Monday, 6 August 2012
Mo's Victory is a Victory for Us All
Lib Dems MUST Punish this Betrayal, for the Sake of Decency in Politics
If all the rumours are true, as all those we assume to be in the know would appear to accept they are, the Conservatives are about to stab their Liberal Democrat partners in the back and betray their promise, enshrined within the terms of the Coalition Agreement, to support reform of the House of Lords.
Forget all the dishonest spin and weasel words about the Agreement making no reference to specific detail that is contained in the proposals that are now being made. If Conservative backbench unease was about detail it would have been possible for the two parties of government to have amended the proposals between them in such a way as to address any legitimate concerns. The bottom line is that a substantial body of opinion within the parliamentary Conservative Party is wedded to the whole notion of inequality and privilege in politics as are, to their eternal disgrace, most of the so-called "progressives" of the Labour Party. Not for nothing did Labour's Peter Hain describe the current Lib Dem-inspired attempt to reform the second chamber as a once in a lifetime opportunity.
The argument that now is the "wrong time" due to there being "other priorities" is also a cop out. There will always be economic issues to address. There will never be a time when there will not be one national or international concern or another which can be given priority over constitutional reform if we look hard enough for an excuse to place the issue onto the back burner for another hundred years. The bottom line is that we cannot claim as a society to be committed to fairness and equality of opportunity for as long as our institutions themselves are based upon patronage and favour.
The stark fact of the matter is that the Conservatives, having wrested Lib Dem support for their unpopular and ideologically driven austerity programme, given in good faith, are now preparing to renege on their promise to their partners to honour their side of the bargain. It is a thing that the big parties do. As somebody who was Leader of a minority group at the London Borough of Hounslow in coalition with the Conservatives from 2006 to 2010 the pattern of behaviour is instantly familiar to me.
I have only bad news for Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats. The situation will get worse. As the next general election begins to approach their partners will figure that it will become increasingly difficult for them to cut and run. Throw a few spanners into the works, employ a few delaying tactics to stretch things out for a year or two, and suddenly it will have become nigh on impossible for the Lib Dems to abandon the coalition without being accused of extreme cynicism in the run-up to an election.
The fear of heavy electoral losses, itself a consequence of Lib Dem participation in the coalition, will also play heavily on the minds of the party's elected members when it comes to contemplating taking the very drastic step of forcing an early election by walking away from a one-sided coalition. Self-interest will almost inevitably win the day and so the coalition will limp on grumpily until 2015 at which time the Lib Dems will lose most of their seats, dispense with their leader and set about the long, painstaking but at some point probably successful task of placing some distance between themselves and this whole regrettable episode and eventually regaining lost ground.
What seems clear to me is that the big parties attract and encourage a mentality in which intrigue, behind-the-scenes plotting and betrayal are considered a necessary and inevitable feature of political discourse and one which some of those involved actually find quite exciting. Just behold for a moment the smug, fatuous grin on the face of the career politician on Question Time or Newsnight as he or she smarmily avoids answering a question and you will clearly see for yourself what I mean - these people actually believe that by the practice of spin and deceit they are in some way being clever rather than just deceitful.
In the course of its betrayal the senior partner will have powerful allies. In Hounslow it was senior officers of the Council, not necessarily supportive of the Conservatives but wedded to the old establishment practices to which they had become accustomed under Labour and fearful of the radical agenda promoted by the Community Group on the Council which I led. In the case of the government it will be the largely Conservative press, and we can be sure that between now and 2015 the Daily Mail and other such esteemed organs of the establishment will be drip-feeding us juicy titbits of information, and non-information, about the junior coalition partner for our edification.
Meanwhile another plank of the Coalition Agreement concerns proposed electoral boundary changes, due to be introduced before the next election, which will favour the Conservatives at the expense of the Lib Dems and the Labour Party. The rationale of the changes is that they will bring more integrity to the process of government by rectifying inequalities that have developed within the present alignment of constituency seats.
Through their betrayal over Lords reform the Conservatives will have demonstrated that they have no interest in bringing more integrity to government, nor in rectifying inequality. As such the Liberal Democrats will no longer have any moral obligation to support the proposed changes.
Furthermore, the Conservatives will already have set the precedent that coalition promises need not be honoured.
It is almost certainly too late for the Lib Dems to reverse the hemorrhaging of their own support that their participation in the coalition government has brought about. Nevertheless it is essential that that loss of support is not exacerbated by the complete loss of credibility that will ensue should they roll over and simply accept the bad faith shown to them by their untrustworthy partners.
In my view it is of critical importance that the Lib Dems punish the impending betrayal by withdrawing their support for boundary changes and making it crystal clear why they have done so. Their partners will whine like stuck pigs and no doubt some of them will genuinely be too stupid to understand why it has happened, in the same way as some of the Conservatives on Hounslow Council were shocked when we failed to support their 2010 budget following the Mogden debacle, when our partners refused to back us in our quarrel with chief officers over the nuisance caused to residents by a local sewage plant "managed" by Thames Water (which has donated money to the Conservative Party).
Not only will such a response be crucial if the Liberal Democrats are to maintain any dignity and self-respect at all, but I also truly believe that punishing underhandedness and betrayal will send precisely the right message to the spinners and backstabbers who seem to dominate modern party politics that their way doesn't actually pay.
In other words it will, in the long run, be beneficial not only to the Lib Dems but indeed to all those politicians, including those within the Conservative and Labour parties, of which I have no doubt there are many, who do actually appreciate the importance of good faith and integrity in our politics.
Forget all the dishonest spin and weasel words about the Agreement making no reference to specific detail that is contained in the proposals that are now being made. If Conservative backbench unease was about detail it would have been possible for the two parties of government to have amended the proposals between them in such a way as to address any legitimate concerns. The bottom line is that a substantial body of opinion within the parliamentary Conservative Party is wedded to the whole notion of inequality and privilege in politics as are, to their eternal disgrace, most of the so-called "progressives" of the Labour Party. Not for nothing did Labour's Peter Hain describe the current Lib Dem-inspired attempt to reform the second chamber as a once in a lifetime opportunity.
The argument that now is the "wrong time" due to there being "other priorities" is also a cop out. There will always be economic issues to address. There will never be a time when there will not be one national or international concern or another which can be given priority over constitutional reform if we look hard enough for an excuse to place the issue onto the back burner for another hundred years. The bottom line is that we cannot claim as a society to be committed to fairness and equality of opportunity for as long as our institutions themselves are based upon patronage and favour.
The stark fact of the matter is that the Conservatives, having wrested Lib Dem support for their unpopular and ideologically driven austerity programme, given in good faith, are now preparing to renege on their promise to their partners to honour their side of the bargain. It is a thing that the big parties do. As somebody who was Leader of a minority group at the London Borough of Hounslow in coalition with the Conservatives from 2006 to 2010 the pattern of behaviour is instantly familiar to me.
I have only bad news for Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats. The situation will get worse. As the next general election begins to approach their partners will figure that it will become increasingly difficult for them to cut and run. Throw a few spanners into the works, employ a few delaying tactics to stretch things out for a year or two, and suddenly it will have become nigh on impossible for the Lib Dems to abandon the coalition without being accused of extreme cynicism in the run-up to an election.
The fear of heavy electoral losses, itself a consequence of Lib Dem participation in the coalition, will also play heavily on the minds of the party's elected members when it comes to contemplating taking the very drastic step of forcing an early election by walking away from a one-sided coalition. Self-interest will almost inevitably win the day and so the coalition will limp on grumpily until 2015 at which time the Lib Dems will lose most of their seats, dispense with their leader and set about the long, painstaking but at some point probably successful task of placing some distance between themselves and this whole regrettable episode and eventually regaining lost ground.
What seems clear to me is that the big parties attract and encourage a mentality in which intrigue, behind-the-scenes plotting and betrayal are considered a necessary and inevitable feature of political discourse and one which some of those involved actually find quite exciting. Just behold for a moment the smug, fatuous grin on the face of the career politician on Question Time or Newsnight as he or she smarmily avoids answering a question and you will clearly see for yourself what I mean - these people actually believe that by the practice of spin and deceit they are in some way being clever rather than just deceitful.
