Labour should park its pink bus along with all the other gimmicks.

This week shoppers at a branch of ASDA in Stevenage were treated to an offer that was 'special' in entirely the wrong way.

It was the launch of the Labour Party's 'Woman to Woman' campaign and involved deputy leader Harriet Harman trundling up in a van the colour of a sunburnt Miss Piggy in search of the party's lost female voters.

To say this first big stunt of the coming election campaign caused a bit of a fuss is rather like saying the pigeons got a bit of a surprise when a dirty great cat appeared in their midst.

Twitter went wild with users, not all of them women, burning up their keyboards typing out pithy messages about how this was 'patronising' and 'sexist.' Even the usually Labour friendly Daily Mirror got in on the act with political correspondent Kevin Maguire tweeting 'Pink? Pink? I'd have expected Harriet Harman to demand a blue bus election bus to fight gender stereotypes.'

Defending the whole sorry stunt in an interview with ITV's This Morning show Harman said the colour of the van, which she had twisted herself into comical knots trying to say was magenta rather than pink, had to be eye catching because 'there is a big hole in our democratic politics.'

Its one shaped like the 9.1 million women who chose not to vote in the 2010 general election because, she said, 'they just don't think politicians have any interest in their lives,' and that she wanted to send the message to women to 'use your vote, use your voice because politics is too important to be left only to men.'

Noble sentiments, most things are too important to be left only to men; at least they are if you want anything to get done about them.

Later, speaking to the Huffington Post Harriet Harman defended the colour of the bus (its pink not magenta OK) said 'well it doesn't have big pink eyelashes on the front;' phew what a relief, because that would have been really patronising wouldn't it?

She also claimed her 'Woman to Woman' campaign was was the first campaign aimed at women, which would have come as a bit of a shock to the suffragettes.

There are times when the antics of politicians really do make you despair, its almost as if they're trying to make themselves irrelevant; this is one such occasion.

Supporters may point to the fact that a ComRes poll conducted for the Independent on Sunday still gives Labour a small lead over the Conservatives, but a bungle this big so early on could be a further nail in the party's electoral coffin. The same poll shows Ed Milliband trailing David Cameron on most questions relating to leadership abilities and sanctioning a mess like this is hardly going to do him any favours.

This is a scheme that is long on marketing gimmickry and painfully short on actual ideas, politicians trundling around the country in a bus looking for voters is hardly an original concept. The fact they've decided the colour of the bus matters to which voters they attract is a new wrinkle, suggesting they think the whole process is a bit like hunting for moths. As a whole though it is all too sadly typical of the sort of nonsense Labour have been prey to since the advent of Tony Blair.

You have to feel sorry for Harriet Harman, she is an intelligent woman who has spent her career speaking up for her gender in parliament, often facing harsh criticism and cheap ridicule in the process; she deserves better than being wheeled out to front stupidity of this sort.

This is further proof that Labour, in this instance, the Tories with their black tie balls and Fifty Shades of Grey style relationship with city hedge funds are sure to come up with something equally silly some time soon, are totally out of touch with the electorate.

There is no such thing as 'women's issues', in the sense of issues that are of concern to women and nobody else. Men often think that more should be done about domestic violence or to improve access to affordable childcare; women want the government to do more to help small businesses and think the UK should have a strong defence policy.

Personal experience is a far more reliable guide to political priorities than gender or any other crude generalisation. Thinking this isn't the case is in effect supporting the 'divide and rule' tactics that force voters into dozens of small camps each set against the other that supports the defunct status quo.

It is a mindset that Labour, a party that originated in a radical challenge to the establishment, should be fighting against; not endorsing through silly stunts, however well meant they might be.

The decline of our high streets is about more than just empty shops.

It is an unfortunate truth that wherever there is a league table there is a good chance that Stoke-on-Trent will find itself near to the bottom.

That happened again last week when the Local Data Company published its league table for town with the most vacant shops, three of the six towns making up our city placed in the bottom ten.

In Burslem, according to the report, 29.4% of shops are empty, in Hanley its 27.7% and in Stoke 26.6% of shops are standing empty, the national average is 11.8% with towns in the South doing better than those in the grim old North.

