreviation TTFO meant - an expletive expression roughly translated as "Told To F*** off”. He said: ‘This guy was asked by the judge what the acronym meant, and luckily for him he had the presence of mind to say: 'To take fluids orally'

BBC News August 2003
Dr Fox recounts the tale of one doctor who had scribbled TTFO - an expletive expression roughly translated as "Told To Go Away" - on a patient's notes. He told BBC News Online: "This guy was asked by the judge what the acronym meant, and luckily for him he had the presence of mind to say: 'To take fluids orally'

Countdown for Hague?

2011-03-10T07:00:00.001Z

Poor old William Hague. A few years back, he was the golden boy of the Conservative Party, destined to lead them back to power. Then he fell from grace, one of the Tory leaders ground down by the Blair machine and he returned to the backbenches and made some money before reappearing in government as Foreign Secretary - a senior office of state, to be sure, but one that is usually relatively sidelined unless crisis strikes and then tends to become head of blame. Even so, there were some - myself included - who wondered whether last May might have had a different result with Hague as Tory leader or if Foreign Secretary would indeed be his final hurrah as a senior politician. Increasingly, it looks as though the end may be nigh.

After last year's peculiar matter of his advisor and snide comments about their relationship, the past couple of weeks have been pretty painful for him - there was the claim (swiftly reversed) that Gadaffi was en route to Venezuela, the embarrassment of the botched airlift from Libya and then we had the debacle of the weekend operation that went badly wrong, leaving a small group of special forces held prisoner by farmhands. It is interesting that this operation was authorised by the Foreign Secretary, indicating that it was primarily an SIS job, although the PM has belatedly given cover to his rather beleagured Foreign Secretary today during PMQs. You would think that landing a group of heavily armed special forces troops in the middle of a civil war would be a matter for the PM, but apparently not.

And now we have the spectacle of people briefing against him. In the Guardian
since last September Tories believe that Hague, who lacked the killer instinct of his predecessor David Miliband from the day he took the job, appeared to have lost his mojo'
Quentin Letts in the Mail
...this William Hague is at present finding it hard to land a punch. He looks pale, peaky, even (some say) past it.

Now, in the latest twist of his curiously oscillating political journey, there is speculation about whether he will be in his post for much longer. Politics is turned on its head. Hague, a master of ridicule, is ridiculed. Seemingly calm and solid, he has become part of a damaging narrative for the Government as a whole that poses potentially lethal questions about its competence... Even some of those inside No 10 who are admirers of Hague are beginning to wonder what is happening. They are not angry, nor do they go out of their way to target him. But one or two are a little bewildered as to why he has stumbled.
The Mail reports that an understudy waits in the wings,
Yet senior officials were openly speculating about Mr Hague’s future yesterday. Sources said that Mr Cameron was poised to promote Mr Mitchell when Mr Hague appeared about to renounce frontline politics last year after revelations he shared a room with a male aide. A well-placed source said: ‘Andrew Mitchell is very well thought of and familiar with all the issues. He sits on the National Security Council. He would have been sent over last year if William had gone and he’s still the man.... William has lost his mojo. He seems tired and often unengaged. He just doesn’t seem that interested.’
When the Foreign Secretary is questioned by the press about his own energy for the job while meeting with the Palestinian President, you start to wonder whether his time is up. Somebody senior within his own party clearly thinks it is, which is why there is a sudden splash of negative stories, all bearing the fingerprints of his own colleagues.

Yet, there is a wider issue of competence, one that we have seen raised by Ed Miliband and others in recent days and it is a potentially dangerous one for the government. There has been a series of cock-ups - Gove and his ever-changing list of cancelled school projects, Hague, Spelman and the forests, Gove and books, Cable and Murdoch, Gove and school sports, Clegg on virtually any subject of consequence.... All this in less than twelve months, remember. This is not just the vagaries of events, this is symptomatic of a wider problem in this government - they simply aren't up to the job. Over at the Indie, Steve Richards gets in the game

Curse of Cameron

2011-03-08T07:30:00.000Z

Cameron visited the Coventry-based electric van builder Modec in 2009. Osborne promises a growth agenda.

Last week, Modec went into administration and let half the workforce go with 15 minutes' notice.

The meaning of Barnsley

2011-03-07T07:30:00.002Z

I have always held that be-elections are peculiar beasts - each is unique with a particular rhythm and set of issues applicable only to that moment. Accordingly, drawing any massive conclusions from one election is no more relevant than relying on a single opinion poll to predict the next government. This has always been true and I believe always will remain true.

While Barnsley was a good result for Labour - we won, we need to remember that it is a safe seat for us, despite the criminal prosecution that saw Eric Illsley end up in jail. Prior to 2010, we would probably have seen a harder campaign from the Liberal Democrats, but reports from the ground suggest that their candidate, Dominic Carman, was largely on his own out on the streets, certainly towards the end of the short campaign. It was also the case that Illsley was a popular MP - a local man himself - and that people felt that he had been somewhat unlucky, that all politicians were 'at it' and that Illsley was just caught out. Labour also ran a candidate with a hugely strong personal narrative as a major in the Parachute Regiment who has seen active service - this trumps his poor local credentials and allowed him to become the first MP to represent Barnsley Central not born in Yorkshire and without strong links to the coal industry. In fact, since 1938, there's only been one other Barnsley Central MP not born in the town.

The results were interesting, though. Despite a low turnout - 20 points lower than May 2010 on just 37%, the drop in individual votes is interesting. While UKIP saw 171% of their voters appear to give them a poor second place and independent Tony Devoy more than doubled his vote, 85% of Labour's vote turned out to secure an easy win. Things are less bright when we look at the other parties, especially when you consider that 65% of the 2010 electorate turned out to vote last Thursday - the remaining parties underperformed significantly. The BNP vote held up the best, with 44% finding their way to the polling station to cast their vote in line with prejudice, but the Tories only saw 31% of their voters do their civic duty. The Liberal Democrat voters were pretty much the mirror image of Labour's - only 15% of them thought it worthwhile supporting their candidate, delivering the resounding smack in the face for Nick Clegg. Social media Lib Dems quickly took the line that Labour were celebrating a win which saw the BNP beat the Lib Dems, as if that was somehow the fault of the Labour Party rather than the result of a very poor Liberal Democrat campaign.

