Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

The post sets out how the gov.uk team is using as a working definition of policy "statements of the government's position, intent or action".

This includes mandatory information on the issue and actions being taken in response to it, plus optional information on the policy background, who is engaged with it, who is being affected by it, the legal framework, partner organisations and related news and publications.

It highlights just how much unpacking the simple word 'policy' seems to require.

Occasionally the government talks in a language that implies there are policies and meta-policies.

The original motivation behind the development of departmental business plans was not so much for Whitehall to achieve something itself, but for it to put in place the frameworks, systems and incentives for others to achieve it.

In which case the 'policies' may become more diffuse, being developed and implemented by a variety of local providers and getting blurred with the day-to-day decisions and delivery, operations and implementation.

Anyway, this post aims to suggest a couple of ways in which the presentation of policy information online could be used to significantly enhance political accountability, in line with my personal definition of eDemocracy.

There are two classes of information, open data and freedom of information releases, which might implicitly be covered by the phrases "statements about actions" or "related publications" but which would benefit from being explicitly mentioned given their potential importance.

They might not be relevant in every scenario, but as well as the statements and speeches about what the government says it is doing, policy pages should also include the datasets which might provide some kind of evidence about what it is actually achieving.

Given that some of the most significant policies (those in the departmental business plans at least) have targets or intended outcomes associated with them, and deadlines, it should be possible to pull out the data from the information strategies which is being used as an indicator for delivery success.

Progress on each of the business plan objectives is already being tracked in monthly updates, but more could be made of this information than is currently the case.

Some data visualisations of this information might also be a massive step forward for visibility and accountability, certainly on the headline commitments if not on every last detailed policy.

Further down the road, gov.uk could also go further on some of the other open data that's out there and relate spending figures to policies so everyone can see how much a policy costs.

Another significant step would be to publicly assign the policy to people or bodies in the departmental organograms which are available now, so it is also clear who is responsible for it.

Adding in this kind of information (gov.uk might be planning some of this already for all I know) - and making it available for re-use and publication anywhere else - could significantly transform the quality of information available to citizens about what their government is both trying to do and actually delivering.

© eDemocracyblog.com 2012. | Permalink | No comment |

Lib DemMP Jo Swinson scored another victory this week in her one-woman battle against the beauty industry. But is 'airbrushing' really the big issue during an economic crisis?

On the way to meet Jo Swinson I'm still unsure what to make of the Lib Dem MP's campaign for body confidence. Is this a gutsy, slightly risky move by a young woman on her way up, taking on an issue that proved calamitous for Labour in 2000, when its "body image summit" was widely ridiculed? Is it a subject simply too soft and fuzzy for the political arena? (The YMCA's website for their part of the campaign features pictures of barely clad people holding hearts saying "I love me" over their genitals, as if recently beset by Gok Wan, Trinny, Susannah and some unruly Care Bears.) Or is it an impressive example of a politician using techniques often associated with grassroots campaigners - the simple, straightforward letter of complaint - to secure surprising results?

Most importantly: is it what politicians should be focusing on right now? There's no doubt this week saw Swinson notch up another small triumph in her campaign. On Wednesday it was reported that a complaint she had made to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) had led to it ruling that an ad for a L'Oréal anti-wrinkle cream could never again appear in its current form. The ad showed a lovely photograph of the actor Rachel Weisz, her skin glassily, fantastically smooth. The ASA decided that although the ad didn't misrepresent the "luminosity or wrinkling" of Weisz's face, "the image had been altered in a way that substantially changed her complexion to make it appear smoother and more even", and concluded it could therefore mislead the public as to the product's performance. This came after two rulings in Swinson's favour last year - ads featuring Julia Roberts and Christy Turlington were also deemed to have been digitally enhanced, and potentially misleading - and another in 2009, when an image of Twiggy was pulled.

All perfectly laudable. No one would argue in favour of misleading adverts, few in favour of the over-enthusiastic use of airbrushing - even if trying to stem this last tide seems Sisyphean in a digital age. And yet it still feels slightly odd to see an MP focusing on this issue in the midst of an economic crisis. Body confidence obviously affects both men and women, but primarily the latter, yet when I talk to women's campaigners it doesn't seem to be at the forefront of the issues they are worried about. The Fawcett Society, the UK's leading women's rights campaign, seems more concerned about the 23-year high in women's unemployment, and the way cuts to benefits will disproportionately affect women (a fifth of female income comes from welfare payments and tax credits, compared to a tenth of male income).

