NYC

The girls are back. All Chanel'd and beautiful.

They visited the Chelsea & Meatpacking district (Frank's and Pastis of course), Highline Park, the top of the Rock, South St. Seaport & Pier 17, the Frick, MoMA (capitalisation very important), noho & soho.

All in one short week of tremendous energy. And because they lived as New Yorkers - looking after a friend's apartment (and feeding Freddie the hampster) - they are confident in saying that New Yorkers are much nicer than Londoners. Pleasant, engaging, polite and supportive.

Thank you Mr Bin Laden. Apparently post 9/11 New Yorkers live for today. There may be no tomorrow.

Alternatively, the evidence suggests they may be too busy shopping...

The Great International Development Leader

Having supported Guido earlier, I now remember why I found it so surprising. Guido is now running a story that Gordon Brown is trying to return to the shadow cabinet as International Development Secretary.

I really can't think of a more stupid, irrational and unlikely move. Even for Gordon Brown.

Local jargon

Paul Goodman writes admiringly about Eric Pickles – the Tories’ action man - in today’s Telegraph.

In little more than three months, Pickles has announced an end to regional housebuilding targets, home insurance packs, the comprehensive area assessment system for local councils, the Standards Board, the proposed unitary local authority for Norwich, the local government office for London, bin taxes (provoking a simmering row with Caroline Spelman, the Environment Secretary) ...and abolished the Audit Commission.

He's also released details online of all department spending over £500, instructed local authorities to do the same, tightened rules about councils publishing newspapers, and attacked his Labour predecessors for squandering taxpayers' money on official photographs and fancy furniture, all the while trumpeting a new "golden age for local government".

Apart from knowing who the Environment Secretary is, I really haven't a clue what he's talking about.

Progression & the IFS

Can't believe I agree with Guido Fawkes, but this piece makes sense.

The left defines a “progressive budget” as one that benefits those on lowest incomes most. Since the population decile on the lowest incomes is overwhelmingly composed of those on welfare it means that no tax cutting budget, even if it disproportionately benefits the lowest paid by raising thresholds, can ever be “progressive”. The only way the budget could be progressive would be by raising welfare payments to those who spend their days sitting on the sofa watching daytime TV.

Living wages

Miliband's IFS document on the living wage makes interesting reading. Not only does it incentivise work over welfare, it directly helps the lowest paid, and does so in a way that attaches social responsibility to business practices. The key detail is:

An increase in wages for everyone in the private sector to the level of the
"living wage" (£7.85 in London and £7.60 in the rest of the UK) would lead to an increase in gross earnings of between £11.4 billion and £12.0 billion, of which about £4.5 to £4.9billion would accrue to the Government through higher income tax and employee national insurance payments and lower spending on benefits and tax credits. Employers would also pay about £1.4 to £1.5 billion more in Employers’ National Insurance. In total, the Treasury would gain between £5.9 billion to £6.3 billion.

Dizzy had an interesting take on it yesterday morning re welfare reform. Note the calculation involves 'everyone in the private sector' including SME's paying a lot less in corporation tax (21%) than larger enterprises (28%), with little consequent scope for tax reductions. But this is just the type of initiative the treasury needs to be looking at.

The wind that shakes the barley

Michael White in Politics Weekly, Gaby Hinsliff in yesterday's Observer and now Jackie Ashley in today's Guardian. So where were you guys exactly when we were getting high? Defending the indefensible, that's where. Yes I'm talking to you Polly Toynbee.

The party of anger, hatred and deceit lost. Miserably. And the forces of terror that knew better than us how we should live left without contrition. A 'dumb waiter' deserving of extinction eh? Sounds about right Mr Milli-balls. Just be careful what you wish for...

Grade F Mr Balls

Telling interview with Ed Balls on Newsnight following yesterday's A level results. When asked why the attainment gap between State and private schools is still increasing after 13 years of New Labour educational spending, he could only offer the excuse 'because they're selective'.

No Mr Balls, they have always been selective. The only variable to change over that period has been the vast increase in spending on state education under your government.

Definitely an F grade for Mr Balls then. Not to mention the fact that the wonderful schools building program that achieved so little, was financed not out of current (New Labour) spending but by PFI.

So my children and grandchildren will still be paying for it in thirty years time. Double F Mr Balls.