While this result does not bode well for the future of Liberal Democrat councillors and MPs, remembering the intense local complexities of these contests, the real test of the coalition does not lie in a random by-election - although I think that they will find it difficult to pull off their tried and tested oppositionalist schtick for the duration of their time in government. The first test will be in May this year, when councillors across the country have to face their electorates. I suspect that while this year will be rough for the Liberal Democrats, it will be 2012 when the real bloodbath will take place.

While it is not conclusive, this may prove an omen.

Life of Pie

2011-03-06T09:30:00.002Z

Eric's at it again. This time, he's blaming Labour councils for cutting front-line services for political reasons, rather than cutting back office operations. Just as Pickles and his sidekicks can't really define a 'non-job' (they leave that up to their mates over at the Telegraph and the Taxpayers' Alliance and their dodgy research), they seem to ignore the concept that back office work may actually be vital to keeping the front line working (or that the outcome may be that front line staff end up doing the back office work as well, which will also impact on the quality of service offered). Headline-grabbing soundbites accusing councils of a 'bleeding stump' strategy don't help his already badly fractured relationship with local authorities of all stripes, with even Tory councillors having a barely-concealed contempt for him, but he shows no sign of changing the direction of his strategy of gunboat diplomacy towards councils.

Eric clearly isn't aware of the front-line service cuts coming to Birmingham as a result of decisions taken by a Tory council, aided and abetted by their Liberal Democrat lapdogs. I doubt very much that Adult Services has £118 million worth of cuts that can come from back office functions, especially as 11,000 people will have their provision reviewed and 3500 will certainly lose all support. I find it hard to believe that the already stretched and failing Children's Services team can lose £69 million in support roles, nor that libraries and leisure centres can absorb £9 million without affecting their front-line service provision. And anyone who genuinely believes that is seriously deluded to a point beyond psychiatric provision.

Despite promising localism, the Pieman can't stop interfering in council decisions, in an increasingly desperate attempt to divert blame for the cuts away from his government. This week, he promised that if councils cut too deep into charitable grants, he would legislate within weeks to force councils to reverse agreed budgets. Rather than accept that he had been excessively meek in surrendering to Osborne and Alexander over the cuts that his department could deliver, cuts that he then forced upon local authorities in an unfair way to discriminate against areas with the greatest deprivation, Pickles blames the local authorities for making decisions within the budget that he provided. Either he is talking so much more hot air and this is simply yet more spin or local authorities - virtually all of whom have agreed budgets to start on the 1 April - will be forced to revisit their budgets and redirect their cuts to please the Secretary of State.

As I've noted before, Pickles talks a good game on localism, but when it comes down to accepting the consequences - that locally accountable councillors may make decisions of which Eland House may not approve - he fails. Given that this is likely to be the highwater mark for Conservative and Liberal Democrat local authority control, it is also likely to be the highwater mark of what passes for localism. From here on in, centralism will be the reality, whatever the spin.

Acocks Up

2011-03-06T09:00:00.000Z

London Midland are reducing the staffing hours (and doubtless the staff) at many of their stations - and closing the ticket offices at a few - and one of them is my local station at Acocks Green. Handily placed, with a six or seven minute journey time into the city centre, it has a decent-sized car park. The only problem with that car park is that while it has some disabled spaces, the station building and platforms (they are both on the same island) are currently only accessible by long flights of steps, rendering wheelchair access impossible. It has been pointed out that currently, the car park stairs are only accessible when the ticket office is open, so under the plans as proposed, commuters who park their cars on a weekday will face a long walk round the streets to get back to a car. As the staff make the station more welcoming and, indeed, safer, this is hardly a step that will encourage greater use of public transport.

Child abuse claim in meeting

2011-03-02T07:30:00.001Z

I used to have a little bit of respect for Cllr Lawrence, the Tory Cabinet member for Education. That vanished yesterday afternoon when he was speaking about Labour claims that cuts to the Youth Service will mean the closure of 40 youth centres. Cllr Lawrence described this as scaremongering and said that the Labour councillors should be reported for 'child abuse.'

I've no problem with the rough and tumble of politics, but that sort of comment is beyond the pale. Child abuse isn't to be used as a cheap dig at your opponents and Cllr Lawrence should know better.

With that kind of leadership, you understand why child social services were removed from his control and why it is in the mess it is.

Budget setting

2011-03-02T07:00:00.000Z

Thanks to so many people for their kind words about the tweetathon on the #bcc hashtag yesterday afternoon. The enthusiastic amateurs outnumbered and outlasted most of the professional media. If the chance arises, I'll write it up in a bit more detail.

New media creeps into Birmingham

2011-03-01T07:30:00.001Z

Last week, the Department of Communities and Local Government issued a letter to all local authorities encouraging them to open their council meetings to the mainstream broadcast media and to the new stream of hyperlocal bloggers and tweeters.
Council meetings have long been open to interested members of the public and recognised journalists, and with the growth of online film, social media and hyper-local online news they should equally be open to ‘Citizen Journalists’ and filming by mainstream media. Bloggers, tweeters, residents with their own websites and users of Facebook and YouTube are increasingly a part of the modern world, blurring the lines between professional journalists and the public. There are recent stories about people being ejected from council meetings for blogging, tweeting or filming. This potentially is at odds with the fundamentals of democracy and I want to encourage all councils to take a welcoming approach to those who want to bring local news stories to a wider audience. The public should rightly expect that elected representatives who have put themselves up for public office be prepared for their decisions to be as transparent as possible and welcome a direct line of communication to their electorate.

