It’s Just One Depressing Scandal After Another

July 3, 2012 Leave a comment

There seems to have been an incredible amount going on in the news, politics especially, in the last few months, which has made it difficult for me to keep up blogging wise. Usually because I see a story that I’m interested in, think ‘oh I’ll write about that when I get time’ and by the time I actually have the time another scandal has erupted gloriously across the online media world.

Just recently we have gone from celebrities avoiding tax, to potential O-level re-introduction, children abandoned in pubs, EU referendum talk, Libor scandal, police cuts, people setting themselves on fire outside the Job Centre, the Queen meeting Martin McGuinness, Lords reform, Chloe Smith getting offered up as a human sacrifice, ongoing Leveson enquiry et al

In simple terms, ‘it’s all kicking off’. I can’t help that remember when Brown was PM the lead story for days was that he called a woman a ‘bit bigoted’, actually Gillian Duffy seems to have cropped up in the news too recently, add immigration to the list of recent stories. Whilst we’re on that subject can we just get over that remark? I noted that as Gillian Duffy’s name began trending on Twitter recently several people furiously took to their keyboards to express how the incident was a perfect reminder of how much contempt Brown had for ordinary people and his supporters. Umm.. musing that you think somebody seemed a tad bigoted isn’t that bad, nor is it contemptuous, it’s not like he got in the car and ranted that she was a ‘fucking bitch’ or anything really offensive. He apologised, job done.

What was probably the most entertaining moment, in a depressing batch of news stories and example after example of government incompetence, was when David Cameron went to town on Jimmy Carr over his tax avoidance, practically falling over himself to have a go at the comedian and denounce his actions as ‘morally wrong’. Then promptly shutting up when it emerged that Tory-supporting chums like Gary (Fat Boy) Barlow, Tory-donor Lord Ashcroft and the PM’s own father-in-law Lord Astor had used tax havens. Presumable tax-avoidance is only immoral if you’re not a fully devoted member, supporter or donor of the Conservative Party. Glad we cleared that up. The exceptional mismanagement of the situation only served to make Carr, who apologised and came out to take the flak, look sympathetic and Cameron to look incredibly stupid. He must be paying his PR chaps a fortune…

Right now I’m looking at the political headlines and we’re still on the Libor scandal and Bob Diamond’s resignation, as if we needed reassuring that the bankers were a bad lot, they’ve not exactly done themselves a lot of favours in the last few years. Maybe they’re using the same PR people as Cameron? Good old Tony Robinson has come to the conclusion that bankers are not human, which might explain something, worth a watch here, the best rant I’ve seen in recent times.

Back to the headlines and Ken Clarke seems to be banging on about how we’re ‘losing the war on drugs’. I wasn’t aware that we had declared a war, nor am I really convinced that Ken Clarke has any idea what he is saying on this issue.

Other headlines seem to concern what has become the standard of late: cuts, ‘reforms’, cuts, EU, cuts, banks. All rather depressing really and by the time I hit publish no doubt a new demoralising scandal will have emerged.

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Panic, petrol, pasties and pussycats… A perturbing week.

April 2, 2012 Leave a comment

Oh I just love to alliterate…

Over the past week pretty much everybody I have spoken to has brought the same three issues up in conversation – petrol, pasties and George Galloway (unfortunately I cannot hear the name of the latter without picturing Rula Lenska stroking him and hearing those chilling words, ‘would you like me to be the cat?’ One of the more disturbing moments in the history of television). As I have (unforgivably) neglected this blog lately I thought I would jump on the bandwagon and air my opinions on these issues.

Petrol

'Was it something I said?'

So it all kicked of nicely on the 28th March when, in a moment of fabulous stupidity, Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude thought it was a good idea to advise people to fill up their tanks and keep a jerry can of petrol handy in case of strike action. Why he thought this was a good idea is still a mystery, probably even to himself. Other members of the government then decided to blunder in to make matters worse, giving conflicting advice about how full people’s tanks should be (pretty damn full was the general consensus, if you were wondering) and many members of the public duly rushed out in panic to suck the pumps dry, followed by many others who heard of the panic and also panicked and so on ad infinitum (or at least until the petrol pumps ran out, as they did in many areas).

The Conservative Party reacted by trying to calm the situation, of course publishing a leaflet containing a scathing attack on tanker drivers. Well, well done…

People love a good panic, as the government know and quite clearly exploited for their own duplicitous means. The prospect of strike action had been looming benignly for some time, without any sort of panic, until Francis Maude opened his fat mouth causing chaos and a chain of causation that led to a woman in York suffering horrific burns when petrol she was decanting in her kitchen caught fire. The government deliberately engineered a run on the pumps in an attempt to discredit Unite the Union and, in turn, the Labour Party, who receive donations from Unite (at least Labour are open about donors, unlike the Conservatives and let’s face it, Labour don’t have a bevy of millionaire pals queuing up to donate like the Tories do so donations have to come from somewhere).

