When is a barbecue summer not a barbecue summer? When it’s predicted by the Met Office of course.
As they’ve spent the past week pointing out with a Tour De France style display of back peddling of the sort usually put on by a junior government minister caught in an embarrassing situation, the Met Office didn’t actually say we we’re going to have a good summer. What they said, and you can probably hear the sound of a hair being split lengthways here, was that there was a 65% chance of it being a good summer.
After all we did have a couple of good weeks in early June and a rain free Wimbledon meant that Cliff Richard didn’t end up ‘entertaining’ the crowds on Centre Court. Anyway long range forecasting is jolly difficult and so we shouldn’t grouse when they get things a tad wrong.
As Brian Goulding, a spokesman for the Met Office told the BBC this week ‘seasonal forecasting is a difficult thing to do and this places some limitations on our forecast.’
Tell that to the marines Mr Goulding, actually, no, go tell it to all the families who in these environmentally conscious and recession haunted times opted for a staycation this year and as a result spent two weeks trapped in a caravan listening to the rain drum on the roof as their children wailed ‘we’re bored; there’s nothing to do.’
The British are a patient people, we’ll put up with just about anything from bent MP’s to trains that don’t even try to run on time, never mind customer service that is all but non existent; but having the weather forecast exposed as little more than so much over optimistic spin may well be too much.
You can be honest we don’t mind the rain, moaning about the weather is a national sport, tell it how it is and leave the spin and shifty evasions after the fact to the real experts; the politicians.
Oh David; you are a twit.
Its official, the silly season is well and truly upon us, noting else could explain the acres of newsprint devoted to David Cameron’s slip of the tongue during an interview broadcast on Absolute Radio last week.
He was talking about why he didn’t have any plans to join the growing number of MP’s who broadcast their thoughts to a breathless world via Twitter and said:
‘I think politician do have to think about what we say. And the trouble with Twitter is the instantness of it. Too many twits make a t**t.’
You got that right Dave, to his credit Mr Cameron issued an almost immediate apology saying ‘You always have to be careful what you say. If I’ve caused any offence I obviously regret that.’
As he enjoys a trashy novel on the beach this summer perhaps the Eton educated Mr Cameron might like to ponder a little maxim that was prominently displayed at my much less august alma mater ‘engage brain before opening mouth.’
Not such a nice guy Alan.
A few months ago I wrote an article on another site suggesting that Home Secretary Alan Johnson might make a future leader of the Labour Party. I was wrong.
A point proved this week by his shameful refusal to take action to ensure that Gary McKinnon, a rather sad young man suffering from Asberger’s Syndrome who hacked into the Pentagon’s computer system searching for information about UFO’s, would face trial in the UK rather than being extradited to the US.
Mr McKinnon’s guilt isn’t in question, rather whether a fragile man liable to self harm were he to be thrown into the bear pit of the US prison system wouldn’t be better served by being tried and punished on home soil.
The first duty of any leader is to protect the vulnerable; Alan Johnson has failed in that duty as has the government in which he serves; shame on him and on them.
Farewell Sir Bobby
On Friday the death of Sir Bobby Robson the former England football manager was announced and, for once, the tributes that followed from the great and the good of the game to dozens of ordinary fans were utterly genuine.
In the silly, self regarding world of professional football he was, despite filling his trophy cabinet with silverware over a fifty year career and later facing a horrific illness, a true original; a quiet and humble hero; a true gentleman of a type we may never see again.
Sunday, 2 August 2009
Friday, 24 July 2009
Time to break through the glass ceiling.
Social mobility in modern Britain has ground to a halt with professions such as the law, medicine and journalism increasingly closed to anyone unlucky enough not to be born with a silver spoon in their mouth. This was the sad conclusion drawn by a report chaired by former minister Alan Milburn published this week.
Children from poor backgrounds, it concluded, need more encouragement and better careers advice to help them realise their full potential. Speaking to the BBC on Tuesday morning Mr Milburn said of the government’s attempts to level the educational playing field over the past twelve years ‘We have raised the glass ceiling but I don’t think we’ve broken through it yet.’
Too many professions, he said, still operated a ‘closed shop’ mentality when it came to recruitment and what was needed was a ‘great wave of social mobility’ to match that of the 50’s and 60’s that would lift talented people from disadvantaged backgrounds into previously closed professions.
Critics of the report, unsurprisingly, cited the decline and fall of the grammar school system from the sixties onwards as the chief driver behind the stalling of social mobility. Daily Mail columnist Quentin Letts spoke for the majority of people on this side of the argument when he said, also to the BBC, ‘if only you brought selection back into state schools and as a result had a decent education system’ people from poor families would be able to ‘power through’ the glass ceiling.
In response Alan Milburn said that selection had worked when there were 250,000 students studying at Britain’s universities, but was no longer applicable at a time when student numbers have swelled to 2.5million.
As ever in matters such as this both sides get some important things right whilst at the same time ignoring much that is important, but, from their respective standpoint, inconvenient.
Alan Milburn is right to point out the extent to which the professions are still stuffy, clannish and disposed towards looking backwards and that in a modern society they should be representative on the social mix of the country in the same way they should of the mix regarding race, gender and disability. This isn’t a radical departure, its just basic common sense.
Quentin Letts and the legions of people who support the reintroduction of grammar schools make a valid point, however much the idealists dislike it selection will always have a role to play in education. When we try to make everybody equal we inevitably end up rounding standards down and preventing talent from flourishing, a high price to pay for ideological purity.
Both sides of the argument seem to ignore though one major point, social mobility cannot simply be commanded from the centre, it depends to a large part on the behaviour of individuals, and, sad to say, too many people remain on the bottom rung of the ladder because they choose, consciously or not, to do so.
