Archive for the “Personal Stuff” Category
A little history.
One of the reasons why there has been radical political change in the UK in the last year is that the British people have finally started getting truly fed up with MPs on the ‘gravy train’ who seem to prosper whilst the rest of the country goes down the plughole. Until 2006, it was legitimate for MPs to pay expenses / rents / fees etc. to their partners or family members. A change in the rules then stated that you could no longer do that.
David Laws fell foul of this by virtue of the fact that between 2004 and 2009 Mr Laws claimed money back from the State - that is, us - to pay rent to his partner a total of around £40,000. I think it’s safe to say that had this been a story involving a couple of jobless folks claiming benefits there wouldn’t be an issue of paying the money back right now – it would be more likely to be an issue of someone spending a year at Her Majesty’s Pleasure.
At first glance, Laws appears to have either been incompetent with money (never good for someone tasked with the job of implementing Government cuts) or dishonest (equally a bit of a downer for someone in that job…) And then it gets complicated – apparently the actual reason for the…misunderstanding….involving the expenses was that laws was actually gay, and he was trying to keep this quiet for respect of his and his partner’s privacy.
To date I’ve been impressed with the Coalition – both their politics and the way they’ve been implementing them. But the Coalition has come to power with a whole host of ‘issues’ around it – there are folks in both parties who don’t want it to work, Labour are waiting for errors to exploit and people are expecting a lot from the new Government. What folks are not wanting is a return to parliamentary expenses problems – especially when it features someone who’re responsible for implementing serious, albeit necessary, cuts.
- Laws – this is why I am bloody angry with you. I find it VERY difficult to believe that you:
- Didn’t appreciate that your private life was going to be public at some point in the last year or so.
- Chanced your arm by carrying on claiming after the rule change.
- Were hard-up enough to need to claim the rent back at all.
- Didn’t realise that it would all come out if you became a frontbench Minister, especially in the Treasury.
It’s inevitable that whoever implements the Coalition’s Treasury policy needs to be pretty much whiter than white – or at least as white as any politician can be these days -for whatever reasons Laws didn’t meet this criterion.
Whether he thought he was working within the rules or not, he wasn’t. He’s now given an open-goal to opposition to the Coalition within the Tory Party, the Liberals and New Labour. Personal hubris has yet again laid waste a political career, but with potentially bad implications for the country.
And that’s why I’m so fucking angry with Laws – he’s managed to drag the bad issues of the last Parliament through in to this one, distracting people away from the really major issues of getting the UK back on it’s feet after a decade of mis-rule.
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Now that the smoke of battle (and confusion) of General Election 2010 has cleared and we have a Coalition Government that hasn’t yet been proven to be the spawn of Beelzebub, can I make a suggestion that demonising anyone in politics – even Tories – is not a good move?
Twenty five years ago, during the Thatcher years, a few of us on the Left made the observation that it was potentially unhelpful to refer to the politics espoused by her Government as ‘Thatcherism’, even as a shorthand. Our argument went that if you attach a name to a branch of politics in that very overt way, then as soon as the individual dies, quits or gets voted out of office then, almost by definition, that form of politics disappears from the scene. There is a historical precedent; whilst 99% of everyone called the political beliefs of Hitler and his followers Nazism or Fascism, a few people in the 30s – often doctrinaire Communists – referred to it as ‘Hitlerism’. Whereas we’ve been able to spot Nazism over the decades, spotting the politics underlying ”Thatcherism’ seems to have been harder - the monetarist and ‘Shock Doctrine’ policies of the Chicago School have come back repeatedly to haunt us in many ways, culminating in the years of Bush Junior Government in the US.
This last election has been truly bizarre, with people repeatedly warning me about ‘re-electing Thatcher’ in the form of David Cameron. The irony is that some of the folks who’ve been most vociferously demonising Thatcher and the Tories were in the twenties and early 30s – in other words, when Thatcher was in power these folks were either foetuses or snot-nosed kids.