The People want Fairness

Extraordinarily honest view from former New Statesman Editor John Kampfner in today's Daily Mail. He suggests the electorate are a lot more intelligent than the Labour leadership candidates currently believe.

Kampfner uses several examples of diverse and often contradictory policy solutions to prove his point - privatisation of BT (good) versus Network Rail (bad); PFI(bad) v public funding (good); Banking excesses (bad) v taxpayer bailouts (good).

His point? Its not about ideology. Its about fairness. And what works.

Happy 100 days

Good news if Iain Martin is to be believed - a tapered incentive back into work for millions of welfare dependents. No doubt the Sunday's will be full of it. All we need now is a realistic and effective welfare to work program - just like Cameron promised at last year's conference. Remember that? Seems like an age now...

It coincides with the first 100 days of the coalition government with articles all over the media. A more radical opening is hard to imagine. And there's plenty more promised - a patient-led NHS (albeit through GP's), decentralisation of local government, a comprehensive defence review and voting reform of both houses, to mention just a few.

But amongst such progress, I still have doubts over a flatlining economy - and bank lending, not government spending, remains at the heart of my doubts.

Instead of whining over bonuses, Vince Cable should be introducing new legislation offering 'narrow' banking licences to new entrants to the retail banking market. And reforming a swathe of (largely EU inspired) business regulations and centralised bureaucracy to free up and stimulate new business generation.

Trolls and tantrums...

Today I learnt the word Troll - Internet slang for someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community. I am currently looking at ways in which they - just like an annoying fly - can be controlled.

Apparently Trolls are all around. And especially within. They need to be guarded against fiercely and excluded immediately.

Poor Trolls.

Not sure why, but just thinking about that reminded me of an amusing incident in a previous existence. Back when I was 16, I had a holiday job at Air Products in Bracknell, Berks. One of my duties - during a two week cold snap - was to keep a busy loading bay (where cryogenic tankers would re-load) free of ice.

On the first morning the Manager stood next to me explaining what needed to be done. He showed me where the bags of road salt were kept, and in one huge sweep of the shovel, how to cover a swathe of iced tarmac, keeping the precious tankers firmly grounded.

And as he demonstrated, he told me about a 'stupid namby-pamby little boy' they had employed the previous winter, who had 'pranced around' delicately sprinkling little handfuls of salt here and there as if he were some 'poncey ice skater'.

Naturally I agreed with the Manager, laughing animatedly at his amusing characterisation. All the while realising that the boy he was talking about, was me.

100 days Post Terror

100 days of Dave does not sound an inspiring title. But is an excellent piece from Tim Montgomery in the New Statesman.


He points out a growing number of reform programs the coalition has surprised us with, confirming their revolutionary fervour - shelving the prison building program, welfare dependency reform and the NHS re-organisation of strategic and area health authorities. Reforms to schools, policing and local government were well anticipated.

But it is the personal that for me features so prominently in Tim's assessment. The courage so evident in constructing a 'change alliance'. The deep and seamless bonding of two distinct political traditions, expressed through the prism of David Laws resignation. And the sheer delight that appears to accompany every decision the coalition makes. In one word, trust.

One more heave, Mr Heffer

I may have enjoyed one expression from Simon Heffer, but I can't think of a writer who's made me more angry over the past four years.


For me, Heffer represents everything that is wrong and unacceptable with the Conservative party. He and his followers are the reason why - until Cameron became leader in 2005 - I had been unable to vote in a general election since John Major in 1997. The last honest and decent politician who handed over a golden legacy for the incoming Labour administration to destroy.



Heffer it seemed to me, delighted in attacking Cameron - and particularly shadow Chancellor George Osborne - for daring to question the old orthodoxy of Thatcherite shibboleths that the electorate had so convincingly rejected many years before.



Even in today's paper, Heffer claims Cameron "...believes in nothing except remaining Prime Minister" despite initiating the most fundamental reforms to education, health, voting, policing, prisons and welfare for a generation. All within the first 11 weeks of a coalition government which is additionally committed to more than halving the deficit during its lifetime, left by Labour for future generations to pay.



He suggests the only people with anything important to say "...are to be found on the Right of the Conservative Party and the Left of the Liberal Democrats." Well, they may form an audience for Mr Heffer - though I doubt Simon Hughes would agree - but they hardly seem a willing coalition with which to win elections.


