20-Mar-10
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg will take part in a special Politics Show debate this Sunday, meeting undecided voters and trying to win them over for the Liberal Democrats.
You can watch Nick Clegg on the Politics Show on BBC One at 12.00tomorrow (Sunday 21st March).
The following article was written by Liberal Democrat Deputy Leader, Vince Cable, and appears in this week's Mail on Sunday:
Red Robbo. Jack Dash. Mick McGahey. Remember them? The almost forgotten union militants who once ruled the roost in Britain's strike-prone industries and helped to wreck them. Perhaps the tradition is not dead after all - with BA the new battleground.
The 21st Century was supposed to be different: modern-minded, pragmatic unions; employers skilled in human relations management; governments which kept out of the way.
There have been strikes - on London Underground and the railways; at the Royal Mail; among refuse collectors - but they have mostly been resolved without too much damage done.
Indeed, today's union leaders are for the most part people with a good understanding of the needs of their industries and constructive in their approach to industrial disputes.
At BA something has gone horribly wrong. We are back to old-fashioned industrial conflict of a kind that we thought, and hoped, had gone
Yet at BA something has gone horribly wrong. We are back to old-fashioned industrial conflict of a kind that we thought, and hoped, had gone.
British politics has also quickly reverted to the rhetoric of a bygone era. Prime Minister's Questions this week seemed to be taking place in a time warp: Harold Gordon Wilson versus Edward David Heath.
The party of organised labour versus the party of the bosses. Union barons versus the Baron of Belize (as Lord Ashcroft is known).
The unresolved scandal of party funding lies behind this outburst of class warfare. The Labour Party depends to a worrying degree on Unite, the cabin crew union, for its funding - 11million over the past two years - and the Conservatives on very wealthy individuals, including Lord Ashcroft, who alone has donated more than 5million.
All parties have been damaged by association with questionable donors and the system smells to high heaven.
Party funding is deeply corrupting of democracy since it involves, essentially, the buying of seats in Parliament and political influence.
It is a bigger scandal than MPs' expenses and, yet, vested interests have prevented any move towards serious reform. That failure is now aggravating what was already a poisonous industrial dispute.
As with all such wrangles there is merit on both sides. The management case is that they are trying to survive in a highly competitive industry and the pay of their staff - a key element of their costs - is well above that of competitors such as Virgin and easyJet.
Willie Walsh was brought in four years ago to sort out a company that had become complacent, was losing money and had built up a big pension fund deficit. I recall flying BA 'cattle class' in those days - the food was terrible and staff seemed to have been trained in the Stasi school of customer relations.
I stopped using BA unless it was unavoidable. I sense that it is now improved from a customer point of view. The management argument is that unless they build on this and cut costs they won't survive.
The workforce have an argument too. They do not enjoy massive salaries. They are highly paid only by comparison with their competitors.
Cabin crew who have been to see me to explain their case were on 20,000 a year, below national average earnings. The company has already cut a lot of old perks. The workers complain of constant bullying.
And the union can reasonably claim that this is not a strike by unrepresentative militants; there has been 80 per cent backing in a ballot, twice.
So does it matter if BA flights are grounded by a strike?
It is deeply embarrassing to Gordon Brown a few weeks before an Election for his friends to be seen to cause serious disruption. And, of course, it is inconvenient to those with booked tickets. But we are not talking about an essential public service. There are plenty of other airlines.
While unions and management slug it out, they both seem to be forgetting that BA exists only because of considerable privileges which are a hangover from its days as a nationalised company.
BA has preferential take-off and landing slots at Heathrow which it receives free of charge, much to the fury of competitors such as Virgin and BMI.
The expansion of runway capacity at Heathrow - bitterly opposed by large numbers of Londoners who live under the flight paths - is being undertaken at the behest of BA as well as the airport's owner BAA.
It is time to stop this pampering. If Gordon Brown and Lord Adonis seriously want to stop this strike they could make it crystal clear to both sides that these privileges will be taken away, leaving the airline and its jobs at the mercy of competitors. They would settle soon enough.
So why doesn't the government act decisively? The answer takes us back to party funding. What we are dealing with here is not a return to Seventies industrial strife.
The strike is a by-product of our thoroughly corrupt system of party funding and the power it has put into the hands of vested interests, be they unions or billionaire off-shore tax dodgers.
If his premiership is not to end in total ignominy, Mr Brown has only a few weeks left to sort out this problem.
Vince Cable is the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman
Several blogs got here first, but 17 or the 18 joint UUP and Conservative candidates have been announced today.
