Gertsamtkunstwerk

Women candidates and a male cleansweep

I drafted this following the announcement of Labour's London Mayoral candidate and I'm editing it after announcement of Labour Leadership & Deputy results. In response to many tweets bemoaning the male clean sweep of the posts.

Women make up just over 50% of the population, are underrepresented in most spheres of influence and are overrepresented in most disadvantaged groups. I read an article based on research that suggested that when people see a TV programme or a conference where 17% of the participants are women, they perceive this as equal numbers of men and women. When women comprise 34%, this is perceived to be female domination.

These perceptions are backed up by numerous comments I have observed over the years eg someone declaring in 1997 that, right, there are enough women MPs, we don't need any more, when there were barely a hundred out of a total 650. Even now, there are more current women MPs than there are women former MPs going back a hundred years or more.

In the 2015 General Election the Conservative and Liberal Democrat candidates in my constituency were both women, and the Labour candidate was male. I voted Labour, for political and ideological reasons, and no one suggested  I should choose either Tory/Lib Dem on gender grounds.

I apply a similar logic to posts at the top of the party. In the Mayoral contest I voted for Christian Wolmar, then Diane Abbott, knowing they would be eliminated early and the contest would be a two horse race between Sadiq Khan and Tessa Jowell. I picked Sadiq, because on balance, he is closer to me on policy grounds than Tessa, and Tessa was supported by people with a very different vision for the Labour Party than mine. In the end I voted with my head for Yvette Cooper despite serious reservations (eg a reluctance to oppose austerity) rather than my heart for Jeremy Corbyn (I'm very pro-EU, and I worry that Jeremy is too influenced by what feels right rather than what is evidenced - his support for homeopathy is a tiny example but a huge symbol of this). I didn't vote for Yvette because she is a woman, but I have followed her career closely partly because of that.

There are still too few women MPs, and, despite some all women shortlists, too few women are selected for 'safe' seats where the incumbent (usually male) is retiring. All women shortlists are a decent attempt to tackle this, but not enough. 

To have more women vying for the top offices needs a greater supply of women at all levels. There's been some talk of north vs south of England, and much debate about the over-concentration of candidates who are graduates of just one or two universities. And, as it happens, there were equal numbers of men and women in the leadership race, and the Mayoral front runners were one of each.

Now people are talking about Keir Starmer as the favourite for the next Labour Leader, based upon his ability to bring his experience of being a former Director of Public Prosecutions, and his lawyer's ability to speak clearly. I was about to write, but there aren't women with equivalent experience - except of course that his successor as DPP is a woman. but I think my point stands. 

Many MPs, male and female, start off as councillors but local government is still male dominated, even though active users of council services are disproportionately female. That women remain statistically the prime carer of children explains to some extent why there are fewer women, but many councillors are retired or semi-retired from their day job (and thus presumably their children, if they have some, are grown up), and roughly half of women of child bearing age don't have children. When I was a woman councillor in my 20s I was a statistical freak. Not unique, but rare outside trendy politicised metropolitan areas - and I found myself subject to unwanted sexual advances from male Labour councillors at gatherings such as Local Government conference. 

The process for selecting council candidates favours people with skills that are categorised as male - standing up and speaking confidently in front of a room of people and being seen to be an active campaigner in visible settings - and downplays the characteristics categorised as female, such as building and nurturing relationships, listening and empathising. Of course, these skills are not actually exclusive to either one or the other gender, but we are socialised in a society that tries to genderise such attributes.

I can't target individuals on Twitter and ask them what they have done to encourage women into politics: knowing my luck I'd target someone with good credentials. And I have done very little in recent years.

But it's like the board of a company or a government department. You can shout loudly about encouraging more women to be directors, even imposing quotas, but it misses the point. If there were equal numbers at the next level down, and the level below that, the law of averages means that the best person for the job is just as likely to be a woman as a man, and proportionately likely to be BAME. But when there are obstacles that deter women from getting onto the lowest rung, you're losing a lot of potential. And, often the women that do rise above that level have all the same faults as too many men - ambitious, and determined to be in position, but not necessarily with the right skills and experience to do the job.

It's better than 20 years ago, in politics and in workplaces. Prior to 97, young women MPs (and especially BAME ones) stood out for their rarity. I'm getting older, so 'young' is a relative concept, but every few weeks I come across some young woman MP I hadn't been aware of, and older women too. I  sense there are more women councillors, including relatively young ones at least in areas I notice.

But it's not enough just to encourage or role model and mentor. There are artificial obstacles -  the criteria for selecting councillors aren't those that make a good councillor - and it's a truism that women are hesitant to brag and project themselves. The political ambitions that drive politicos - and I include my former self, because it's not a gender split - do not make a good councillor or MP . These require relationship building and insight at the casework and 'pothole' level, and analysis and scrutiny at the strategic level. I was fairly good at the latter back then, and would be even better now, but I was hopeless at the former and probably worse now. You rarely see prominent politicians praised for their relationship building (unless it's tactical, building up favours and loyalty) or their skills at challenge, and perhaps if more excelled in these area, politics would be different.

The skills that make a good politician aren't the skills that win votes. Policy areas with big challenges,  such as Social Services don't win votes, and doing the right thing is often an unpopular vote loser.

And I don't know what the answer is, other than a gradualist increase in women participating at all levels.

On GFC2

I'm not going to carry out an analysis of the causes or implications of the latest Global Financial Crisis to hit. Don'tcha hate that when people who know eff all about eff all writing as if they are experts and have done some research?

I'm inclined to conclude that we're all doomed. But we were all doomed previously. And the easy availability of cheap credit was just a smokescreen to delude us that we're not doomed.

Coming so swiftly after the tidal wave of revelations and resignations from News International, it only serves to confirm what I knew instinctively as a young activist but conveniently forgot in the years of comfort - democracy is an illusion.

We go through the motions of participatory and representative democracy, discussing subjects that matter enormously to people's lives locally and internationally. But now we know, what we really should have known all along - the power lies with the unelected unaccountable elites, such as Murdoch and other press owners, who themselves are only following the dictates of 'the markets'

The supine state of some parts of the news media is just depressing. I ignore ITV news, and regard Sky News as unreliable, even though it has moments of brilliance. Channel 4 News seems consistently ahead of the curve with good, deep and reflective coverage of these stories,  and more. For example they have sent a British-Somalian journalist into a remote region controlled by Al Shabaab, whereas the BBC had a white public-school-educated reporter based in Mogadishu reduced to interviewing African Union peacekeepers.

Al Jazeera was the station of choice for the Arab Spring and for the Japanese Tsunami. The BBC's main Japanese correspondent (presumably appointed on account of having achieved being the son of a long-standing BBC newsreader) was clearly unable to speak Japanese and had to interview UK and US expats barely affected or reporting what AFP were reporting NHK were saying. Al Jazeera are said to have more reporters in Latin America than BBC and CNN combined, many of them from or connected to the countries they report upon.

Nothing in the main BBC news coverage of the Global Financial Crisis is designed to shed any light. Newsnight would be worth watching except that the reliable and thought-provoking Paul Mason is currently on holiday. So, the other night, in place of reasoned debate, we had a rude shouty American from deep within Wall Street effectively trying to argue that all of civil society should kow-tow to the infinite greed of 'the markets'.

Yet again the stock markets have caused calamity, and the BBC reports on them with the same unquestioning deference as they report on the Royal Family and the Church of England. Seen as supreme and benign, no suggestion that there could be an alternative, or that these are inimical to the decent lives that most ordinary people want to live.

I will never be a revolutionary socialist because I do actually support capitalism, if capitalism be the trading of goods and services for profit. And I suspect that most people would prefer to hang onto the little they still have  rather than risk losing everything, even if it means long-term gain for their descendants. I hate the huge parasitical bottom-feeding panoply that has grown up around trade, most of all the banks, hedge funds etc that have become the tail that wags the dog. 'Buying shares' is seen as 'investing'. Constantly trading shares in one big gambling game is seen as 'adding value'. Neither is true. (And yes, I do understand that the big investors are pension funds and insurance companies, and how that flows back to ordinary individuals).

Most people, when they give it some thought, have at least some attachment to and belief in democracy, some kind of sense that ultimately the will of the people will prevail, even when they appear to have evidence of the opposite occurring in certain cases. Even though it came as no surprise to me, I still found it shocking to learn how so many politicians of all political parties were so submissive to Murdoch. And now we are being told that entire democratic structures should be dismantled  in order to pacify 'the markets'.

The cost of borrowing for the US government, and thus the cost of providing government services will increase, because some unelected, unaccountable, set of commentators, called Standard & Poor have decreed that the US Government is a bad risk to lend to. Their opinion, their judgement, the consequences of which I can only guess. They are effectively dictating to a Government elected on broadly democratic principles, and, almost on a whim, dictating the course of human history for perhaps the next fifty years. 

There are some complex philosophical points that I don't pretend to understand, but I am angry that the mainstream news is reporting this as if it's the betting for the Grand National or something as much beyond human understanding as the latest tweet from CERN

Thanks to recent fine tuning, the LHC has delivered 2 inverse femtobarns of data already this year; peak luminosity is now over 2x10^33.

I don't know what the answer is, I certainly don't think taking to the streets in public show of impotence will help. But I would like the publicly funded BBC main TV news service, for once in their miserable lives, to remember it's the public who actually pays their salaries,  and stop singing the tune of the Murdochs and others who have demonstrably bribed them into compliance.

 

Press Freedom and Injunctions

Why waste a few good tweets when I can so easily turn them into a blogpost...!

Twitter is interesting. In that, it seems to be journalists who are so insistent that everything is fair game for newspapers. A 'free press' is a classic test of whether society is free. But almost no rights are absolute, and any right is naturally curtailed by the extent that it restricts another right.

The Media, especially the mainstream and tabloid Press make a lot of money by intruding into people's privacy and family life. Those are also rights, laid down in the Human Rights Act which was based upon the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

And people sheeplike following them thinking they're jumping on the latest 'civil liberty' bandwagon. They are in fact defending the right of the rich and powerful unaccountable newspaper industry to trample on the rights of individuals. Individuals who may be exceptionally wealthy, but have a fraction of the power of any newspaper editor or proprietor. 'Civil Liberties' has never actually been about defending the bully against the bullied.

It would be lovely to see private lives of those journos made public. Not sex, that's boring: drug/alcohol abuse; debts; medical records. Maybe exposés on how they don't recycle, or drive when they could walk. Losing their temper, falling out with neighbours.

The focus on the sex lives of the celebrities in question just shows how cynical those journalists are. They claim some moral high ground about how these celebrities cash in on a 'Mr Clean' image in sponsorship deals. Apart from it being ridiculous to think that any adult actually thinks that our heroes are saints, why only sex? If they are people unfit to be our heroes, surely this will be on account of any number of flaws.

After all, journalists are in the public eye. By their logic, they have a duty to reveal all their own flaws, sins, crimes and bad temper to public scrutiny. If they don't, they are breaking their own rules. If they don't want to be so exposed, they ought to behave like absolute angels, or stay out of the public eye.  No faults, flaws, mistakes, weaknesses or off-days. Not reasonable, is it?

People need to remember that  'adultery' & 'promiscuity' are not illegal. I rather despise those who have used this legal tussle over privacy as a Trojan horse for their odious views on sexual behaviour. They defend the 'freedom' of a Press that it is out of control and try to deny you or me the freedom to have sex with whoever (adult, consenting) we choose. What strange warriors for freedom they are!

Some of them display a nasty puritanical streak; in some cases, this is made worse by knowing that those who say 'keep it in your trousers' are two-faced hypocrites who don't, but because they are nobodies, they are confident their behaviour won't be found out.

Or assume that they won't be - until, perhaps, someone close to them becomes 'news', perhaps in tragic circumstances, and they themselves will become victims of the Gutter Press's 'Right' to write about anyone's private life without constraint.

It's disingeneous to argue that injunctions about adultery are just paving the way for covering-up the crimes of capitalism. Using a judicial process, some sort of legal instrument, doesn't mean that the cases are similar or even concerned with the same branch of law. Just look at the wide range of cases covered by any type of court eg Small Claims, Administrative Court  - for example, why should a landlord/tenant dispute be seen as precedent-setting for cases relating to sales of goods. So, there seems no logical imperative that an individual's right to privacy should necessarily lead to cover-up of corporate atrocities.

When those journalists cry crocodile tears for 'freedom of the press' ask them how many abuses of corporate or political power they've exposed. Or have they acquiesced in Big Business curtailing their newly-found-to-be-precious Press Freedom? Rank hypocrisy! As one of my Tweeps commented "How many newspapers paid any attention to Trafigura, where the same legal process was used to cover up the crimes of capitalism? Certainly none of the papers that are leading the way over the celebrity injunctions, if I am not mistaken..."

I can only conclude that the precious 'Freedom of the Press' that newspaper employees are invoking, and their followers are unquestioningly endorsing, is purely the freedom to sell newspapers that somehow titillate readers with their grubby tales of everyday life.

Frankly, if you're turned on by non-specific tales of some bloke having a casual fling away from his marriage, I hate to think what will happen if you read an explicit modern novel, let alone internet erotica!  Although, I suspect they are less interested in writing/reading vague details about a footballer having an extra-marital fling than they are in the potential for soft-porn pictures of semi-clad attention-seeking women. So, congratulations to all of you arguing so strongly for that Press Freedom. Have you really thought it through?

I have reflected on whether my views on the whole 'Superinjunction' issue is affected by me being a massive fan of the footballer who is rumoured to be at the heart of the superinjunctions issue. I have reflected, and concluded, no, I am actually intelligent enough to form views quite independently of my ability to appreciate a great footballer.

