One week on from his surprise win in the first televised debate between the leaders of the three main parties the knives have come out for Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg; and with a vengeance too.
As party colleague Chris Huhne put it every right wing newspaper, meaning most of the British press, ‘has a splash attacking Nick- I wonder why.’
The splashes, or ‘smears’, as his supporters have described them, have mostly concerned claims made in the Daily Telegraph that Clegg received up to £250 per month of donations into his own account from three businessmen during 2006 and the unearthing by the Daily Mail of comments he made about Britain’s relationship with Europe in 2002, which prompted it to run the headline ‘Nick Clegg in Nazi slur on Britain’ yesterday.
As Nick Clegg wryly commented to the BBC this week: ‘I must be the first politician to go from Churchill to being a Nazi in the space of a week,’ referring to the comparison made after his triumph in last weeks debate between a man most people thought of as a political also ran and the nation’s iconic wartime leader.
On the subject of claims that he had serious questions to answer about his expenses Clegg said ‘I have done nothing wrong. In the next few days I will publish figures to prove it.’
The Liberal Democrats have also come under a more general attack for everything from their attitude towards Trident, a laudable endorsement of scrapping a costly nuclear deterrent that hasn’t deterred anyone since the Berlin Wall came down and their less than popular stance in immigration; much of which has taken the shine of the nations’ newly installed political poster boy.
To a large extent this is only the close examination of policy that any party hoping to enter the political mainstream should expect, but there is also an added element of vindictiveness that says as much about the fears of the political establishment as it does about the shortcomings of a party seen until recently as little more than a repository for protest votes.
As Chris Huhne told the BBC this week: ‘British politics needs a fundamental rethink and a real change and the Conservative Party doesn’t offer that and never did,’ the question lurking in the background being do the Lib Dems offer that change?
Last night’s debate proved to be something of a score draw with David Cameron appearing more relaxed and as a result seeing his standing in the polls improve; expect him to throw everything at winning next week’s final round and Gordon Brown was as dreadful as before; for him things can only get worse now. The truth remains though while the Liberal Democrats, as I pointed out during conference season, lack the fire in their bellies necessary to force open the doors to the political big time their success in this election could provide much needed encouragement for those individuals and parties that do.
And another thing:
What a difference a week makes, last week the skies were a blue dome free from any blemish save the odd cloud, now they’re crowded with planes once more. While I’m glad that the stranded holidaymakers are finally able to make their way home I can’t help feeling that the resultant vapour trails look a little too much like graffiti on the roof of the Sistine chapel.
After almost fifty years of battling international super villains and their henchmen armed with claw hands and deadly bowler hats James Bond had been done in by his most deadly adversary; the accounts department. MGM, film distributors for the Bond franchise are in financial trouble and so work on the latest movie has been indefinitely suspended.
You can imagine how the conversation went:
Bond: (tied to a table with a circular saw spinning uncomfortably close to his family assets) ‘Do you expect me to talk?’
Evil Accounts Exec: (stroking a white Persian cat naturally) ‘No Mr Bond; I expect you to produce receipts.’
And finally, a good friend who keeps his eye on such things told me yesterday that calls to the Samaritans have risen threefold since the start of the election; never mind Gordon, not long to go now.
Friday, 23 April 2010
Sunday, 18 April 2010
All talk; no real debate.
Did the earth move for you last Thursday, during the history making television debate between the leaders of the three main political parties; it didn’t budge so much as an inch for me.
The whole thing with its over rehearsed sound bites and ludicrous rules that prevented the audience from clapping, groaning or giving any sign they hadn’t slipped into a coma was a huge disappointment. It told us, the voting public, nothing we didn’t already know about the three privileged men standing on the stage.
Gordon Brown is awkward and more often than not rather cross, how dare anyone doubt that he and he alone saved the world in the autumn of 2008. His inability to communicate with his fellow debaters demonstrated all you need to know about his inability to communicate with the wider electorate.
David Cameron gave a solid, rather presidential, performance, he was a little too sure of himself and left viewers with the distinct impression that he is only pretending to understand how ‘ordinary’ people live. While he did less well than many people expected him to Cameron has at least kept the momentum of his campaign going, something at which the Labour Party have so far failed miserably.
If anyone emerged as the ‘winner’ of the debate it was Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, mostly because he came across as a, comparatively, normal human being. As a result his approval ratings have soared and at least one newspaper has claimed that he is now more popular than Winston Churchill; pay dirt for the leader of a party that is all too often pushed to the sidelines. Little of this new found popularity will translate into seats won on May 6th due to the cold mathematics of the electoral system, but it might strengthen his hand in the negotiations surrounding a hung parliament.
The awkward question waiting to be asked is did the media circus surrounding the debate improve public understanding of and engagement with the political process? Somehow I doubt it. Part of the problem was the awful way the debates were staged, the set looked like it had been borrowed from a third rate daytime quiz show and the camera work was at best amateurish and at worst downright incompetent. The main problem though is that due to the dire state of current affairs programming on British television the debates aren’t, as those in the US always are, backed up by the candidates being subjected to regular in depth interviews by respected journalists, rather than soft focus stuff sandwiched between people plugging books and films done by someone who used to be a journalist until they found out that talking bilge on the box pays far better.
The debates, of course, had to compete this week with a story that pushed the election off the front pages, by which I mean the grounding of every plane in Europe by the eruption of an Icelandic volcano with a name even the locals can’t pronounce.