A quick question, whilst we’re on the Unions, – why do certain elements of the press and the Tories themselves try to make out that Trade Unions are some dark, secretive, mafia-like organisation who should be feared and loathed in equal measure? A Trade Union is, in the words of the Oxford English Dictionary:

noun

  • an organized association of workers in a trade, group of trades, or profession, formed to protect and further their rights and interests.

Yes, how very dare workers unite together to try and protect their own rights and interests and how dare they try and influence political parties to protect workers rights also. Shocking behaviour…

Today, William Hauge has crawled out from his lair (much like an aging cougar) to assert that the government have done a stand-up job of handling the crisis (this would be the crisis that they caused) by warning and preparing (the silly, complacent) public in case a strike does occur. What he fails to mention is that any strike action would take place after 7 days notice so it’s not as if you wouldn’t have a warning if one were to occur.

Unite assistant general secretary Diana Holland  has said:

We will not be calling Easter strike action as we focus on substantive talks through Acas. We do still retain the right to call strike action for after the Easter, should those talks break down.

It should be stressed that what we are seeking is reasonable and no more than what is in place elsewhere in the industry. There have been minimum standards governing the offshore oil industry since 2000 covering health and safety, training, and terms and conditions.

She added: “This is not a political dispute. It is an industrial dispute and the government’s recent rhetoric will not help us achieve a negotiated settlement. They must set aside their political objectives and work with us, the employers, retailers and oil companies to achieve an outcome that is good for the industry and the country.

 

Pasties

Hot and expensive, just how he likes it.

George Osborne’s proposal to impose VAT on freshly baked products, increasing prices by 20%, swiftly aimed the nickname ‘Pasty Tax’, although it affects more than just the pasty of course, it applies to any food sold “above ambient temperature”. This means that some pastries will become subject to VAT depending on how long after they are taken out of the oven they happen to be sold – now that won’t cause confusion at all…

Personally, I only buy a pasty about 3 times a year (cheese & onion as I don’t eat meat) because I’m not a massive pasty fan and I actually prefer to wait for it to cool before I eat it. Besides, unless you shovel your hot pasty/pastry in your mouth as soon as you meander out of Greggs (remember when it was called Thurstons round these parts? That sounded nicer), which I don’t because I don’t like eating whilst walking or standing and eating in the street, then your snack is going to have fallen below “ambient temperature” before the time you get to eat it anyway. Basically, you’re paying extra to heat the paper bag that your pasty is in for a few minutes.

Ken McMeikan, Choef Executive of Greggs, has written in the Guardian Northerner how this tax could have huge repercussions for the baking industry and how this is the last thing people need when their finances are already squeezed. 

 

Pussycats

Galloway

Dignified MP George Galloway and Pete Burns searching for a fake puppy, or something...

When it became clear that George Galloway had won the Bradford West by- election many were quick to take to their computers and share their ‘expert’ analysis on why Labour had lost, flooding blogs, twitter and column inches. Interestingly, I have ready many, many articles purporting to tell me why Labour lost and Galloway won but only one of these articles had actually come from somebody who had lived in Bradford West for a time. Most of the others seemed to come from people who have never strayed North of Watford Gap but think they are an authority on the inner thoughts of the people of Bradford West  and assume that all the Northern cities that are, for whatever reason, lumped together in most newspaper articles – Leeds, Bradford, Birmingham, Manchester – are exactly the same, so the people must all be exactly the same and all choose who they are voting for, for exactly the same reasons. Whatever.

I pretty much live next-door to Bradford and attended a school located on the Leeds/Bradford border with many pupils who came from Bradford, yet even I wouldn’t attempt to tell people why people in Bradford West voted the way they did, simply because I am not a Bradford West voter and I therefore don’t know. Perhaps we should all be asking people in Bradford West to tell us why they voted the way they did rather than assuming on their behalf’s, if that’s not too much of a novel idea?

I wasn’t hugely shocked to hear that Galloway had won because he has a history of this sort of thing. He was able to provide an ‘alternative’ to the three main parties, he has the ‘celebrity’ factor (something which, sadly, now seems to be an important component in people’s voting decisions) and, whatever you may think of him, he is a good performer who knows exactly what to say to impress people and get their vote. Presumably his voters hadn’t seen the video of the cat incident either…

If he will continue to impress voters in the community of Bradford West now he has won his seat in the Commons is a different matter, he did take time out from Parliament whilst he was MP for Bethnal Green and Bow to take part in Celebrity Big Brother which I think says something rather dubious about his attitude towards Parliament (the whole episode can be classified as dubious really) but we shall see how things work out at the next general election and hopefully by then I will have the image of George Galloway and Pete Burns performing interpretive dance in brightly coloured lycra leotards out of my head…

 

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The New Lost Generation

January 21, 2011 Leave a comment

Government attacks on the young could create a generation in unemployment and poverty.

