The local newspaper as bully pulpit

In his North Devon Journal column of November 8th Peter Christie criticised our our MP, Geoffrey Cox, for what he implied were excessive expense claims as Mr Cox ranked 207th out of 645 MPs. In so doing Mr Christie revealed that he is unfamiliar with the word "context".

Torridge & West Devon is the second largest constituency in England in terms of its geographical size. This means that by its very nature Mr Cox will incur greater expenditure discharging his constituency duties than an MP in a compact urabn constituency with a similar population. The constituency is also sufficiently distant from London to necessitate Mr Cox maintaining two homes and an office in both Westminster and his constituency. Again these are expenses unlikly to be incurred on such a scale by the many MPs whose constituencies are in or within commuting distance of London.

Mr Christie also criticised Mr Cox's attendance and voting record. It's only fair to point out that Mr Cox's attendance this parliament is a whole 10% higher than his predecessor, John Burnett's.

And one final bit of "context" should be mentioned before granting any credence to Mr Christie's opinions: he's the failed former Green Party parliamentary candidate for this constituency. Maybe he's not unfamiliar with the context, but is simply ignoring it in an attempt to use the North Devon Journal as his personal bully pulpit.

Mooted tourism "bed tax" threatens region

Sir Michael Lyon's review of local government funding is reportedly considering recommending a bed tax, under which local authorities would be able to levy a five to ten per cent tax on the price of hotel and guest house accomodation.

Such a move could be fatal to the Westcountry's tourism trade, and has met staunch opposition from the regions MPs from all parties. We already spend £18 billion more on holidays overseas than is brought into Britain by visitors from abroad. Any additional taxes on tourism will simply increase the relative cost of holidaying in Britain, and will drive holidaymakers overseas.

Britain already has the highly taxed tourism industry in Europe, with the exception of Denmark. VAT on tourist-related activities in this country is ratyed at the standard 17.5%, whereas in most of the rest of Europe it is 8.5%, and in countries such as France it's taxed at as little as 5.5%. Tourists may use local services, but they are already being heavily taxed to pay for them.

The last thing an already fragile and uncompetitive local economy needs are higher taxes.

Scottish stitch up scuppers local shipyard?

I've blogged before about the problems facing Appledore shipyard. In 2004 it collapsed into receivership among accusations from its then Managing Director Jim Wilson, that the yeard had been repeatedly denied the chance to tender for naval contracts in favour of yards in more politically sensitive areas. While there was the lingering odour of sour grapes in Wilson's comments, they did find support from our MP of the day, Lord Burnett.

The new owners of the yard, DML, has staked hopes for the yard's survival on winning a £10 million contract to build a new Scottish Fisheries Protection vessel. There were concerns that the Scottish Executive would discriminate against the English yard in favour of supporting Scottish jobs. Those fears now appear well founded.

The Scottish Fisheries Protection Agency has revealed that Appledore had offered “the most economically advantageous tender and should be awarded the Minna type contract”.

Instead of publicly announcing the winner, the Scottish Executive informed all of the tenderers, without explanation, that there would be a delay in the award. A vigilant DML employee discovered last week, on the SFPA website, the news that the procurement process was said not to have conformed to EU regulations and had been terminated.

This appears to be a politically motivated decison by the Scottish Executive. The losing Scottish Yard, Ferguson’s, has been in recent crisis talks with the Scottish Executive First Minister and the Scottish press is reporting the Liberal Democrat Fisheries Minister is to visit Ferguson's to discuss the order.

I can only hope that Geoffrey Cox is successful in getting answers on his forthcoming visit to Scotland regardins this matter. But as things stand it looks like the Liberal Democrats have made an bogus decision for their own party politcal advantage, and deserve to be condemned as such.

Super supermarkets

Supermarkets seem to receive regular thrashings from the press. In recent weeks David Cameron has attacked Tesco by name, David Miliband has urged the Competion Commission to examine their impact on rural communities, and farmers' unions have railed against the Competition Commission's stance that it doesn't exist to protect the interests of suppliers. Close to home one town is apparently resisting Tesco's overtures.