Meh To AV

Someone started a hashtag on Twitter Meh2AV

It brilliantly summarised my feelings about the forthcoming UK referendum on the voting system.

I used it once, to state:

It's not proportionate but may either hasten or delay PR. Assuming that one has a view either way on PR.

And I was lectured by someone describing himself as a 'first year student at Cambridge University'.

I resisted saying: 'I was thinking cogently about voting systems before you were born' because I hate the implication that being older necessarily confers greater knowledge.

(Below the body of the post, I insert tangential ruminations about the essence of politics).

The discourse ended when he said:

You'll make your own mind up will you?

To which, naturally, I replied:

No, I'm a middle-aged bloody woman. How on earth can I make my fucking mind up without having it explained to me by a teenager?

My indifference to AV is: it changes the electoral system and appears more representative when it's not. (Not that I especially support PR: it's logical, but in weakening the local link it may create MPs divorced from what they represent).

I consider AV to be inferior to FPTP because it caters for negativity and cynicism in politics. It's brilliant for those who want to vote for the party most likely to unseat the incumbent but can't identify which party this is.

I suspect this will lead to more negative campaigns: rather than 'Vote for our package of life-improving measures' it will, even more, be 'Vote for us because we're not as evil as the other lot'. Hmm, that argument is probably enough to convince me of the need for a properly proportional system.

In its favour, it can allow for tactical and true voting where there is a risk of BNP being elected  - the only circumstances I can envisage myself voting Tory would be to stop the BNP (or similar). In doing so, I am sort of disenfranchising myself. Under AV, I could vote Labour 1, Tory 2. Even so, I'd have to cross my fingers and hope that BNP didn't exceed 50% of first preferences. If I was unsure of this, I'd end up voting Tory 1; my Labour 2 would be eliminated before Tory, so I'd still have disenfranchised myself.

It would lead to different results in some constituencies. I suspect under AV, where I live, Streatham, would have elected a LibDem, as the anti-Labour and anti-Tory voters  combined in a ill-defined mealy-mouthed centre. Elsewhere, it would further reinforce the inherent 'natural' majority.

It is difficult to see how it would advance the representation of smaller parties, whether it be the Greens - whose growing influence enriches politics - or the BNP - who earn the votes of significant numbers of people however repugnant I find this.

If one supports a change to the electoral system from FPTP to PR,  a move to AV may not help this. Granted, it will demonstrate that change is possible. Conversely, most people who aren't political geeks will think 'we've already changed the voting system once, I can't be doing with this constant meddling'.

In all the years on-and-off that I have been politically active, PR has only been an issue on the doorsteps inside student Halls of Residence.

There is no ideological argument for or against AV. I see no reason to get out and campaign for or against. I probably won't return to the subject on blog, certainly not with new insights, before May.   I don't know how I shall vote in the referendum, because I don't care.

My 'don't care' isn't the product of apathy. There exists a strong case for constitutional and electoral reform. We still have an unelected Upper House of Parliament and an unelected, hereditary Head of State. Applying patches to the First Past the Post system of voting is a spit in the ocean. It does not further a debate about how we should be governed or how society should be arranged. It is just a numbers game to fascinate the geeks. (And coming from me...!)

The Royal Opera House accounts

Thnaks to Intermezzo, I have found a copy of the Royal Opera House accounts for the year to the end of August 2009.

To break it down, their total expenditure is £99.5 m, of which £7.5m is the cost of commercial and voluntary activities, leaving £92m to spend on opera and ballet.

Note 7 on page 24 breaks down expenditure into various categories, of which the main ones (in round millions of pounds) are:

Royal Opera 16

Royal Ballet 9

Orchestra 9

Production 10

Stage and Transport 10

Other production and sales costs 5

Management 2

Marketing & publicity 6

Education etc 3

Support costs 20

Staff numbers are

Production 395

Orchestra 114

Ballet 122

Opera 82

£9 million for 114 orchestra players and staff looks *about* right - in actual fact probably includes salaries and on-costs for 114 employed staff and fees for freelancers - £79k probably too much for an full-time orchestra player (please note the costs include Employers' NI & pension contribution as well as salary).

82 opera staff costing £200k each, so I presume that's 82 employed staff - chorus, young artists, and maybe a few assistant assistant conductors/rehearsal pianists, plus the fees paid to any number of visiting freelancers (I say any number, they're listed in the programmes, but I'm not counting now).

It's reasonable to assume that those are the salary and on-cost or fees for instrumentalists, dancers and singers.

395 staff for production at cost of £10 million suggests a cost of £25k, which doesn't strike me as very much (remember, not salary but full cost to employer). Let's hope a significant number are part-time!

£15 million of the support costs are premises related, and the rest are mainly 'management and administration', presumably including  ushers, cleaners, cloakroom attendants etc

Scenery, costumes, animals etc are presumably what comes into Stage and Transport, all £10 million of it. Without seeing the budget/management accounts for a specific production it's difficult to conclude, but it doesn't seem excessive, depending on how many productions it represents and the extent to which the costs are shared with other houses - off the top of my head I can't remember which productions were new in 08/09 season.

I guess to some people, 65 managers and administrators may seem excessive, but it depends what they do. I presume they include people like Stage managers, lighting engineers, as well as HR, Legal, finance, media and all those myriad functions every sizeable organisation needs to have in house. I may of course be wrong.

Income includes £35m from box office sales, and £7 million from membership of the Village Hall Flower Arranging Committee Friends. That's quite striking - membership is a fifth of ticket sales.

It's difficult to know what to conclude.

There doesn't seem to be a great deal of fat in that budget. On the other hand, where I work there is an expectation of 25% reduction in frontline services, and a third in backroom support. Much as I love opera, I do think that most of the frontline services my department provides are far more important to the nation (although one may disagree vehemently about the politics behind the policies that drive the operations - and believe me, one does, although not being frontline, one meekly accepts one's position as low-down the food chain and thus expendable/not socially useful).

On the other hand, the budget is 100 times the size, so arguably has more scope for scaling down and finding efficiency savings - though not 25%!

Personally, I think there is a good argument for protecting small budgets such as Arts and Overseas Aid (the latter, the Coalition agrees with me) because enormous cuts to them make not one jot of difference to the overall national finance). But I always think that the ROH audience may contain a disproportionate number of extreme tax avoiders. (By extreme, I don't mean people who ensure they claim every business expense, use their full ISA allowance, etc, but people who create elaborate arrangements and subsidiaries whose only function is to avoid tax which would otherwise be due).

Child benefit and statistics

I don't have any personal interest in child benefit because I don't have children.

There is a strong argument that well-off people shouldn't get child-benefit - which of course is paid for partly by people who never have had and never will have children.

There are also strong arguments for having a universal child benefit - being universal makes it easy to administer, and perhaps more importantly, it is the one source of income, however small, that a parent has immediate access to in all sorts of circumstances, including abandonment by the wage-earner or sudden loss of income, perhaps because an employer or customer has failed to pay.

But given that child benefit has always been universal, the recently announced change should be judged as a change, not in some abstract way, but how it will impact upon actual people in reality.

The change is patently unfair in that households with children, where one parent only is in paid work, lose it at £44k a year, whereas a household with two parents earning could have an income of nearly £90k before losing the benefit.

(This has been characterised as picking on the 'SAHM's - the Stay-at-Home-Mother households, who, no doubt are far more attractive or deemed worthy than the single-parent household...a nice subtle reminder that single parents deserve all they don't get, irrespective of the fact that they are actually doing the parenting.)

Just as unfortunate is the fact that it represents a massive marginal tax rate. A modest pay-rise of a few hundred pounds could mean someone loses several thousand pounds in CB. It will also be interesting to see how they intend to administer it for people with varying income, where overtime or commission may push them over the limit, but without any guarantees.A real disincentive not to work - although conversely, perhaps it will encourage the sharing of earning and childcare more equally between both parents. Hmm, probably not a policy many in the Tory party actually want to encourage

I was really annoyed by Philip Hammond on the TV last night. He declared that 'the median income for one income households in the 40% bracket is £75k'. Clever use of the word 'median', there. It sounds impressive and technical. But look again what it actually means.

Half of the people affected earn less than £75k. As that covers a range of £30k, it's probably fair to say that nearly another sixth earn between £75k and £87k. So, about 2/3 of single-income households who will lose CB, earn less than the maximum joint income where people remain eligible for CB.

George Osborne has claimed that this unfairness is nothing new, because income is taxed on the individual not on the household, so what are people moaning about?

He is of course talking nonsense, because Child Benefit is not a payment to households - else people like me would get it - it's a payment based on the number of children. And he's trying to cover up his gaffe by announcing an extra tax allowance for married couples - irrespective of whether they have children or are caring for dependent adults. Just, anyone really.

The other aspect is a consideration of what is a 'high earner'. I've seen some interesting comments on the internet ranging from 'I couldn't support a partner and two kids on less than £50k' to 'why should I subsidise rich people to breed'.

I found an interesting article last week which said

The median wage in Britain last year was £20,800. If you take home more than £40,000 a year, you are in the richest 10 per cent.

The figures chime with what I've read elsewhere, except that I would take issue with the word 'richest' and also question the word 'wage'.

A wage isn't the same as income, especially when you consider the people who have unearned income, from investments, including rental property. I am also not convinced it covers people whose main income is from the profits of a limited company. It doesn't seem to include people on 'out-of-work' benefits, including pensions, but it is also reduced by the large number of people who work part-time. So the stated figures are distorted beyond any usefulness and it's guesswork what earnings flow into a 'typical' household.

I have read a figure that says about 15% of people who currently have children are in one-income-households above the 40% threshold. That's actually rather a lot of people (over a million households, so nearly two million adults); even more if you add in the people who are close to the threshold and expect to rise above it soon.

Lost in the small-print is the withdrawal of child-benefit for 16-18 year-olds still in full-time education. I don't know how that chimes with the raising of the school-leaving age to 18 in 2013, but I suspect that this announced cut, and the abandonment of the Building Schools for the Future, means that it won't happen - the Tories will keep school leaving age at 16. And is an across-the-board attack on all people with future 16-19 year-olds, including  - especially - the poorest.

There's been mutterings that the chattering classes have ignored the restricting of benefit to £26k per year. I know that sounds quite a lot of money for not working, but of course, most of it isn't 'money'. The amount of benefit paid out is dependent on the amount of rent that is being charged, especially by private landlords.

The internet tells me that the average monthly rent in my postcode is £600 for a studio flat or £1300 for a two bedroomed house. Granted these are nice places, to rent to young professionals rather than claimants, but even so, it's not 'benefit scroungers' who are getting rich, but the buy-to-let brigade, and the other property speculators.

The same people who are pushing up house-prices, which leads to someone saying they couldn't imagine supporting a partner and two kids on less than £50k in London. Hmm, good luck in finding a £200k property.

So, she's right, but then, why should she be subsidised by someone earning half that, and still living in their parental home?

People are angry, knowing that the benefit cap will force people out of their rented homes. Instead they suggest rental caps, as used to exist. I'm inclined to favour that. However, it will lead to these rapacious landlords withdrawing from the market, and the poor people will still be homeless, even though it will allow Ms £50k to afford a decent family home, and Mr £23k to move out of his teenage bedroom.

On competitive school sport

I suspect that this blogpost is likely to be dismissed as the rantings of some Guardian-reading Lefty but hey ho!

It seems that a particular bete noire of mine from the Eighties has surfaced again -  the idea that all school sport should be competitive 'because life is'. I think it's a nonsense promulgated by dullards who can only define themselves by their erstwhile ability to have represented their school or Borough/County at some team sport for a very short period of their lives.

In practice, for most adults, life is horrendously competitive, but sport is often the one area they can actually escape from formal competition. What on earth can sport teach you for the numerous competitions in life? Why schools should be teaching kids sports skills which have no further purpose beyond school?

Take football out of the equation for a moment. Football is unique among sports that it dominates the national discourse and dominates public spaces. It is beautiful because it only needs a strip of land and a ball to make it possible. Fancy kit and equipment are optional extras.

Life is competitive. We compete against other candidates in job interviews and for promotions. Even when not actively seeking promotion we generally want to do at least as well as our peers and often want to out-do them. Not particularly out of pure competition but to get a bigger bonus, more interesting assignments or to ready oneself for a promotion in the medium term - playing the long game.

We often find ourself competing against obstacles. In our paid jobs, or many life tasks such as Do It Yourself, planning a holiday, or fighting chronic ill-health to cope every day.  Many of those obstacles come from within ourself, many more from the external environment. If we care enough, we fight to win, if not, we don't bother.

The biggest competition many of us face is in human relations - to win that man (or woman) and then to maintain that relationship, as well as competing for the attention and affections of myriad friends whilst fighting the jealousy when they appear to favour another (or is that just me?)

I have never played hockey since leaving school, and have only played netball and rounders a few times and not for years. I can't find any benefit from having learned those at school.

My chosen forms of exercise are swimming and cycling. For many other people, 'going to the gym' or other forms of 'keeping fit' where the objective is on 'keeping fit' rather than vanquishing another human being.

Even for those - runners in particular - who do compete, they spend a lot more time battling themselves and the elements to get themselves up to standard than they do 'competing'. I do not think that most people who enter Marathons do so in order to win - they do it to conquer the environment and their physical weakness (relatively speaking!).

Playing team sports does not prepare you for this, and for people with no emotional involvement, their motivation is zero and they soon learn it really doesn't matter. As opposed to that competition to get the job, to do the job properly, to get promotion, which always matters, at least up to a point!