In the course of its betrayal the senior partner will have powerful allies. In Hounslow it was senior officers of the Council, not necessarily supportive of the Conservatives but wedded to the old establishment practices to which they had become accustomed under Labour and fearful of the radical agenda promoted by the Community Group on the Council which I led. In the case of the government it will be the largely Conservative press, and we can be sure that between now and 2015 the Daily Mail and other such esteemed organs of the establishment will be drip-feeding us juicy titbits of information, and non-information, about the junior coalition partner for our edification.
Meanwhile another plank of the Coalition Agreement concerns proposed electoral boundary changes, due to be introduced before the next election, which will favour the Conservatives at the expense of the Lib Dems and the Labour Party. The rationale of the changes is that they will bring more integrity to the process of government by rectifying inequalities that have developed within the present alignment of constituency seats.
Through their betrayal over Lords reform the Conservatives will have demonstrated that they have no interest in bringing more integrity to government, nor in rectifying inequality. As such the Liberal Democrats will no longer have any moral obligation to support the proposed changes.
Furthermore, the Conservatives will already have set the precedent that coalition promises need not be honoured.
It is almost certainly too late for the Lib Dems to reverse the hemorrhaging of their own support that their participation in the coalition government has brought about. Nevertheless it is essential that that loss of support is not exacerbated by the complete loss of credibility that will ensue should they roll over and simply accept the bad faith shown to them by their untrustworthy partners.
In my view it is of critical importance that the Lib Dems punish the impending betrayal by withdrawing their support for boundary changes and making it crystal clear why they have done so. Their partners will whine like stuck pigs and no doubt some of them will genuinely be too stupid to understand why it has happened, in the same way as some of the Conservatives on Hounslow Council were shocked when we failed to support their 2010 budget following the Mogden debacle, when our partners refused to back us in our quarrel with chief officers over the nuisance caused to residents by a local sewage plant "managed" by Thames Water (which has donated money to the Conservative Party).
Not only will such a response be crucial if the Liberal Democrats are to maintain any dignity and self-respect at all, but I also truly believe that punishing underhandedness and betrayal will send precisely the right message to the spinners and backstabbers who seem to dominate modern party politics that their way doesn't actually pay.
In other words it will, in the long run, be beneficial not only to the Lib Dems but indeed to all those politicians, including those within the Conservative and Labour parties, of which I have no doubt there are many, who do actually appreciate the importance of good faith and integrity in our politics.
Tuesday, 17 July 2012
Council Watchdog Must Raise its Game, MPs Warn
The body which decides whether council services are up to standard should "raise its own game significantly", a report by MPs suggests.
The Local Government Ombudsman takes too long to deal with some cases and has to prove its value to the taxpayer, the Local Government Committee says.
Otherwise it will "undermine its own role and credibility", it adds.
The LGO, which is funded by the government but is an independent body, handled 21,840 complaints in 2010/11.
'Satisfaction'
The committee's chairman, Labour MP Clive Betts, said: "LGO has been taking far too long to determine some cases. One of the ombudsmen conceded that the delay in determining some cases was itself likely to amount to maladministration.
"This must raise questions about the LGO's authority and credibility. The organisation needs to apply strict deadlines to all the cases that it handles."
The committee found the LGO needed to provide a "clear methodology to measure levels of customer satisfaction and publish the results".
It added: "It must also put in place arrangements to ensure there is an annual evaluation of its own activities and decision-making by an independent external reviewer, to ensure the LGO is itself fair, effective, open, transparent and accountable."
This reviewer should be appointed by the end of this year and report for the first time no later than Easter 2013, it added.
The cross-party committee said: "An organisation whose primary job is investigating and determining whether maladministration by others has taken place must itself take care to avoid maladministration by delaying justice. If it does not, it will undermine its own role and credibility."
Reproduced with acknowledgements to BBC News.
The Local Government Ombudsman takes too long to deal with some cases and has to prove its value to the taxpayer, the Local Government Committee says.
Otherwise it will "undermine its own role and credibility", it adds.
The LGO, which is funded by the government but is an independent body, handled 21,840 complaints in 2010/11.
'Satisfaction'
The committee's chairman, Labour MP Clive Betts, said: "LGO has been taking far too long to determine some cases. One of the ombudsmen conceded that the delay in determining some cases was itself likely to amount to maladministration.
"This must raise questions about the LGO's authority and credibility. The organisation needs to apply strict deadlines to all the cases that it handles."
The committee found the LGO needed to provide a "clear methodology to measure levels of customer satisfaction and publish the results".
It added: "It must also put in place arrangements to ensure there is an annual evaluation of its own activities and decision-making by an independent external reviewer, to ensure the LGO is itself fair, effective, open, transparent and accountable."
This reviewer should be appointed by the end of this year and report for the first time no later than Easter 2013, it added.
The cross-party committee said: "An organisation whose primary job is investigating and determining whether maladministration by others has taken place must itself take care to avoid maladministration by delaying justice. If it does not, it will undermine its own role and credibility."
Reproduced with acknowledgements to BBC News.
Sunday, 15 July 2012
Only Cameron Can Rescue the Coalition. But Does He Want To?
By Andrew Rawnsley
In the honeymoon days, when the atmosphere within the coalition was so light and breezy that David Cameron and Nick Clegg could be amused by the differences between their parties, they shared a private joke. The Lib Dems' attachment to elaborate consultation and exhaustive internal democracy was like "a kibbutz". In contrast, the Tories were "Napoleonic" in their apparent willingness to follow unquestioningly orders handed down from above.
As it has turned out, they have both been proved wrong. So has everyone else who started off with the assumption that there would be a big strain on the coalition from the contrast between obedient, realistic Tories who understood that power involves compromises and difficult, naive Lib Dems who would insist on putting their precious principles ahead of the deals necessary to make coalition government work. Sure, there has been that contrast – but, by and large, it is the Lib Dems who have been the grownups of the coalition and the Tories who have been the juveniles.
The Lib Dems have understood the fundamental premise of coalition: that a marriage between two parties can be sustained only if both partners are prepared to sacrifice their own preferences for the greater cause. Mr Clegg's party has been astonishingly disciplined over the past two years. To a fault, they have often put aside their own desires and interests for the sake of coalition unity. They have held their noses and voted through welfare cuts, immigration caps, tuition fees and a health plan which was not even in the coalition agreement. With one or two exceptions, their ministers have been stalwart defenders of the coalition and their backbenchers have refrained from badmouthing it.
For this, they have paid a punishing price. At local elections, Lib Dem councillors have been slaughtered. On their current opinion poll rating, they have lost more than half of the support they received at the last general election. They have virtually no friends in the press. Their leader has been flayed to within an inch of his political life.
Coalition has generally been much easier for the Conservatives. As the bigger party, they have been asked to make far fewer compromises. It is the snarl of the rancorous tendency on the Tory backbenches that David Cameron has allowed the yellow tail to wag the blue dog, but there is scant evidence to support their cries of betrayal.
Sayeeda Warsi, the Tory party co-chairman, can cheerfully, and pretty much accurately, boast that the government is implementing 80% of the Conservative manifesto. Where the coalition has pursued Lib Dem ideas, such as tax cuts directed at those on low incomes or the pupil premium for schools in deprived areas, Tories have not had to grit their teeth. They have taken up these policies because they liked them. Yet a significant section of the Conservative party was never happy with coalition from the off and these rejectionists have been growing in noise and numbers as time has gone on. Unlike the Lib Dems, they refuse to accept the fundamental basis of coalition: that of give and take on both sides.
This contrast came to a vivid head last week when the government had to beat its humiliating retreat over Lords reform – legislation shaped by a Tory minister and approved by the whole cabinet – because almost 100 Tory MPs defied their whips. This is a debacle with several consequences, none of them good for the health of the coalition. Tory MPs now think they know that when they see the whites of the prime minister's eyes, they can make him blink. The Lib Dems now know that when David Cameron promises he can deliver the Conservative party, his word cannot be relied on.
