UNEMPLOYED? UNEMPLOYABLE, MORE LIKE! GRRR....

The Daily Mail today notes that MPs on the Commons Public Accounts Committee have produced a report which says that four out of ten unemployment benefit claimants who get jobs are back on the dole within six months.

The Tories are naturally up in arms and have condemned the government's 'back to work' iniatives.

Now, I'm no mathematician and I certainly balk at defending this government but ten minus four equals six, doesn't it? That means that six out of ten unemployment benefit claimants who find work, er, stay in work which doesn't seem so bad.

This doesn't let the feckless, workshy layabouts the Daily Mail believes the country is infested with off the hook of course but it does suggest that things might not be as bad as they appear in the august pages of the scariest read since Stephen King.

BEGAD, SIRRAH AND FIE, THRICE FIE!

Nickers raised the issue of the Prime Minister defending 'clapped out 19th century procedures' when he spoke in Parliament today. Instantly a stocking-clad old man in ancient robes clambered to his feet from his throne at the head of the King's Chapel and warned Nickers to be careful.

The sergeant at arms roused his men and they all grabbed their swords, ready to respond at a moment's notice if any difficulty arose. Apparently the Top Hat which is needed to clear the Chamber of members of the public was slightly disturbed during these unporecedented scenes of chaos.

You would half expect the Mikado to emerge stage left wouldn't you...

Well said, Nickers. It's time to abandon the pantomime, make Parliament a museum to further fleece the tourists and relocate the whole shooting match to an industrial estate on the edge of Milton Keynes.

WAY TO GO, ED

This is a brief post to express my full approval for Ed Davey and the rest of the Parliamentary party for their response to the gagging of the proposed motion on European membership.

To suggest that the motion to be tabled is not the subject under discussion is somewhat akin to saying the Labour Party is the most principled, honest political party in the western world and it is not pursuing a cynical agenda to avoid serious debate abetted by its sleazy, inept Speaker in any way. In other words it's complete b*llsh*t.

The best news of all is surely that we were immediately attacked by John 'just pasing through you solar system, earthlings' Redwood, so we must be on the right track.

Another 'proud to be a LD' day.

PRICE OF A STAMP, SIR?

Post Offices across the country are currently threatened with closure and the review has arrived in this area. One of the ones planned for closure here is at the local army base, where many of the troops are currently away, serving abroad. Any closure would thus have significant repercussions for the families remaining behind as they will have to travel into the local town to send their letters and packages abroad.

Putting aside the sheer madness of this particular decision for a moment, I have a suggestion to make for more effective government. What Whitehall needs is someone - perhaps a few people - to sit in an office and to take a cursory glance at every decision which is made. Their job would not be to check for affordability, or cost effectiveness or even efficiency. No, their sole task would be to consider if any decisions the government plans to take are just plain stupid, as this one would be.

If someone did this day in, day out, we might find perhaps that removing services for families of serving forces, removing checks on the transfer of sensitive data around the country, the private finance initiative and allowing Alastair Darling to be Chancellor might have been stopped before these decisions were allowed to screw up the country quite as much as they have.

TORIES AND EUROPE GO TOGETHER LIKE PEACHES AND SLURRY

Nick Clegg introduced our proposed motion in Parliament today on the European referendum with an excellent press statement. He's very good at clarity and the proposed motion is bang on but I worry that he's still too nice, a problem we often have as a party. That said, his performance has been as sure footed as a panther's so far so I imagine the former MEP has got all bases covered in this area.

The press statement mentions several occasions when the Tories signed us up for more integration without any hint of a referendum, as they knew then what they know now: that a referendum would blow the Tory Party clean out of the water. Putting aside our honourable intention for this motion - giving British people a say over how their country is run - this has to be enough justification for the motion in itself. Labour's record over Europe since the 1960s is scarecely better but they seem to have concealed their deep divisions more successfully in their craven grab for power in the 1990s.