We are all, quite rightly, concerned by the chronic underachievement of many members of what used to be called the white working class, not least because it has been a major contributing factor in the rise and rise of the far right in some of Britain’s most disadvantaged areas. It can, I would guess, be attributed to one key factor, the near total collapse of aspiration amongst the same social group.
This can be seen in the unwillingness of white working class boys to engage with education for fear of seeming to have diminished their masculinity by doing so, and in the number of girls from similar backgrounds who would rather be ‘famous’, than clever. It is a shocking testament to the shrinking of horizons that has taken place over the past fifty years.
It wasn’t always so, within living memory education was prized highly by working class people, every mining village and mill town had its own institute and library filled with working people determined to better themselves through learning. It goes without saying that these people wanted their children to do even better than they had, and to their credit many of them did too.
This government and the next should take heed of Alan Milburn’s report, central government can do a great deal to improve careers advice and to make sure children leave school with the skills and qualifications to get good jobs, but it can’t act alone. Individuals must take more responsibility for their progress and that made by their children. Making room at the top is not enough on its own, people must be encouraged to make the sacrifices necessary to climb the ladder.
Children from poor backgrounds, it concluded, need more encouragement and better careers advice to help them realise their full potential. Speaking to the BBC on Tuesday morning Mr Milburn said of the government’s attempts to level the educational playing field over the past twelve years ‘We have raised the glass ceiling but I don’t think we’ve broken through it yet.’
Too many professions, he said, still operated a ‘closed shop’ mentality when it came to recruitment and what was needed was a ‘great wave of social mobility’ to match that of the 50’s and 60’s that would lift talented people from disadvantaged backgrounds into previously closed professions.
Critics of the report, unsurprisingly, cited the decline and fall of the grammar school system from the sixties onwards as the chief driver behind the stalling of social mobility. Daily Mail columnist Quentin Letts spoke for the majority of people on this side of the argument when he said, also to the BBC, ‘if only you brought selection back into state schools and as a result had a decent education system’ people from poor families would be able to ‘power through’ the glass ceiling.
In response Alan Milburn said that selection had worked when there were 250,000 students studying at Britain’s universities, but was no longer applicable at a time when student numbers have swelled to 2.5million.
As ever in matters such as this both sides get some important things right whilst at the same time ignoring much that is important, but, from their respective standpoint, inconvenient.
Alan Milburn is right to point out the extent to which the professions are still stuffy, clannish and disposed towards looking backwards and that in a modern society they should be representative on the social mix of the country in the same way they should of the mix regarding race, gender and disability. This isn’t a radical departure, its just basic common sense.
Quentin Letts and the legions of people who support the reintroduction of grammar schools make a valid point, however much the idealists dislike it selection will always have a role to play in education. When we try to make everybody equal we inevitably end up rounding standards down and preventing talent from flourishing, a high price to pay for ideological purity.
Both sides of the argument seem to ignore though one major point, social mobility cannot simply be commanded from the centre, it depends to a large part on the behaviour of individuals, and, sad to say, too many people remain on the bottom rung of the ladder because they choose, consciously or not, to do so.
We are all, quite rightly, concerned by the chronic underachievement of many members of what used to be called the white working class, not least because it has been a major contributing factor in the rise and rise of the far right in some of Britain’s most disadvantaged areas. It can, I would guess, be attributed to one key factor, the near total collapse of aspiration amongst the same social group.
This can be seen in the unwillingness of white working class boys to engage with education for fear of seeming to have diminished their masculinity by doing so, and in the number of girls from similar backgrounds who would rather be ‘famous’, than clever. It is a shocking testament to the shrinking of horizons that has taken place over the past fifty years.
It wasn’t always so, within living memory education was prized highly by working class people, every mining village and mill town had its own institute and library filled with working people determined to better themselves through learning. It goes without saying that these people wanted their children to do even better than they had, and to their credit many of them did too.
This government and the next should take heed of Alan Milburn’s report, central government can do a great deal to improve careers advice and to make sure children leave school with the skills and qualifications to get good jobs, but it can’t act alone. Individuals must take more responsibility for their progress and that made by their children. Making room at the top is not enough on its own, people must be encouraged to make the sacrifices necessary to climb the ladder.
Saturday, 18 July 2009
Reviving the national character.
A lot of things that don’t make much in the way of sense tend to get written about the decline of the British national character. Half a century or more of the welfare state, easy credit and easier divorce has, so the prophets of doom say, turned us into a nation of pleasure seeking layabouts liable to collapse into hysterics of a sort that would have shamed our stoic grandparents when faced with the slightest hardship.
I can only imaging those people who make their living reading the last rites over the corpse of their country must be blind to the solemn scenes played out with painful regularity in a small Wiltshire town with a name so typically British in its whimsicality you could be forgiven for thinking it the creation of a team of marketing experts.
The town in question is Wootton Bassett and the solemn ceremonies relate to the bodies of British service personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan returned in flag draped coffins to nearby RAF Lynham.
Almost since the start of those two unhappy wars local residents, joined more recently by people from around the country, line the streets to pay tribute to the returning war dead. This isn’t a ceremony scripted by some government appointee with one eye on garnering good publicity for an unpopular war; rather it is the spontaneous product of something the media claim has all but vanished from our national life, patriotism.
At a time when the nature of what it means to be British is under assault from the forces of a globalized economy, social change and a peculiarly British desire not to be seen making a fuss about who you are or what you stand for the display of public patriotism seen in Wootton Bassett is both authentic and vital.
Its authenticity rests on the fact they is so very understated, there are flags in abundance but they’re lowered to symbolise a shared grief and a shared understanding of the part played by the casualties of the current conflict in the much longer story of a small island struggling to make its way in a large and threatening world. The difference between this and the loud, gaudy and puddle shallow patriotism of a football crowd draped in flags of St George is as clear as that between lead and pure gold.