I would think that schools and others charged with nurturing children need to equip them with the means to manage adult life. This includes skills such as hard work and determination; teamwork; when to co-operate and when to look after one's self-interest; working towards goals; conquering one's fears; overcoming weaknesses; and having the ingenuity to find alternative solutions and the wisdom to accept one's shortcomings.

Some of these can be taught to a certain extent by sports, be they competitive or not, in teams or solo. For the majority of adults - and children and teens - the greater challenge is to become and stay fit. If that is through country walks or dance classes, that is so much better than forcing lumpy adolescents to charge up and down a hockey field doing a passable imitation of Quasimodo. Someone who learns the art of hiking or gets into a swimming habit young is far more likely to maintain this into middle-and old-age than someone who is taught that physical activity is only worthwhile if you win.

Competitiveness is learnt through numerous activities. For many of us, it's sibling rivalry, competing for parental attention, which then transfers to the classroom and teacher. Some of us competed to out-do our friends in exam marks -  this is deemed to be discriminatory against dullards and boys for exactly the same reasons that makes competitive team sports a torture for physical inadequates and girls. We compete in quizzes and board/card-games, these days kids do it with computer games.

Almost anything creative ends up competitive, be it prizes at the inter-school festivals, exams for dancing, drawing competitions. Bright and/or talented non-sporty kids don't need to be dragged down to competing in sports they care little about any more than sporty kids need to be bullied into painting a picture or writing a short story.

I took football out of the equation. I'm going to conclude with an observation about elite football. Following England's shambolic World Cup disaster, Alan Shearer was forthright in his views that there is too much competitive football at a young age. English boys do not learn the football skills that kids from many other nations do because of the obsessive focus on winning and competing.

It made me very sad to hear Alan Shearer, former England captain and one of the most important players of his generation, say this. He's about the same age as me, and when he and I were teenagers way back nearly thirty years, it was an ongoing theme in Match Weekly and Shoot, and on Football Focus. The kids play too many competitive matches, very few have the ball-skills and far too many are exhausting themselves when they should be growing to physical maturity.

Sadly, although is an old problem, it is not one that is being addressed. So it seems even our elite athletes, the footballers who are good enough to play for England, still the Seventh best team in the World, are deemed inadequate because they played too much competitive sport. Surely that must also apply for the part-timers in the depths of non-League and to the hundreds of thousands who play for their pub or works team, reinforcing the argument that schools really shouldn't be playing more competitive sport, but in fact less.

Schools should be on the one hand teaching the skills of the specific sports they favour, and on the other, teaching all pupils how to exercise for enjoyment and to be fit through their life, and to have the determination to push themselves beyond their comfort zones, physically and psychologically.

Wot no audit?

Nothing like starting a blogpost on a tangent. I started my political existence in opposition. I was politicised by the 1979 Election, and joined the Labour Party in 1984. I was 29 before I really experienced a government of *my* colour. I realised in the past three months that many of my young comrades are the mirror image, too young to remember really a Tory government, they flounder at being in opposition.

One thing I have learnt from experience, it isn't necessary, as an activist, to oppose absolutely everything the Government does. Parliamentarians have a specific constitutional responsibility to oppose, but the rest of us should choose our battles wisely and sparingly, in order to make a greater impact when it really matters.

But I couldn't let the abolition of the Audit Commission go by without comment.

I have never worked for the Audit Commission, but I started my career at the National Audit Office, have worked for a large Accountancy firm, and in Internal Audit . For over twenty years.

There is no case for saying that any organisation must continue existing in perpetuity, nor that any particular function should always be delivered the same way.

When I worked for the big firm, it was on contract to the Audit Commission. They were responsible for appointing auditors to all Local Authorities. In many cases they appointed auditors from what was then known as the District Audit Service, in other cases, from private firms - I always understood the firm I worked for to be a Limited Liability Partnership, but I read in Wikipedia it changed its status - somewhat surprisingly - to 'co-operative' a few years after I left.

Councils had no real say in who was appointed their auditor, and they were in no position to dictate how much audit they be subject to. The amount depended upon how much was needed. The firm employed mainly trainees and potentially disastrous contractors (such as me, I wasn't disastrous!), in order to keep the cost down. Of course, that also risks a reduction in quality, but, hey what does that matter!

Audit isn't glamorous, and it's very difficult to persuade people that it's essential. Its necessity is usually more noticed in its absence.

I don't feel a need to shed tears over the demise of the organisation known as the Audit Commission. It's difficult to find out precisely what is happening to various different functions. I have read that the Value for Money work will transfer to NAO, which I feel relaxed about. There may be difficulties in the details, but that is for those closer to the initiative to work out. Possibly some work could be done by the Care Quality Commission.

But what scares me is the fact that councils will be able to appoint their own auditors, from the private or voluntary sectors. I am bit surprised to find that there are voluntary sector audit providers, unless that covers 'co-operatives' like my former employer. Perhaps for most councils, those that are moderately competent or better, it won't be a big deal, for a while.

But, to be honest, even in those circumstances, I am fearful of what it means.

I don't think Local Government yet knows - but can guess - how savagely they will have to cut expenditure. It will be exceptionally painful to slash the big spending budgets, especially schools, and care for the elderly.

It will seem like a no-brainer to go for the cheapest possible audit option. Even the most senior officers and elected members think that audit is there to prevent fraud, and that alone, and will claim to have great corporate anti-fraud structures.

Many of them will need to be persuaded of the need for Internal and External Audit, thinking them to be duplicate functions. Internal audit looks at the management of risks and the adequacy of controls, whereas External Audit exams the financial statements, and, where necessary, the systems that support them.

Irrespective of the cuts agenda, there is a need for Internal Audit to re-examine its role: when I started twenty years ago, no one but Internal Audit carried out any sort of scrutiny of risks, systems and controls. Nowadays, in most mature(-ish ) organisations have, at least to some extent, the tools to self-scrutinise. But the operational independence of an Internal Audit service is crucial.

In some councils, officers and members may welcome the opportunity to appoint their own auditors, swallowing the guff or believing the myth that 'bright people in accountancy firms' can offer us so much more. I simply don't think this is true. Sure, they have some great economies of scale in firms, being able to develop specialisms by client, by theme (eg Housing Revenue Account, infrastructure assets) or in use of a specific accounting system, for example. But I assume that the Audit Commission is also large enough to sustain that level of specialism.

And I have seen in firms I have worked with and worked for, that the standards are really not very high. I won't say more, for reasons of commercial confidentiality.

In the near future,  deep cuts will bring about massive changes, not least significant staff reductions. At a time of change, when staff are departing, morale is low, remaining staff are under pressure to 'deliver more for less', corners will be cut, and there is a very real risk that controls will be ignored, and internal scrutiny will be scrimped. Appointing a poor quality external audit - and reducing internal audit -  will exacerbate the problems.

But no one will notice. Eventually, service users will see a sharp deterioration in service levels, but that won't come as a surprise to anyone. We will blame it on the underfunding of services, it will be ridiculous to try and blame it on the absence of adequate audit.

It's impossible to imagine a Lambeth, or Westminster Homes for Votes, or Doncaster, happening again, because history doesn't repeat itself. In any case, if such scandals do happen again, will we know?

Labour leadership Brixton Hustings 30 June

It's not often that we get vote to for leader. I've been in the party since 1984 and have only voted in three leadership elections; this compares to six General Elections.

Before the recent General Election I had been politically inactive for quite some time, but Labour Party politics - and, I daresay, other parties, too  - have this habit of drawing you back in.

So when I heard that all the leadership contenders were to be husting in Brixton - yeah, Brixton - I was, like, try and keep me away. I actually did hesitate, because it did occur at the start of the most hectic three weeks of my life, at least since leaving the council. Which is why this blogpost is so belated!

I took a few photos of the contenders. Their relative quality reflects only where I was sitting. I could have been more assertive and taken more and better photos, but I don't think that that's very comradely. And nothing can be deduced from my voting intentions from the photos.

Diane Abbott was the most interesting. I identify the most strongly with Diane. She tends to speak first and think later, or doesn't seem frightfully concerned about how a statement will come across, if it's something that she believes and wants to say. She's also a bit rubbish when it comes to stand-up comedy. I'm surprised that, with her experience, she hasn't realised that however funny one is in informal situations with off-the-cuff quips, it doesn't necessarily work on stage in front of an audience. I feels she knows most instinctively how benefit cuts and job losses will affect ordinary people, whereas I think the blokes are more like me - we can intellectualise from observation but it's not the same.

I am happy to give Ed Miliband my second preference vote. Of the chaps he seemed the one most able to understand the need for change, not just in matters of detail but in a wholesale philosophical approach. I think he has the intellectual capacity to be Leader, although his people-skills fall short of those of say Tony Blair or Neil Kinnock, or indeed Diane Abbott or Ed Balls, but are far ahead of Gordon Brown and Ken Livingstone, for example. I also think he has the capacity to grow into the job. He doesn't come across as a Prime Minister but some people are capable of stepping into giant shoes.

I felt that Andy Burnham's heart wasn't in it. He seemed the most affected by the tremendous heat in the room - by the end he looked a lot damper than this, with which I can sympathise. I think his campaign is so overwhelmingly North West  - so it was a bit weird when he announced himself the local - Brixton-dwelling - candidate. Before the meeting I disliked him intensely, now I don't, so he may count that as a victory, if he wishes. But I can't see any reason to put him above five on my list.

I cannot properly decide between David Miliband and Ed Balls. I feel that they both have way too much baggage I want to distance myself from. Miliband is too much a Blairite, Balls is too much a Brownite. Both of them have repudiated these positions and have declared they have moved on, but I feel some discomfort at some of the Miliband followers, and I just don't trust Ed Balls. I think Balls comes across as by far the most impressive as a campaigning politician, who knows how to seize the news agenda; I fear a Balls leadership would be back to the same-old same-old Mandelsonian/Campbell/Blair/Brown obsession with ephemeral headlines, which was successful for it's time but we've moved on. As for David Miliband, I tend to like him, and I think he has the intellectual capacity to be leader and a personable character  , but I think he lacks a certain indefinable 'leadership quality'.

I think it's brilliant that it's a long drawn-out leadership campaign and that they are touring round the country. Westminster insiders and the media wanted it to be over quickly, clinical and decisively. Instead ordinary party members have had the opportunity to hear the candidates unmediated by mass media and actually ask questions. Political parties get this luxury at the start of a Parliament. Whatever is lost by a sense of leaderlessness in the past couple of months will be soon forgotten. I believe that whoever becomes leader will know - and members and voters know - that they have an undisputed mandate from the members.

There is nothing like political involvement to get members involved. For the past dozen years, the wail has always been - how do we get members involved. And I've always said that people primarily want to be involved in political discussion and education. It's difficult to campaign when you have forgotten what you're campaigning for, or that it's the rather nebulous concept of 'to win'. It gets a bit boring doing local campaigning, a lot of which isn't really party political, but about jostling for position and trying to get inward funding in one's area.

And it was stiflingly hot in the hired premises, which somehow just added to the nostalgic feeling for old-style Brixton policies!

At one point, Diane Abbott stated that she is the daughter of immigrants. I could see reactions all round - the Milibands are the sons of immigrants, and both Ed Balls and Andy Burnham (and Andy Burnham's Dad) have stressed repeatedly that they are from backgrounds far from privileged. Then later, David Miliband proclaimed himself to be 'the first member of my family born in this country', which caused Ed to react, almost - but not quite - imperceptibly, and led to quite a bit of comment on my Tweetstream. So, after the hustings, when Ed came over to talk to the person I was standing with and say hello and glad-hand me, I did ask him whether he suffered from 'second sibling syndrome'. That probably counts as one of the most stupid remarks I have made to someone in such a situation. HE said he didn't know what it was, so I explained. Cringe moment, hey...

PS It was chaired by Steve Richards from the Independent, visible in the Ed Balls photo

David Laws and the £40,000

I do have a certain amount of sympathy for David Laws, given the circumstances which led him into this mess.

There is no precise analogy with a straight or indeed out gay MP. I am a bit irritated at the claims that he is an intensely 'private' person; 'private' people don't tend to put themselves up for public office. But I feel a bit uncomfortable writing that, because there's obviously a very good reason for him wishing to be 'private'.

That having been said, it's not the sole domain of gay people to value their privacy above office - I can't think of any minister (past or present) and doubt there are many, if any, women MPs who have children by 'father unknown' or 'father did a runner pronto', even though, reportedly, it's rife throughout the nation¹.

My instincts tell me that this case is unlikely to meet the requirements of 'beyond reasonable doubt' required by Criminal Justice, but an employee breaking the rules of expenses claims in such a way would be subject to an internal disciplinary to be decided 'on the balance of probabilities'. Even though the charge would be the euphemistic '(Gross) misconduct', the nub of the matter would be fraud.

I don't feel any great need to defend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury who will be implementing a massive cuts programme, even though that wasn't in his party's manifesto and would be going ahead irrespective of which personality happened to be holding the job. (I also feel disinclined to defend a rich banker who appears also to be greedy). I was attacked by a Lib Dem supporter who stated:

Hey, Labour women, gloat about Laws in your homophobic way. When Tory anti-abortionists get overall majority, you may be sorry.

Even acknowledging that that was a 'Friday night special', it was still bizarre, to say the least. I don't really see the connection between alleged expense fiddling - or indeed economic liberalism - and abortion rights.

I find extremely objectionable the implication that the only area of public policy women should concern themselves with is abortion; and in any case, abortion bills are customarily on a free vote because the pro-choice/anti-abortion split goes right across party lines.