Traders across the city called on the council to do more to support businesses in the six town centres, Cynthia Bruce, owner of the Aisle of Brides store in Stoke told the Sentinel that 'rents here are too high' and said that something needs to be done to 'give people an incentive to move here.'

In defence the council drew attention to the £4.1million spent on restoring buildings in Burslem town centre and the £900,000 facelift scheme being delivered in Stoke through a partnership with English Heritage.

Council leader Mohammed Pervez told the Sentinel the 'problems of empty shops affects cities up and down the UK,' and said the council's regeneration strategy is about 'working closely with private sector partners, helping to create the space and conditions for businesses to thrive.'

The decline of the British high street is a tragedy that has been unfolding in slow motion for decades. Everybody thinks something should be done about it; but nobody seems to know exactly what.

That doesn't mean that nothing has been done, just that most of the attempts at revival have been pretty ineffectual if often well meant.

Take the so called 'Portas Pilots', when the government brought in abrasive TV personality Mary Portas in to help revive flagging town centres with, of course, a camera crew following close behind.

The key feature here is that what was going on was a television programme first and a scheme to save struggling high streets from oblivion second, a very distant second at times. In the way of modern television the driving force was conflict and Portas provided this in spades, striding around speaking plainly, or being plain rude depending on your view of such things.

The camera loved it, many of the towns involved didn't, spin the tape forward a couple of years and most are no further forward from where they started and the people concerned have gained little apart from, perhaps, the feeling they have been chewed up and spat out that is common to anyone who has been in contact with the less than magical world of reality television.

The truth is our complacent political class isn't much fussed what happens to the high street, or streets, in towns like Stoke, like an earthquake in China there demise is sad, but too far away to have an impact on their lives. They inhabit a mostly southern world of bijou towns with artisan bakers, a couple of art galleries and a delightful little gastro-pub, a super place to live, if you're rich enough.

There is no sadder place to be than in the centre of a town like Stoke that is slowly dying from a mix of inertia and official indifference. Sadly local government seems no more interested in the plight of the high street than the national variety.

Too many councillors and local government officials have bought into the witless idea that the high street and the small independent businesses that are its core are, like steam trains and fountain pens, a charming anachronism that have had their day. Big chains and flagship malls are where its at; nobody and nothing else makes the game.

You can see evidence of this in the way Mr Pervez and his cabinet have trumpeted the forthcoming arrival of fast food chains Nandos and Frankie and Benny's at the expanded Intu Potteries Centre. The jobs they will bring are welcome in a town where too many people are without work; the corresponding replacement of local character with corporate sameness isn't.

The tragedy for towns like Stoke lies in the fact that to the people who live and shop there they matter for reasons way beyond where they buy their groceries. They inform deep feelings about identity and act as a barometer for the health of our communities.

When they are allowed to wither it is hard not to feel that yet again local people are having something important taken away from them by an elite who never see, let alone have to live with the consequences of their actions.

The lesson of the big crash of 2008 is that people want a society that operates on a more human scale. That's why shoppers are deserting huge out of town supermarkets in favour of the shops on their doorstep, dropping processed food trucked in from miles away for produce grown locally; and why the idea that only London can deliver good governance looks like the real anachronism.

Sadly the political establishment, despite its members boasting a constellation of starred double firsts in PPE from Oxbridge are, again, one jump behind the rest of us. As a result they can't hear the death rattle of the high street because of all the noise they're making about austerity being the only game in town.

Let’s kick the D-word out of politics.

Next Tuesday there will be a hundred days to go until the next general election; just writing that sentence makes me cringe.

It shouldn’t be like that, I’ve been actively interested in politics for fifteen years and if I’m getting turned off by the prospect of the coming election what chance is there of a floating voter getting engaged?

Even before the race has begun in earnest what passes for debate has settled into the grimly repetitive rhythms of a playground squabble. Labour accuse the Tories of ‘wrecking’ the NHS, they in turn say the only way to ‘save’ it is by selling huge chunks off to private companies. Ukip want to make our flesh creep over immigration and everyone agrees there is no alternative to more cuts, although Red Ed, bless, seems to think Labour cuts would somehow be kinder than Tory ones.

Locally a Labour group with no idea what to do about the city’s problems, apart it seems from dreaming up costly and badly run projects on which to spend money we don’t have, clings limpet like to power for no reason other than that’s what they’ve always done.