That such a display takes place at all is vital in the way that it demonstrates a sense of what it means to be British that isn’t based on race or generation, the crowds lining the streets in Wootton Bassett were as multi-cultural as anything assembled by earnest workers after integration and the age range spanned those with memories of the last world war to children young enough not to have been born when Tony Blair took office. It also symbolises a sense of what it means to be British that is informed by an awareness of our remarkable history and past achievements without being their hostage.
It would be reading too much into an event given value by its simplicity to claim this marks some ‘sea-change’ in the way we feel about ourselves; an end to years of hand wringing apologies and a mature acceptance that while many things change the essential character of a people is a constant. One thing though is clear, however much they wail about its decline the people who claim to understand the British character haven’t, in most cases, managed to get its measure.
It would be remiss of me not to mention the, partial, retirement this week of a sportsman who embodies much that is good about the British character, the England cricketer Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff, who has given up playing Test cricket saying ‘My body has told me its time to stop.’
Showing a typically self deprecating view of his own abilities as a player and an inspiration to others he scotched any suggestion that his impending retirement would overshadow England’s performance in the Ashes saying ‘An Ashes series is bigger than any one player.’
Quite so, but then again Freddie Flintoff himself is bigger than most other players. In an age when sports stars are all too often gilded aristocrats divorced from the real lives of the fans who pay their inflated wages or focussed but bland automata grinding out results with all the joy of a canned goods factory set up in a gulag he possesses the magic ingredient of ‘character.’
At its worst that can manifest itself in tipsy mishaps that make the front page of the next day’s tabloids, at its best is represents a mixture of gritty determination and anarchic good humour that is as British as tea on the village green and trains that don’t run on time.
Thirty one is a little young for a player of his standing to be hanging up his bat for good, and Freddie Flintoff will still be available for one day matches and lucrative 20/20 games, it does make you wonder what will become of him once the long littleness of full retirement descends.
Surely not decades of well fed ineffectuality as one of the ‘blazers’ of which there are already far too many hanging on the coat tails of British sport, maybe a better role would be as a role model for our disaffected young boys, proving that the discipline of being a team player need not mean the death of the flaws and virtues that make an individual remarkable.
I can only imaging those people who make their living reading the last rites over the corpse of their country must be blind to the solemn scenes played out with painful regularity in a small Wiltshire town with a name so typically British in its whimsicality you could be forgiven for thinking it the creation of a team of marketing experts.
The town in question is Wootton Bassett and the solemn ceremonies relate to the bodies of British service personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan returned in flag draped coffins to nearby RAF Lynham.
Almost since the start of those two unhappy wars local residents, joined more recently by people from around the country, line the streets to pay tribute to the returning war dead. This isn’t a ceremony scripted by some government appointee with one eye on garnering good publicity for an unpopular war; rather it is the spontaneous product of something the media claim has all but vanished from our national life, patriotism.
At a time when the nature of what it means to be British is under assault from the forces of a globalized economy, social change and a peculiarly British desire not to be seen making a fuss about who you are or what you stand for the display of public patriotism seen in Wootton Bassett is both authentic and vital.
Its authenticity rests on the fact they is so very understated, there are flags in abundance but they’re lowered to symbolise a shared grief and a shared understanding of the part played by the casualties of the current conflict in the much longer story of a small island struggling to make its way in a large and threatening world. The difference between this and the loud, gaudy and puddle shallow patriotism of a football crowd draped in flags of St George is as clear as that between lead and pure gold.
That such a display takes place at all is vital in the way that it demonstrates a sense of what it means to be British that isn’t based on race or generation, the crowds lining the streets in Wootton Bassett were as multi-cultural as anything assembled by earnest workers after integration and the age range spanned those with memories of the last world war to children young enough not to have been born when Tony Blair took office. It also symbolises a sense of what it means to be British that is informed by an awareness of our remarkable history and past achievements without being their hostage.
It would be reading too much into an event given value by its simplicity to claim this marks some ‘sea-change’ in the way we feel about ourselves; an end to years of hand wringing apologies and a mature acceptance that while many things change the essential character of a people is a constant. One thing though is clear, however much they wail about its decline the people who claim to understand the British character haven’t, in most cases, managed to get its measure.
It would be remiss of me not to mention the, partial, retirement this week of a sportsman who embodies much that is good about the British character, the England cricketer Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff, who has given up playing Test cricket saying ‘My body has told me its time to stop.’
Showing a typically self deprecating view of his own abilities as a player and an inspiration to others he scotched any suggestion that his impending retirement would overshadow England’s performance in the Ashes saying ‘An Ashes series is bigger than any one player.’
Quite so, but then again Freddie Flintoff himself is bigger than most other players. In an age when sports stars are all too often gilded aristocrats divorced from the real lives of the fans who pay their inflated wages or focussed but bland automata grinding out results with all the joy of a canned goods factory set up in a gulag he possesses the magic ingredient of ‘character.’
At its worst that can manifest itself in tipsy mishaps that make the front page of the next day’s tabloids, at its best is represents a mixture of gritty determination and anarchic good humour that is as British as tea on the village green and trains that don’t run on time.
Thirty one is a little young for a player of his standing to be hanging up his bat for good, and Freddie Flintoff will still be available for one day matches and lucrative 20/20 games, it does make you wonder what will become of him once the long littleness of full retirement descends.
Surely not decades of well fed ineffectuality as one of the ‘blazers’ of which there are already far too many hanging on the coat tails of British sport, maybe a better role would be as a role model for our disaffected young boys, proving that the discipline of being a team player need not mean the death of the flaws and virtues that make an individual remarkable.