With this in mind, I thought I'd ask Birmingham City Council what their views would be on improving coverage of their meetings. Oddly, the chamber has had an impressive automated camera system which would take little adaptation to provide a live internet broadcast feed, a connection that has been a couple of years in not coming, but I understand that it may finally be coming to fruition.

I've had responses from Dr Mirza Ahmad, the Corporate Director of Governance (might as well start at the top) and he stood up for local democracy, arguing that despite ministerial advice (which has been flowing from DCLG like a river in recent months), decisions on filming, recording and photography are put to the Council Business Management Committee (chaired by Mike Whitby) and without approval from that committee, the Lord Mayor is likely to resist any attempts of that nature.

He was more forgiving when it came to using mobile devices, which essentially came down to advice that users would probably be OK if they didn't get caught or disrupt the council meeting. A further communication from the media team - top marks to them for getting involved - who confirm that there is no problem with text blogging from a mobile device or laptop.

I'm not really in a position to rebroadcast sound or video, so that's an area for other social media specialists, but transparency is a key element of democracy. Modern broadcast media have shifted and they now need sound and/or pictures to flesh out packages for broadcast, so we can't complain too much if their coverage of council matters is relatively poor if they aren't given the materials to work with. Sometimes, restricting scrutiny suits elected members, but if the Tories are going to walk the walk on transparency, times have got to change.

Assuming I can get in - this afternoon's budget-setting meeting promises to be the hottest ticket all year - I'll be liveblogging and tweeting from the event.

Clegg the opportunist

2011-02-28T08:00:00.001Z

Some of us view the Liberal Democrats as opportunists, happy in opposition and ready to leap aboard any passing bandwagon that takes their fancy. Others are more negative, of course.

Clegg has continued his march towards being a statesman by abandoning a cause for which he expressed great support whilst in opposition, that of Gary McKinnon, who faces extradition to the USA for hacking into defence computers - a crime for which he could be prosecuted in the UK. Nick turned up on the picket lines with Mr McKinnon's mother and wrote articles in support of the hacker
The life of a vulnerable man is on the line. Gary McKinnon’s case is as serious as that. Unless someone intervenes there is the distinct possibility that he may be handed a sentence measured not in years but decades, and die behind bars in a brutal American Supermax prison. It is the basic duty of a government to protect its citizens... The only conclusion possible is that the British Government cares more about its relationship with the United States than it does about the welfare of its citizens... The truth is this Government has lost its basic sight of what’s right and what’s wrong.

Now in government, Clegg has refused to meet with Mrs McKinnon as 'it would be better all round' if they didn't - although he has no part in the extradition decision. Apparently, there's nothing he can do.

He can't have it both ways - if the last government was wrong by not intervening, then Clegg has also lost sight of right and wrong. I fear his vision is impaired by the fumes from whatever power he thinks he has. Not for the first or last time, Calamity Clegg is forced into an embarrassing reversal over a bandwagon policy he endorsed in opposition.

Clegg fumbles it again

2011-02-28T07:30:00.000Z

Another victim of dreadful media management - although not helped by a universally oppositional print media - is Nick Clegg. A few weeks back, he was - somewhat unfairly - castigated as a 'part-time' deputy Prime Minister. Having seen what he has done as part-time, one dreads what he would do if he was working a full-time schedule, but I digress. As someone who had recently championed 'alarm clock Britain' (whatever that is - perhaps as opposed to those in this country who are woken by their butlers or sleep through until noon), the report that his ministerial red box closed at 3pm Monday to Thursday and at noon on Fridays was always going to look bad. The fact that this doesn't indicate the times that Clegg actually knocks off work and that it allows his aides to review the documents and provide background information if required, isn't important - the myth of a part-time DPM is already out there.

Last week, Clegg shot himself in the foot with an interview with the freesheet Metro - not normally a publication that breaks big stories, but one that excelled itself.

Asked if he was in charge of the nation, Mr Clegg told Metro: ‘Yeah, I suppose I am. I forgot about that.’ Laughing off the comment, however, he said talk of who was in charge was overblown in the modern era.... ‘I’m holding the fort but I’m hoping to take the end of the week off with my kids. Someone else will have to do it then. It sounds more haphazard than it probably is.’
Yes, Calamity Clegg forgot that he was supposed to be in charge while the head prefect was away. He showed he was in charge by promptly jetting off to the family chalet in Davos, at the same time as Cameron was out of the country. Cameron quickly stamped on any thoughts that Clegg might be in charge - probably to stop a run on the pound or the utter collapse of confidence in UK plc - and reminded the press that since the advent of global communications, he remained in charge. One may assume that the communications with the Prime Minster's delegation were rather better and more reliable than those with a chalet in Switzerland.

Meanwhile, Clegg's spinners explained that those remarks were a joke at the end of the interview, a defence that will hold no water. Liam Byrne wrote a light-hearted private note to David Laws, his successor in the post of Chief Secretary, and then had to endure those words being repeated across all the networks ad nauseam by every single government spokesman as if they were holy writ. Perhaps Clegg thinks that he can get away with jokes like that, but his popularity is so poor that he can't - anything he says will be used against him and he only has himself to blame, particularly when he makes such poor decisions as the one to take a holiday just as the Libya crisis blows up. He left the Foreign Secretary to act as the face of the government, a derogation of duty.

The truths behind the stories are almost unimportant - the image of a part-time, lightweight deputy prime minister who is so irrelevant to the course of government that his absence is unnoticed will prove immensely damaging to Clegg, the Liberal Democrats and the government as a whole.

Never mind, eh?

Living in interesting times

2011-02-28T07:00:00.001Z

It has been a very interesting week in British politics.

