Another damn blog http://thisisrjg.posterous.com More unedited thoughts from someone you don't know posterous.com Thu, 03 May 2012 23:30:00 -0700 The wrong answer http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/the-wrong-answer http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/the-wrong-answer

7140668329_3ff707fffc_o

Image by Coventry City Council - CC-BY-NC-ND

Amidst a low turnout, the people of the English cities have largely rejected adopting a London-style Mayorality system.

The basic reason for introducing such a system is that local government is broken in England. Councils have either got permanent, unmovable majorities on one hand or shifting, unstable coalitions on the other. Neither is working well: permanent majorities lead to a lack of dynanism in councillors and stodgy, slow-to-react councils.

Shifting coalitions and their cousins - councils swinging between one party and another each election - mean that councillors spend their time fighting (sometimes literally), backstabbing, playing to the gallery and otherwise being very insular and political. This results in council policy forever changing and the council services being disrupted.

The Mayoral system is meant to stop that. Instead of such poor extremes, you get one man (almost always a man, alas) with the power concentrated in his hands for four years and the councillors act as the check and balance on him. This sounds great in theory but in practice it's the same again - either it's permanently the same man or it swings back and for between two wildly opposing men, albeit only once every 4 years rather than every May.

The solution is obvious to all politicians at all levels, but they don't like it. They don't want to let the solution in through the door because when people discover how well it works, they start wanting it for everything. The solution is the supervote, also known as the single transferrable vote (STV).

The supervote put all of the power in the hands of the electorate. The parties no longer have the power of patronage; there is no longer a need to vote for someone you dislike in order to avoid electing someone you dislike more; there are no permanent majorities; there are no dramatic swings. And above all there's no tactical voting. Because of that, the need to punish or reward the distant national government in London via a local election disappears.

What the individual votes for, the council gets. Your party's candidates are all elected together but you get to chose between them. Suddenly you have all the power over the parties and the councillors. If you're on the left of Labour, you can vote to push Labour locally to the left. Ditto if you're on the right of the Tories.

Supervote does result in more coaltions, but they are more stable - councillors don't have to guess what people want, they already know. Political infighting doesn't work because the public will use the supervote to punish it. We get more responsive councillors and a more responsive council. Turnout goes up because the vote means something. If your councillor is rubbish, you have another one to turn to. If they're all rubbish, you have the power to remove them - even without changing what party you vote for.

The power of the supervote is truly awesome. And that's why the politicians don't want you to have it.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Wed, 18 Apr 2012 11:39:00 -0700 We wake up, we go out, smoke a fag, put it out http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/we-wake-up-we-go-out-smoke-a-fag-put-it-out http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/we-wake-up-we-go-out-smoke-a-fag-put-it-out

2655975315_f9c362b470_b

I'm a smoker.

I have been since my early teens. Smoking and me were made for each other. I love the taste. I love the smell. I love the sophistication that I feel with a fag between my fingers. Each cigarette is something I look forward to, enjoy lighting, enjoy drawing the fumes into my asthmatic lungs and enjoy stubbing out at the end. Smoking and me were made for each other. When I'm not smoking a cigarette, something is missing from my hand.

I'm an anti-smoker.

I don't like other people's smoke. As much as I would really enjoy a ciggy with a pint, I'd rather not share my pint with other people's smoke. I love a cigarette between courses of food but don't want someone smoking during my meal. A very long train journey is a nightmare for me without the gaspers. I'd rather not share a carriage with a single person puffing on a fag - let alone sit in a (now long forgotten) smoking carriage.

Perhaps that lets me make the following comment about current government policy on cigarettes.

Cigarettes are expensive. This is A Good Thing. The cost deters people from starting and makes the insane cost of nicotine replacement therapy seem reasonable. (Yes, a full weekly course of NRT costs less than a week of cigs, but smokers discount the cost of the daily packet as if it was background voices and inflate the cost of NRT because it seems so upfront).

The latest wheeze (ho ho) is to put cigarettes out of sight. You go to buy them and they're not there. The shop assistant unlocks a door, fishes them out and sells them to you blind.

I have my preferred brand - Silk Cut Silver, if you must know. It's low tar and low nicotine. Of course this is worse than not smoking at all, and I agree it it's probably no better than smoking Capstan Full Strength. But as I queue at the kiosk, if they don't have my brand, what do I do? Write off the queue time or buy something else? I'm human. I'll buy something else. And it'll be stronger. So for the next 24-48 hours, I'll be smoking something that tastes stronger, has higher tar and has higher nicotine. That'll help when the day comes to give up.

But the worst part of this stupid idea is that it makes the price of fags completely discountable. Yes, us smokers will choose by price to a degree, despite what I said above. But if prices continue to rise above inflation, the motivation for stopping increases. Poorer smokers - and I've been a poor smoker, even whilst in the arms of the welfare state - will buy a packet of 10 and eke them out when the price gets too much. Eventually, they'll turn to their GP and ask to be enrolled on the humiliation-and-hectoring course the NHS does free to help you quit (that would *so* not work for me - the words "who the fuck do you think you're talking to?" would bubble up uncontrollably).

What has happened here is that the price of cigarettes has now been hidden. Not the packets, not the subtle advertising, not the craving - just the price. As the cupboard doors appear over the fags, so the connection between price and the cost of smoking disappear. Already WHSmith do this - their railway station outlets put a £1 premium on the cost of 20 fags. The shop assistants usually warn you. "They're £8.10 here and there's a real shop down the street". When they don't warn you, you're faced with paying £8.10 there and then. And you do, because you've queued and because you're gasping and because you don't want to shop elsewhere and you don't want to annoy the shoppie… So you pay.

And so it will be when all the cigarettes are covered up. The supermarket hegemony will jack the prices because you can't see them. The local shops will undercut them, but only by a few pence. The NHS's major weapon against smoking, the control of the price, will be broken and the rewards will be taken by the large retailers and the tobacco companies who are about to get a cigarette-based bonanza of cash.

And the losers? Well, the slow but steady rise in the cost of fags has benefited the NHS via the Treasury for 30 or more years. It has also pealed off the more casual smoker who choses to give up on Budget Day. The forthcoming free-for-all in prices will benefit neither. Smokers will be quickly immunised to the prices. But the retailers and the tobacco companies will be minting it.

The only loser will be the NHS. But then we're under a Liberal-Conservative government of the rich, by the rich, for the rich, that believes that the NHS is for losers only anyway. So it hardly matters.

 

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Tue, 14 Feb 2012 09:10:00 -0800 Tear down this Bill, Mr Lansley http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/tear-down-this-bill-mr-lansley http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/tear-down-this-bill-mr-lansley

The government's epetitions website is meant to be a place that we subjects can blow off a little steam without actually bothering our lords and masters.

That, however, isn't to say it isn't useful for those of us who want to take back parliament from the vested interests that are now running the show. When 100,000 people sign a petition, MPs have to look into having a debate about it - getting our voice into parliament, something many MPs (my own, Fester McVague, in particular) feel they were elected to prevent.

So here's a petition that can make a difference, even if the result is only to bolster the ineffective opposition parties and shake the smug, self-satisfied consciences of the Liberal Democrat MPs who have let power go to their heads and their hearts.

If you're a British resident, visit the Drop the NHS Reforms Bill epetition now - at the time of writing, it's agonisingly close to the 100,000 signatures needed to force a debate, most of which were gained today.

Whatever you vote, and I don't presume to know what goes on between you and a (secret) ballot box, if you're British you have reason to be grateful for our NHS. Yeah, it's not perfect, but it's ours and it's run by people who are doing it for love not money, for people regardless of what they can or should be asked to pay. And it is ours, not the government's, not big business's, not Lansley's, not anyone's. The NHS is ours and we need to stop it being privatised by stealth.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Sat, 03 Dec 2011 06:02:00 -0800 I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this any more http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/im-as-mad-as-hell-and-im-not-going-to-take-th http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/im-as-mad-as-hell-and-im-not-going-to-take-th

It must be really easy to be right wing and reactionary. Toss a subject at a committed Tory and they've got an instant, knee-jerk answer that they didn't even need to think about. Immigrants? Coming over here to do jobs white people aren't prepared to do - send them back! Gays? They're just trying to make their unnatural sodomy as acceptable as my heterosexual sodomy. The poor? Why do they expect handouts - can't they pull themselves up like I did with my free education, free university and free healthcare? Taxes? Why should I pay a portion of the salary I earn in my job in insurance into a system that I probably will never claim from?