Thursday, 9 July 2009
The king is dead; long live amnesia.
When the video to Thriller first came out in the early 1980’s one of the record shops in my home town put a television set in its window showing it on a constant loop. This rapidly drew a sizable crowd, each member of which was held in place by the fascination of watching a performance, and a performer, that seemed to be being beamed to earth from another and much stranger planet.
On the Tuesday of this week the world said goodbye to Michael Jackson, the architect of that spellbinding performance with a memorial concert that combined the glitz of a Vegas casino opening with the solemnity of a state funeral. Indeed since his death two weeks ago the eulogies attesting to his brilliance as a performer and his qualities as a man have reached such heights of hyperbole it must have come as a surprise to many people present that his casket wasn’t preceded into the auditorium by a rider-less horse with the fallen hero’s boots placed backwards in the stirrups.
As it was mourners around the world had to content themselves with a slick floor show and a tearful eulogy delivered by Jackson’s 11 year old daughter Paris, who said: ‘I just wanted to say, ever since I was born, Daddy has been the best father you could ever imagine,’ sentiments any child should be free to express about a departed parent, but not, perhaps ones that stand up to adult scrutiny in light of his somewhat eccentric approach to parenting.
Speaking about Jackson’s well eccentricity, a product, we are told of his fame and lack of a normal childhood and a reliable meal ticket for the tabloid press for the past two decades his brother Marlon told the audience: ‘We will never, never, understand what he endured,’ and added ‘maybe now the world will leave you alone.’
Some hope! Tuesday’s elaborate funerary farce was more about burnishing a legend than marking the passing of a life, after all a in the kingdom of pop a dead monarch can rack up more in the way of income than a living one.
At least he can if his legend in managed properly, if all the awkward mistakes and personal failings that make up an individual’s character, whether he is famous or not, are neatly ironed out, leaving behind, in Jackson’s case, a back catalogue of catchy, if slightly dated, bubblegum pop songs and the image of an eternal child bruised by the cruelty of the adult world.
All well and good, show business is the destination of choice for consumers who want to abandon reality you might say, apart from the fact that the reality of Jackson’s life and the squalid decade that preceded his death is the most important part of the story. They are an exemplar of how fame and wealth corrupt individuals and those around them. There must have been someone in Jackson’s entourage with the wit to say dangling your baby son out of a hotel window isn’t the sort of thing a responsible parent does; or that having inappropriately intimate friendships with young boys is no way to recapture your own lost childhood. Nobody did though because everyone was on the payroll and nobody wanted to risk their salary by being honest.
Perhaps by allowing others, through a willingness to remove the roseate glasses when they remember his life and career, to recognise the corrosive effects of fame and fortune is the one good thing that could come out of the wasted life of Michael Jackson.
It won’t happen though; it won’t happen because despite the fact that he was more astute than his tabloid image ever gave him credit for being, Jackson with his eccentricity and his well publicised slide from talented performer into public madness created the template for modern fame. We can see it in the elevation of poor helpless Susan Boyle to the position of being a national treasure and the delight the media took in her fall from grace; it was there in the tributes paid following the death of Jade Goody which neatly wrote out of her story little details like her lack of talent and involvement in a racist incident broadcast on national television.
Its telling, perhaps, that Jackson chose to call his Californian ranch Neverland since like Peter Pan there was always something a little sinister about him, in rejecting the cares of the adult world he also rejected its responsibilities and that, however hard we try to pretend otherwise, isn’t a recipe for preserving innocence; it’s a recipe for chaos.
On the Tuesday of this week the world said goodbye to Michael Jackson, the architect of that spellbinding performance with a memorial concert that combined the glitz of a Vegas casino opening with the solemnity of a state funeral. Indeed since his death two weeks ago the eulogies attesting to his brilliance as a performer and his qualities as a man have reached such heights of hyperbole it must have come as a surprise to many people present that his casket wasn’t preceded into the auditorium by a rider-less horse with the fallen hero’s boots placed backwards in the stirrups.
As it was mourners around the world had to content themselves with a slick floor show and a tearful eulogy delivered by Jackson’s 11 year old daughter Paris, who said: ‘I just wanted to say, ever since I was born, Daddy has been the best father you could ever imagine,’ sentiments any child should be free to express about a departed parent, but not, perhaps ones that stand up to adult scrutiny in light of his somewhat eccentric approach to parenting.
Speaking about Jackson’s well eccentricity, a product, we are told of his fame and lack of a normal childhood and a reliable meal ticket for the tabloid press for the past two decades his brother Marlon told the audience: ‘We will never, never, understand what he endured,’ and added ‘maybe now the world will leave you alone.’
Some hope! Tuesday’s elaborate funerary farce was more about burnishing a legend than marking the passing of a life, after all a in the kingdom of pop a dead monarch can rack up more in the way of income than a living one.
At least he can if his legend in managed properly, if all the awkward mistakes and personal failings that make up an individual’s character, whether he is famous or not, are neatly ironed out, leaving behind, in Jackson’s case, a back catalogue of catchy, if slightly dated, bubblegum pop songs and the image of an eternal child bruised by the cruelty of the adult world.
All well and good, show business is the destination of choice for consumers who want to abandon reality you might say, apart from the fact that the reality of Jackson’s life and the squalid decade that preceded his death is the most important part of the story. They are an exemplar of how fame and wealth corrupt individuals and those around them. There must have been someone in Jackson’s entourage with the wit to say dangling your baby son out of a hotel window isn’t the sort of thing a responsible parent does; or that having inappropriately intimate friendships with young boys is no way to recapture your own lost childhood. Nobody did though because everyone was on the payroll and nobody wanted to risk their salary by being honest.