Mike Nesbitt - Strangford
Daphne Trimble - Lagan Valley
Sandra Overend - Mid Ulster
Fred Cobain - North Belfast
Ross Hussey - West Tyrone
Bill Manwaring - West Belfast
Trevor Ringland - East Belfast
Harry Hamilton - Upper Bann
Danny Kennedy - Newry and Armagh
John McAllister - South Down
Rodney McCune - East Antrim.
Lesley McAuley - East Londonderry.
Paula Bradshaw - South Belfast
David Harding - Foyle
Irwin Armstrong - North Antrim.
Ian Parsley - North Down
Tom Elliott - Fermanagh and South Tyrone
To see how fair is we will have to watch Dispatches tomorrow.Twenty senior MPs and peers were offered payments of up to £35,000 a year for helping a fake firm forge lucrative links with the government.
Six of them demanded between £3,000 and £5,000 A DAY to sit on a make-believe advisory board.
And several are said to have exaggerated their influence in the hope of cashing in.
Ex-Transport Secretary Stephen Byers even claimed he was like a "cab for hire" to the tricksters as he boasted about how he still has a direct line to the heart of government.
Others caught up in the sting include ex-Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt, ex-Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon and former whip Margaret Moran.
Sky News have also got the figures for tonight's YouGov poll. After a slow decline in the Conservative lead over the last few weeks tonight's has it bouncing back up. The topline figures with changes from their Thursday poll are CON 38%(+2), LAB 31%(-1), LDEM 19%(-1) – meaning that YouGov and ICM's figures are now very close to indentical.
The changes themself are within the margin of error, but it is the largest lead that YouGov have recorded since the beginning of the month, and perhaps a sign that the focus on Unite is moving the tide back in the Conservatives' favour. I will add my normal caveat that one should always be cautious of sudden changes in polls: until we see YouGov's figures on Monday we can't tell whether the gap is widening again, or whether it is just sample error.
More to come later when the Sunday Times story goes up and the other questions in the poll are published. I've still no confirmation on whether there is a ComRes tonight or not.
There is a new ICM poll in tomorrow's News of the World. Topline figures, with changes from ICM's previous poll a week ago, are CON 38%(-2), LAB 32%(+1), LDEM 19%(-1). While we've had a couple of ICM polls showing seven point leads recently, six points is the narrowest they have shown since December 2008. Fieldwork was conducted on Wednesday and Thursday.
There is still a YouGov poll for the Sunday Times to come tonight, plus the possibility of a ComRes poll in the Independent on Sunday.
1. Raedwald explains why a man called David Rowland is very important in our democracy.
2. All Seeing Eye tears apart Labour's latest stupid initiative.
3. John Ward has a quick update on the online battle for political supremacy.
4. The Appalling Strangeness learns that ID cards have got off to a troubled start.
5. Quiet Man wonders if UKIP are the ‘real Tories'.
1. Platform 10 wonders if the internet is a hormonal teenager.2. Next Left on Little Scotlandism.
3. Tim Montgomerie says there ARE other Tory candidates, you know.
4. Peter Kenyon on Labour's seat engineering.
5. Guido on Kevin Maguire's toff's day out.
6. Iain Martin on Nick Clegg's coalition demands.
Keith gets in first with a great blog taking the piss out of Ian Parsely’s sudden fondness for being pictured standing in front of stuff.
The facebook series titled “Out and About” sees the former promising Alliance upstart stand, dare I say it, UNCUNFortably, at some of the North Down issue key battlegrounds, including the Bangor fountain “I say NO, NO, NO, to the needless waste of fairy washing up liquid in this fine seaside water feature.”, Donaghadee Harbour and the above pictured temporary carpark. Talk about drawing battle-lines.
Q. What do UKIP want to avoid at all costs?
A. A Socialist Europhile Government.
Q. What will they get by voting UKIP?
A. A Socialist Europhile Government.
Jesus, do we need a hammer?
The Straight Choice is an online collection of election literature from across the country, aiming "to create a live visualization of the flood of party political leaflets as they are delivered across the country during an election campaign".
Whilst the origins of the name may grate with those Lib Dems who don't wholly accept Peter Tatchell's account of the 1983 Bermondsey by-election, the idea is an excellent one from the people who brought you sites like They Work for You, Public Whip, Planning Alerts and What do they know? (the last allowing you to search and submit Freedom of Information requests).
The Straight Choice is a great idea. With a decent cross-section of literature uploaded from all the political parties, it should allow the political machines to be held to account, spot parties saying different things in different places, illuminate different styles of campaigning in different areas and provide a valuable archive of literature all too often lost. It could also identify how far voters in safe constituencies are being taken for granted (or saved from the dead tree avalanche, depending on how you look at it).
But there's a problem.
It's been going for nearly a year, over which time tens of thousands of different leaflets, letters and other pieces of election literature have been created and pushed out to the eager, and sometimes less than eager, voters.