When this rant was followed up by a comment including the words 'Your pin-up Hazel Blears' I knew that enough was enough and I blocked that person. You see, there is political debate and then there is personal attack. And the great thing about Twitter, as opposed to newsgroups, it's possible to ignore someone entirely without then having to tolerate disjointed conversations.

The Lib Dems really have to wake up to the realities of being in power. It does take time to adjust, I remember that from 1997. It probably is true that the Telegraph was motivated to release this story because of its dislike of the proposed rise in Capital Gains Tax.

I happen to support the rise in CGT and am bewildered it has been so low for so long², but I think it is entirely legitimate for the Telegraph to campaign against it.

It isn't exactly noble to do so by unearthing this story³ but there is a harmony in exposing how someone is profiting from a second home whilst reducing the rights of many others to profit from their second homes.

And, in general, it is correct for the Press to scrutinise the actions of politicians - as politicians - even if I believe they often go too far in invading personal lives: I felt it entirely unnecessary for downmarket newspapers to publish photos of the Cameron's stuff being carried into a removal van, including a mattress for crying out loud, and I have argued repeatedly that extra-maritals or unusual 'arrangements' are not in themselves subject to scrutiny or cause for resignation.

I'm inclined to feel that if this situation had ceased after last Spring and the Great Expenses Scandal, I would have been fairly relaxed. It was an opportunity to stop claiming with no fuss. When I read that Laws was putting out propaganda highlighting how squeaky clean he had been over expenses, I felt weary. And I think it is entirely disingenuous for LibDems to state that if he had rented a flat commercially, it would have cost the taxpayer more. That is almost certainly true, but it's never a valid defence, not for benefit claimants nor for employees caught being creative with their expense claims.

By the way, a couple of years ago when Jimmy was unemployed we had a conversation about whether he should claim benefit on account of being my 'lodger' rather than be entitled to nothing as a result of sharing his life with me. The answer was no, not least because I dread the 11th Commandment (thou shall not be found out). I expect we could have got away with it and been a few thousand pounds better off. But we didn't. We don't share bank accounts either and arguably have very different social lives.

It's unusual for a CSttT to be so under scrutiny, in a way that hasn't been so since the Thatcherite cuts in the 80s. I know that the 'second homes' issue is a thorny one and I certainly wouldn't wish to return to the bad very old days when MPs were expected to meet out of their private income or personal fortune the necessary costs of being in both London and the constituency. I also recognise that David Laws chose not to be out and I'm glad we no longer have malicious outing for its own sake. But the message after last Spring is that people really resent some others enriching themselves while others are losing their jobs or having to suffer paycuts.

As for Hazel Blears, I've only ever said one nice thing about her, and that was about her stepping aside to let me pass when I was carrying a coffee. Her practices were dodgy and unethical, to say the least, but as far as I know she didn't break the rules at the time (which we all know were crap). Furthermore, she stood before an electorate who were in knowledge of the facts, and even though it's very difficult to imagine Salford being anything other than Labour, safer seats have fallen. And in any case, one could argue that Hazel is fully representing the spirit of Salford by being on the make⁴.

1 I may be wrong; I haven't studied the circumstances of every single woman MP, especially not the new ones, but even if I am wrong and there are women MPs like that, I don't think it invalidates the point

2 I expect a decision was made that the political cost of sustained attacks from the right-wing Press on the rights of middle-classes to make easy profits was disproportionate to the financial gain; I happen to think that's wrong.

3 by the way, some people have questioned why now, others have suggested it would have been 'ethical' to keep it under wraps because of the ramifications. It's possible - though unlikely - that maybe they did keep it until now for precisely those ethical reasons.

4 I'm kidding, right; there are plenty of honest people in Salford.

Elephant in the room

On Wednesday, I popped out of the office to take photos of elephants in Victoria Tower Gardens. I got better pictures than this of the actual elephants but they can wait.

As I was close to College Green, the epicentre of the media circus surrounding the formation of the new coalition government, I thought I would linger and shoot there, too.

The elephant in the room may well be that no one seems to have mentioned that Simon Hughes may not be entirely overjoyed at having to work closely with the Conservatives

NB: Anyone who posts a confrontational comment arguing on the basis of serious political points will be deleted; this isn't supposed to be taken seriously as Political Commentary. And yes, I know it's lame opportunistic attempt at stretching a metaphor/chiché to breaking point.

Also, in retrospect, I should have changed the angle to get the full glory of the clock face.

Electoral Reform

Suddenly, after 27 years of near-silence people other than political geeks are talking about a need for electoral reform.

It's a subject I have views on, of course I do, but I've never felt a passion for it. I haven't perceived any great desire for it in all the time I've been politically active. It doesn't come up on doorsteps or in pubs, when people are more concerned about public services, the economy and social justice

Anybody with an A-Level in politics can write an essay outlining all the various different systems and the textbook pros and cons of them all. Essentially, they boil down to whether you want your representatives to be closely identifiable with and accountable to a defined geographical area or whether you want your party of choice to have a share of people elected that reflects, at least broadly, the share of votes cast for them.

It's really important to emphasise how much many people value the perception that they 'know' their MP and councillors. This is probably not important to people whose community is virtual or have few ties to the area they happen to live. But it's vitally important to people who care - often passionately - about their area and who use services, many of which are area based.

An effective councillor knows every street and tower block in their ward, and is well acquainted with the chair of every residents' association and school governors. Similarly with MPs although with less detail. Irrespective of party, a good constituency MP is known throughout the constituency and on balance is liked and/or respected irrespective of party allegiances.

This isn't just about wanting councillors and MPs to be Super-Caseworkers, because both have a duty to scrutinise and be strategic. I want my representatives to think beyond potholes, but I also want them to be acutely aware of the impact of their policies on the wide range of people they represent. Politicians are often accused of being out of touch, often by journalists who wouldn't dream of visiting the estates and day centres, or don't have the opportunities to hear how ordinary people are struggling, be it with anti-social behaviour, access to services, benefits trap and childcare, or any of the other myriad commonplace problems people raise with their representatives. It's not good enough merely to know the theoretical textbook says.

A local connection is the biggest advantage of First Past the Post and would be preserved with an AV system (and weakened with AV+).

For European Elections and for the London Assembly, the 'fair share' system works reasonably well. It's important to have MEPs that understand and represent the interest of my region on a wider stage. It allows for smaller parties to get elected. In the case of the Greens, this is undoubtedly a Good Thing (I am currently writing as a student of politics rather than a tribalist); in the case of the BNP it appears to be a bad thing, but I'm relaxed about them: the more scrutiny they get, the more odious they appear. Their annihilation in Barking and Dagenham reflects previous results nationwide - they get elected by mobilising the support of people whose racism is passive and lazy, who feel hopeless and need to blame the poor sod one step higher or lower on the relative ladder of life. Once these people become aware of the BNP's active violent racism and their incompetence in office, they turn away from them.

I have read a lot of people complaining that their views or preferences go unrepresented. Someone was shown on the TV yesterday saying that not getting the MP of your choice is akin to getting apple pie when you order cheesecake. It's not: there is a difference between individual and collective choice.

However, that doesn't deny the broader point that for many people going out to vote seems like a waste of time. People who live in safe seats held continuously by a party they dislike intensely are often forced to choose between the party they prefer or the one they dislike but perceive as being the best placed to defeat the incumbent. They often feel they might as well stay at home. If they guess wrongly who is challenger, that feels even worse.

I don't think that the Alternative Vote system would really address that.

Suppose I lived in a constituency which was Tory held, reasonably safe but not impregnable, with Lib Dems generally well behind in second place and Labour in third. I would have voted Labour on Thursday but would have found it difficult to persuade others not to vote LibDem: I guess I would have put my campaigning efforts into a neighbouring area.

Under AV, I would happily have voted Labour, and guessed that my first vote would be eliminated. So I suppose I would have lent my alternative vote to the Lib Dems (unless I had several alternative votes, in which case Greens would have got my second). If the plan worked as predicted, there would be a good chance that the Lib Dems would have got elected as being the second preference of Labour, Green etc voters in addition to their actual supporters.

But I would still be left with an MP who doesn't support my views. And if the electorate behaved differently, the Tory MP who under FPTP gets say 40% of votes, could end up being elected with 60 or 70% of ultimate votes, reinforcing the Big Majority. This system would probably mean more LibDems elected, but I don't think it would actually make any great difference to parties such as the Greens (or UKIP, BNP etc).

The other extreme is to go for a party list system. You can dress it up with endless variations and fancy names but ultimately you vote for the party. It would be conducted on a much wider geographical basis than FPTP or AV. I reckon local to me the smallest area that could be sustained is about four Boroughs - say Lambeth, Southwark, Wandsworth and Lewisham, roughly one eighth of London. This would mean we elect about ten MPs in "Inner Sarf London". Perhaps a quarter of London would be preferable, so 20 MPs (roughly, I haven't actually totted up the precise numbers, I'm trying to make the arithmetic easier).In Inner Sarf, I would expect 4-6 Labour MPs, perhaps they could have one or more that 'specialises' in Lambeth, but I couldn't realistically demand they have instinctive intimate knowledge of local concerns.

Any party getting 10% of the vote would be guaranteed an MP in Inner Sarf London. For South West quadrant it would mean only 5%. This would mean that Parliament would approximately reflect the political preferences by party of votes cast. It would change voting behaviour. People would feel happier to vote for the Greens, for example, and probably most importantly would stop voting 'anti'.

Psychologically, that is a massive change - and I have no idea how it will play out. I suspect in time it will lead to far more smaller parties, as the artificial coalitions within the Big Three are no longer relevant pre-election. At the moment, you have to accept the coalition and ensuing compromises put forward by the party that most closely echoes your views; under a system more proportional you'd have to gird yourself for surprise coalitions and compromises you don't envisage or desire (which could never happen under FPTP, /sarcasm).

I suspect a plethora of smaller parties would have some unforeseen consequences because they would probably lack the expertise and sheer numbers to run an effective campaign. A well-oiled campaigning machine, with bodies running round the streets on a Thursday evening can make a big difference currently in marginal seats and potentially to vote share, but there is a risk of poorly targeted and under-resourced campaigns leading to lower turn-out. On the other hand, more people might get involved with a party which is a closer match than the loose unsatisfactory coalition they end up supporting at elections. Alternatively, there is the risk of endless fragmenting like the Judean People's Front!

I don't think it's enough to offer 'electoral reform' and hope that *everyone* agrees. Constitutional reform is messy and takes time - Parliamentary (and thus that of officials) time to process the legislation, plus it's one of those areas where I think it best to establish a broad consensus rather than forcing through legislation on a Three Line Whip.

I have always felt, right back to Sixth Form, that 'Lords Reform' should go hand-in-hand in with changing the way votes are counted (that's a way to solve the dilemma between local and proportional).

I also believe it makes little sense to do all that without considering the Monarchy. I suppose we could do nothing till the Old Dear pops her clogs, but if Charles had a scrap of decency in him, he'd indicate his willingness to submit to a referendum. Or if not him, William, who is rumoured to have no desire for the job so long as he can keep his wealth. But as was illustrated in Australia, a referendum has to be worded right. Also, the wrong result would end up legitimising the monarchy and closing the question off.

Five years ago I wrote about Electoral Fraud, and yet despite my blogpost, nothing has changed. There are questions to be asked about whether Thursday is the right day - although I also feel there are strong arguments against Sunday voting. I have mixed feelings about Fixed Term Parliaments, and I strongly oppose cutting back on the number of MPs, unless it could be accompanied by a similar restriction on the number of ministers and shadows - otherwise it would be a cull of potentially independent-minded backbenchers vital for scrutiny.

Vote Early Vote Often

 

Gordon Brown's speech to Citizens UK

Gordon Brown triumphs in unofficial fourth TV leadership debate

 Prime minister puts in extraordinary performance when the three party leaders addressed community groups

Gordon Brown today put in one of the most extraordinary performances of his tenure as prime minister when the three party leaders took part in an unofficial fourth debate – addressing community groups in the largest live audience of the election campaign.

Brown appeared to find an emotional range and vocabulary previously unheard from him. Prompting repeated standing ovations, he told the audience: "As you fight for fairness, you will always find in me a friend, a partner and a brother." The speech, before 2,500 voters in a large church hall, may end up having been the most electrifying event of the campaign. Critics of the prime minister described it as one of the best speeches they have seen by a politician.

Lies, damn lies and newspaper statistics

I find the statistics of elections endlessly fascinating.

I have found a story on the internet. I was alerted to it by a satirically fake David Cameron on Twitter, and have seen no other references to it, so I assume that everybody else is ignoring it with the derision it deserves. Except for Witney LibDems, who, without a hint of shame, blazen it on their website as:

Oxford Mail poll puts Lib Dems in lead for Witney

I voted in the poll, merely to access the results for the sake of this blog. At 1440 on 26 April, the 'results' read as:

Conservative     12%
Green                29%
Labour                3%
LibDems            52%
Other                  5%

The obviously not-very-bright LibDem candidate says:

Seeing this poll is a huge boost to the campaign

(although in fairness, she also says she's not planning to hand in her resignation at work any time soon)

If David Cameron were to be unseated next week, there would be huge glee nationwide, not least in some sections of the Tory party, but it's simply not going to happen. Or, in the unlikely event that it does, there is no way that the Oxford Mail can claim to have predicted this.

The simple fact that it allowed to me vote is enough totally to discredit it. I'm not registered to vote in Witney, I haven't even been there! It hasn't allowed me to vote a second time, probably because of cookies, but it would, I assume, allow me to vote from a different machine.

Although it gives the latest picture in terms of percentage, it does not say how many people, registered in Witney or not, have voted. Is it tens of thousands or just a few dozen?