Since May we have seen an appalling amount of Tory-led government cuts that will directly affect young people, especially teenagers. Tuition fees were forced to rise exorbitantly due to cuts in higher education funding, the Future Jobs Fund, a scheme that began in 2009 and by March 2011 will have funded over 100,000 jobs, mainly aimed at 18–24 year olds who have been out of work for six months and claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance, is now closed to funding bids and Educational Maintenance Allowance, to financially assist those from lower-income families during post-16 education was scrapped this week as Labour lost the vote to save it by a majority of 59 votes.

With regards to tuition fees and EMA, huge public protests took place against the governments proposals, but they simply weren’t listening. They have promised new, better schemes and delivery for EMA and the Future Jobs Fund and yet have not explained what these replacement schemes are and how and when they will be implemented. They have also failed to explain why they have scrapped EMA and the FJF now, without having these supposedly better schemes in place. Instead they have left many young people without funding and without valuable assistance to find work for the foreseeable future and the assurances that these new, improved schemes will be implemented don’t really hold much weight when this Tory-led government have broken so many of the promises and assurances that they made prior to the election.

Without EMA to help young people stay in education, without the Future Jobs Fund to give assistance into employment and with rising tuition fees that scare many away from applying to university the country could end up with a generation of young people, from predominantly low-income families, who are not able to reach their full potential, unable to better themselves and achieve their aspirations and end up trapped in the poverty cycle. Rather than attempting to close the attainment gap between the rich and the poor the government seems to be driving an even larger wedge between the two.

The convenient excuse of course is that “we need to reduce the deficit”. Yes we do, but we don’t need to reduce it at such ridiculous speeds and by storming in and cutting valuable assistance for young people within a few months, clearly without full consideration and after pledging not to less than a year ago. All these cuts and measures aimed at reducing the deficit are hitting the poorest in society the hardest and yet measures such as a tiny tax on the financial sector which would generate billions of pounds (lets not forget it was the irresponsible actions of the bankers who created this problem) are completely ignored.

Funny, I’ve not heard George Osborne say “we’re all in this together” recently.

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Cameron’s argument on EMA reveals ignorance

December 20, 2010 1 Comment

When challenged by Ed Miliband on the scrapping of EMA at PMQ’s yesterday, David Cameron’s big argument was that the students in receipt of EMA would have stayed in education anyway so therefore it’s not necessary, stating,

“The problem with Education Maintenance Allowance is that over 90% of those who receive it would stay on at school anyway.”

Cameron seems to have rather missed the point on this one. As far as I am aware no big argument exists that says if you scrap EMA students staying on post-16 will drop dramatically and I doubt it has ever been the defining factor in students choosing to continue studying after their GCSE’s, as Cameron seems to suggest.

EMA was designed to assist poorer students in covering their study related expenses, books, revision guides, stationary, travel etc and as the Direct Gove website still puts it, “EMA spells fewer money worries with up to £30 a week during term time – leaving you to get on with your studies.”

Although Cameron’s claim that EMA does not affect participation is also incorrect. In survey done in 2004 by 56 of the 150 local education authorities, the Institute for Fiscal Studies and Loughborough University found staying-on rates improved up 5.9 percentage points among those who were eligible, with the research suggesting that EMA has the most benefit on young men from poorer homes.

Studies have also reveled the great amount of benefit that EMA does have on those students who “would have stayed on anyway”,

The research found that in areas where EMA was available, students had A-level grades averaging four points higher than would otherwise be reached and were 2% more likely to reach thresholds on the National Qualifications Framework. BBC.

Furthermore, the key assumption behind the Government’s methodology for calculating the deadweight is that the impact on participation is the only outcome that matters. But the EMA may have other benefits: those who receive EMA and would have stayed in education regardless of it might still benefit educationally through other channels: for example through better attendance, or more study time as a result of not having to take on a part-time job. Moreover, even if the EMA had no impact on educational outcomes it would still represent a transfer of resources to low-income households with children, which may in its own right represent a valuable policy objective. IFS.

I haven’t heard Cameron bringing up any of these evidence based points lately, only the fact that the students would have stayed on anyway and even there he get’s his figure wrong, citing 90% when it is actually 88% (some convenient rounding up). It appears that he has basically just cherry-picked the points that fit his agenda from the latest research and ignored all the evidence regarding how EMA has improved results and attendance in target groups.

