So the government has announced that it’s going to axe NHS Direct and implement a new “non-emergency” helpline. The chief executive of NHS Direct says that the new service will be “better and more cost effective”. Which is nice; we want good healthcare, and we’re also a bit short of money at the moment. So an idea that could be better and cheaper is good.

If it isn’t a good idea, if it doesn’t really work, then ok. But it seems that the intention is to do what I just mentioned, better and cheaper.

Andy Burnham disagrees:

“It is yet more evidence that Andrew Lansley is on a vindictive mission to break up the NHS, ruthlessly dismantling services before alternatives are in place.”

It’s something that you see time and time again in political discussions and I find it bloody annoying. Not that he disagrees with the idea, but that he’s assigning some sort of malicious motive to it. It seems common; the whole “Tories are Evil” thing, for instance. And, well, really? I get that you might disagree with the idea, but do you honestly think that (with one or two honourable exceptions!) someone goes to the effort of getting elected into office, purely for the reason of making things worse for people?

It’s ridiculous and stupid. Even if you disagree with an idea, you can’t just decide that the person who came up with that idea deliberately wants to make things worse for people. I mean, I wasn’t the biggest fan of Gordon Brown, and I think that he made certain things worse throughout his political career. But it would be foolish of me to assert that he did things maliciously (except – allegedly – certain things to destabilise Blair), just because I disagreed with his policies.

The same sort of thing gets thrown at Lib Dems now that they’re in the coalition, talk about selling out for power, or other such nonsense. Is it really that controversial to assume that, actually, they’re doing what they think is best for the country, rather than they’re nasty people who just want their own ministerial Jag?

Posted In: Politics, Rant, Sleep Tagged: Grow up, Labour I'm talking to you, Politics | 2 Comments

Nick Clegg retreats on no-confidence votes.

Nick Clegg today performed the first big U-turn of the coalition when he announced rules to guarantee that a simple majority of MPs will be able to vote down a government and trigger a general election.

The fuss about the dissolution of parliament (not the passing of no-confidence votes, which is a different thing) centred on the proposal for the requirement of a 55% majority to pass a vote to dissolve. The argument centred on how parliament should require a simple majority to dissolve, rather than the 55% limit. Opponents of this policy said that this limit was engineered to allow the coalition to decide when to dissolve parliament (which betrays a colossal misunderstanding of current parliamentary procedure, but that’s somewhat incidental at this point).

I really don’t understand how this is a U-turn. The opposing argument was that a simple majority would not be sufficient to dissolve parliament, and today Clegg has announced that actually the government will introduce a higher requirement – a 66% majority – to dissolve parliament. OK it’s different to what was originally proposed, but it’s not exactly a U-turn and it’s certainly not bowing to the opposition. I mean, they wanted it to just be a majority of MPs, so if they were thinking straight they would be even more opposed to the higher limit. As far as I can tell, the initial announcement back in May had nothing to do with changing the rules for no-confidence votes, and was all about moving power for dissolving parliament away from the Prime Minister and instead giving MPs that power. Today’s announcement doesn’t change that at all, so where’s the “big U-turn”?

I guess I shouldn’t expect anything else from the Grauniad though…

Clegg is currently trending on Twitter, in response to today’s announcement. A lot of it is negative, with some people saying things like “well I voted Lib Dem, and I won’t make that mistake again”. Huh? The Liberal Democrats have never been coy about their commitment to electoral reform, so the things Clegg announced today really shouldn’t come as a shock, especially to people who voted for the party. I mean, I’d sort of expect those people to have an idea that the people they voted for are committed to such major things!

Quite honestly, I can find nothing controversial in the announcement (except perhaps the date), so much of the negative reaction is a bit perplexing really.

Posted In: Rant Tagged: Electoral Reform, Politics, Stupidity | 7 Comments

Keynes’ central insight was that the economy is cyclical. That when observed over a long period of time, there are economy-wide fluctuations; that there are times when the economy is generally doing well and we’re all getting richer (expansion), and times when the economy doesn’t do so well and we get poorer (recession).