I hope that the debate highlights the crucial issue over responsibility for the European project, which is that a Tory government negotiated our accession to the EEC, as it was then, in 1973, a Tory Prime Minister signed the treaty in 1972 and that same Tory government gave absolutely no consideration whatsoever to a referendum over this fundamental change to our constitution when they did so.

William Hague is a brilliant speaker and he stands out like a basketball player among pygmies when he speaks for the Tories but I hope that he will be challenged to answer this charge: that the Tories no more support any kind of referendum on the European Union than Vladimir Putin supports free and fair elections and any attempt to say otherwise is a cynical, posturing lie.

CONSTITUTION? OUT THE DOOR, ON THE LEFT, ONE CROSS EACH...

This one passed me by: Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary (black visored helmet, leathers, huge motorbike, mean expression) has hinted that we should have a written constitution, which will tell us all about our rights, our responsibilities, that way the various arms of government work and the opening times for libraries across the country. The document may take 20 years to fudge, er, write and then there would be a referendum.

Now, I don’t know much about constitutional law but I cannot conceive of how a single document could encapsulate all this in any meaningful way. Surely a constitution should be simple and clear and should act as a framework on which to set the existing politicial and legal system. The obvious exemplar for this is the US constitution which has stood the test of time, although it can be argued that it is in need of significant amendment, as the original drafters of the document had planned.

If we are to have a constitution – and I for one remain sceptical about the value of such a document – my preference would be for it to be limited to one side of A4 and to be the kind of thing we could all understand, that immigrants could easily get the hang of and that could work as a guide, not a sacred text to be revered.

But then, when have the dull, uninspired apparatchiks of New Labour ever done anything simple, straightforward and intelligible?

WHAT PRECISELY ARE THE TORIES FOR?

There is a wonderful line in the Independent today from Steve Richards discussing the Northern Rock fiasco. He naturally criticises the government and makes the obvious point that Vince is the only politician to have come out of this looking good.

He then discusses the Tory response and their terror of supporting nationalisation or making any decisions at all. He notes that they began by supporting the government when it intervened in Northern Rock. Then they criticised discussion of nationalisation without coming up with any propoals of their own. Finally the 13th baronet Osborne (George to his friends) criticised the government for not having decided to nationalise earlier while still opposing the plan. Decisive or what?

Richards makes the following comment, which I love: 'This is not a sequence that suggests the Conservatives value consistency and coherence over opportunism.'

The full article is at: http://preview.tinyurl.com/yvrow8

This criticism comes on the back of a comment in the Independent on Saturday that, David Davis, the Baronet and Alan Duncan aside, the Tories are distinctly lacking in any presence on their front bench. It seems they are rather creaking as an edifice.

PRINCE CHARLES TALKING OUT OF HIS ROYAL FUNDAMENT? SURELY NOT...

Prince Charles has told the European Parliament that the ‘fight’ agains global climate change is a ‘war’ and that the ‘Doomsday Clock’ is ‘ticking ever closer to midnight’. This is, of course, complete b*ll*cks.

There are echoes here of the over emotive language used by the USA following the 11/9/01 terrorist attacks on their country. A dedicated band of terrorists wrought one of the worst attacks ever on a western country and the foolish response was to declare a 'war', which our delightful Prime Minister went along with slavishly. This 'war' immediately legitimised the misguided beliefs of the terrorists and their campaign to drag everyone back to the middle ages. And what a victory the war has been ever since!

The use of such language seems to be missing a trick, as any politician with a few years under their belts should know, not to mention being ever so slightly dismissive of the numerous wars which are going on around the world, killing, maiming and generally causing misery to millions every year. So why are we still resorting to such ludicrous exaggeration?

The best way to stop war is to get people making money, owning their land, putting their kids through school. Then they’ll be too busy to bother about the ‘big-enders’ next door as they’ll be far more interested in selling them their produce to buy other things back.

The best way to address global warming is surely to sell the benefits to people, not to try to frighten them and to get all emotive. You don’t have to live in a tree with dreadlocks to be green, you just have to be sensible and that’s where we seem to be going off the edge of the cliff on this one.

