Month: December 2006

I will ask the technicians to look at the configuration of the system to help you all read it easily.

An English Parliament.

I am surprised at how many want a seperate English Parliament. That means more politicians, more advisers, more bureucrats, and many more bills for taxpayers to pay. You are already paying for English MPs at Westminster. Surely the sensible answer is to make us MPs do both jobs for our money – discussing and voting on English issues at Westminster a couple of days a week, and Union matters for another couple of days a week. If Scotland and Wales were sensible they would make their MPs work harder, by asking them to do what needs doing in the devolved assemblies when the English MPs are using Westminster as the correct home of the English Parliament. There is no need for different people to staff the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh Assembly. Whilst we are at it, it would also be a good idea to cut the number of MPs. The USA has fewer Senators and Congressmen and women than we have MPs, and they staff two Chambers of a sovereign legislature for a much larger country.

??Can you trust the Conservatives on the EU?

There is no pleasing some people. The Conservative party was whipped to vote against the Nice Treaty. It was whipped to vote against the Amsterdam treaty. It was whipped to vote for??a crucial amendment to the 1972 European Communities Act allowing us to pick and choose which laws we will accept from Brussels. It is against both the Euro and the Constitution in principle.

The disagreement with UKIP comes down to two simple issues. Firstly do you think it helps or hinders the cause of getting back powers to govern ourselves to have UKIP trying to take Conservative votes away, making it more likely Lib Dem or Labour federalists will be elected to Parliament? The second question is, does it make more sense to renegotiate our position with the EU first before asking the people if they like the revised package, or to pull out unilaterally, only then to have to try to negotiate a set of arrangements over everything from the environment to trade with former partners who have no reason to negotiate positively with us? We are much more likely to get a??good deal if Brussels sees there is a chance the UK voters may vote in a?? referendum to stay in if the package makes sense. The UK electorate would be in charge??in such a process, as the decision would be made by referendum.

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Has no-one told Labour Ministers they are all responsible for every policy and action of their government? If they don’t like something, and they cannot persuade their colleagues in private to change things, they have to resign.

We now see Labour Ministers rushing to distance themselves from the NHS cuts that are becoming visible. As the next couple of years unfold there should be many more pressure points on public spending. The blow out years are past, and even this Chancellor and this government are going to have to?? cut the rate of increase in public spending considerably. Given the poor way they manage the public sector, that will doubtless mean cuts in those services which Labour MPs cherish. We will become used to Minister after Minister lobbying against their own government, even at times lobbying against their own department!

??It will happen because they are incapable of managing their huge?? budgets well. Because they spend so much on wasteful things, and use staff and other resources so badly, there will be more cuts, and more phoney protests against them by the very people who are responsible. They do not seem to be able to control staff numbers, propose sensible levels of pay and pensions increases, nor to be able to use private sector consultants wisely??by replacing rather than adding to staff they already employ in house to do something. They heap quango on quango, chasing headlines and trying to avert bad publicity. They use Csars to take the pressure off Ministers who have failed in a particular area, and outside bodies to take the blame.

Parliament has set a bad example again, breaking for Christmas on 19th December and not reconvening until January 8th. Now many other parts of the public sector seem to take a long Christmas break. It’s such a contrast with the private sector, where many shops opened up on Boxing Day and are open all this week, where newspapers and taxi services have been available since?? December 26th, and where milk, bread and many other goods have been supplied. My local Council is not collecting any recyclables until well into the New Year, at the very time when people have most waste. I have received a holding reply from Reading Council on behalf of one constituent, telling me there is no chance of the letter being considered until the second week of January. We thank all the nurses and doctors who kept the hospitals running over Christmas, and the police who turned out for duty. There hasn’t been much else working in the public sector, despite the large pay awards and the extra money.

The government is right to worry that children who achieve the highest standards academically are often held up or let down by state schools. I am glad they at last acknowledge there is a problem. It is??a pity that their solution of vouchers for the top ten per cent in each school is such a poor response.