Being left wing and progressive is far harder. With every issue, you have to sit down and actually expend mental calories on deciding what the best course of action is, weighing the greater social good against your own upbringing and class. Burkas? Well, I deplore the circumstances that would force them on to women, but I'm loathe to dictate what someone can and can't wear. Overthrowing dictators in far off countries? In principle there's something to be said for not allowing murderous scum to run a country, but in practice overthrowing them always makes life worse for everybody and smacks of colonialism. Religion? I don't have one and I don't appreciate having religion - any religion - thrust down my throat, but if I'm entitled to be an atheist, then others are entitled not to be.

See what I mean?

Today I came face-to-face with one of these dilemmas. As I went into the supermarket, a bunch of holy-looking do-gooders stopped me and pressed a shopping list into my hands. It seems that Wirral has now got a 'foodbank' and they'd quite like me to donate to it. I took the list and spent around half an hour standing in an aisle having a mental debate as to whether this is a good idea or not.

There are several problems with foodbanks. First and foremost, since the Second World War, society and government have agreed that it's the state's responsibility that no one in the UK should ever starve. Successive governments have tried to shake free of this basic, humane commitment but we've never let them. Until now. Now, with the country suffering from the wastrel ways of obscenely rich bankers, we've decided to cut the poorest loose to go hungry and die. This is wrong. But if I donate to a foodbank, am I not doing 'Dave' Cameron's job for him? Shouldn't he be finding the money to prevent people dying of hunger in a first-world nation rather than wasting it on selling nationalised banks at a loss?

Then there's the problem of foodbank schemes being run by churches. There's an element of "sing for your supper" implicit in the leaflet they handed me. If you claim from a foodbank, the church is likely to be highly involved - you go there to collect the food, you have a talk with a god-botherer spouting Jesus, you get pressured to start coming on Sundays and pretending you believe. You may be financially bankrupt, but churchgoers are often the first to believe that others are morally bankrupt as well. Your food is going to come with a side order of Jesus and a desert of condemnation and pity. This type of crap was one of the reasons Attlee's 1945-1951 government took poor relief out of the hands of local vicars and brought it into the machinery of the state - nobody should be forced to pray for their supper, let alone be judged for it as well.

Then there's the taking away of people's choice. Yes, that's a very right wing thing to say, but bear with me. When you get your Family Allowance and Income Support and the other meagre crumbs from the LibCon table, it comes as cash. This lets you choose what you do with it: shoes for little Johnny this week, an extra pint of milk for me tomorrow, a bus ride to his mum's so she can look after the kids for a few hours... all tiny, but all very important. When you're poor - and I've been poor - your world shrinks. The giro is the only thing that expands your horizons, even if only slightly. Instead, we're now routinely leaving the least able to cope with no money at all; they go to a foodbank and they get... a bag full of food. Chosen by a middle-class shopper, handed to them pre-packed by a middle-class do-gooder, that tiny horizon is slapped shut - you'll get what you're given.

Also, I doubted what the middle-class shoppers of the Wirral would choose for their poorer brethren. And I was right: as I left the store, the modest pile of groceries was all "Value" items - inedible "Value" cornflakes, "Value" packet soups so thin can see the bottom of your cup when you've made them, "Value" toilet paper that will tear you a new one. The middle classes of Wirral had spoken: you foodbank users, look at our largess - nasty crap we wouldn't give house room to, awful shite we would never eat ourselves. Gee, how generous of my fellow man.

So, what did I decide? After half an hour standing there, completely unable to decide whether these points outweighed my general humanity, I decided that the socialist thing to do would be to donate to the foodbank and get angry about it later. So I did. And I bought brand names, stuff that I would choose for myself, not stuff I would choose for others, because that idea stinks. Heinz soups; Colgate toothpaste; Lynx shower gel and so forth - stuff that people, that I, would want.

But now I'm angry. I'm very very angry. THIS IS WRONG. Foodbanks shouldn't exist because they shouldn't be necessary. We MUST get these awful, nasty, cruel Liberals and Conservatives out of government next time. And we must send a message to Labour: look to Beveridge. Look to Attlee. It's time to roll back Thatcherism. We're as mad as hell, and we're not going to take this any more.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Tue, 29 Nov 2011 02:31:00 -0800 The Prime Minister displays his common touch http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/the-prime-minister-displays-his-common-touch http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/the-prime-minister-displays-his-common-touch

Youreallinthistogether

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Mon, 29 Aug 2011 03:26:48 -0700 Let them fail http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/let-them-fail http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/let-them-fail
3084877308_012d4f195e_b

If you listen to the business news on the Today programme or read the inside pages of the Financial Times, you may have spotted something called "LIBOR".

LIBOR is the interest rate banks charge to each other. Because banks are big and have vaults stuffed with money, it's a low-risk deal to lend money to other banks and the rates are therefore only slightly more than the base rate of the central bank in question. A few years ago the rate rose significantly as the risk of the money a European bank was lending would go to an insolvent US bank increased. It wasn't possible to say with confidence which US bank was insolvent. If I presented you with a bowl of strawberries and said "one of these is rotten but the rest are fine", you'd likely reject the entire bowl. The markets did the same: they stopped lending money to the US banks because one of them was rotten. We called it the "credit crunch", and ultimately it brought down a number of banks and then the economy itself.

This rate has started to rise again, this time propelled from the other direction: the US banks are frightened that a European bank is secretly insolvent. There are a number to pick from: many large multi-purpose banks in France and Germany have heavy investments in Spain, Greece and Italy. If any of those countries defaults or if any banks in those country go bankrupt, there will be a domino effect that eventually will hit the US banks. So the liquidity in the markets starts to dry up again.

Last time round we pumped money into the system. We underwrote the losses of the banks, encouraged weak banks to merge into strong banks, even bought capital in the failing banks to keep them afloat. The reason was stark: the crisis wasn't anticipated. If allowed to play out, the next morning that cash machines would empty and not be refilled. Shops would not get a float delivery from Securicor. People paid in cash would go unpaid. People paid by BACS would be unable to access the money. The world as we knew it would've stopped.

This time, I suggest, things are different. If we see this happen again, we must let the banks fail.

Not, of course, an undisciplined collapse -- more like controlled demolition. It should be easy, with forewarning, to protect the money of ordinary savers and the loans of ordinary mortgage payers. It should be easy to transfer these assets and liabilities to one of the state-owned banks we got last time round. If governments move quickly, they can take the ordinary accounts, the current and mortgage accounts, the savings accounts, the stuff people in the street like us have and move them to a safer place. The remaining sick bank left behind should be allowed to fail and take the bad debts with it.

To a degree we did this last time, especially with Northern Rock, but we made the startling error of taking on the bad debts with the good and leaving that badness on the government's books. We even facilitated Northern Rock taking the most profitable part of its business and moving it off-shore, out of the reach of the government. Last time we paid for the banks' mistakes. This time we must seek to profit from them in some way.

It's odd to hear such words coming from the keyboard of an old-fashioned socialist like me. But as long as the savings and houses of the ordinary people are protected, I don't give a stuff what happens next. The banks and the markets are not the real enemy anyway: the real enemy is and always has been unemployment. Rescuing the banks ruined the economy. This increased unemployment. I'm willing to bet that letting them fail won't be as bad. If it costs nothing to the government and sweeps away a lot of unsound debt, the increase in unemployment should be less than what it would've been with another rescue. It'll also be quicker to bounce back from.

