Month: November 2008

I raised a few eyebrows when in the early days of the US Presidential election process I praised Mr Obama’s rhetoric and campaigning ability. It has carried him a long way, and may propel him into the White House in tomorrow’s poll.

Most people in the UK – and the rest of Europe – are keen that he wins. I do not share the excitement of so many, as I do not see in either candidate a new approach to the world economic crisis that offers us hope.

The worst moment of the whole process was when the two Presidential rivals turned up in the Oval office and meekly endorsed the Paulson/Bush plan to squander billions on stressed banks. The plan fell at the first political hurdle in Congress despite the support of the President and both challengers. It has now failed to bring rapid improvement to damaged Amercian markets, but is beginning to impose a huge strain on US finances.

I would like change. I want quicker change in the US/UK approach to the Middle east than we are being offered. Above all I want change in the way the authorities handle the financial crisis – change to a policy which recognises there are distinct limits to what taxpayers can afford. Mr Obama shows no sign of understanding that.

Well done to Lewis – a great champion. He never put a word wrong during a difficult season, and drove brilliantly often enough to emerge the victor. It is especially sweet to see him win after disgraceful racial abuse from so called fans of the sport.

Most of you have written in in favour of the abolition of the Licence fee. Many of you deny there is a special type of broadcasting called “public service” broadcasting. There are still no defences of edgy comedy.

One of my critics seems to think offering top BBC executives the same salaries as Cabinet Ministers is another example of my fabled generosity to the public sector. I promise him it would represent a huge pay cut for the top executives we have been reading about.

I would like to hear more about whether anyone out there thinks there is something good and distinctive in parts of the BBC’s output that could be said to be “public service”. What does that mean and how does it differ from ITV and commercial radio? If there is then we can discuss how this could be preserved. It does not have to be paid for by a TV Poll Tax.

Ed Balls is playing to the left wing gallery again. He wishes to give them the impression that he is against selection, determined to write fairness into dishing out school places. Maybe he should take stock of just how much selection there is in English education, before asking himself the important question Is all selection wrong?

Many Labour figures regard selection by academic ability as especially pernicious. They dislike the grammars which used to give many a child from a modest background a better chance in life, including many of the Labour politicians themselves. Yet they happily preside over a system which uses academic ability as the main criterion for selection at 17, to allocate the scarcer places in College and University. They allow academic ability to be a criterion for selection at 11 and 13 in the private sector.

The government accepts selection based on ability when it comes to sport, music, and dance. Young people with an aptitude and passion for elite sport, dance and music are selected on ability, sometimes at young ages, to be given a superior training in these fields by the best teachers.

Labour mainly prefers selection by the income of parents. The children of the richest can obtain places in independent schools, which include the most prestigious, most academically successful and best resourced schools in the country. If your parents are poor and live in a low income borough or district, you will be sent to a comprehensive nearby. If your parents are better off and live in one of the more affluent areas, you will be sent to a neighbourhood comprehensive there. The gap between the achievement levels of comprehensives in the leafy suburbs and in the concrete jungles remains stubbornly large in favour of the richer areas, despite much larger sums of public money being spent on the poorer districts.

Labour also allows selection by religion of the parents. There are many flourishing faith schools in the state sector, offering a choice to people of various faiths. Whilst it is true that the government has sought to prevent discrimination against people of no religion or differing religions to that of the school, in practise people of religious faith in a local religious community have some choice in many cases.

It is time Mr Balls used some of the intelligence he is said to possess to give us an honest account of how our education system works. I would like to hear him explain why he thinks it is better to select children mainly on the basis of their parents income, rather than mainly on the basis of their own aptitudes and capacity for hard work.

Within limits I do not think young people are born natural sportsmen and women or natural academics. It is mainly what they choose to do and how much effort they put in, allied to how well they are taught and inspired. Yes, some people are brighter than others, and some people have larger feet (good for swimming) or longer legs (probably good for distance running). However, the biggest difference between a good sports person and the rest of us is the amount of training they do. The biggest difference between a good academic and the rest of us is the amount of reading they do.

Mr Balls needs to address the injustice that selection by parents income creates. I would not myself do that by banning good schools for rich people – that would just drive them offshore or to find some other way round the rules. What we need instead is a fair way of choosing and motivating children who do not have rich parents, so they too can shoot for the stars. That has to include selection, whether by competitive exam and specialised academies or through setting and streaming.

I am glad that the sick joke of Mr Ross has a good outcome – both Labour and the Conservatives now think pay is out of control at the BBC. This state pensioner needs to gain some financial discipline quickly, so the licence payer gets better value for the money we are forced to pay.