Previously, we had Caroline Spelman executing a handbrake turn on government policy on forests. On the one hand, her humility in abandoning a policy in the face of such public venom is to be applauded, but on the other hand, she and her department demonstrated utter incompetence in preparing the ground and marketing the policy to the nation. Amazingly enough, that incompetence carried forward into last week's embarrassment over the handling of the crisis of British citizens trapped in Egypt. Events are always the downfall of any government and their handling of Libya has proved spectacularly poor. It was only at the end of last week that UK Special Forces were deployed to save a small band of British citizens (pictured), whose reputations were under severe threat from Col Gaddafi's behaviour.

The limitations of the defence review are also coming under severe scrutiny - not least by a small group of former military commanders, who may well be being used as the voice of those still serving. Apparently, we don't need carriers or close support aircraft for the foreseeable future, when the reality is that the ability to put a safe floating airfield capable of supporting large transport helicopters close to an unstable state is crucial to evacuating UK nationals in times of crisis. The decision to mothball the small carrier fleet and to essentially leave the new carriers ill equipped will prove to be even more short-sighted in years to come, especially as the US Navy, usually first on the scene with an all-powerful carrier group, doesn't have one currently deployed in the Mediterranean at the moment and wouldn't be guaranteed to support us in any case. The only other vessel in the surface fleet capable of providing that sort of support - but without the capacity to carry aircraft in self-defence - is HMS Ocean, the helicopter carrier and assault ship, which is working up following a period of scheduled maintenance. Albion and Bulwark are capable headquarters vessels, but lack the deck space to operate sufficient helicopters to be useful in this sort of operation. The irony that HMS Cumberland, which has been ferrying evacuees back and forth for the past few days, will shortly return to the UK for decommissioning as a part of the review, isn't lost on observers.

Cameron also dropped the ball significantly this week, opening himself up to accusations that he was more interested in flogging teargas and baton rounds to dodgy Middle Eastern regimes than dealing with the real problem of UK nationals stuck in the middle of what threatens to deteriorate into a civil war. A hastily-arranged visit to inspect what may or may not be the birth of democracy in Egypt - and I'm far from convinced that it is anything other than a change of name over the door in that country - has largely gone unnoticed. While the trade mission may have been planned in advance, it won't look good on the record.

Sweeping the poor from the streets

2011-02-28T06:00:00.000Z

Even as they plan to ship their housing benefit claimants off to the outer reaches of London, Tory Westminster council is hatching a plan to eliminate homelessness as well by banning rough sleepers from the Victoria area of the borough and also outlawing the giving out of free food and drink. This prohibition was suggested in 2007, but was scrapped because of a massive outcry amongst charities and support groups across London. I wonder if it will fail this time round?

This is an ingenious assault on those elements of the Big Society - charities like the Salvation Army - who carry out great work amongst the homeless and run things like soup kitchens and soup runs into areas where people congregate. It also attacks those businesses like Pret A Manger (amongst others), who quietly and unfussily give away their out of date food to those in need.

I look forward to council officers bravely issuing fixed penalty notices to the Sally Army.

Don't rile the Tories

2011-02-22T07:00:00.000Z

Cllr Richard Kemp is the leader of the Liberal Democrat in local government and has been championing the cause of local government against the onslaught of the Tories and his own party at the DCLG. In particular, he has earned the wrath of Grant Shapps, Pickles' wannabe attack dog, so unsurprisingly, Cllr Kemp has found his private life under scrutiny from the Conservative media, who have found little ammunition worth speaking of.

Is this the new politics that Dave promised us?

He wants to live like common people

2011-02-21T12:57:00.002Z

One of Cameron's most sensitive issues is his own, rather privileged background. To be fair to him, he's never had to mix with 'ordinary' people and, by a number of accounts, he is uncomfortable with those who are not perceived as his social or economic equals. As the New Statesman points out, a poll in 2009 found that only 38% of people thought he was in touch and David Davis pointed out that Dave and Gideon "don't actually come from backgrounds where they had to scrape for the last penny at the end of the week." A website is dedicating itself to finding those pictures of Dave looking completely at home amongst us ordinary folk.

You'll never live like common people,
you'll never do what common people do,
you'll never fail like common people,
you'll never watch your life
slide out of view,
and dance and drink and screw,
because there's nothing else to do.

Sing along with the common people,
sing along and it might just get you through,
laugh along with the common people,
laugh along even though they're laughing at you,
and the stupid things that you do.
Because you think that poor is cool.

Common People, Pulp

Careless lips sink thousands

2011-02-20T09:00:00.000Z

Amazing how expensive a few words can be, isn't it? Vince Cable's promise to 'declare war' on Rupert Murdoch, which nearly cost Vince his job, has cost the taxpayer a whopping £300,000, with £280,000 being spent on the IT work alone, which is apparently "being handled as cost effectively as possible," although some would suggest that the costs on IT are particularly imaginative.

The John Glen story continues

2011-02-19T19:40:00.002Z

A comment today from Mr Glen himself (or someone who claims to be him)

This is John Glen - how about the fact that I have a massive mortgage on the flat in London which is rented out, It has been rented out since I got married 2 years before I came an MP in 2010. I can't use it now as the expenses system says I need to rent somewhere (at higher public expense incidentally) than the mortgage interest payment. I am more than happy with that system and will take any questions on my expenses. Call me "selfish, self-serving creep" if you like Raymond - but these are the facts which I recognise you don't care too much for....

Comment via Twitter also from Oliver King, the C4 News programme editor, who adds that

the mp was left in no doubt what his piece was about.

Bravo Barclays!

2011-02-19T08:30:00.000Z

Yes, paying £113 million in corporation tax on 2009 profits of £4.85 billion - just 2.4% - is a remarkable achievement for the corporate finance team, who must have been appropriately remunerated for the value they added to the company in structuring the accounts so carefully.

With the new tax rules quietly introduced by this government, it is likely that even less will be paid in future, no matter how much posturing the government does in pretence of getting tough on the bankers.