I suppose there is an argument against this; that the problems which occur aren’t generally structural issues to do with the economy, but rather specific issues to do with the way the economy is run. For instance the credit crunch which precipitated the current downturn was caused by the default of loans on assets which were overvalued (i.e. people not paying their mortgages), and you may say that this isn’t something which will always happen. That there doesn’t need to be a cycle, if only things were run better.

This is almost academic though; looking back through history, clearly there are cycles for whatever reason (there have been recessions in the 70s, 80s and 90s as well as the more recent one). Keynes said that the government should act in a manner which is counter-cyclic. That a period of recession is marked by a shortage of demand, and that the government should spend lots of money during that period in order to pick up some of the slack and help the economy at large. That, in essence, during a recession the government should run a deficit and spend more money than it takes in.

That was the rationale that was used to inform the response of the government to the downturn in 2007-8, but it’s not a complete analysis. Because Keynes said that the government should pursue counter-cyclic policy. By definition, running up a deficit in recessionary times is only half of the story; the other half is that the government should run up a surplus in the boom years, that it should save money. The previous government didn’t pursue this policy, instead they borrowed and spent more and more money. They then added to this with deficit spending in the downturn, which means that we now have a staggering level of public debt and we need to pay it off. The question that today’s budget is trying to answer is: how?

By the way, the costs of bailing out the banks aren’t entirely part of this problem. Because when the government did that, they mostly did it in exchange for shares in the business. As far as I remember, we should actually make a profit from this when the government sells those shares on in a few years, because the banks will be worth more then than they were when the government bought the shares.

Some people have offered the defence that the previous government “didn’t know there would be a recession”. I reckon that is an incredibly poor argument, because even without the recession it was really poor policy to run up such a large amount of public debt. In addition, I simply don’t buy the idea that the recession was unforeseeable. I was working in a retail bank during 2007, and even I had thoughts along the lines of “they’re giving money to people who can’t afford it… is that really wise?”. The causes of the crash were not rocket science, and I know that I’m writing with the benefit of hindsight, but I contest that the Chancellor of the Exchequer really should have shown a bit more foresight. Proclaiming “the end of boom and bust” is nice rhetoric, but seems somewhat blind to the economic reality (pun not intended :-P).

I’ve also heard the argument that people look at public debt in the same way as household debt but that really the two aren’t comparable. People seemingly use this to justify a deficit, to argue that it’s acceptable for the government to borrow large sums of money. This is disingenuous, because whilst there are differences, the fundamental principles are the same. When someone borrows money, they are giving up some money in the future in order to have some now. This isn’t a bad thing as it allows us to be more productive, but we have to be aware that this is what we are doing. And if we take on too much debt, then the cost of that debt can become crippling (I believe that the current figure is £80,000 per day in interest). Increasing debt reduces our future spending power, and if the costs of paying back loans is greater than we can afford, then we have a problem (see the issues presently facing Greece for an example). We need to make moves now to reduce our debt, to reduce the likelihood of that happening.

This budget is painful, but it needs to be. The grim reality is that we simply can’t afford for anything else, so the task was to cut the deficit in a manner which is least damaging. It’s very easy for the opposition and their supporters to snipe, to point out that the budget is tough, and to blame the big mean Tories for screwing the poor and the Liberal Democrats for “selling out” in exchange for cabinet positions, but that version of reality ignores who helped get us into this position to start with.

Posted In: Politics Tagged: Budget, Economics, Keynes, Politics | 1 Comment

I read through the coalition agreement the other day, and on the whole it actually seems rather good. Of course it remains to be seen how well the coalition works, but as I’ve said before I’m quite optimistic. Especially when Nick Clegg makes speeches like this…

But when I read the document, there was one line in particular that I was unsure about. The promise that “we will extend anonymity in rape cases to defendants”. I did a sort of double-take when I read it (if that makes sense), because to put it frankly, there are almost definitely more important issues surrounding rape than whether or not the defendant is anonymous. Like the fact that a hideously low amount of rape victims even bother to report the crime, or the appalling way they are treated if they do report it. If it were me, that would be my priority to be honest.

Irrespective of that though, is this a good idea? The arguments in favour of anonymity are clear; rape (quite rightly) carries a certain amount of stigma, and I can imagine that even if someone is found not guilty of raping someone, it’s still a weight around their neck. There’s no smoke without fire, after all… This is a simple argument, but to my mind it’s an incredibly persuasive one. After all the fundamental idea is that someone is ”innocent until proven guilty”.

