Balls in your pocket

Most people I have spoken to have a grudging respect for Alastair Darling. he was dealt a bad hand and has done his best even while having the thumbscrews put on him by the madman next door. Now apparently he is to be given the chop so that Ed Balls ("widely respected in the city" according to the Sunday Times) can assume the job.

Hold on a minute! I don't know much about the city but it stretches even my copious imagination that he would be welcomed by the economic movers and shakers. This is surely the same man who advised Gordon Brown on his various tax-raising sleights of hand and helped him deliver budgets that increased public borrowing as well as taxes. Widely respected in the city?!!

Mr Balls' record is hardly stellar. As a scholls minister he has precipitated and presided over examination fiascos, declining standarda, and various half-baked schemes like making cooking compulsory in all schools. Mr Darling by contrast has been a steady, if unimaginative, pair of hands in all his portfolios.

It does say something of Brown's bunker mentality that he can actually believe that the media-unfriendly Mr Balls will bring sunshine to his decaying government.

I meet an MP

Today I met Mark Hoban, my MP, who was out campaigning with one of our local councillors. My first impression is that he is intelligent, personable, probably hard-working and CLEAN. Nothing has emerged about any irregularities in his expense claims and it may be fair to assume that after this time there is nothing to worry about.

So I was very good; I didn't raise the issue of MP's expense claims. Instead we talked about the business climate and his work in committee on the Finance Bill. This latter surprised me a little because I assumed that had been done and dusted some time ago.

Anyway it is a little reassuring to know that there are some MPs out there who are trying to do their best without abusing the voters.

Brown but not dull

At the beginning of Brown's reign I was prepared, like most people, to accept that he could do a useful job. He was not particularly likable but as long as he introduced some competence into government I told people that I would be content. It would have suited me if he was dull and effective like Major or Attlee so that I could get on with my life.

Instead we have had an extraordinary two years. The only period without headlines was last summer when Brown took a holiday; otherwise it has been a succession of catastrophic mismanagement. He may be the worst Prime Minister in a century but his term of office has not been dull.

It has been obvious since September 2007 that this man does not have the skills to be an effective PM. There are even now some doubts as to his effectiveness as a Chancellor of the Exchequer, but plainly now, Blair masked his weaknesses from view. Other than the "psychologically flawed" comment that emerged during one of the 10-11 battles Brown managed to keep his head down during every difficult moment yet maintain this fiction that he was a superior candidate for the job than Blair. How empty that boast appears today. It is not enough to wannabe, you actually do have to have talent.

Sir Humphrey must go!

David Cameron's proposed reforms are worth considering. In fact any reform of our governance is worth considering. But between the idea and the reality falls the shadow, and the shadow is often those who have the strongest interest in the status quo.y

Tony Blair complained of the "forces of conservatism" and Iain Dale alluded to this today. It is a reality. George (not Gordon) tried to effect some civil service reforms in 1964 but even that old battler had to retire defeated. The Sir Humphreys of this world are very powerful and exercise great skill in preventing reform.

Tony Blair tried to work around the problem by hiring political whiz kids to work at number ten in order to work around the civil service. Plainly that gambit failed.

There is a solution. Make the Permanent Secretary NON- Permanent. The Canadians have a system which is obviously modelled on our but with some important reforms. One is to ensure that they are able to hire chief Civil servants who are disposed to their mind-set. They call them Deputy Ministers, nd often they will not survive a change of government.

I didn't always think so but now I see thisas a good system. The Permanent Secretary was devised to guarantee continuity but in modern times it guarantees ossification.

So if David Cameron is truly interested in effecting change he should first open up all the departmental top jobs. At a stroke change would become possible.

They surely won't be missed

Nicholas and Anne Winterton announce their retirement. They won't be missed.

"I have a little list. I have a little list...................."

Tax return costs should be a tax credit

Even the Chancellor of the Exchequer has to call in professional help to complete his tax return. He can thank his mobile-phone-throwing, laser-printer-chucking neighbour for spending a decade developing the most complicated and opaque tax system in the history of mankind. If he needs help, fair enough! But if this guidance is supplied at taxpayer's expense, then the privilege should be extended to the rest of us.