"Cameron didn't work anything like hard enough," says one senior Lib Dem. "He's had two years to think about how he was going to do this and failed." Mr Clegg felt obliged to accede to the prime minister's plea to be given more time to work on the Tory rebels, but there is little confidence among senior Lib Dems that Mr Cameron will be able win over enough of the dissenters to secure a timetable for the legislation when parliament returns in the autumn.
Whatever you may think of these proposals for the Lords, the Lib Dems burn with an entirely understandable resentment that they have repeatedly done their duty by the coalition by swallowing a lot of things they don't like, but a blocking minority of Conservative MPs simply will not reciprocate when it comes to something that Lib Dems care about. From my conversations with very senior Lib Dems I have absolutely no doubt of this: if Lords reform does not progress in September, the Lib Dems will respond by killing the redrawing of constituency boundaries which are estimated to be worth an extra dozen to 20 seats to the Tories at the next general election. Moreover, they will veto the boundary changes as an explicit act of payback for Tory sabotage of Lords reform. It won't be a case of Nick Clegg quietly licensing his backbenchers and peers to work with Labour to vote down the boundary changes. All Lib Dems, ministers included, will vote against.
More than once, and in terms no one could misunderstand, Mr Clegg has warned Mr Cameron that the Lib Dems cannot go into the next election having delivered all the constitutional changes which suit the Tories and not secure a single reform hoped for by the Lib Dems. As one Lib Dem minister puts it: "What will it say about the whole idea of coalition government if the junior partner always gets the shit end of the bargain?"
The Conservatives attach enormous importance to the small haul of extra seats they expect to gain from these boundary changes – a sign of their lack of confidence that they can win the next election. If the Lib Dems vote down the boundary changes, some Conservatives predict that the anger among Tories will be so intense that it will be the death knell of this government. So it is possible that the coalition will collapse in poisonous acrimony and Ed Miliband will be prime minister by Christmas.
On the spectrum of probabilities, this remains an unlikely scenario. Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg have a mutual interest in keeping the show on the road if only for fear of what would happen to their parties at an early election triggered by a squabble over the constitution which would look arcane and self-indulgent to the vast majority of the public. Both men would have a hard time explaining to voters why Lords reform and bagging a few extra seats in the Commons for the Tories were more important to them than sticking to their original promise to work together for a full parliament to fix the economy.
So the coalition will probably endure. The question is in what sort of state. Tomorrow Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg will try to reinvest their partnership with some dignity by making one of their joint appearances, on this occasion to launch their latest ideas for trying to stimulate the economy through housing and other infrastructure projects.
They will never recapture the early romance of coalition when their claimed willingness to put aside party differences to tackle a national economic emergency captivated many voters and deeply alarmed senior people in the Labour party. The sweet scent of the rose garden has evaporated for good. The best they can probably now aim for is to demonstrate that there is still some residual shared purpose to this endeavour.
For Mr Clegg and his party, the long-term point of being in coalition was to prove to Britain that it could be a stable, effective and attractive form of government. A descent into a permanent condition of seething acrimony, punctuated by furious shouting matches and parliamentary defeats, will discredit the very idea of coalition government. Voters will not be minded to repeat the experience, which won't be good for Lib Dem hopes of being in office again.
Quite a lot of the Tory party would be secretly – and not so secretly – delighted if this coalition gave a bad name to the whole notion of coalitions. David Cameron has a decision to make: is he one of them? It was his initiative which led to the formation of the coalition. When he made his bold offer to the Lib Dems on the morning after the last election, it was the most creative gambit of his political career, the best response to the circumstances and highly popular with much of the electorate. Failure to make it work will not say good things about his judgment or abilities.
So the prime minister has some hard thinking to do over the summer. Is he ready to take ownership of the coalition? Can he confront those in his party who want to wreck the government with the determination now necessary to save it? Will he tell the hard truths to the Conservative party about the necessary compromises of sharing power?
If he is not able or willing to do that, then no one else can rescue the coalition.
Reproduced with acknowledgements to The Observer.
In the honeymoon days, when the atmosphere within the coalition was so light and breezy that David Cameron and Nick Clegg could be amused by the differences between their parties, they shared a private joke. The Lib Dems' attachment to elaborate consultation and exhaustive internal democracy was like "a kibbutz". In contrast, the Tories were "Napoleonic" in their apparent willingness to follow unquestioningly orders handed down from above.
As it has turned out, they have both been proved wrong. So has everyone else who started off with the assumption that there would be a big strain on the coalition from the contrast between obedient, realistic Tories who understood that power involves compromises and difficult, naive Lib Dems who would insist on putting their precious principles ahead of the deals necessary to make coalition government work. Sure, there has been that contrast – but, by and large, it is the Lib Dems who have been the grownups of the coalition and the Tories who have been the juveniles.
The Lib Dems have understood the fundamental premise of coalition: that a marriage between two parties can be sustained only if both partners are prepared to sacrifice their own preferences for the greater cause. Mr Clegg's party has been astonishingly disciplined over the past two years. To a fault, they have often put aside their own desires and interests for the sake of coalition unity. They have held their noses and voted through welfare cuts, immigration caps, tuition fees and a health plan which was not even in the coalition agreement. With one or two exceptions, their ministers have been stalwart defenders of the coalition and their backbenchers have refrained from badmouthing it.
For this, they have paid a punishing price. At local elections, Lib Dem councillors have been slaughtered. On their current opinion poll rating, they have lost more than half of the support they received at the last general election. They have virtually no friends in the press. Their leader has been flayed to within an inch of his political life.
Coalition has generally been much easier for the Conservatives. As the bigger party, they have been asked to make far fewer compromises. It is the snarl of the rancorous tendency on the Tory backbenches that David Cameron has allowed the yellow tail to wag the blue dog, but there is scant evidence to support their cries of betrayal.
Sayeeda Warsi, the Tory party co-chairman, can cheerfully, and pretty much accurately, boast that the government is implementing 80% of the Conservative manifesto. Where the coalition has pursued Lib Dem ideas, such as tax cuts directed at those on low incomes or the pupil premium for schools in deprived areas, Tories have not had to grit their teeth. They have taken up these policies because they liked them. Yet a significant section of the Conservative party was never happy with coalition from the off and these rejectionists have been growing in noise and numbers as time has gone on. Unlike the Lib Dems, they refuse to accept the fundamental basis of coalition: that of give and take on both sides.
This contrast came to a vivid head last week when the government had to beat its humiliating retreat over Lords reform – legislation shaped by a Tory minister and approved by the whole cabinet – because almost 100 Tory MPs defied their whips. This is a debacle with several consequences, none of them good for the health of the coalition. Tory MPs now think they know that when they see the whites of the prime minister's eyes, they can make him blink. The Lib Dems now know that when David Cameron promises he can deliver the Conservative party, his word cannot be relied on.
"Cameron didn't work anything like hard enough," says one senior Lib Dem. "He's had two years to think about how he was going to do this and failed." Mr Clegg felt obliged to accede to the prime minister's plea to be given more time to work on the Tory rebels, but there is little confidence among senior Lib Dems that Mr Cameron will be able win over enough of the dissenters to secure a timetable for the legislation when parliament returns in the autumn.
Whatever you may think of these proposals for the Lords, the Lib Dems burn with an entirely understandable resentment that they have repeatedly done their duty by the coalition by swallowing a lot of things they don't like, but a blocking minority of Conservative MPs simply will not reciprocate when it comes to something that Lib Dems care about. From my conversations with very senior Lib Dems I have absolutely no doubt of this: if Lords reform does not progress in September, the Lib Dems will respond by killing the redrawing of constituency boundaries which are estimated to be worth an extra dozen to 20 seats to the Tories at the next general election. Moreover, they will veto the boundary changes as an explicit act of payback for Tory sabotage of Lords reform. It won't be a case of Nick Clegg quietly licensing his backbenchers and peers to work with Labour to vote down the boundary changes. All Lib Dems, ministers included, will vote against.
More than once, and in terms no one could misunderstand, Mr Clegg has warned Mr Cameron that the Lib Dems cannot go into the next election having delivered all the constitutional changes which suit the Tories and not secure a single reform hoped for by the Lib Dems. As one Lib Dem minister puts it: "What will it say about the whole idea of coalition government if the junior partner always gets the shit end of the bargain?"