The worry expressed by many in Torrington is that supermarkets are a "threat to the town's small firms." It's almost certainly true that while a supermarket will create jobs, it will also drive some local firms out of business. The question is whether this is in itself a bad thing.

Such concerns overlook the consumers - or 'people' as they should be known. Most of the huge productivity gains it and other retailers have squeezed out of the supply chain have been passed on to consumers.

The ideal of the local shop, whose keeper knows all his locals and their favourite products, still lives on. Such places still exist, but they thrive only when they provide a good service.

My local butcher, for example, finds that many people prefer the convenience of stopping at the supermarket on the way home, and that he can't compete on prices. This hasn't killed off his business though. What he offers instead are high quality goods and excellent service. On top of that, he trades at farmers' markets as a speciality pork butcher, offering products the supermarket does not. A good local business will find a way to survive

Local businesses do struggle to match supermarkets for price, but keeping large chains out of the marketplace for that reason is a grotesque betrayal of the people who need low prices, and the not to mention those the supermarkets employ.

Under Thatcher Britain learned that protectionism doesn't work. Perhaps it's time to remember that when it comes to our local shops. The choice that Tesco could offer the inhabitants of Torrington might not only bring employment opportunities, but also act as a driver to improve the truly local businesses.

Say "no" to compulsory voting

Many people have been worrying about voter-apathy in the United Kingdom. The IPPR, Geoff Hoon and Peter Hain have endorsed one solution to falling turnout: compulsory voting.

Those concerned about voter-apathy claim a high turnout is needed at the election to confer legitimacy on its outcome.

It's hard to see how a government returned with a 100% electoral turnout, but only 51% of the votes cast, could be thought to enjoy any greater legitimacy than one returned on a turnout of only 50% of potential voters and with only a 51% share of the votes cast.

In the latter-case, the incumbent government can fairly claim over 75% of the electorate don’t mind it being in power which is more than can be said by the incumbent government described in the case of the first electoral scenario.

There is a second reason for a lack of concern about voter-apathy. Those who don’t vote are probably less interested in and well-informed about electoral issues. The motives behind forcing the ill-informed to make an electoral choice are surely suspect.

Ben Rogers of the IPPR argues that compulsory voting would force the parties to engage with the electorate. As their core votes would turn out anyway, he beleives the parties would make a play for the new forced votes.

The experience of countries like Australia show this to be wishful thinking at best. Rather than engaging with the electorate, the parties pursue a twin course of populist policies and negative campaigning (remember that Lynton Crosby made his name in Australian elections). The aim becomes destroying the opposition's credibility, so that votes can be hoovered up by default.

Worryingly, in thse days of disaffection with the major parties, these votes may well go to the likes of the BNP. I would prefer apathy kept these voters away, rather than forcing them to vote.

Oliver Heald, Constitutional Affairs spokesman for the Conservatives, has rejected the proposals, rightly recognising them as a cop out from the challenge of engaging voters with exciting and relevant policies.

If the parties could engage the electorate, then they wouldn't have to worry about fundraising or the rise of extremism. It's not as easy an answer, but it is a better one.

Nine years on ...

Nine years ago today Tony Blair was appointed Prime Minister. His government was elected on a wave of optimism and hope. Now it founders in a sea of incompetence and corruption.

Senior Labour Party figures remain under investigation by the police for the sale of peerages. The Deputy Prime Minister, who once mocked Conservatives whose sexual antics were outed by the press, has abused his office in the course of a sordid affair. The Health Secretary has been barracked by nursing unions over her claims that the NHS is better than ever. Perhaps worst of all, the Home Secretary is trying to face down the systematic failure of his department.

Arrogance and incompetence lie at the heart of this government's failure to deliver.

Charles Clarke was personally responsible for the failure to consider the deportation of the foreign citizens in Britain's prisons. Like David Blunkett before him, Charles Clarke was alerted to the problem and did nothing about it. That is why he should resign.

This failure is not a one-off. It is symptomatic of a systemic failure that characterises this government.

One man must bear the responsibility for that systematic failure: Tony Blair.

Happy anniversary.

Change for change's sake

David Cameron doesn't wake up every day thinking it would be nice to have a smaller state.

David Cameron doesn't wake up every day thinking about which Cabinet ministers should be made to resign.