Why is unemployment the enemy? Because unemployment, any unemployment, is a very bad thing. It's bad for the unemployed person, left almost penniless and subject the humiliation of claiming Jobseeker's Allowance. It's bad for the unemployed person's spouse, left working harder or scrimping further. It's bad for the unemployed person's children, left hungry and uncertain. It's bad for the unemployed person's community, as ordinary transactions dry up and more businesses fail leading to more unemployment. It's bad for the unemployed person's region, struggling to get investment as potential employers would rather invest were there is less depravation. It's bad for the the unemployed person's country, because high unemployment goes hand in hand with rich people getting richer and poor people getting poorer; eventually, you have riots and looting.

In a land with total employment, the workers have power. You're difficult to replace; the company wants to keep you and will invest in your skills and raise your wages and generally try to be seen as benevolent to keep you in your job.

In a land with high unemployment, the companies have power. You're easy to replace; the company doesn't care if you leave and can hire someone with skills rather than training you. The company knows you won't ask for high wages because you fear replacement by someone cheaper. They don't have to appear to be benevolent -- they can act like bastards to extract more work from you. If you don't like it: go and be unemployed instead.

Of course, there was a flip-side to this. Full employment in Britain brought real power to the workers and we misused it. We tried to use it to bring down governments (succeeding twice). We tried to use it to screw fantasy money and non-productive jobs out of employers who then went bankrupt. We tried to use it to force the government to buy the failed businesses to keep us in work (and succeeded: think British Leyland). But the answer to this was not what Thatcher did -- deliberately create unemployment, foster it to destroy the workers' power and then stigmatise the unemployed to keep the fear of unemployment high. There were many, many other ways that wouldn't've destroyed so much of urbanised Britain without creating a permanent hard-core of unemployable people, whose children and grandchildren are now on our streets, equally unemployable.

But the idea is still in the minds of economists and politicians. If unemployment is over 2 million, the workers will remain powerless and the corporations will make more money faster. They rescued the banks last time knowing that it would push unemployment up. Next time, they should let the banks fail gracefully, otherwise we're going to keep rescuing them again and again and each time we'll push unemployment up more.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Tue, 09 Aug 2011 00:28:20 -0700 I predict a riot http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/i-predict-a-riot http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/i-predict-a-riot
2163691046_ca21f66155_o

A third night of rioting, now mainly based around the concept of looting stores then setting them on fire. It's a new thing for Great Britain, something not seen since the (more politically justifiable) riots of the 1980s.

Three years ago, a chain of events previous thought impossible occurred. The banks had become reckless, spending money they didn't have on schemes they didn't understand. Lined up like dominoes, exposed to each other's risk, they started to teeter and then fall. Each bank that fell took the next one along with it. The good times, the boom we'd got used to under Labour, turned to a bust. The government staggered on but lost the following general election and in came the Tories with Liberal support.

What happened next was predictable. Senior Tories are very friendly with senior bankers. Indeed, senior bankers are the senior Tories. Members of the Tory front bench gave up lucrative jobs in investment banks to take their seats in parliament. The new government had an emergency budget where they made it clear to everyone that the collapse of the banks had to be paid for. And it was to be paid for by the poor. Taxes on the poorest rose whilst tax on the rich (the "wealth generators" in Reaganism's discredited "trickle-down" theory) was cut. The tax on bankers' bonuses was removed as was access to welfare for the sick and disabled. Cuts were made across the board, except in the most leafiest of the Tory Shires, where more money was made available. And the bankers would not pay for their mistakes: we would, as they were rewarded by further showers of unearned cash.

We all saw this and most of us were appalled. It was unfair, even disgusting. The students and the "feckless" public service workers took to the streets, but mostly we shrugged and thought "well, that's the price to be paid" or "well, that's what Tories do".

But we forgot that there was a class of people who saw this but were unable to vocalise the scandal they felt. A class of kids from the fourth or fifth generation of poverty, with no aspirations because we'd given up on them and forgotten them. A class who were to be hit hardest by the foolishness of the super-rich. A class who didn't protest about student fees because they were never going to university in the first place.

What that class saw was the same as we saw: the rich getting richer as the poor paid. They saw the middle classes queuing outside the Apple store for the latest glass-and-aluminium trifle while their parents couldn't get Jobcentre Plus to pay for tonight's dinner. They saw this deep inequality. A spark -- another murder by armed policemen but it could've been anything -- and the place was on fire. This class, however, saw an opportunity. They saw that they had been shafted by society, by the bankers, by the Tories and they did what our consumer culture should have expected: they took supermarket trollies and looted. They stole the trainers they're heavily sold but can't afford. They stole the games consoles they see advertised everywhere that they didn't have. They stole the posh frocks and the expensive food, the carpets and the furnishings, the things they didn't have but we'd continued to make them want.

Of course, it spread wider than that - the looters included people from further up the social scale who wanted their slice of the freebies. It spread beyond the worst places in London to the nicer suburbs and then to the country's other cities as people all wanted what they'd been promised but couldn't have. Our leaders sat in their luxury villas in Tuscany and the like, enjoying the foreign holidays this class will never get. And back home, the shopping streets burned.

None of this provides an excuse. Looting and rioting achieve nothing and invariably make the social, political and economic situation in the areas affected far, far worse. There was zero chance of this right-wing Liberal/Conservative government pouring jobs and investment into these areas before; there's zero chance now. Rioting destroys the very homes and jobs the rioters are concerned about; it is the ultimate in self-defeating action.

Meanwhile, it has thrown up something interesting. At a recent royal wedding, 5000 police were available to keep the pampered couple safe from the rest of us. As London burnt, the Met could only find 1500 officers to do anything and said they were powerless to stop it. At the wedding, the police happily rounded up any elements that didn't fit the picture postcard image the Tories wanted us to see; the homeless and the republicans and the people having a party dressed as zombies all went into the cells. As London burnt, the police said they were powerless to stop it. During the protests over Liberal hypocrisy on student fees, thousands of officers 'kettled' peaceful women and children for hours whilst politicians talked about how 'violent' they'd been. As London burnt, the police said they were powerless to stop it.

'Dave' Cameron flew home overnight. He needs to be visible but not let anyone see how tanned and well-fed he is (Crisis? What crisis?). He needs to be seen to be in control whilst continuing his streak of doing nothing. He needs to tell everyone it will get better whilst pursuing policies that he knows, truly knows, will make everything worse. And in the midst of this active inaction, he needs to remember that while the looters are responsible for what they've stupidly done, he is also responsible for goading them into it.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Mon, 11 Jul 2011 12:11:34 -0700 PM in a bubble http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/pm-in-a-bubble http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/pm-in-a-bubble
Cameron

I'm a news junkie. I have been for years, quite possibly since the miners' strike, certainly since the Brighton bomb. It's just in me: I love news. It should come as no surprise that the News of the World phone hacking scandal (that was - it's now hundreds of times larger than that) has had me transfixed like no story since the Coalition negotiations or September 11.

It's not just the shear inevitability of the story as it unfolds - albeit with some surprises in the detail - but the fact that it has proved something those of us on the left have been saying for years: Murdoch has power and influence on government that is truly terrifying. We all knew this, we all said it regularly, but nobody did anything about. When people like me shouted that Murdoch having Christmas dinner with Cameron was a bad thing, most people shrugged and said "so?". Certainly the politicians chose to ignore the disquiet, even politicians on the left.

But now it stands revealed: Murdoch has Cameron's balls in a drawer, as he had Blair's before him. That he failed to get Brown's balls was why he destroyed the man (Gordon didn't help by being useless as PM, of course). So when Murdoch announced he wanted to take full control of Sky, Cameron squeaked his approval and the opposition merely murmured, if they said anything at all. The government couldn't object, didn't want to object, because Murdoch had more than the Prime Minister's ear: he had (or was perceived to have) the power to destroy Cameron and his shoddy little government.