Demonising any individual politician is fraught with danger for those doing it; unless your target is very obviously evil incarnate (in which case the vast majority of people will see it anyway and you’re ‘preaching to the choir’) then folks will just regard it as sour grapes and ‘ad hominem’ arguments. One thing that has started happening in recent times in the UK is that people have become disillusioned with the political process, politicians and the whole schoolyard ethos that seems to have permeated British politics for the last 20 years. The demonisation of one individual or party by others involved in the same ‘game’, so to say, has all the elements of ‘pot calling kettle black’ and people have responded to it accordingly.
It IS last century – just look at the nonsense at ACAS last night when BA Chief Willie Walsh was surrounded by a good old fashioned British ‘leftie rent-a-mob’ that seemed to belong more in the 1970s at Grunwick than in 2010. The union chief was furious, ACAS was embarrassed and angry, Walsh commented on the disgust he felt in the situation he was in. The demonstrators focused their chants on Walsh, and have probably significantly damaged chances of settling the dispute. Seeing the placards from groups like ‘Socialist Worker’, for those of us who were in the Labour movement in the 80s and 90s it was like a return to old times with the ‘Usual Suspects’ – the professional hecklers and agitators who have no great desire to settle these disputes but simply seek to benefit from them.
Boys and girls, that approach is over. It was always pointless and now people see it for what it is – egotistical tantrum throwing by typically over-privileged, under-occupied political performance artists. If you want to achieve change in our society – get involved with genuine community groups and put your backs in to getting some work done. Demonising the opposition is childish and pointless.
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Less than 2 hours after the closing of the Polls in the UK’s General Election, it’s clear that there have been some cock-ups in the logistical management of the election that makes most developing world elections look like the Acme of organisation. Let’s face it – this is THE most important election for probably probably 20 years – and one might have expected that such an election would be run in the most professional, efficient and effective way possible.
Unfortunately, it appears to have been organised by people who make Fred Karno’s Army look like the SAS. Let’s just take a look at what seems to have been happening in the last few hours of polling.
- People turning up to find massive queues at their polling station, going away, coming back repeatedly, then finding themselves being turned away when the Polling Station closes at 10pm. Although in some places, people queueing when the Polling Station has closed have been taken in to the Polling Station and allowed to vote.
- Other people turning up to vote to find that there aren’t enough Ballot Papers and so they can’t vote.
- People in some places have been turned away an hour BEFORE the Polls closed, and have been told that they Polling Station can’t handle the queues.
In other words – some Polling Stations have been under-resourced, badly staffed and inadequately supplied. How can the Local Authorities and the Electoral Commission have allowed such a sorry and anti-democratic situation to arise? After all, it should not have been a surprise that there would be a higher turnout in this election than previous ones – people have been excited by this election in such a way that I’ve not seen for some years. We might therefore have expected the Returning Officers and Electoral Commission to take this on board and plan accordingly.
In my own polling Station I saw no more staff than usual, but did witness a higher throughput of people than I’ve seen for some time. It was the first time I’ve actually queued to vote for as long as I can remember, despite the fact that the turnout is only a few percentage points higher than previous elections, going by the current returns.
So what’s happened? For what it’s worth, here’s my twopence-halfpenny.
- Perhaps in some places people left it too late to vote; there were stories about people going to vote at 6pm, finding a queue, then coming back an hour later, finding another queue, then going away again and then finally getting in the queue at 9pm…..why not stay in the queue at 6pm? Polling Stations are open for over 12 hours – perhaps folks could get their arses in to gear a little earlier if they are determined to vote?
- Returning Officers clearly have lacked guidance and possibly understanding of the Law in the way in which they have reacted to the queues – some have kept the station open after 10pm, others effectively closed it before that time, etc.
- Has there been additional time taken in distributing the ballot papers and handling enquiries about Council elections as well as the General Election?
- Has there been enough staff at Polling Stations, and has the staff been used effectively – when I voted it appeared that 3 members of staff were only capable of processing one voter at a time. Why weren’t additional staff deployed to reduce the queues earlier in the day?
- Have some Local Authorities tried to save money by cutting staff?
- Have attempts been made to save money by printing Ballot Papers to suit the projected turn out rather than printing one paper per voter and a few hundred extras ‘just in case’. It’s not friggin’ rocket science!
So….if any of the seats where this nonsense has happened generate narrow results then we could see challenges and possibly re-runs. It looks like the rules have been ignored, and there’s been clear incompetence at a local level. Let’s hope that lessons are learned and at least a few heads role where needed.