The large numbers of layers of ineffective management, all on very high salaries, would be a good starting place for cuts. One of the most interesting things to come out of the Ross saga was how many highly paid people above him were involved but failed to show any judgement. Let’s have fewer, and let’s pay them less. Their task is no more difficult than a Cabinet Minsiters, and they show no more competence, so let’s pay them at that sort of level.

It would also be a good idea to look at how many channels are truly “public service” deserving of subsidy, and how many should be commercial and required to compete for funds and audience in the usual way. Surely no one can argue that what Mr Ross does is “public service”. If you want to pay such a huge sum to someone to do what as he does, then it should be from the pockets of those who enjoy that sort of thing, financed through adverts or subscription or sponsorship.Many people do like much of his output so they would pay.

I would like to hear from people on what they think “public service boardcasting” is and should be. I have heard three conventional explanaitons

It is unbiased news – that would be good, but is clearly not what the BBC delivers, as it nearly always delivers news from the standpoint of someone who thinks more government is the answer and never the problem.

It is high class drama – but the BBC has no monopoloy on costume dramas. Some are good, and yes there may be a case for subsidy to such arts.

It is high class documentaries. Yes some of those are good, but there is too a tendency for them to be biased towards conventional wisdom. Today they may well make a good documentary about the excesses of the banks, but they are unlikely to make one about the follies of the regulator or the Bank of England, and never make one saying there is a different way to sort out the Banks from the public shareholding route chosen by the politicians so far.

So what would a public service broasdcaster look like in this multi media age? And how much are we prepared to pay for it? Should we carry on paying for it with a poll tax, or in some other way?

Let debate be joined.

We have seen a £2.7billion emergency package to deal with the problems of Labour’s tax reforms, and the announcement of new aircraft carriers. This time round there is the £37 billion financing package for RBS, HBOS and its possible new partner, Lloyds.

The government will tell you that these spending items are unconnected to by-elections. I do notice, however, that some are keen keen to spin that the bail out of Scottish banks by English and Scottish taxpayers shows Scotland would be too small to go it alone.

The reaction to Barclays has told us a lot about the agenda of Vince Cable and some Labour figures. They clearly want the taxpayer to end up owning more banks. Their anger that Barclays have paid more to keep their freedom, tells us the UK taxpayer is getting a rotten deal from the proposed share purchses the government wishes to make. The way Vince Cable was allowed so much BBC airtime to front run nationalisation, without any Labour slap downs, tells us it was a policy they favoured. He was a useful front man to avoid accusations that Old Labour had been rehabilitated. Meanwhile, all sensible proposals to avoid state owned banks were studiously kept off the airwaves to avoid complicating the argument.

It all worked so well. The Regulator demanded more capital at a time when it was difficult to raise it quickly. Someone leaked the talks to the media, driving the share prices of the affected banks down, making it even more difficult to raise the money from the market. Then the banks were presented with a take or take it offer which three accepted. The government meanwhile was busy nationalising the assets of Bradford and Bingley, but never told the media directly that that meant taxpayers borrowing £18 billion to send to Santander to take on the deposits.

Taxpayers will rue the days that the government was so liberal with their money in the banking sector. All these banks had a future without state equity, if the Bank of England did its job as lender of last resort, and if the Regulator worked quietly behind the scenes on a timetable for strengthening their capital. Assurances that the government stood behind the weaker banks was a good idea. Loans were helpful. There was no need to add state equity, which will prove to be a bad idea for taxpayers. Just look at the firest half results for Northern Rock – large losses – and get ready for the next results from state banks. The treat is on you.

The Conservatives had a great policy for cutting carbon outputs. It was called electricity privatisation. As soon as the industry was denationalised, it switched from building big coal power stations that were only around 35% fuel efficient, to building gas fired stations that were more than 50% fuel efficient. The dash for gas in our power industry ensured we could hit the Kyoto targets.

The present government has been unable to come up with a policy which has made a similar big impact on carbon output. They have dithered over nuclear, not put through enough renewables, and left open how they are to replace the old nuclear stations that soon have to be shut. They have failed to discipline the public sector, where the extra offices and staff burn ever more fuel to keep the bureaucracy turning. Ministers jet round the world, lecturing the rest of us on how we should travel less. At times they have adopted policies which seem to want to export fuel intensive activities to other countries, as if that helped cut world carbon output instead of merely shifting it to China or India.

However, they have now come up with a policy which is going to transform all that. It is called recession. It will cut our carbon output. The trouble is, it is going to cut a lot more as well, leading to a big increase in unemployment and a further weakening of our economy.