Others cite this week's news that local authority cuts to the domestic violence sector have led to women being advised to sleep in Occupy camps or police stations because all the shelters are full. Body image may have seemed a pressing issue before the recession, and it is very necessary, of course, for campaigners, doctors and academics to work together on eating disorders and associated problems. But is it a priority for the political arena?

I meet Swinson in a cafe in Kennington, south London, the area where she lives with her husband, fellow Lib Dem MP Duncan Hames. She bustles in from the cold, and we get straight to talking about the campaign. I ask why she feels so strongly about this issue, and she says she feels strongly about a lot of issues. This is certainly true. There can be no doubting Swinson's commitment.

In 2005, when she was elected MP for East Dunbartonshire, the area where she grew up, Swinson was 25, the youngest MP in the House. She made a decision, she says, "that I wasn't going to be afraid of the chamber, and I was going to make sure I spoke regularly and just didn't get scared of it". Since her first question at prime minister's questions - asking Tony Blair if it was time "to say goodbye to the Punch and Judy style of PMQs" - she has spoken up on everything from foreign affairs to the over-packaging of Easter eggs, and is now deputy leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats.

"So," she continues, "you know, when I went to Chechnya in 2010, and looked at the human rights situation, I think I arg-u-ably," she spaces out the syllables to give just the tiniest hint of sarcasm, "felt more strongly about that". She straightens up in her seat. "But [airbrushing] is a very important issue. It's important because it has an impact on health. The Royal College of Psychiatrists has said very clearly that they think excessive retouching - and I would talk about this in a much wider context anyway, because it's not just about retouching cosmetics adverts, it's about the whole range of body image pressure on men and women - but this kind of culture creates a huge amount of pressure on people, and that can lead to self-esteem problems. At extreme ends, we have rising rates of eating disorders, and we [also] have a much larger section of the population that engages in what they would call disordered eating rather than eating disorders. And then, from an educational point of view, there's research that shows young people are less likely to participate actively in class on days when they're not feeling confident about their appearance."

She started working on this area in 2009, when it was part of a Lib Dem women's policy paper. She co-founded the Campaign for Body Confidence in March 2010, then became a leader of the all-party parliamentary group on body image in 2011. She says the campaign has "ambitious goals - to change the culture we're living in". What does she say to suggestions that body image isn't an appropriate area for politicians? "Well, it's not just politicians who are involved. After the policy paper was published ... I was contacted by lots of organisations, and so, on the Campaign for Body Confidence, we have Girlguiding, the eating disorders association Beat, Mumsnet, Susie Orbach and her AnyBody team, YMCA, All Walks Beyond the Catwalk, and political representation too."

The all-party group has been hearing evidence from experts over the past months. One interesting snippet came from an industry voice who said that what had been acceptable in advertising 12-15 months ago was not any longer, due to public pressure, so maybe Swinson's incremental, small-scale system of complaints is working. I ask what other measures Swinson thinks politicians can take to address body-image problems. There's a possibility of education on this issue becoming a part of the PSHE curriculum, she says; there's also the question of "What do you do about parents? So much of what young people perceive about their body image is taken from watching their parents ... I think we need to look at ways we can help parents pass on more positive messages to their children, and perhaps some of that can be done through health visitors, for example."

Another problem for young women, she says, is the paucity of strong women in the public eye. She and some other MPs are meeting with the head of sports at the BBC soon to discuss the fact that 2011's Sports Personality of the Year shortlist featured 10 men and no women. I ask whether there is any embarrassment in talking about this issue when there are only seven women Lib Dem MPs - just 12% of the party's total. The representation of women in the Lib Dems has long been disastrous - although not as disastrous as the fact that they have not a single non-white MP - and last year a report suggested they could potentially be left with no women MPs at all after the next election. Five of their women MPs are in marginal seats, including Swinson.

Swinson has opposed all-women shortlists in the past - at the 2001 Lib Dem party conference she wore a bright pink T-shirt saying I Am Not a Token Woman - but it's these shortlists that led to a sea-change in the representation of women in parliament: the breakthrough moment in 1997 when 101 female Labour MPs were elected. She speaks enthusiastically about the Lib Dem's leadership programme, which involves mentoring people from under-represented groups, but, speaking to experts in this field, there is scepticism about whether this will make much difference.