Simple, easy truths would be far better:
• energy conservation saves us money;
• depleting the rainforests will make life more expensive for us so it is a good, self-interested investment to stop them being depleted;
• using less petrol in our cars, buses and lorries is getting costlier by the day so reducing this use os good for us all;
• recycling stops us filling up our countryside with waste. Thanks London for the daily trainloads to Oxfordshire…
• seasonal local produce is ‘interesting’ and is inordinately better than pre-packaged crap from a Dutch factory.

The emphasis on greener living is not a ‘war’, it is common sense, something the good prince has seemed to lack many times during his career in the royal ante-chamber. I wish we could cut out the ‘sackcloth and ashes’ approach to green living and focus on the good bits, like the potential to live more healthily while still being able to enjoy a take-away pizza every now and them without having to flagellate onself for the misery inflicted on toads in the upper Volta.

One final thought which always amuses me is to ponder how many people go on the green demonstrations around the world and then drive home, walk in the door, turn on the light, put the kettle on and sit down to Emmerdale, or the equivalent - which I take as demonstrating that, the loons aside, we’re all the same fundamentally and that a little positive action from everyone could work wonders without us all having to forego being, er, happy...

SOMEONE TELL THE BBC NEWS IS MEANT TO BE BORING

The Times on Monday reported that the BBC is looking to appoint some new ‘news rottweilers’ as John Humphrys, Jeremy Paxman, James Naughtie and David Dimbleby retire. Putting the respected David Dimbleby to one side (bizarre image…) for a moment, two thoughts come to mind.

Firstly, the day the three other goons step aside will surely be one of carnivals, fireworks and general celebration as millions of people realise they can once again turn on Radio 4 in the morning and actually hear some news, rather than a grumpy and rather dim old man trying to string a sentence together and getting hopelessly tied up in sub-clauses every time, while his neighbour sits shouting nonsense at people hoping they will listen to him. You can almost smell the urine and Werther’s Original…

Yet more people will realise that the BBC’s in depth evening news analysis programme will actually ‘do what it says on the tin’, rather than simply being a vehicle for the biggest – and most misguided – ego on television. The word ‘pants’ springs nimbly to mind…

The second thought is to marvel at the idiocy at senior levels within the BBC which assumes that this style of shouting match is interesting to people. The contrast for me is PM with Eddie Mair, who can be a bit of a shit, its true, but who makes up for it by apparently listening – repeat, ‘listening’ – to the people he interviews.

Perhaps the word ‘rottweiler’ could be replaced with ‘shi’tzu’ – i.e. small, in-bred yappy things which annoy people constantly with their yelping but which serve no other function whatsoever.

ROUND AND ROUND THE GARDEN...

SO, in an interview on Sunday on the BBC, JON SOPEL asked Nickers: "We heard Peter Kellner there, talking about, you'll never do a deal to prop up a minority Tory administration at Westminster. Your comments to the Financial Times on Friday, seem to suggest that, providing the policies were right, you'd have no problem with that whatsoever."

Nickers answered: "What I said and I'll say it again, is that if the Labour Party or the Conservative Party, miracle of miracles, turn into Liberal Democrats, promote the priorities we want for a complete re-invention of the political system, our political system is broken, really promote de-centralisation, a total gear shift in international relations, helping the poorest children in our school system, if they do all of those things, I don't care who writes that kind of manifesto, then of course, as someone who wants to see a more liberal Britain, of course I'm open to listening to those ideas. But look, I feel equidistant between the Labour Party, which is a rather authoritarian party and the Conservative Party, which I think has never really taken social justice seriously, and is rather swivel eyed on issues like the environment, and I think a lot of the so-called liberal conservatism from David Cameron is fake liberalism. So I'm not, you know, asking you to make a choice between the two is one that I don't find a very appetising choice to make. But what I do say, as someone who wants to see a more liberal country to live in, is if they change radically, then of course I'll listen."

Now, I'm no media guru or seasoned politician but I can't help thinking he could have just said something like: "I don't want a coalition with either party, I want to win the next General Election".

Couldn't he?