Perhaps by allowing others, through a willingness to remove the roseate glasses when they remember his life and career, to recognise the corrosive effects of fame and fortune is the one good thing that could come out of the wasted life of Michael Jackson.
It won’t happen though; it won’t happen because despite the fact that he was more astute than his tabloid image ever gave him credit for being, Jackson with his eccentricity and his well publicised slide from talented performer into public madness created the template for modern fame. We can see it in the elevation of poor helpless Susan Boyle to the position of being a national treasure and the delight the media took in her fall from grace; it was there in the tributes paid following the death of Jade Goody which neatly wrote out of her story little details like her lack of talent and involvement in a racist incident broadcast on national television.
Its telling, perhaps, that Jackson chose to call his Californian ranch Neverland since like Peter Pan there was always something a little sinister about him, in rejecting the cares of the adult world he also rejected its responsibilities and that, however hard we try to pretend otherwise, isn’t a recipe for preserving innocence; it’s a recipe for chaos.
Thursday, 2 July 2009
Not waving but drowning?
Is it a policy document or a manifesto? Is the question people have been asking about ‘Building Britain’s Future’, a glossy publication setting out the government’s draft legislative programme.
The pledges made in the document are impressive, cancer patients are going to have the right to be seen by a specialist within two weeks of being diagnosed; schools are to be freed from the shackles of the literacy and numeracy hour and allowed limited freedom to set their own curriculum in these important areas; public services are no longer going to be bound by endless targets and ambitious job creation plans are going to swing into action any day now.
Motherhood and free apple pie for all don’t get a mention but the heroic determination to reshape the world set out in the document tips it closer to being a manifest by another name than a mere statement of policy.
All well and good, some of the more cynical commentators have pointed out that many of the policies announced in Building Britain’s Future are already in place or have been ‘borrowed’ from the opposition, but is heartening to see a beleaguered Labour government trying to spell out what it stands for.
At least it is if you don’t pay too much attention to the overall tone of the announcement, which, with its gimmicks, Gordon Brown spent three days touring the country by train this week, and sense of breathless urgency aimed at attracting the attention of a media that seems to be rapidly losing interest, smacks uncomfortably of the sort of thing parties do during their first awkward term in opposition.
A desperate attempt to talk very loudly about anything at all apart from just why it was they fell out of favour with the public. Despite a heroic effort to suggest something different the government still seems, like the swimmer in Stevie Smith’s poem to be not waving but drowning.
Source: bbc.co.uk
One good thing to come out of this week’s whirlwind of policy announcements is the shelving of plans to part privatise the Royal Mail.
Lord Mandleson initially claimed the bill to do so was likely to lose out as it ‘jostled’ with other items of legislation for space on a crowded commons agenda, later in the week he kicked the issue into the long grass for an indefinite period.
He was, it was claimed, acting out of pure expedience, mostly by people who also complain about the government not listening to public opinion. On this emotive and politically divisive issue they have listened, but doing so has only delayed an awkward decision.
The Royal Mail has, like the railways, been in decline for decades and, like the railways full or part privatisation is unlikely to solve any of the underlying problems afflicting the service. Like Dracula in a schlock horror movie the privatisation of the Royal Mail is an issue that will refuse to die however many silver bullets are fired at it.
The choice that will have to be made sooner or later is a stark one between a privatised service run by several providers struggling to maximise income for shareholders whilst cutting operating costs to the bone or a state run mail service free from the crueller demands of making a profit but bound by a need to justify its expense and existence that will leave little room for sentimentality.
Choosing between this particular rock and hard place could decide much more than just the future of the Royal Mail; it could also decide that of the Labour Party.
Source politics.co.uk
Never mind the economic crisis or the fate of the polar ice caps a far more important question has been thrust upon us this week, what will happen to her poor old pussy now Mrs Slocomb has been transferred to the great department store in the sky?
Seriously, Mollie Sugden who died yesterday and was known and loved by millions as the battleaxe shop assistant from comedy classic ‘Are You Being Served? Was one of Britain’s great entertainers, it may be fashionable for trendy media types to look down on the type of programme in which she appeared as tame and suburban; they were nothing of the sort. Are you Being Served smuggled more smut, subversion and sheer comic talent into a single half hour that makes it into an entire series of today’s more self consciously ‘edgy’ comedy shows.
We won’t see her like again.
The pledges made in the document are impressive, cancer patients are going to have the right to be seen by a specialist within two weeks of being diagnosed; schools are to be freed from the shackles of the literacy and numeracy hour and allowed limited freedom to set their own curriculum in these important areas; public services are no longer going to be bound by endless targets and ambitious job creation plans are going to swing into action any day now.
Motherhood and free apple pie for all don’t get a mention but the heroic determination to reshape the world set out in the document tips it closer to being a manifest by another name than a mere statement of policy.
All well and good, some of the more cynical commentators have pointed out that many of the policies announced in Building Britain’s Future are already in place or have been ‘borrowed’ from the opposition, but is heartening to see a beleaguered Labour government trying to spell out what it stands for.
At least it is if you don’t pay too much attention to the overall tone of the announcement, which, with its gimmicks, Gordon Brown spent three days touring the country by train this week, and sense of breathless urgency aimed at attracting the attention of a media that seems to be rapidly losing interest, smacks uncomfortably of the sort of thing parties do during their first awkward term in opposition.
A desperate attempt to talk very loudly about anything at all apart from just why it was they fell out of favour with the public. Despite a heroic effort to suggest something different the government still seems, like the swimmer in Stevie Smith’s poem to be not waving but drowning.
Source: bbc.co.uk
One good thing to come out of this week’s whirlwind of policy announcements is the shelving of plans to part privatise the Royal Mail.