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Over the last few days there’s been some very strange stories emerging and then submerging again in the UK Media – the General Election has made the silly season come early this years. One story about a prospective Tory candidate has been apparently blocked with a gagging order, and another story about a possible car bomb in the Aldgate area of London fell off the radar. Combine that with military ‘Chinook’ helicopters being seen operating in the vicinity of 7 or 8 towns and cities in Britain (whether the helicopters were black or not I’m not sure) and we have a very panicky media right now.
A story that seems to be pretty popular right now is that on Friday morning, whether or not he wins an outright majority or not, David Cameron will go to the palace, tell the Queen he’s forming a Government and basically trot back to Downing Street and demand Gordon Brown vacates the premises. The various posts / Tweets / etc. are best seen here. Whether Downing Street will be emptied with the aid of a team of crack chinless wonders from Conservative Central Office, or whether Brown would tell Cameron to bugger off is debatable.
Just how likely is this to happen – to be honest, I very much doubt it’s likely to happen at all. To me it sounds like a good ol’ bit of Labour FUD – Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. If you don’t vote us in, the Tories will take over by the back door, so give us your votes. This from the Government who have:
- Remove Habeus Corpus from the statute books for certain crimes.
- Gone to war on some very dodgy legal grounds.
- Introduced a series of laws that have repeatedly eroded our civil liberties.
Of course, something like this would put the Queen in a rather bad position – were she to be asked to allow Clegg or Cameron to form a Government before Gordon Brown admitted defeat – even if he were leading a minority party – it would put her in the insidious position of being asked to support the new boy against Labour or Labour against the new boy – not at all a good place to be.
It’s times like this that I wish we had a written Constitution in this country and a Head of State of some sort to apply it. As it is, we’re going to be relying on common sense on Friday morning to see us through the next few days, as I believe a hung Parliament is almost inevitable.
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There’s a scene in Monty Python’s ‘The Life of Brian’ in which a character asks ‘What have the Romans ever done for us?’ This is then followed by a host of other characters giving many useful things that the Romans HAVE provided for the people of Palestine.
I was reminded of this sketch when I encountered this article about Apple’s Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook in which he comments that there isn’t a single thing that a Netbook does well. Time, I have some bad news for you, sunshine; there are lots of things that Netbooks do well – however, they’re probably things that Tim Cook doesn’t do. In the last week or so:
- I used the Netbook to test an ADSL connection at the point of entry of the phone-line to the house.
- When out and about I used it to write a blog article whilst waiting for an appointment.
- Hooked it up to my amateur radio gear to decode some weather fax images.
- Downloaded some code from an SVN repository, made a quick fix and uploaded it again.
In other words, stuff I couldn’t use my Blackberry for, and stuff that I needed a real keyboard for – whilst the Crackberry is great, I don’t fancy writing 500 words of blog post or trying to debug code on it.
But it’s real, genuine work being done, and not stuff I could do on a keyboard-less, USBless iPad. Sorry Tim – here on Planet reality we’re not all managers and critics and reviewers and surfers. Some of us actually do real work on the move, which at the moment (and probably will do for some time to come) requires a real keyboard and a piece of kit that I can actually install software on – not a closed garden that looks good but is at the same time too big to put in my pocket and too small to act as a sensible paperweight.
I love teh concept of the Pad – but this sort of arrogance from Apple – following on from their recent attacks on development toolkits and the serious limitations in connectivity of the iPad – really makes me wonder whether the bods at Cupertino ever spend time in the real world watching how people use technology.
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I was 18 years old in 1979; people of a certain age will remember that year as being the start of the ‘Thatcher Years’ – the start of 11 years of Tory Government that was characterised by radical right wing policies, many originating from the Chicago School of Monetarism, jingoistic manipulation of the electorate in a popular war (The Falklands). The economic policies ensured a destruction of large swathes of British manufacturing industry, steel and coal, and it might be argued that it was a ‘mild’ form (relatively speaking) of the shock and awe school of political change that alumni of the Chicago School had already inflicted on Chile and other countries in the 1970s.