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOATH

The Independent on Saturday led with a chilling front page about how Russian President and putative Czar, Vladimir Putin, spoke of a 'new phase' in the arms race with NATO which Russia would respond to in kind. The article went on to outline how the Russians have been taking increasingly aggressive steps militarily, including testing missiles in the Bay of Biscay and sending military flights deep into the Pacific.

Well 'whoooooooh'!

Only in the second article on this subject, the reliably good analysis tucked away at the bottom of page, did a degree of context creep in, in other words the refusal of the USA to accept that things are changing in the world rather fast, that China and India are moving up the pecking order of superpowers with incredible speed, that Pakistan remains a nuclear state and one that is 'failing' by the day and that US intervention in the 'Middle East' has been an unmitigated disaster. There is also the complete failure of the USA to recognise that Russia remains a very weak country, that its spending on its military would require billions more each year for decades to come to bring it anywhere near a modern force and that the chances of Russia posing a realistic threat to neighbouring states are consequently extremely slim - although it must be recognised that they do exist.

The other side to this is that the USA continues to rattle its rather tired sabre around the world and that the view in Russia towards the proposal to site radar tracking stations in Poland and Bulgaria is bound to be a little shirty, to say the least.

I used to be what is known as a 'realist' in terms of international relations, that is to say that I believed that a degree of might is necessary to get one a seat at the table. However, the world spins ever faster and it is surely only an idiot who still thinks that we can shoot our way to any kind of victory over another country.

Russia is a powerful but unstable country but we should not see a need to face up to their government. Instead we need to engage with them - and their citizens - and persuade them that we can do business. We need to encourage Russians to stop putting their trust in the 'hard men' who preach conflict with no prospect of any meaningful success and instead to come and make money with everyone else.

And - God knows - we need some proper leadership from the USA, still the most powerful country in the world but misfiring badly in the field of international relations.

ASHES TO ASHES, MARVELLOUS!!!

The first episode of the spin-off series of Life on Mars was on this evening and it proved a worthy successor to the earlier programme. I knew it was going to be a sure-fire hit when a couple of pseuds dismissed it on Newsnight Review last Friday and it lived up fully to its billing.

The news series was followed on BBC4 by the very last episode of Life on Mars, which once again wowed me, made me laugh and made me wince with horror at how truly awful1973 was, even though I was only 4 at the time.

It is difficult to do justice to the concept of these programmes and their sublime execution. They are an homage to old fashioned cop-dramas, they are a wonderful vision of what we suffered to get to where we are today, they are categorically well written and thoroughly entertaining dramas and best of all they are a vehicle for that god of the box in the corner of our front rooms, the Gene Genie himself, Gene Hunt. Few characters have ever bestrode the screen in quite the way he does. He is perfect. As he might say himself, he is the b*ll*cks.

There is an old saw that the best characters in literature are the baddies and the beauty of Gene Hunt is that he is a kind-of baddie but a lovable one. His one liners have entered the language and he is the perfect foil to his modern counterparts. Through all this he retains his own bizarre sense of honour and fair play, like a Mancunian John Wayne.

Keeley Hawes also made a superb start in her role as the new 'victim', Alex Drake. She is a strong, knowing character who gave her part a lot of humour which John Simm perhaps didn't, even though he was excellent in 'Mars'.

The bottom line is that these dramas are sheer, unalloyed entertainment and if you analyse them to death they will have holes in them. However, if you sit back with a beer and just enjoy Gene Hunt, Ray Skelton, Alex Drake and the whole shooting match for the romp they are you will have a riot. Sheer, unequalled entertainment of the old fashioned variety.

CAROLINE FLINT: THE DEVIL OR SOMEONE WITH AN INTERESTING IDEA? IT SEEMS WE'VE ALL DECIDED...

I'm slightly bemused with the numerous angry response to the proposal by the housing minister that people in council houses should be encouraged to work.

'Encouraged'. There's a good word and one we should focus on.

I have always held as one of the core beliefs - if not the core belief - of the LDs that we support equality of opportunity. To me that means giving everyone the same life chances so that we can all 'start the race' from the same line. We will all still finish at different times, to continue the metaphor but we will all have been given an equal chance.