Over that time, which covers last year's local elections, Euro elections and the run up to the General Election this year, fewer than 800 items have been uploaded. True, that's a big advance on the five leaflets it had last time we reported on it, but still not great.
It's not necessarily a problem, but it can produce a very distorted picture. It might be that leaflets in an area are uploaded by a partisan supporter of one party, giving an impression that would be very different to someone who saw all the literature from all the parties in context.
In my constituency, for example, only three leaflets have been uploaded (two of them by me, last year). The Lib Dems alone must have put out the best part of a hundred different leaflets and letters since then, and we've had many others from the Conservatives plus a few from UKIP, the BNP, the Greens and even one from Labour – so I accept my share of the blame in not uploading more.
If the project is to fulfil its potential, it needs a lot more leaflets uploaded (photograph or scan the leaflet and upload the piccie). Not just the opposition ones that annoyed you (with obligatory seething commentary) but a proper cross-section.
- Leaflets where the authors try to set a new standard for tedium and poor writing.
- Christmas cards and hand written letters.
- Negative leaflets.
- Leaflets with amusing party leader photos.
Got a pile of leaflets and an hour to spare? Why not do your bit – and I'll try to do mine too.
- Charlotte Gore comes out of semi-retirement to give us a glimpse of Gordon Brown's wedding vows.
- Millennium Dome's Daddy has a letter to Labour.
- Mr Eugenides has some breaking news about racist sharks in South Africa.
- Max Chambers writing on CiF says that mandatory testing for drugs in prison is actually exacerbating the problem.
Two bonuses tonight for Saturday:
An article from Science News that explains how virtually nobody understands the significance of statisitical significance.
50 incredibly weird facts about the human body care of The Nurse Nut.
The strategy recognises the serious strategic challenge Britain faces over the next ten years:
* We will become increasingly reliant on imports as North Sea oil and gas production goes into steep decline;
* One third of our current electricity generating capacity will close by 2020;
* We are required (by EU agreement) to raise our proportion of renewably-sourced energy to 15% from 2.5% today;
* We have committed to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by at least 34% from 1990 levels;
* Between £100 and £200 billion of new investment in our energy infrastructure is needed according to Ofgem.
The paper sets our four objectives for Britain's energy policy under a Conservative government:
Security: Britain must be able to count on, today and in the future, reliable supplies of energy for electricity, heating and transport;
Sustainability: Our wellbeing depends on a healthy environment. In extracting, generating and using energy we must safeguard the ecosystems we rely on;
Economy: Energy is a necessity of daily life for consumers and business. We want it to be abundant and affordable;
Opportunity: Historically, energy has been a sector of British industrial and commercial strength. We want to develop and deploy those strengths to create new wealth for the country.
To achieve these the paper sets out twelce policy proposals:
1) Ensure that Britain has a clear, consistent and stable energy policy. Ministers - not quangos, advisory bodies or regulators - should be unambiguously responsible for determining policy.
2) Establish a capacity guarantee in the electricity market. The regulator would be able to make long-term commitments on behalf of consumers to provide certainty of payment for new capacity.
3) Establish a security guarantee for gas supply. Britain must not play a passive role at the end of a long Eurasian supply chain.
4) Reform the Climate Change Levy to provide a floor price for carbon.
5) Operate a streamlined planning process for large infrastructure investments. Conservatives will retain, the provisions made in the 2008 Planning Act for a streamlined, fast-track planning process for major infrastructure projects.
6) Facilitate nuclear power. The paper contains clear and positive statements in favour of nuclear power.
7) Accelerate the demonstration of carbon capture and storage. To ensure Britain can use coal without damaging the environment.
8) Promote renewable energy. CHP, waste heat capture, biomass, biogas, geothermal and microgeneration technologies will be promoted as well as wind, wave and tidal energy resources.
9) Revolutionise supply and demand by building an energy internet. A smart grid that will encourage more responsible and cost-effective use of energy by industrial and domestic consumers.
10) Reduce demand by offering every household a Green Deal on energy efficiency. Every household in Britain will benefit from 'a Green Deal' of up to £6,500 worth of energy efficiency improvements at no upfront cost.
11) Electrify transport to reduce dependence on oil. With efforts focusing on railways and cars.
12) Create a Green Investment Bank. In conjunction with the Treasury, Green ISAs and Green Bonds will be designed to leverage private sector finance and allow retail and institutional investors to participate more easily in the major task of building clean energy systems.
Hat tip to Conservative Home, where Greg Clark sets out his policies in a "Platform" piece which you can read here.
You can read a news story about the launch of the plan and download a copy of the full document on the Conservative website here.
"When Blair got in he said his priorites were 'Education, Education, Education.'
What he delivered was Regulation, Regulation, Regulation."