The Conservatives attach enormous importance to the small haul of extra seats they expect to gain from these boundary changes – a sign of their lack of confidence that they can win the next election. If the Lib Dems vote down the boundary changes, some Conservatives predict that the anger among Tories will be so intense that it will be the death knell of this government. So it is possible that the coalition will collapse in poisonous acrimony and Ed Miliband will be prime minister by Christmas.
On the spectrum of probabilities, this remains an unlikely scenario. Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg have a mutual interest in keeping the show on the road if only for fear of what would happen to their parties at an early election triggered by a squabble over the constitution which would look arcane and self-indulgent to the vast majority of the public. Both men would have a hard time explaining to voters why Lords reform and bagging a few extra seats in the Commons for the Tories were more important to them than sticking to their original promise to work together for a full parliament to fix the economy.
So the coalition will probably endure. The question is in what sort of state. Tomorrow Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg will try to reinvest their partnership with some dignity by making one of their joint appearances, on this occasion to launch their latest ideas for trying to stimulate the economy through housing and other infrastructure projects.
They will never recapture the early romance of coalition when their claimed willingness to put aside party differences to tackle a national economic emergency captivated many voters and deeply alarmed senior people in the Labour party. The sweet scent of the rose garden has evaporated for good. The best they can probably now aim for is to demonstrate that there is still some residual shared purpose to this endeavour.
For Mr Clegg and his party, the long-term point of being in coalition was to prove to Britain that it could be a stable, effective and attractive form of government. A descent into a permanent condition of seething acrimony, punctuated by furious shouting matches and parliamentary defeats, will discredit the very idea of coalition government. Voters will not be minded to repeat the experience, which won't be good for Lib Dem hopes of being in office again.
Quite a lot of the Tory party would be secretly – and not so secretly – delighted if this coalition gave a bad name to the whole notion of coalitions. David Cameron has a decision to make: is he one of them? It was his initiative which led to the formation of the coalition. When he made his bold offer to the Lib Dems on the morning after the last election, it was the most creative gambit of his political career, the best response to the circumstances and highly popular with much of the electorate. Failure to make it work will not say good things about his judgment or abilities.
So the prime minister has some hard thinking to do over the summer. Is he ready to take ownership of the coalition? Can he confront those in his party who want to wreck the government with the determination now necessary to save it? Will he tell the hard truths to the Conservative party about the necessary compromises of sharing power?
If he is not able or willing to do that, then no one else can rescue the coalition.
Reproduced with acknowledgements to The Observer.
Wednesday, 27 June 2012
Public Meeting to Discuss River Crane Pollution - Twickenham Library, July 11th
Representatives from Thames Water, which is being prosecuted by the Environment Agency for the sewage release, will be present at the meeting to answer questions. Friends of the River Crane Environment (FORCE), who have organised the meeting, are hoping for big public support. Please come along if you are able.
I Won't Say I Told You So
That's how the song goes anyway.
It could, of course, have been written by the ICG for those mugs who voted in support of an application by Thames Water to expand its stinky Mogden operation back in 2009 on the grounds that (a) it would "reduce smell" and that (b) the London Borough of Hounslow would be able to exercise "more control" over the selfish, relentlessly profit-driven activities of the water utlity through the watered-down and thoroughly useless Section 106 agreement that Thames condescended to sign as part of the approval process.
The ICG told the sorry shower that comprised the Sustainable Development Committee that the grounds were flawed on two counts. Namely (a) it wouldn't reduce the smell but would increase it, and (b) the London Borough of Hounslow has never had any intention of exercising any kind of control or restraint whatsoever over Thames Water, which imposes its odours on the surrounding community with absolute impunity.
Guess what happened?
The following is an excerpt from a letter written by the resident-led Mogden Residents' Action Group (MRAG) to Isleworth councillor Ed Mayne on June 10th:
"Residents are thus astounded to learn that, without any consultation with MRAG or community groups, the Council elected of its own volition, to remove the out of hours call centre for victims to ring so that Environment Officers can take 24/7 H2S readings and thus build a case to enforce Abatement Notices. Residents were led to believe that this call centre and the associated costs for Council Officers to investigate complaints is funded 100% by Thames Water as a pre-condition of the S106 agreement and it was agreed that this would remain in place until 2013 when the upgrade of Mogden is completed. Why then, and on whose authority was this vital function removed just before the summer months when odour escaping the Mogden premises is at its most severe?
"You will also be aware that residents requested, and were granted GBP 150,000, within the S106 agreement to enhance and beautify the environment around Mogden in residential areas most affected by Mogden's mismanagement and negligence over the last 14 years. We have repeatedly requested information on when consultation with residents will commence in order to define how the £150K will be spent, but we have received no response."
So there you have it, so supportive is the Head of Environment at LBH of the residents who pay his not unsubstantial salary that he has withdrawn an important facility that was provided as a condition of acceptance for the expansion project at no cost at all to the borough!
And what have the elected members, who are supposed to be running the council, done about it?
Well, Councillor Mayne has offered to facilitate a meeting between residents and the new Lead Member for Environment, Councillor Colin Ellar, and this offer is in the process of being responded to.
We can only hope that Councillor Ellar and his administration will take the necessary measures that we would have taken had our coalition partners backed us post-2009 to sort out the utter disgrace that is Hounslow's Environment department for once and for all.
It could, of course, have been written by the ICG for those mugs who voted in support of an application by Thames Water to expand its stinky Mogden operation back in 2009 on the grounds that (a) it would "reduce smell" and that (b) the London Borough of Hounslow would be able to exercise "more control" over the selfish, relentlessly profit-driven activities of the water utlity through the watered-down and thoroughly useless Section 106 agreement that Thames condescended to sign as part of the approval process.
The ICG told the sorry shower that comprised the Sustainable Development Committee that the grounds were flawed on two counts. Namely (a) it wouldn't reduce the smell but would increase it, and (b) the London Borough of Hounslow has never had any intention of exercising any kind of control or restraint whatsoever over Thames Water, which imposes its odours on the surrounding community with absolute impunity.
Guess what happened?
The following is an excerpt from a letter written by the resident-led Mogden Residents' Action Group (MRAG) to Isleworth councillor Ed Mayne on June 10th:
"Residents are thus astounded to learn that, without any consultation with MRAG or community groups, the Council elected of its own volition, to remove the out of hours call centre for victims to ring so that Environment Officers can take 24/7 H2S readings and thus build a case to enforce Abatement Notices. Residents were led to believe that this call centre and the associated costs for Council Officers to investigate complaints is funded 100% by Thames Water as a pre-condition of the S106 agreement and it was agreed that this would remain in place until 2013 when the upgrade of Mogden is completed. Why then, and on whose authority was this vital function removed just before the summer months when odour escaping the Mogden premises is at its most severe?
"You will also be aware that residents requested, and were granted GBP 150,000, within the S106 agreement to enhance and beautify the environment around Mogden in residential areas most affected by Mogden's mismanagement and negligence over the last 14 years. We have repeatedly requested information on when consultation with residents will commence in order to define how the £150K will be spent, but we have received no response."
So there you have it, so supportive is the Head of Environment at LBH of the residents who pay his not unsubstantial salary that he has withdrawn an important facility that was provided as a condition of acceptance for the expansion project at no cost at all to the borough!
And what have the elected members, who are supposed to be running the council, done about it?
Well, Councillor Mayne has offered to facilitate a meeting between residents and the new Lead Member for Environment, Councillor Colin Ellar, and this offer is in the process of being responded to.
We can only hope that Councillor Ellar and his administration will take the necessary measures that we would have taken had our coalition partners backed us post-2009 to sort out the utter disgrace that is Hounslow's Environment department for once and for all.