The state should exist to provide a safety net and to ensure that everyone gets that equal start, i.e. through decent education, good housing, social support where necessary and various other services which go to make up a fair, free and democratic society.

The myth doing the rounds in response to the minister's suggestion seems to be that people in council houses are the poor, downtrodden masses who need their hands held and their every whim catered for, even unto death. That view seems unbelievably patronising. It seems to me that people in council housing are, er, just like everyone else and just like everyone else they should be encouraged to stand on their own two feet. If people are in social housing they are (i) already being given assistance by the state (ii) in bald economic terms effectively clogging up a resource which others in greater need could use. It therefore seems entirely reasonable, logical and practical to give these people assistance to move on and up where possible.

Again, let's revisit that last phrase for a few moments: 'where possible'.

From what I've read and seen the proposal is not for modern day slum clearances but for more support for often quite deprived communities. I'm fascinated to know when we LDs started to oppose such measures.

KENYA BELIEVE IT'S HAPPENING AGAIN?!

Looking at the disaster that is Kenya, formerly one of the most stable and prosperous countries in Africa before – as so often has happened – one man’s arrogance caused the society meltdown, I can’t help recalling the Economist’s call a few years ago for a group of western countries to take over a plot of land in Africa 10 miles square and to run it in effect as a dictatorship. The dictatorship would have a functioning police force, judiciary, economy and would essentially offer that simplest of things, stability. The article speculated on how many people from surrounding countries would find their way to the borders of ‘Ordinia’ to get away from the depressingly predictable regimes which still plague the continent.

If a country like Kenya can fall so quickly from being a model of stability to a completely riven tribal society it really does seem like the time has come for action but this carries with it so much moral baggage that western countries and international institutitons have always shied away from any pro-active measures. I imagine the residents of Darfur would endorse this view.

So many countries in Africa are unbelievably badly run and the people in those countries are suffering unnecessary hardship and violence. You have to wonder how long we can all can stand by wringing our hands, afraid to offend sensibilities and to revive colonial memories before accepting that we bear a lot of the responsibility for what has happened there and that we should get involved in helping out.

I’ve always been intrigued by some kind of federal regime led by South Africa but with bags of support from other countries, including Europe and China. Unfortunately that would be a long term commitment which the Americans in particular seem to find offensive. ‘If you can’t do it in a presidential term, it ain’t worth doing’ seems to be the mantra but any commitment to good governance and economic development in so many African states would require decades of commitment and shedloads of cash. The benefits to the world economy and to the countries in Africa would of course be immeasurable. In bald capitalist terms, imagine fully plugging those millions of people into the global market and think of the returns you could get.

I am currently reading a book about how China sent out great armadas around the Indian Ocean in the 15th century, as well as to the four corners of the globe (great phrase, completely nonsensical!) to seek out new trading agreements and countries to ‘kow tow’ to the emperor. What is striking about the book is first how cooperative the venture seems to have been. Far from the later European expeditions of conquest from the late 15th century onwards, the Chinese seem to have sought out partnerships and trade with far away countries. The author notes how Indian trading ships joined the Chinese armadas to sail to Arabia and Africa to trade. They also brought back leaders from other countries to the court at Beijing as honoured guests, even if they did have to swear allegiance to the emperor. The benefits seem to have far outweighed the issue of subjecting one’s country to China.

The second striking thing is how engaged African ‘states’ were in this whole venture, all along the east coast of the continent. Rulers from these countries were taken as honoured guests to China to meet the Emperor and to establish trading links. It really comes as a great surprise when you look at the later European experience with Africa, which was about as far from honourable as you could get.

Of course there was a dark side, not least in the cruel regime for most Chinese people and the existence of slavery throughout Africa run by the Arabs but the bigger picture was one of states co-operating with each other.

I don’t suppose anything will change soon but it does leave one in total despair to see yet another counry falling to pieces within about a month. This surely can’t be right and the rest of the world community surely can’t continue to let it happen. Does this make me a ‘bleeding heart liberal’?