You see, profits earned outside the UK are taxed at the local rate of corporation tax and only taxed in the UK at the difference (if any) between the UK rate and the rate of the jurisdiction where the profits are made. This government has decided to abolish even that small amount of additional liability, so profits made overseas by companies tax headquartered in the UK will now incur no tax liability at all in this country.

Of course, this all pales into insignificance next to the Vodafone deal, which remains an obscene dereliction of public duty by HMRC in only recovering £1 billion of a £7 billion liability.

All in this together? Yeah, right.

Fine and not so fine

2011-02-19T08:00:00.000Z

Another day, another £100k spent by UK taxpayers on a stunt for the Taxpayers' Alliance (that's the cost of servicing each of their round-robin research Freedom of Information requests that are used to dig up costs with which they batter public authorities). This time, they are scraping the bottom of the barrel - or bin - and worrying about how many waste bins each local authority collects. Apparently, the disparity is 'shocking.' Now, while I struggle to understand why Newcastle-under-Lyme needs nine of the damn things, I'm not sure that this is a big issue on the doorstep. Still, it keeps the TPA off the streets and away from sane people.

But that isn't the point of this post.

In their bullletin email, which I am lucky enough to receive, they quote Bob Neill, the Local Government Minister, as saying
"the bin bully approach of fining residents for minor breaches of increasingly complex bin rules is not only wrong, but utterly counter-productive"

Strong words and you can understand where he is coming from - asking people to put card and paper into one and cans into another is a task that would challenge many (people forget or get a bit careless). Human error is easily understood with the busy lives that we lead.

So I am intrigued as to why this government now want to fine people £50-300 pounds for forgetting to inform them of any change of circumstances - this is a punitive fine in addition to any repayment due. If you are living on benefits, a £50 fine - quite close to one week's Jobseekers Allowance - is a hefty amount and will certainly feel like an unfair punishment. I've no problem with people repaying overpayment, but the forms are fiendishly complicated at the best of times and this just strikes me as unfair and disproportionate to the actual costs. Indeed, one might say

"the benefits bully approach of fining claimants for minor breaches of increasingly complex benefit rules is not only wrong, but utterly counter-productive"
On the flipside, should we then expect similar compensation when the DWP or HMRC get it wrong? Or is this just a way of taxing the poorest in society by another £15 million a year?

John Glen - spinning or spun against?

2011-02-18T13:45:00.003Z

The Salisbury MP, villified here and elsewhere after his appearance on Channel 4 News this week, where he appeared to blame families who used a charitable food bank for making wrong decisions, has spoken out to his local paper, claiming that he was 'done up like a kipper' by the manipulations of the journalist Gary Gibbon.

Mr Glen gave a 20-minute interview on the subject but by the time it was broadcast, he says, it had been edited to two 30-second soundbites giving the impression he blamed people for making poor decision about how they spend their money.... He has protested to the news bulletin’s director.
I have asked Channel 4 News for a comment - not that I'm hopeful of getting a response.

I would point out though, that 'I was misquoted/misrepresented/stitched up/taken out of context' is the first line of defence of anyone caught saying something that they would rather keep out of the public ear.

Blogger Raymond Soltysek asked the man himself for comment and received the following reply, which I reproduce in part.

Anyone who knows me is aware that I am a compassionate person, who is deeply committed to helping people. That 30-second excerpt of my 20 minute conversation with the reporter, in no way reflects my full views.

I agreed to take part in the interview, believing it to be a piece about the Trussell Trust food bank, a Christian charity founded in Salisbury, for which I have the greatest admiration and with whom I have recently undertaken a day’s volunteering.

I wanted to support the Trussell Trust by taking what I thought was a golden opportunity to go to their HQ and publicly praise their work in the most challenging and deprived area in Salisbury, where I know from personal experience that many people’s lives have disintegrated into utter chaos – for any number of reasons.

The wider context of the piece was not made clear to me and I really regret the fact that the way the piece was edited made it appear as though I was casting aspersions on the household management skills of the three people who were interviewed separately – something I would never dream of doing, nor did I know who they were or their personal circumstances.

Of course poverty exists in leafy Salisbury and the circumstances of the interviewees – illness, rent arrears and the expenses associated with a new baby – illustrated exactly why the kind of short-term crisis support offered by the food bank is so valuable.

So, was he misquoted or just caught out?

No defence

2011-02-17T08:00:00.000Z

"The first duty of government is the defence of the realm, and our most vital asset in that is our people.... This is why a Conservative government will repair the Military Covenant as a matter of urgency."

Conservative Armed Forces Manifesto, 22 April 2010

Cameron went further in June and promised to codify the covenant.

Yesterday, he deployed his footsoldiers through the lobbies to block exactly that. It appears that an annual report to Parliament will suffice.

Mind you, he promised the equipment that the forces need to operate in Afghanistan and so far, the 24 Chinooks that Labour were ordering - 22 new aircraft and 2 replacements - have been halved and even that order has yet to be finally approved.

And our people are so important that we'll sack them by email when they are on active service.

BMA to oppose NHS destruction?

2011-02-17T07:30:00.000Z

Despite Andrew Lansley's increasingly desperate assertions that his 'reforms' have widespread support, it now looks as though the BMA are getting energised. Members are furious that their current leader, Hamish Meldrum, failed to consult them before he embarked on a policy of critical engagement with the minister and want the Association to come out in full-throated opposition to the proposals. It may cost Meldrum his job, but it looks like all out war may be about to kick off over this attempt to abolish the NHS by stealth.

The Tories promised to be the party of the NHS.

They lied.

John Glen MP is an inhuman, insensitive bastard.

2011-02-17T07:00:00.000Z

Sometimes, you see something on TV that angers you beyond belief, that makes the blood thunder round your veins and fizz as it boils. Last night's Channel 4 News carried a striking report from Gary Gibbon on a food bank in leafy, upper middle-class, rural Salisbury, nestling in the Wiltshire countryside.