Cameron’s further argument is that post-16 education will be compulsory in the future anyway so a new system will have to be found, hence scrapping EMA from next year onwards. This is also interesting because in the terms of the  The Education and Skills Act 2008 compulsory education  or training to the age of 17 comes into effect from 2013 and to 18 from 2015. So why not phase out EMA when these compulsory measures kick in and not 1-3 years before? The hasty nature of this cut means that students in their first year of post-16 education who currently receive EMA will not do so next year, which seems shockingly unfair. They could have at least waited until these current students had completed their two years before snatching it away from them. In the course of my work I have spoken to Sixth Form students who are worried that they will have to “drop-out” next year because they feel that not getting that extra bit of money each week will cause a unnecessary burden on their families and/or that they will have to work longer hours, negatively impacting upon their studying.

I have written before on the discrepancy between those who have to work due to financial pressures when studying and those who don’t, so I won’t rehash those points agin. Needless to say scrapping EMA so suddenly will only widen this discrepancy and Cameron hasn’t even had the decency to construct a valid and correct argument for doing so.

You can find the Save EMA Campaign here.

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RIP Liberal Democrats 1988 – 2010 & A New Dawn for Labour

May 11, 2010 8 Comments

Today signaled the end to Nick Clegg’s Leaders Debates presentation of the Liberal Democrats as a fresh, new political party, set apart and above old politics and the “two old parties”, the Conservatives and Labour, as the Tories and Liberals compromised their ideals and manifesto promises to form a coalition government.

Really this signals the end of the real Liberal Democrats in general, all in the name of power, a centrist – centre-left party now doing deals with the right-wing Conservatives. Liberal Democrat ideology must have changed profoundly in the last few days, as must have some Conservative ideology. Obviously ideals, ideology, credibility, promises and principles do not matter much to Clegg and Cameron when it comes to the pursuit of power.

Clegg is the real hypocrite in this. He stood on a platform of change, of a ‘new politics’, distanced from the Conservatives and Labour. It was basically “vote for us because we’re not them” but literally it was “vote for us and get them”. Well we did say “vote Lib Dem, get Tory”. True both at a constituency level and now at national level. You have to wonder how many people who put an X in the Lib Dem candidates box last Thursday would have felt compelled to do the same if they were aware that Clegg would soon be happily entering a coalition with the Tories.

The Lib Dem’s I have spoken to and read and heard the views of seem to be split. Some take the Simon Hughs, “better to be in government than not” view, presumably not matter how many principles are lost along the way. Others I know feel betrayed. They didn’t vote for a Tory government, they thought they were voting for the change and fresh politics they were promised.

It will be interesting to see how this coalition will work. Cameron has had to offer the referendum on electoral reform, which Labour had already committed to in our manifesto, something I can’t see too many Tories celebrating. In reality it is likely that the Tories will turn around and campaign against any change in the voting system. Public spending cuts are likely, as the emergency Tory budget will more than certainly go ahead, which rather tramples all over the Liberal Democrats ideological commitments to the welfare state and higher public spending. On immigration and Europe the parties are still widely apart in their views – creating further possibility of compromises on policy and promises from either party in the future.

If this coalition survives for long I will be surprised. I would doubt that the two other options available after the election result would have lasted long either. I am glad Labour did not compromise their manifesto promises to form the so-called “progressive” or “rainbow” alliance, which would have involved concessions to the minor nationalist parties and would have probably been unpopular with Labour and Lib Dem members alike, caused the Tory media to go into attack overdrive (Adam Boulton style) and angered a good portion of the electorate. When it comes to ideology and principles I don’t think we should be quick to compromise, especially when the result is unlikely to be a particularly stable government and would probably do much to damage politics and the Labour Party in the long term.

The other option Nick Clegg could have allowed to happen would be a minority Tory government – in my eyes the best option. A minority government would be unlikely to last for very long and the Tories would have had a great deal of trouble in passing any legislation they wanted to get through, which would have protected the country to some extent. With the Liberal Democrats and Tories together I fear what could happen to many sections of British society, the economy, children’s services, public spending. We are definitely heading into ‘the age of austerity’ Cameron is so fond of mentioning. What he doesn’t mention is that he means austerity for the ordinary working families and people of Britain and not for the wealthy like himself and his chums.

With any luck the best thing to come out of this will be a fast re-election hopefully on the few months and not the couple of years timeline and by that time voters will be able to see and judge for themselves what a Tory-Lib Dem coalition really means. I think we are entering a difficult era that will destroy much of what Labour have fought for and achieved in the past 13 years. I can only hope that we can repair the short term damage quickly and build the foundations for a stable and prosperous long-term – with a return to a refreshed and progressive new Labour government in the near future. We will carry on fighting for what is right and we will be ready when the next election is called to win back the seats we have lost. Not simply for power or self serving purposes but for the good of the ordinary people of this country, for a progressive government with progressive and tolerant values, for a stable economy and a bright future. That is why I am a Labour Party member and I will not stop fighting.