Adding Andy Coulson, a Murdoch favourite of the past, to the Downing Street staff helped Cameron keep Murdoch on side. It also helped Cameron with one of his biggest problems: the man doesn't have the common touch. Yeah, sure, Cameron has enough of Blair's earnestness and Clinton's empathy to make people believe that he's one of us. But he isn't. He's the rich son of a very rich father, he went to a private school and married a millionaire's daughter. He lives with other millionaires and has staff to look after his house. Whether or not he knows the price of a loaf of bread is unimportant - he's never even considered the idea of looking. It just gets put on his American Express Centurion Card and it gets paid by his accountant the moment the bill is due.

Cameron has no experience of small change or £5 notes. He's never had a mortgage, he's never paid his own car tax. He's never arranged for a plumber to come nor tried to start the boiler. That was why he needed Coulson: someone who had done all those things but also was comfortable with the posh knobs like Cameron and Osborne that he was going to have to knock about with. Coulson could provide the common touch, slipping him details on basic things we all do for ourselves that Cameron had never done - never even conceived that people would do for themselves. In Cameron's bubble, there was nobody who could provide this experience and expertise so hiring someone from outside was the way to go. It could only be a bonus that Murdoch himself provided a reference.

I'd assume Cameron thought he was buying himself some peace from Murdoch. The PM-in-a-bubble had no way of knowing how bad things were at News International. Indeed, he didn't want to know; it wouldn't matter anyway as it was never going to come out; and his close circle saw it - still sees it - as their job to keep their isolated, otherworldly PM-in-a-bubble in his bubble where he wants to be. When Ashdown and Rusbridger and others went to his advisors and tried to tip them off, they nodded, agreed and didn't pass the message on: the PM's bubble was not to be burst for a pair of lefties, or indeed anyone else.

People have disbelieved Cameron for saying that, while he asked Coulson for "reassurances" that he wasn't bringing baggage with him, he never pressed the matter and asked the natural follow-up questions. I do believe him. Why would he? In his Club, he never asks follow-up questions, rich gentlemen never do. With his colleagues he never asks follow-up questions, rich gentlemen won't answer. It would be a wrenching break with his character to even think of asking the basic questions you or I would ask. It'd be like asking the plumber how much he charged per hour: you and I would want to know that; Cameron might be mildly interested to see the invoice but really it doesn't concern him.

The problem with being the PM-in-a-bubble is that it has left him horribly exposed. Exposed as out-of-touch, yes, but also exposed to the popular backwash for the whole sordid News International affair. As a rich gentleman, he must be aware that he has implicitly at least given a handshake contract - the strongest kind - to Murdoch that the government will facilitate his takeover of BSkyB. That's now politically impossible, so it's been kicked successively further into the long grass in the hope that by the time the decision is made and Cameron is called to honour his handshake, the public will have forgotten the matter and the deal can proceed.

All this is why people on Twitter and in the non-Murdoch papers have been playing "Where's Dave?" today. The news conference he gave last week was designed to draw a line under the affair; when it became clear that a line could not be drawn and his association with Coulson directly, the poison of (and poisonous) Rebekah Brooks indirectly and Murdoch from afar was doing him real damage and he couldn't talk his way out of it nor just blame the previous government, he had to go to ground. If nothing else, the PM-in-a-bubble doesn't have someone to whisper in his ear the magic formula that the public would accept. He needs Coulson; and that's where the problems began.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Mon, 06 Jun 2011 13:07:47 -0700 As Thatcher nods approvingly http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/as-thatcher-nods-approvingly http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/as-thatcher-nods-approvingly
Blue_vince_2

I saw lights coming on above the heads of the remaining supporters of the Liberal Democrats today.

Since the Tories came to power with Liberal support last year, Liberal Democrat friends have been quick to defend their party's abysmal record in government. As one Liberal minister after another has stood up in parliament or on the stump and announced illiberal, hateful, even downright evil policies straight from the Tory manifesto, my Liberal Democrat friends have said "They're a restraining force! It'd be worse without them! It's a price worth paying for voting reform!".

My reply has been same each time. The Liberals were elected on a Liberal manifesto. Why are they the ones that get to announced the implementation of far-right Tory policies? Why does reasonableness flow from the arch-Thatcherite Cameron creature and betrayal from the man with the office in a box in the corner of the PM's broom cupboard?

And how could it be worse without them? So far, we've had almost everything promised - threatened - by the Tories when they were in opposition and almost nothing threatened - promised - by the LibDems when they were the half-forgotten minor party. The things that Liberal Democrats have trumpeted as "great victories for Liberalism" were things the Tories were committed to anyway: the scrapping of the daft Heathrow expansion and the end of the Orwellian ID Card scheme, for instance. The Liberals won nothing when they backed what the Tories were going to do anyway and could easily have done as a minority government.

All along, I have repeatedly said that the price - voting reform - was too high. And I'm committed to voting reform. First Past The Post stinks and has ill-served us as a nation on every single occasion it has been used since 1950. The House of Lords stinks, even without the hereditary peers exercising legislative power just because their orange-seller great-great-grandmother fucked the then king. A House that consists almost entirely of people the voters have roundly rejected (Norman Lamont) or are old and decrepit but too rich to be put in a home to be abused (Norman Tebbit) is a downright insult to the British people and our values.

And, anyway, the voting referendum was probably lost when Gideon Osborne made his first budget speech and definitely lost the day Liberal Democrat MPs - almost all of them - tramped through the lobby to vote in favour of excluding poor people from higher education, in direct opposition to a pledge that each one of them had personally signed.

Now there's nothing left. The Liberals in this Tory government aren't behaving like liberals in any way. The only thing we could possibly hope was that they might retain a shred of the 'Democrat' part. They haven't.

This morning, the chief turncoat of the Liberals, "Blue" Vince Cable, made a speech to the GMB union. The GMB, an honourable, democratic association of people who work lower grade jobs throughout the economy, founded in 1889, was pleased to yet again have a senior member of the government addressing its conference - it generally happens only under Labour, so having Vince there under a Tory-controlled administration was something of a coup.

Vince stood up and announced that, should the GMB or anyone else organise industrial action in the face of the government's drastic and mean-minded cuts to services to the least able to defend themselves in society, the Liberal Democrats would be the ones to pass new anti-democratic, anti-union legislation.

Thirty years ago, the unions had real power in the country. Acknowledged as one of the pillars of our society, they had a direct line to heart and soul of government. Thirty years ago, they abused this power and Thatcher's governments systematically rolled back both the unions' muscle and their influence. The abuses have now gone; the unions are now democratic and now fight directly for better terms for their workers without really trying to change national or social policy. Nobody, on either side of the political divide, seriously suggests that we should go back to how things were in the late 1970s.

But the Tories have remained flushed with their victory over the unions. Their press backers have made billions since Thatcher's legislation allowed them to sweep unions out of the print houses and the newsrooms. Thus the Tories always get good headlines when they union bash, and the proprietors always get extra invites to Downing Street when they print those headlines. If anything goes wrong, if workers are killed on unsafe deregulated rails, if nurses are asked to cut treatment to the poorest, if teachers are told to politicise lessons, the unions stand up for their members, the press shout them down and the Tories threaten to "rein the unions in".

And then one day a Liberal Democrat MP in a Tory government stands up and announces that he will no longer stand for this. It's not a political thing, he says, it's an economic thing. That comes as a surprise to Liberal Democrat members, who always thought union membership was a social thing, divorced from politics and economics - social things are one of those areas the Liberals fundamentally believe government should keep its ugly pointy nose out of. And here's Vince, saying that not only is it an economic thing after all, but also he will, with a song in his heart, legislate to make strikes virtually illegal if the members of the democratic unions democratically decide to withhold their labour when abused.

As I say, this was the point that lights started to come on over the heads of the Liberal Democrats I know. This was a Liberal Democrat cabinet minister saying something neither liberal nor democratic. This was a Liberal Democrat cabinet minister who had sold his soul for power - and was most probably too inexperienced at government to even realise the depths to which he had been pushed.