It is a curious, and curiously satisfying, experience to be able to go outside and look up into a sky totally free of the vapour trails left by jet planes. All of a sudden we are in a world of mail boats and birdsong where the humble train is no longer the Cinderella of the transport world. If things go on like this for much longer the only way to travel across Europe will be on board the Blue Train or the Orient Express, good news, I suppose, for spinsters who write Golden Age detective novels.
We have, for the moment at least, been spared the thoughts of the three men who would be prime minister on the power of a volcano with a name that looks like a losing hand at scrabble when written down to bring a whole continent grinding to a halt. Perhaps they’ve been embarrassed into silence by the realization that when it comes to making headlines Mother Nature always steals the show.
The whole thing with its over rehearsed sound bites and ludicrous rules that prevented the audience from clapping, groaning or giving any sign they hadn’t slipped into a coma was a huge disappointment. It told us, the voting public, nothing we didn’t already know about the three privileged men standing on the stage.
Gordon Brown is awkward and more often than not rather cross, how dare anyone doubt that he and he alone saved the world in the autumn of 2008. His inability to communicate with his fellow debaters demonstrated all you need to know about his inability to communicate with the wider electorate.
David Cameron gave a solid, rather presidential, performance, he was a little too sure of himself and left viewers with the distinct impression that he is only pretending to understand how ‘ordinary’ people live. While he did less well than many people expected him to Cameron has at least kept the momentum of his campaign going, something at which the Labour Party have so far failed miserably.
If anyone emerged as the ‘winner’ of the debate it was Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, mostly because he came across as a, comparatively, normal human being. As a result his approval ratings have soared and at least one newspaper has claimed that he is now more popular than Winston Churchill; pay dirt for the leader of a party that is all too often pushed to the sidelines. Little of this new found popularity will translate into seats won on May 6th due to the cold mathematics of the electoral system, but it might strengthen his hand in the negotiations surrounding a hung parliament.
The awkward question waiting to be asked is did the media circus surrounding the debate improve public understanding of and engagement with the political process? Somehow I doubt it. Part of the problem was the awful way the debates were staged, the set looked like it had been borrowed from a third rate daytime quiz show and the camera work was at best amateurish and at worst downright incompetent. The main problem though is that due to the dire state of current affairs programming on British television the debates aren’t, as those in the US always are, backed up by the candidates being subjected to regular in depth interviews by respected journalists, rather than soft focus stuff sandwiched between people plugging books and films done by someone who used to be a journalist until they found out that talking bilge on the box pays far better.
The debates, of course, had to compete this week with a story that pushed the election off the front pages, by which I mean the grounding of every plane in Europe by the eruption of an Icelandic volcano with a name even the locals can’t pronounce.
It is a curious, and curiously satisfying, experience to be able to go outside and look up into a sky totally free of the vapour trails left by jet planes. All of a sudden we are in a world of mail boats and birdsong where the humble train is no longer the Cinderella of the transport world. If things go on like this for much longer the only way to travel across Europe will be on board the Blue Train or the Orient Express, good news, I suppose, for spinsters who write Golden Age detective novels.
We have, for the moment at least, been spared the thoughts of the three men who would be prime minister on the power of a volcano with a name that looks like a losing hand at scrabble when written down to bring a whole continent grinding to a halt. Perhaps they’ve been embarrassed into silence by the realization that when it comes to making headlines Mother Nature always steals the show.
Saturday, 10 April 2010
An election in slow motion.
They’re off! Cue the wall to wall television coverage, set the battle busses rolling; go back to your constituencies and prepare for total public indifference. For all the talk of it being the most open for more than a decade the election seems, so far, to be a rather undercooked affair.
The day of the official launch, Tuesday, set the tone for all that has followed. After his trip to the palace Gordon Brown posed for a photo opportunity with the members of the cabinet in Downing Street before heading for St Pancras station to be filmed waddling about on the platform like Paddington’s grumpy uncle. David Cameron made an Obama-lite style speech outside County Hall surrounded by a crowd of rapt Tory activists, most of whom were young enough for ‘Glee’ instead of ‘Newsnight’ to be their favourite television programme. As for Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, he was his usual earnest self, I’m sure he did or said something important; but nobody noticed.
The rest of the country looked on at all this silliness and decided that it was nothing to do with them, perhaps because the hot topic of the campaign so far is whether or not National Insurance contributions should be raised to help cut the deficit. This, depending on your political position, is either a reasonable measure for paying off the national debt whilst maintaining front line services or a recipe for destroying jobs and businesses. What it isn’t though, is the sort of thing that sets the national pulse racing.
However dull the game might be so far it is still possible to hazard a guess as to who might be doing well and who could be heading for disaster if socks aren’t pulled up sharpish.
On my score card the Tories seem to be ahead by a nose, their campaign, for all the party’s lack of policies, seems to have a sense of momentum. The problem for the Conservative high command though is how to overcome the impression that theirs is a one man band, would Cameron look so attractive to the voting public were they more aware of the less than savoury baggage hidden by the glow of his celebrity.
Baggage is also a problem for the Labour Party; in this case it is all labelled Gordon Brown, not wanted on voyage. Less than a week into the campaign and he looks frazzled already, he gave an awful performance at the last PMQ’s of the parliament and the prospect of the live television debates must make the party faithful shudder in anticipation of the potential embarrassment to come.
Of the three party leaders Nick Clegg, surprisingly, seems to be in the best position, although being a Liberal Democrat he probably doesn’t recognise it. He won’t be prime minister come May 7th, but, in the event of a hung parliament, he could play the role of king maker. If, that is, he and his party can summon the guts not to let their biggest chance for eighty years slip through their collective fingers.
