I gave up on the Today programme last week with its Guest editors.  The Guest editor for business made his main item the first day an interview with a woman running a knitting circle for the digital generation who were fed up with being on line and wanted to make something. I wanted a briefing on the state of the world’s economies and markets, as other major countries did not have a bank holiday on Monday so there was real business and market news to catch up with. Usually of course Today’s regular editors wish to turn most major business interviews into some special commentary on the EU referendum, wrongly assuming all company heads will favour staying in. The editors seem quite unaware of the many attractions to business of being out.

 

The media say they are now doing a great job on presenting business to the public, thanks to their Dragon’s Den, Apprentice  and similar competitive frameworks. Far from following business, these are reality shows about possible future small businesses and new ventures that have been artificially stimulated by the powers of early  tv exposure. There is little proper business news coverage. The BBC does not usually want to present the profits, investment programmes and product launches of most companies. Most interviews are confined to a few heads of well known large businesses in the public eye with many direct customers. They are rarely required to defend their results, or to explain shareholder disappointments. The most aggressive interviews are when their company or industry is said to have caused a national problem – food companies are attacked for people being fat, energy companies are criticised for low income customers not having enough money for all the energy they want. Sometimes the business leader is invited to attack or support the government of the day, however sensibly reluctant they may be to be dragged into UK politics.

 

As a result of the lack of BBC coverage of the importance of business and what it does, we have low standards of public information on the scale, contribution and decisions of business.  A piece on knitting circles won’t hack it. That just leaves the BBC at the foot of the business guillotine waiting for the next excuse to monster a company.

Yesterday saw the end of the disastrous season of Guest editors. Let me contrast the two crucial interviews on Saturday’s programme.

The first was with the Chief Executive of the Environment Agency. The second was with the CEO of BP.  Both were worthy guests. Many listeners would have crucial questions they wish to put to them both. Both of them required discussion of money as an important part of the debate.

A professional interviewer took on the Environment Agency. As you might expect he gave a much more professional interview, with more bite and more discussion of the contentious issues. Lord Browne, a clever and successful businessman turned politician interviewed a successor to his job as CEO of BP. It was a pathetic performance.

The first requirement of a good interview is to ask about the contentious matters that worry the audience. John Humphreys lighted on three of the most important things that annoy people about the current Environment Agency. He raised their misleading statement about the absence of their Chairman at the  height of the flood crisis. He probed on how little dredging the  EA does, leaving rivers blocked or with restricted flow. He put the point that the EA seems to regard habitats and “natural state” as more important than protecting riverside residents from flood.

Lord Browne did not ask about anything that a worried listener wanted to know. BP is one of the most widely held shares in the UK. Many listeners have pension funds, insurance investments or small private holdings in BP. The low oil price and the decline in profitability leads directly to fears for the sustainability of the dividend which is crucial to the share price. There was no question on the dividend. BP was an important pioneer of the N0rth Sea oilfield. Some think that at current oil prices we face accelerated closure of the remaining N0rth Sea fields, leading to further damage to our oil output and associated industrial and engineering activity. There was no question on the future of the UK’s oil province. Many employees of BP are worried about their jobs against the present background of much reduced cashflows from oil. There was no question about how much cost cutting BP should do to respond to the collapse in price of its main asset and product. The CEO of BP has traditionally been paid huge sums of money to reflect the scale of BP’s cashflow and profits. Will the CEO this year take a lead by cutting his pay substantially to reflect the much worse financial prospects? His pay was not mentioned.

 

The second requirement  of a good interview is to be well  briefed on the detail, to be able to respond to any dodgy defences put up  by interviewees. John Humphreys was reasonably briefed on the aims and requirements laid on the EA, but clearly had no brief on the finances. He was told by the EA that it had spent £20 m on dredging, but that probably was over a two year period. He did not immediately point out that was a tiny sum, under 1% of EA spending over a two year period, and tiny in relation to the number of rivers that need attention. He did not even ask how many miles or river you can dredge for just £20 m, and how many miles or river the Agency is responsible for. He forgot that much of the dredging was the result of Ministerial intervention demanding dredging of the Somerset rivers after the disastrous inundation of the Somerset levels under EA policy.  Nor did he get the apology the EA should make over the misinformation about the Chairman, though he did press the issue.

