OneGuyFromBarlick

I like it! It has always bothered me that the union of two people who cynically broke their marriage vows can go through a sea change and as far as the Establishment is concerned it never happened. This rings a bell with me because later in life I got the full story of how my mother and father were ostracised for years in their small society because they were 'living in sin' and my mother was still married to another man. In fact when we dug into father's history we found he had left a wife in Australia when he joined the Anzacs. He once told me that if anyone ever called me an ill-bred bastard I shouldn't argue with them. It took me fifty years to fully understand what he was talking about!
Just heard a Labour economics spokesman dodging the question about if they means-test winter fuel they can't really avoid bus-passes TV licences etc. Interesting thing is that he was already talking in terms of the mess that the Coalition will leave when Labour form the next government. The yah boo politics will carry on as normal.
Did anyone hear Lord Oakeshott talking eminently good sense as usual and saying that Politics is a swamp that wants draining? (LINK)

MP Mercer (Cons) & 3 Lords caught (2 Labour, 1 N.I.) in the sting

Shows that the House of Lords requires an opportunity to remove badly behaving Lords, and the government must put in place the ability to recall an MP or other elected person who flouts the rules of the house, which they promised to implement in the Coalition agreement and the Lib Dems put out to committee.

A register of Lobbying might stop bogus lobbying, but it is the people in the two chambers who are taking the money and changing the laws, not the lobbyists

Tory plans for legislation against lobbyists are being used to include ant--union measures to stop them funding politicians. This is cynical exploitation of current affairs and bad politics. They should read their history and realise that it was the union movement that gave birth to Labour and there is no difference between them funding than industrialists giving money to the Tories and later getting lucrative contracts. The question of party funding is a separate matter and should be treated as such.

I've no idea why the trade unions would be involved, but then I have no idea why someone like UNITE would sponsor Owen Jones as a lobbyist.

The problem is not the lobbyist, the problem is taking the money

It has been pointed out to me that had their been a #recall section inserted on all elected representatives, then the first to have suffered would have been David Laws (Lib Dem). Probably Chris Huhne (Lib Dem), Mercer (Cons) and a whole host of others too (MacShane etc). So it isn't just one side of the house

Now we have another Lib Dem resigning the whip because of a civil Court Case alleging sexual predation (Mike Hancock)

I get the feeling that they won't do something that actually affects them directly

If an MP has transgressed to the extent that the authorities remove the whip, or expel them from Parliament for a time, or the party, or all three, then that MP is unable, to varying degrees, to fulfill the role they are elected for. Which is to represent their constituency views in the national legislature on matters of national and international policy. That in and of itself should be sufficient to trigger a bye-election as the constituency has been denied its democratic voice, and so perhaps we could look to changes to the Representation of the Peoples Act or whatever the legislation is to provide for this (if the facility isn't already there).

A recall procedure unless tightly defined has the potential unintended consequence of being the perfect vehicle for every grouping with a gripe seeking to recall MP after MP. We would not surely want some percentage of electors in a constituency to 'recall' an MP because for example, that MP hasn't done 'enough' (in their view) on a local issue would we? And thus in 'tightly defining' I rather suspect we would limit it to the sorts of transgressions that warrant the sanctions noted in the first paragraph above. In which case, why waste time on considering it? Just chuck 'em out so to speak (and perhaps invoice the miscreant - or their party - for the cost of the bye-election while we're at it).

Richard Broughton

I agree Richard. We are all aware of how a small body of activists can usurp the democratic process because of the apathy of the rest. It doesn't only affect politics, when I was drawing up the Articles for charitable companies limited by guarantee I always put in checks and balances that could be used against 'entryism'. There is the other problem of course, the dreaded unintended consequences of hurried and ill thought out legislation.

John MIlls of JML donates £1.6 million to the Labour Party and avoids paying £1.5 million in tax

That might be a little embarrassing for the two Eds

"That might be a little embarrassing for the two Eds"

Don't bank on it - politicians at that level don't do embarassment.

Tripps wrote:"That might be a little embarrassing for the two Eds"

Don't bank on it - politicians at that level don't do embarassment.