And another thing.
Ok so I’d still kill for his short game, or his long one for that matter, but it looks like Tiger Woods has slipped off the pedestal marked ‘hero’ once and for all, even if he has made it back onto the golf circuit.
Never mind the affairs or the lost sponsors, what finally sunk his reputation is the advert he made for one of the ones that stuck by him. The payoff for Nike’s loyalty is a toe curling advert in which a chastened looking tiger is asked by the disembodied voice of his dead father if he’s ‘learnt’ anything from his fall from grace.
He sure has, he’s learnt that sincerity is what matters; if you can fake that you’ve got it made.
And finally, it was announced this week that the rules of Scrabble are to be changed to allow proper names to be used. This might just be the end of civilization as we know it. Next thing you know they’ll be allowing an open verdict to be returned in Cluedo.
The day of the official launch, Tuesday, set the tone for all that has followed. After his trip to the palace Gordon Brown posed for a photo opportunity with the members of the cabinet in Downing Street before heading for St Pancras station to be filmed waddling about on the platform like Paddington’s grumpy uncle. David Cameron made an Obama-lite style speech outside County Hall surrounded by a crowd of rapt Tory activists, most of whom were young enough for ‘Glee’ instead of ‘Newsnight’ to be their favourite television programme. As for Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, he was his usual earnest self, I’m sure he did or said something important; but nobody noticed.
The rest of the country looked on at all this silliness and decided that it was nothing to do with them, perhaps because the hot topic of the campaign so far is whether or not National Insurance contributions should be raised to help cut the deficit. This, depending on your political position, is either a reasonable measure for paying off the national debt whilst maintaining front line services or a recipe for destroying jobs and businesses. What it isn’t though, is the sort of thing that sets the national pulse racing.
However dull the game might be so far it is still possible to hazard a guess as to who might be doing well and who could be heading for disaster if socks aren’t pulled up sharpish.
On my score card the Tories seem to be ahead by a nose, their campaign, for all the party’s lack of policies, seems to have a sense of momentum. The problem for the Conservative high command though is how to overcome the impression that theirs is a one man band, would Cameron look so attractive to the voting public were they more aware of the less than savoury baggage hidden by the glow of his celebrity.
Baggage is also a problem for the Labour Party; in this case it is all labelled Gordon Brown, not wanted on voyage. Less than a week into the campaign and he looks frazzled already, he gave an awful performance at the last PMQ’s of the parliament and the prospect of the live television debates must make the party faithful shudder in anticipation of the potential embarrassment to come.
Of the three party leaders Nick Clegg, surprisingly, seems to be in the best position, although being a Liberal Democrat he probably doesn’t recognise it. He won’t be prime minister come May 7th, but, in the event of a hung parliament, he could play the role of king maker. If, that is, he and his party can summon the guts not to let their biggest chance for eighty years slip through their collective fingers.
And another thing.
Ok so I’d still kill for his short game, or his long one for that matter, but it looks like Tiger Woods has slipped off the pedestal marked ‘hero’ once and for all, even if he has made it back onto the golf circuit.
Never mind the affairs or the lost sponsors, what finally sunk his reputation is the advert he made for one of the ones that stuck by him. The payoff for Nike’s loyalty is a toe curling advert in which a chastened looking tiger is asked by the disembodied voice of his dead father if he’s ‘learnt’ anything from his fall from grace.
He sure has, he’s learnt that sincerity is what matters; if you can fake that you’ve got it made.
And finally, it was announced this week that the rules of Scrabble are to be changed to allow proper names to be used. This might just be the end of civilization as we know it. Next thing you know they’ll be allowing an open verdict to be returned in Cluedo.
Saturday, 3 April 2010
That old Blair magic returns to the campaign trail.
Tony Blair, the great actor manager of modern British politics returned to centre stage this week by giving a speech to Labour Party members in his former constituency of Sedgefield.
In the speech he expressed optimism for Britain’s future saying ‘We are not out of the woods yet, but we are on the path out. This did not happen by chance; but by choice.’
The choices in question, he implied, were those made by his successor and one time rival Gordon Brown.
Unsurprisingly the opposition parties were critical of Blair’s return to something like centre stage, Tory Chairman Eric Pickles said the speech told people ‘nothing about what Labour has to offer this country.’ On a more cutting note usually absent from his party’s attack Liberal Democrat spokesman Danny Alexander said the speech would only serve to ‘remind people of the failures of Labour over the last thirteen years.’
Quite so would be a reasonable answer to both points, but of course the intended audience for Blair’s one night only comeback tour wasn’t the wider British public, it was the membership of the Labour Party. As such it, along with the fact that Peter Mandelson and Alistair Campbell are to play prominent roles in the forthcoming election campaign sends an unhappy message about the health of the party.
Tony Blair’s performance at Trimdon Labour Club on Tuesday exhibited all the old familiar tricks, the catch in his voice to show strong emotion only just being held in check and the odd chopping motions with his hands, added to these were a orange tan straight from a bottle and an accent that sank somewhere in the mid Atlantic. It was rather like watching a pop star who used to be big a decade or so ago doing his act in Vegas, fascinating in the sense that he can still hold a crowd but also rather sad because it highlighted how completely the dark arts of PR can overwhelm an individual’s personality.