When it comes to the ever more troubled Smithfield project, still no tenant in sight and over the weekend rumours emerged of fresh problems with the floor that could being more costs and delays voters could be forgiven for thinking we’re living in a topsy-turvy version of the Kevin Costner film ‘Field of Dreams.’ What the vision told them about had been built, but they, meaning the investors, will not come.

The Independents and some others carry the banner of protest, but they are too few and too divided to bring about change and so inertia and Labour could win the day.

All of the above makes me sound like the worst sort of saloon bar cynic, they’re all the same so why bother with any of them, and that isn’t good.

I have always believed that politics matters, that it should be an optimistic business and even though they are the most over used words in its lexicon; that it really is all about hope and change. What needs to change than to make me feel a bit less jaded about the coming election?

What we need to do is get rid of something that has dragged politics down for decades; deference.

Let me explain what I mean using a story told to me some years ago when I was Secretary of my local Labour Party branch. A member told me about taking his very elderly mother-in-law to vote; she had poor eyesight but was in every other respect the full shilling. She would always ask him how far down the list the Labour candidate was, count that number of places down and make her mark. At no stage did she ask the name of the candidate or what he or she stood for, the idea that she might vote for anyone other than Labour was, to her, as unlikely as one of Pavlov’s dogs not getting excited when the bell rang.

You could probably get someone to tell you the same story in a staunchly Tory constituency and it is a mind-set that has done terrible damage to our political life. Too many people voting how they have always voted lets the political class massively off the hook. It means they need only pay lip service to engaging with the voting public, leaving them with more time to concentrate on their own insular little squabbles, it’s like Game of Thrones without the swords, a good thing too says our old chum the saloon bar cynic because you wouldn’t trust that lot with anything sharp.

Locally it means Labour can go on using a play-book written for them by regional office that ignores most of the things that concern local people safe in the knowledge that however rough the waves might be in May they’ll still be there clinging to the civic rocks once the storm has passed.

It doesn’t have to be like that, we deserve so much better; but it is up to us to do something about it because the status-quo suits the people who have always held power all too well.

We need to look beyond the so familiar they’ve gone past contempt main parties to new parties that bring new voices to the debate. Voices that, incidentally, sound more like yours and mine because they belong to candidates who have lived a life outside politics.

If you can’t find a party that fits the bill then be one of those new voices yourself and stand as an independent committed to living up to the name.

This isn’t easy for some people, even though it has let them down time and again the Labour Party, for example, exerts a strong emotional pull over those who have supported it for generations. If we’re serious about wanting change though then the time has come to let go of nanny’s hand and make our own way.

Who’s afraid of the big debate?

The leaders of the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties along with Ukip supremo Nigel Farage have written to the prime minister saying that it is ‘unacceptable’ for him not to take part in the pre- election television debates.

The debates were first staged in 2010 and, briefly, made Nick Clegg the UK’s most popular politician, Mr Cameron has refused to take part this time round on the grounds that following a ruling by OFCOM the Green Party will not be allowed to take part, despite polling ahead of the Lib Dems in the European elections.

In identical letters the three party leaders say that it would be a ‘major setback for our democratic processes if these debates were not repeated because of one politician’s unwillingness to participate.’

They go on to say that unacceptable for the ‘political self-interest of one party leader’, the prime minister is reputedly far from keen on the idea of debating immigration policy with Nigel Farage, ‘were to deny the public the opportunity to see their leaders debate in public.’

The letters end with a call for broadcasters to ‘press ahead’ with staging the debates and to ‘provide an empty podium’ should Mr Cameron have a ‘last minute change of heart’ about participating.

The BBC, Sky, ITV and Channel 4 have tabled plans for three televised debates the first of which would see David Cameron and Ed Milliband go head to head, in the second they would be joined by Nick Clegg and in the third Nigel Farage would make up a foursome. Confused? The audience probably will be.

Quoted on the corporation’s website BBC assistant political editor Norman Smith said that broadcasters would show a ‘huge amount of caution’ before going ahead with the debates without the prime minister taking part.

David Cameron’s conversion to supporting the Greens is frankly unconvincing; he is merely using an ill thought out judgement by OFCOM as an excuse not to participate. I never thought I’d write this sentence, but I’m inclined to agree with Norman Tebbit, if the PM carries on like this it is hard to draw any other conclusion that that he’s ‘frit.’