In many ways, Swinson is impressive, and the Lib Dems could do worse than to promote her - she is articulate, loyal, always willing to put her head above the parapet, and in a way that draws the focus to the issues rather than her as an individual. She is confident, a comprehensive school pupil who loved debating and went on to study management at the London School of Economics. But her devotion to politics can sometimes make it difficult to find out if there's much beneath the rhetoric. I ask about growing up in Milngavie, part of the area she now represents, and rather than any insight into her childhood, she talks about it being a middle-class, affluent area, with]]> http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2012/feb/04/jo-swinson-interview http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/feb/04/deknighting-fred-goodwin-gesture-politics

This gesture politics won't combat the increasing inequality in society

Stephen Hester declines his bonus. Fred Goodwin is deknighted. Fine. But this is gesture economics. David Cameron remains convinced about the morality of free markets, and their natural ability to make everyone rich. This sharing out is ostensibly carried out by a kindly invisible hand, identified long ago by the Scottish economist Adam Smith, and in recent decades referred to as "trickledown".

New Labour did believe that the trickle had to be helped, but they were so busy actively redistributing, which in itself belied the trickledown theory, that they persuaded themselves that close scrutiny of the source of the largesse was not necessary or desirable. But figures in both Britain and the US show that huge increases in wealth at the top of society have not, in fact, led to any increase in affluence at the bottom. High salaries got much, much higher. Low wages, even average wages, stagnated. Underlying unemployment rose.

The neo-liberal concern is always that, left to its own devices, let alone deliberately channelled by "the state", a trickle can become a flood. But really, the growth in inequality in neo-liberal economies confirms the belief of neo-liberalism's critics - that a trickle is all too easy to dam up.

The debt crisis, quite simply, is the result of the huge efforts that have been made to hide the absence of trickledown. Cheap debt, in the form of mortgages, artificially inflated housing assets, encouraging people to take on more cheap debt, that they could treat like disposable income, created a consumer boom.

Even without a mortgage, you could still get credit cards, lots of them, and continually transfer your debts to the latest new deal. This meant that people felt as if they were becoming more wealthy and affluent, even when in reality they were not. Thus, an illusion was created - the illusion that concentrated wealth really was enriching everyone, when that was far from the case. Is Cameron really deluded, or just cynical? Either way, he is not going to find a solution while he remains so tremendously enthusiastic about the problem.

One year ago, a father's racist politics had poisoned the relationship with his son. Now, the birth of a child has brought about a subtle change

After more than a day of labour, Baby Finn forced his way into the world: 5lb 11oz, beautiful, healthy and wondrous. Dizzy with pride for my partner and son, I wanted to tell the entire world, one by one. Except, that is, for my own father.

He'd made clear his lack of interest in our mixed-race child, so what must be life's greatest phone call was taken from me by his irrational hatred of difference. In truth though, nothing could sully the joy of Finn's arrival. If the third world war had broken out, it would have been a footnote to my day.

Collecting myself in the autumn air outside St Thomas' hospital, London, where not even the gothic splendour of the Palace of Westminster could impress after seeing what Mira had gone through to bring Finn into the world, I rang Mira's mother. The happiness doubled and the news would be distributed among the Patels at a speed Twitter could only dream of.

Now for my lot. If I rang the family home, the only person in the world I didn't want to speak to would answer. We hadn't spoken in months and he didn't deserve - or desire - the good news. On this day, especially, I didn't want to hear his voice.

Given the length of the labour, I had been able to warn my mum that we were heading for the hospital and to turn her mobile phone on. (For reasons best known to the elderly, mobile phones are usually turned off when not in use to "save the battery", even when childbirth is imminent.)

Mum was overwhelmed to hear the news that she had a fifth grandchild. It was an unexpected treat for her late in life as it had been 16 years since the last one, and he's already shaving. She knew how happy Mira and I were, and hoped we'd bring her a baby to love. Her prayers and my father's fears were answered simultaneously.

For the first few weeks of Finn's life I'd pick my mum up to bring her to see the baby without speaking to my dad. She couldn't have been more delighted. Well, perhaps if her husband shared her profound glee, she could.

Mira's family were regular visitors and made a fuss of Finn, showering him with affection and gifts, as well as providing great support.

The situation with my father couldn't go on. He's approaching 90 and it was intolerable to think that Finn would not meet his grandfather. I don't know why he finally decided to get in touch, but détente was reached at his request.

He didn't apologise, but wanted us to put our differences aside. He said he had his reasons for his objections. I told him I didn't care what they were - they would make no sense to me. We were talking about an innocent baby, his grandchild, I told him. He agreed. A newborn baby was to be cherished. He wanted to meet him. We would not reach an understanding, simply a slightly chafing accommodation.

When Finn was three months old, I took him to see my father. When I put my son in his arms, even with his faltering eyesight and unsteady grasp, he was visibly moved to hold him, to gaze down on those big brown eyes and declare him handsome.