Any such poll or survey which invites people to participate is susceptible to manipulation. Over the years I lose track of the number of times I have been contacted by someone organising a mass-vote in any number of 'polls' from the frivolous to the very serious. They tend to demonstrate who is the most organised partisan.

It is more likely to attract people who regularly interact online. Approximately half the electorate is over 50 and about a quarter of the adult population is of retirement age. A rural Home-Counties constituency such as Witney is probably older on average than, say, where I live, urban Streatham (unless RAF Brize Norton provides an unusual counter to the general rule).

Although I don't have statistics to hand, I think we all know that internet use is much less amongst older people; I'm not sure whether they are more or less likely than younger people to access the local paper proportionate to internet usage. Again, everybody knows older people are much more likely to vote. I would hazard a guess that Witney Conservative Association is very organised at ferrying their elderly supporters to poll**

The only poll that actually matters is the one on 6 May. But, obviously, there are lots of Opinion Polls around that attempt to predict the outcome.

There is a Code of Conduct governing these. Furthermore, they are conducted on the basis of what they believe to be a statistically valid sample. Typically the sample size is about 1,000, and I have problems with this, even though I understand perfectly that this is absolutely valid (+/- 3%) if the sample is random.

Often, they try and get a stratified sample, attempting to reflect the demographic make-up of society.  I find it difficult to believe that, considering how much more diverse society has become even since I first studied this subject,let alone since 1945.

I just cannot accept that a sample size of about 1,000 is equally accurate for a larger electorate, with a wider age span, that is generally much better educated, that has so much more ethnic diversity, in a society where women are (generally) less likely to vote as their husband instructs them to, where people are less likely to vote the same way as their parents for that reason, where there is greater access to news, which has faster reaction/ turn-around times, where people's community is less local and more widespread, be it online or with fellow workers who live miles away, and where people are less deferential.

Although I do recognise that irrespective of the population size and individual characteristics, everyone can be grouped into one of a very small group of options - but even then, the options are more numerous than ever before - some commentators proclaiming the move from a two to a three party system fail to see that we are close to a multi-party system: the London Assembly has members from 5 parties, the European Parliament has 8 from Britain, including SNP and Plaid Cymru but excluding Northern Ireland

I can see that a newspaper runs an online poll, hoping that it will attract and keep readers by being interactive and user-driven although I think it.

I realise that I am in danger of disappearing up my own geekiness in this election. A stranger reading this should challenge me to cite sources. I am not writing as an academic; I'm not even writing as a  political activist*. I just know this stuff, to me it's common sense and self-evident (but that's because I have specialised over the years, not putting down people whose expert knowledge lies elsewhere)

* I was very active in the Labour Party between 1984 and 2004, was a Labour Councillor in Lambeth 1994-2002, remain a Labour Party member and (small) donor, and have given some time to Streatham CLP in this election

** My partner's late father and my colleague's elderly mother, both Labour voters, habitually got/get lifts to polling stations from Tory workers

Touching too much fruit or veg in the supermarket

I have read the Liberal Democrat manifesto and I bet they are kicking themselves that they haven't pledged to end the 'carrying of small dogs when they can clearly walk' or 'clapping when the plane lands'

There's nothing in the manifesto to make my blood boil; I can't really see that overall it would make anyone's blood boil, although inevitably there are bound to be things that any individual tends to disagree with.

I've even found I was mistaken on the one policy that I found attractive. I admit that this is down to my own stupidity and naivety. I thought that their pledge not to renew Trident was in fact a pledge to move towards unilateral nuclear disarmament. It turns out it's just a technicality; they do want Britain to continue having a supposed 'independent' nuclear deterrent. I don't. It matters to me, but isn't an issue that in itself would determine my voting behaviour. But I did ask myself - can I in all conscience not support a unilateralist party? Is there any issue that is so big that it trumps that in itself it trumps the overall balance of the Big Picture?

Problem over, the LibDems aren't planning on Ban The Bomb. I think even the Tories are multilateralists nowadays. The LibDems oppose the like-for-like replacement, but they word it suitably ambiguously to kid you into thinking that they would actually divert the nuclear budget to conventional weapons and equipment and civilian purposes - that's what I would do.But, it seems, not what they want.

Most other pledges cause a so-what reaction. It seems to be a disjointed reaction to a variety of unconnected grumbles, some of it blatant opportunism.

They pledge to make airlines reveal the actual full cost of tickets (rather than the base figure plus so-called 'optional extras' such as making the payment!). We all know it annoying, but for heaven's sake, we do have the opportunity to review the actual total before you click 'Pay' ; surely, by now everyone knows what the deal is.  It doesn't stop us grumbling, but is this really the role of government? In any case, I'm sure Michael O'Leary would find a way - such as being based in a different sovereign nation, Ireland  - to circumvent this. There are numerous other pledges of this nature, including some which I won't talk about for obvious reasons, where the reaction is - so what!

Many of the things they propose are already being done or at least in development, again, some in areas where I dare not speak. It seems pretty easy to promise to deliver something that is halfway complete. I fail to understand the point of some of their pledges. For example, to 'regulate CCTV' - what does this actually mean? CCTV is already regulated under the Data Protection Act. If they propose further measures, such as setting up a body to license all operators, or some appeal process, or what - it doesn't spell it out.

Some of their proposals are to scrap things - such as Home Improvement Packs - which I know little about, but were introduced to meet a recognised problem. There is nothing in there that proposes how they will address that pre-existing problem. It's not an area that interests me: I haven't moved house for years and have no intention of doing so in the foreseeable future, but it seems to be a headline-grabbing proposal with no substance.

I don't see any big picture or vision in this manifesto. It seems to be a lot of clutching at disparate 'good ideas', each of which could achieve a broad consensus. I suppose they wrote this in a frame of mind of being the ultimate pressure group, and good luck to them, but it's not really a manifesto for government!

A large number of people have flagged up the contrast between the promises made by the LibDems locally and their performance in local councils. I know certainly in Lambeth, their record in coalition with the Tories between 2002 and 2006, that the people of Lambeth voted for a majority Labour Council against the trend of national voting where there was a massive anti-Labour swing - some of it opposition to the Iraq War, which isn't a local government responsibility. I have read that Social Care for the Elderly is in dire straits in Sheffield. I know that locally the LibDems opposed new secondary schools for Brixton; indeed, have a tendency to oppose anything that spells progress. There us a rumour that they are planning again for coalition with the Tories and intend to close the Sure Start Children's Centres*.

There are a few things said by leading Liberal Democrat politicians recently. One is this stupid slogan Clegg keeps using of not being an 'old party'. One can split hairs and point out that the actual legal entity of the Liberal Democrats was formed in 1988; this was as the Social and Liberal Democrats,  a merger of the previously allied Social Democratic Party and Liberal Party. The Liberal Party came about after the Great Reform Act out of the Whigs and Radicals. So it's disingenuous verging on the dishonest to persist with this.

Similarly dishonest is the attempt to portray Clegg as some political outsider who had an ordinary normal job before he went into politics. I rushed to his biography to read about his days down the mine followed by his nights as a trawlerman and his sabbatical as a teacher of special needs. But no, it turns out he did a political wonk job and worked for a lobbying company. He did also work as a journalist, and I will concede not one dependent on the Westminster rumour mill. But, really, I don't think the majority of people would really consider that as being a 'normal'. And if the normal jobs include his gap year jobs, then that's really pathetic.

What has annoyed me profoundly is the suggestion that the last 65 years of British history has been a failure. That is outrageous. My life is very different now than if I had been born in 1903, and thus my current age in 1945. I wouldn't have gone to University, probably wouldn't have been able to pursue a career, would certainly not be able to get a mortgage to buy a house in my own name. I am very proud of the National Health Service. I am proud that life expectancy has risen and neo-natal and maternal mortality has fallen.

I am proud that in the last 65 years we have abolished judicial murder and legalised homosexual acts, to the point where discrimination against lesbian women, gay men, bisexuals (and also transgendered people who tend to get lumped in with LGB) is illegal, as is sexual and racial discrimination and that based on disability. I can think of few areas of British life that, however flawed it is now, isn't a massive improvement on how it was in 1945. A lot of this is down to Labour Governments, much of it is merely in keeping with similar developments throughout the Western world, and some of it did happen as a result of action under the Conservatives, too (it's kind of like naming ten famous Belgians, if you screw your eyes up and think hard you can probably name ten decent Tory initiatives).

I am also incredibly bored of the bandwagon-jumping commentarati repeatedly portraying the Liberal Democrats as 'left of centre'. I suppose it all boils down to whether you consider Ken Clarke, say, to be centrist. The official LibDem national/Parliamentary policy ticks all the right boxes on any number of touchstone issues. My concern is more about the 'Orange Book' economic liberals and their support for free market economics.

*That having been said, I don't think that the 'competence' of often bumbling amateurs (of any party) is an indicator of the competence of full-time national politicians; I also think that with the LibDems, who have a track record of saying anything they think will get them elected, specific policies in any given area are no guide to what they'd do elsewhere

Cutting waste

This appears to be the mantra of this Election. Surely, no one can disagree with the imperative of cutting waste - unless, perhaps you take the Keynesian view that it is better to pay a man (or woman) to dig a hole in the road and fill it in again than for them to languish in idleness.

You could say 'cutting waste' is a subject close to my heart, being that it has been a major part of my job for twenty years. Obviously, I am not going to talk directly about the specifics of my job or how my employer arranges things.

Whoever is charged with making economies must understand what waste is, what they are doing and what its consequences are. I shall follow with a few illustrations which spell caution!

Every year, there is a series of questions in Parliament asking how much has been spent on taxis, which is followed by an outcry in the tabloids as it is revealed that Civil Servants spend several millions on taxis*. Throughout twenty years with several employers in the public and private sector, I have often used taxis for the final leg of a journey otherwise travelled by train. I travelled many times to Llandrindod Wells as a passenger, either in someone's private car or in a hire car, and, of course, I never claimed anything for doing so. On other occasions I have travelled by train to rural town councils and ports which are 2 - 10 miles from the nearest station and have finished off the journey by car. If there was a blanket ban on public servants using taxis, there would be a rise in the cost of private and hire cars; often, taxi and train (especially a cheap advance ticket) is cheaper than hire car (or allows there and back in one day, thus saving on a hotel bill.

It seems to make sense that if you want to make savings, you cut 'unnecessary' admin jobs rather than direct front line service providers. It depends to some extent what you call admin: as I quipped on Twitter, I have seen NHS positions such as hospital porters and 999 call-takers described as 'admin', and even in some instances occupational therapists, physiotherapists and phlebotomists. 

Even without this silliness, it's still important to understand what the admin person does. Many years ago I was on a Social Services Appeal Panel. One of the witnesses observed that some time before that, a round of spending cuts had led to all the filing clerks being made redundant with the expectation that social worker do their own, despite costing two or three times more and already snowed under with caseload. The result  - many 'Serious Case Reviews' highlight the poor quality of record-keeping.

Other frontline public services are attacked because expensive highly trained professionals are forced to do paperwork rather than being out at the chalkface doing what they do. Ironically, of course, when steps are taken to bring in cheaper admin staff to take over some duties, that also gets attacked as a watering down of public services.

Incidentally, many years ago I was in the pub with someone who I think was then the chair of Lambeth School Governors. He was of the opinion that the fixation on class-sizes might prove an irrelevance - that it was far more important to maintain a high ratio between trained adults and children. I understand that nowadays many classrooms have several adults in them, not just the class teacher but assistants for various SEN children, and assistants to prepare materials and support the teacher.

Another thing to be cautious of when 'cutting waste' is to be aware that all accounting is double-entry. I saw something recently, and I can't for the life of me think what and if it was at work I wouldn't tell you anyway, but it referred to a saving made in a fee to another branch of Government. Indeed, if savings are to be made by abandoning or not-renewing contracts with private sector suppliers, or by re-negotiating more stringent terms, it isn't a pure economic win. Nor is making staff redundant (or ceasing to recruit). It will look good in the books of the individual body that does it, and monitoring and controlling public expenditure would be impossible if there weren't sub-divisions created for convenience. Every saving made, unless it is reinvested directly into services, means that someone loses their job or stays unemployed, collecting benefits and not buying goods and services or paying taxes. It might mean a supplier going bust: it's good practice not to place a contract if it would make up more than 25% of the contractor's turnover. But it wouldn't entirely surprise me if, now, there are firms entirely dependent upon contracts from just two or three government departments.

I think Inspectorate and Audit, like every other function needs to be reviewed from time to time, with a few basic questions: Does it do what it's supposed to do (outcomes, not inputs)? Do we want it to do this? Is there another (better or cheaper) way to achieve the same outcome? Are there perverse or unintended consequences that negate the (assumed) benefits? The trend in local government is to adopt a shared service approach, and I have to admit to being shocked that it has taken small district councils in particular so long to do so. It is self-evident that there are savings to be made in Shared Services; there are also dangers that they can become big self-perpetuating bureaucracies in themselves. Ironically, the early years of my career witnessed the disbanding of Property Services Agency; I am sure there used to be a Government Department devoted to buying supplies for other government departments, which, I guess, aimed to achieve economies of scale but eventually imploded.

But Inspectorates are just too easy a target. I am sure people could write whole Ph.D theories on the danger of managing solely to meet targets and ignoring that which isn't scrutinised. At their best, Inspectorates act as a conduit of Best Practice and enable organisations to be transparent. Where organisations are failing to serve their public, the Inspectorate regime exposes this; failure to improve has further consequences, rather than a laissez-faire which allows inadequate councils, prisons, schools and other public sector organisations to bumble along in incompetency and failure.