David Cameron does wake up "every morning thinking what more can we do to change the Conservative party"

Sky News's Joey Jones used this as an opening to ask what Cameron didn't like about the current Conservative Party and what he wanted to change it into.

No answer was forthcoming beyond increasingly frenzied gesticulation on the leader's part, his pulling out of the interview, and a request from his minders that the footage wasn't used.

Naturally Sky went ahead and used the footage.

Jones said it was a "sour end" to their time together. "The likelihood is that despite his (David Cameron's) best efforts, the Tory showing next Thursday will be less than spectacular.

"If that's the case, the question as to whether he was wise to try and transform the Conservative party will reoccur with greater insistence and he will be well advised to get used to it."

Towards a broader Conservatism

The problem the Conservative party has faced since 1997 hasn't been that its pandered to its core vote, as many modernisers would have us believe, it's been that the party has been irrelevant to the way most people live their lives.

Scarred by Black Wednesday and forever behind on issues like the health service, the party's successive leaders avoided sustained positions on issues like the economy, education and health. Instead they concentrated on those issues where they could see their policies were more popular than Labour's ones.

William Hague therefore talked a lot about saving the pound, while Michael Howard dwelled on immigration. This not only meant that their Conservatism was narrower and less relevant than ever before, but that it also felt unbalanced.

David Cameron has looked to address this problem by talking about other issues, but has done so almost to the complete exclusion of offering Conservative positions on core issues like crime and immigration policy, or common ground issues like education and the economy.

Talking about the environment may be worthwhile in and of itself, but is once again a fringe issue and not one that decides elections. The fact that people continue to buy large 4x4s does tend to suggest that rising global temperatures are so remote a threat that the associated costs don't even affect an individual's major purchasing decisions. Why should it therefore affect their vote?

In his own way, David Cameron has kept the party's focus narrow and made it seem like it's still irrelevant. After all, despite the media brouhaha over David Cameron, his leadership has managed to deliver poll ratings worse than Michael Howard's, and all while the government is in crisis.

Dr Fox has apparently had similar thoughts. On GMTV yesterday, he expressed concern that the party was tilting too much in one direction:

"We have made a start under David Cameron of trying to remove some of the negatives attached to the Conservative party but I think that there are a number of things that we have to remember. First of all that we avoid external coalitions in our politics by maintaining an internal coalition, and the Conservative party has long been a broad coalition and if the party is tilted too much in any one direction that makes us politically less stable and that makes us less attractive for the voters. And if you want to look to an example of where the party was at its best under a broad coalition you look at the Thatcher government when it came in 1979, a very broad coalition of the Conservative party, and we weakened that coalition at our own cost."

It does appear that more attention is being paid to making Conservative policies Lib Dem coalition friendly, rather than on building a strong Conservative coalition. To succed, the Conservatives need to show they are a broad coalition by combining traditional Conservative policies - such as wealth creation and being tough on crime - with a social agenda that tackles poverty and even includes green issues.

The threat is that the new narrow brand of Conservatism will fail to deliver a Conservative government, just as its predecessors failed, but will also schism the Conservative movement. My impression is that while Cameron has won over some support from Labour and the Lib Dems, he's lost a similar amount from the Conservatives to fringe parties and absenteeism. That's no recipe for success.

Or if it is a recipe for a uccess, then that success doesn't lie with Conservative ideas.

Save Darfur.org

Yesterday the Save Darfur Coalition held a rally in Washington D.C. The great and good of America's left, from George Clooney to the Rev Al Sharpton took to the streets as part of the "Million Voices for Darfur" campaign, which applauds President Bush's pledge to push for additional UN and NATO help to protect the people of Darfur, and urges him to take steps necessary to end the genocide and build a lasting peace.

You have to wonder what they hope to achieve.

While the US was quick to recognise events in the Darfur as genocide, it has been unable to spur the international community into action. At best, US opposition to the International Criminal Court and their suggestion of instead instituting a special war crimes tribunal for Darfur has served to distract debate.

That debate has shown that the United Nations is absolutely not the right vehicle to respond to an international crisis. It still refuses to classify the Darfur crisis as "genocide". It seems that two of the UN's permanent security council members would never vote for that situation to be identified thus. One, China, has growing oil interests in Sudan, which it would not wish to endanger, while another, Russia, is busily selling military hardware to the government in Khartoum, whom neither party wishes to distress.