Now he regularly rings up to ask: "How's my beautiful grandson?" before telling me how alert and lovely he is, just like any proud grandad. It still surprises me, but I'm gratified and - more than anything - relieved. As an added bonus, he hasn't said anything offensively racist to me for months. I think of it as Babies 1, BNP 0.

He hasn't changed his politics, of course, but he has at least stopped his small-minded bigotry poisoning the bond with his own blood. Although our relationship will never be the same, it is at least cordial and Finn at last has a grandfather (Mira's father died some years ago).

Race was not an issue for Mira's family. Both her sisters are married to white Englishmen and have beautiful children. The family has had many happy mixed marriages since they came to England from east Africa in the 1970s.

It took a baby to shake my father from his rigid stance, and I suppose it is the same for many families. The thing you fear turns out to be nothing at all.

I still brace myself for an offensive outburst when we take Finn to see my parents. But he takes most of the attention, so the state of the modern world comes up less. Last time, my dad piped up: "It doesn't make sense. Our government has just given £4m to the starving Somalis ..." I tensed, fearing the rest of the sentence but he said, "Yet Manchester City has just spent £35m on a footballer." Perspective is the last thing I expected from him.

Mostly, though, I am glad that he is proud of the baby we made, a child we couldn't love more, who will grow up to hear that his grandad has some good points. I can tell him he was a war hero who risked his life and gave part of his sanity, in my opinion, to protect this country from the evil force of nazism.

It still shocks and saddens me that my father, along with others of his generation and experience, embraces the racist ideology they fought against in the battle that defined their lives. Do they really wish they had been on the other side?

"I didn't fight for this," he used to say about our multicultural society. I could never satisfactorily explain it to him, but he did fight for this - for Britain to determine its own future and for its people to be free to live their lives and love whoever they loved. And he fought for Finn, and all his grandchildren, so they need never fear a knock at the door from a regime based on hate, division and brutality. For that I will always be grateful.

Names have been changed

Westminster Voting intention: CON 25%, LAB 50%, LDEM 6%, PC 11%, Others 9%
Assembly consituency vote: CON 20%, LAB 49%, LDEM 7%, PC 17%, Others 7%
Assembly regional vote: CON 20%, LAB 45%, LDEM 7%, PC 15%, Others 13%

...Davey became politically active as a student "discussing the minutiae of energy conservation and green economics" and conservationism is his big issue. He believes citizens should be viewed as "custodians of the environment and not just consumers".

Chris Huhne's divorce spiralled into political crisis after claims by his former wife that she took speeding points on his behalf

The acrimonious divorce of Chris Huhne and Vicky Pryce spiralled into a political as well as personal crisis when they were both charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, prompting Huhne's resignation as energy secretary and a call by Pryce for the case to resolved quickly.

Huhne described the director of public prosecutions' decision to charge him as deeply regrettable and vowed to prove his innocence in front of a jury.

Pryce, in a brief statement from her lawyer, did not declare her innocence or guilt, saying she would now spend some time with her family and adding: "Obviously I hope for a quick resolution of the case." It is not known what plea she will submit to the charges.

In a day of personal turmoil and suspense for Huhne and Pryce, Keir Starmer, the DPP, announced he judged that sufficient evidence existed to charge the former couple. It is alleged that Pryce has admitted taking speeding points on behalf of her former husband in March 2003, an allegation she initially made in the Sunday Times during their separation.

It is the first time a serving cabinet minister has been charged with an imprisonable criminal offence in modern times, and represents a devastating blow to one of politics' most resilient figures, as well as potentially weakening the Liberal Democrats at a time when the party is hoping to stage a recovery. Huhne has been described as "the grit in the oyster", self-confident enough to challenge his coalition partners across the policy range.

Lawyers for the former couple will be summoned to appear at Westminster magistrates' court on 16 February, with a full trial at the Old Bailey possibly in September, on the assumption that neither side pleads guilty or manages to get the case dismissed. There is a prospect that other Liberal Democrats could be summoned to give evidence.

In a letter accepting Huhne's resignation, Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem leader and deputy prime minister, said: "I fully understand your decision to stand down from government in order to clear your name, but I hope you will be able to do so rapidly so that you can return to play a key role in government as soon as possible."

David Cameron, however, made no mention of a possible return in his own letter accepting Huhne's resignation, saying only: "Like the deputy prime minister, I am sorry to see you leave the government under these circumstances and wish you well for the future." He added that Huhne had made the right decision to stand down in the circumstances, and praised his work on climate change.

In a typically robust response, Huhne said: "The Crown Prosecution Service's decision today is deeply regrettable. I'm innocent of these charges and I intend to fight this in the courts and I'm confident that a jury will agree.