Lord Mandleson initially claimed the bill to do so was likely to lose out as it ‘jostled’ with other items of legislation for space on a crowded commons agenda, later in the week he kicked the issue into the long grass for an indefinite period.
He was, it was claimed, acting out of pure expedience, mostly by people who also complain about the government not listening to public opinion. On this emotive and politically divisive issue they have listened, but doing so has only delayed an awkward decision.
The Royal Mail has, like the railways, been in decline for decades and, like the railways full or part privatisation is unlikely to solve any of the underlying problems afflicting the service. Like Dracula in a schlock horror movie the privatisation of the Royal Mail is an issue that will refuse to die however many silver bullets are fired at it.
The choice that will have to be made sooner or later is a stark one between a privatised service run by several providers struggling to maximise income for shareholders whilst cutting operating costs to the bone or a state run mail service free from the crueller demands of making a profit but bound by a need to justify its expense and existence that will leave little room for sentimentality.
Choosing between this particular rock and hard place could decide much more than just the future of the Royal Mail; it could also decide that of the Labour Party.
Source politics.co.uk
Never mind the economic crisis or the fate of the polar ice caps a far more important question has been thrust upon us this week, what will happen to her poor old pussy now Mrs Slocomb has been transferred to the great department store in the sky?
Seriously, Mollie Sugden who died yesterday and was known and loved by millions as the battleaxe shop assistant from comedy classic ‘Are You Being Served? Was one of Britain’s great entertainers, it may be fashionable for trendy media types to look down on the type of programme in which she appeared as tame and suburban; they were nothing of the sort. Are you Being Served smuggled more smut, subversion and sheer comic talent into a single half hour that makes it into an entire series of today’s more self consciously ‘edgy’ comedy shows.
We won’t see her like again.
Friday, 26 June 2009
Brown pledges to fight on as Bercow climbs the greasy pole.
In an interview given to the News of the World last weekend Gordon Brown said that he was ‘determined’ to lead the Labour Party into the next election, this despite the party having managed to attract only 16% at the recent European Parliament elections and his premiership having been plagued by a string of resignations and threats to dethrone him.
He struck a decidedly bullish tone saying of his embattled government ‘We must win and we will win’, he also urged MP’s to spend the long summer recess in their constituencies rebuilding relations with the public that have been severely damaged by the expenses scandals of recent months.
Regarding his own political motivations Mr Brown said: ‘It has never been the trappings of power I care about but what we can do in power to help hard pressed families.’
Well he would say that, wouldn’t he? Chorus the cynics, and Gordon Brown attracts cynicism like no other politician and yet it is not entirely impossible that he could be speaking truthfully.
Whatever we may think of Gordon Brown’s leadership style or the means by which he came to be Prime Minister there are still some impressive and too little recognised aspects about his character.
Although it has done him few favours in the constant glare of the twenty four hour news media the most important of these is that he is demonstrably ill at ease with himself and has trouble reconciling his ‘moral compass’ with the messy compromises required by personal ambition and the demands of day to day governance.
Although his moment as a significant political figure is coming to an end in the long term history may take a kinder view of Gordon Brown, if not the party he led, than his current fortunes suggest.
Source: bbc.co.uk
John Bercow, the self styled ‘change candidate’ was elected Speaker of the House of Commons this week, collecting 322 votes to the 271 given to his nearest rival Sir George Young.
Bercow, like all the other hopefuls in the race to be speaker stood on a platform of reforming Westminster after the disastrous tenure of Michael Martin and the scandal over MP’s expenses. Although his election formally welcomed by the leaders of both parties Bercow is not at all popular with his fellow Conservatives, many of whom see him as a opportunist and as only paying lip service to the need for change.
You can see their point, Bercow, in the definition of such things provided by Tony Benn is more of a weather vane than a signpost, meaning he changes his political outlook in line with the whims of fashion rather than standing by a clear set of principles. In his case that means moving from being an ultra-Thatcherite to a position of smoothly metropolitan liberalism allowing his to move to whatever part of the middle ground looks most promising at any given moment.
Despite his choice to abandon the Speaker’s traditional robes in favour of an academic gown John Bercow is no kind of change candidate. Proof of this can be seen in just one line from the speech he gave during the hustings debate before MP’s voted on who was to be the next Speaker.
He wanted to take one of the most important offices in the land, he said, because, ‘I don’t want to be somebody: I want to do something.’
Awful; the sort of trite nonsense spouted by managerial buffoons and written by cynical PR types, it spells out the sorry message that for all the window dressing under the new Speaker business within the Westminster bubble is going to carry on as usual; and that is the last thing MP’s or anyone else needs.
Source: bbc.co.uk
The sun is shining, the Pimms is chilling and strawberries and cream are being sold for the price of a bachelor pad in Knightsbridge, it could only be Wimbledon fortnight.
As usual Andy Murray presents Britain’s only real challenge in the tournament having strolled into the second round with a 6-2 7-5 6-3 victory over Latvia’s Ernests Gulbis. Needless to say the press has already deemed this to be the year when Murray becomes the first Briton since Fred Perry back in 1936 to win the tournament.
What of the other British players? Well might you ask they all fell at the first hurdle, proving, yet again, that despite being awash with money, a large slice of it from the public purse, the Lawn Tennis Association is little more than a production line for amiable amateurs unable to cope in the modern sporting world.
The problem, so we’re told in the annual round of hand wringing that follows another failure to win Wimbledon by a British player is that, as a country, we don’t really care about tennis. Quite true in that apart from two weeks a year the sport barely troubles the public interest, but a little success could change that overnight.
There is though only one way that will ever happen and in may just be too much for the blazer wearing chaps of the LTA to cope with. The time has come to uncouple the underachievers from the funding gravy train, put the funds released into a sensible programme for encouraging tennis in schools and reminding those who may be inspired to play the game professionally that the most important qualification they need is the one thing that, now he has learnt to control his aggression, is the one thing Andy Murray seems to have in spades; the hunger to win.