I can sort of understand the counterarguments though. In some cases - such as John Worboys – the naming of the person who has been accused has spurred other victims into reporting their cases, and this obviously increases the likelihood of the defendant being found guilty. I’m not sure how common this is though, and even if it is common I’m not sure if it’s a valid reason not to have anonymity. Because to my mind the underlying problem is still that most victims don’t report the crime, and this doesn’t really solve that issue all that effectively.

I read on the BBC that Labour introduced anonymity for rape defendants in 1976, and the subsequant Conservative government reversed this in 1988. I don’t know what the rationale was for the Tories doing that, and it’d also be pretty interesting to find out what – if any – effect it had.

Not surprisingly, shouty feminists have pointed out that this is a very bad thing.  They say that it’s misogynistic, that it reinforces the idea that when a woman reports a rape, she’s obviously lying. To put it simply, I think that’s a complete load of bullshit. I think that all this aims to do is to address the effects of the accusation on those people who are innocent, and I don’t think that is a bad thing at all. Clearly there are valid arguments for and against, but I think the negative reaction is overblown. Yes, anonymity may have a negative effect in some proportion of cases, but isn’t it important to balance the rights of both sides?

No doubt someone will come along later and say “oh you would say that you’re a man” and put this down to “male privilege”. And to anyone tempted to say that, then just No. This is just trying to look at both sides of the argument in a balanced way, rather than simply jump to a conclusion. It’s very easy to over-react to things we disapprove of (and make no mistake, I think the way rape is dealt with in this country is atrocious), but I think it’s important to try to retain some sense of perspective.

Posted In: Politics Tagged: Fairness, Feminism, Politics | 2 Comments

When New Labour swept into power in 1997, I was 9 years old. At the time I was too young to pay attention to politics, so I didn’t know too much what it actually meant. All I knew was that John Major was out, and that a younger bloke called Tony Blair was now PM.

Basically, in the time that I’ve been reasonably aware of what’s going on and paid attention to the news and to politics, all I’ve known is a Labour government. And as long as I’ve been paying attention, I’ve mostly had one feeling towards that government: disappointment. A feeling, every time I read the news, of things getting worse. I’m not going to detail specific things, because the time has passed and I’ve said much of it before; but generally I’m thinking of things like ever-increasing taxes, or ever-spiralling public spending, or batshit-mental policy decisions which run contrary to what they’ve been advised to do, or of course the constant erosion of civil liberties.

This last thing is something that particularly ires me, because civil liberties – freedom – should be the hallmark of a civilised society, so it baffles me why anyone would think that taking some of them away would be a good thing. Someone I know who is a member of the Labour party says that I “exaggerate” this issue, that Labour hasn’t actually done that much to damage liberty. But that’s clearly bollocks; Labour have done quite enough, and I cannot take seriously any party who thinks that such attacks on individual freedom are justified.

So my experience has always been of the government disappointing me, always seeming to fail the people of Britain, and for that reason I’ve never supported the Labour government. Over the last few months, as I’ve been thinking about politics more and reading into the policies and ideologies of all the parties, I’ve began to understand exactly why I dislike them. The “nanny state” is a cliched joke now, but like most cliches there is a reason for it being – it’s true! Nick Clegg wrote a pamphlet last year called “The Liberal Moment“, and he said:

“Labour requires a mighty nation state, just as liberalism believes in pooling sovereignty in multi-lateral institutions. Labour believes that society can only be improved through relentless state activism, a belief driven by far greater pessimism about the ability of people to improve their own lives. Liberalism believes fairness, fulfilment and freedom can be best secured by giving real power directly to millions of citizens. Labour believes in the ordered, controlled capacity of the state to take the right decisions about other peoples’ lives. A liberal believes in the raucous, unpredictable capacity of people to take decisions about their own lives. Labour believes a progressive society is characterised by enlightened top-down government. A liberal believes a progressive society is distinguished by aspiration, creativity and non conformity.”

