Author: johnredwood

When the Culture Secretary gave his statement on the future of the BBC, I spoke for England. I asked if we could have a BBC England to match BBC Scotland? I pointed out that many of us do not want a BBC seeking to split up our country and trying to foster artificial senses of regional identity. As we move towards more England only decision making at Westminster, we need a BBC England news to cover it.

I will submit further evidence to the review to show the need for BBC England. My area is lumped into BBC South, so we see a lot of news stories about seaside resorts all along the south coast that have nothing to do with inland Wokingham. Meanwhile, we have to switch to BBC London to see things going on 20 miles down the road that are of more relevance to us. My part of the world is variously called Thames Valley, Rest of the south east, the south, London and the south east, the home counties, the three counties (Bucks,Berks and Oxon), and mid Berkshire. No wonder there is no great sense of regional loyalty, when there are so many differing boundaries and descriptions, and when none of these places have sports teams, Councils or representative figures to speak for them. There is no Head of the Thames Valley (apart from the Chief Constable)or First Minister of the south – I am pleased to say – and no Mayor of the three counties or Lord Lieutenant of the Home Counties.

In my area people relate to the UK, to England, and to Wokingham Borough or West Berkshire. There is also a loyalty to the royal county even though it has no Council. The County does have sports teams, ceremonial events and various dignitaries and its own historic sense of identity.

The BBC needs to work with the senses of identity that people feel. England is increasingly aware of itself and of its needs and abilities. The BBC is not even struggling to catch up. The BBC seems determined to cling to old twentieth century ideas of balkanising England and helping the EU split us into regions which mean nothing to us.

President Obama is wrong about the UK and the EU.
If letting foreign countries impose laws on you, levy taxes on you, and spend your money is such a good idea why doesn’t he create an American Union so Mexico can have common borders with the US, Cuba can spend US tax on herself, and Brazil can impose laws on the US the US does not want.
If he did that to the US and it worked then he would be in a stronger moral position to lecture us on having common borders with Eastern Europe, having Greece spending our money and having laws the Germans want but we don’t.

Recently the media gave little attention to an important and worrying announcement – more than 700 jobs went in the UK steel industry. You would have thought they would have given that top billing, with interviews of those left without a job, and angry remonstrations with the managers who carried it out. Far from it. Perhaps the reason is that the closure was brought about primarily by EU/UK energy policy. The company made clear it could not longer afford UK energy prices.

This is not the first time government has been told this. Dear energy was at the centre of the row about the future of the petrochemical plant at Grangemouth in 2013. Uncompetitive cost was cited as a reason for loss of 400 jobs at Port Talbot steel works in July last year. The aluminium industry has lost plenty of jobs in recent years, where energy again is a prime suspect.

The UK’s energy bill for business is far higher as a proportion of costs than the US, thanks to the EU’s renewables policy. It appears that UK energy prices can also be higher than continental competitors, thanks to the reliance on more coal in parts of the continent despite EU policy requirements, assisted by substantial subsidies to industry.

The EU needs to revisit its energy policy if it wishes to support and grow industry in Europe. What is the point of making EU energy with less CO2 than elsewhere on the planet, if it simply moves more industry off to somewhere with lower energy prices emitting more CO2?

The new UK government has agreed to cut back subsidies to solar and onshore wind. However, the main problem arises from the EU targets for more dear energy in the first place, rather than from the particular forms these take. It is worrying that when we go into next winter industry will be warned that they might have to cut back on electricity usage if we have cold weather and little wind, so that the system can cope. The march of the makers requires better than this. The new Climate Change and Energy Secretary needs to put the supply of more cheaper power at the top of her priorities.

Yesterday saw the release of the June figures for spending, taxing and borrowing. Over the year June 30th total public spending rose by 2.9% in cash terms. As there was no inflation over that year, that is a real increase of 2.9%. I look forward to a flood of articles praising the end of austerity and recognising that real public spending is rising.

The welfare figures also show that despite a good year for creating jobs and getting more people off welfare and into work, the combination of higher rates, more people eligible for various benefits and better take up has led to a 3.6% real increase in the amount of welfare paid out.

The deficit came down a bit, thanks to revenue growing at a lively 4.4%. That’s a big real increase in tax receipts, thanks to higher incomes and more items being purchased and attracting VAT. It would be welcome if more commentators writing about the economy worked from the actual Treasury figures, instead of relying on misleading and wrong opposition soundbites. In order to discuss how we can best look after those in need, we first need to know how much we are currently spending and why it is going up.

I have no more love for ISIL than the Prime Minister. Like him, I would rather live in a world where there are no extremist groups using violence to gain power over worried and damaged communities. I wish him well with his wider strategy for tackling extremism.

I do however have the same reservations about bombing Syria as I did when I wrote to him with others when he last wanted to do it. We urged him not to.

Bombing remains a blunt weapon, for all the improvements in tracking and aiming technology. Whilst with modern intelligence and bomb aiming it is possible to kill more of the people you want to kill whilst killing fewer of the people you do not wish to kill, you can still end up killing the wrong people. In what is a war for hearts and minds as well you also leave yourself open to claims that you have killed bystanders and civilians, and open to extremists themselves killing others and claiming you did it. You also create martyrs of the dead in the eyes of those who support them, which can enable them to recruit replacements for those you kill.