Shame on Blue Vince. Shame on his words. Shame on those that wrote such a nasty, pernicious speech. But most of all, shame on the Liberal Democrats for selling themselves to the Tories for so very, very little.

Of course, what has happened, I'm told, is that there has been a coup within the parliamentary Liberal party and the old socially liberal, economically socialistic members have slowly been replaced by "Orange Book" Liberals, socially centrist and economically hard right; this makes the British Liberals much closer to the European idea of what a "Liberal Party" means. The activists never saw it happening, or never thought it would happen in this way; the parallel is with Militant's attempted takeover of Labour in the early 1980s, only the Orange Book mob have actually managed to seize power in their party, something Militant never achieved.

Of course, the light that went on over the heads of the Liberal faithful soon started to flicker. "It's okay," they said. "Vince doesn't mean it. The Liberal Democrats will block such horrible legislation if it comes to it, and it won't come to it. Everything will be all right, we're in power now".

I believe the last people to comfort themselves with such words were the original liberal-minded, consensus-seeking Macmillan-Heath Tories, back in the early 1980s. "It's okay", they said to themselves, "we'll stop her when she goes too far".

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Fri, 20 May 2011 13:31:00 -0700 You're fired http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/youre-fired http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/youre-fired

Mostly, American politics is poisonous. Even compared to the pernicious politics we've now got in the UK, where the members of the 'radical centre-left' third party form a nonsensical queue to support insane right-wing policies and attack those they are most politically close to, American politics as reported in Europe drips nauseating personal, immoral and bloody bile from both sides (but mostly from the right of the Republican party and from Rupert Murdoch's House of Evil Media and Invisible Mending).

So it's oddly nice to see the President of the United States getting the boot in too: to Murdoch's minions and also straight into the ludicrously bewigged face of Donald Trump. And I can't express the pleasure I feel at Trump sitting there, stony-faced and humiliated. Shortly after this singular drubbing at the hands of his Commander in Chief, Donny "Rugburn" Trump announced he was too much in love with his money to run for president after all. Also, he probably wouldn't look forward to that damn liberal media replaying this clip every single time he made a speech during the entire election campaign.

Live by the sword, Don, die by the sword. Dog eat dog. Shit or get off the pot. Various other trite phrases that you'd've trotted out had you run for president. And above all: you're fired.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Thu, 19 May 2011 00:36:49 -0700 This is the age of the train http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/this-is-the-age-of-the-train http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/this-is-the-age-of-the-train

In 1992, the Conservatives narrowly won a general election. This was not the expected outcome, least of all by the Conservatives themselves. Their manifesto was based on them losing but returning to power quite quickly, having sorted their internal problems out. Instead, they had to keep their crazy promises and have their internal battles publicly.

One crazy promise was a vague commitment to privatise British Rail. BR was, by this time, the last big state corporation. It hadn't been touched before because, conventional wisdom had it, you can't privatise something that usually makes a loss and you shouldn't privatise something that will continue to require subsidies. This is what Mrs Thatcher believed; but she was gone and someone much less intelligent was now in charge (if you can remember who he was, please leave a note in the comments).

British Rail was the most economically efficient railway in the entire world. It received the least subsidy from government of any railway in Europe, yet still managed to be seen as innovative and well-run by other railway administrations. Compared to attempting to make local trips in Northern Ireland or rural France, a BR train - even a crappy Pacer - was a dream. BR actually had very good industrial relations. Not perfect by any means, but national stoppages were very rare compared to both France and Germany of the time.

To meet their crazy promise, the Tories turned to outside interest groups to find ways of privatising BR. Their initial ideas included having trains race between stations - the winner would get all the passengers - an idea that failed when they realised that there are very few places to overtake on a railway. The other bright idea was that fast and well-upholstered trains could be run for businessmen and rich people, whilst another company could provide cheap and cheerful services for secretaries (yes, the rail minister actually said that; that's what Tory government are like, you may now be noticing again).

Eventually, it fell to the Adam Smith Institute, a right-wing, demented pack of liars and thieves masquerading as a pressure group (the modern successor is the much worse Taxpayers' Alliance) to decide that the best way to proceed was to take a hammer to BR and smash it into 137 pieces. Each depot became a Train Operating Company, even though that left the Hull to Liverpool trains being run from Newcastle. The infrastructure - rails, signals, ballast - was cleaved from the operations - trains, passengers - to create Railtrack, which the Tories promised solemnly would be kept as a public corporation, then privatised. Various departments in 222 Marylebone Road were turned into companies and flogged - many, like Red Star Parcels, being bought by a competitor and then simply closed down.

The main aim of privatisation was to destroy the three railways unions (Aslef for the drivers, RMT for the guards and signalmen, TSSA for the managers and supervisors). It didn't quite work: Aslef helped to create a fierce internal market in the railways for drivers, boosting pay into the stratosphere. TSSA found that most of the bigger talent left the industry in disgust, leaving many vacancies for its members - even the ones who didn't go upward saw their pay and terms protected as the new companies looked under every stone for people with some knowledge of how to run a railway. RMT's signallers got massive share options in Railtrack to keep them sweet and the guards got their terms and conditions protected by law. BR itself worked to achieve these things as the clock ticked down to its destruction: it couldn't save the railway, but it could still defend its staff.

What we're left with now is exactly what the Tories wanted. There is competition in the industry. It doesn't work, it was never going to work, and to make it look like it works, the government must throw billions of pounds at it, but they knew that would happen and it didn't bother them (not least because it would be Labour's problem after the next election in 1997). There is still a fierce internal market for skilled staff, with drivers now able to screw £50,000 and four-day weeks out of the operators: again, a prime example of how markets operate and something to be applauded. There was clearly some elastic in the fares system, and the market has now pushed up ticket prices way beyond inflation every year since BR was disaggregated: again, this is how markets are supposed to work and the Tories should be applauding what they've achieved.

Of course, it now costs 400% more to run Britain's railways than it did to run British Railways. It costs a third more to run our railways than it costs to run the far-inferior and ramshackle SNCF classic lines. The government has to keep pumping money into the system just to have the trains run at all: if the amount they're prepared to pay is too little, the private companies announce they're taking their ball home with them and fuck off - as National Express has done on the east coast and First is doing on the Great Western. It turns out that running a railway for profit and running a railway for passengers are two completely different and unrelated things. If the government wants trains at useful times, it must either pay more now or renegotiate the contract (and pay even more) as it has had to do with First Great Western and Virgin.

This is exactly what the Adam Smith Institute said would happen and wanted to happen. This is exactly what John McGregor, the ineffectual and deceitful Transport Secretary of the time, wanted to happen. The railways are now a market operation with a captive audience - the passengers and the government - and any business with a monopoly of supply will take the customer to the cleaners.

This present unholy Tory government, however, for some reason doesn't like this market operating like a market. Well, it does, but it expected market forces to push prices down (when, in the history of privatisation, did any prices fall once the company was out of state hands?). To get the bill to fall, the Tories need to do something. Now, you and I know that the best way to save money would be to take the profiteering companies out of the system and merge the operating companies and the infrastructure company to create one organisation run at arms-length from the government. You and I both know that it would be best if that organisation was 100% owned by the state and run by a board of experienced railway managers. You could call it the British Railways Board, for instance.

But the Tories don't want that: they say they want to cut costs across government, but they are lying. They're always lying. Tories lie. They have not changed. They want to cut services across government, which is not the same thing as cutting costs at all. That's why they're continuing to do mad things like buy replacements for Trident and fight unwinnable wars against people who will come to hate us. They're not cutting anything expensive, they're just withdrawing services from the people least likely to complain loudly enough to be heard - old people, the disabled, the unemployed, the low paid - saving them fuck all.

