Author: johnredwood

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?

Shortly after Parliament  gave approval for bombing in Syria the government has to strengthen its military support to the  Afghan government to help in its fight against the Taliban. The UK is also considering what military action it might need to take with its allies in Libya.

The fact that there are conflicts in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Libya should remind us how difficult western military intervention us, and should alert us to the limits of what we can achieve with few ground forces and an understandable reluctance to commit them in any numbers to any of the present war zones in this troubled part of the world.

The government needs to ask itself why has military intervention in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan failed to create stable peace loving governments in any of those countries?

Why did democracy backfire in Egypt?

What is the prognosis for creating a peaceful government in Syria now we are part of the bombing forces?

It would be helpful if the government would make a statement giving us a more accurate picture of the various extremist, terrorist violent groups in these countries, instead of seeking to claim there is just one extreme enemy, Daesh. It appears in recent days the government has returned to finding the Taliban unacceptable, and presumably the various Al Qaeda affiliates are also still in the extremist lists. They also need to explain what the connections between Daesh in Syria and Daesh in Libya might be and examine how pushing Daesh out of parts of Syria might affect Libya.

We are also due an update on what military and diplomatic action the regional powers are going to undertake. Saudi, Iran and others are crucial to finding a peaceful settlement. They are also well armed, understand more of the languages and culture of the war zones, and should be able to assist or lead.

What is increasingly clear is that modest targetted bombing in a wide range of locations is not about  to make much difference to these complex and violent disputes. The West lacks a vision and a plan for the four Middle Eastern countries currently in turmoil. Can we try and do better in 2016, or be more realistic about our abilities to bring democracy and peace to this region?