We saw a young family with a baby, having had their double incomes reduced to one of just £800 a month and unable to afford food on top of their other bills. A single parent, who was temporarily unable to work through illness and went to the food bank to feed herself and her child because the cupboard was bare. There was a jobbing builder, living in a sparsely-furnished flat and coping with income that varied massively from month to month depending on the weather and the market, admitting that he had gone without food to ensure that he kept a roof over his head.

These are not scroungers, ripping off the taxpayer because they know how to play the system. These are - to use the favourite phrase of politicians - hard-working families. Ordinary people who find that the money they earn simply isn't enough to keep body and soul together. They have to rely on the charity of a local church group that collects food donated by shoppers at a supermarket.

This is wrong. In this century, in this country, it is fundamentally wrong that this is allowed to happen. If you want an evil to target, this is it.

Then Gary Gibbon went to see Salisbury's new Conservative MP, John Glen - the product of Oxbridge, the Conservative Research Department and consultancy firms. He is about as in touch as you would expect for a young man with no experience of how the majority live or indeed any idea how to cope with a low income. Blessed with a safe seat, unfortunately, he will never need to understand it either.
"I believe that everyone who's working will have enough food if they don't spend the money on other things. There is a choice there that if you spend money on food to start off with.. if you earn anything or you have the minimum wage, you will have some money for food. The question is what other things the money is being spent on."
Typically, John, it is spent on mortgage or rent, heat and light, transport to work, perhaps a few clothes. People pay off what is most urgent and cut back on other things - they fall behind with the electricity or gas and end up on prepayment meters, allowing the house to get cold rather than load the meter card with money they don't have and that coldness brings illness. They make sure the kids are fed and go without themselves.

They need decent jobs that pay decent living wages, not part-time, minimum wage positions. I have some hope that Ian Duncan Smith's benefit propositions might offer some light at the end of the tunnel, but my fear is that it will be an oncoming train, with insensitive bastards like Glen quaffing champagne and celebrating the accident of birth that has brought them such good fortune. I hope that IDS will cut through the maze of benefits, but I suspect that the real driver will not be the relief of poverty, but cutting the cost of helping the poorest in our society.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

2011-02-16T07:30:00.001Z

Even the police are hacked off - this comes from the chairman of the Sergeant's Central Committee of the Police Federation, clearly a hotbed of far left activity and subversion.

The Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) has dominated the political and policing landscape, the consequences of which will affect the future of policing, our pensions and terms and conditions for many years to come. The Chancellor, George Osbourne, initially indicated that cuts in the police budget would be no more than 14%, but well below the 25% that was predicted. However, it soon became clear that we were looking at a real cut of at least 20% unless local authorities were to raise the local tax precept. Central government has no authority to raise the policing precept. The actual cuts in the police service from central government will be 8% in the first year, 6% in the second and then two years of 4% cuts. Unlike in other areas the government has shamefully chosen not to prioritise policing.

The result will be completely destructive to policing as we know it. Indeed, HMIC warned earlier this year that cuts beyond 12% would result in service delivery being affected. Leading up to this we predicted large scale cuts in police numbers and an early Christmas for criminals, and were accused of scaremongering by government, but they will never admit that we were right.Who is going to kettle the police when they march on Westminster?

Maggie had the sense to keep the police onside, Cameron and Clegg haven't learned that lesson.

(Hat tip to @lisaansell)

Another let down from Cameron

2011-02-16T07:00:00.001Z

The BBC has found out that, despite rising unemployment - partly its own fault - the government's new Work Programme will take 605,000 people in 2011/12 and 565,000 in 2012/13. In 2009/10, Labour's schemes helped 850,000 people.

Oddly, given the evidence from the Public Accounts Committee that Jobcentres worked better on the Pathways to Work:

Contractors have universally failed by considerable margins to meet their contractual targets for helping claimants who are required to go through Pathways. They have performed worse than Jobcentre Plus areas, although recent improvements have narrowed the difference.

Predictably, the government is going with the external providers, even though the contract management last time round looks to have been exceptionally poor and has erred on the side of the supplier.
Despite being paid £100 million in 2008–09, providers claim not to have made a profit from their contracts. The Department agreed to pay £24 million in service fees early in view of contractor cash flow problems, although we consider the need for this was questionable given the large size of some of the organisations involved. The Department had an objective to build a healthy market, but has failed to develop an adequate understanding of the supply chain. It has not monitored how well prime contractors are sharing rewards and risks with the more than 80 specialist sub-contractors involved, and we have concerns that effective small private and voluntary organisations working in local communities are being asked to take an unfair share of the risk by prime contractors.
It isn't clear that lessons have been learned from this programme, as

Graham Hoyle, the chief executive of the Association of Learning Providers - who represents more than 100 firms and voluntary organisations bidding for Work Programme contracts - says "there is no question" that some of them will go out of business, and community groups or voluntary groups hoping to get contracts
are particularly vulnerable.
So, within a day of another relaunch, that's another nail in the coffin of the Big Society.

Oh and the reward for the effectiveness of Jobcentre Plus? 9300 jobs will be cut from a service that we actually need. Fewer people will be helped by a less-effective service.

Unity strikes again

2011-02-16T00:23:00.002Z

The Ministry of Truth has been investigating the increasingly weird and wonderful world of Nadine "70% fiction" Dorries and raises a whole pile of interesting questions about Dorries expenditure of taxpayers' money on a small, provincial PR firm.

Well worth a read.

Business Plan 2011 - Goodbye to all that

2011-02-14T07:45:00.001Z

It may be Valentine's Day, but there's no love on display at the Cabinet meeting.