"So as to avoid any distraction to either my official duties or my trial defence, I am standing down and resigning as energy and climate change secretary. I will of course continue to serve my constituents in Eastleigh."

Clegg spoke to Huhne on Thursday night and Friday morning. Clegg's wife, Miriam, spoke to Pryce to express her sadness and offer her support. It was being stressed by Lib Dem aides that the Cleggs were not taking sides, but making a human gesture to two people who as a couple had been the only Liberal Democrats to attend their wedding.

Pryce is said to be disappointed at the decision of the Sunday Times to succumb to a police court demand to hand over emails between herself and a journalist on the paper. The Sunday Times had initially resisted the release of the emails, but changed tack, prompting some of Pryce's friends to claim that it had not protected its sources as newspapers are expected to do. News International sources said it had a written agreement with Pryce that it would protect her but if the court demanded material, the Sunday Times could hand that material to the police.

Cameron was informed at 9.10am of Starmer's decision and spoke to Huhne by phone at 10.40am, little more than half hour an hour after Starmer's announcement.

In a rapid, long-prepared response to the resignation, Cameron appointed the Lib Dem business minister Ed Davey to succeed Huhne. Norman Lamb, Clegg's parliamentary aide, has taken on Davey's former brief.

Lib Dem officials praised Davey's quick grasp of policy and ability to get on with officials and said he would be his own man putting forward a strong green case. He said his three chief challenges were climate change, energy security and securing a better deal for energy consumers, a field in which he specialised while at the business department.

The prime minister's spokesman said he did not expect to see any substantial change in policy as a result.

But some environmentalists voiced dismay at the loss of Huhne, described by Greenpeace as "a vocal advocate for the green agenda in a government whose green credentials are looking more than a little tarnished".

Other government changes resulting from the resignation saw the Lib Dem MP Jenny Willott appointed an assistant government whip and Jo Swinson take Lamb's old post as parliamentary private secretary to Clegg. Despite speculation, there was no return for David Laws, who quit as Treasury chief secretary in May 2010 and was later suspended from the Commons for seven days after an expenses scandal.

Andrew Lansley says some trusts can no longer afford to honour PFI deals that were 'badly negotiated' by Labour ministers

Seven hospital trusts struggling with crippling private finance initiative debts are to receive £1.5bn in emergency funding from the government to help them avoid cutting patient services to pay their bills.

The Department of Health is making the £1.5bn available - in grants, not loans - to the seven hospital trusts in England with some of the heaviest PFI debts through a "stability" fund. Trusts will be able to use the money to meet PFI repayments, rather than their usual budgets, as long as they meet four conditions set out by the department.

The move will help trusts such as South London Healthcare NHS trust, which is facing a PFI repayment in 2012-13 of £66.8m under the terms of a deal agreed in July 1998, in the early days of Tony Blair's government. They will be able to access the £1.5bn over the next 25 years, until the PFI contracts end.

Andrew Lansley, the health secretary, said he had been forced to use taxpayers' money because certain NHS organisations could no longer afford to honour PFI deals that had been "badly negotiated" by Labour ministers.

"Labour left some parts of the NHS with a dismal legacy of PFI, and made them rely on unworkable plans for the future. They swept these problems under the carpet for a decade and left us with a £60bn postdated PFI cheque to deal with," Lansley said.

"The problems facing some parts of the NHS left to us by Labour now have to be sorted out. Tough solutions may be needed for these problems, but we will not let the sick pay for Labour's debt crisis."

The six other NHS trusts are Barking, Havering and Redbridge; Peterborough and Stamford Hospitals NHS foundation trust; St Helens and Knowsley; North Cumbria; Dartford and Gravesham; and Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells.

Without the fund, there was a danger that services would be put "at severe risk" because of the weight of their PFI deals at a time of tightening NHS budgets, according to Department of Health sources.

South London faces the largest annual repayment in 2012-13. The Barking, Havering and Redbridge trust has to find £49.8m on its deal, agreed in January 2004, and the St Helens and Knowsley trust's payment will be £42.5m under the terms of its contract, signed in June 2006.

Lansley acted after 22 hospital trusts told him their PFI debts were endangering their financial or clinical future. Department of Health research established that PFI payments were one of the reasons for trusts' problems.

The department set four conditions for trusts to use the fund:

o The problems they face must be exceptional and beyond those faced by other organisations.

o The problems must be historic and they have a clear plan to manage their resources in the future.

o They must show they are delivering high levels of annual productivity savings.

o They must deliver clinically viable, high quality services, including delivering low waiting times and other performance measures.

Andy Burnham, the shadow health secretary, who was health secretary during Labour's time in office, has previously admitted in relation to the deals: "We made mistakes. I'm not defending every penstroke of the PFI contracts we signed."