If multilateral action is possible, then NATO would make a more attractive and easily negotiable vehicle. Its core members would have had to provide the men and material for any serious UN peacekeeping operation.

The problem is that such action would have to take place outside of the framework of UN resolutions supported by those protesting yesterday. It would be another job for a coalition of the willing. Sadly the fallout from the Iraq war may mean that President Bush lacks the political will and ability to put together another such coalition.

Pensions: "help me help myself"

HSBC recently completed a worldwide survey on attitudes towards pensions. The results were interesting, to say the least.

In the 80s and 90s, people viewed retirement as something preferable to work. Now people see themselves wanting to work past their retirement age, but to work part time. The possibility of a large workforce of silver surfers has obvious implications with regards to the economy. It makes the case for mass immigration less compelling as people would be less reliant on taxes paid by the current workforce for their support, as well as reducing the need for migrant labour itself.

More interesting still was the absence of faith that the state will provide. Overall people showed an acceptance that they had to be responsible for their own pension provision. They realised that they couldn't count on their governments - or even their families -to support them in their old age.

What was favoured though - above tax increases and raises in the pension age - was enforced saving. People want to help themselves, but sometimes need the incentive to do so. This is a far cry from the Chancellor's preferred approach of keeping pensioners trapped on a regimen of means tested benefits.

It's reassuring that some Conservative sentiments are so widespread.

Not fit to govern

If this government has an ounce of honour left than Charles Clarke would resign. Apparently the Prime Minister thinks otherwise.

The Home Secretary gave a couple of interviews last night and said that he would only resign if he was personally responsible for the Home Office's failings. In a later interview he said that he was personally guilty of shocking failure.

That appears to be a perfectly fair summary. There was warning after warning from the Chief Inspector of Prisons, the Prison Reform Trust, the National Audit Office, and the Public Accounts Committee. This leaves no excuse for the Home Office's devastating failure to protect the public from these most dangerous criminals.

The Chief Inspector of Prisons' 2002 report identified the problem. This should have triggered the Home Office into drawing up a plan to deal with the problem, then to implement that plan and monitor its results. This didn't happen.

This is not rocket science. It's the basic business of government. Once again Labour has proved that it's not even up to that job.

What is the truth about global warming?

David Vance has an interesting post up at A Tangled Web questioning the orthodox views about global warming:

"Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero). And also, yes, this eight-year period of temperature stasis did coincide with society's continued power station and SUV-inspired pumping of yet more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere."

David believes that the current media trend for scare stories about global warming - and the habit of politicians have adopted of trying to cash in on this - is something of a con.

The orthodox view is that global warming is the heating up of the earth from burning fossil fuels.

Not so.

Global warming is the theory that increased levels of carbon dioxide and certain other gases are causing an increase in the average temperature of the earth’s atmosphere because of the so-called ‘greenhouse effect.’

David isn't alone in questioning this (although the media coverage may well lend you that impression). Recently 41 climate scientists wrote to the Canadian Prime Minisiter to tell him that:

"global climate changes all the time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural 'noise'...

"... observational evidence does not support today's computer climate models, so there is little reason to trust model predictions of the future."

There does seem to be a wealth of evidence to support their views:

• most of the warming in the past century occurred before 1940, before CO2 emissions could have been a major factor;
• temperatures fell between 1940 and 1970 even as CO2 levels increased;
• temperature readings from reporting stations outside the U.S. are poorly maintained and staffed and probably inaccurate; those in the U.S., which are probably more accurate, show little or no warming trend;
• temperature sensors on satellites report much less warming in the upper atmosphere (which the theory of global warming predicts should warm first) than is reported by temperature sensors on the ground;
• data from weather balloons agree with the satellites;
• temperature readings taken by terrestrial reporting stations are rising because they are increasingly surrounded by roads and buildings which hold heat, the “urban heat island” effect; methods used to control for this effect fail to reduce temperatures enough to offset it;
• changes in land use and urbanisation may contribute more to changes in the average ground temperature than “global warming” caused by human emissions.
  