To save money on the ludicrous railway market, the big plan is to force pay cuts on staff and reduce terms and conditions. Railwaymen should work longer and harder for less money and have their 10 instances of free travel a year taken away. That'll cut, ooh, fuck all from the system. It won't be any cheaper to run, since the money it frees up (very little money, actually) will be absorbed by the private companies, not by the government. The railways will be much, much less safe, too: but accidents are rare and it takes three or four before a government needs to react, making it the next government's problem (hurrah!).

If the Tories were serious about saving money, they wouldn't be tinkering at the edges of the railways, they'd be reforming them from the centre. But they're not serious about saving money. They're just serious about putting working people in their place.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Sat, 07 May 2011 07:39:50 -0700 Little men, what now? http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/little-men-what-now http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/little-men-what-now
Partytime

So, it was "no" after all. It wasn't a surprise, although it was a disappointment. And the post-mortems begin now, with the media busy asking "what now for the Left?".

On the face of it, a good question. But the question we should be asking is "what now for the Right?". It's not being asked by anyone and attempts to ask the question directly to the Tories in the aftermath of the elections and referendum have been answered with one line: "it's a major defeat for Labour". They've said this so often that even the left-wing press have bought this lie. The BBC, trying so hard to be neutral that it tipped over into being anti-AV, have also bought the lie; as the AV result came in, a stupid (but sadly off-camera so I don't know who she was) BBC reporter poked a microphone at Ed Miliband and said "You've staked your reputation on this result, haven't you?". Well, the Tories have been saying that - Ed hasn't. He never staked his reputation on it. But the BBC have bought the lie.

Make no mistake, Labour could have done better at the elections - but only if the Tories had done worse. The collapse of the Liberal vote benefited the SNP in Scotland (Labour's share held, but the swing from the Liberals to the Nats overwhelmed them); it benefited Labour in Wales and the north of England; and it benefited the Tories in the south of England. This is all pretty normal and is exactly what happened when voters deserted the SDP/Liberal Alliance during the damaging and protracted merger negotiations of the late 1980s.

We don't really need to worry about Labour - they're holding their own, given it's just over a year since they lost power nationally (it took them 18 years to be in this position last time; it took the Tories 13; a year and 'holding your own'? Not bad at all). We do need to worry about the Tories: the collapse of the Liberal vote and their victory in the AV referendum has convinced them they have a mandate for what they plan to do next. The Liberals, in disarray, won't be willing or able to stop them, either.

So, what's next for the right? Well, first up, AV is gone, but the other half of the Act is still there and in law - the gerrymandering of the constituencies. On the face of it, making all constituencies equal sounds a very good idea. In practice, it's impossible as natural boundaries prevent it. The way round that is to ignore the natural boundaries, creating weird constituencies with nothing in common, like the proposed Mersey Riverside cross-river constituency taking in areas of Wallasey and Liverpool, two towns that hate each other. To make this work, the Boundary Commission has been told to stop the in-depth, neutral public enquiries it makes and to start rubber-stamping constituencies with equal electorates as proposed by the local parties. The party with the strongest local organisation will get to choose. And that party is always the Conservative Party. This means that, barring a miracle, the Tories will win the next election.

Next is the long-promised reform of local government (an unrepresentative mess) and the House of Lords (ditto). This is being presented as the Tories' gift to Nick Clegg, something for him to do to while away the long, long hours alone in his office. The problem is that most of the Tories are perfectly happy with local government and the Lords, especially since Cameron flooded the upper chamber with Tory peers last year. Already, the Taxpayers' Alliance-run NO2AV campaign have said that the "no" vote is not only "a ringing endorsement of First Past The Post" (it isn't) but also the vote was "a rejection of Lords and local government reform" (how could it possibly be?). Reform simply isn't going to happen.

Then, the Right owe Rupert Murdoch a favour. He has been allowed to takeover BSkyB, creating a media monolith that will be competition-proof. After the next election, the BBC is doomed (so the sucking-up to the present government was pointless, Mr Thompson), as another favour to Cameron's preferred Christmas dining partner.

Often mooted in private is a cherished Tory goal of further trades union 'reform'. The plan, so far as it has spread outside of the pages of the Sunday Telegraph, is throw so many hurdles in the way of any strike - principally by making it punishingly expensive for the union involved - as to make them impossible. Couple that with a rollback of working conditions improvements, a hold on the minimum wage (plus new exemptions for any industry that calls for them loudly enough) and a drastic cutback in the workplace powers of the Health and Safety Executive and we're soon to lose most of our rights as workers.

Finally, there will be a slow drift back to the regressive, repressive social legislation of the 1980s. Already the Tories have let Nadine "Nutjub" Dorries test the water with a Ten Minute Rule Bill designed to stop girls getting useful sex education and instead be taught to keep their knickers on. This is the start of something; whilst pressure groups have been seeking to make sex education inclusive of gay and lesbian interests (coz, like, we're born gay, we don't develop it like back acne in our late teens), the Tories are looking at cutting it back. They've accepted that we shouldn't see same-sex kisses before the watershed. We have bigoted 'faith' schools decrying homosexuality to their impressionable charges and a growing trend of young gay people killing themselves. These things are all inter-related. And the Right is seeking to make it worse.

This is a centre-left country. We've been a centre-left country since the Second World War. The British people have always been fundamentally 'conservative' when it comes to public social matters, but they've started getting more liberal - indeed libertarian - over the past 15 years. The Brits have a sense of fair play and like seeing that everyone gets an equal go. This is what the Tories want to change, not least so that everyone will properly know their place.

This is what the Right will do next. And what will you do to stop it?

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Mon, 02 May 2011 05:51:00 -0700 Imagine if this was a left-wing country http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/imagine-if-this-was-a-left-wing-country http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/imagine-if-this-was-a-left-wing-country

Margaret-thatcher-david-cameron-laughing
The other day, David Cameron made one of his lie-filled speeches about AV, and inadvertently blurted out a truth.

No, not the truth that he thinks that you and I are too stupid to understand numbering candidates rather than dabbing a big X next to their name, although that particular vote of confidence in the intelligence of the British population is duly noted. This accidental truth was when he said "First Past The Post has served us well over the years". He's right: First Past The Post has served the Conservatives really, really well over the past 60 years. In fact, it has given us plenty of Conservative governments we didn't want and couldn't throw out.

There have been 18 general elections since the Second World War. In the majority of those elections, the Conservatives came out on top, never once with more than half of the people supporting them. In 1951, Labour won 48.8% of the vote to the Tories' 48%. But Labour got 295 seats, the Tories 321. Labour would be out of power for 13 years and the Tories would be seen - and see themselves - as the "natural party of government" for the rest of the 20th century.

For reasons I can't quite fathom, history records that Mrs Thatcher won a landslide in 1979. She didn't. If Jim Callaghan had gone to the polls six months earlier, Labour would probably have been returned; Labour was not as unpopular in the late 1970s as the media now recalls. Mrs Thatcher won 43.9% of the vote in 1979 and this gave her a working majority. In the next four years, she blundered through the economy, basically destroying it. Unemployment hit 5 million - a plan her economic advisers had decided upon, not an accidental consequence of her callousness.

She went to the polls in 1983 buoyed by the Falklands War but still unpopular generally. Her share of the vote fell to 42.4% and she got a landslide majority. This landslide was the one that sold off our electricity and water to foreign buyers. She got an unstoppable majority, which gave her dictatorial powers, when 57.6% of the country voted for other parties. She would be in power until 1990, the Tories would be in government until 1997, all from what 42.4% of the vote could do. The post-war settlement, the agreement that the state would work to care for its citizens in return for their hard work, was torn up on the say-so of 42.4% of the population.

First Past The Post really served the Tories well there; but it destroyed my country and ill-served the British people. The next time someone tries to tell you that Mrs Thatcher's reforms had the support of the vast majority of us, remind them that 42.4% is a minority.

Recently, senior Liberal Democrats seem to be regaining their sense of decency. They have publicly opposed some of the more terribly right-wing things the government is trying to do. And good on them: in other countries with a coalition system, minority partners often go on television to complain about what the other half of the government is doing; this includes cabinet ministers. Here, the LibDems have been silent for too long.