It just seems to me that Mr Heffer's attitude - like that of the European Union - is that the electorate seems to have got it wrong. And they need to be made to vote again and again and again. Until they get it right. Or should that be Right.

The Brown Terror

I love the expression 'The Brown Terror' used by Simon Heffer in today's Telegraph. It perfectly sums up the years of anger, hatred and deceit under the butcher of Kirkcaldy and his acolytes.

Even now - and without so much as an apology - some of them are standing for the Labour leadership. The remainder of course, were unable to find the courage to put the British people before personal gain and ideology and stop the terror.

Its not a great choice. And the one man who stood up to the bully and put his moral convictions first is missing. James Purnell was oppointed Chairman of the ippr thinktank on 20th July. I shall read their output with a great deal more enthusiasm from September.

Be careful what you wish for...

I keep reading that Ed Miliband is now expected to beat his more high profile older brother for the Labour leadership by virtue of the fact that he has fewer enemies and presents himself as a nicer person - not to mention the workings of the AV electoral system which the party so principally rejects.

Often such characteristics in a politician suggest little or no thoughts of their own; a lack of strength in moral conviction or being vacuously described as 'all things to all men'.

In fact, exactly what they accused Cameron of being during his recent travels to Obamaland, Turkey and India - telling each what they wanted to hear.

Strange then that the very same party should be looking to elect exactly the characteristics they find so objectionable in the Prime Minister as their new leader.

Packing the electorate

Looks like we're nearly at save the LibDem's time. 55% of Conservative voters now accept the need for an electoral pact. Certainly the Conservative Whigs owe a great deal to the Liberals - if not the Democrats.

Personally I'm amazed at the plummeting electoral fortunes of a junior partner which has managed to introduce quite so many manifesto commitments within weeks of coming to power - far more than Blair's 1997 steroidally obsessed regime. An electoral pact may well become necessary.

But probably only once a referendum on AV has been lost...

Welfare reform

Don't often see a piece of this length - nor importance - in the Spectator blogs. Well worth a read. It starts with Labour's view from former spad Jo Moore -

'Sorting welfare comes at a political cost – and for what? Helping a bunch of people who tend not to vote. Far easier to shovel money at the poor, and leave them in decaying council estates.'

And that's exactly what they did. But as we all know, it's how you look after those you do not need that defines you. The piece ends 'how serious is he (Cameron) about fixing this broken society? In the next few months, we’ll see.'

Iain Duncan Smith and welfare reform is fast becoming the totemic issue for this coalition. And not before time.

Pakistan (and David Miliband) doth protest too much, methinks

So 'loudmouth' Cameron is making it up as he goes along is he? Not very likely Mr Miliband. Nor very polite. And being a victim of terrorism hardly makes Pakistan innocent. The connections and coincidences are now too great to ignore. The complacency of the ISI too freightening. The louder they protest, the more we wonder what they're trying to hide. Speak loud Mr Cameron. The world is listening.

The Losers

Labour: Ed Balls - too close. David Miliband - lacking courage. Harriet Harman - PMQless. Jack Straw - even worse. Lord Mandelson - too well rewarded for his disloyalty.

LibDems: David Laws - doh! Vince Cable - past form catching him up.

Conservatives: Liam Fox - completely out of touch. David Davis - off the scale.

Media: Andrew Marr - lost all his friends. Simon Heffer - the lunatics have taken over the asylum and are doing rather well. Polly Toynbee - run out of apologists. This Week - Diane still missing & four idiotic replacements.

Calmly Radical

The summer recess is here and politics is going away on holiday.

'Better than the last lot' was Jeff Randal's verdict. Not difficult really - and what a relief after the forces of anger, hatred and deceit finally left the stage.

So how have they done? Radical, that's for sure.

Eight short weeks into a government program scrambled together whilst assembling the first national coalition in half a century, and the government has embarked on the most radical reform program possible: halving Labours profligate borrowing, deep reforms in welfare, education, the NHS, policing, prisons, and immigration as well as constitutional changes the like of which we have not seen since women's suffrage in the 1920's.

And Labour always told us Cameron was policy light. Naughty Labour.

The most obvious change though has been in attitude. A quiet determination to apply real solutions to pressing problems, with calm and curtesy. None of the frenzy that characterised NewLabour and its spin machine.