I encourage everyone to read that pamphlet, because it’s a really interesting thing. As I read it, one thought kept running through my mind: “I agree with Nick”! I was shocked – and delighted - that any of the leaders of the mainstream parties actually believes the same sort of things that I do; that I’m not just some nutter on the fringes of the political spectrum.

After seeing their results and understanding their politics, my response to Labour campaigning for “a future fair for all”, or saying that theyre “fighting for your future” is: how dare they? After 13 years of illiberal, unequal government, how dare they pretend to stick up for anyone other than the rich and the powerful?

As I’ve said before, I support the Liberal Democrats. I seem to be in the minority in that I also don’t hate the Conservatives. And as you may have ascertained by now, I have nothing but contempt for Labour. And today, for the first time I can remember, I look at government and don’t feel disappointed. I think we really could be seeing the start of “new politics”, where the emphasis is on co-operation and compromise; not pointless tribalism where the aim is just to win.

For now, I feel optimistic. And I can’t tell you how excited I am about that.

Posted In: Politics, Rant Tagged: Politics | 7 Comments

I’m not calling it a coalition, if indeed that is what we get. I’m calling it the Alliance because then the government sounds like something from Star Wars, and that’s just cool.

Anyway I’ve had an uneasy feeling since the election result. Not about the result itself – that’s quite interesting (it looks like Labour will shortly be out of government – of which I approve. And Jacqui Smith also lost her seat, which is what is known as a “Fucking Result”. I saw a blog the other day which said this was a bad thing; words fail me to be honest. Real shame about some of the other people who also lost out though). No, the general reaction is what’s made me uneasy. All through Friday, #dontdoitnick was trending on Twitter, because of the fact that the Liberal Democrats were (are) in talks with the Conservatives. Can’t remember where but I’ve read someone saying we’d been “LibConned” as well. Conned, you see, from Conservatives, and Lib from Lib Dems. Oh the rapier wit…

I’ve also read a fair few posts like this, criticising the Liberal Democrats for basically talking to the Tories. Not for anything they’ve agreed, just for talking to them. It’s a bit tiresome really.

Anyway the reaction to the whole thing – the idea that the two parties talking is the worst thing in the world – really didn’t sit well with me, and it’s taken a while for me to work out why.

I’ve been impressed by the Tories and the Liberal Democrats for the way they’ve handled this. Obviously I don’t really know what’s going on as I am not privy to the talks, but from the things we’ve heard it sounds as if discussions are really quite amicable, and that both parties are trying to bash out a deal. The speeches Cameron and Clegg made on Friday were both graceful and statesmanlike. Obviously they’re bound to be, because they want to work together and make friends, but it seems that both parties had the right attitude. Of course not everyone has had that reaction, but we’ll gloss over that…

Obviously proportional representation is a hot topic at the moment, and people criticise it saying “it ends up in weak governments”, “it always gets coalitions”. Well, I think the last few days have been refreshing. We’ve had the spectacle of two political parties apparently trying to put aside their differences and co-operate. I’ve often criticised politics for being too adversarial, too much about beating the other team and not about working constructively.

The parties have (apparently) been working constructively, and perhaps the new parliament will be formed in that sort of co-operative spirit. The parties themselves seem to understand this, but judging by the response on Twitter and the Blogosphere, a lot of supporters are still stuck in this old adversarial mindset. The time and place has passed, and there are more important things than sticking one to the other side. Politicians have impressed me lately (and I really don’t say that much), but their supporters have just depressed me. The point of politics isn’t to win; it’s to do good. Just because “your side” didn’t win, no need to be so bitter about it and oppose something that hasn’t even happened yet.

I suppose that a lot of it is down to Irrational Tory Hatred, but that’s another phenomena I’ve never fully understood. I mean I loathe a lot of things about Labour but I don’t exactly have a hatred for the party, yet for a lot of people the Tories seem to provoke a raw visceral hatred; as if Tory MPs drink the blood of dead babies and stamp on kittens for fun. Most bizarre.

In other news, I’m seriously considering joining the Liberal Democrats. How does one go about doing so? And what’s the cost?