Tuesday, 26 June 2012
Cameron's Big Cut "Idea" Will Only Backfire on the Tories
By Polly Toynbee
Attacking the under-25s might help poll ratings for now, but the real causes of high housing benefit costs lie elsewhere
Behind in the polls, David Cameron cleaves to his one truly popular policy: cutting welfare. Pollsters say people want it cut even more. His speech hits every button, stirring up those on quite low incomes against those on very low incomes, dividing and ruling, distracting from the lifestyle of the rulers. With the rottweiler tendency on his backbenches growing restless, he throws them the vulnerable to chew on – all those luxuriating in the "culture of entitlement" on £71 a week unemployment pay. Politically, it works well – for now.
A red mist of despair poured from children's and disability charities, stunned at yet another assault on those they try to defend. Already the £18bn benefit cut is "without historical or international precedent," according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Cameron's 17 "ideas" may not all see the light of day, but another £10bn will be cut: housing benefit and US-style benefit time limits yield the big money.
Few people realise that 88% of benefit cuts are still to come, with two thirds of disabled children to lose large sums. Housing benefit cuts, driving thousands of families miles from their homes and children from their schools, have only just begun. Without yet knowing the perverse effects of these cuts, with chaos about to engulf the Department for Work and Pensions on the work programme and universal credit, Cameron shoots from the hip.
He sounded plausible, and his sweeping tour of benefits seeming common sense to many. Every system since the Poor Law faces the same dilemma – how to help the needy without weakening work incentives, how to tell a "sturdy beggar" from a hard-luck case and give them enough to live but less than a low-paid job. There are no satisfactory answers – but Cameron's "ideas" are the harshest ever proposed. How knowingly he misled in almost every example he gave, as he pitted "those who work hard and do the right thing" against those on benefits, deliberately disguising that these are mainly the same people. Most of the poor drawing benefits are cleaners, carers, caterers – the 62% living below the poverty line, working hard yet needing benefits to survive.
Cameron's focus on the ever-rising housing benefit bill omitted key facts. The Smith Institute reports that 95% of the £1bn rise in housing benefit this year is paid to people in work. Only one in eight people drawing the benefit is out of work; the rest are low earners. The cost is not about feckless people but the housing crisis, the failure to build social, rented or private housing over the last three decades. Shortage makes rents rise faster than earnings, and faster than price inflation. Cameron's plan to peg housing benefit to prices, not to inflation, will be devastating. Shelter reports that if prices rose as fast as rents since 1971, a chicken would now cost £47.51. Nor is there any sign housing benefit cuts will cause rents to fall: rents are still rising as landlords turn away benefit tenants, easily finding others in this starved market.
In a familiar litany of charges against the workless, single mothers, drug addicts (only 4%), he summons up a familiar portrait of the multi-child household, beloved of television documentaries, seeking worst cases to be entertainingly put right by Ann Widdecombe. Every society will always have enough of those to keep the cameras happy. But the dull lives of cleaners juggling childcare and jobs make bad TV, as do dull statistics that give the lie to the idea that moral turpitude drives the escalating benefits bill.
Low wages and lack of housing are the root cause. A living wage would lift the burden off taxpayers and put it on to employers. Regulated rents and a great housebuilding programme are the way to cut the housing benefit bill. The government prefers mass removal of the workless to low-rent areas with no jobs.
Cameron's plan for the under-25s to stay at home springs from his own social milieu, where empty nesters rattle around in echoing home counties mansions, easy for returning children to commute to first jobs. But take housing benefit from 380,000 young people, and what does the student from Middlesbrough College do at the end of their course if they can't move to where the jobs are, get a room, get started? Stay at home and be unemployed for ever. Even in work, the 205,000 under-25s with a child will have to separate, each to move back to their parents. With benefits as well as wages cut in depressed areas, the north-south divide will gape yet wider, with no chance of moving.
Let's hear no more from Cameron about social mobility. If this proceeds, Alan Milburn should resign as social mobility tsar, since nobody will be going anywhere. Bright but poor graduates will be sent home and everyone will stay where they were born. Labour spokesmen's lack of visceral indignation on this was dispiriting. Confronting popular prejudice with facts is politically dangerous, but bravery wins plaudits too.
The dumbfounding spectacle of this wealthy prime minister kicking away slender supports of the weak will be an abiding image of the man and his party. In the longest recession, with 2.6 million out of work and 1.4 million part-timers desperately seeking full-time jobs, the sheer effrontery of suggesting over-generous benefits keep them out work is beyond belief.
Cameron may saw with the grain of public opinion now, but by the next election, enough of those now clamouring for cuts will have seen their effects at first hand. The British Social Attitudes Survey records how public sympathy for underdogs ebbs after Labour benefit increases – but soon rekindles under Tory harshness.
Reproduced with acknowledgements to The Guardian on Facebook.
Attacking the under-25s might help poll ratings for now, but the real causes of high housing benefit costs lie elsewhere
Behind in the polls, David Cameron cleaves to his one truly popular policy: cutting welfare. Pollsters say people want it cut even more. His speech hits every button, stirring up those on quite low incomes against those on very low incomes, dividing and ruling, distracting from the lifestyle of the rulers. With the rottweiler tendency on his backbenches growing restless, he throws them the vulnerable to chew on – all those luxuriating in the "culture of entitlement" on £71 a week unemployment pay. Politically, it works well – for now.
A red mist of despair poured from children's and disability charities, stunned at yet another assault on those they try to defend. Already the £18bn benefit cut is "without historical or international precedent," according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Cameron's 17 "ideas" may not all see the light of day, but another £10bn will be cut: housing benefit and US-style benefit time limits yield the big money.
Few people realise that 88% of benefit cuts are still to come, with two thirds of disabled children to lose large sums. Housing benefit cuts, driving thousands of families miles from their homes and children from their schools, have only just begun. Without yet knowing the perverse effects of these cuts, with chaos about to engulf the Department for Work and Pensions on the work programme and universal credit, Cameron shoots from the hip.
He sounded plausible, and his sweeping tour of benefits seeming common sense to many. Every system since the Poor Law faces the same dilemma – how to help the needy without weakening work incentives, how to tell a "sturdy beggar" from a hard-luck case and give them enough to live but less than a low-paid job. There are no satisfactory answers – but Cameron's "ideas" are the harshest ever proposed. How knowingly he misled in almost every example he gave, as he pitted "those who work hard and do the right thing" against those on benefits, deliberately disguising that these are mainly the same people. Most of the poor drawing benefits are cleaners, carers, caterers – the 62% living below the poverty line, working hard yet needing benefits to survive.
Cameron's focus on the ever-rising housing benefit bill omitted key facts. The Smith Institute reports that 95% of the £1bn rise in housing benefit this year is paid to people in work. Only one in eight people drawing the benefit is out of work; the rest are low earners. The cost is not about feckless people but the housing crisis, the failure to build social, rented or private housing over the last three decades. Shortage makes rents rise faster than earnings, and faster than price inflation. Cameron's plan to peg housing benefit to prices, not to inflation, will be devastating. Shelter reports that if prices rose as fast as rents since 1971, a chicken would now cost £47.51. Nor is there any sign housing benefit cuts will cause rents to fall: rents are still rising as landlords turn away benefit tenants, easily finding others in this starved market.
"Labour spokesmen's lack of visceral indignation on this was dispiriting. Confronting popular prejudice with facts is politically dangerous, but bravery wins plaudits too."
In a familiar litany of charges against the workless, single mothers, drug addicts (only 4%), he summons up a familiar portrait of the multi-child household, beloved of television documentaries, seeking worst cases to be entertainingly put right by Ann Widdecombe. Every society will always have enough of those to keep the cameras happy. But the dull lives of cleaners juggling childcare and jobs make bad TV, as do dull statistics that give the lie to the idea that moral turpitude drives the escalating benefits bill.
Low wages and lack of housing are the root cause. A living wage would lift the burden off taxpayers and put it on to employers. Regulated rents and a great housebuilding programme are the way to cut the housing benefit bill. The government prefers mass removal of the workless to low-rent areas with no jobs.
Cameron's plan for the under-25s to stay at home springs from his own social milieu, where empty nesters rattle around in echoing home counties mansions, easy for returning children to commute to first jobs. But take housing benefit from 380,000 young people, and what does the student from Middlesbrough College do at the end of their course if they can't move to where the jobs are, get a room, get started? Stay at home and be unemployed for ever. Even in work, the 205,000 under-25s with a child will have to separate, each to move back to their parents. With benefits as well as wages cut in depressed areas, the north-south divide will gape yet wider, with no chance of moving.