So, all I'm saying, if someone knocks on your door promising to cut waste, ask them what they mean by this. Hope that the journalists will ask the politicians the same question. Try and work out if the politicians even understand what they are talking about, or are they just promising this because they know that every reasonable and intelligent person abhors waste.

* Like the recent outcry in the tabloids at the news that council employees use corporate credit cards in toy shops - it's not like any council has any responsibility for looking after or educating children, is it!

Breath-taking stupidity

"We got Rage Against the Machine to #1, we can get the Lib Dems into office!"

The Facebook Group which campaigned to get Killing in the Name to number one had 750,000 members; the record sold 500,000 copies (I'm not sure if that was in that one week or over that slightly longer period).

I know Facebook Groups are an easy target, but I this one has to win some special award for a special mix of stupidity, naivety and arrogance.

I would bet that of those 500,000 - note merely 2/3 of those who joined the group -  a significant number will either be too young to vote, not registered, or, on Election Day, too preoccupied or CBA to vote.

Another set will be already loyal (or loyal-ish) to the LibDems, and, therefore, any campaign to persuade them to vote Lib-Dem because of the RATM effect is wasted.

Another set will have strong reasons to vote for one of the other parties standing, be it a loyalty (ish) to that party, a personal connection with their local Parliamentary candidate, or a calculation of which 'least worst' party is best poised to defeat the most worst (in their opinion).

Some of them will be in Northern Ireland and thus divorced from the British electoral system.

Amongst that 500k, or 750k, will be an incalculable number who actually believe in voting for a candidate or party on the basis of the policies either laid out in the manifesto or espoused over the previous Parliament and longer.

I read that there are 46 million people registered to vote. Even allowing for duplicates and, again, removing Northern Ireland, it still means that the RATM/Facebook people are less than 2% of the electorate.

As a campaigning tactic, it's unbelievably stupid. Not just because the numbers don't compute; not just because it's political illiteracy to base one's vote on the notion of being part of a crowd (I recall John Cole on eve-of-poll 1992 commenting that many people vote like they back horses - wanting to be aligned with the favourite/predicted winner), but because it betrays an insular ignorance of the world around them.

I have this notion in my head of students believing that just because their mates, their mates' mates and even their mates' mates' mates all think the same, then it stands to reason that everybody does. Point out to them that people's attitudes change as they get older and they're likely to think about people over say 30 or 40 as irrelevant and marginal.

The median age of the UK adult population is 48. That means that nearly half of UK electorate is over 50; it's a given that turnout is much higher amongst older people than amongst the young. And of course, most people over the age of, what, don't actually give a shit what's number one, especially if a mere 500,000 sales (at 39p!) can make a Christmas number one!

Perhaps I am missing the point and this group is set up in an ironic post-modern way. But I don't think I am and I don't think it was.

Perhaps some young person, studenty type will come back wailing about how difficult it is to find out about politics, or how much it interferes with their substance abuse to get out and engage with other people, to find out what matters to them. To which I shrug, because it isn't difficult. It wasn't difficult before the internet; it ought to be even easier with it, providing you know how to use it (oh, but but but, my parents are, like, way too old, yeah, and school was, like, crap, so, like, how I'm supposed to, like, use the internet if no one shows me, like, yeah, man, cool)

For generations, young people have begged to be taken seriously. Yes, this is the way to go about it. Hmm.

And here's to you, Mrs Robinson

I am always of the view that if politicians screw around outside their marriage, so be it. It isn't normally relevant to their role as politicians, and shouldn't be regarded as any more heinous than any of the numerous other things that imperfect human beings do.

I also think that any politician who has cast judgement upon the sex lives of other people has surrendered the right to privacy in their private life.

So there is a large dollop of schadenfreude hovering over the revelations about Iris Robinson, considering her views in the past, in particular on homosexuality, but also on adultery.

There is a little part of me that is hesitant to wade into this: I am pretty damn certain that if it had been Peter Robinson having an affair with a teenage woman, there would have been less scurrilous sniggering. If women in private life are judged more harshly than men, then this goes with spades for women in public life*.

The 'Mental Health' card has been played, and it's wise not to wade into that minefield. For example, there was a ridiculous slur campaign a few months ago that 'insinuated' that the wifey of Oik Osborne has mental health issues. I believe that Oik's wife - who seems to stay well out of visible politics - is not a legitimate target, regardless of the incompetence and arrogance of Oik himself. I also believe that to using someone's illness, whatever the nature and cause, as grounds for attack is neanderthal.

For all I know, Iris Robinson may have a history of depression. It's not improbable - isn't 20% of the population at any time; also, with a husband away from home for long stretches, while she's stuck in some dreary backwater bringing up the children, and her being all into religion and that, it's almost a classic textbook case.

That having been said, it's almost like now we are supposed to be all sympathetic and understanding of mental ill health, it's become a convenient excuse.

During the Expenses Scandal, there were reports of MPs feeling suicidal. I can't really feel sorry for them, even though I (probably less than many people) know too well how awful it feels when the bills and debts are piling up and you can't see a way of settling them. Doing something wrong, and being found out, is never a good feeling. So I shall wade into that area!

It always makes me feel good when I see some self-righteous religious nutter - and the DUP epitomises religious nuttery - being hoist by their own petard.

It's easy when you have the nice life, the uncomplicated marriage where the man is successful in his career to be all smug and idealistic. I guess we all have some ideal of how life should be lived, but most of us acquire, from experience and observation, the wisdom that rarely do lives fall into the category of ideal. I suppose the religious nutters would condemn me for having an 'anything goes' mentality, and, actually, yes, I do more or less (with the usual caveat of consenting adults).

We are also the products of our society. Among my friends and peer group, there is a general acceptance that people's lives are messy. That isn't to say that there is endorsement of the messes that people make; there is also an absence of condemnation, because we all do stupid things.

I don't just mean sexually. Many of us have done messy things with career, finance, family/friendships and so on. Because we are human, we can't see into the future and know the consequences, because we are weak and give into temptation, because not having the affair would cause us to feel so miserable. And so on.

I guess that in the society they live, the knowledge of the wife having an affair, the husband being a cuckold, is hard to bear. Perhaps in other circles, it's one of those things that acknowledged but deemed diplomatic not to discuss at dinner parties. I wonder how much her contemplation of suicide was due to the knowledge that her public reputation would be ruined for ever. I have to say that as an MP she had barely scraped my radar at all. I remembering noticing that his wife had been elected, a rare woman from Northern Ireland, but I assume that she is a big cheese that matters in Northern Ireland.

I haven't even mentioned the financial impropriety which is, actually, the nub of the matter. No doubt some religious nutters would use this as proof that nothing good ever comes of extra-marital flings. They would say - perhaps with justification - that Iris Robinson wouldn't have made this misjudgement if she hadn't been blinded by the euphoria of a fling. But I would respond that plenty of people have shown themselves to be venal and corrupt without sex being the motivation. 

I would hope that some of these born-agains and rigid fundamentalists would use this incident to pause and reflect, and remember that we are all human, that human beings have human instincts, and that, often, to deny those instincts is to deny our essential humanity. Most of us try to muddle through, generally trying to avoid harm to those who haven't harmed us, and we all behave in ways that seem irrational to others.Creating an ideal and condemning those who fail to meet it makes all our lives more difficult. Ironically, it hits hardest those who have created and maintained the ideal, in their smugness, absolute conviction, and sheer stupidity, they don't realise that one day they will be killed by the sword they have yielded.

* Women politicians are criticised far more frequently for their appearance; my observation is that there are far more casual comments accusing women ministers eg of being 'annoying' or 'patronising' or 'in it for themselves' than of men; and the personal, domestic, family etc arrangements of female politicians are scrutinised more thoroughly than men. In the Great Expenses Scandal, the ghastly Julie Kirkbride was subject to far more (justified) criticism than her odious husband, who was complicit and equally guilty. (as an example)

Poppy hypocrisy

It's that time of year when the wearing of a poppy becomes de rigeur on TV, where any public figure or, indeed private individual not wearing one is subject to questioning, often of an insulting or bullying nature, and where the news media are full of stories of perceived or actual slights to the Poppy.

The British Legion was founded in 1921, following the First World War. That war was a watershed in modern warfare. From a British perspective, it was the first in modern times where so many men were conscripted (without choice). It was also notable for the large numbers killed - many leaving widows and dependent children -  and seriously injured, many too seriously to earn a decent living, hence the need for a charity to support the destitute and needy. The Poppy became the symbol of their annual appeal, remembering the poppies that grew in the fields on the Western Front.

The First World War gave rise to a thought - a hope - that it mustn't happen again, it was 'the war to end all wars'. But as we know, the Armistice was only an Armistice, and hostilities resumed within 21 years - barely a generation later. And again, ordinary men (and women) were called up to serve in the army, having little choice unless they were in a reserved occupation (or physically unfit).

Conscription - or National Service - carried on after the Second World War until it was abolished in 1960, and the British Army/Navy /Air Force became volunteer forces. Highly trained, with a professional officer corps and highly skilled tradesmen and women. No one is conscripted into the British Forces, all are there by choice.

The reasons for the two world wars are complex, but I think we all know the 'headline' reasons. The First World War was started by disastrous macho posturing by the men in charge; in the Second World War it was to counter the disastrous effects of the Nazis, who had risen partly (largely?) as a result of the macho posturing in the Treaty of Versailles.

The Poppy Appeal, and the Remembrance Festival, had been set up to remember those who had died so pointlessly in World War I, and was extended to include the dead of World War II - it is often said that they gave their lives so we could be free.

One characteristic that appals me most whenever I read about World War I is the jingoistic fervour whipped up by the British population, egged on in no small way by the media, labelling anyone who didn't wish to fight as a coward or traitor. The reaction to that included poems by writers such as Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, which I think are pretty much compulsory reading at school.

Fast forward to the 21st century, and we have our volunteer forces fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Regardless of the fine point of International Law, it is at best doubtful whether they have any moral right to be there.

In Afghanistan, for example,  the war aims are unclear - and seem to alter whenever the wind changes. The civilian deaths and casualties are covered up - how often do you read about them in the broadsheet let alone the tabloid press. Those who take up arms to defend their country - as every good Englishman should do, apparently - against a foreign invader are labelled as 'insurgents', guerrilas or Taliban.

Meanwhile, every year the British Legion, nowadays with a Royal prefix, holds a Festival of Remembrance at the Albert Hall, which is televised. I watch it most years, for reasons that need not detain us now, and each year I am appalled by the lies and propaganda that are peddled. Small children, too young to read Owen and Sassoon, are fed lines about the soldiers (etc) fighting in Iraq/Afghanistan 'to protect our freedoms' or 'so that we can be free'.It is so wrong, wrong that these lies are being put out on national TV, and wrong that children are being brainwashed with inaccurate information.

We have come a long away from the legacy of the First World War, where people vowed never again to be fooled by jingoistic propaganda started by the Press and spread by their unthinking readers.

Most of us have little difficulty in understanding how the Second World War was about fighting for our freedom (even if we may debate the detailed causes and sequence of events).

I simply see no justification for the hysteria being whipped up now, the snide hints that anyone not wearing a poppy is somehow not 'patriotic', or the crazy situation where a shop that enforces its general policy of no charity badges becomes national news. We are forced to accept that the Poppy Appeal is different from any other charity.

And yet, what is it mainly about?

Providing support, probably much needed support - to former volunteer soldiers (etc). If people wish to donate, and display the emblem of giving, that's great. But I can think of no other charity - or their supporters - who are so strident and so insisting that every body joins in.

A far more fitting memorial to those slaughtered and maimed in 1914 -1918 would be to vow never to go to war except in self-defence, never to get caught up in jingoistic bullying.

This is why I shall never again donate money to the British Legion nor shall I ever wear a poppy - if I did wear a poppy nowadays, it would be with shame.

Lib Dems Lies & Opportunism on the doorstep

Please bear in mind that this only applies to the Liberal Democrats in Streatham Constituency or even only Brixton Hill. You might have Liberal Democrats in your area but it is unlikely that anything they promise will have any connection to the promises in my area.

Because I was due at the Barbican this afternoon, I reneged on my promise to go canvassing this morning. At least it meant that I was in when there was a knock on the door. Turns out to be someone canvassing my vote for the multi-millionaire Liberal Democrat Parliamentary candidate.

I asked "Why should I vote Liberal Democrat? What have they ever done for this area?"

She told me that they had never had the opportunity to do anything. So I said  that they had run the council - badly - for four years. It didn't seem to be news to her that they had run the council (2002-2006) - despite her earlier statement - because she explained that they ran the council because when they took it over it was being run into the ground and the government was about to take over and put it in special measures.

I have to say that was completely news to me. I must have taken my eye off the ball in the years leading up to the 2002 election. I wasn't exactly in a good position to know what was going on in Lambeth Council at the time because I was busy...

Oh shucks damn, the 2002 election!

I was a member of Lambeth Council in the years leading up to the 2002 election.  As it happens from 2000-01 I worked for a department of a neighbouring authority which was in Special Measures, so I was fairly well-placed to know the difference between 'a lot done, a lot more to do' and 'about to go into special measures'. And I think the Lib Dems at the time knew that, too, otherwise it would have been a key plank of their election campaign*

I told her she had been fed a pile of bullshit, and she turned her attention to their candidate. I asked what he had ever done for the community. Her reply was that he does a lot - a LOT - of casework.

Me: Of course he does, he's the Parliamentary candidate. What  did he do before he decided to run for Parliament?

Her: People don't  work for the community unless they want to be elected for office.

Me: That's not true - there are lots of people 'round here' who work for the community without any desire to stand for office.