In headline figures, Birmingham's formula grant will take a 10.2% cut in this financial year. Once all the other grant and council tax income is taken into account, the final loss compared to last year is expected to settle out at around 9.7% - a drop of £128 million. These cuts do not take into account any inflationary changes, so the change in real terms will be worse. 2012/13 will bring a further drop, cutting 14.4% off Birmingham's 2010 spending power (inclusive of all indicative budgets). Beyond that, things are a little hazier, but the forecasts are rather bleak. It is expected that the 2013/14 settlement will be only slightly less than 2012/13, rendering that year's income just 15% lower than 2010, but the 2014/15 grant income is (following the assumptions in place from the council) going to see the formula grant drop by 23.6% on 2010 levels and an all-in cut of 18.3% from this current year.

That is going to mean swingeing cuts in local services and this looks exceptionally bleak. Leisure Services is badly hit, losing 17.5% on last year (Andy Howell writes about the whole budget scene on his blog - detailing the tribulations affecting Cllr Mullaney, who is in charge of that particular portfolio when he isn't being offensive). Adults and Communities gets a whopping cut of 15.8% on last year, Children and Young People (a service area under tremendous scrutiny) is rewarded by being slashed by 10.7% and the Housing team will lose 11.5%.

This is going to hurt. A lot.

Detailed within the Business Plan are the policy changes coming down the line and however you cut this, this will affect front line services, despite the ineffectual and misleading promises from central government.
I warn you not to fall ill. I warn you not to get old.

Adults and Communities will be battered. Essentially, 11,000 service users across Birmingham will have their care packages reassessed to find cheaper options or other support mechanisms, as the service reverts to a basic signposting service for the vast majority, with funded support only for the poorest with the most critical needs. Programmes previously funded by specific grants which have now been removed from ring-fencing and rolled into general funding face cuts - so mental health, learning disabilities, learning and development and carers will suffer. Third-party service providers - outside the local authority - will see their costs targetted and funding for that will be cut.

I warn you not to be young.

Over at Children, Young People and Families, cuts will be made to the costs of looked after children and we can expect the social service team to be 'remodelled' - or cut. The Education Welfare Service will be reduced and savings will be ripped from Special Educational Needs, Disabilities, Day Nurseries and Children's Centres will all face spending cutbacks. A common pattern is that schools - funded by the direct schools grant and not through this funding stream - will be expected to 'contribute' more to these centralised operations and part of the Early Intervention Grant has been snaffled to support this new Future Operating Model. This has already been started with things like school swimming and museum visit costs now being charged to schools. Youth services will also have the begging bowl out to school governors, but given that school funding is legally restricted to being spent on educational needs, this may prove difficult to support. Buildings are expected to be transferred across as part of new community, charitable or private sector offerings to cover some 40 existing operations.

School transport will be shredded - including transport for children with special needs - and all those benefitting from assistance will be reassessed against new and tougher criteria to deliver hefty savings.

Schools cleaning, catering, music services, outdoor services and health education are being forcibly outsourced to a new co-operative and support cut for health education. School improvement partners have been scrapped and most of the professional advisors previously employed by BCC have already left to join a private company which currently has a monopoly in the city. Schools will no longer even get free briefings on policy from the city council - these have been removed and will be available through the private sector at a price.

I don't know where all this money to support services provided from outside the school is going to come from. School budgets are under huge pressure and I can't see them being able to offer much help.

I will return to this, but there's a sample of the headline cuts. There is much more, but the detail will be worked out over months, not days, as the Conservative teeth dig into our City and the Liberal Democrats watch and cheer on the destruction of services we once valued.

Fair and progressive cuts? Or not.

2011-02-14T07:30:00.000Z

The graph above is lifted from the Birmingham City Council Business Plan 2011 (of which more to come).

The further up the chart, the more deprived the council area. The further to the right, the bigger the cut imposed by this government. Birmingham, being an area particularly affected by deprivation, predictably faces one of the biggest cuts of any local authority.

Truly, we are all in this together. Just that some are more in it than others.

Gove's 'abuse of power'

2011-02-11T22:45:00.000Z

As Pencilandpapertest points out, Gove came out fighting after a judge had accused him of an abuse of power by scrapping the Building Schools for the Future programme without any reference to an equalities assessment or with any consultation with the local authorities involved.

Rather than admit he had made a mistake, he couldn't wait to point out that nobody should get their hopes up that he would reach a different decision. He didn't accept that he had been manifestly unfair or needlessly rushed a decision - as if the fiasco over the innumerable lists of scrapped projects wasn't evidence enough. He can't find the cash to replace crumbling schools -Sandwell's scheme was an ambitious plan to completely restructure and reorder the council's school system, making the whole thing fit for the future - but turn up with a half-baked plan to open an ironically-titled 'free' school and Gove will chuck wads of cash in your general direction.

"I am delighted that the Judge has ruled in my favour”. To go with his peculiar interpretation of making a decision that was deemed to be both unlawful and an abuse of power, Gove chooses to add an unpleasant whiff of eau-de-gloat, picking out the following for our delectation: “…no-one should gain false hope from this decision.

In other words, he has already decided the outcome.

Again.

Local authorities, pupils, parents, courts - is there anyone that Gove doesn't hold in contempt?

Letter to the Times

2011-02-11T07:30:00.001Z

Today, 131 of the most senior Labour councillors sign a letter to the Times

David Cameron acknowledged in a speech in 2009 that “local government is officially the most efficient part of the public sector”. As councillors and elected mayors we will work to continue to drive down the costs of delivering quality public services. However, we feel that the Secretary of State for Local Government, Eric Pickles, has been disingenuous about the impact his cuts will
have on our ability to provide services. The design and depth of the cuts to local authority budgets will undoubtedly hurt local economies and damage frontline services. Because of the costly long-term impacts these cuts will have to our communities and our local economies we believe it is important that we keep the discussion with the Government open. We therefore invite Liberal Democrat councillors to join us in writing to their fellow Liberal Democrat, Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander, to ask him to ask Eric Pickles to look again at the unfairness of the Tory-Lib Dem Government’s cuts.