True

£100k donation and £1.5 million taken from the Treasury by tax efficient planning (legal)

I'm sure Any Burnham will tell us how many A&E nurses that would fund

Watched the second programme on Iraq night before last on BBC2. It highlighted the fact that no forward planning was done for what happened after the assault was over. The only description that fits is 'total cock-up'.
Some very disturbing news last night about the effects of the massive cuts in funding for care homes. About 50% of providers report that they are no longer able to adhere to legal minimum standards of care. Asking patients to top up their funding is becoming common even though this is illegal. How long does this go on before the number of funding reviews demanded by the sector swamps the system?

I'm not holding out a lot of hope that the latest knee-jerk initiative to examine all Parliamentary passes is going to do much good. It has always been far too easy for MPs to get passes for their cronies from lobbying groups. As Lord Oakeshott said the other day, more would be gained from examining the work done by the plethora of 'groups' both in the Lords and the Commons that are very suspect. Think of the number of MPs who get freebie trips as long as they support some obscure and often reprehensible country.

I listened to William Hague avoiding saying anything concrete about the PRISM debacle yesterday and reflected that Lord Acton was right, all power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Once techical power like modern computers is available it doesn't take long for a 'national security issue' to be found to justify using that power. On the ground technicians have to operate the machines and unfortunately they have consciences. The CIA employee Snowden evidently reached the limits of his acquiescence as did the man who blew the information to Wikileaks. We tend to think of this technology and the consequences as being a contemporary problem but I had an American friend who worked for the NSA at Menwith Hill in the days when the US denied the NSA even existed. He was fluent in Arabic and Russian and his jobs included listening to phone calls from the Kremlin. At one point he found himself listening in real time to the conversations of taxi drivers on their radios in Omsk. He realised that he didn't want to be doing this but they were not allowed to resign. Being a smart bloke he engineered his dismissal on a technical matter and resumed normal life. He found a way of getting out that didn't involve blowing any whistles and said he felt a lot better. The thing about it is this was over thirty years ago. Just think what their capabilities are now and how much greater the pressures are on the staff. I also know a man who was a Spook at the sharp end until he suffered a breakdown and had to retire early. He is almost out of the wood now but has had a rough ride. Think of these people when you listen to smooth talking politicians speaking weasel words about 'intelligence'.

Did anyone watch the Panorama programme on BBC1 last night on the blacklist operated within the construction industry. The funny thing is that this totally illegal practice has been known about for over twenty years and despite fine words from politicians nothing has been done to bring the companies to book when they are obviously guilty of illegal practices. Not a new phenomenon of course, read the account of William Rushton in Rare Texts and also the evidence in the LTP. The Manufacturers Associations were blacklisting strikes in the 1930s in Barlick.

In case you haven't noticed, the current preoccupation amongst politicians and economists is how to tell whether we are going forwards or backwards. I listened to a very sensible lady on R4 Today this morning who suggested that a good place to look would be the relationship between workers and individual productivity instead of simply looking at raw figures like employment or GDP. Sounds sensible to me and at the moment the picture is not good which chimes well with my gut feeling about our progress. A new report says that wages have dropped more since 2008 than 'any other comparable five year period', whatever that means....
News from Greece that the government has pulled the plug on the state TV station without any consultation. It appears they didn't like the amount of criticism they were getting from their own media. Not a good augury for the future.
Not too sure about Mr Gove's latest resit of the examination problem. On the face of it I can't argue against his basic premise that the more rigorous they are the more weight they will carry as a qualification but I can think of circumstances where a student may not be on top form on the day of the examination, particularly some girls of course. The advantage of course work and projects as a component of the marking was that any obviously suspect results could be recognised and rectified. On these grounds I worry that the new one-shot examination could be unfair on some candidates. Simply pursuing 'rigour' could be too simple and have bad consequences for some students.

Manufacturing production dropped 0.6% in ytd to April 2013. So with more people in work, there is bound to be much less productivity. However, it probably isn't quite so simple, multi-factorial.

The only other blandness is http://letbritaindecide.com/ which adds very little to the current debate.

The income figures confirm me in my belief that many of the 'jobs' being created don't pay a living wage. I suspect that in real terms the amount paid to workers overall has either dropped or stayed the sam. Not so for the top management of course, the discrepancy between their awards and that of the workers is a scandal.
Watched the final programme on Iraq last night. A litany of horror and the end result is not far short of what Saddam was presiding over. This was 'victory'/ It isn't over yet of course, time will tell what the end result will be but I still believe it will be a reversion to three 'states', Kurdistan, Baghdad and Basra. In other words Kurds, Sunni and Shia, just as it was when Gertrude and the British government 'reformed' Mesopotamia in the 1920s. 100 years if interference and exploitation and countless deaths.... Not the West's shining hour.