Let's hear no more from Cameron about social mobility. If this proceeds, Alan Milburn should resign as social mobility tsar, since nobody will be going anywhere. Bright but poor graduates will be sent home and everyone will stay where they were born. Labour spokesmen's lack of visceral indignation on this was dispiriting. Confronting popular prejudice with facts is politically dangerous, but bravery wins plaudits too.
The dumbfounding spectacle of this wealthy prime minister kicking away slender supports of the weak will be an abiding image of the man and his party. In the longest recession, with 2.6 million out of work and 1.4 million part-timers desperately seeking full-time jobs, the sheer effrontery of suggesting over-generous benefits keep them out work is beyond belief.
Cameron may saw with the grain of public opinion now, but by the next election, enough of those now clamouring for cuts will have seen their effects at first hand. The British Social Attitudes Survey records how public sympathy for underdogs ebbs after Labour benefit increases – but soon rekindles under Tory harshness.
Reproduced with acknowledgements to The Guardian on Facebook.
Tuesday, 5 June 2012
A Celebration of Community
As I think I said in a previous post I am not a flag-waving type nor a particularly fervent monarchist.
Nevertheless I did venture out to the Jubilee celebration party in Isleworth's Chestnut Grove, partly I guess to support my father who had been involved in helping to organise it and partly because it was the road I grew up in.
I'm glad I went along. For a little street of some 40 or so dwellings the turnout was incredible, fortified as it was by the participation of some neighbours from Cleveland Road and Twickenham Road and some moved-out former dwellers.
Back in the 1960s and early 1970s Chestnut Grove had been a typical suburban, owner-occupied, semi-detatched residential neighbourhood. Typical at that time, of course, meant Sunday roast-eating, Crossroads-watching, "respectable" - and white. It won't have been the only street in England, nor even in Isleworth, in which the news that an Asian family would be moving in was met with a certain amount of fear and trepidation. Not hatred nor even hostility per se, but an intangible feeling that this development would be in some indefinable way "bad" for the neighbourhood and that things would somehow never quite be the same again.
Fast forward to 2012 and the moral triumph of the integrated society was as evident in Chestnut Grove as it could ever possibly be. The well-intentioned but ignorant fears of yesteryear had well and truly given way to a new, inclusive sense of community, the bonds that join it every bit as united and as powerful as they had been back in the sixties and seventies but with the old concerns - what I have called "the fear of difference" - replaced by a new and very real sense of togetherness.
This was not "tolerance", a word that suggests putting up reluctantly with others for the sake of a quiet life, but a real unity that pervaded the whole street. I chuckled inwardly as I watched some quite elderly people, those very residents who had been so concerned by the prospect of demographic change all those years ago, dancing to the bhangra bearing expressions of real celebration and joy.
The other emotion induced within me by the occasion, and not a little by the sangria, was one of real anger at the knowledge that communities such as this are still not trusted to determine their own destinies. Still considered in constant need of steering and guidance by self-appointed political elites who for some undefined reason believe that only they know what is best for them.
Those local politicos would have been welcome at the Chestnut Grove street party, but as individuals wanting to join us not as politicians wanting to direct us.
I recall a street party in Orchard Road, Brentford back in 2006, shortly after the local elections of that year which had seen six ICG councillors elected. If I recall correctly we all attended, but as members of the public going along to support an initiative by fellow residents. We didn't have our impending presence announced with a fanfare of trumpets. It was their activity - the residents'. Not ours.
Whatever the occasion may have been about officially I like to think the Chestnut Grove street party was above all a celebration of community. An audacious flaunting of our unbroken and unbreakable spirit. Communities such as Chestnut Grove need no controlling or directing. We are free spirits, and that is the way it will always remain.
Nevertheless I did venture out to the Jubilee celebration party in Isleworth's Chestnut Grove, partly I guess to support my father who had been involved in helping to organise it and partly because it was the road I grew up in.
I'm glad I went along. For a little street of some 40 or so dwellings the turnout was incredible, fortified as it was by the participation of some neighbours from Cleveland Road and Twickenham Road and some moved-out former dwellers.
Back in the 1960s and early 1970s Chestnut Grove had been a typical suburban, owner-occupied, semi-detatched residential neighbourhood. Typical at that time, of course, meant Sunday roast-eating, Crossroads-watching, "respectable" - and white. It won't have been the only street in England, nor even in Isleworth, in which the news that an Asian family would be moving in was met with a certain amount of fear and trepidation. Not hatred nor even hostility per se, but an intangible feeling that this development would be in some indefinable way "bad" for the neighbourhood and that things would somehow never quite be the same again.
Fast forward to 2012 and the moral triumph of the integrated society was as evident in Chestnut Grove as it could ever possibly be. The well-intentioned but ignorant fears of yesteryear had well and truly given way to a new, inclusive sense of community, the bonds that join it every bit as united and as powerful as they had been back in the sixties and seventies but with the old concerns - what I have called "the fear of difference" - replaced by a new and very real sense of togetherness.
This was not "tolerance", a word that suggests putting up reluctantly with others for the sake of a quiet life, but a real unity that pervaded the whole street. I chuckled inwardly as I watched some quite elderly people, those very residents who had been so concerned by the prospect of demographic change all those years ago, dancing to the bhangra bearing expressions of real celebration and joy.
The other emotion induced within me by the occasion, and not a little by the sangria, was one of real anger at the knowledge that communities such as this are still not trusted to determine their own destinies. Still considered in constant need of steering and guidance by self-appointed political elites who for some undefined reason believe that only they know what is best for them.
Those local politicos would have been welcome at the Chestnut Grove street party, but as individuals wanting to join us not as politicians wanting to direct us.
I recall a street party in Orchard Road, Brentford back in 2006, shortly after the local elections of that year which had seen six ICG councillors elected. If I recall correctly we all attended, but as members of the public going along to support an initiative by fellow residents. We didn't have our impending presence announced with a fanfare of trumpets. It was their activity - the residents'. Not ours.
Whatever the occasion may have been about officially I like to think the Chestnut Grove street party was above all a celebration of community. An audacious flaunting of our unbroken and unbreakable spirit. Communities such as Chestnut Grove need no controlling or directing. We are free spirits, and that is the way it will always remain.
Monday, 28 May 2012
What If...?
Brentford Labour Councillor and former Deputy Leader Ruth Cadbury has an interesting item on her blog on the recent elections to the Greater London Authority (GLA), with a useful breakdown of voting patterns in the London Borough of Hounslow on a ward by ward basis. You can read the whole article by clicking here.
Whilst I don't believe the results from a London-wide election can be accurately projected onto the local elections to be held in 2014, they do give us some indication of how the ICG could expect to fare if, hypotheically, we were to contest them (the figures given are the "Party List" votes which probably give us a more accurate picture for the purposes of analysis, certainly more so than the beauty contest that was the Mayoral election itself).
On a similar turnout to that that we are likely to witness in 2014 Labour achieved 1094 votes in Isleworth and 1088 in Syon, the two wards which returned community councillors in 2006. These figures exclude the postal votes, which were counted separately. Allocating those postal votes proportionately from the overall total the Labour vote increases to around 1470 in Isleworth, and 1460 in Syon.
The Conservative vote is especially interesting. Just 653 people voted Conservative in Isleworth and 777 in Syon. Adding the postal votes calculated in the same manner as with Labour those figures increase to 916 in Isleworth and 1089 in Syon.
Both Labour and Conservative totals are those achieved in what was more or less a straight fight between the two (the minor parties, including the Lib Dems, shared a fairly small proportion of the overall votes cast). In other words, it is the vote the two big parties can reasonably expect in the absence of a challenge from within the community.
In both 2002 and 2006 votes for ICG candidates in Isleworth ranged between 1065 and 1266. In Syon in 2006 they ranged between 1329 and 1417. I have deliberately ignored the 2010 totals, which were higher, as the turnout was distorted by the fact of the general election being held on the same day.