The reason Tony Blair, who has been busy making himself very rich over the past three years, has been brought back is as simple as it is misguided, the Labour Party high command think that he and the fellow architects of the New Labour project will be able to scatter a little of their ‘magic dust’ over what looks likely to be a lacklustre campaign. It won’t work of course because one person’s magic dust is another’s toxic fall-out.
The media treated Blair’s speech as what it was, a minor distraction unlikely to sway floating voters one way or the other. Where the real harm will be done is through the reaction of Labour’s fast diminishing army of active members and that, I fear, fear will not be at all positive.
To all but a tiny majority of these people Tony Blair is an unwelcome reminder of how completely the heritage of their party has been sold off in order to win three elections. They find it hard to feel the optimism he expressed about the future of a country they see as being increasingly divided, over taxed and spied on to the point of paranoia by a largely ineffective bureaucracy. Staged events of the sort at which New Labour excelled won’t reconnect these people with a party that seems to take their support for granted, only an honest and at times unavoidably hurtful discussion of what the Labour Party stands for in a world that has changed out of all recognition since it was founded will do that, but, sadly, a party hierarchy obsessed with clinging on to power at all costs has little enthusiasm for such an exercise.
Gordon Brown deserves a small amount of respect for eating the large portion of humble pie involved in bringing a man for whom he has little love back on side to fight his corner, not least because for all his faults Tony Blair possesses many of the social skills he so clearly lacks. Doing so won’t though do anything to alter the course of the election that will in all likelihood provide a sad coda to his political career.
In the speech he expressed optimism for Britain’s future saying ‘We are not out of the woods yet, but we are on the path out. This did not happen by chance; but by choice.’
The choices in question, he implied, were those made by his successor and one time rival Gordon Brown.
Unsurprisingly the opposition parties were critical of Blair’s return to something like centre stage, Tory Chairman Eric Pickles said the speech told people ‘nothing about what Labour has to offer this country.’ On a more cutting note usually absent from his party’s attack Liberal Democrat spokesman Danny Alexander said the speech would only serve to ‘remind people of the failures of Labour over the last thirteen years.’
Quite so would be a reasonable answer to both points, but of course the intended audience for Blair’s one night only comeback tour wasn’t the wider British public, it was the membership of the Labour Party. As such it, along with the fact that Peter Mandelson and Alistair Campbell are to play prominent roles in the forthcoming election campaign sends an unhappy message about the health of the party.
Tony Blair’s performance at Trimdon Labour Club on Tuesday exhibited all the old familiar tricks, the catch in his voice to show strong emotion only just being held in check and the odd chopping motions with his hands, added to these were a orange tan straight from a bottle and an accent that sank somewhere in the mid Atlantic. It was rather like watching a pop star who used to be big a decade or so ago doing his act in Vegas, fascinating in the sense that he can still hold a crowd but also rather sad because it highlighted how completely the dark arts of PR can overwhelm an individual’s personality.
The reason Tony Blair, who has been busy making himself very rich over the past three years, has been brought back is as simple as it is misguided, the Labour Party high command think that he and the fellow architects of the New Labour project will be able to scatter a little of their ‘magic dust’ over what looks likely to be a lacklustre campaign. It won’t work of course because one person’s magic dust is another’s toxic fall-out.
The media treated Blair’s speech as what it was, a minor distraction unlikely to sway floating voters one way or the other. Where the real harm will be done is through the reaction of Labour’s fast diminishing army of active members and that, I fear, fear will not be at all positive.
To all but a tiny majority of these people Tony Blair is an unwelcome reminder of how completely the heritage of their party has been sold off in order to win three elections. They find it hard to feel the optimism he expressed about the future of a country they see as being increasingly divided, over taxed and spied on to the point of paranoia by a largely ineffective bureaucracy. Staged events of the sort at which New Labour excelled won’t reconnect these people with a party that seems to take their support for granted, only an honest and at times unavoidably hurtful discussion of what the Labour Party stands for in a world that has changed out of all recognition since it was founded will do that, but, sadly, a party hierarchy obsessed with clinging on to power at all costs has little enthusiasm for such an exercise.
Gordon Brown deserves a small amount of respect for eating the large portion of humble pie involved in bringing a man for whom he has little love back on side to fight his corner, not least because for all his faults Tony Blair possesses many of the social skills he so clearly lacks. Doing so won’t though do anything to alter the course of the election that will in all likelihood provide a sad coda to his political career.
Friday, 26 March 2010
Cabs for hire, more like the four stooges.
Stephen Byers, Patricia Hewitt, Geoff Hoon and Margaret Moran, remember those names; they belong to the four stooges who broke British democracy once and for all with their greed and stupidity.
They were caught out in a ‘sting’ operation run jointly by Channel Four and the Sunday Times offering to use their influence as members of parliament, and in the case of Hoon, Hewitt and Byers as former ministers of the crown in return for generous fees from lobbying companies.
Stephen Byers, charmingly, used the phrase that sums up their tawdry attitude to the public trust by describing himself as a ‘sort of cab for hire’, for a fee of around £5000 per day he would happily tout the interests of anyone who paid him around Whitehall. For all I know he would even south of the river after five o’clock, something real London cabbies never do, but they, at least, are trying to make an honest living.
Not surprisingly the Tories have seized on this latest incidence of Labour MP’s on the fiddle to claim the moral high ground, even though their own benches are home to more than a few ‘cabs for hire’, with Sir George Young, their shadow leader of the house calling for the matter to be ‘fully and impartially investigated’.