It's time to extend the "rules" to the rest of us.

Archbishop of Deep Space 9

Some people have a talent for being on the wrong side of every issue. Gordon Brown is one example and Rowan Williams another. The last time the Archbishop of Deep Space 9 came to earth he was advocating Sharia law in this country. Now he feels that the exposure of MPs should come to an end. This would be fine if we had achieved anything out of this. Ministers are still parroting the line that they have done nothing wrong and the PM continues to try to kick this issue into the long grass of a committee report. No appeasement! Reform!

Flipper for Speaker

I rather think that Flipper the famous Dolphin should become the next House of Commons Speaker. Flipper is highly intelligent, came by his name honestly, isn't a knight of the shires, doesn't have a trade union background - in short free from bias. I appreciate that a new aquarium would present a difficulty but any government that has managed cost overruns on the Millenium Dome and the Olympics will not be fazed by this.

There are alternative flippers if you want choice. John Bercow . . . 

Election Time

I don't know how representative Question Time audiences really are. Obviously the BBC pre-selects to try to match whatever notion the metropolitan elite has of a representative audience but what they end up with is anther matter. They were however wholly hot for an election now.

Ben Bradshaw felt he had to defend the party line and developed a sophisticated argument that all the expenses information should come out first and be dealt with before the electorate could be trusted. Equally, the elitist Yasmin Alibah-Brown insisted that to trust the electorate at this time would result in the election of BNP candidates. To which we have to respond, if we are secure in our democracy, so what! During the 25 years I lived in Canada (and I don't think anyone would argue that Canada was a banana republic) a number of small parties came, enjoyed some limited success, and went. Democracy was not impaired.

So it must be with the BNP and if we are sensible we will allow this safety valve to work. The BNP will never gain mass appeal with its present raft of policies, but it does have some appeal to some voters who might have been traditional labour voters but who have become disillusioned. You might have thought that this would be the spur for Labour to get its act together and treat their voter base with some respect, but no, it is far easier to take the lazy option and condemn the opposition and despise voters who might look for an alternative. Apparently elitism survives and the Yasmin Alibah-Brown's view of the world has not oved on from Victorian times. "God has called us all to a certain station in life."

Normal service resumed?

Gordon Brown was up to his usual wooden, unimaginative standard today. An election would cause Zimbabwe-like chaos and therefore could not be called. Labour MPs who broke the rules would be disciplined which the electorate have already interpreted as meaning nobody will be disciplined as the "rules" forgave any excess. As if to reinforce that message Hazel Blears chirped up todat that she had done everything within the rules.

Brown has set up some committee which will presumably take months to report. Is this enough? Are we back to normal service? Will he get away with it?

Fortunately the Telegraph has more ammunition. Let's see what happens tomorrow.

The Reform Act of 2010 - Part 2

The Grammar School I attended in the 1950s was managed by a Headmaster, one secretary, a Senior Master and a Senior Mistress. There were teachers who taught their specialist subjects and prefects who gave teachers some relief by patrolling the school grounds at breaks and lunchtimes. As far as I could tell everything worked very well. Nowadays an equivalent school requires a Head, Deputy Head, Assistant Heads, Heads of Year, Heads of Departments, Assistant Heads of Department and a phalanx of secretarial staff. I don't sense that schools have become more effective over the past 60 years.

I make this observation because over the same time period Parliament has grown its administration from a handful of ministers and a few PPS's to a bewildering array of ministers. I don't doubt that highly developed arguments could be put forward for each of them but I cannot escape the conclusion that jobs have been developed to keep MPs occupied. Many of these functions could be properly done by trained civil servants. More ministers has led to less accountability and again I don't get a sense that government is more effective in delivering services.

My second reform is to reduce the number of government ministers - basically to one minister per department and put them all in the cabinet. Abolish junior ministers and keep one PPS to act as House of Commons liaison.