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No Nick Clegg, Tories & Labour are not “the same”

April 17, 2010 10 Comments

Young Nick Clegg has taken the populist tack this week, as exemplified during the first Leaders Debate on Thursday, claiming that the Labour Party and the Conservative Party are the same and he is the only fresh, real, change around.

Actually Nick, no, the Tories and Labour are not the same. Not at all. If we were there wouldn’t be so much opposition, debate and argument. All activists and supporters would just agree pleasantly with each other and Prime Ministers Questions would pass without quarrel, without Call Me Dave turning red and spluttering as he said, “Oh yes Gordon, jolly good plan, we all agree. Anyone for tennis?”

Labour and the Tories are split, on ideology and policy. That is what makes the parties different. That is why they are not the same – so claiming that they are is rather a stupid argument. Easy, yes. Likely to resonate with the disenchanted, yes, but definitely stupid and easily pulled apart. You only have to look at some of the big issues like the economy, the environment, public services, parliamentary reform etc etc to see how different Labour and the Tories are.

As for the Lib Dems as a nice change, well lets take a look at my home council shall we – the Liberal Democrat – Conservative Leeds City Council. The Libs aren’t so distinct from the Tories there. They were happy to go into a coalition with the Tories, who they are supposedly oh so very different from to outnumber Labour, happy to vote along Tory lines against Labour, happy to provoke and prolong a strike amongst bin men, whose pay they were trying to disgracefully slash (see previous articles on Leeds bin strike below). Kinda makes a joke of their whole Lab-servative, they’re just the same, chortle, chortle, efforts. It’s not just Leeds either, the Liberals have got into bed with the Tories in other city councils to get a majority over Labour – sorry to all the Liberal supporters who thought they were a nice, fair, independent, left-leaning party. More like an opportunist party really.

Bin Strike Articles

Leeds Bin Strike week 10 – the dispute continues

Leeds Bin Strike – nearing the tenth week as children play amongst rats and waste

Eighth week of Leeds refuse strike

Quick update on Leeds refuse strike

Leeds Refuse Workers Strike: Tory/Lib Dem council failures

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Bullying, Brown and Bad Journalism

February 22, 2010 6 Comments

Having watched the “Gordon Brown, massive bully” story unfold on the BBC and the reactions to it a lot of questions have sprung to mind. Also a lot of doubt. The claims by the National Bullying Helpline that they have been contacted by members of Downing Street staff coincided very conveniently with stories in the national papers about ‘bully Borwn’ and the serialization of Andrew Rawnsley’s book in The Observer claiming that Brown, amongst other things, suffered from ‘volcanic eruptions’ (interesting mental image at that one) and physically assaulted staff. The viability of the claims and in fact the “charity” involved are frankly dubious at best.

When I first saw the stories about the new BBC claims and the figure of National Bullying Helpline frontwoman Christine Pratt openly declaring that the helpline had received calls from No.10. I had two main reactions; boredom, because this story seems to have been going on in several forms for weeks, without any defining evidence or proof and my second reaction was incredulity, that such a service would release what I would have thought to be confidential information to the BBC and have its executive director happily repeating the claims across the media. It all seemed incredibly strange and hard to believe.

No doubt I will be accused of ‘trying to smear a charity’ or a disgraceful attitude towards bullying or indeed a defender of bullying, as I have seen some Conservatives accuse Labour supporters and others of on social networking sites. Although all I have come across is people questioning Christine Pratt going public with what many regard to be confidential information and also questioning the credibility and political bias of the National Bullying Helpline – which is starting to look very shady and I shall come onto that in a minute. Just to clear things up, I do not support or condone bullying in any form. I do, however, like others find it incredible that a so-called charity helpline would give out information regarding who had contacted them.

I was bullied throughout high school and also more-or-less bullied out of a job a couple of years ago. I know it is not a pleasant experience and not something I’d wish anyone to go through. I never contacted any sort of helpline, I don’t remember it occurring to me to do so even though I was aware that they did exist. If I had I would have been mortified if it was then announced during the morning school bulletins that, “Reports continue that is a bully, in totally unrelated news somebody in Mrs Jennings form has contacted the National Bullying helpline”. The excellent Bullying UK have already stepped forward to criticise the actions of Ms Pratt and the National Bullying helpline and  recently issued this statement,

Bullying UK is horrified at a story in today’s Daily Mail in which the National Bullying Helpline CEO Christine Pratt all but identifies someone from Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s office who contacted her helpline for confidential help.

Mrs Pratt tells the Daily Mail: “At least one of the callers who we were in correspondence with was suffering from work-related stress and had time out of the office.”

Gordon Brown’s office is small and the National Bullying Helpline’s comment will almost certainly identify this person who turned to the helpline in despair.

It’s hard to imagine a more serious breach of confidentiality. And it’s extremely concerning that we’ve had emails and Tweets (Twitter messages) from people who think that this charity is responsible.