??The first injustice is in taking the top ten per cent of each school, whatever the general standard. It means many children who work harder and are brighter in better schools??will not get the extra assistance which less hard working or less motivated children in poor schools will receive. If it was truly a talent based system it would seek to help all those who met a required standard, not the top ten per cent of every school.

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The second injustice is to think they are "gifted", when quite often it is ninety percent perspiration and only ten percent inspiration. Being a successful academic is not all in the genes – much of it is reading and writing much more than others, to become good at it. Just as great athletes have to spend a large number of their waking hours training, so a high flying academic has to spend a large number of waking hours studying. The rewards should go to those who combine intelligence with great effort.

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The third mistake is to think it can all be done in summer and week-end schools. What is needed is to remedy the defects every day in??each child’s school. We need setting and streaming, so every secondary school can have a grammar stream, where children are encouraged or required to go more quickly through the basics and to delve more deeply into the subjects.

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Bright hard working children from poorer areas should have the chance of a place at a local grammar or independent school, paid for by the state, so they can compete on more level terms with the children of better off parents. Such an entitlement would do them far more good than summer school vouchers.

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The grammar schools provided an excellent education for those?? who had an aptitude or a love for learning. The failure was in many of the other schools that failed to light flames for achievement in other areas of life. We should keep what grammar schools we still have, and at the very least create a grammar stream in every comprehensive, as we know grammar schools are the best way to nurture and speed the academic development of many children, from any background. They are the scholars’ comprehensives. We need more of them. No amount of summer school work for the top ten percent can make up for the loss of so many grammars, nor can I understand how?? the creator of this idea??can think it is a "less divisive" system than grammars.

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This government has created an exam based culture where much of the effort?? goes into coaching for exams rather than into wider education. Many bright pupils now have a materialistic view of knowledge – tell me only if it can help me pass the exam. Whilst there is a need for good public exams for schools leavers of 16 or 18 years of age, there is?? no need to have so many other public exams on the way. Schoolchildren should enjoy some years when instead of cramming for exams and relaxing afterwards in the summer term, they can be encouraged to read, think and range more widely without the pressure of an immediate public test. Our education system is falling prey to a crude centralisation based on a target culture. It shows once again that when the government sets targets they can so often distort or destroy the institutions they are seeking to control.

Happy Christmas to all you bloggers. There will be no Happy Winterval on this site.

There is something for all to enjoy at Christmas, especially for children who love the Christmas story of the baby Jesus, and the folklore of Santa Claus and his reindeers. Our Christmas is a blend of pagan and Christian, Victorian and commercial. it can be enjoyed by people of all faiths and of none.

I myself love the Nine Carols and lessons from Kings Cambridge, as the voices soar in that superb setting. There is magic in such powerful words, such melodious music, such glorious architecture.?? It shows that mankind can aspire to beauty and magnificence. The search for the divine can bring faith to believers, and joy to non believers who appreciate fine art.

??May you all find some peace and??joy during this holiday season.

Yesterday when the trains were fully booked and many internal flights were cancelled, to cap it all the authorities closed two lanes and then the whole southbound M40 for the whole day.

As someone trying to get to the Midlands and back that day I experienced the chaos for myself, as thousands of cars were routed through the narrow roads of Banbury and headed south on roads suitable for light local traffic only, leading to very long delays and annoyance to people living near the roads.

??I understand the authorities had to allow access for lifting gear to put a lorry back on its wheels and get if off two lanes of carriageway, but surely it cannot take from very early morning until evening to do that?

??I was part of a Bill Committee which charged the authorities with the simple but important task of re-opening blocked carriageways as quickly as possible. It did not work well yesterday. We need the Highways Agency and the other authorities to have a much greater sense of urgency, with lifting gear on standby contracts to remove heavy debris or vehicles as quickly as possible.

The government and the BAA together have given air travellers a dreadful year, and they are still at it over the Christmas period.

Over the last two days fog at Heathrow has created scenes reminiscent of the badly managed security measures in the summer. There are some simple steps which the government and the BAA ought to take to help people in such a situation.