And yet the big loser - at least in polling terms - appear to be the Liberal Democrats. The latest polls show them languishing at around 15%. So what, in policy terms, did the LibDems actually secure?

They agreed and are implementing the necessary deficit reductions from their own manifesto. They have secured constitutional reform including AV with a referendum set for 5th May next year. They have secured - through Michael Gove's educational reforms - the 'pupil premium' of their manifesto. They are set to take out a tier of buraucracy - strategic health authorities - from the NHS as outlined in their manifesto. They have secured a prison reform program that was widely criticised in the leader's debates during the election campaign. And perhaps most significantly, the tax threashold was increased towards their much publicised objective of £10,000 in George Osborne's emergency budget. Not a bad haul for a party providing just 59 of the 365 coalition MP's.

Vodka & Madmen

Started watching the first series of Madmen this week. Really baffling. Few good characters - Draper's wife a rare exception - no real storyline. Oddly stylised 1960's environment. And a whole series of seemingly unrelated mini-stories that don't seem to go anywhere: Draper's childhood, a long-lost brother, his wife's hand problem, babysitting loo incident, copy-writing secretary, gun-buying account executive, massed alcoholism. I could go on.

Still, the Bloody Mary's are great, smoking rules and what's the name for a Vodka & Milk?

All you need is a bike

Its summer and I need some exercise. Today - but not in honour of the Mayor's new bicycle scheme - I will buy a bike. A lean and beautiful bike. A road bike. With the thinest tyres I can find and the lightest frame possible.

Not like John Lennon's then.

Labour, principle & AV

Excellent piece by Martin Kettle called Labour is playing fast and loose on AV reform in today's Guardian. He writes:

"When Labour looks at this bill it sees Clegg – whom it now hates – not
electoral reform, which it should and until a few weeks ago did support. Nearly
two centuries after the Chartists, one is bound to ask whether the Labour party
is any longer a party of reform at all."

It is quite extraordinary how unprincipled the Labour party now appears to the electorate.

You've had the cowboys, now try the Indians...

I can't believe I've just heard Laura Kuenssberg - BBC Chief Political correspondent - saying on the 6 o'clock that honesty in foreign relations is part of the new politics and - by implication - very little to do with the old.

Cameron is apparently "determined to persue this new 'frank' style abroad - honesty he believes is the best foreign policy".

She obviously doesn't realise the forces of anger, hatred and deceit left office on 6th May...

Turkey votes for Christmas

Apparently Turkey still wants to join the EU. They really should know better.

So after a decade of New Labour's uncontrolled immigration to the UK 'just to rub the right's nose in it' and the apparent necessity of the coalition's new immigration cap in order to control integration, we now need 74 million young Turks enhancing our diversity.

I can only assume (always a dangerous course) that with so much reported opposition from Germany, Austria & France amongst others, Cameron knows he's on safe ground. Cynical or what?

Hilary Clinton

A North Korean border guard looks suspiciously at US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton on a recent visit to the disputed 1953 Military Demarcation Line that is the border.

What struck me was how aged she appeared after just two years in office.

Banksy's farce

Its entertaining. It uses an unlikely or improbable situation. It may involve disguise or mistaken identity. The potential for verbal humour including sexual innuendo and wordplay is enormous. The speed of the plot should increased to an endpoint involving an elaborate chase and unlikely outcome.

Its farce. And Banksy's image provides everything you need to know. Just enough naughtyness. Just that perfect moment representing all those wonderful moments in British farce.

And then there's the perfect positioning of hands. Left of course.

Licensing Heroin

300,000 heroin addicts throughout the UK currently commit more than £14 billion of criminal activity each year. Its an extraordinary total. Yet the fact that we measure drug addiction in terms of criminality and economics shows just how far we are from solving it.

In an article from Times 2 today - whose URL I am unable to link to because (a) you now need to subscribe for online content and (b) I read it on an iPad without any address bar - talks about an experiment that has been running in Zurich since 1994 to provide heroin for regular users in an effort to tackle street drugs and their associated criminality. The organisers say it costs £33.50 per patient per day, but produces a net saving of £27.60 per day after factoring in the reduction in crime & criminal justice system costs.

More importantly, 30% of Swiss users find jobs and pay taxes. A remarkable total. As Dr Adrian Kormann - Zoki 2's clinical director - suggests, '...their health and welbeing improve, they stop committing crimes and many can get back into education or work. They rebuild relations with their families and friends. And all of it comes at a saving to the state.' A similar limited experiment has apparently been tried in this country, with results so far unknown.