Gone, forgotten

This afternoon I was an unwilling listener to St Stuart Bell who claimed that Michael Martin was a reforming Speaker and should have been allowed to get on with the job. Later Gordon Brown claimed to be the only one who was reforming Parliament. Puhleeese! As I have remarked before Martin was never up to the job. Worse still he took every suggestion and offer of help as a personal slight and invented this idea that people were against him because of his background. There have been very many better men and women than Michael Martin who have been able to move on in life and actually clock up real achievements rather than polish a chip on the shoulder.

Gone now. Gordon Brown will probably give him a seat in the Lords where he can carry on troughing, but at least he won't be in a position to block reform.

Douglas Carswell appears to realize that the whole Parliamentary set up needs reform. I hope he is able to convince others. In the meantime Gordon Brown appears to believe that it's only a matter of cleaning up the expenses system and salaries for MPs, so we are not much further ahead.

Glenda Jackson

I first became aware of Glenda Jackson in 1966 when I saw Peter Brook's production of the play known as Marat/Sade. Although she had a minor part there was a stage presence and I was not surprised to be able to follow her subsequent stellar career. I also became a huge admirer when she decided to leave her acting career and become an MP. She appeared to do this for all the right reasons and I naively expected at the time that her political career would also be glittering.

How wrong I was, and it is a sad and cautionary tale is it not about the way our political system drains energy. Who would be more likely to get a political soundbite - Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Gerri Halliwell or Glenda Jackson? It's a rhetorical question.

Glenda Jackson has probably been a very good MP. I believe she was given some junior portfolio in Blair's early government and then put forward as a stop-Livingstone candidate. After that, she appeared to have no more usefulness to the governing class and appears to have faded. This is one illustration of how the "system" makes very poor use of talent. It is not the system of paying expenses that is rotten but the system of making MPs semi-redundant.

It is no surprise of course that she has been scrupulous about her expenses. It is what I would expect of a principled person.

The Reform Act of 2010 - Part 1

Early on in this expenses farrago I recall Stephen Pound touring the broadcast studios to insist that providing receipts for amounts under £25 would create an impossible work load for MPs. He insisted that MPs work "bloody hard" and that it would be "ridiculous" to expect MPs to do this.

Let's take at face value the assertion  that MPs do work hard and that it is a pressured job. We therefore need people who are dedicated to it. But you can't help noticing that as soon as MPs become ministers they seem to be able to cope with this second job without too much difficulty, and similarly, ex-ministers like Patricia Hewitt, Alan Milburn and William Hague can find time to slip into highly paid consultancy work, or that George Galloway has the time to be an MP and manage a broadcasting career. So which is it - a full time or part time job?

It has stuck me as ell as many other observers that the expenses scandal is a symptom of a Parliament that badly needs reform. The role of the MP has degenerated over many years from an independent representative of his or her constituency to little more than lobby fodder. And what really is the "sovereignty of Parliament" these days?

So perhaps we can start with the role of the MP. The idea of local constituency representation is both ancient and honourable and ought to be the core principle. Yet it is this aspect that has been the most manipulated by the parties in the 20th century. Ambitious and well-connected politicians  are parachuted into safe seats. MPs on the first rungs of the political ladder are reduced to asking planted questions along the lines of: "Does the Prime Minister agree with me that as the result of his government's unprecedented expenditure on education my Primary School in Lower Puddle has been able to afford to buy three computers?" Can you imagine Tony Blair ever returning to Sedburgh, or even the North East?

The first step is to restore proper local representation. Establish a residency requirement along the lines of 12 months certified residence within, say, 30 miles of the centre of the constituency prior to nomination. At a stroke this would gives MPs and their constituencies more independence from government manipulation and get closer to the original purpose of MPs.

Second, go for fixed term parliaments. The idea of calling an election at a time convenient for the incumbent party is now anachronistic. The term could be 4, 5 or even 7 and it could be staggered so that there is no wholesale replacement of the house, leading perhaps to more stable government. It would however, provide some employment security for MPs.