On the face of it he has no reason to be, of the three main party leaders he is the one most likely to handle the debates best. Clegg is too fatally compromised by five years of coalition; Ed Milliband’s awkwardness is near legendary, if he dusts down his ‘Dave’ persona Mr Cameron though could still connect with the audience.

There are, it must be said, some problems with the debates themselves, three is far too many, after the first debate most of the viewing public lose interest. If there has to be three then broadcasters could make things a lot clearer for everyone if they kept the same line-up throughout.

These though are distractions, that he is so unwilling to take part speaks volumes about David Cameron’s weakness as a leader and the failings of the political class in general.

The three main party leaders will, if they go ahead, have been comprehensively rehearsed by their aides, making a genuinely off the cuff remark or honest answer as rare as water on Mars. Instead we will be treated to the frigid lexis and faux outrage that for all it might excite the boys and girls in the Westminster bubble bores the public to tears.

Adding Nigel Farage and Natalie Bennett to the mix would mean including a variable for which the political establishment has no idea how to compensate. Both have a directness of approach that could turn the safe dolly-drop questions the other three party leaders have been practicing not answering for weeks into unplayable bouncers.

Undoubtedly the player with the most to lose would be Mr Cameron, unlike in 2010 he is there to defend the record of his government, not make blue sky promises about what he’ll do if we trust him with the keys to Downing Street. The definition he uses to prove the success of his government’s economic plans is so narrow it leaves the concerns of most of the people likely to be watching out in the cold.

What David Cameron if rightly ‘frit’ about is being challenged by Farage and Bennett on why a government that pledged to ‘make work pay’ has presided over a situation where working families are driven to use food banks. How the unnecessary panic he stoked up over immigration has handed a golden opportunity to Ukip allowing them to move into the political mainstream and, most of all, why he has done nothing to stop major corporations from dodging tax whilst public services are being cut to the bone.

All of the above are undoubtedly tricky questions; but having to answer them is the price of holding power. By trying to dodge doing so David Cameron is further reinforcing the feeling that politics has become a closed court with little interest in or respect for the feelings of ordinary citizens.

He should stop making excuses, man up and take part. If he doesn’t he risks, to adapt a phrase he coined during his salad days, appearing to be an analogue leader in what is starting at last to look like a multi-party world

A slick performance from the Commissioner as Rent a Cop eyes a move to Stoke.

On Monday evening around twenty two people braved the damp and cold evening of what was, allegedly, the gloomiest day of the year to attend a PACT meeting at the Medical Institute in Hartshill.

The attraction was a double bill featuring Staffordshire Police and Crime Commissioner Matthew Ellis and Joy Garner, Stoke-on-Trent’s representative on the Police and Crime Panel.

There has been a change in Mr Ellis’s style since his last visit to this parish. I’ve previously described him as resembling a house master at a good public school, now he seems like a man who might have his eye on being headmaster someday.

There was certainly a touch of the junior minister with prospects in his delivery on Monday night.

He outlined the impact his attempts to modernise the technology used by the county’s officers had on putting more Bobbies on the beat. Streamlining the mountains of paperwork they have to deal with and getting the multitude of IT systems the force uses, and which currently get on together about as well as cats in a bag, to coordinate properly certainly met with approval from the uniformed officers in the room.

Mr Ellis also highlighted his determination to engage the public with the work of the police, through the 268 projects backed to date through his People Power fund and the work done by the force’s cadet scheme to reach out to young people.

Other engagement initiatives planned for the year ahead include involving members of the public in appointing a new Chief Constable and the setting up of a Safer Communities Panel. Quite how said panels will work, who will sit on them and whether they will have anything like teeth remains to be seen, but it does suggest some level of commitment to public involvement.

All in the garden isn’t rosy though, with his brows knitted together in the way they teach people to do at politician school when they’re being ‘grave’ Mr Ellis told his audience that funding was ‘tricky’; meaning the Treasury would like the force to rub along with less of it, but that he was committed to protecting front line services.

He also expressed disappointment with the support offered to victims of crime and the inability of the council, police and other bodies to work together efficiently. The former, he said, would be addressed by a ‘victim’s gateway’ bringing all the available services together in June.