So is the climate changing?

Yes. But if anything, change and not stability is the defining characteristic of the climate.

Are emissions responsible?

I've yet to be convinced.

Does a skepticism about this mean we can stop being environmentally aware though?

Obviously not. On a selfish level, we want to live somewhere pleasant and a land marked by pollution fails on that score. On a practical level, there simply aren't the natural resources to support an ongoing oil guzzling lifestyle. As resources become ever more scarce, then conservation will become all the more important.

Has Cameron unleashed the environmental version of "Back to Basics"?

A Labour Party spokesman today denounced David Cameron as "complete hypocrite".

The reason?

Cameron rejected the government's offer to replace his Vauxhall Omega with a Toyota Prius, and instead leased a Lexus GS 450h with a "hybrid" engine. The Lexus is of course a larger car than the Prius and has higher levels of carbon emissions.

The rationale Cameron gave on Sky News does seem rather odd:

"My problem is that often when I go on tour, I have a lot of people in the car with me and I found on the tour when I used a Prius it meant we had to have two cars rather than one, so I don't think it would be very good for the environment."

The things is that both cars are five seaters. The only difference is that the Lexus has more luggage space, more rear legroom and is a luxury marque.

But Cameron's not alone in this. Environment spokesman Greg Barker is being forced to give up his Porsche and Chris Grayling has already surrendered his Land Rover.

Will the outing of Range Rover owning Tory MPs be the latest way to show that up the style that takes precedence over substance?

Getting the disadvantaged into Higher Education

The government has decided to take action to make universities accept more people from disadvantaged backgrounds. The proposals from UCAs are to drop the entry standards required for people in underepresented groups, especially in elite institutions.

With places at Oxbridge and the members of the Russell Group already massively oversubscribed, and tens of thousands of students with "A" grades being turned away, one has to wonder how exactly this would work.

Besides seeming unfair to those who have made the grade, it also potentially opens up institutions to people who aren't up to the work the courses require. We can already see the effects of this in the former polytechnics and new universities, who have been driven to accept more students who fail to reach academic minimum standards, and consequently suffer drop out rates of up to 25 per cent.

All this really constitutes is fiddling with the system. It adds another layer of bureaucracy to the admissions process, which serves to manipulate entry to university and thus undermine the value of students' objective achievements.

The government would be far better advised to find ways to improve standards in schools accross the board so that children can realise their exam potential, rather than stacking the system against those who don't come from their target backgrounds.

Cutting schools free from Westminster and LEA control would constitute a good starting point.

... and what to do about them.

Friday's YouGov poll suggested that twenty-eight per cent of the population would consider voting for the British National Party at the forthcoming local elections. It's hard to believe that number of people would endorse that BNP's policies of racism and hate.

It's equally hard to claim that they can be ignorant of what the BNP stands for. While it's true that under Nick Griffin's leadership, the BNP has downplayed its overt racism, there is a general awareness that this is at the core of the party's being.

The answer probably lies in two areas.

This isn't a general election so people feel it's safe to make a protest vote. Many Conservative supporters will vote for UKIP at the European Parliamentary elections to express their displeasure with their party's European positions. Similarly many people must be tempted to vote BNP as a protest at the main parties.

Obviously voting for a fascist party is an extreme protest, but it's perhaps easily explained by the issues the BNP has campaigned on: political corruption, the increasing tax burden, Europe, penal sentencing and immigration.

These are the issues where the mainstream political parties seem most out of synch with public opinion.

The only way to stop people being driven to extremist parties is for the mainstream parties to be aware of what drives voters there.

In 1978 the BNP's predecessor, the National Front was resurgent. Then Mrs Thatcher gave an interview to Granada's World in Action that demonstrated she understood the concerns that were driving people to support the National Front.

Her talk of people feeling "swamped" by immigration may have offended liberal opinion, but the remarks made voters worried about immigration appreciate that she was on their side and that the Conservatives understood their concerns. Support for the National Front collapsed.

The current Conservative leadership will doubtless claim that Michael Howard and William Hague tried that strategy and failed. The observation is correct, but misses the point. In the case of Howard and Hague, the party failed to court the centre and seemingly returned to issues like immigration and Europe in a panicked attempt to shore up the vote. This strident opportunism and the narrowness of both leaders' platforms ensured it failed to convince the people who have moved towards the BNP in recent days, or the middle classes.