Third, pay MPs from the constituency. The Returning Officer would probably be the right person to do this. The taxes to support this could either be nationally or locally raised but this reform would do two things - free pay and expenses from government and political manipulation, and give back to the people in the constituency some sense of democratic control and ownership.

More thoughts in future posts. 

The mere shall inherit the earth

I've grown accustomed to the wannabe culture where people without any apparent talent, skill, knowledge or even graft can suddenly find themselves counted amongst the famous. Then tonight I saw a Sky News promo that featured Michael martin's bad-tempered dressing down of Kate Hoey and I thought, this man is likely to become the most famous Speaker of modern times. He will become a household name while his more distinguished predecessors will remain known only to a few.

The same observation could be made about Jackie Smith. She'll be remembered while those who could actually do the job won't.

Georgia on my mind

When I was 22 I had a very high opinion of myself and if the opportunity to become an MP came my way I would not have doubted myself for a moment. So I don't blame Georgia Gould for seeking a candidacy in a safe Labour seat but I do fault the Labour aristocracy for trying to parachute her into the seat. What were they thinking? 

I think I know the answer to that but fortunately events have intervened and the local party members have chosen a local candidate with some political experience. Good for them and bad cess to those who continue to treat Parliament with contempt.

Reform can start tomorrow

Throughout the 20th century, and certainly in my lifetime, the Speaker of the House of Commons was always a considerable parliamentarian  respected on all sides of the House. Then in 2000 MPs decided that social engineering should supercede common sense, so they by-passed the obvious merits of Gwyneth Dunwwody and Sir George Young in favour of someone who still wants to fight the class war.

From day one Michael Martin was clearly inadequate but MPs convinced themselves that the machinery of office and a certain amount of goodwill would take care of the rough edges. I don't suppose they dreamed that the job would require some real leadership qualities. Quite disturbing really and on a par with putting people into ministerial roles who only have wannabe credentials.He has been, and remains, an obstacle to reform. Reform is going to be complicated enough as it is without this antedeluvian roadblock. He must go now, not next year. He ha done nothing to deserve the reward of a peerage and if Brown tries to pull this stunt i will only bring Parliament further into disrepute.  

A winning goal for the Dead Tree Press

When The Daily Telegraph published its spoiler articles about Guido after he revealed the Damien McBride smear I vowed never to buy the newspaper again. I suppose that shows you should never say "never"! I am now on my tenth consecutive day of Telegraph purchases - a paper I have only occasionally bought before. Plainly the arrival of Benedict Brogan has provided some leadership and direction to the paper's political reporting. I'm not holding my breath, but I would expect to see Brogan and Heather Brooke in the next honours list.

Newspapers as businesses are clearly in some trouble and possibly in decline but the Telegraph has proved that there is life in the beast and that they have the resources and expertise to do a big story in depth. No other medium can match it for immediacy and in-depth analysis.

The newspaper is a well-known technology, like the book, and although I have listened to predictions of the demise of the book since 1993, it has not happened. in fact there are more books published than ever before. We should therefore reflect that the newspaper may find ways of surviving. It can be read at the breakfast table, in bed, in the bath, on the train, in a bus shelter, and in bright sunlight. It can be folded, crumpled, torn and ultimately disposed of. It is often re-cycled - used to wrap fish and chips, insulate the chests of Tour de France riders making a rapid mountain descent, absorb spillage, provide temporary protection of surfaces and is even used as wall insulation. When I once bought a lakeside cabin in Canada many years ago I found old 1930s newspapers in the walls when eventually came to remodel it.

So I revising my opinion about the potential life of newspapers. There is a shift to online media but don;t write off newspapers - not just yet.

A custard pie for Big Brother

George Orwell's 1984 had a context; he was writing it in post-war Britain where the tendency to, and consequences of, totalitarian control were obvious to most people. In a very different genre J R R Tolkein developed a similar theme.