And now I’m going to go read about concrete. My life is so rock and roll…

Posted In: Politics, Rant Tagged: Being Reasonable, Politics | 5 Comments

I think that the upcoming election has the potential to be a really significant moment for our political history. For a whole host of reasons, we look set for a hung parliament. If that happens, then there’s a real chance that we could finally get electoral reform, which would significantly change the political landscape in Britain.

If you ask me (and you’re reading my blog, so I’ll assume you are), this can only be a good thing. I think that a lot of people are fed up with the way things are. Numerous scandals have shaped the perception not just of the governing party, but of the entire system. In the past, I think that people fed up of Labour would’ve voted for the Conservatives. But now people seem to look at the opposition party and see more of the same, despite the “change” narrative that the Tories have been trying to desperately to create. People want change, but they seem to have woken up to the fact that the Conservatives can’t deliver it.

Whatever happens, it seems extremely unlikely that Labour can win this. Which I also think is a magnificently good thing, because I think that the last decade has shown that a Labour government is a very bad thing indeed. To understand why I say this, you have to look beyond their rhetoric (“A Future Fair For All”. Isn’t a future that is fair, by definition fair for all? Because if it isn’t fair for all, then it isn’t fair) and focus on their record. I don’t really believe that you can focus too much on their policies, because experience has shown us that they don’t always stick to their policies…

One of the main reasons I dislike Labour is for the damaging restrictions they have placed on civil liberties. For instance the Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP) Act. As a result of this law, the government has the right to snoop on, well, anything really. And they have the right to demand that you unencrypt any encrypted information, or even to simply pass over the keys. Or, there’s anti-terrorism legislation, which allows them to indefinitely detain foreign nationals in the UK – without trial – if they are suspected of being a threat to national security. But it’s much better for British citizens, because we can only be  locked up for 28 days (although Labour wanted it to be much longer than that initially). Other gems include the DNA database which contains data of completely innocent people who have never been accused of crimes (I think this was declared illegal by the European Court of Human Rights, but of course the data hasn’t been taken off the database yet), the proposal of ID cards, and of course the Digital Economy Act, which I shall revisit later.

I hope I don’t need to explain why any of these are Bad Things. To be perfectly honest, I am quite at a loss as to how anyone can support a party who has eroded civil liberties in this way. In my opinion, even if I agreed 100% with everything else that a party proposed, if they also supported this sort of attack on the liberty of individuals then I could never support them; I fully agree with Benjamin Franklin that “they who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety“.

Another reason why I think it would be undesirable for Labour to win the election is because of their poor economic record. Now I don’t deny that we have had good years – low unemployment, relatively high levels of income etc. But in the first half of the 2000s we were living in a global boom. Britain has a fairly strong underlying economy (i.e. good access to resources, and a relatively skilled population), so I think it would’ve taken a complete moron to make things worse during the good years! But looking at it like that masks a few problems. Because in the last few years the global economy has obviously had some difficulties, and the British economy has suffered as a part of that. Now, just as I would argue that Labour can’t take all the credit for the good years, they certainly can’t take all the blame for the downturn of the last few years – it’s a global market and our economy is vulnerable to problems in others, and no government can really stop that. But Labour can take some of the blame for making it worse.

In the years prior to the downturn, Brown was chancellor. During his time in that job he continually spent more money than the treasury took in tax; he took on a lot of debt and built up a large deficit (as an aside, much of the reason for this spend was pure politics; it makes the Labour government look good if they can announce lots of spending on hospitals and schools and things like that). Now, running up some debt isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Of course it’s a bit of a con, because for absolutely anyone the result of borrowing money means that you have less money to spend in future (governments can raise taxes, but taxes are generally a thing to be avoided where possible), but I accept that this sometimes can be desirable.

The problem is when the deficit is too large. And by spending too much in the boom years, Brown set the stage for a very large deficit indeed. Because when the downturn did come along, the right thing for the government to do was to spend some money to help the economy – “some ol’ fashioned Keynesianism” as Andy put it on a comment on one of his recent blogs. In a downturn there is a good argument for runing up a deficit in the public finances because by spending money the government can help the economy to recover more quickly and with fewer adverse consequences (i.e. lower unemployment) by replacing at least some of the demand which has disappeared due to the recession. It’s better to have a recovering economy and a certain level of public debt, instead of flatlining economy with no debt.