To succeed, the Conservatives must show people it understands their concerns on issues like crime, tax and immigration, as well as demonstrating breadth with policies on the environment, education and health.

Hopefully it's not too late.

The BNP and "the extreme right"...

Amongst all the panic about the resurgence of the British National Party (fed no doubt by the oxygen of publicity), one question has almost gone unasked: what is "extreme Right-wing" about the BNP?

Lord Tebbit raised just this point in yesterday's Telegraph letters' pages. The "extreme Right-wing" epithet is applied in almost every news article about that party, but a cursory examination of their manifesto reveals little that's obviously right wing:

On the other hand, there is plenty of anti-capitalism, opposition to free trade, commitments to "use all non-destructive means to reduce income inequality", to institute worker ownership, to favour workers' co-operatives, to return parts of the railways to state ownership, to nationalise the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and to withdraw from Nato. That sounds pretty Left-wing to me.

Indeed it does.

Today's Telegraph contains readers' letters that try and rebut the point. They miss the mark.

Matthew Bright of Tunbridge Wells (who sadly appears not to be disgusted), also examined the BNP manifesto and responded as follows:

A few policies plucked at random include: restoring British sovereignty by leaving the EU, halting immigration and funding voluntary repatriation, restoring grammar schools, competitive sports and corporal and capital punishment, with prison sentences to be served in full.

While it's true that many - if not all of these ideas - have been expounded by people who would self-identify as being "right wing", very few of them are exclusive to the right. Many on the old left, for example, campaigned against EU membership.

Selective education is hardly a preserve of the right either; it's remarkably common in left of centre European nations, for example. So if it's not indicative of the right, what is it indicative of? The simple answer would be statism: the belief the state can best determine the management and delivery of services.

As for the other examples, competitive sports and issues of punishment straddle the political spectrum. If anything they are indicative of authoritarian approaches, rather than anything uniquely right or left of centre.

But what of immigration and repatiration? Supporters of all parties want immigration controlled; there is no left-right divide on the issue. Controlling immigration commands overwhelming support across the board.

Repatriation however is simply indicative of racism in this case...

As Tebbit observes:

Certainly the BNP poses as a patriotic party opposed to multiculturalism, and it has racist overtones, but there is no lack of patriotic Left-wing regimes; opposition to multiculturalism is now mainstream and racialism was not unknown even in the Soviet Union.

I think the point here is that the left-right axis only makes sense as an economic one, with those on the right favouring increasinly laissez-faire positions. Attempts to use other indicators simply confuse the issue, as other positions are neither exclusive to or typical of the right.

This brings us to the other reader's response:

Lord Tebbit asks what is "extreme Right-wing" about the BNP. I would say, roughly the same things that were "extreme Right-wing" about the National Socialist German Workers' Party.

So that would be nothing then?

The BNP are racist, they are nationalists, and they BNP are authoritarian, but like their continental bretheren like Le Pen, they are socialists.

Of course, the term used to describe racist, nationalist socialists is "fascist".

But that doesn't tell us what to do about them...

The indignity of it...

Doubtless concerned by headlines about elderly patients lying neglected in NHS hospitals, the government has as responded as only it knows how: with a PR gimmick.

The gimmick in question is the Dignity Nurse.

Their job will to be to make sure that the elderly are respected and not neglected. There is one crucial problem with this plan: it's rubbish.

All nurses should have respect for their patients' dignity. This scheme would seem to recognise that they do not have that respect, while simultaneously failing to address the root cause.

That cause lies in the structure and funding of our health service.

To many in the the medical profession, the elderly are seen as little more than bed-blockers who consume a hospital's finite resources. Such thinking is made possible because the revenues of the hospital are not seen to be coming from the patient. The patient may have paid their taxes, but the connection between that and the consumption of services is not made because the Exchequer remains the paymaster.

In a private system, patients are associated with revenues. In the NHS they are associated with costs. It's hardly surprising therefore that the NHS tends to view them as a cost to be controlled, rather than a customer to be served.