 

Lord Browne got through the whole interview with BP without mentioning or questioning a single figure. He praised the CEO’s attempt to answer the question of what will happen to the oil price, as he got through his own stint as BP’s CEO   refusing to answer the most basic question affecting the business! The CEO of BP of course need a strong and clear view of the oil price, as all else the business does and plans depends on that single variable. If oil is going back up to $100 a barrel soon then they need a  big exploration and development programme. If it is staying around $30=40 most of the options are uneconomic for new development. BP’s decisions on how much investment to commit to new activity will be important to jobs and activity in the UK. He asked questions as if he did not know the company, or wished to conceal anything too difficult. There was an exchange of management jargon about reorganisation without Browne asking why there was need of reorganisation and what the reorganisation was likely to achieve.

 

When interviewing about money matters can we have some basic questions asked well. How much does it cost? What do you get for the money? How much money have you got? How could you spend it better? Instead we had a lame question to the EA about how much more they might need, and no questions to BP about how they will get by with reduced oil income.

Lord Mandelson was always keen to require iron discipline in New Labour when he was one of the small clique in charge. Today he is now an enthusiast for rebellion, urging modern Labour MPs to disagree with their Leader and to remain true to the  flexible pro European and pro military intervention stances  of Blairism. This sad volte face is not surprising. Lord Mandelson would argue that an MP only owes loyalty to his party and its Leader when they are “doing the right thing”. The problems with that proposition are twofold. The first is who gets to decide what is the right thing? The second is, can it ever be the right thing in a democracy to seek to prevent the official opposition opposing for good reason?

There are two defining issues in Lord Mandelson’s mind where he wishes Mr Corbyn to  be more Blair like to justify his  support and recommendation. The first is the UK’s willingness to undertake  military action in the Middle East against regimes or Islamic groupings it dislikes. The second is the UK’s requirement to accept any new law, regulation or treaty amendment from the EU that the EU institutions and other member states may propose. In  both cases Lord Mandelson argues that to be a serious party of government Labour needs to be nearer the centre, which he claims is in support of more military intervention, and in support of more EU intervention in our lives. I suggest to him that in  both cases this is a misreading of the public mood. I do not recall the Conservatives under Mr Cameron campaigning in last year’s General election to take military action in the Middle East, nor stressing the need for more EU entanglements. Indeed, part of the attraction of the Conservative case was the combination of a negotiation to remove EU powers, and an In/Out referendum so we can leave if the new relationship remains poor.

The issue of military intervention is a crucial one. A good argument can be made to say that Tony Blair lost substantial support amongst voters as well as within the Labour party by the decision to go into Iraq, and by the way he, Campbell and Mandelson presented the case for such intervention. Parliament does need to debate the consequences of the substantial interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, and the interventions of our allies in Syria, and to ask if past military interventions have been helpful. Mr Corbyn and some other Labour figures have a tradition of doubting the value and wisdom of such actions, which is shared by an important part of the electorate. Why must they now suppress their views and doubts, and switch to the pro intervention side? How do they keep their existing support, and reassure people in the middle ground, if they have to defend all that was done by past Labour governments in Iraq and Afghanistan? Arguably Mr Corbyn was too kind and weak in allowing Labour MPs a free vote on the Syrian war. His decision to allow such a free vote meant Parliament was not going to provide any serious challenge or check on the current government’s wish to pursue military action.

The Labour party’s position on Europe is even more shaming. Several of the Corbyn  group of rebels from the Mandelson era did not go along with the endless transfer of powers and monies to the EU from the UK, which was brave of them.  Under Labour’s Opposition leader in the last Parliament the Labour party was whipped to make sure the government could never lose a vote to prevent some new piece of EU law going through, or to grant  some additional financial charge on the UK. Most Labour MPs were advised  not to turn up to EU debates, or were briefed to come in and treat them all as “tory split” issues, so making it impossible for Parliament to have a mainstream critical examination of anything European with the chance of a vote which the government might lose given Conservative rebels.