Good luck with that, as the saying goes, because at the moment there seems to be little enthusiasm on the part of the government for an enquiry, maybe there are a few too many skeletons in the Labour Party cupboard for that to be advisable this side of an election. Deputy party leader Harriet Harman said the issue had been looked into and that she was satisfied that any decisions made had been free from the ‘impropriety’ alleged by the media.
Well that’s ok then, we won’t worry our fluffy little heads about this any more and get back to being enthralled by the antics of the various leaders’ wives; as John Wayne might have put it the hell we will!
Last summer we all found the MP’s expenses scandal with its duck houses, bath plugs and mucky movies mildly amusing, how very small beer British political corruption seemed in comparison to that in other European countries. This time round we could comfort ourselves by saying that this sort of thing always happens when a government is running out of steam.
We can dredge up memories of the cash for questions scandal that did so much harm to John Major’s government during its dog days, in particular we will recall Neil Hamilton and his too close relationship with Harrods owner Mohammed Al-Fayed, we didn’t much like him then but his willingness to turn himself into a figure of fun since has won him a soft spot in our hearts.
It all contributes to the lie we like to tell ourselves in this country that politics is really a sort of Carry On film complete with sex scandals and dodgy characters out for the main chance. If that’s what we want to go on thinking after this latest debacle then we’re wrong; dangerously so in fact.
This is not something out of an Ealing comedy; it is a serious threat to our society and the democratic values upon which it is based. There is a real risk that Byers, Hewitt et al are low down on a rotten totem pole of potential corruption that reaches to the heart of government.
Gordon Brown may well be able to dodge holding an investigation into the activities of ex ministers for hire; he won’t though be able to escape the judgement of the public at the ballot box, even if it is expressed by record numbers of people not bothering to vote at all. Even that won’t end the problem though; a parliament largely filled with shiny new MP’s untainted by any hint of corruption will still be at a disadvantage caused by the people now heading for the sunset, or the Lords, with their pockets stuffed with cash. They will lack the one thing necessary for truly effective government; the trust of the British people.
And another thing:
Scientists have discovered yet another miracle weapon for combating obesity, it is, wait for it; seaweed.
My guess is that it stops you getting fat because it tastes so god awful nobody in their right mind would ask for seconds of any dish in which it had been used as an ingredient.
The death was announced this week of Harry Carpenter, for many years the voice of boxing on the BBC. He was, by all accounts, a true gent, a man who knew and was loved by everyone who was anyone in the fight game over the past fifty years, not least because he mastered the difficult trick of combining knowledge and passion for his chosen sport with an ability to share both with the viewing public.
How very different from the loud and excitable presenters covering sport for television today for whom the audience are only bit players in the epic drama of their personal ambition; truly we will never see his like again.
They were caught out in a ‘sting’ operation run jointly by Channel Four and the Sunday Times offering to use their influence as members of parliament, and in the case of Hoon, Hewitt and Byers as former ministers of the crown in return for generous fees from lobbying companies.
Stephen Byers, charmingly, used the phrase that sums up their tawdry attitude to the public trust by describing himself as a ‘sort of cab for hire’, for a fee of around £5000 per day he would happily tout the interests of anyone who paid him around Whitehall. For all I know he would even south of the river after five o’clock, something real London cabbies never do, but they, at least, are trying to make an honest living.
Not surprisingly the Tories have seized on this latest incidence of Labour MP’s on the fiddle to claim the moral high ground, even though their own benches are home to more than a few ‘cabs for hire’, with Sir George Young, their shadow leader of the house calling for the matter to be ‘fully and impartially investigated’.
Good luck with that, as the saying goes, because at the moment there seems to be little enthusiasm on the part of the government for an enquiry, maybe there are a few too many skeletons in the Labour Party cupboard for that to be advisable this side of an election. Deputy party leader Harriet Harman said the issue had been looked into and that she was satisfied that any decisions made had been free from the ‘impropriety’ alleged by the media.
Well that’s ok then, we won’t worry our fluffy little heads about this any more and get back to being enthralled by the antics of the various leaders’ wives; as John Wayne might have put it the hell we will!
Last summer we all found the MP’s expenses scandal with its duck houses, bath plugs and mucky movies mildly amusing, how very small beer British political corruption seemed in comparison to that in other European countries. This time round we could comfort ourselves by saying that this sort of thing always happens when a government is running out of steam.
We can dredge up memories of the cash for questions scandal that did so much harm to John Major’s government during its dog days, in particular we will recall Neil Hamilton and his too close relationship with Harrods owner Mohammed Al-Fayed, we didn’t much like him then but his willingness to turn himself into a figure of fun since has won him a soft spot in our hearts.
It all contributes to the lie we like to tell ourselves in this country that politics is really a sort of Carry On film complete with sex scandals and dodgy characters out for the main chance. If that’s what we want to go on thinking after this latest debacle then we’re wrong; dangerously so in fact.
This is not something out of an Ealing comedy; it is a serious threat to our society and the democratic values upon which it is based. There is a real risk that Byers, Hewitt et al are low down on a rotten totem pole of potential corruption that reaches to the heart of government.
Gordon Brown may well be able to dodge holding an investigation into the activities of ex ministers for hire; he won’t though be able to escape the judgement of the public at the ballot box, even if it is expressed by record numbers of people not bothering to vote at all. Even that won’t end the problem though; a parliament largely filled with shiny new MP’s untainted by any hint of corruption will still be at a disadvantage caused by the people now heading for the sunset, or the Lords, with their pockets stuffed with cash. They will lack the one thing necessary for truly effective government; the trust of the British people.