The money will be available over the remaining lifetime of the seven trusts' PFI contracts. It will come from underspends over that time in different Department of Health budgets.

In December a report into NHS finances by the public accounts committee flagged up looming problems with PFI debt. It concluded: "The cost of private finance schemes is an additional challenge for a limited number of hospitals. Analysis commissioned by the department has identified six trusts that are unviable largely because of their PFI charges. Long-term private finance initiatives deals reduce the department's ability to establish a level playing field of financially sustainable, autonomous trusts.

"In many cases efficiency savings alone will not be enough to make unviable trusts financially sustainable. The department faces a particular dilemma about how to manage the debt of these hospitals as their long-term financial commitments make reconfiguration more difficult," it added.

The capacity of clubs such as Portsmouth to carry on in apparently hopeless positions is one of the game's phenomena

In football perspectives have obviously changed. There was a time when the merest hint of a famous old club threatened with extinction would have been regarded as a major crisis within the game. Now the news of Portsmouth being issued with a winding-up order by HM Revenue and Customs for unpaid taxes is greeted with a shrug.

So what. Portsmouth have been this way before, HMRC having filed a similar petition in December 2009 which was eventually withdrawn, leaving the club to face a nine-point penalty for going into administration.

Pompey have experienced a series of financial crises since the late 90s which have usually involved last-minute rescues by foreign investors, though with mixed results. Harry Redknapp's two spells as manager between 2002 and 2008 saw them gain promotion to the Premier League and win the FA Cup but their cash problems have only ever been put on hold.

Now Portsmouth's bank accounts have been frozen following HMRC's latest wind-up. The tax man is owed £1.6m which may seem trifling compared to the sums being paid to Premier League players and the debts run up by their clubs as a result, but is posing yet one more threat to the club's future.

The winding-up petition is due to be heard on 20 February. Portsmouth are seeking a validation from the court to have their accounts unfrozen so that wages and money owed to suppliers can be paid. Meanwhile their supporters will be wondering who will take over the club next, always assuming that there is anyone left out there likely to show an interest.

Elsewhere life goes on. The season's issues continue to grab the headlines ... the Mancunian arm-wrestling contest at the top and the struggles of the rest to keep up, John Terry, Carlos Tevez, red cards that should or should not have been shown, two-footed tackles ... and so on and so forth. Winding-ups are not big news.

Portsmouth will probably live to be wound up another day. The capacity of football clubs in apparently hopeless positions to carry on somehow is one of the game's phenomena.

In the mid-80s Middlesbrough were broke and had to borrow £30,000 from the Professional Footballers' Association to pay the wages. The gates at Ayresome Park were padlocked and Boro, then in the old Third Division, kicked off the 1986-87 season with a home game against Port Vale except that "home" on that day was at Hartlepool.

Ten minutes before the deadline for registering with the Football League, at a cost of £350,000 which up to that point Middlesbrough did not have, Steve Gibson, the present chairman, led a consortium to the rescue and Boro ended up winning promotion. In the early 80s Derek Dougan headed a similar salvage operation to bail out Wolverhampton Wanderers, again with minutes to spare.

Broadly speaking, football clubs live on so long as the will to live is strong. For Halifax Town read FC Halifax, riding high in the Blue Square Premier. Cast a glance through the Evo-Stik North Premier and there are Bradford Park Avenue, a point ahead of FC United of Manchester. Darlington's financial woes may have cost them 10 points in the Blue Square Premier but at least they are still there, the fans having rallied round to keep them going.

Older followers of Leyton Orient will remember Arthur Page, then the chairman, walking around the running track at Brisbane Road with a plastic bucket into which supporters were invited to drop contributions to ease a cash crisis. The will of the fans to ensure that their team stays in existence should never be underestimated.

The restoration of Brighton and Hove Albion as a serious footballing force, epitomised by the way Gus Poyet's side have just swept Newcastle United out of the FA Cup, owes much to the energy and vision of Dick Knight. But if Albion supporters had given up when, the Goldstone Ground having been sold from under them for development, they were asked to travel to the ends of the earth, otherwise known as Gillingham, to watch home games, the club might have faded away.

Maybe a franchise system, requiring those who would own a football team to stick to an agreed set of practices or lose control, might save clubs from themselves. At present the tendency is to apply the Billy Bunter principle in matters of finance : the Owl of the Remove was forever expecting a postal order. Either this or hope that the figure shimmering in the heat haze of an Arabian desert is Omar Sharif with oil wells and not merely a mirage.