The advent of The Corbyn group at the head of the Labour party promised a more principled stance, with proper opposition in Parliament. Unfortunately it look as if the Leadership has given in to the Blairite tendency and decided  not to oppose  more EU after all. In opposition the Conservatives spoke and voted against Nice, Amsterdam and Lisbon and other EU centralising measures. Because Labour’s majority was so large we never won a vote but at least we fulfilled the need to push the government to explain and to battle for these matters. Labour it appears do  not wish to oppose despite the majority being smaller.

Lord Mandelson was wrong on the European Exchange Rate Mechanism which he supported and which did great damage. He was wrong on the Euro. He is now wrong on how the Labour party should conduct itself in opposition. A loyal opposition should always support our military and be united in support of military action when our homeland requires swift and strong action, but it should not allow any military intervention anywhere without Parliamentary challenge. Above all, a loyal opposition should always be willing to stand up for the rights of the UK electors to see matters settled in their own Parliament, not spirited away to the EU. Lord Mandelson’s policy proposals do not look popular to me.

 

 

You are here at last, and most welcome.

We want a new beginning. We want to restore our democracy, and to change it for the better.

It is fitting that many of us have boundless ambition for our country. We know that independent the UK can be richer, freer, and more of a force for good.

Restored to our rightful place at the top tables and councils of the world, the UK will have more capacity to help shape the future.

Able to make our own decisions about who to welcome here, we can be fair to people from all round the world and no longer have to discriminate against the non Europeans.

Lets make 2016 a great year to rank alongside 1660 and 1688 when our freedoms were increased by political actions.

Bruised and battered the old year goes out amidst war, floods and the usual political recriminations about the role and cost of the state.

All was not lost, as 2015 at least broached some of the big issues that we need to confront to restore our democracy and find justice for England.

It is true that on offering England her voice, it was muffled badly by the  Hague reforms. Our devolution settlement remains too lop sided as well as under continuous pressure from the SNP.

2015 has usefully highlighted some of the ways the British people and their Parliament have lost control. The inability to change our VAT on tampons exploded the  myth that we can still choose our taxes. The failure to restrict benefits to economic migrants show how one  of Labours red lines with the EU has been wiped out. The powerlessness to achieve the very popular government target for net  inward migration stands as a prime example of our lack of power and authority as a country.

These matters roll into this year in search of a solution. 2015 will not have been in vain if we decide to leave the EU, the cause of so much damage to our democracy.

It is commonplace in the modern UK political world for the politicians to share the general view of them as unsuited to making important long term decisions. So often the UK establishment in alliance with the front benches of the two main parties agrees that a matter is “too important” for politics, should be taken out of politics, and given to some all wise and expensive independent quango.

This is one of the more absurd ideas. In practice when one of these quangos gets it wrong and singularly fails to do its job, the cry goes up for the politicians to change it or its policies. It still usually suits all involved to blame the politicians rather than the wise independent body set up to the do the job. That body either resorts to the defence of inadequate resources, or decides to lose a senior person or two so the quango can self perpetuate with good jobs for all the rest involved. These quangos normally see their role as enforcing and following the endless laws from Brussels to avoid any controversy with their EU masters.

It is difficult to think of one of these bodies that has done a good job. The mother of them all, the Bank of England, presided over a spectacular failure of banking supervision and monetary policy in the period 2006-10 and has spent  recent years blaming the commercial banks for what was at root a catastrophic failure of central banking, allowing too much credit and excess in the commercial sector. Doing better than the Bank would not have been difficult. I and others warned on the way up that credit was too loose – the main opposition parties warned the same. I then warned that too severe action to control the banks in 2007-8 would bring on a  banking crash, which they duly did. Today the Bank of England shows a singular lack of touch over the future direction of interest rates, regularly changing its mind about the conditions for an increase. It seems happy to preside over a bond market artificially inflated by excess purchases by itself.