We’re not, we’re disgusted and upset and we’re writing to the Charity Commission today to complain about the National Bullying Helpline.

In the meantime, we suggest Mrs Pratt considers her position, given the damage she has caused to the anti-bullying sector where confidentiality is paramount.

A patron of the National Bullying Helpline, Prof. Cary Cooper, has also resigned citing his own disgust at the breaching of confidentiality as the reason. He is quoted as saying,

One of the things that is really important for any helpline or any counselling service is to retain confidentiality of the people calling up.” “She did not reveal any names, but that is irrelevant. She is revealing the employer, which is No 10,” he said.

“I just think that is wholly wrong and inappropriate. You don’t do that. I can no longer be a patron.”

 ”The point I am trying to make is that there is no way – any helpline or counselling service giving advice to people – do you reveal anything into the public arena about it.

“I am involved in a range of charities, none of whom do that kind of thing. It is not the way you behave.”

Indeed the actions of the National Bullying Helpline could damage the credibility of these kinds of helplines if people are worried that details of their calls could be made extremely public. Ms Pratt’s actions could prevent many people who need help and advice ringing helplines in the future. It is completely unacceptable behavior.

So why did she do it? And who are the National Bullying Helpline – because until yesterday I’d never heard of them? Well both questions can be answered in similar ways. This excellent blog post by Adam Bienkov covers what the BBC neglected to tell you about the National Bullying Helpline (probably because these details immediately shatter the credibility of their story),

In fact a quick look at NBH’s website reveals:

  • A personal endorsement from Conservative leader David Cameron
  • One of their patrons is Conservative MP Ann Widdecombe
  • Another patron is Boris Johnson’s Chair of the London Health Authority, Conservative Cllr Mary O’Connor
  • They have close ties to Conservative controlled Swindon borough Council.

There are also doubts about whether NBH is actually a functioning charity at all.
An even quicker look at the Charity Commission’s register reveals that

  • They are 206 days overdue on registering their accounts.
  • They have registered just £852 pounds in expenditure since they were established.

Now this doesn’t seem to be the operations of a national charity to me. In fact just a little more digging tells us that

 This “charity” has very cosy links to the Conservative Party – which rather suggests a large heaping of bias about the whole thing and some of the latest press reports are now speculating on the close ties between Ms Pratt and the Conservative Party. So is this why she breached all rules and expectations of confidentiality, to bolster a political smear campaign against Labour? Surely not. Her own reasoning behind the move is,

“I saw the Lord Mandelson statement that had a categorical denial that bullying was going on in Gordon Brown’s office. I saw red.”

So basically she decided to disregard the rules and decency of confidentiality because she was annoyed that Peter Mandelson denied claims that had no substantive evidence behind them to begin with. Nothing at all to do with her close links to the Conservatives, the fact that the “Brown bullying” stories were high on the news agenda and guaranteed coverage which would give lots of nice publicity to her bullying business… erm… sorry, “legitimate charity”.

Ms Pratt seems to be backpedaling faster than Lance Armstrong pedals forwards today claiming that she never, ever, ever meant that anybody had mentioned or made an accusation about the Prime Minister during these phone calls, she also claimed not to know exactly how many calls they had actually received from Downing Street (hardly solid, compelling evidence). She said,

“I knew that there were two from the Deputy Prime Minister’s office and another two or more from the PM’s office. The number is irrelevant,”

So the facts are irrelevant.

“… nor have we said that Gordon Brown is a bully. Our concern here is the public statement from No 10 of denial … we would just want Gordon Brown and No 10 to lead by example.

“We would have hoped that Gordon Brown would have said that he was looking into this, that due process was being followed, and that he takes these issues seriously.”

Firstly, how does she know that No.10 and Brown aren’t looking into these claims – with the confidentiality you would expect – and why, if she is so keen to now deny that this is nothing to do with Brown, are all the related headlines about “Bully Brown” and why then did she state the reason she came forward is because of denials that Brown was a bully? The story she went for wasn’t “There may be a bully inside Downing Street who is not Gordon Brown” angle. The intention was clearly to further implicate the Prime Minister and add to the allegations that he bullied his staff.

In my opinion about the actual allegations I have yet to see any compelling evidence of actual bullying by Brown towards his staff. I have no doubt that No.10 can be a very stressful and tense place to work and there are incidences of high-tempers, rants and shouting, as the allegations state - but I’ve had that in most work places. It can make work hell, it can be intimidating at times but it’s not the same as bullying, in my view. I see bullying as more personal, more vindictive and more sustained. Of course if members of staff at No.10 are unhappy with their work environment and are stressed and upset by the atmosphere or conduct of others I do believe they have every right to contact a bullying helpline for advice on how to deal with the situation. I just wouldn’t say the behaviors of Brown that do actually seem to be true – his demanding nature and ranting etc – constitute a bully as people would imagine a bully to be and how the press are painting him to be.  Other people may have different definitions but I think shouting and ranting – even though not a great thing –  is part of the workplace at times and in itself does not constitute bullying.