Lamely she said he was involved in lots of groups - churches and so on (churches, plural - don't most people pick a church and stick with it?).

I laughed and said he just wants to buy the constituency, with all the leaflets that he keeps paying to produce. She explained that he's not paying for it, it's Liberal Democrat money.

 "Oh," I said, "that's all right them; Lib Dem money scattered like fairy dust from the Lib Dem money fairy."

Shall I put you down as a Labour voter?" she asked, sounding a bit unsure.

"Oh I think so," I replied suitably patronisingly. I think I did quite well for a virgin - this was the first time I have ever been canvassed by a member of an opposition party!

A few months ago I was leafletted by another Lib Dem.

There were so many leaflets she had to knock on the door rather than use the letter box. I asked her to take them away, I didn't want them.

She tried to insist that I took them "They are Liberal Democrat leaflets personally addressed to you!"

What was sad is that this woman is a councillor. She was elected at the same time as me, indeed she was elected for the ward in which I then lived.

There were very few women councillors back then, so we tended to be quite friendly between the groups, even if only on a very superficial level - chatting about the weather as we touched up our lipstick in the Ladies rather than pulling glarey faces. She and I conversed at christenings and funerals and it wasn't unusual for us to sit together when we happened to get the same bus after meetings.

And yet, she had no clue whatsoever...

* Labour got the same number of seats as the Lib Dems - ironically with a greater proportion of the vote - but the Lib Dems went into alliance with the Tories so that they could play at being in power

Boy George's Big Gesture

And, of course, Gesture politics are tokenistic.

I noticed the headline about pay freezes for public sector workers above £18,000  - except for soldiers.

Now, interest declared, I am a member of the Public and Commercial Services union, so I have a personal interest in this. I don't want a pay freeze; I certainly don't want a pay freeze imposed on me for two years hence when who knows what inflation will be at that time.

But I'm no idiot. I don't see any political advantage in arguing for pay rises for faceless bureaucrats when employees of small and medium enterprises and the self-employed are hit by the consequences of the reckless greed of Osborne's city mates (did you know that pre-credit crunch his only economic advisers were hedgefund managers?).

As long as I can remember, public sector pay 'restraint' has been a blunt tool of policy. It has its uses, even though it has considerable disadvantages, too. But let's just for the sake of argument say it's a good thing, then it should be applied across the board.

But Oik* Osborne has declared that armed forces personnel should be exempt from this pay-freeze. I realise that there can be compelling reasons for carrying out a fundamental review of the salaries of one sector; if the evidence shows they are falling behind or not getting the fair rate for the job, that presents a strong case for bucking the trend.

The fact that they arbitrarily select the armed forces, without any evidence to support this,  gives a very strong indication about which areas of the public sector are the priorities of the Tories. They don't give damn about the NHS or about the state education system, and they probably haven't got the slightest clue about what Environmental Health Officers or Covert Security Officers do, and consider them to be of less value than soldiers.

It may be a peripheral issue, but again it illustrates something very telling about the Tory philosophy. The armed forces are disproportionately male, and, I would guess at >£18k pa, disproportionately from public school backgrounds. Whereas, I would hazard a guess that police tend, on the whole,  to come from a state education. And health and local government front-line services are disproportionately female - and, unlike the Armed Forces, at least proportionately from ethnic minority backgrounds.

So Gesture George - pay rises for posh white boys, freezes for the rest, including women and Black and Ethnic Minorities.

* the Bullingdon Boys call him that because he 'only' went to an expensive private school called 'St Paul's' not to superposh Eton.

The Tories' Big Idea

Or at least, today's big idea, is to increase male retirement age to 66, from its current 65. It is difficult to oppose on principle, because any age-limited activity is arbitrary and pragmatic. The change will have an effect on most men but proportionately relatively small. No doubt there will be individual men who are disproportionately affected by this change; if the policy doesn't address this, that will be a serious failing.

As I heard the news last night, it was being trumpeted as 'raising the retirement age by one year to 66'. My immediate thought was 'three years'.

It seems that overnight, it has dawned on the Tories that their spinning was only partial. And this, to me, is of more significance than what is ultimately an administrative adjustment.

I do not know what properly sums up the Conservative Party's attitude to women. Is it that they don't think that women matter; is it that they believe that women should not bother their pretty little heads with complex matters of politics and finance.

Or is it that the fundamentals of Tory belief and policy making is that instinctively one size fits all. It's not that they ask themselves the question and actively decide that everyone is the same. It is that their instinct is to plough on assuming that what fits them must fit everybody else. It simply would not occur to them to consider the differential impact of a policy change on women. I was about to write that women are an afterthought, but they aren't.

It is pretty clear that the Tories do not intend to govern for women, if  by some dreadful occurrence they win the General Election. Announce what amounts to firm plans for men, and then, desperately back-heeling overnight, promise that they'll look into what it will mean for women, because we're marginal to their plans and effectively invisible.

Should we pay politicians?

The MPs' Expenses Scandal is in many ways old news, although I suspect that 'moats and duckhouses' will linger for years as a symbol of something.

Something that has struck me forcibly about the story is how out of touch people are with each other; indeed, how out of touch I am with most people.

On the one hand, you have members of the public leaving their comments on MSM articles or speaking in voxpops declaring that an annual salary of £65,000 is a definition of rich, and on the other hand you get Tory MPs declaring that such a salary would deter people from a professional or business backgrounds from going into Politics.

Both opinions are simultaneously right and wrong.

And also reflect my own ambiguous views about income and wealth.

All the media reports suggest that my earnings are high, even if I just put in the part time equivalent; if I extrapolated my FTE, I would be higher still. But these reports are caveated that the data comes from PAYE and benefit records, thus excluding those on  unearned income, or, I think, the many self-employed who trade as limited companies etc. So, while I am statistically a high earner, my income is considerably less than countless other people I would not consider as 'rich'. And yet, I know that there are plenty of people in skilled or semi-skilled jobs who earn much less than I do (and in many cases have dependents to support from that).

To the best of my knowledge there isn't a shortage of people wanting to become an MP.  My childhood ambition was to be Prime Minister, and it certainly isn't the salary that deters me from seeking to be a candidate - the reasons for that are many, none of them is salary.

Even if one was entirely motivated by money, being an MP could be used as a springboard to great financial rewards. Obviously, ex-PMs get to earn millions doing after-dinner speeches, but even relatively obscure ex-MPs can find countless sinecures and non-jobs as non-executive directors, pseudo-journalists, gameshow competitors and so on, if they so wish.

These Tories talk as if somehow they are examples of the high quality people that Politics is desperately in need of, as if there is currently a dearth of lawyers and management consultants on the green leather benches.

What Parliament actually lacks is a critical mass of professionals and business people for whom £65k pa would represent a significant pay rise. Public sector professionals or technicians - real ones that deliver, not bureaucrats like me - who have real experience of how health, education and transport work in practice, or genuine businesspeople, such as publicans, electricians or makers of artisan cheeses, for whom labour costs, regulatory burden and fluctuating exchange rates are everyday realities not theoretical concepts; in other words, the workers by hand or by brain for whom the Labour Representation Committee was formed.

Of course, we want our Parliamentary representatives, legislators and ministers to have the intellectual capacity, experience and confidence to assimilate information and judge conflicting evidence, to draw a conclusion and to understand how to implement the change or eradicate the problem. Which is why there are so many lawyers and bureaucrats in Parliament.

We also need them to be able to think through a logical process whilst empathising with natural human irrationality. We want Parliamentarians who can differentiate between a groundswell and a bandwagon, who can listen to a vulnerable person and inspire a crowd, who can prioritise simultaneously  the needs of the community they serve and the most needy and vulnerable nationally and internationally, who can stick to their principles (which makes principles a prerequisite) and can compromise pragmatically. I doubt that we have many Parliamentarians who possess even the majority of those skills, and those that do are not necessarily the most prominent or high-flying.

To be honest, I don't think that I care a great deal whether an MP's salary is £65k or £150k. To me they are pretty much in a range that I could call 'more than I earn but pretty sure that I could spend easily without branching out into a designer/luxury lifestyle'.

Salaries in that range won't attract people motivated purely by money. But I'm not sure they would deter people such as hospital consultants or entrepreneurs who have the drive and hunger to offer their skills.

If they want it enough, they will make the 'sacrifices'; if they don't want to forego the school fees, the expensive holidays, the large houses, they probably don't want to be an MP enough to go through the hard slog of getting selected, and then elected.

I see no point in trying to align MPs' salaries with highly skilled professions or with Chief Executives of large organisations, because neither the skills and training required nor the responsibilities entailed can compare. Granted nothing is more responsible than decisions to go to war, but backbenchers don't make those decisions, and most 'decisions' over matters as diverse as education policy or reproductive rights are matters of detail and incremental.

What annoys me more about the content of what those out-of-touch Tory MPs said was the style in what it was said, their seeming lack of awareness of the actual earnings not only of 'poor' or 'struggling' or 'not well off' people' but also of the majority of professionals and business people who have decent housing, disposable income and a prosperous lifestyle. In one respect I do agree with the New Labour philosophy of representing Mondeo Man or Worcester Woman, because the Tories clearly do not and cannot begin to understand their needs and aspirations. But I don't believe WW and MM should be considered as more important than the poor, struggling and not well off.

Lovin' the NHS

Just in case anyone hasn't noticed, there is a major row raging. Opposing President Obama's plans to widen public provision of health care, certain right wing Republicans in the USA choose to tell lies and fling insults at the UK NHS.

In retaliation, many people in the UK have been stating how and why they love the NHS (others, politically aligned with the right wing Republicans) have been telling tales about the NHS is a disgrace because they failed to get attention for a non-urgent condition at 4am, or tales of incompetence, which may or may not be true, but can be matched by similar anecdotes from the private sector, in the UK or elsewhere.

Someone said that the NHS is like a husband, you can moan about it as much as you wish, but as soon as someone else does, you are honour bound to defend it. That argument has its attractions, but it has its flaws. I do feel, however, that one is perfectly entitled to favour something in principle, and, generally in practice, but be able to see the flaws in the details and wish to improve them.

The debate is getting somewhat bogged down in arguments about the relative technical competency. I don't think anybody has ever suggested that the very best of US medical expertise can be bettered elsewhere (but the same statement could be applied to most developed countries).

The argument is, plain and simply, about whether or not it is desirable to have a system of healthcare provision that is available, free at the point of use, to all people irrespective of financial means. And I strongly believe that it is.

I don't believe that there are any plans in the USA to introduce a system analogous to the UK NHS, and, to be honest, I'm not sure it would be the system we would adopt if we were constructing it from scratch.

My major criticism of the US-style system is how healthcare is rationed on the basis of ability to pay. Anecdotes abound about people not being able to afford an insurance policy because they are in low-paid jobs, or because they are self-employed, or because they work for a small company that can't afford a health system.

Indeed, I have a cousin, who is a born again evangelical Christian and right wing Republican - was a county legislator, openly supported George W Bush during the 2000 primaries, home-schooled his children, didn't allow his daughters to socialise with their male cousins of similar ages in order to prevent inappropriate behaviour.

He wished to make a living as a preacher but knowing the cost of birth, and wanting many children (he has four children, and has adopted the orphaned daughter of his wife's sister), he instead became a carpet salesman. 

I don't agree with his religion, but I always used to think it was a pity that he couldn't pursue that dream because of the terrible system of American healthcare; it has only just dawned on me that he is complicit, and in some ways entirely responsible for his lack of freedom to pursue his dream. Surely there must be many more who are 'trapped' into jobs or long hours, because it would be too much of a risk to become an entrepreneur or to work for one, or to stay at home to bring up their children (maybe even to home school them) -  and they count among the insured, not the millions of the uninsured.

Our mutual aunt was a community nurse in Long Island; she has told me tales of how, basically, she would visit patients until their insurance ran out ie not based on their clinical need.

I read blogs and have done for several years, and what strikes me again and again how many people in the US write about how they, or their relatives, are not getting the treatment their doctor has recommended, because the insurance company has vetoed it. I know that people are denied treatment in the NHS because of 'postcode lottery'; personally I would prefer a transparent and accountable system.

One of the statistics I have read is that cancer survival rates are longer in the USA than in the UK. This may be the case and it may be that this is a result of the US health system having developed superior treatment (and refused to share the secrets with the rest of the world). Alternatively, it may be to do with one or more of the following factors:

• perhaps there is a culture in the UK of later self-referral for embarrassing but lethal cancers such as bowel cancers
• perhaps there is a greater incidence in the USA of non-lethal cancers, such as skin cancers, as a result of climate differences
• perhaps there is a greater culture in the UK of offering palliative care to maintain a quality of life rather than chemotherapy and radiotherapy to prolong life in pain and discomfort
• perhaps more people in the US - without insurance - die with cancer undiagnosed

Of course, I have no evidence to prove (or disprove) these statements, but it's just the auditor in me applying a bit of professional scepticism to bare statistics.

Quite a lot of people have argued in favour of the National Health Service on the grounds of compassion, humanity and society, and I certainly wouldn't argue against that, but sadly, I don't think that that would wash with these rapid right-wingers. I would reiterate my argument above that access to a health service free at the point of use increases freedom to pursue quality of life rather than merely working as a wage slave. 

I find it shocking to know that in the USA working people on modest incomes are denied medical treatment. I find it even more shocking that people are denied coverage because they have an existing condition.

Jimmy had a heart attack at 29.This has never been a barrier to him receiving treatment; indeed, although he is perfectly healthy, because the attack shows up on the EEG it is always of interest to doctors. I believe that certain insurance schemes in the USA would withhold coverage on that basis.