Source: reuters.co.uk
He struck a decidedly bullish tone saying of his embattled government ‘We must win and we will win’, he also urged MP’s to spend the long summer recess in their constituencies rebuilding relations with the public that have been severely damaged by the expenses scandals of recent months.
Regarding his own political motivations Mr Brown said: ‘It has never been the trappings of power I care about but what we can do in power to help hard pressed families.’
Well he would say that, wouldn’t he? Chorus the cynics, and Gordon Brown attracts cynicism like no other politician and yet it is not entirely impossible that he could be speaking truthfully.
Whatever we may think of Gordon Brown’s leadership style or the means by which he came to be Prime Minister there are still some impressive and too little recognised aspects about his character.
Although it has done him few favours in the constant glare of the twenty four hour news media the most important of these is that he is demonstrably ill at ease with himself and has trouble reconciling his ‘moral compass’ with the messy compromises required by personal ambition and the demands of day to day governance.
Although his moment as a significant political figure is coming to an end in the long term history may take a kinder view of Gordon Brown, if not the party he led, than his current fortunes suggest.
Source: bbc.co.uk
John Bercow, the self styled ‘change candidate’ was elected Speaker of the House of Commons this week, collecting 322 votes to the 271 given to his nearest rival Sir George Young.
Bercow, like all the other hopefuls in the race to be speaker stood on a platform of reforming Westminster after the disastrous tenure of Michael Martin and the scandal over MP’s expenses. Although his election formally welcomed by the leaders of both parties Bercow is not at all popular with his fellow Conservatives, many of whom see him as a opportunist and as only paying lip service to the need for change.
You can see their point, Bercow, in the definition of such things provided by Tony Benn is more of a weather vane than a signpost, meaning he changes his political outlook in line with the whims of fashion rather than standing by a clear set of principles. In his case that means moving from being an ultra-Thatcherite to a position of smoothly metropolitan liberalism allowing his to move to whatever part of the middle ground looks most promising at any given moment.
Despite his choice to abandon the Speaker’s traditional robes in favour of an academic gown John Bercow is no kind of change candidate. Proof of this can be seen in just one line from the speech he gave during the hustings debate before MP’s voted on who was to be the next Speaker.
He wanted to take one of the most important offices in the land, he said, because, ‘I don’t want to be somebody: I want to do something.’
Awful; the sort of trite nonsense spouted by managerial buffoons and written by cynical PR types, it spells out the sorry message that for all the window dressing under the new Speaker business within the Westminster bubble is going to carry on as usual; and that is the last thing MP’s or anyone else needs.
Source: bbc.co.uk
The sun is shining, the Pimms is chilling and strawberries and cream are being sold for the price of a bachelor pad in Knightsbridge, it could only be Wimbledon fortnight.
As usual Andy Murray presents Britain’s only real challenge in the tournament having strolled into the second round with a 6-2 7-5 6-3 victory over Latvia’s Ernests Gulbis. Needless to say the press has already deemed this to be the year when Murray becomes the first Briton since Fred Perry back in 1936 to win the tournament.
What of the other British players? Well might you ask they all fell at the first hurdle, proving, yet again, that despite being awash with money, a large slice of it from the public purse, the Lawn Tennis Association is little more than a production line for amiable amateurs unable to cope in the modern sporting world.
The problem, so we’re told in the annual round of hand wringing that follows another failure to win Wimbledon by a British player is that, as a country, we don’t really care about tennis. Quite true in that apart from two weeks a year the sport barely troubles the public interest, but a little success could change that overnight.
There is though only one way that will ever happen and in may just be too much for the blazer wearing chaps of the LTA to cope with. The time has come to uncouple the underachievers from the funding gravy train, put the funds released into a sensible programme for encouraging tennis in schools and reminding those who may be inspired to play the game professionally that the most important qualification they need is the one thing that, now he has learnt to control his aggression, is the one thing Andy Murray seems to have in spades; the hunger to win.
Source: reuters.co.uk
Saturday, 20 June 2009
Time to start worrying about the bomb?
This week a commons select committee concluded that Britain should do more to promote nuclear disarmament; despite having the best record out of the five major nuclear nations in this area the UK is perceived as doing to little to encourage fellow members of the nuclear club to fulfil their obligations.
Committee Chairman Mike Gapes welcomed the government’s plans to ‘scale down’ Britain’s nuclear arsenal, including the decision taken by Gordon brown the Trident armed submarines would carry fewer warheads in future. He was critical though of the lack of information regarding the country’s nuclear commitments provided to the committee, making it hard to judge if the weapons retained truly constituted the ‘minimum’ requirement for a nuclear deterrent.
The question, once you’ve got over the shock of reading about members of parliament doing something constructive rather than fiddling their expenses, is just who these days are we trying to deter with our nuclear arsenal.
The various strands of radical Islam would, I don’t doubt, love to get their hands on enough fissile materiel to build a bomb and some of their number may be mad enough to use it, but the horrors of 9/11 and the London bombings show that the lunatic fringe is only too capable of causing mayhem without going nuclear.
For developing nations, who feel having the bomb is a means of joining the club of ‘major’ nations, the cost of building even a modest nuclear arsenal is ruinous for their economy and forces them into political allegiances that threaten their budding democracies.
During the dark days of the cold war only the most idealistic of campaigners would have denied there was some wisdom to having the nuclear card available, if only because it prevented anyone else from attempting to play it, but those specific dangers have, thankfully, passed.
In our new and no less frightening world Britain and the other major powers have to take the lead in nuclear disarmament and use the resources, both financial and technological, to build lasting security at home and abroad.