According to Next Left, the relationship between local authorities and the ministerial team at DCLG is now at rock bottom and digging down, so future conversations will be had through the Lib Dems at the Cabinet Office. How long this situation can be allowed to continue is a very difficult question, as Pickles has proven himself to be a spectacularly unpopular Secretary of State, aided in this quest by his sidekicks Shapps and Stunnell. While the depth and breadth of the cuts is certainly an issue, it is the repetitive attempts to shift the blame for actual service reductions onto the local authorities and the level of the spin being used to attack councils that has really angered councillors. Will Cameron let the departmental dysfunctional relationship with their local authority colleagues continue and risk the whole thing grinding to a halt? Can he tempt Pickles away with some pies and another post?

Letter from the Lib Dem Cllrs to DCLG

2011-02-10T13:44:00.002Z

Hat tip to Lisa Ansell,

Sir, local government is playing its part in tackling the country's deficit and advancing the coalition's aims of localism and the Big Society. But local and central government are being let down by the Communities and Local Government Secretary who appears unwilling to lead the change that's so desperately needed.

Local government has made efficiency savings of 3% in each of the past eight years - in stark contrast to the runaway spending of central government under the previous administration. We've also been planning for further saving since the true state of the economy became apparent six months ago.

What has been delivered is a difficult cuts package across all government
departments, but clearly the most severe is to local government. These cuts will have an undoubted impact on all frontline council services, including care services to the vulnerable.
Rather than assist the country's recovery by making public sector savings in a way that can protect local economies and the frontline, the cuts are so structured that they will do the opposite. The local government settlement will take a major hit in this coming financial year and further, smaller, cuts in subsequent years.

This front-loading means councils do not have the lead-in time necessary to re-engineer services on a lower-cost base and ease staff cuts without forced, expensive redundancies.
Inexplicably, local government is also being denied the opportunity to spread the cost of reorganisation and downsizing over several years - at no cost to central government - which just makes even bigger in-year cuts inevitable the Secretary of State's role should be to facilitate necessary savings, while promoting the advance of localism and the Big Society. Unfortunately, Eric Pickles has felt it better to shake a stick at councillors than work with us.

Local and central government should be united in a shared purpose. Instead of chastising and denigrating local authorities through the media, the Government should deploy all its efforts to help councils minimise the impact on vulnerable communities and frontline services.

We would be delighted to discuss with the Secretary of State how we could take on the difficult challenges shared by all levels of government and would prefer to do this than continue with the gunboat diplomacy which is the current order of the day.

The unvarnished truth about Ronald Reagan

2011-02-10T13:19:00.001Z

A fascinating hatchet job on the memory of a vastly overrated US President.

The story about launching Challenger to meet the demands of a photo-opportunity was a new one to me. Even if the disaster couldn't have been foreseen and perhaps had more than one root cause, it is still shocking, given the risks of any space launch.

Clegg at bay

2011-02-10T07:30:00.000Z

I almost felt sorry for Nick Clegg while watching his Q&A session with a group of university students last night. This time last year, he would have been lionised by the group, praised as the future of progressive politics and chiming with the mood of youth. Now, he looked very drawn, despite his attempts to spin his personal broken promise as a win for students everywhere - a line that they just wouldn't swallow. Clegg's embarrassment also revealed that the plans to offer two free years to students in receipt of free school meals in sixth form are in tatters and look to be dead in the water.

Resorting to the condescending and insulting approach of suggesting that they simply failed to understand the policy didn't help him either and ensured that I couldn't find any pity for him.
He has chosen his path, taken his party with him towards electoral destruction and all but guaranteed them a return to political irrelevance for a generation. The tribal part of me enjoys it, but there is an element that feels sorrow that a party with many members of a truly progressive mind has been suckered into supporting Cameron's cronies. Nick Clegg has become a liability, an albatross around the neck of the Liberal Democrats and it would take a miracle for him to be fit to lead the party into the 2015 election.

As one student put it

You are either stupid, or you are mad, or you are malicious
Nick Robinson chided him for insulting the deputy prime minister, but he missed the point. Clegg might even be all three.

Shott at dusk

2011-02-09T22:00:00.002Z

With their own unique skill, the Liberal Democrats have danced all over the banking announcement today, as Lord Oakeshott was sacked from a post he didn't have in the first place. Apparently, even though he has been all across the press and broadcast media in recent months, described as a Liberal Democrat spokesman in the Lords, the Liberal Democrats have oddly denied that he held any formal post at all since the election, although a comment on Next Left points out that he was listed as a Treasury spokesperson in the Lib Dems own conference handbook last year.

He was sacked/stood down (or not) over these comments made to the BBC
The Treasury's negotiating tactics haven't been very good - they've got an awful combination of arrogance and incompetence. Most of them couldn't negotiate their way out of a paper bag and this is not as tough a deal as it should have been.
Can't argue with that assessment, to be honest. Like so much of the crowd-pleasing policy that is being pumped out of the dream factory at the moment, this is far more spin than substance. The banks have promised to lend more, but the amount at risk isn't the issue - the problem is the hoops that potential business borrowers are facing to be considered for a loan. Horrendously high interest rates for even small business overdrafts are the norm and otherwise solid business operations aren't being offered loans. The banks need to repay the nation for the damage caused by their profligacy pre-crash, when they were more than happy to gamble on dodgy packaged loans, by taking a few more risks now. This isn't a call for an excess of credit, but for the banks to fuel the growth and support the entrepreneurs who are our only hope of a way up and out.

The Oakeshott affair is interesting, though, as he is a close colleague of Vince Cable, who has been as positive as he can be about the proposals, but who can't be happy with the outcome.

Truth hurts - Hague winces at protest song on Andrew Marr Show

2011-02-08T08:00:00.000Z

An excellent protest song from Show of Hands. Arrogance, Ignorance and Greed - as seen on the Andrew Marr show last Sunday. In particular, watch out for William Hague, forced to sit through this attack and see him wince at the lyrics.