I have several friends and acquaintances whose children have chronic incurable or congenital conditions such as cystic fibrosis, cerebral palsy, spina bifida or have received organ transplants. I understand that, under certain insurance schemes, their entire families would be excluded from insurance.

Some of these friends and acquaintances are on fairly high salaries, but by no means wealthy. I can't imagine how they could possibly afford to pay up front all the treatment their children have. I am perfectly happy to know that my tax/NI is being spent on their children.

It is not the place of a UK blogger to tell the citizens of the USA how to organise their domestic politics. However, when their politicians spread lies and insults about our system, I do think I am entitled to fight back.

Eternal optimism

My mother once said "You've become very cynical since you started working for the National Audit Office". That must have been nearly twenty years ago. I must have have been very idealistic before then, because I've spent almost two decades in the most cynical profession and yet I'm still an optimist! It makes me a rubbish auditor and also a rubbish politician and political commentator.

Everywhere you turn, you just can't avoid talk about the Expenses Crisis and the separate but connected Cabinet Meltdown Calamity. The general consensus is that it's a bad thing for Politics, that the Great British Public's disillusionment with the political process is complete.

Not me, not at all. I ought to be intellectually rigorous and consider the evidence of public disengagement. The sound-bites where Random Public person says "They're all in it for themselves" or "They're all as bad as each other".

Long ago I held ambitions to become a Parliamentarian; no ambition is real unless it includes Rising to the Very Top. Yeah, from the age of eleven my sole ambition was to be Prime Minister. Everything else was a stepping stone en route.

My time as councillor firmly removed that ambition. There was a recognition that there is more to life than working long hours, which is what is required to get to the top in just about any field. I was daunted by the enormous challenge of trying to perform the role properly yet fitting it round a part-time job.

What put me off the most was the realisation of what was required to become  a Parliamentary candidate. There are basically two routes to take, either that of a party loyalist, or as a maverick. As a maverick you stand most chance if you get the support of something like the Campaign Group, which is the grouping within the Labour Party most representative of my views. But that carries the same burden as being a Blairite lickspittle - you end up not being allowed to think for yourself and air your own views.

Perhaps keeping quiet and saying the 'right' things might be a small price to pay to getting into a position where people will listen to you say the 'wrong' things. But there is a fear that one would end up making calculations - just until I get to be junior minister, just until I get into the Cabinet, I will resign from Government and become a Select Committee Chair with teeth.

But what I despise was and is the people who play 'politics'. Manoeuvring and campaigning for personal advantage, in the process marginalising people like me who did speak out, did try to look at the bigger picture. I resented being side-lined by intellectual pygmies with no strategic over-view, no sense of Leadership or understanding of complex matters (such as Corporate Governance or Joined Up Government, which are dread and simplistic buzzwords for really important concepts). I have seen people become MPs with no discernible ability other than the ability to bullshit and to position themselves in the right place at the right time.

I have actually been through a strange and silly thought process in the past few days of actually considering applying to be a Parliamentary candidate. Perhaps for some of the same reasons that motivated me in the early 90s to become a councillor - a perception that I couldn't fuck it up as badly as the previous lot, however well meaning they were.

All week I have been surrounded by political conversations, and it's really quite exciting. I have remarked to several - carefully selected  - people that all the shenanigans this week will quite overshadow the launch of the next series of Big Brother.

(I don't actually believe that, because the print media are offered considerable bribes to ensure such TV programmes are given blanket coverage. I see such programmes as being entirely pointless and a complete waste of time.

They don't entertain me. If I wanted to eavesdrop on the empty conversations of uninformed uninteresting chavs, I would catch a bus to Streatham. They don't educate me, or give me any insight into life, the human condition, or the world around me.

Why waste my time on such TV when you don't have to search very far to find well-researched documentaries or well-crafted dramas that open my mind and extend my horizon.)

I remember the world's most boring man, Trevor the Planning Officer now retired to Barbados, telling me that even bad architecture serves a purpose by bringing the community together. He was proved right because my own little local area has a thriving and active Residents' Association as a direct result of the infamous Streatham Place development which kicked off over seven years ago.

It has been heartening to see so much passion - and humour - across the internet and in real life in the great urge to get people to vote almost anything but BNP. I blogged this a few weeks ago and while I wasn't being original I did think I would be a small voice crying in the wilderness.

Obviously, we won't know until Sunday, in reality Monday morning, and I might be horribly wrong. I hope though, that we have all remembered that although many politicians in the mainstream  have been shown to be greedy, cynical and corrupt, a great many are not. Most are hard-working, and all share a general belief in the democratic process, and most people in Britain don't want a divisive, hate-filled and violent polity.

Some of the media say that the recent Expenses furore will lead to people being turned off politics. I don't suppose I am typical of anybody - once a political geek always a political geek - but I think most people who become involved in politics at any level, from grassroots to Cabinet are motivated by a desire to do it better than the incumbent/previous lot. This is certainly not an announcement that I shall be standing for Parliament in 2014/2015, but it is an announcement of a bit of a wake-up call. How  I respond to that wake-up call remains to be pondered on.

Polling station

Ambrose about to vote - I already had. He was less perturbed than me at what I consider an unnecessary Welsh sign. I would have thought that Polish, Urdu, Portuguese or Spanish would be more appropriate in our area. Or English would suffice.

European Elections (in the UK)

Stop the BNP!

Obviously, European Elections will take place across the EU, but my remarks are primarily about the UK. Actually, primarily about Britain (Northern Ireland has different parties and a different electoral system). However, some of the broad points are by-and-large applicable to other countries, too, but please forgive me for not addressing specific local issues elsewhere.

We have a confluence of events, with the 'credit crunch' and ensuing recession, coupled with the scandal of MP expenses. Both of these issues are making people turn away from the mainstream parties.

In case you haven't noticed, I am a member of the Labour Party. I joined when I was 16, during the miners' strike, which obviously was a major issue in Altrincham and Sale ;-) I am not currently/no longer active, for all sorts of boring reasons which can be briefly summarised as Iraq and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. But I am and always will be a democratic socialist, who believes in a helping hand from cradle to grave, fairness and equality. (Big themes, too long for this post).

I shall be voting Labour on June 4 and of course urge everybody else to do so, too. However, I am mindful that even if I write screeds and screeds, and try and explain the purpose of the European Parliament, I am simply not arrogant enough to think that anybody will pay attention.

I dislike the fact that local and European elections are somehow seen as an opinion poll on the outcome of the next General Election. I think it's a corruption of democracy, and is there any wonder that politicians are not seen as being accountable when we wilfully refuse to hold them to account? So I assume that a few people will vote on relevant issues, a few more will go out and vote for Party loyalty or as a protest, and quite a lot of the rest will stay at home.

The details of how we will elect MEPs is here and other articles should also be of interest. In a nutshell, we will vote for a party, and assuming that a party exceeds a threshold, they will get an MEP elected. As Greater London will have 8 MEPs, I expect that threshold to be 12.5%; other regions will vary accordingly.

If people who would normally vote decide to stay away, this reduces the total number of votes cast, and thus requires far fewer votes to reach the 12.5%. I would dearly love the Labour Party to win all 8 seats, or even 5, or 4, but I am also a realist.

What I fear is that the BNP will get MEPs elected as a result of protest voting and disaffected non-voting.

What I want is for people who are normally voters of the three main parties but refuse to give their votes in the current climates to go out and vote nevertheless. Don't stay at home and let yourself be represented by the BNP.

If you can't stomach voting Labour, Conservative, or Lib Dem, what about the Greens, or the Christian party, or Arthur Scargill's Socialist Party? I suspect, and in the context, hope that The Greens will benefit from this, I would be surpised if the Christians or the Socialists will.

But, depending on your inclinations, voting for any one of those parties and reducing the BNP's share of overall vote has got to be a better moral choice than staying at home in protest. (If you do stay at home and protest, how will anyone know; they'll just assume you don't care).

Local elctions are more complicated, involving a tactical assessment of who is most likely to beat the BNP, and trying to avoid spreading the anti-BNP vote too thinly and letting them through by default.

This is only one of the reasons that I support PR for local elections, although I am at best agnostic and perhpas tending to the 'anti' for UK Parliament elections

Not a defence, but...

All this stuff about MPs' expenses is fascinating. To say the least.

Nothing in this post should be considered as a defence of anything we have read in the media in the past week or so, but I do have several disconnected observations.

I find it difficult to understand how someone can have 'forgotten' they have paid off their mortgage. For me, and for people I know or read, any mortgage-related transaction is noteworthy. It seems to be fairly well demonstrated that working long hours and being deprived of sleep does affect one's memory and judgement. All ethics apart, it doesn't exactly fill me with confidence that our political representatives are so mentally impaired that they are unable to remember paying off their mortgages or unable to judge the implications of potentially fraudulent claims. And I doubt that such mental impairment is confined to politics. Throughout the world of work, 'leaders' are working stupid hours; how clear are their judgements?

I didn't like my reaction when I read of David Cameron's wisteria clearing. "That's only £600" I thought. In my defence, it is small and sort-of almost understandable in contrast to multiple flippings etc. I am ashamed because I know that in reality it is a lot of money - bearing in mind I work part-time, so although my grossed-up salary FTE is well above average, £600 represents just about what I have left each month after all the Direct Debits (but we are a two income household and I'm playing fast-and-loose, and shortsightedly using my house equity). But it does illustrate how easy it is to lose sight of the real value of money.

I have been active in politics for quarter of a century; this has not been a great way to celebrate my silver anniversary in the Labour Party. Despite studying Politics at University, despite being trained and paid to be sceptical, and despite 8 years serving as a politician, I remain an optimist with a benign view of human nature. Whether my self-awareness of my naivety is proof of an absence of naivety, I don't really know. I have always known that there are people who go into politics solely for personal gain, that it is common for people who start-off as idealistic to become jaundiced, but I do believe that most people are merely venal. But I am being shaken out of my innocent rose-tinted innocence by this unfolding saga of greed.

Two things annoyed me at the Classical Brits (well, more than two, but let's concentrate on the MPs' expenses issue).

David Mellor (ex-MP) appeared to present the Critics Award. He made a speech about how the critics had assembled for a long liquid lunch, and he made some quip about expense claims. Understandable and verging on the almost humorous. Except I found it very smug. The inference I took was that as it's now many years since he was an MP, he of course is above all this. Possibly, as an ex-MP for Putney, which I suppose counts as Inner London, he was never entitled to the Second Home Scam. But 12 years on,  his expense claims,  submitted long before Freedom of Information, are free from scrutiny. I got annoyed with some news headline yesterday which said "The most corrupt Parliament ever?" To which I reply, "I doubt it. We just don't know and can't possibly tell. The difference is there is growing transparency. Not enough, but more than there has been previously"

I was asked by my neighbour Langrabbie whether I had encountered Iain Dale. I didn't, but I did spot his companion. She was high on Jimmy's list of 'women who ruin nice figures and nice dresses with poor posture'. Turns out this was Nadine Dorries MP , who, as it happens, is today entwined in the exes issue. More interesting to me was that she was at a dining table at the record industry annual shebang. I may be making a big mistake and in fact she is a madly fanatic José Carreras fan and so felt compelled to buy an arena/dining ticket in the Albert Hall for his Lifetime Achievement Award. If so, I apologise profusely.

More likely, she was a guest of some or other record company, getting free dinner and wine, and a concert which some of us paid up to £65 a ticket for. So what, you might say. All I can say is, the next time there is a Parliamentary vote on matters relating to, for example, copyright on recordings, I believe that Nadine Dorries,  and anyone else who accepted the freebies,  should excuse themselves from the vote; otherwise it would be a prima facie case of corruption actually more serious than dodgy home claims  - Iain Dale's blog says

I am afraid I now have to bow out until later this evening as I am going to the Classic FM Brit Awards (sic) in my role as "escort" to female Conservative MPs (note the plural)

I just use this as an example. I feel angry at the memories of my time on the council,  when we were over-cautious. For example, Licensing Committee did a night-time tour of nightclubs. The head of Licensing, Trevor, reminded us not to accept drinks.

In one place (Caesars) we were offered a drink. Everyone declined but me. Because I was parched I requested a glass of water. Trevor's face changed very quickly from exasperation/annoyance to relief and amusement. I am sure some people would read this and sneer.

But the point is, no one could then accuse me or my fellow committee members of accepting inducements. Imagine the hilarity if a newspaper tried to run "Councillor Gert solicited and accepted a half-pint glass of tapwater from Streatham's leading nightclub owner". Surrey Cricket Club tried to treat us to a slap-up reception; our Chief Whip reminded us that there was a major planning application pending for The Oval.

All I can say is, irrespective of how you feel about the main parties, do go out and vote for anything but the British National Party. If nothing else, make the European elections, and Local if you have them, a vote against the BNP. Ultimately, hatred of ethnic minorities (and gays, and women) will continue when we've all forgotten the MPs' expenses scandal. Hopefully, this is something on which the activists, members and supporters of all mainstream parties and decent citizens can unite.

Happy Thatcher Day

In the light of the previous post, it has just dawned on me that today, the day when the banks are nationalised, is of course the birthday of Margaret Thatcher.

Sweet...!

This wasn't what I was looking for but it's bloody good...

*
Billy Bragg's version of The Internationale

And while we're on the subject of Billy - his greatest song, and one of the very greatest English songs

Between the Wars

And the Red Flag (I don't much like the vid...)

To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.

Next stop, The Commanding Heights of the Economy**

Comrades, the Struggle

*Except where it doesn't scan :-)

** Disclaimer: nothing on this blog should be construed as being the Offical Policy of the Labour Party, unless otherwise stated