The Environment Agency has clearly failed to put in sufficient flood protection, preferring to spend its substantial grant in aid on other priorities in the main. The issue with the EA is one of analysis and recommendations on how to tackle excess water. I have had  arguments with them over possible flood relief schemes for my areas which they simply refuse to recommend.

Network Rail has shown how little railway you can get for the huge sums of money tipped into it. They have been unable to provide extra rail capacity to time and to  budget. They are fixated by the need to change the traction system from diesel to electric instead of the dealing with the basic need to provide more track to allow more trains to pass. They like spending large sums on expensive financial derivatives, and have for some unknown reason added substantial foreign and index linked debt to the nation’s balance sheet.  Outside London they seem unable to harness the potential of their substantial property asset base.

By all means write in with any examples of quangos that do the job they are meant to do well, or with other examples to prove my point. In a democracy there is no such thing as an independent government body. The public expect their politicians to monitor, control and defend the public bodies they  set up, and to appoint people to lead them who can do a good job. As the Infrastructure Body set up to take big schemes out of politics has found, the very first challenge of Heathrow turns out to be a big political decision which only the politicians can take.

Amidst all the talk about cuts there has of course been no analysis of how much money the Environment Agency, the main body to control flooding, has received. The BBC never wants the figures to get in the way of a good cuts story.

In 2014-15 the Environment Agency received a grant of £890 million, compared to £652 million the year before. Ministers made clear they wanted more to be done to curb and prevent flooding. In particular they demanded dredging of Somerset rivers after the disaster in the Somerset levels and asked the EA to work with local interests elsewhere on river maintenance, dredging and weeding.

The Agency was given the following as its first two objectives:

 

Corporate Target 1a   to “improve protection from flooding for more households”

and Corporate Target 1b  to “maintain flood and coastal risk management assets at or above the required level”

The Environment Agency reported that it did carry out the specific instruction to dredge Somerset rivers, with work on “an 8kn stretch of the Parrett and Tone rivers”. They pledged to “better maintain these waterways in the future”.

In the rest of the country the EA gingerly embarked on some pilot joint ventures with local interests over river maintenance to remove weeds and silt. There is no sense of urgency or of any widespread new approach communicated in the report. So where did the money go?

 

Staff costs stayed high at £412 million for the year, with a continuous big build up in pension liabilities. Back liabilities amounted to £707 million at the March 2015 date.

There was capital spending of £281 million. This figure included £41 million on risk strategies and maps rather than on ditches, better river beds and embankments.

Redundancies were down on the previous year, but 9  people still left on packages in excess of £100,000 each.

Ministers need to ask again about how all their 10,000 staff are deployed, and ask again about policy towards maintaining rivers and anti flood structures.

 

It’s not so much the quantity of money that is the issue, but what you spend it on. The UK debate is so often about the need for additional money and so rarely about what all the committed money is spent on at the moment.

I thought the idea of a Guest editor was to get stories covered and views across that the BBC usually ignores. It turned out yesterday the aim was to do even  more of what they usually do, with a Guest editor effectively accusing the BBC of not  being elitist Euro climate change consensus enough.

We had to have the mandatory “Climate change theory is right” slot with no-one putting any other view. Lord Deben was given an unchallenged opportunity to explain weather, climate and the world as he wished, with no difficult or interesting questions.  We were told that the problem with the UK government is it does not spend enough on flood relief, whilst urging the government to spend more on overseas aid at the same time. In the flood relief interviews there was no probing on dredging, the EU Water Directives, the priorities of the Environment Agency or any of the other relevant matters which could have illuminated the current crisis or offered us a better answer. The  Guest editor Mr Sheen gave up all pretence of being an independent and fair minded editor with his remarks on poverty and the funding of Wales.