Bearing in mind that the turnout in 2014 is likely to be similar to that of the GLA election, the suggestion is that any community candidates would take their votes largely from the political candidates, and proportionately this would mean for the most part from Labour and the Conservatives.
Could the ICG expect a similar vote to that which it achieved in 2002 and 2006? The feedback and general support that we are picking up from across the community leaves me in no doubt at all that we could. So what does this all mean?
Well first of all it means that, with or without a community intervention, the Conservatives have no realistic chance of making any headway in either Isleworth or Syon in spite of their bizarre bragging on Internet forums in the immediate wake of their defeat in 2010. If the ICG doesn't contest, Labour wins.
Secondly, it suggests that the ICG would, if it were to involve itself, probably be the bookie's favourite to win all six seats back. 1400-odd votes less a good few hundred lost to the ICG equals something decidedly short of the likely ICG total.
Possibly though this wouldn't be enough to seize the balance of power on the Council, as was the case last time. In the west of the borough there are a number of seats in which representation is "mixed" and current trends, coupled with the Conservatives' general lack of a gameplan other than a pie-in-the-sky aspiration for achieving an overall majority which would appear to be based solely on wishful thinking rather than any form of strategic planning, would seem to point to Labour gains in 2014, especially with the Conservatives being the major party of government. Even without Isleworth and Syon Labour currently holds 29 of the Council's 60 seats. A couple of gains in the west would secure them overall control in any event. But with a majority of, say, three seats the party would be extremely vulnerable to any eccentricites and deviations on the part of any of its own people. Party loyalty and organisational obedience would be put to the test like never before.
Like I say, this is all strictly hypothetical. The ICG doesn't have to contest elections. There is more than one way to skin a cat - if my very vegetarian daughter would forgive me such an expression. What it does mean however is that we remain in a position to use our clout within the community to wrest concessions at a time when some cutbacks are inevitable and when decisions will have to be taken between dependent and non-dependent services by an administration which institutionally feels more kindly disposed towards people and organisations that are dependent upon them. The hugely successful demos around Isleworth Library and St. John's Community Centre, coupled with our continuing active support for Isleworth Public Hall, are cases in point.
Whilst I don't believe the results from a London-wide election can be accurately projected onto the local elections to be held in 2014, they do give us some indication of how the ICG could expect to fare if, hypotheically, we were to contest them (the figures given are the "Party List" votes which probably give us a more accurate picture for the purposes of analysis, certainly more so than the beauty contest that was the Mayoral election itself).
On a similar turnout to that that we are likely to witness in 2014 Labour achieved 1094 votes in Isleworth and 1088 in Syon, the two wards which returned community councillors in 2006. These figures exclude the postal votes, which were counted separately. Allocating those postal votes proportionately from the overall total the Labour vote increases to around 1470 in Isleworth, and 1460 in Syon.
The Conservative vote is especially interesting. Just 653 people voted Conservative in Isleworth and 777 in Syon. Adding the postal votes calculated in the same manner as with Labour those figures increase to 916 in Isleworth and 1089 in Syon.
Both Labour and Conservative totals are those achieved in what was more or less a straight fight between the two (the minor parties, including the Lib Dems, shared a fairly small proportion of the overall votes cast). In other words, it is the vote the two big parties can reasonably expect in the absence of a challenge from within the community.
In both 2002 and 2006 votes for ICG candidates in Isleworth ranged between 1065 and 1266. In Syon in 2006 they ranged between 1329 and 1417. I have deliberately ignored the 2010 totals, which were higher, as the turnout was distorted by the fact of the general election being held on the same day.
Bearing in mind that the turnout in 2014 is likely to be similar to that of the GLA election, the suggestion is that any community candidates would take their votes largely from the political candidates, and proportionately this would mean for the most part from Labour and the Conservatives.
Could the ICG expect a similar vote to that which it achieved in 2002 and 2006? The feedback and general support that we are picking up from across the community leaves me in no doubt at all that we could. So what does this all mean?
Well first of all it means that, with or without a community intervention, the Conservatives have no realistic chance of making any headway in either Isleworth or Syon in spite of their bizarre bragging on Internet forums in the immediate wake of their defeat in 2010. If the ICG doesn't contest, Labour wins.
Secondly, it suggests that the ICG would, if it were to involve itself, probably be the bookie's favourite to win all six seats back. 1400-odd votes less a good few hundred lost to the ICG equals something decidedly short of the likely ICG total.
Possibly though this wouldn't be enough to seize the balance of power on the Council, as was the case last time. In the west of the borough there are a number of seats in which representation is "mixed" and current trends, coupled with the Conservatives' general lack of a gameplan other than a pie-in-the-sky aspiration for achieving an overall majority which would appear to be based solely on wishful thinking rather than any form of strategic planning, would seem to point to Labour gains in 2014, especially with the Conservatives being the major party of government. Even without Isleworth and Syon Labour currently holds 29 of the Council's 60 seats. A couple of gains in the west would secure them overall control in any event. But with a majority of, say, three seats the party would be extremely vulnerable to any eccentricites and deviations on the part of any of its own people. Party loyalty and organisational obedience would be put to the test like never before.
Like I say, this is all strictly hypothetical. The ICG doesn't have to contest elections. There is more than one way to skin a cat - if my very vegetarian daughter would forgive me such an expression. What it does mean however is that we remain in a position to use our clout within the community to wrest concessions at a time when some cutbacks are inevitable and when decisions will have to be taken between dependent and non-dependent services by an administration which institutionally feels more kindly disposed towards people and organisations that are dependent upon them. The hugely successful demos around Isleworth Library and St. John's Community Centre, coupled with our continuing active support for Isleworth Public Hall, are cases in point.
Thursday, 17 May 2012
Another Isleworth Councillor on the LBH Executive
At the Annual Meeting of Borough Council on Tuesday (it's to all intents and purposes a kind of AGM but doesn't appear to have an official title) another Isleworth councillor was promoted to the Council Executive.
Councillor Sue Sampson is now the Council's Lead Member for Performance and Customer Care, joining fellow Isleworth member Ed Mayne who remains Lead Member for Community Safety and Regulatory Services (the former half of that portfolio having been held by yours truly between 2006 and 2009).
Meanwhile Syon councillor Steve Curran holds what appears to be a rather large portfolio as Lead Member for Education, Housing and Human Resources and his ward colleague Theo Dennison has the influential task of chairing the Sustainable Development Committee (with Councillor Curran as his Vice Chair).
It is pleasing to see our own local representatives having such an input and playing such an important role. I am particularly pleased for Sue as I feel she is suited by temperament for the post for which she has been chosen, and I say this notwithstanding some of the disagreements we've had over the negative electioneering methods with which she has been associated in the past, a thing which to be fair was to some extent a cultural trait inherited from some of her predecessors.
I am sure she will make a success of her new appointment and I wish her all the very best.
The full list of appointments can be viewed at the London Borough of Hounslow website.
Councillor Sue Sampson is now the Council's Lead Member for Performance and Customer Care, joining fellow Isleworth member Ed Mayne who remains Lead Member for Community Safety and Regulatory Services (the former half of that portfolio having been held by yours truly between 2006 and 2009).
Meanwhile Syon councillor Steve Curran holds what appears to be a rather large portfolio as Lead Member for Education, Housing and Human Resources and his ward colleague Theo Dennison has the influential task of chairing the Sustainable Development Committee (with Councillor Curran as his Vice Chair).
It is pleasing to see our own local representatives having such an input and playing such an important role. I am particularly pleased for Sue as I feel she is suited by temperament for the post for which she has been chosen, and I say this notwithstanding some of the disagreements we've had over the negative electioneering methods with which she has been associated in the past, a thing which to be fair was to some extent a cultural trait inherited from some of her predecessors.
I am sure she will make a success of her new appointment and I wish her all the very best.
The full list of appointments can be viewed at the London Borough of Hounslow website.
Lance Newbigging
I was sad to learn at the weekend that my good friend and former work and ICG colleague Lance Newbigging passed away last Friday.