 As for the allegations of physical violence, surely that’s a police matter? Not an anecdote for a book you are trying to promote.

David Cameron is now, probably jubilantly, calling for an inquiry into the allegations of bullying so I expect this story will run for a while…

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Third time lucky for Tory poster campaign? Probably not…

February 15, 2010 3 Comments

After two failed attempts at trying to produce a decent campaign poster, and two lots of brilliant parodies, the Tories have desperately regrouped in an attempt to produce a poster that imaginative internet users cannot make a mockery of in photoshop, spending God knows how much in the process (it’s OK though, they have the ££££££ to keep wasting) and have now come up with these (tad nauseating) efforts complete with super modern video campaign featuring fresh first time Tory voters, eager to let us know why they are joining Dave’s gang.

This is hardly a revolutionary campaign effort, every party has first time voters they could whip out and use in the media, it’s a ‘play it very safe’ campaign – the main aim simply seems to be ’let’s make a poster that they can’t make fun of this time’. Whilst it’s OK to photoshop around with Cameron’s face (he does it himself after all) and make fun of the Tory message everyone can see it would be bad form to do the same to their poster voters. Making fun of another parties voters is hardly going to win you any friends and no doubt the Tories are eagerly awaiting the parodies this time, ready to jump up and down in protest, “how dare they mock these voters on our posters, it’s not on”. Indeed it isn’t really but I think they have vastly underestimated the intelligence and imagination of would-be cyber parodiers (that’s probably not a real word) who will easily find their way around this issue and indeed already have. Barely five minutes had passed since the shiny new posters began doing their rounds on the web when this appeared -the tweet is in response to the hash-tag #ivenevervotedtory / #inevervotedtory  - which appeared almost immediately to lead the cyber backlash. As you can see the quickly created new parody poster easily manages to avoid any offence towards the first time voter in the original, face changed, text changed – where’s the problem?

Not only have the Tories failed to produce a set of posters that cannot be mocked they have also failed to produce a set of posters with any sort of effective message. The two claiming ‘we need to sort out the economy’ and ‘but I like their plans to help families’ are words any party could have used about their own policies on the issues. Once again the Tories offer no policy and no substance. Just ubiquitous messages. Even a BNP voter could claim ‘I like their plans to help families’ about their party without any back-up. As far as ‘their plans to help families’ are concerned the main policy that springs to mind is the highly contentious marriage tax breaks plan. Hardly comforting. As for the economy, wasn’t it the Conservatives that got every plan wrong during the recession? Cuts, cuts, cuts! God knows where their cuts would leave us if they got into Government, not in a great state I would confidently predict. The economy is not safe in their hands.

As for the ‘I’ve never voted Tory before but we’ve got to mend our broken society’ well that’s simply laughable today after it emerged that the Tories had got their figures wrong yet again, claiming that 54% of teenage girls under 18 in the poorest areas got pregnant – so hell bent they are on believing this ‘broken Britain’ rhetoric that nobody obviously thought to question that this figure could be wrong. In the Tories minds over 50% of teenage girls are getting pregnant (which would mean we would all be knee deep in babies by now) and teenage boys seem to be portrayed as something akin to Lord of the Flies. Out of touch with the people they wish to represent? Surely not! Even the Daily Mail seemed disgusted (which is really saying something).

Aside from all this the fact that we are now onto our third round of posters since the New Year is starting to reek with desperation. Maybe try knocking on doors? Plenty of babies and young children to meet by the sounds of it…

- As I’ve been writing this these templates have already popped up for you to spoof on http://www.mydavidcameron.com

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The Tories – Wrong on British society, wrong on helping families.

January 29, 2010 5 Comments

A rather interesting article caught my attention today – this story on the BBC website states that the divorce rate in England and Wales is at it’s lowest point in 29 years, since 1981. The facts are:

In 2008, the divorce rate in England and Wales decreased by 2.5% to 11.5 divorcing people per 1,000 married people, compared with 11.8 in 2007.

Divorces in Scotland fell by 10% from 2007 to 2008, while divorces in Northern Ireland decreased by 4.8%.

The report, by the Office for National Statistics, did not offer any reasons why divorce rates had fallen.

The 2008 divorce rate in England and Wales was the lowest since 1979, when there were 11.2 divorces per 1,000 married people.

Yet, the Conservatives are wanting to throw money, in the form of tax breaks, at married couples because it is oh-so-very important that people are married because it’s the breakdown of marriage and the “traditional” family that has cause “broken Britain” – the crime-ridden nation that the Tories and Daily Mail are anxious to convince us that we live in but it seems from this report that we don’t have couples divorcing en masse anyway.