It is not realistic to suppose you can kill enough of the extremists by bombing to get them to give up. They are too widely dispersed and too embedded in the civilian populations to allow easy success from the air. That’s why various military experts say bombing has be part of an invasion or wider campaign. In the end you only destroy ISIL power by fighting house to house and killing them or forcing them to retreat. This can be done, but you end up killing a lot of the civilian population you are trying to liberate. Most people agree that US and UK soldiers should not be asked to do this. You leave open the question of how then do you help the legitimate government establish proper control? Where the government is the government of Syria, you are left with the moral dilemma of do you want to help Assad re establish control over the country? If not, how do you also arrange for his defeat? What would you replace both ISIL and Assad with? How would the new government after a brutal war to gain enough control be able to unite the country and create successful peaceful administration?

The other problem I have with bombing ISIL is they are not the only nasty group to dislike. The UK has banned or condemned a long list of organisations. What about Boko Haram? Al Nusra? Abu Nidal? Adu Abyan? Abu Sayyah? Al Qaeda? Ansar al Sharia? -just to name a few from the A and B items on lists of such organisations. Extremism is a multi headed monster. Bombing one part of it has so far not ended or controlled it.

Yesterday I asked the Secretary of State for Defence who would take over the government of parts of Syria if Coalition forces are successful in displacing ISIL? He did not seem to want the current government of Syria led by Assad to do that. There’s more to creating better government than bombing some evil men.

I have a debate on Tuesday in Parliament on the topic of political union. I want to draw more attention to the 5 Presidents joint policy statement of how they intend to create a political union out of the EU and Eurozone. It is high time the BBC followed this, and the UK government made their response to this revolutionary and important document known.
The ambition of the document is clear. They seek a Euro Treasury. They want detailed control over a wide range of economic and business policies in every Euro state. They want a political union to back their currency union. They imply a transfer union despite German objections.
The document envisages future large transfers of power, just as we are seeing in Greece already. The document says nothing reassuring for the UK as a non Euro member. The UK has to understand this vision, and work out a new relationship for us to live and work alongside it but not to be dragged into it. That is the purpose of my debate, to stress the urgency and to see how the government will protect our democracy from this latest assault.

As the document says “Progress must happen on four fronts: first , towards a genuine economic union that ensures each economy has the structural features that prosper within the monetary union. Second, towards a financial union that guarantees the integrity of our currency across the monetary union and increases risk sharing with the private sector. This means completing the Banking union and accelerating the Capital Markets Union. 3rd, towards a fiscal union that delivers both fiscal sustainability and fiscal stabilisation. And finally, towards a political union….”
This will inevitably involve sharing more sovereignty over time…it will need to shift from a system of rules and guidelines for national economic policy making to a system of further sovereignty sharing with common institutions, most of which already exist…”

All this is a sensible prospectus to try to build a successful single currency. There are three problems with it. The first is they want to use the EU, when two members of the EU are not going to join the Euro and seven others are not yet in it. That requires a different political architecture.

The second is, they have already created the currency, which is greatly stressed by not having proper political and transfer arrangements to back it up.That means they are in a tearing hurry on what are very sensitive and difficult matters.

The third is, Germany is still reluctant to pay her share of the bills in the way richer parts of a currency union do elsewhere.

It is time for the UK to explain why we need a looser relationship with the EU, as the Euro area takes the rest on a wild ride to political union.

The Germans have some good points to make about Greece. Perhaps their best one is to remind people just how much debt relief Greece has already enjoyed.
In March 2012 97% of all the bonds held by the private sector representing money lent to Greece were reduced in value by 53.5%. This meant a Euro 107 billion gift to Greece and loss to the bondholders.
At the same time the Greek Loan Facility from the EU accepted a 1% or 100 basis points reduction in the interest receivable on its loans. The EFSF guarantee commitment fees were waived and the maturity date of all GLF and EFSF loans to Greece was extended by 15 years. Interest on loans from the EFSF (which became the main lender to Greece) was deferred for ten years.
These very generous terms were not made available to other emergency borrowers from the EU. The ESM official website tells us these changes cut Greece’s debt burden by a handy 49% of 2013 GDP.
The problem is, the Greek economy has not recovered and Greece has not found a way to prosperity, despite this debt retirement and despite substantial new loans being offered. If Germany were simply a profit oriented bank manager she would conclude that this had so far proved to be very bad business, and would also conclude that lending more was unlikely to be more successful than past loans.
Were the EFSF and the IMF to contemplate writing more debt off or extending it further and making its terms yet more lenient,they would also be wise to change the policy they are recommending attached to any future loans. Why should the next lot be any better at triggering prosperity than all the debt so far advanced?

If the rest of the Euro area want to keep Greece in and avoid perpetual crisis, they need to put Greece on grant aid. If they want a real Greek economic revival, they have to allow Greece out of the Euro, and have a proper IMF recovery package which usually includes a devaluation and an accommodating money policy to permit growth without too much inflation.  The Euro is just giving Greece permanent deflation. In such a circumstance more public sector cuts depress demand further, as the private sector cannot take up the slack.