Education. I would have thought that a good education system requires the following. A committed, very well qualified, trained and rewarded teaching cadre. A similarly committed and motivated as well as engaged pupil cadre, plus engaged parents. And a plural Board of Governers to provide management oversight with local funding arrangements. I feel quite confident in predicting that if you optimised all this, good 'standards' would follow. None of this requires to a great extent any involvement of an Education Secretary sat in London. Nor does any tinkering to encourage 'rigour' (whatever that means - I confess I don't know but I agree with others who suggest it means 'Shakespeare' or somesuch).

I also note that following the changes, we will have in this United Kingdom differing arrangements in Scotland (which has always been the case), England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Which seems sensible..................

Richard Broughton

I agree, education does not require any politics. Every child should be able to receive a good education that will equip them for the real world after school, whatever that choice may be.

A great big Mea Culpa by Calamity Clegg over Rennard from the report, but very interesting that no one has resigned over it, strange that it also occured on the day of "Ban page 3" debate happened in the commons.

I agree Richard but also think that the biggest shortfall in education has long been investment in Primary schools. Far too much attention given to the simplistic measure of exam results and post-graduate employment. Both important of course but educators have known for years that the place where investment pays the biggest dividend is in the formative early school years. The consequence has been a sad litany of neglect.My old friend David Moore (who knew a thing or two about teaching) constantly advocated leaving education to the educators.
Did you notice that the pop[e has discovered a core group of gay priests in the Curia who work to give each other advantage? I thought about the book that Tripps gave me, Thief in the night.

Just to qualify what I said above, I do not want to imply that studying Shakespeare = 'rigour', or is a measure of rigour. If it did or were, then my schooling would have lacked rigour as the totality of my Shakespeare was reading aloud selected passages from Julius Caesar and listening to extracts of a performance of The Tempest. I read not one Shakespeare play. Nor have I since. I have though, seen many a production. Nor perhaps should rigour be implied by 'big words' - the Education Secretary in one of his early interventions on perceived lack of rigour noted in Parliament that chemistry now no longer involves an understanding of Valence Shell Electron Pair Repulsion Theory (he could have said Gillespie-Nyholm Theory or the Sidgwick-Powell Rules, just as 'impressive'). How appalling! If you don't know your tetrahedral from your trigonal bipyramidal all is clearly lost (oh, and knowing these 'words' doesn't make me in anyway 'clever' of 'bright').

No doubt the Education Secretary spent the night before swotting up on those 'big words' to get them right. Had no idea what it was, but spewed it out on the day gaining 'full marks'. The day after, all was forgotten. Which some might contend is the reason why 'final exams' are his preferred option.

Oh, and I agree entirely with the importance of primary education.

Richard Broughton

Bruff wrote:Nor perhaps should rigour be implied by 'big words'

Very true. Some of our younger chemists now will understand phrases like `Valence Shell Electron Pair Repulsion Theory' but don't know the difference between `there' and `their'!

From this morning's news reports it looks like we are in for another Iraq/Afghanistan/Tunisia type of venture, but with the added twists of potentially triggering a war between Israel and Syria, damaging relations with Russia and China, and possibly arming the terrorists we seek to eliminate elsewhere.

Richard, one man's 'rigour' can be another man's light entertainment. I have recently been taking an interest in Suetonius, a Roman historian who wrote 'The Twelve Caesars' about 2,000 years ago. I'll bet that would qualify for Gove's definition of rigour but actually if you want a blow by blow detailed description (always apologised for) of the sexual antics of the Caesars, go no further! A rattling good read which is at times semi-pornographic.
Tiz, I share your misgivings. From the Crusades through oil exploitation to modern 'democracy building' the Western world's track record in the middle and far east is appalling. And here we go again!

I quite like Cameron's latest idea on tax. He is proposing that all companies registered in the UK should be forced to make public who ultimately benefits from the profits of their activities. PE reports this week that there are signs that their recent major exposé of the number of 'brass plate/ PLPs has had an effect.
Did anyone catch the news item yesterday in which the people of Enniskillen reported some of the rumours flying round the town about the G8 summit? Obama visiting by submarine coming up Lough Earn....