A major factor in why US prisons are overflowing is the highly profitable privatised industry that has an incentive to fill them

In the past few decades, changes in sentencing laws and get-tough-on-crime policies have led to an explosion in America's prison population. Funding this incarceration binge has been an enormous drain on taxpayer dollars, with some states now spending more to lock up their citizens than to provide their children with education. It's difficult to spin anything positive out of that scenario, but as it turns out, even this blackest of clouds has a silver lining - silver as in dollars, that is, for the private prison industry.

In 2010, two of the largest private prison companies in America, GEO Group, Inc and the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) generated over $4bn dollars in profit between them. Their respective CEOs, George Zoley and Damon Hininger, each earned well in excess of $3m in 2010. Although there have been some concerns that any relaxation of sentencing or drug laws might negatively impact their bottom line (profit), they remain confident in their ability to drum up new ways of generating their taxpayer-funded commodities (also known as inmates): lobbying California for their excess prisoners being one; caging juveniles on trivial charges another. But the favorite, by a long shot, is the accelerated drive to lock up America's immigrants.

So far, these strategies seem to be working nicely. In their 2011 third-quarter earnings report, the GEO group proudly announced an increase in profits from the previous year. This joyous news can be at least partially attributed to changes in immigration law, particularly in states like Arizona and Oklahoma, which allow for, among other things, the indefinite detention of illegal immigrants, including those whose asylum proceedings are underway. The majority of immigrants who are picked up by law enforcement officials, mostly on civil charges, like being caught with a broken tail light for instance, will end up in privately run prisons. In many of these facilities, they will be charged $5 per minute to call their loved ones, whilst earning $1 per day for their labor, from which the corporation running the facility will profit.

According to an investigation by NPR, in 2008, two men, allegedly from CCA, showed up in a small Arizona town, close to the Mexican border to pitch the construction of a new prison specifically to house women and children who were illegal immigrants. Local officials were not convinced that the prison could be kept full, but that is, perhaps, because they were unaware that, at the time, CCA was one of the key groups involved in drafting and promoting the Arizona Senate Bill 1070 (which requires police to lock up anyone who cannot prove they came to the US legally), under the auspices of a secretive group called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which specializes in model legislation.

It's hard to think of a more cynical way to earn one's fortune than to devise means of placing innocent children in prison. But if no one's going to stop you, then why the hell not?

It's not all sunshine and roses in private prison land, however. These dens of inequity were sold to the public as super-efficient, money-saving, job-creating dream machines. The trouble is, most of the savings are derived from hiring too few prison guards and paying them on average 30-40% less than their counterparts in government-run prisons. According to Brian Dawe, executive director of the American Correctional Officers (ACO), an organization that promotes the well-being and safety of corrections officers (COs), no self-respecting CO wants to work in a private prison - where their chances of being assaulted are 49% higher, where escapes are commonplace, where riots are frequent and where the staff are ill-equipped to cope.

It might seem counterintuitive to create conditions that are conducive to outbreaks of violence, until you realize that violence is good for business. Inmates who act out tend to get time added to their sentence. Time added to sentences means more money, and more money is exactly what the CEOs and their shareholders are interested in.

This brings me to what the ACLU's David Shapiro, who authored the recent report Banking on Bondage, calls a "fundamentally flawed incentive". In a sane society, the purpose of a prison should be to keep the public safe. The goal should not be to encourage criminal behavior or to find new ways to incriminate people, so that certain private individuals can line their pockets.

It's an added kick in the face that these corporations which profit from human misery are doing so at the taxpayers' expense and to the detriment of public safety. But until the public cries foul, there will be no stopping them.

Interested parties can write to: 

Sadhbh Walshe 
PO Box 1466
New York, NY 10150

Or send an email to: sadhbh@ymail.com

Imagine a door-to-door salesman comes to your house one day to try and sell you a burglar alarm by telling you about the terribly high crime rate is in your area. You're not convinced, so you tell him you don't want one. A little while later that same salesman breaks into your house, nicks the TV and does a crap on the sofa.

Now replace "door-to-door salesman" with "David Cameron", "your house" with "France" and "burglar alarm" with "financial transactions tax", and you've pretty much summed up our government's attitude to attempts to rein in the forces of global finance.

This was Cameron speaking a few months ago (bolded text my emphasis):

The danger, we have always believed, is driving transactions to a jurisdiction where it wouldn't be applied. So a global tax would be a good thing, but in Britain also we have put in place stamp duty on share transactions, a bank levy.

...and this was him this week:

Boris Johnson and David Cameron today urged French bankers to quit Paris and move to London in a dramatic escalation of a row with the French president.