But our problem is that we already had a lot of public debt. We already had a large deficit. Which means that now, we’re a bit screwed. Because whatever happens, public expenditure has got to be lowered, or taxes raised (and I think the idea is that it’s better for public expenditure to drop, rather than to raise taxes). I think that every party acknowledges this even if they are rather quiet about how they would achieve it, so it’s rather unfair to criticise any of them for saying it. The key thing to me isn’t that the parties say that cuts need to be made. The key point is that the reason these cuts need to be so drastic is because of the irresponsible spending of the Labour government over the last decade or so.

Gordon Brown as chancellor said in 2004 that “I want us to do even more to encourage the risk takers”. He boasted of his “light-touch” when it came to regulating the banks. Well, the banking crisis in 2007 which precipitated the whole downturn was caused (in part) by banks engaging in risky deals, as well as by under-regulation of the banks. The two things that Brown encouraged during his chancellorship! Do we really want someone with such economic acumen to continue to be Prime Minister of the country? Especially at a time when it would be desirable to re-shape our banking system to make it more robust, less prone to catastrophes like this, and to lessen the vulnerability of ordinary consumers and businesses to the effects of bank failures?

During the last debate, I found it telling the way that Brown continually referred to tax cuts as “taking money out of the economy”. Now, just stop and think about this. If you earn money, then you pay a certain amount in tax. And what do you do with the rest of it? Well, you either spend it for things you want or need, or you put it in the bank and save it (and the bank then gives it to other people in the form of loans). To put it simply, this is the economy. The economy is you and me going to the shops and buying things. If lots of people buy things, we have a strong economy and we get richer. If people don’t buy as much, we have a less strong economy and we can get poorer (a recession, in other words). When Gordon Brown says that the Conservatives want to “take money out of the economy”, he actually means that they want to take money out of government. They still want to reduce the deficit, but they believe that it is better for individuals and businesses – you and me, in other words - to have money rather than for the government to have it. Whether this is a good or bad thing is an argument for a different post. Suffice it to say that, in my opinion, the implicit idea in Brown’s statist viewpoint that “government knows best” is extremely undesirable. I accept that there is a need for taxes (as there is a need for government), but I think it’s better for everyone if that government is less paternalistic and therefore less expensive, and I believe that individuals – as well as the economy – are better off if taxes are lower.

As an aside, Labour’s tax policy has hardly been “fair for all”. Over the last 13 years, the outcome of policies like the removal of the 10p tax band and the refusal to increase the personal allowance in line with inflation is that the poorer members of society pay proportionately more tax than the richer ones. Fair?

Anyway, I’ve stated my opinion on the Labour party’s statist attitudes, but do they actually work? Well, over the years that schools and the NHS have been centrally-managed by government, the results haven’t exactly painted a rosy picture. The NHS has apparently got better, but given the massive amount of investment that it’s seen during the last decade or so (and that’s obviously to be applauded, to a point), it would be bizarre if it didn’t improve. And it’s questionable whether the improvements have been in proportion to the spend. Certainly, there seems to be a layer of bureaucracy in the NHS which must be incredibly costly, as well as impede the ability of the service to function effectively.

In my opinion, the picture is more clear-cut when educaton is considered. Despite a heavy amount of government involvement (6 education acts in 13 years!), standards seem to have fallen. I heard a teacher being interviewed not long ago and she was asked what government could do to make things better. Her response was for them to “stop changing things”. She said that schools would take a year or so to get used to the new systems and whatnot implemented by the government, only for them to be completely changed again after a relatively short period of time. With this level of instability in the system, it’s perhaps not surprising that things haven’t got better. Additionally, the system seems to be more unequal now than it was before Labour came to power; children from better-off families do better compared to children from poorer families, than they did before. I would argue that this is a by-product of the inherent inflexibility of the Labour “system”. So it certainly seems quite clear to me that Labour’s brand of statism just doesn’t work, despite their best intentions.

Don’t just take my word for this. Lucy is much more informed about education matters than I am, and she made the point much more elegantly than me on a recent post on her blog: “Teachers up and down the country have been wringing their hands over the past thirteen years of heightened pressure, targets, and interference from a government that essentially hasn’t trusted them to do their job properly”. If only the “light touch” used with the banks that Brown was so boastful of was used here – they got it all the wrong way round!