In fairness, the report findings do say that the figures don’t show a full picture as it may be that divorce rates are lower simply because marriage rates are lower – there is also talk of “family disintegration” and what can be done to prevent it but this is in relation to co-habiting couples and those “non-traditional” families that the Tories aren’t interested in helping anyway – apart from encouraging them to get married so they can have extra tax breaks. Yeah, that’s sure to solve all relationship problems.

A good quote in the article comes from Claire Tyler, chief executive of Relate the relationship counseling service, who says:

“Politicians have recently been hotly discussing what makes people get married. These figures show that it isn’t just about getting couples up the aisle – what’s really important is that relationships last.”

I’d be confident to bet that Relate don’t think that the way to make relationships last and for families to work is to simply encourage/bribe people into marriage by offering them tax break rewards. Claire Tyler endorses relationship counseling, for all couples not just the married ones. Maybe if Cameron really wants to help the breakdown of the family – and fix his (fictional) “broken Britain” he should perhaps be suggesting something like vouchers so couples and families in trouble can attend counseling or maybe giving money to services like Relate enabling them to offer free or discounted services to those on lower incomes, how about more money into services that assist families and children – like the Sure Start Centres that they have not pledged to continue funding, how about a whole load of other things that would help families that the money used to fund marriage tax breaks could be spent on and make a real difference.

Wrong on recession, wrong on recovery – Wrong on British society, wrong on helping families…

There’s not much they’re getting right really.

For my previous posts on this issue see:

Pulling Nadine Dorries to Pieces: why the Conservatives views on marriage and the family are wrong. – 01/12/09

Cash for marriage…a Cameron incentive. – 01/12/09

Do you fit the Tory perfect family mould – 13/07/09

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Britain is not Broken, actually I think we’re pretty great.

January 25, 2010 6 Comments

As the horrific details of the case of 10 and 11-year-old brothers torturing two other youngsters, almost to the point of death, in South Yorkshire emerged David Cameron couldn’t resist the urge to start banging back on about his “Broken Britain”  – despite the fact that the more he bangs on about this and tries to use examples to prove his point then more and more flaws occur in his argument.

If we take the case of the boys in South Yorkshire a great deal was made about their “toxic upbringing” – with their mother and father. I thought the whole “Broken Britain” extravaganza focussed around the fact that so many children grow up in “broken” single parent households without two parents, hence the marriage tax breaks (ridiculous) proposal? If we are in some way attributing the actions of these children to their chaotic upbringing at home, with their mother and father, then how exactly does this fit in with our broken, single poor parents, lacking in family values society?

The other cases Cameron seems to be bringing up to highlight his point are the death of Baby Peter, which is a very different type of case, and that of the murder of James Bulger, again by children. The James Bulger case, although similar to that in South Yorkshire,  was in 1993 – a large 17 years ago – I find it odd that Cameron is using this as an example of today’s “broken” society.

In fact I find the whole thing odd. I don’t feel that isolated, rare instances of extreme violence by children, 17 years apart, constitute a broken society – brought on by the breakdown of the family (apparently). I think they are, as I have said, isolated incidents which provoke an extreme reaction because such severe cases are so rare. They may reflect problems in one area, one social services department, one family but I think it is incredibly wrong to use them as examples of Britain as a whole. Many people, families and communities in this country do great and wonderful things every day – why aren’t they celebrated as the unbroken, great, Britain that as a whole nation and a whole population I believe we are? On the web today I was heartened to read the story of a 7-year-old boy who has raised thousands for the relief effort in Haiti, nobody is using him as an example to say ‘look we’re great, what this kid has done is great, there can’t be that much wrong with the whole country because people do great things like this everyday here’, but we ignore all the positives and highlight the negatives. This is just another case of Cameron talking down Britain and making us all think that it is terrible out there, aided and abetted by the right-wing press who seem to exist to create mistrust and fear – no wonder people seem to think crime has risen when it is actually falling, they are constantly getting the message that we are in some terrible crime ridden state.

If these cases of extreme child on child violence reflect a broken society then I am afraid we were broken long ago – Mary Bell, 1968, Peter Barratt and James Bradley, 1861 etc etc. I’m sure we could carry on back for years finding these very similar cases. Certain people and families may be ”broken” and that is what leads to these shocking crimes but I don’t think it is fair to lay the blame at the entire nation’s door and say as a whole we are broken.

I would also like to know how Cameron intends to fix his “broken” society, apart from the marriage tax breaks, which I highly doubt would have done anything to prevent these cases. Unfortunately I think this is just a rather appalling instance of David Cameron attempting to use dead children to make a political point, on the back of peoples shock, anger and fear.

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