It is fair to say that Councillor Garner has a less rehearsed approach to public speaking to that of Commissioner Ellis, less stagecraft and more of a chat over a non-existent garden wall. Not a bad approach and sometimes an appealing one since it has the benefit of being genuine rather than just seeming to be genuine.

Unfortunately she came to Monday’s meeting struggling under the weight of two problems. The first is that the police and crime panel has a somewhat nebulous role scrutinising the activities of a public servant most of the public couldn’t be bothered to vote for.

She gamely asserted that the panel was there to ask the public’s questions and then spent much of the meeting fielding questions of her own as to whether the city was ‘shouting up’ for itself on the panel. Her answer that the members of the panel worked together to hold the PCC to account was factually accurate, but exposed their big problem. As a committee by its very nature the work it does is dull and focussed on detail making it hard to feed the press with stories of battles won and concessions gained.

The other problem dogging Councillor Garner was that she spent much of the evening defending the council’s unpopular cuts agenda. Questions about the removal of school crossing guards and the money spent of trying to bring HS2 to the city bounced over her head like cricket balls on a fast wicket, by parroting the party line about the cuts being all the fault of the wicked government she played a straight bat to most deliveries, but scored few runs.

Mr Ellis didn’t have the easiest of times answering his own questions, asked about statistics on littering he gave an ill thought out response about attending a terrorism briefing earlier in the day had pushed such matters clear out of his mind; rude. He also coined the phrase ‘purposeful visibility’ to describe what he wanted officers to engage in, which sounds like pure minister speak. Aspiring to play with the political big kids is fine, but he should try to avoid picking up their worst habits.

The surprise of the evening came at the end of the meeting with Stewart Brown and Steve Rowney of security company Facilitas giving a presentation on proposals to pilot a Community Patrol and Response project in Hartshill and Penkhull.

In the spirit of openness I should declare that I live in one of the communities where the project is to be trialled. It amounts to householders paying £1 a week to have a security guard patrol their neighbourhood and report any suspicious incidents or individuals to the police.

Their motives may be noble, the project would be run on a not for profit basis; but it won’t work and shouldn’t be attempted.

The feeling of the meeting expressed though a number of questions from the floor and some creditable comments by Councillor Garner was that local people won’t support a private police force. There are also practical problems since the patrols would only be able to observe and report and so couldn’t protect people or property.

This particular project is likely to fail, what worries me is that now the idea is in the public forum it won’t go away. A council keen to cut costs any which way it can is open to being tempted by ‘radical’ suggestions.

Like it or not Rent-a-Cop could be patrolling a street near you if not tomorrow then some time soon.

Tony Blair shows why ex leaders are the elephant in the political drawing room.

Former leaders are always a source of trouble for political parties, like the elephant in the drawing room they are indisputably there; but everyone tries their best to ignore them.

That is certainly the case when it comes to the Labour Party and Tony Blair their most successful, and most controversial leader.

Before the new year break he said in an interview given to the Economist that Labour risk losing the next election if they are perceived as being too left wing.

There was a risk, he said, of May’s general election being one where ‘a traditional left wing party competes with a traditional left wing one, with the traditional result’, meaning defeat for Labour.

The Labour Party, he went on to say ‘succeeds best when it is in the centre ground’, adding that he was ‘still very much New Labour’ and that ‘Ed would not describe himself that way, so there is a difference there.’

All very neatly put with the inference, for those who wish to find it, that Red Ed is too red and will lead the party to defeat.

Lucy Powell, a close ally of Ed Milliband told the BBC that she had ‘a great deal of respect’ for Tony Blair, but said he was a politician from ‘a different time’ and that the challenges faced by the current leadership are different.

Paul Kenny of the GMB union, also speaking to the BBC, was more robust saying that Mr Blair was ‘disconnected’ from the lives of the people Labour represents, adding that it was ‘sad and disappointing’ that the former party leader appeared to oppose Labour’s policies aimed at closing the ‘unacceptable inequality gap between those at the top and the rest in our society.’

At one level this is, of course, a story about one of the largest egos in politics grabbing a few precious minutes in the spotlight. Mr Blair later said that his comments had been ‘misinterpreted’ and that he expected Labour to win in May. The damage though may already have been done.