This is just the sort of bold, but vital initiative we need in the UK to start turning the tide against decades of ignorant attempts to treat, usually through the prison system, the symptoms of heroin addiction which blight families and communities up and down the country - street crime, burglary and prostitution. We must start returning addicts back to families and communities able to properly support them. Without the blight of criminal activity that so divides them from society.

Prison Reform

Just read Ben Gummer's maiden speech on penal reform. This really is an important area for the coalition - central to their vision of a 'broken society'. Prisons remain the main repository of family breakdown, educational underachievement and substance abuse in Britain.

With the exception of a small number of high security jails for serious long-term offenders, our prisons should be turned into adult education centres providing both basic reading, writing & arithmatic as well as vocationally-based qualifications allowing all inmates the chance of a future on release.

They must also be drug-free zones in which all detainees know before entry that drugs will not be tolerated and all warders change into prison uniforms on entry.

Swine Flu

The governments £1.2bn response to swine flu was apparently 'proportionate and effective' we learned from a report published this week and commissioned by that same government. It used just 5 million of 132 million doses of anti-viral drugs ordered (thats 3.8%) despite forcasting at one stage that 65,000 UK citizens could die from the worldwide pandemic. The outcome was 457 deaths (thats 0.7%).

No possibility then that Gordon Brown's nasty, incompetent, angry, spiteful and unpopular Labour government might have been feeling just a little vulnerable at the time?

Where's Labour?

Iain Martin writes witheringly of David Miliband's inability to engage in foreign policy debate. But it is no irony that the favourite for Labour leadership, foreign secretary for the last three years, leading Labour reformist and keeper of the Blairite flame, simply dismisses William Hague's speech as 'vacuous'. Brother Ed meanwhile (another leadership candidate), lazily attacks serious attempts at welfare reform as 'on yer bike Toryism'.

Time and again senior Labour figures - cabinet ministers up until a few short weeks ago - simply do not get it. From Harriet Harman's PMQ's performance downwards, the arguments have moved on. Labour has not.

Last nights Question Time reflected the same impoverished performance from Alan Johnson. 'I dont want to make it an Iain Duncan Smith benefit night' said David Dimbleby at one point as all four questions - on the budget, prison reform, immigration caps and job mobility -went unanswered by the former home secretary. Meanwhile Iain Duncan Smith argued lucidly on the geographic nature of poverty, its roots, the rehabilitation of first-time offenders and successfully absorbing immigration. No tribalism. No point scoring. Just intelligent and purposeful debate.

Later on This Week, Andy Burnham - yet another Labour leadership contender - could only muster the line 'it reminds me of the 1980s' as Michael Portillo (who left front-line politics five years ago) and a twenty-something indy folk singer (Roy Stride of Scouting For Girls), accurately took the pulse at the heart of coalition politics. Where's Labour?

Your Freedom

Entitled Your Ideas For Freedom this site is well worth a visit. I found it painfully slow to load, but nicely laid out with great ideas being voted on. But will it lead to reform?

VAT

Its extraordinary how outraged the comment on increasing VAT to 20% becomes. Its £3 a week for the average person for heavens sake. It excludes food, children's shoes & clothing, books, newspapers and includes a reduced rate on heating bills. Just how outraged do you think you should appear? Yes its not as progressive as increasing income tax, but its a lot cheaper to collect (retailers & businesses do all the work) and its collected every quarter on the dot - or serious fines ensue.

The coalition's mistake was not increasing VAT, but not to use that increase for a specific purpose. It should have been used as a locally-based sales tax covering all local government expenditure. Amounts raised in VAT and those spent by local authorities (roads, transport, care services etc) are remarkably similar in this country - around £90bn - and a whole layer of local bureaucracy could be saved in the process. This involves valuing properties, calculating council tax, printing & sending demands, collecting & enforcing late payers, legal fees etc. I'm sure you get the picture.

Throughout the US a local sales tax is used to pay for local services. It enhances democracy because local people become interested when their money is on the line and it puts people at the centre of local government. After all, the only way to increase local government revenues under such a system, is to increase either businesses or consumers in your area. Not exactly a nimby's charter then, and rather responsive to demographic changes from immigration, no?