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1. Tell people in overseas airports flying to London that they may not be able to get a connection out of London, allowing them to re-route.

2. Work with the airlilnes to agree a schedule of flights that can take off that day, and?? cancel the others early, notifying all passengers. At least BA had the sense to cancel all its domestic flights and tell everyone that was happening, to give it more chance of meeting passenger demands for long haul.

3.BAA to work with other airports to try and divert more Heathrow planes to the nearest open airports with capacity, laying on surface transport.

It has also highlighted the continuing cost of not providing enough transport capacity of all kinds. The railways were telling people they did not have the capacity for people to rebook at popular times to go?? by train instead of domestic flights. The roads were congested, and the runway and terminal capacity once again woefully inadequate. It has served to highlight the complete failure to build any new main transport facilities in the last ten years, save completing the Channel rail link and the M6 tollway in Brimingham,?? projects initiated under the previous government.

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It is important the Competition authorities take action to deal with the way the BAA monopoly is run. How many more times have people got to sit around for hours in tents outside the terminal building proper and sleep on floors and hard seats in our leading airport before something is done to sort the problems out?

<font size="3"><font face="Tahoma">Crisis, what crisis??, ask government ministers, as the police circle Downing Street?? over cash for peerage allegations. Crisis, what crisis? echo the Liberal democrats, as they are investigated?? for?? their biggest election donation from someone in prison for perjury facing fraud allegations.?? Crisis, what crisis? ask some Conservatives, as they look at the massive ??35 million debt on their balance sheet. </font></font>

<font size="3"><font face="Tahoma">The game is up for raising large sums of money from a small coterie of donors. It is not doing the parties any good, and it is not doing the donors any good any more either. Who wants to have their private affairs and emails rifled just because they decided to give some cash to their favourite political party?</font></font>

<font size="3"><font face="Tahoma">The parties are in denial about?? big money politics. The penny hasn’t?? dropped that the public is as suspicious of how the parties spend the money,?? as they are of?? how politicians come by it. The writing has been on the wall for all prepared to read it for some eight years now. The?? statistics of the electoral decline of both major parties since the 1990s are stark. </font></font>

<font size="3"><font face="Tahoma">Labour polled 4 million votes fewer in 2005 than in 1997, 4.5 million fewer than the Conservatives when they just won in 1992. The Tories were still more than 5 million votes adrift on 13 years earlier. Only two in five of all electors voted for the two main parties combined in 2005. Surely that should tell us all in politics that the audience doesn’t like the show, they are avoiding the political theatre in their droves.</font></font>

<font size="3"><font face="Tahoma">Polling after the election showed that the main national campaigns did more harm than good to the parties spending all that money on them. Twice as many voters?? in?? 130 Labour marginals were put off by the Labour campaign than were attracted to it. The Conservative campaign did almost as badly, with many more put off by it than wooed by it. Why should we go on taking risks with how we raise the money, if spending it puts the punters off?</font></font>

<font size="3"><font face="Tahoma">Twentieth century elections attracted many more voters to the polls. Politicians had to engage on doorsteps and in public meetings. They had to take the rough with the smooth, deal with the heckler and the opponent, recognise that they could not airbrush disagreements out of their campaign. They spent modest sums on posters and hiring halls to speak in, but did not go in for high budget PR driven programmes backed up by sophisticated computers, target marketing and voter research. Voter research was done the hard way by canvassing door to door. Candidates accepted that the media had to balance their coverage and you could not manage all the footage.</font></font>

<font size="3"><font face="Tahoma">Today some of the sharpest?? and youngest campaigners agree that we need to return to local candidates campaigning on local issues, building up just such a picture of their patch through door to door work supplemented by low budget website entries and?? leaflets. The message from the new Conservative MPs in 2005 who won with the best swings was just that we did it, they said, despite the national campaign.</font></font>