Lucy Powell is right when she says that Tony Blair is a man out of his time with a take on political realities to match, the centre ground is a much less attractive place to be than it was in the 1990’s.

The trouble with Ed Milliband is that since becoming leader in 2010 he has tried with ever increasing levels of desperation to please everyone, the unions, the New Labour faction, the press and an increasingly restive grassroots membership; with the predictable result that he has ended up satisfying nobody.

There is a real risk that given his past form he will respond to this fairly coded criticism by making yet another policy lurch with the associated pratfall; that would be a potentially fatal mistake.

The parties that are growing, Ukip, the Greens, and the SNP et al make no pretence of being on the middle ground; they are all very clear about where they stand. In the case of Ukip that may often be in a rather worrying place, but it is a distinct one for all that.

Labour can’t be the nostalgia party wedded to a past rooted in heavy industries that have gone for good, they could and should though be more vocal about adhering to their core values. Having a leader who is determined to be the first version of himself rather than the next Tony Blair would be a good start.

Government cash barely skims the surface of Britain’s pothole problem.

The government gave motorists an early Christmas present on Tuesday in the shape of £6 billion in extra funding for councils to fill in potholes on the nation’s roads. Councils will also be able to bid for a share of an additional £575 million to pay for repairs to infrastructure such as junctions, bridges and street lights, £578 has also been set aside to reward councils who demonstrate ‘value for money’ in carrying out improvements.

Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin told the BBC the funding on offer was enough to pay for 18 million potholes to be filled, saying it was ‘part of our long term economic plan to ensure we have a transport network fit for the twenty first century.’

The Local Government Association ‘welcomed’ the extra funding, but, said a spokesman there was still ‘a very long way to go’ when it comes to improving the standard of Britain’s roads. He went on to say, also speaking to the BBC, that though ‘helpful’ the money on offer ‘does not bridge the funding gap which is increasing year on year.’

The Institution of Civil Engineers described the money as a ‘welcome boost’, but, their spokesperson said, with ‘catch up’ costs totaling £12 billion ‘a significant gap will still remain in local authority revenue budgets.’

Shadow transport Secretary Michael Dugher told the BBC ‘local roads are in a desperate state under David Cameron’ adding that ‘hard pressed motorists and businesses are justifiably sick and tired of having their vehicles damaged because of Britain‘s pothole crisis.’

The trouble with Christmas presents, early or otherwise, is that they tend to look much less impressive when examined in the cold light of Boxing Day morning, that’s pretty much the case here.

On the face of it £6 billion looks like a lot of money, but when spread over more than a hundred local authorities over six years it is really little more than enough to pay for the pothole problem to be, literally, skimmed over. As for the £578 million set aside to reward councils for providing ‘value for money’ given the demands on their shrinking budgets it is hard to see how any could earn a share, unless they interpret value for money as meaning penny pinching; another exciting perverse incentive brought to you thanks to austerity.

Maybe it is time to see the pothole problem as one we can never solve so long as traffic volumes continue to rise and see this as an opportunity to invest in public transport. That probably got you spitting out your leftover turkey, the received wisdom being after all that we love our cars and hate busses.

The thing with the received wisdom is that it often fails to tell the whole story, what we dislike and with good reason isn’t public transport as such; it’s the costly, threadbare and inefficient services we often have to put up with. After all Britain is a small country, there is no need for people to drive everywhere and it would probably be a much nicer place of most of us didn’t.

Just imagine if, for example, First Potteries had focussed on customer aspirations and day to day experiences as much as cost savings and efficiency when they reorganised their routes in the summer. The months since wouldn’t have been eaten up with campaigns by residents angry at a service being withdrawn followed by frequent climb downs by the company, all of which is time consuming, unproductive an the sort of thing that persuades people to stay in their cars.

Travelling by public transport in this country is all too often an uncomfortable and frustrating experience; it doesn’t have to be though. The application of a little of the funding lavished on the roads along with a lot of thought and a willingness to listen to passengers could make the service into one people actually want to use.

Nobody should be forced out of their car, but if a viable and pleasant alternative were available many people might be persuaded to leave it behind. A Britain with less traffic on its roads would certainly be a calmer and healthier place; there’d probably be much fewer potholes too.