And another thing:
Scientists have discovered yet another miracle weapon for combating obesity, it is, wait for it; seaweed.
My guess is that it stops you getting fat because it tastes so god awful nobody in their right mind would ask for seconds of any dish in which it had been used as an ingredient.
The death was announced this week of Harry Carpenter, for many years the voice of boxing on the BBC. He was, by all accounts, a true gent, a man who knew and was loved by everyone who was anyone in the fight game over the past fifty years, not least because he mastered the difficult trick of combining knowledge and passion for his chosen sport with an ability to share both with the viewing public.
How very different from the loud and excitable presenters covering sport for television today for whom the audience are only bit players in the epic drama of their personal ambition; truly we will never see his like again.
Friday, 19 March 2010
Would a hung parliament be so bad?
It’s official, well as official as anything depending on the inexact science behind opinion polls ever can be; Britain is heading for a hung parliament after the coming general election. Leaving aside the tired saloon bar joke about the best thing to do with politicians being to hang the lot of them would that really be such a bad thing?
It would be a very bad thing if you happen to believe that what Britain needs more than anything else as the economy stumbles and the deficit rises ever higher is the ‘smack of firm government.’
You know the sort of thing, firm leadership from someone who didn’t believe in changing their mind and thought the cabinet and parliament itself were there only to ask ‘please sir how high?’ whenever the great leader bellowed ‘Jump!’ That was what we had in the halcyon days of the eighties when Mrs T was in Downing Street and all was well with the world.
The trouble with people who feel nostalgic for the eighties is they are either on the payroll of Tory Central Office or too young to remember what they were actually like.
Tough leadership of the type we are all supposed to long for tends to create more problems that it solves. Decades of social and economic decline cannot be halted by telling the nation to pull its socks up or else and the refusal to change their mind shown by leaders in the Thatcher mould is more often than not symptomatic of a fear of appearing weak than any real sense of purpose.
In this sense a hung parliament would be a good thing because it would reintroduce to British politics something that has been considered a dirty word for the past quarter century; consensus.
Whoever wins the election will be unable to use the force of their personality, Thatcher, or a thumping majority, Blair, to ride roughshod over parliament and public opinion. After years of being a supine talking shop parliament will rediscover its power to hold the executive to account and sensible compromise, long a feature of British life outside the Westminster bubble will once again become the order of the day.
A hung parliament might also be the catalyst for finally encouraging Britain to stop worrying and learn to lover proportional representation. If that were to happen our political life would be freed at a stroke from the dead hand of the three main parties, all of whom have largely lost touch with their core vote and fallen for the blandishments of focus groups and marketing gurus instead. New voices and ideas would enter the debate and for the first time in decades politics would really mean something.
None of this may come to pass of course, opinion polls are notoriously inaccurate, public rage against New Labour, who ironically look very old indeed these days, might yet sweep David Cameron’s Tories into power; but what if it doesn’t? What if something fundamental has changed, before long we might find ourselves in interesting times where every vote counts and policies matter more than marketing.
And another thing:
David leaves clothes lying on the bedroom floor and can’t be trusted with the remote, Gordon is messy and noisy but loves to help people and as for Nick; he’s a little tinker who, allegedly, likes to play kiss chase.
Does any of the above matter, does knowing the foibles of the three party leaders as described by their adoring wives make them appear more ‘human’? Maybe, but it also makes them sound like lovably naughty six year olds.
Anna Arrowsmith, an award winning director of, ahem, ‘art’ films; you know the sort where the actors don’t wear much more than a smile, has put herself forward to be a parliamentary candidate for the Liberal Democrats, cue much wailing and gnashing of teeth from the chattering classes.
I don’t think its so much the mucky movies she makes, in, I’m sure the best possible taste, that they dislike as the fact that she’s, scandalously, had a proper job before deciding to enter politics.
I laughed out loud and then shuddered at the story about three Royal Navy officers being brought before a court marital this week for crashing their submarine into a forty foot rock formation. Doubtless like male drivers the world over they failed to notice the rocks in question, which were marked on the map, because real men don’t look at maps.
I don’t know what effect it has on Britain’s enemies, but the though t of dunderheads like that sailing the world’s oceans in a nuclear armed submarine scares the c*** out of me.
It would be a very bad thing if you happen to believe that what Britain needs more than anything else as the economy stumbles and the deficit rises ever higher is the ‘smack of firm government.’
You know the sort of thing, firm leadership from someone who didn’t believe in changing their mind and thought the cabinet and parliament itself were there only to ask ‘please sir how high?’ whenever the great leader bellowed ‘Jump!’ That was what we had in the halcyon days of the eighties when Mrs T was in Downing Street and all was well with the world.
The trouble with people who feel nostalgic for the eighties is they are either on the payroll of Tory Central Office or too young to remember what they were actually like.
Tough leadership of the type we are all supposed to long for tends to create more problems that it solves. Decades of social and economic decline cannot be halted by telling the nation to pull its socks up or else and the refusal to change their mind shown by leaders in the Thatcher mould is more often than not symptomatic of a fear of appearing weak than any real sense of purpose.
In this sense a hung parliament would be a good thing because it would reintroduce to British politics something that has been considered a dirty word for the past quarter century; consensus.
Whoever wins the election will be unable to use the force of their personality, Thatcher, or a thumping majority, Blair, to ride roughshod over parliament and public opinion. After years of being a supine talking shop parliament will rediscover its power to hold the executive to account and sensible compromise, long a feature of British life outside the Westminster bubble will once again become the order of the day.