Those senior LibDems have made a very good point: this country is actually a left-of-centre country. It doesn't feel like it, but it truly is. Put it this way: since the Second World War, the Conservatives have polled more votes than Labour and the Liberal Democrats just once - in 1955 they got 49.7% of the votes to the Left's 49.1%. Imagine that. Imagine the second half of the 20th century effectively without the Conservatives. Imagine no Stop-Go in the 1950s. Imagine no Three Day Week in the 1970s. Imagine no Thatcherism in the 1980s. Imagine no selling off of British Rail in the 1990s.

Imagine a 20th century where the only Tory Prime Ministers were Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan, both briefly.

AV wouldn't quite give us that, and it's wrong to choose a voting system based on the likely outcomes being more to your liking, but still: imagine a 21st century without the Conservatives. We could get nearer to it, if we vote Yes on Thursday.

Ukgepercentvotes

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Wed, 20 Apr 2011 00:07:28 -0700 Andrew Lansley, dangerous idiot http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/andrew-lansley-dangerous-idiot http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/andrew-lansley-dangerous-idiot
Andrew-lansley-006

When the Tories came to power (yeah, whatever), the party faithful and the new MPs were the most right-wing they had been in their entire history. They've liberalised their views on some social issues (they're now pro-gay, they say, although they still hate single mothers and other social deviants) but economically, they're neo-conservatives in the George W Bush/Tea Party stylee.

Unlike the neo-cons in the US, they know that the British people are basically centrist, so they have done a good job of hiding the breadth of their plans for selling public services to their friends in big business. We Brits don't tend to like that type of thing.

With the NHS, the Tory plan seems to have tested well in focus groups before the election. In broad terms, it does indeed sound good. Instead of remote boards and faceless managers deciding everything, the job will be handed to your friendly, cheerful, local GP to do. And, if he won't do it, well, don't worry, other groups (private businesses, but we won't say that loudly) can do it. All's well.

Except it isn't. This is a radical switch in power from those with a lot of knowledge to those with none. By making hospitals dance to the GPs' tune, the experts - specialists, consultants, nurses - in given diseases will have to do what the GP - general, jack-of-all-trades - wants them to do. And I've just experienced this.

I've been having tests at a local hospital. They're all negative. Yesterday, I saw the specialist and she was downright hostile. Why, she demanded, was I wanting all of these pointless tests? What was I trying to prove? Well, nothing. I didn't want any of the tests. My GP wanted me to have them. I really don't have the medical knowledge to decide whether the GP is seeking pointless tests or not.

She pushed further into my notes and wondered if they were incomplete. Did I know what the results were for such-and-such a test? Did I know what level something-or-other was at? No, I didn't, because I'd never had those tests. My GP had seized upon one symptom and was having the hospital probe that symptom over and over again; what he wasn't doing was attempting to find a root cause for all the symptoms. He hadn't stopped and looked at the whole body, he'd skipped to the likeliest outcome based on one symptom and passed me on to the hospital, rather than paying for the actually-needed other tests.

The specialist at the hospital will now be writing him a stern letter, reminding him to do his job fully first in future.

And here's the rub: when Andrew Lansley's "reforms" to the NHS go through, the specialist will never again be able to write such a letter. The power will move from her, with her a-lot-about-a-little knowledge, to the GP, with his a-little-about-a-lot way of working. The hospital will have to keep performing the pointless tests on one symptom until the GP is satisfied. The patient - me - gets a worse deal than ever, being poked and prodded and taking time off work for tests that aren't needed. The GP gets to make expensive financial decisions in the 4-minute slot allocated to each patient every day along with the medical decisions that we'd rather he made in that tiny time. The specialist doesn't get to specialise; the generalist has to do the impossible and get more specialised about more and more generalities.

This is all bad. Give me a remote, faceless bureaucracy any day.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Sun, 17 Apr 2011 05:28:20 -0700 Voting or not voting? http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/voting-or-not-voting http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/voting-or-not-voting
2678367136_eb5d410f73_o

My quiet Sunday morning has been shattered... by something called the Wirral Egg Run. A ridiculously large number of motorcyclists gather at New Brighton, then ride 20 miles all over the Wirral to Clatterbridge hospital to deliver Easter eggs to children, watched by a ridiculously larger number of cheering spectators. And this takes place just outside my front door. For about 4 hours (there really are a ridiculous number of motorcycles involved). Still, it's for charr-i-dee.

Less shattering was a discussion on Twitter. Someone there made the decision to not vote any more. It's hardly groundbreaking, since 35% of people didn't bother to vote at the last election. But it's a subject that annoys me, since the people who don't vote are the ones that make the loudest noise about how dissatisfied with politics/politicians they are.

Frankly, I've never understood this. Put simply, if you don't vote - and you have the right to not vote in the UK - then you give up your right to complain about the outcome. If you didn't contribute to the result - even by going in and spoiling your paper if needs be - then how can you complain that you didn't get what you didn't vote for?

I can't think of any other subject where we allow the most noise to be made by the people with the least invested in the subject. People who complain about the state of the railways are the people who use (or used to use) the trains. A driver who never uses the rails doesn't comment - or if she does, gets shouted down by people who do, and rightly so. The same applies in other spheres of ordinary life. But if you don't vote, that seems to entitle you to complain about things that voting brings about and does or doesn't change.

Of course, it's worse when you don't vote rather than actually exercising your right to do so, because of the statement you are making. The argument is usually "the political system has disenfranchised people like me, therefore I don't/won't/can't vote". The problem is that politicians do all they can not to listen to us, except when we're saying what they want to hear. Or are saying something different that can be spun to sound like it sounds like something they want to hear. The only time we get to try to make them listen is at the ballot box; declaring that you've been disenfranchised and then disenfranchising yourself (you did it, not them) allows them to ignore you more than if you did actually vote. Worse, the politicians look at 35% not voting and take home a message: 35% don't care what we do. The number of people they can fuck over is vastly increased (for the record, it's people who voted against you + people who didn't vote, which, in our minority-votes system, means politicians are allowed to fuck over anything up to around 75% of the population between now and the next election).

Because of that, people who don't vote don't count - to politicians or to me. Why should I listen to the grievances of someone the government is fucking over when they did nothing - nothing whatsoever, not even the bare minimum asked of them, which is putting a cross in a box - to try to help themselves or try to prevent this outcome? Why should I have my ear bent by someone who can't even travel the half mile to mark a piece of paper to try to prevent other people being fucked over by the government?

To me, not voting is extremely selfish. You raise yourself and your circumstances above those of the other 65% of the population that, rightly or wrongly, believe they are contributing to the process, telling those 65% that your circumstances are so very important that you can't even begin to put a cross in a box, so fuck the rest of you.

Also, ahem, people died so we could have the right to put a cross in a box (and, with luck and a fair wind, a 1 in a box in future. See, that's not complicated, is it, Mr Cameron?). A woman threw herself in front of a horse race and died so that other women would have the right to vote. Men and women are dying even as I type in Libya, Egypt (still) and Bahrain amongst far too many other places, all because they want fellow citizens to have the right to put an X or a 1 in a box. Yet people in the UK stay home, don't bother doing the bare minimum, but do complain very loudly about how they're being ignored.

And then they call you a cunt for pointing it out. Oh well.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Wed, 13 Apr 2011 00:58:14 -0700 Tomorrow almost never comes http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/tomorrow-almost-never-comes http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/tomorrow-almost-never-comes There appears to be a gob-smackingly dumb "middle way" appearing in the AV debate. It runs like this: AV isn't proportional and is a poor compromise, so let's vote "no" and campaign for a better system after. This is amazingly politically naive. In evidence, look back at the devolution vote of 1979.

People forget this event as it was a miserable failure. Labour, in government but not in power at the time, was reliant on Liberal, Plaid and SNP votes to keep it afloat against a barrage of confidence motions from the Tories.