I predict that over the week of Guest editors no-one will speak for England or follow up stories relevant to England and Englishness,  no-one will state the Vote leave case and most will seek to downplay the pivotal importance of the forthcoming EU referendum. No-one will seek to address the sloppy and uncritical approach to the vast panoply of EU law and administrative decisions which characterises Today coverage.

Yesterday’s programme was a particularly poor one. Roll on next week when we put these Guest editors behind us.

I am dusting down the submissions I have made over the years to have a successful counter flooding strategy. Necessity should  be the mother of invention.

The first task must be to cut inward migration to the government’s reduced targets, to reduce the demand to build more homes. In and near residential areas, more homes means more concrete and tarmac, faster run off of water, and more water to handle. All too often new homes are built on low lying land.

The second task should be to refuse planning permission for new properties on floodplain and other low lying land prone to water problems. Only if a developer puts forward a plan to handle all the extra water a development will generate, handle all the fast run off the hard surfaces will create and make a contribution to improving water management in the area should permission be considered.

The third task is to change the balance of spending in the Environment Agency, so more of its budget is spent on traditional water course management and maintenance. I have fought many a long battle to get better water course maintenance for the local River Loddon in my area. The EA remains reluctant to dredge, to tidy banks and to remove blockages.

The fourth task is to identify holding fields and areas above settlements where water in extreme weather can be diverted to flood countryside rather than housing. Farmers should of course be compensated, which would be cheaper than the rebuild costs of flooded property.

The fifth task is to complete better embankments, culverts and diverted watercourses where streams and rivers cause problems.

None of this requires pioneering technology. The Dutch have kept back the sea and lived happily on land below sea level for centuries, thanks to dams, embankments, pumps, canals, culverts, ditches and an active programme of land and water management. They have managed to do this despite the EU Water Directives. So too has our own Fenland area, where the old pattern of drainage and water management has survived whilst other areas have fallen prey to modern less effective methods. The Somerset levels were returned to dredging, embankments and pumps after their last catastrophe, showing that the old fenland methods can work.

 

The old idea for retail was to sell more food, drink and gifts for Christmas at full price before 25 December. Stock left over, damaged, or seasonal was then offered at a discount to get rid of it in the January sales. The shops could stock up for November and December, hope to achieve decent prices in the best trading season of the year and could then get rid of any surplus at a discount . They could enter the New Year with lower and better stock after the  strains of the Christmas rush and the hurricane of the post Christmas sales.

Today several changes have occurred to alter this pattern fundamentally. The arrival of on line shopping has given many more people the chance to shop at their convenience  at week ends, late at night or whenever. This year has seen a further big switch from in store to on line purchases.

The second thing that has happened is customers and retailers now play a game of chicken with each other over when the big surge may occur in transactions. More customers hold out for discounts before Christmas to tempt them to buy. More families seem to share the present buying with more consultation of the recipient, so there are more people buying presents for each other on line or post Christmas to take advantage of better prices.

The third thing is American influence with the advent of Black Friday, a new mega shop day based on special discounts. Some get caught up in the spirit of this “give away” and rush to the shops. Some get stuck in huge traffic jams trying to get back again.

It is doubtful that the advent of Black Friday does add much to total retail spend over the period of the Christmas season. It may simply reduce trading margins a bit, where genuine new discounts are offered for items which people were probably going to buy anyway.

The biggest issue is the future of the town centre. With Internet market share rising so rapidly it points to fewer successful shopping centres, and to shorter or more compact High Streets in some places. The Town Centre managers have their work cut out to promote and promote their venues for shoppers, who want a high proportion of cafes, entertainment, coffee shops, restaurants and the rest to make shopping more than a trip to the shops. For the shops themselves they now have to battle against people seeing and learning about the merchandise in the store, only to buy it back home on line.

When the Somerset levels flooded during the last Parliament the government overrode the Agendy and told it to resume dredging to increase the capacity of the river system. The Agendy still seems to be against the idea of dredging generally? Should it change its mind? Is it merely following a Water Directive from the EU?