I mentioned the Digital Economy Act earlier and said I’d come back to it. For me, it’s emblematic of everything that is wrong with Labour (and to an extent the Conservatives, to be fair). I was disgusted at the fact that this was passed. Not just because it’s a bad law (which it definitely is), but for the way it passed. For starters, the bill was influenced by certain record labels. It is in their interest to get a law like the Digital Economy Act passed because it helps them cling to an outdated business model which makes them shedloads of money. To spell it out, it’s not in the interest of consumers, or even artists. It’s purely to benefit a bunch of very rich people who want to retain the business model which made them so very rich. Their money bought them power, and I can’t support a government that let itself be swayed by the smell of money.

In addition, there is the way the bill was forced through parliament. There was something like 2 hours allocated to go through and debate the bill line-by-line. Purely because Labour wanted it pushed through parliament before it was dissolved, they allocated 2 hours to debate a lengthy and contraversial piece of legislation. In my opinion, that shows the level of contempt in which the public are held by Westminster. Not just by Labour – the Tories were in on it too. The fact that the interests of the wealthy “elite” quite clearly came before those of everyone else is just disgraceful.

Anyway. Those are some (!) of the reasons why I couldn’t support Labour, and why I think you’d have to be a bit mental to do so (granted, some people may have more faith in the state than I do, but emphasis on the word “faith” there – that mindset seems to require one to ignore what we’ve learned from the past 13 years…). I’m not going to write a similar post for the Conservatives because the people who are likely to vote for them are unlikely to be swayed by anything I could say, and besides I don’t think they’d be as damaging as a Labour government would be. I’ve already cast my vote (postal vote) for the Liberal Democrats, and rather than explain why I direct you again to Lucy’s blog, because she’s summed it up rather well (and probably rather more concisely than I would manage).

All that remains to be said is that whether you agree with me or not, as long as you’ve registered in time, have a read through the various manifestoes (and also read a few news sites for some analysis of them - some of the blogs on the BBC site are particularly good) and make sure you go and vote next Thursday!

Posted In: Politics Tagged: Fuckups, Politics | 6 Comments

I intend to write a fuller post about politics tomorrow. Actually I’ve already started it, but I can’t be bothered to finish it right now so I’ll attack it as and when and post it tomorrow at some time.

In the mean time though I can’t help but comment on bigotgate. I hate the -gate suffix. It’s used all the bloody time in F1 (spygate, liegate, crashgate, Buttongate, diffusergate) and it sounds ridiculous.

Anyway. I am far from being Gordon Brown’s biggest fan. I think he was a poor chancellor, a disastrous PM, and a liability for the Labour party. I honestly don’t know why they didn’t boot him a few months ago, put Harman or Miliband in charge and then shamelessly promote themselves as a changed party. I still wouldn’t have voted for them, but I think they would’ve at least looked respectable then…

I’m not a fan of Brown, but I can’t help but feel sorry for him in this case. I think it was clearly wrong to call her a bigot, because from what I’ve seen she isn’t one, and it’s only right that he’s apologised. But it’s an election campaign. The leaders are all working ridiculously hard to campaign, and I imagine the stress (especially for Brown, who is losing) must be fairly high. Brown doesn’t exactly have a reputation for being a people-person (as this delightful clip illustrates), so I’m not surprised if he’s more irritable during the campaign.

That’s not an excuse, of course, but I think it’s unfair to slate him so much for such a stupid mistake. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a hilarious mistake. But I would put money on Brown not being the only politician to privately say unflattering things about people he’s just met.

Additionally, it annoys me that it’s been built up as much as it has been. The focus of politics should be on the issues. If we’re going to criticise Brown (or Clegg, or Cameron, or any politician for that matter) then it should be based on the things they say they will do if they are elected (or indeed the things they’ve already done, in Brown’s case). We may learn a bit about Brown’s personality from things like this, but should this really sway anyone’s vote?

Posted In: Politics, Procrastination Tagged: Fuckups, Give The Man a Break, Politics | 1 Comment