A hung parliament might also be the catalyst for finally encouraging Britain to stop worrying and learn to lover proportional representation. If that were to happen our political life would be freed at a stroke from the dead hand of the three main parties, all of whom have largely lost touch with their core vote and fallen for the blandishments of focus groups and marketing gurus instead. New voices and ideas would enter the debate and for the first time in decades politics would really mean something.
None of this may come to pass of course, opinion polls are notoriously inaccurate, public rage against New Labour, who ironically look very old indeed these days, might yet sweep David Cameron’s Tories into power; but what if it doesn’t? What if something fundamental has changed, before long we might find ourselves in interesting times where every vote counts and policies matter more than marketing.
And another thing:
David leaves clothes lying on the bedroom floor and can’t be trusted with the remote, Gordon is messy and noisy but loves to help people and as for Nick; he’s a little tinker who, allegedly, likes to play kiss chase.
Does any of the above matter, does knowing the foibles of the three party leaders as described by their adoring wives make them appear more ‘human’? Maybe, but it also makes them sound like lovably naughty six year olds.
Anna Arrowsmith, an award winning director of, ahem, ‘art’ films; you know the sort where the actors don’t wear much more than a smile, has put herself forward to be a parliamentary candidate for the Liberal Democrats, cue much wailing and gnashing of teeth from the chattering classes.
I don’t think its so much the mucky movies she makes, in, I’m sure the best possible taste, that they dislike as the fact that she’s, scandalously, had a proper job before deciding to enter politics.
I laughed out loud and then shuddered at the story about three Royal Navy officers being brought before a court marital this week for crashing their submarine into a forty foot rock formation. Doubtless like male drivers the world over they failed to notice the rocks in question, which were marked on the map, because real men don’t look at maps.
I don’t know what effect it has on Britain’s enemies, but the though t of dunderheads like that sailing the world’s oceans in a nuclear armed submarine scares the c*** out of me.
Friday, 12 March 2010
Dimbleby: television is teaching our children history.
The revolution, if it comes, might not be televised but if David Dimbleby, something of a silverback amongst television presenters, is right the only place British children would be likely to learn one had taken place from would be a history programme broadcast on television long after the event.
In an interview with the Radio Times, not perhaps the most cerebral of magazines, he claimed this week that programmes such as his own The Seven Ages of Britain’ (you might think there was a discreet plug in there somewhere I couldn’t possibly comment) are ‘filling in the gaps left by the less than impressive treatment of history in the school curriculum.’
His views are echoed by a survey carried out by the Historical Association in which out of 700 schools questioned 3 out of 10 no longer taught history as a separate subject at Key Stage 3.
Melanie Jones, education manager for the Historical Association, said that although history was in general taught well in British schools ‘far too little curriculum times’ was devoted to the subject.
This isn’t a new complaint, for years parents, education professionals and people believe history matters have been complaining about the problems caused by a narrow curriculum; usually summed up as consisting of Hitler, Henry and the Holocaust, that seems designed for the specific purpose of killing kid’s interest in history off in the quickest possible time. There is also, of course, the perennial problem of a school curriculum that seems to grow ever more packed with requirements thought indispensable under government initiatives that are all too often forgotten about before the bureaucrats have come back from their lunch break.
There is though another problem at work here, namely that we are now governed by people who are, for the most part, historically illiterate. Nothing else could explain how we sleepwalked into the appalling mess that is the war in Afghanistan when an understanding of the horrors visited on British forces there in the nineteenth century would have been wise counsel against making war in that benighted land. The same goes for our approach to the economy, we repeated the mistakes of the 1920’s by allowing the financial markets to run wildly out of control and those of the 1930’s by doing too little to help people who have had their livelihoods destroyed by the crash. If all this leads to us having to relive the horrors of the 1940’s; don’t say the history books didn’t warn you.
The inescapable truth is that one of the most valuable resources any country can have is its history, without a clear understanding of where we’ve been where we’re going to could well turn out to be somewhere we don’t much like.
Source: bbc.co.uk
An ASBO for Rover?
As if they didn’t have enough to keep them busy the government announced plans this week to introduce ‘dog control notices’, ASBO’s for Pit Bull Terriers if you like.
Home Secretary Alan Johnson, a postman before he was a politician and so no stranger to getting bitten by dogs, said ‘The vast majority of dog owners are responsible, but there is no doubt some people breed and keep dogs for the sole purpose of intimidating others.’
He went on to say ‘it is this sort of behaviour that we will not tolerate; it is the sort of behaviour we are determined to stop.’ Cue the patriotic music and thunderous applause for the hero of the hour.
Meanwhile back in the Westminster bubble plans are afoot to launch a public consultation on legislation to make it compulsory for all dog owners to have their pets micro-chipped and to buy third party insurance.
As with so many things the brown government has done since 2007 this is all very well meant and so utterly impractical it is doomed to fail. The irresponsible owners the plans are aimed at are no more likely to buy insurance for their dog than they are for their car; as for giving Fang or Fido, or whatever they call the slavering beast that half drags them around the local sink estate an Anti Social Behaviour order, they’d probably hang it is pride of place on the wall next to their own.
Source: politics.co.uk
And another thing:
All this week BBC 2 has been showing ‘Lambing Live’ as part of its prime time schedules, a programme that does exactly what it says on the tin; meaning that a bunch of cute little lambs get born and nothing much else happens.