The society I in which I grew up in the 40s and 50s was very tightly controlled but held together as much by social convention as government regulation, although there was plenty of that. We had food rationing, restricted shop hours, no sport on Sunday, restricted pub opening times and the BBC controlled the airwaves. For a number of years there wasn't much grumbling - "mustn't complain" was the guiding principle, but things began to open up in the 1960s and for someone of my generation this was the right reaction against the stifling environment we had inherited. It took a generation to move away from that monolithic society but it did happen.

Nobody wants to go willingly back to those days but it does now appear that government does want to return to the days where almost everybody did what they were told. We have had a decade or more of increasingly prescriptive and regulatory government spending millions (no billions) on wild technology schemes that they imagine will bring us all under control. Ironically every one of these schemes has failed to achieve its objective and has turned ordinary citizens into an anarchic frame of mind.

So John Redwood, who has remained wisely silent during the expenses disclosures, is right to make this observation:

I have often written about how much many people hate the bossy, autocratic snooper government which has damaged our freedoms in the last decade. We hate the cameras, the road blocks, the hectoring public advertisements, the multiplying army of regulators, the aggressive tax collectors, the enforced political correctness, the thought police, the concrete blocks around Parliament, the spying on our rubbish bins and the stealthy approach to making us all have Identity cards. Government, both national and local, has become a bunch of snoopers who know how we should all live and know where we live.

The Big Brother state always fails. There are dozens of examples in our recent history. Eventually people tire of it and rebel and I think, along with John Redwood, that this is fueling the anger and resentment against the MPs. At the moment the public are in a mildly anarchic mood - a custard pie in the face perhaps - but unless the government shows itself capable of reforming Parliament, the mood could degenerate into something worse.

Food-raid

Memories of  the 19th century famine in Ireland run deep,and Tony Blair was big enough to apologise for that - on behalf of whom I am not sure. When my great great great grandfather was born in Donegal in 1780 there was an estimated population of 8 million; by the end of the 18th century the population was half that and has never recovered. The famine was a terrible period.

It is therefore heart-warming to know that our goverment has taken steps to ensure that this does not happen again and that Mr and Mrs Robinson, elected MPs from Northern Ireland, are the first beneficiaries of our new food-(r)aid program. Apparently they were able to claim £400 each, £800 per month in total, to cover their food bill. God be praised! Our Irish cousins will never starve again!

The Dredge Report

I don't have a moat; you don't have a moat. You might have thought that moats belonged to the days of yore when knights of Appledore did their deeds of derring-do. Not so it appears. Some MPs have moats and they need cleaning. Naturally this sort of expense should be charged to the taxpayer. How else is a hard-working MP to get a good night's sleep unless he is assured that the burden of moat-cleaning is undertaken by the allowance system? It is reassuring to know is it not that the Fees Office has been so understanding.

But perhaps our MPs are not being so archaic after all. The way the economy of this country is going and the absence of government my mean that we will all need moats in future. Just to be prepared you might wish to clip the article on moat cleaning from today's Daily Telegraph - page 27.

Heckling Time

I missed Question Time last night but picked it up on iPlayer this morning. I've heard ironic laughter and murmers of discontent on previous programs when politicians have tried to defend the indefensible but never this level of hostility. Poor old Ming Campbell, whom most of us in sober moments would regard as an honourable politician, got caught up in this too. And Margaret Beckett! Well!

I suppose she got where she did by arguing that black is white and defending her position at all costs and after years of practice she knows no other way. Even this morning she was on the radio again telling voters that they did not understand.

The point is, however, that we understand only too well the venality of this system and the quality of the people who have put themselves forward to represent our interests. 

From Profumo to Blears: a tale of shabby behaviour.

I remember the Profumo Affair, as it came to be known. The salacious part was the sexual hi-jinks of the Cliveden set - "how the other half loves" as the wags of the day might have put it. The political part was that call girls were being shared between Russian diplomats and Cabinet Ministers. The stupid part was Profumo lying to MacMillan about his involvement in an attempt to cover up.