Lance and I were colleagues at Skycaps at London Heathrow Airport between 1989 and 1991. He would have been around 62 at the time and was regarded by many of the younger porters with affection as a kind of father figure, often bestowing the benefit of his advice based upon the legal training that he had received as a younger man in his native India.
When I lost my job there in 1991 as a inevitable consequence of an ongoing conflict with the appalling management at the company Lance took my part, which led to his own arbitrary dismissal not very long afterwards. Skycaps, run at the time by a company called Valet Services Limited, was a flawless example of the kind of "hire 'em, fire 'em" set-up that the present government is keen to reintroduce under the guise of "competitiveness". Lance and I spend many a happy afternoon together at the Industrial Tribunals, then based at London's Russell Square.
When the ICG was set up a little while later Lance liked what we were doing and joined up. Prior to that he had briefly been a member of the now-defunct Hounslow Residents' Group (HRG) but preferred the ICG model. As a passionate union man its more socially progressive outlook was more to his taste. Lance stood as a candidate for the ICG in 1998 in the old Spring Grove ward.
I had not seen Lance for some time prior to his passing, although we had spoken a few times on the telephone. I would have dearly loved to have visited him and naturally regret not having done so, however with five jobs and counting it was a physical impossibility (I did not see my own parents for six months from November last year and they live less than a mile along the road!). It is sad, but I guess inevitable, that there are some who are retired and lead a sedentary lifestyle who simply (and rather stupidly) just assume that everybody else is in the same position as themselves.
Lance, I know, understood this. He was a very intelligent man. Our friendship was one that went back a lot longer than some others and when we spoke recently we spent a good deal of time reminiscing about our times at Skycaps and about the extraordinary events of 1998 which set the wheels of a whole era in motion.
Lance was very well known, and respected, in his locality. One particularly powerful recollection I have is of boarding a 116 bus in Bedfont after having spent a good few hours at his home, working no doubt on some tribunal case and being sustained with tea and curry by him and his late partner Daphne. Lance had walked me to the bus stop to see me off (and, I'm sure, to have a crafty ciggie). As I paid my fare the driver looked to the stop behind me and asked me "Is that Lance?".
I responded in the affirmative, and for much of the journey back to Hounslow he explained to me how Lance had helped him to save his job when he had fallen foul of his own employers.
It will probably never have occurred to Lance how widely missed he will be. My heartfelt condolences go out to his family and loved ones.
Lance and I were colleagues at Skycaps at London Heathrow Airport between 1989 and 1991. He would have been around 62 at the time and was regarded by many of the younger porters with affection as a kind of father figure, often bestowing the benefit of his advice based upon the legal training that he had received as a younger man in his native India.
When I lost my job there in 1991 as a inevitable consequence of an ongoing conflict with the appalling management at the company Lance took my part, which led to his own arbitrary dismissal not very long afterwards. Skycaps, run at the time by a company called Valet Services Limited, was a flawless example of the kind of "hire 'em, fire 'em" set-up that the present government is keen to reintroduce under the guise of "competitiveness". Lance and I spend many a happy afternoon together at the Industrial Tribunals, then based at London's Russell Square.
When the ICG was set up a little while later Lance liked what we were doing and joined up. Prior to that he had briefly been a member of the now-defunct Hounslow Residents' Group (HRG) but preferred the ICG model. As a passionate union man its more socially progressive outlook was more to his taste. Lance stood as a candidate for the ICG in 1998 in the old Spring Grove ward.
I had not seen Lance for some time prior to his passing, although we had spoken a few times on the telephone. I would have dearly loved to have visited him and naturally regret not having done so, however with five jobs and counting it was a physical impossibility (I did not see my own parents for six months from November last year and they live less than a mile along the road!). It is sad, but I guess inevitable, that there are some who are retired and lead a sedentary lifestyle who simply (and rather stupidly) just assume that everybody else is in the same position as themselves.
Lance, I know, understood this. He was a very intelligent man. Our friendship was one that went back a lot longer than some others and when we spoke recently we spent a good deal of time reminiscing about our times at Skycaps and about the extraordinary events of 1998 which set the wheels of a whole era in motion.
Lance was very well known, and respected, in his locality. One particularly powerful recollection I have is of boarding a 116 bus in Bedfont after having spent a good few hours at his home, working no doubt on some tribunal case and being sustained with tea and curry by him and his late partner Daphne. Lance had walked me to the bus stop to see me off (and, I'm sure, to have a crafty ciggie). As I paid my fare the driver looked to the stop behind me and asked me "Is that Lance?".
I responded in the affirmative, and for much of the journey back to Hounslow he explained to me how Lance had helped him to save his job when he had fallen foul of his own employers.
It will probably never have occurred to Lance how widely missed he will be. My heartfelt condolences go out to his family and loved ones.
Thursday, 10 May 2012
Greece is the Word
I admit to some amusement over the current situation in Greece.
I am not anti-EU. I am, however, deeply opposed to the way in which faceless bankers and unelected powers behind the scenes appear to be pulling the strings ever more openly on the world scene, and am a tad frightened by the fact that they no longer seem to feel the need to even try to hide the fact. We have whole countries now being governed by "technocrats", completely bypassing the whole democratic process with barely so much as a murmur being heard in protest.
The faceless ones are demanding that Greece implements an austerity package to comply with the terms of their bailout. In other words, despite not being answerable to the Greek electorate nor even Greek they assume for themselves the right to determine Greek political and social policy.
But there was one very small impediment to their plans that appears to have seemed to them so irrelevant that it may have been entirely overlooked, and that was that the Greek electorate didn't actually want the austerity programme imposed on them. That electorate took a savage revenge on the international financial establishment by massively rejecting Pasok, the party that had dominated Greek politics for most of the past four decades, leaving it with just 41 seats in a parliament of 300.
Now the financial powers that be are left scratching their heads wondering what went wrong, and in the absence of a coalition with a working majority Greece may be heading back to the polls to see whether it can get it right the second time around.
Sadly voters in the UK are unable to exercise a similar power of veto as the faceless ones have effective control of all the major political parties, as well as the mainstream media which is able to downplay or to rubbish any attempt from beyond the approved parties to challenge their hegemony.
And so, whilst we enjoy a veneer of democracy and indeed even retain the right to bomb and invade other countries which may feel inclined to do things differently, in truth the international financial establishment enjoys a stranglehold which it doesn't yet have over the good people of Greece.
No doubt they will think of something to avert their Greek tragedy, but it has been fascinating to watch all the same. Interesting times.
I am not anti-EU. I am, however, deeply opposed to the way in which faceless bankers and unelected powers behind the scenes appear to be pulling the strings ever more openly on the world scene, and am a tad frightened by the fact that they no longer seem to feel the need to even try to hide the fact. We have whole countries now being governed by "technocrats", completely bypassing the whole democratic process with barely so much as a murmur being heard in protest.
The faceless ones are demanding that Greece implements an austerity package to comply with the terms of their bailout. In other words, despite not being answerable to the Greek electorate nor even Greek they assume for themselves the right to determine Greek political and social policy.
But there was one very small impediment to their plans that appears to have seemed to them so irrelevant that it may have been entirely overlooked, and that was that the Greek electorate didn't actually want the austerity programme imposed on them. That electorate took a savage revenge on the international financial establishment by massively rejecting Pasok, the party that had dominated Greek politics for most of the past four decades, leaving it with just 41 seats in a parliament of 300.
Now the financial powers that be are left scratching their heads wondering what went wrong, and in the absence of a coalition with a working majority Greece may be heading back to the polls to see whether it can get it right the second time around.
Sadly voters in the UK are unable to exercise a similar power of veto as the faceless ones have effective control of all the major political parties, as well as the mainstream media which is able to downplay or to rubbish any attempt from beyond the approved parties to challenge their hegemony.
And so, whilst we enjoy a veneer of democracy and indeed even retain the right to bomb and invade other countries which may feel inclined to do things differently, in truth the international financial establishment enjoys a stranglehold which it doesn't yet have over the good people of Greece.
No doubt they will think of something to avert their Greek tragedy, but it has been fascinating to watch all the same. Interesting times.
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