I know that budget cuts mean Auntie has had to tighten her belt, but if this is the shape of things to come what can we expect next; coming soon ‘Paint Drying-Live?’
Its all gone wrong, Chris Evans taking over the Radio 2 breakfast slot vacated by Sir Terry Wogan at the start of the year, this week the former enfant terrible of radio was pictured creeping into Broadcasting House looking like a haunted wreck.
The Met Office may have given up making long range forecasts, but I more than willing to predict storm conditions in coffee cups across Middle England; it’s not a hurricane dears so please stop panicking.
Lets face it presenting a breakfast show on radio isn’t exactly rocket science, all you need is a pile of records and a store of breezy chat, whether the latter comes from an elderly stage Irishman or an overgrown ginger schoolboy is neither here nor there.
Give it six months and the TOGS currently getting their comfy underwear in a twist over nasty Chris taking over from lovely Terry will have forgotten what all the fuss was about.
Do I care whether Samantha Cameron, wife of the fragrant David, voted Labour during her wild youth? Not all that much.
Being married to a politician does not mean being married to his or her party too, unless, of course, you happen to be the wife of the honourable member for Stepford that is.
In an interview with the Radio Times, not perhaps the most cerebral of magazines, he claimed this week that programmes such as his own The Seven Ages of Britain’ (you might think there was a discreet plug in there somewhere I couldn’t possibly comment) are ‘filling in the gaps left by the less than impressive treatment of history in the school curriculum.’
His views are echoed by a survey carried out by the Historical Association in which out of 700 schools questioned 3 out of 10 no longer taught history as a separate subject at Key Stage 3.
Melanie Jones, education manager for the Historical Association, said that although history was in general taught well in British schools ‘far too little curriculum times’ was devoted to the subject.
This isn’t a new complaint, for years parents, education professionals and people believe history matters have been complaining about the problems caused by a narrow curriculum; usually summed up as consisting of Hitler, Henry and the Holocaust, that seems designed for the specific purpose of killing kid’s interest in history off in the quickest possible time. There is also, of course, the perennial problem of a school curriculum that seems to grow ever more packed with requirements thought indispensable under government initiatives that are all too often forgotten about before the bureaucrats have come back from their lunch break.
There is though another problem at work here, namely that we are now governed by people who are, for the most part, historically illiterate. Nothing else could explain how we sleepwalked into the appalling mess that is the war in Afghanistan when an understanding of the horrors visited on British forces there in the nineteenth century would have been wise counsel against making war in that benighted land. The same goes for our approach to the economy, we repeated the mistakes of the 1920’s by allowing the financial markets to run wildly out of control and those of the 1930’s by doing too little to help people who have had their livelihoods destroyed by the crash. If all this leads to us having to relive the horrors of the 1940’s; don’t say the history books didn’t warn you.
The inescapable truth is that one of the most valuable resources any country can have is its history, without a clear understanding of where we’ve been where we’re going to could well turn out to be somewhere we don’t much like.
Source: bbc.co.uk
An ASBO for Rover?
As if they didn’t have enough to keep them busy the government announced plans this week to introduce ‘dog control notices’, ASBO’s for Pit Bull Terriers if you like.
Home Secretary Alan Johnson, a postman before he was a politician and so no stranger to getting bitten by dogs, said ‘The vast majority of dog owners are responsible, but there is no doubt some people breed and keep dogs for the sole purpose of intimidating others.’
He went on to say ‘it is this sort of behaviour that we will not tolerate; it is the sort of behaviour we are determined to stop.’ Cue the patriotic music and thunderous applause for the hero of the hour.
Meanwhile back in the Westminster bubble plans are afoot to launch a public consultation on legislation to make it compulsory for all dog owners to have their pets micro-chipped and to buy third party insurance.
As with so many things the brown government has done since 2007 this is all very well meant and so utterly impractical it is doomed to fail. The irresponsible owners the plans are aimed at are no more likely to buy insurance for their dog than they are for their car; as for giving Fang or Fido, or whatever they call the slavering beast that half drags them around the local sink estate an Anti Social Behaviour order, they’d probably hang it is pride of place on the wall next to their own.
Source: politics.co.uk
And another thing:
All this week BBC 2 has been showing ‘Lambing Live’ as part of its prime time schedules, a programme that does exactly what it says on the tin; meaning that a bunch of cute little lambs get born and nothing much else happens.
I know that budget cuts mean Auntie has had to tighten her belt, but if this is the shape of things to come what can we expect next; coming soon ‘Paint Drying-Live?’
Its all gone wrong, Chris Evans taking over the Radio 2 breakfast slot vacated by Sir Terry Wogan at the start of the year, this week the former enfant terrible of radio was pictured creeping into Broadcasting House looking like a haunted wreck.
The Met Office may have given up making long range forecasts, but I more than willing to predict storm conditions in coffee cups across Middle England; it’s not a hurricane dears so please stop panicking.
Lets face it presenting a breakfast show on radio isn’t exactly rocket science, all you need is a pile of records and a store of breezy chat, whether the latter comes from an elderly stage Irishman or an overgrown ginger schoolboy is neither here nor there.
Give it six months and the TOGS currently getting their comfy underwear in a twist over nasty Chris taking over from lovely Terry will have forgotten what all the fuss was about.
Do I care whether Samantha Cameron, wife of the fragrant David, voted Labour during her wild youth? Not all that much.
Being married to a politician does not mean being married to his or her party too, unless, of course, you happen to be the wife of the honourable member for Stepford that is.
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