<font size="3"><font face="Tahoma">It’s not just at election time that national parties spend their money badly. Parties now spend large sums on polling and focus groups. They tell us this is to help them with honing the message. The public thinks spinning is allied to lying. The present government tells the public what they want to hear, whatever the reality. They often fail to follow through, or find the idea does not work so they just change the words. No wonder people are so cynical about the whole process.</font></font>

<font size="3"><font face="Tahoma">Indeed it is a fatuous exercise to ask the audience what the answer is and then play it back to them. As a democrat I respect the electorate. They are the bosses. I also seek to understand what they know and what they do not know. They know what the problems are. They can tell us where the local schools are not good enough, where the transport system is inadequate, where the Council tax is too high, and where the hospital does not see you quickly enough. </font></font>

<font size="3"><font face="Tahoma">We should not expect them to tell us the solutions as well. It is the job of elected politicians to spend wisely on?? advice, to find the best remedies. It is the duty of parties to offer the public choice, choice about what the priorities are, and choice about the types of solution.?? The issues need to be debated openly, so the public can make up its mind. It is up to governments and alternative governments to come forward with detailed proposals that can work.</font></font>

<font size="3"><font face="Tahoma">Party politics is today at a low ebb, thanks to a government that has concentrated on spin and failed to deliver on all the finely worded promises. The public now wants party politicians to raise less money, and waste less, both during elections and between elections. We need a???? cap on general election expenditure. It should be ??7.5million or less rather than the ??12.5m being mooted. Individual donations should be limited to ??50,000 each. </font></font>

<font size="3"><font face="Tahoma">It would be a huge mistake to make up the shortfall by forcing extra money from the hard pressed taxpayer. It would be absurd and insulting for politicians to argue that because they cannot any longer be trusted to raise big money from a few people, they therefore should simply take?? money off everyone through the tax system. There are two answers to the money shortfall from the large donors. The first is to spend less. Spend less on market research, computers and?? fancy campaigning get back on the streets with a volunteer army.?? The second is to enrol more members . If you persuade every member to give ??10 for an election not a big ask you can have a ??7.5million campaign from just 750,000 supporters, far fewer than?? used to belong to the Conservative party. That’s still more than enough money to annoy voters if you spend it badly!</font></font>

Today I have set out in the <em><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml;jsessionid=NWF1F1KX543SZQFIQMFSFF4AVCBQ0IV0?xml=/opinion/2006/12/20/do2002.xml">Daily Telegraph</a></em> why party funding is such a problem. Politicans are just beginning to realise that people do not like the way so much money is raised from so few people, companies and Unions, but most still have have not accepted that people also dislike the way so much of it is spent.

The last election produced more negative than positive reactions to the campaigns of the main parties. It is not suprising. If you spend money on finding out what the public already think, and then play it back to them, they will be cynical about the exercise. If you add to that iron discipline over what every candidate is allowed to say, to pretend that everyone thinks the same, the story is just not credible. You can only form a worthwhile cabinet or shadow cabinet if people do disagree about some things, to make it useful to meet and hammer out a common view.

People want a more honest, local politics where they feel they have some influence, and can get something other than the national spun response to their queries. If we had fundraising llimits and a stricter national camapign epxenditure limit that would help. Let’s limit donations to a maximum of ??50,000 each, and let’s limit national election camapigns to ??7.5 million. It would be an important move in?? the direction of a more honest politics.

If anyone suggests spending less than Labour from taxation and public borrowing, the government always counters by saying that means they wish to cut teachers, nurses and doctors. It is a crude misrepresentation of the true debate. I know no MP who wants fewer teachers, nurses, or doctors, but I do know that many of us?? want less waste and unnecessary expenditure.

I am sure many of you must have good examples of how public money is being wasted both locally and nationally, and maybe you could share them with me. My own target list of waste and undesirable public spending includes:
<ul>
<li>The national identity computer and ID cards</li>
<li>All unelected regional government</li>
<li>The excessive use of consultants throughout local and national government</li>
<li>The overbloated ranks of advisers and spin doctors clustered around Ministers</li>
<li>The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, who now enjoys an expensive office with few real functions..</li>
</ul>
What’s on yours?