There are not too many comparisons with today's parliamentary scandal but I do want to note that Profumo left office and parliament in absolute disgrace and then after a lifetime's penance doing unheralded charity work eventually redeemed himself.

In the end he proved a better example than today's crop of MPs who appear to believe that brandishing a cheque in a broadcast studio is their quick channel to redemption,

Poachers and Gamekeepers

We often make the comparison between poachers (outside the law) and gamekeepers (upholding the law), most often these days when someone from the wrong side of the law takes on the gamekeeper role. Until today I hadn't considered that you could simultaneously be a poacher and a gamekeeper. Consider the case of Don Touhig, whom I, in common with most of the country, had not heard of until yesterday. He is the chairman of the Members Allowance Committee which Gordon Brown has assured us will bring about a radical shake up of the system.

Oh yeah? Mr Touhig has been, and as far as we know remains, a vigorous opponent of change and transparency and a keen ally of the Speaker. He was in the vanguard of resistance to exposure of any of these receipts in the first instance and had the High Court not disagreed would have been successful in keeping the lid on this can of worms.

Mr Touhig has also been a "flipper" and has no doubt benefited from the egregious system he is dedicated to maintain - proof, if any were needed, that you can be both a poacher and a gamekeeper at the same time.

A Special Relationship

The term "special relationship" used to be reserved for the diplomatic ties between this country and the USA - Churchill and Rooseveldt, MacMillan and Kennedy, Thatcher and Reagan, Blair and Bush and even Gordon Brown's pathetic attempts to tie himself to Barack Obama's coat tails - but now we learn that our MPs (all 646 of them) have a special relationship with HMRC. I am no longer astonished.

So that probably means, as Hazel Blears has already told us, that she has done nothing wrong by declaring one of her homes as a "second home" for House of Commons allowance purposes and as a primary residence for Capital Gains allowance. Apparently they fill in a special tax form far different from the one that mere mortals like ourselves have to complete. They don't pay tax on their expenses claim, unlike the rest of us whose expenses are subject to some rigorous analysis. 

I haven't tried to do this, but I strongly suspect that HMRC would not allow me to designate a holiday cottage in Devon as my principal residence if I were to sell it, thus avoiding the Capital gains tax that Hazel Blears happily voted for, knowing that she would never be called upon to pay it herself.

Oops!

So now Elliot Morley has been found out claiming his mortgage interest long after he had sold the property. Carry on claiming! It was a "mistake" and apparently has been paid back "within the last two weeks", which I interpret to mean as soon as the news was out that the Daily Telegraph had the goods on MPs. Funny that - all this time he never noticed the oversight and yet the minute he knew that the information was in the public domain it became immediately plain to him.

Stephen Fry and Lembit Opik

Until yesterday Stephen Fry was on his way to National Treasure status, then as he was doorstepped by a reporter on the way to an award ceremony he decided to give us all a lecture about how we were all being petit bourgeois about the abuse of expenses and should grow up and realize that there are far more important issues to concern ourselves with.

Yes there are important issues but none is more important in my view than how we are governed. We have an quaint system of government based upon a few written documents and historical tradition and this lack of definition means that there has to be a strong bond of trust between the governors and the governed. If that is broken (and it has been) how can we have any confidence that the big issues like the economy and efficient delivery of public services?

I have always seen Lembit Opik as a slightly weird but engaging eccentric. Good on UFOs, Weather Women and Cheeky Girls and good for a chuckle on "Have I got News for You". Oh well, today on Simon Mayo's show he came across as humourless and self-regarding as he tried to defend the right of MPs to keep this information secret.

After 356 years

I’ve thought about this for some days now and faltered because it is a commitment and I wanted to be sue in myself that I could sustain it. But as the days have passed I’ve become more and more disillusioned through hearing the self serving claptrap from MPs and some of their mates in the media, so I’m going to add my small voice to the swelling chorus in the country against this abuse by the ruling classes.

There is a lot that I didn't like about Oliver Cromwell but he did know how to root out abuse and deal with it effectively. His time has come again.