To keep Plaid and the SNP on side, Callaghan's government agreed to devolution (called "devo" in those devil-may-care days) against the wishes of the Labour party itself. The resulting Bill was a right dog's dinner, offering Scotland an assembly with all the power of a Metropolitan County and Wales a talking shop with all the power of a parish council.

People in favour of independence or full devo (still then often called "Home Rule") campaigned for a "no" vote - the miserable little compromise should be voted down, they said, then we can have a real debate about real Home Rule.

Wales voted it down resoundingly. Scotland voted for it, but a provision in the Bill said that people not voting were classed as voting "no" unless 40% of all voters said yes. So "yes" won a plurality of those voting, but "no" won the referendum.

Of course, the next government immediately started on a new, better devolution bill, didn't it? Er, no. The entire issue was kicked into the long grass. The people, it was said, having voted "no", had not just rejected devolution, they had endorsed the existing system. They had, in effect, voted "yes" with a song in their hearts to rule from London. It also led to the SNP being wiped out in the general election two months later, handing many SNP seats to the Tories. It would be 1997 before the people were asked again - four whole governments and a political generation later.

People who want the Single Transferrable Vote (STV), like me, are aware that AV is indeed a "miserable little compromise". It's not proportional. It doesn't end safe seats for plutocratic Tories or so-called socialists. STV provides a full choice for the voter while AV makes us choose between career hacks (and X-voting generally doesn't even let us choose in the first place). STV gives the voter real power at the ballot box and the rest of the 5-year term - you have 5 MPs and can play them off against each other, persuade one to change her mind, keep on top of another to make sure he keeps to his promises and so on. The Irish, with good reason, love and adore their STV system because it works so very well.

I want STV. Anything else is not up to the task. And to get it, I'm voting "yes" to AV. Because a win for "no" is not "no to AV", it's "yes to the current way of doing things". And the current way of doing things is very very broken. For people like Lord David Owen, clearly suffering from the early stages of dementia, it seems a good bet to kick out AV and get STV later. What he's forgetting is history: kick out AV now and the next time we'll be asked will be at least 4 parliaments away: 2031 or thereabouts. He won't live to see the consequences of this stupid idea. I'm planning to.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Sun, 03 Apr 2011 01:01:29 -0700 Personal attacks, the making and recording of http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/personal-attacks-the-making-and-recording-of http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/personal-attacks-the-making-and-recording-of
-1

Poor Margaret Beckett. Always the horse-faced bridesmaid, never the bride.

Mrs Beckett is a big supporter of the flawed X-voting system in the UK. Well, she would be, wouldn't she: she sits for Derby South where a tremendous minority of people (43.3%) want her as MP. Yep, she's another MP, like the terrifying Esther McVey for the Tories in Wirral West, who holds a safe seat despite a large majority of her voters wanting somebody - anybody - else as MP.

La Beckett, 68, has been vocally campaigning to retain X-voting and her minority safe seat. This means getting involved in NO2AV's long, long list of outright lies about AV. Mrs Beckett has happily spouted such stuff, although she must have known it wasn't true (the alternative being that she's actually dumb enough to believe the drivel she's saying, libel lawyers of the world please note).

Now she's popped up in that well-known defender of women's rights and progressive views, the Daily Mail [istyosty link] to complain that some unofficial pro-AV group or another in one of the darker recesses of Facebook have photoshopped her head on to a dinosaur. It was, she's quoted as saying, a "nasty personal attack". Because the official NO2AV campaign would never stoop so low, would it? It would also never publish who its funders are, Margaret. Perhaps you'd like to look into that? For the record, the Yes Campaign is funded by the Electoral Reform Society, the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust and shaking buckets in city streets. NO2AV appears to be being funded by the same shady business people behind the so-called Taxpayers' Alliance. That should be more of a worry than a badly photoshopped dinobeckett, shouldn't it?

The problem with taking a stand on something is finding who you are standing next to. I was instantly and irrevocably against the immoral and illegal war against Iraq. That meant that I had to stand next to the prize foaming loon that is George Galloway. The ball-and-chain was pro-war, not believing that politicians would go to war on such an obvious, outright lie. That put him uncomfortably stood with the king of the thick, George W Bush.

So far, however, as a "Yes!" supporter, I'm not stood next to anybody demented or actively undermining the state. It's quite nice. What lefty and progressive "No" people think of standing next to the Beckosaurus, Billyboy Hague, the self-styled Taxpayers' Alliance, Nick Griffin(!!) and the Daily Express is, so far, unrecorded.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham
Fri, 01 Apr 2011 06:58:00 -0700 Selfish reasons for voting "yes" http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/selfish-reasons-for-voting-yes http://thisisrjg.posterous.com/selfish-reasons-for-voting-yes

Mcvey

In my Westminster constituency, Wirral West, we're stuck with a truly awful MP.

When the boundaries were redrawn before the last election, a seat that Labour had held quite well as a marginal became a Tory seat. It's not the safest seat in the world, but barring a 1945 or 1997-style landslide (and they don't come very often) it's almost impossible to remove the person the Tories chose to be our local MP.

Esther McVey is a horrible person. Well, maybe her family tolerate her, I don't know. But as an MP, she's a Gilbert and Sullivan character, Sir Joseph Porter: "I always voted at my party's call / And I never thought of thinking for myself at all". According to TheyWorkForYou, she has never once rebelled over anything. In fact, I'm pretty sure she's never once had a single original thought in her head.

I've twice written to her to voice my opinions (having previously lived in actual marginal constituencies, it was always a good thing to do, provoking honest, thoughtful replies and once actually changing my then-MP's mind). The first time, the letter I got back, eventually, was copied word-for-word from the Tory manifesto with the addition of a paragraph that told me, with good grace, to keep my Commie views to myself in future and fuck off out of it (I paraphrase, but I've never been so politely told to get lost before). The second time I wrote, on a different matter, she didn't even bother to reply.

I think I can safely say that Esther McVey is a party droid, elected to represent the Tories in Wirral West, not the people of Wirral West in Westminster. And she's permanent. Under the current voting system, she cannot be removed.

And yet, only 42% of the people voting in 2010 wanted her as our MP. 58% of people wanted someone - anyone - else. But our "winner takes all" X-voting isn't interested in what the majority want. It wants to pick an MP from the largest block, and with Wirral West drawn to contain some very posh areas of Meols and Heswall, the largest block is the Conservative party.

With the Alternative Vote, the 58% of people - the majority - who didn't vote for Esther McVey suddenly get a choice. People like me, for instance. No longer would this be a safe enough seat that she could fuck me off if I write to her. Oh no: she'd have to at least pretend to listen. She'd have to vote against the government now and again, lest she looked like a party stooge and found that people, handed the power in her seat at last, chose to turf her out.

On the face of it, she still might have won in 2010. She got 42.5%. Labour got 36.3%. The LibDems got 16.8%. The other three (UKIP, 'Common Sense' that wasn't and an independent) hoovered up the remaining 4.4%.

We can probably assume that the right-wing nutjobs who wasted their X-votes on the bottom three would have given their second (or later) preferences to la McVey rather than Labour or the LibDems. So lets be generous and do that transfer now: C:46.9%, L: 36.3%, LD: 16.8%.

Next to be knocked out would be the LibDems. Now, remember this is before the LibDems went all more-Tory-than-the-Tories Orange Book on us. Their transfers would be vital, and this is where it gets interesting. The local LibDems by and large loathe the Tories more than they dislike Labour. Most of their transfers would thus go to Labour... and we wouldn't have la McVey lording it over her Rotten Borough. If we did, it would be on a very thin majority from transfers and she'd need to be a lot more responsive because this seat would be a lot more valuable to her.

And this is why I'll be voting "Yes!" with a song in my heart on 5 May. It might not mean the end of having a Tory MP locally, but a yes vote means the end of having a remote, uncaring Tory MP here. I can settle for that.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1121843/Photo_26.jpg http://posterous.com/users/heO3O71sMMJYe Jamie Graham thisisrjg Jamie Graham