Source politics.co.uk
‘Has nobody heard of magna carta? Did the brave Hungarian peasant girl who forced King John to sign the pledge die in vain?’
Lovers of liberty can sleep a little easier this week as a poll conducted for the campaign group of the same name discovered that 95% of Britons still consider the right to a fair trial and respect for privacy, the home and family life to be important.
You could make a cheap joke at this point by saying the problem is the 5% who think otherwise are all in the cabinet or hold senior position in the police force, but that isn’t really the point.
The slow decline in public trust in politicians that has gathered momentum during the scandal over MP’s expenses could well have led to a growth in the number of people who subscribe to the dangerous idea that strong leadership matters more than the preservation of a democratic system that sometimes throws up legislators who are either venal or inept.
That is hasn’t, despite the electoral success of the BNP, and so many Britons still subscribe to the ideas that underpin democracy, which are always the first casualty of the sort of ‘strong leadership’ provided by dictators, suggests there is still much about which we can be hopeful.
Source politics.co.uk
Terence Stephenson, the new head of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, has called for adults to be banned from smoking in cars with child passengers.
Writing in his ‘Scrubbing Up’ column on the BBC website he said ‘You can’t inflict this (second hand smoking) on your colleagues any more. Why should we treat our children’s health as a lower priority?’
Similar bans have already been put in place in Cyprus, California and the Canadian province of New Brunswick. The proposal has attracted support from anti-smoking group ASH and a spokesperson for the Department of Health said the government would be reviewing the laws around smoking next year.
Once you climb over the obstacle set up by an instinctive and often justified distrust of the nanny state it is possible to see the sense in banning adults from smoking in cars when they have child passengers. Banning smoking has made many public places much more pleasant and trying to control a car whilst smoking a cigarette, whatever the age of your passengers, no safer than trying to do whilst using a mobile phone.
The problems arise when practicalities intrude upon good intentions, for example how would the law be enforced? Using a mobile phone whilst driving has been illegal for several years but many people continue to do so because they know the likelihood of getting caught is minimal. Perhaps a better route to go down is the more subtle one of trying to educate the public and letting cultural change solve the problem over time.
Source bbc.co.uk
Committee Chairman Mike Gapes welcomed the government’s plans to ‘scale down’ Britain’s nuclear arsenal, including the decision taken by Gordon brown the Trident armed submarines would carry fewer warheads in future. He was critical though of the lack of information regarding the country’s nuclear commitments provided to the committee, making it hard to judge if the weapons retained truly constituted the ‘minimum’ requirement for a nuclear deterrent.
The question, once you’ve got over the shock of reading about members of parliament doing something constructive rather than fiddling their expenses, is just who these days are we trying to deter with our nuclear arsenal.
The various strands of radical Islam would, I don’t doubt, love to get their hands on enough fissile materiel to build a bomb and some of their number may be mad enough to use it, but the horrors of 9/11 and the London bombings show that the lunatic fringe is only too capable of causing mayhem without going nuclear.
For developing nations, who feel having the bomb is a means of joining the club of ‘major’ nations, the cost of building even a modest nuclear arsenal is ruinous for their economy and forces them into political allegiances that threaten their budding democracies.
During the dark days of the cold war only the most idealistic of campaigners would have denied there was some wisdom to having the nuclear card available, if only because it prevented anyone else from attempting to play it, but those specific dangers have, thankfully, passed.
In our new and no less frightening world Britain and the other major powers have to take the lead in nuclear disarmament and use the resources, both financial and technological, to build lasting security at home and abroad.
Source politics.co.uk
‘Has nobody heard of magna carta? Did the brave Hungarian peasant girl who forced King John to sign the pledge die in vain?’
Lovers of liberty can sleep a little easier this week as a poll conducted for the campaign group of the same name discovered that 95% of Britons still consider the right to a fair trial and respect for privacy, the home and family life to be important.
You could make a cheap joke at this point by saying the problem is the 5% who think otherwise are all in the cabinet or hold senior position in the police force, but that isn’t really the point.
The slow decline in public trust in politicians that has gathered momentum during the scandal over MP’s expenses could well have led to a growth in the number of people who subscribe to the dangerous idea that strong leadership matters more than the preservation of a democratic system that sometimes throws up legislators who are either venal or inept.
That is hasn’t, despite the electoral success of the BNP, and so many Britons still subscribe to the ideas that underpin democracy, which are always the first casualty of the sort of ‘strong leadership’ provided by dictators, suggests there is still much about which we can be hopeful.
Source politics.co.uk
Terence Stephenson, the new head of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, has called for adults to be banned from smoking in cars with child passengers.
Writing in his ‘Scrubbing Up’ column on the BBC website he said ‘You can’t inflict this (second hand smoking) on your colleagues any more. Why should we treat our children’s health as a lower priority?’
Similar bans have already been put in place in Cyprus, California and the Canadian province of New Brunswick. The proposal has attracted support from anti-smoking group ASH and a spokesperson for the Department of Health said the government would be reviewing the laws around smoking next year.
Once you climb over the obstacle set up by an instinctive and often justified distrust of the nanny state it is possible to see the sense in banning adults from smoking in cars when they have child passengers. Banning smoking has made many public places much more pleasant and trying to control a car whilst smoking a cigarette, whatever the age of your passengers, no safer than trying to do whilst using a mobile phone.
The problems arise when practicalities intrude upon good intentions, for example how would the law be enforced? Using a mobile phone whilst driving has been illegal for several years but many people continue to do so because they know the likelihood of getting caught is minimal. Perhaps a better route to go down is the more subtle one of trying to educate the public and letting cultural change solve the problem over time.
Source bbc.co.uk
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