I entered the workforce in the middle of all this, working in Education for 18 months or so before becoming self-employed in IT, and witnessed the destruction of the communities in which I’d grown up and the politicisation and vilification in the media of family and friends in the mining villages and towns of Derbyshire, Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire. I witnessed troops used as policemen and experienced roadblocks that prevented free travel within the UK. It’s safe to say that those years coloured the political views of a whole generation – and still do today.
Which is why I could initially understand the surge of groups on Facebook and other online communities with names like ‘National Don’t Vote Tory Day’.
And after a while I began to think that this is rather a dumb and negative way to decide who to vote for. To start with, it’s 13 years since a Tory Government – twenty years since Thatcher lost power when the great and the good of the Tory establishment decided that she was a liability and threw her out in a coup. You need to be at least 31 years old to have actually been an adult under a Tory government, but it seems to be within the under 30 age group that this sort of group is popular.
As will be known to anyone who reads this blog or follows my tweets, I have little time for New Labour. I have little time for the Tories or the Liberal Democrats either. Which, I appreciate, means I have some serious thinking to do before the General Election. I believe in small Government, subsidiarity and local, sustainable communities. I believe in freedom of speech and expression, reduction in the intrusive powers of the state and controlled and managed immigration to the UK based on a points system for economic migrants and proof of oppression in the last country they were in for political asylum seekers. I believe in strong defence, continued possession of a tactical nuclear weapons capability, healthcare free at point of delivery, and a benefits system as a last ditch support for folks who genuinely need it. I’m interested in seeing whether a flat rate of taxation would work, along with reduced red-tape for business, closer scrutiny of banking institutions, no further formal integration with Europe, repeal of the majority of Human Rights legislation and replacement with a written constitution. And on a more personal basis, reform of copyright, patent and libel legislation to take on board the fact that the world’s changed.
In other words, a rag-bag, hodge-podge of policies which no party will offer. But at least I’ve thought about what I believe in, and can make most of it join up. Which is where the ‘Don’t vote Tory’ sloganising is ridiculously naive. Wheeling out any party as a bogey man – especially one out of power for 15 years – is daft. I demonise New Labour when, in my eyes and against the principles and policies I personally believe in, they deserve it – I’d like to feel that folks who’re signing up to the ‘Don’t Vote Tory’ sites have at least thought through their own political views and aren’t just signing up to the latest ‘slogan of the month’ based on what happened before many of them were actually old enough to directly experience it.
Slogans aren’t enough; I’d say one thing – if you disagree with a party’s politics, know WHY you disagree with them. Think about it. If you don’t like any of them, vote for the one that you disagree with least. There’s an assumption of trust and competence here, which I’m not sure we can give or expect from any of the major parties this time around.
I’m still to make my mind up. I have significant issues with New Labour and the Tories; I was sort of leaning towards Liberal Democrat until I looked at their policies on Europe and Immigration policy, and I’m not convinced that their finances add up. And I’m still not capable of trusting them on civil liberties and issues of Government intrusion in to the lives of citizens.
But for crying out loud – please, please, think about it.
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Regular readers will have noticed that the last few weeks on Joe’s Jottings have been a bit patchy in terms of the frequency of posts. It’s been a perfect example of ‘life happening when you’re making other plans’ and I hope soon to be getting back to the ‘one post a day’ regime that I aim for on this site.
The reason? I’m afraid that Mammon has had influence on me – basically a great deal of work to be done (which is good in the current economic conditions) as well as other commitments. As a trustee / committee member on a couple of charities, and Treasurer on one, this time of year is always a bit busy with year-ends, AGMs, etc. And then there’s the real world activities as well!!
I’ve actually missed blogging – it’s pretty easy to slip the habit of doing a daily blog post and I’m pretty sure that I’ll have my work cut out for a few days next week when I think I’ll be able to get back in to having enough time available to do the regular post each day, but it’s been a useful reminder to me that blogging isn’t part of my job, it’s a hobby, and therefore should occupy that part of my life also occupied by watching ‘Fringe’ on TV, playing amateur radio and avoiding gardening.
Some months ago I commented that I’d managed to build up a little stockpile of articles for use when the pressure was on – unfortunately I worked through those and now need to build that pile up again as well, so it looks like I’ll be having a busy blogging Bank Holiday at the end of April.
So, there you have it. Normal service WILL be resumed…soon….ish….
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