The Mayor joined the Prime Minister in calling for traders to escape Nicolas Sarkozy's plans for a financial tax by setting up business in the Square Mile.

Mr Johnson said: "Bienvenue à Londres. This is the global capital of finance. It's on your doorstep and if your own president does not want the jobs, the opportunities and the economic growth that you generate, we do."

So, in November you have Cameron telling us that of course a tax on bank transactions is a lovely fluffy idea, which we'd be only too happy to implement if only we could, but you see it just isn't possible because all those nasty banks would move their operations abroad if we did that, and we don't want that, do we? Then this week, he explicitly invites those very same nasty banks to move from France to the UK so they don't have to pay the transactions tax which Sarkozy is threatening to bring in.

Cameron, in short, is explicitly trying to bring about the very thing which he previously said would make a transaction tax untenable, despite ostensibly supporting such a tax in principle. Which, perhaps not surprisingly, suggests rather strongly that his original commitment to it was somewhat less than whole-hearted. Whether this also applies to Cameron and the Conservatives' attitude to other redistributive taxes is something about which I leave the reader to draw their own conclusions.

Transcript of my London #Compass 'Progressive Alliance' talk,

Jan. 10 2012

  Thanks, everyone, for coming—it's a pleasure to be here. 

So, my report on 'guardians for future generations' been creating a bit of a stir.  By the way: If you want to get the report for free it's now available, for download, from the Greenhouse website, which is easy to find.  (If you Google Green House now, we come up first rather than greenhouse adverts, so that's good...)

One of the stirs has been in the Guardian.  The comments closed last night at 325, so there's clearly a lively and interesting debate there.  So: what's it all about? 

Well, I've got a proposal to end, or at least to seek to start to end, the chronic culture of short-termism that we have in our politics, in our electoral cycles, and in our business and economics—with business cycles and quarterly reports and even more short-termist things than that.  And when one is trying to think on a timescale of hundreds of years or thousands of years or hundreds of thousands of years, for example, which is the timescale for nuclear waste, then those kind of short-term cycles don't make a lot of sense.  So what are we, collectively, going to do about it? 

Well, before I say what I am proposing to do about it, here's one more way of seeing the problem, that I think really helps: the concept of democracy is one of my starting points.  What does 'democracy' mean?  So, etymologically, democracy means 'the people rule' or 'the people govern'.  Now I'm sure all those who take themselves as any kind whatsoever of progressive would agree that at the present time it's pretty inaccurate to say -- in any very meaningful, or full, sense -- that the people govern in our society.  So: we don't even have AV, let alone PR; we're still waiting for the upper house to be democratically reformed; beyond those reforms, we need also participatory democracy, many of us would say economic democracy, and a serious re-localisation.  There are vast, vast changes in our society which are needed if there is going to be a real democracy here.  But even if all those changes occured we would still be in a society which ran the risk of being chronically short-termist.  Why?  Well, the way I like to put this is that the democratic institutions that we have at the moment, even the laws that would be brought in if we made all those kinds of democratic changes that I've mentioned that we would all, I'm sure, like to see, tend to still be focused upon the interests and wishes of present people, people who are alive today.  They are the people who vote—and whose votes alone would count even in an improved and enhanced democracy. 

But a people, I want to suggest to you, is not something that exists as a time-slice; a people is something that exists over time.  It begins in the past and goes on indefinitely far into the future.

And while people in the past are hard to harm, because they've had their time, people in the future are extremely easy to harm and indeed, in the extreme, to prevent from existing at all.  Whereas if we get things right, people in the future could have the chance to have a great existence and to go on indefinitely longer into the future having that existence.   So I want to say that we need to find a way of making democracy actually include future people.  We need to find a way of representing them in our political system. 

So, what would this mean?  Can you give future people a vote?  Well, obviously, that's not very feasible.  So we need to find some form of, if you like, proxy representation for them.  They need to have something like a proxy vote, I'm suggesting.

Well, as I said, if we don't screw up so badly that we stop them from existing altogether, over time there will be far more future people than there are present people, which would mean in a democracy that they would out-vote us every time, right? They would be the vast majority.  So, in order to express their proxy 'vote', I suggest that what we need to give them is a proxy veto.  Because: If they did vote on masse together, they would, as I say, massively out-vote us, provided we don't screw things up so badly that we stop them from having the chance of living at all...  So I want to suggest that we need proxy representatives for future people empowered in and by our political system to veto things that we might want to do but that they don't want us to do.  And the people who are going to be these proxies I'm calling Guardians for Future Generations, guardians to represent the interests of these future people to us. 

So, who should these guardians be?  How should they be selected?  Well it doesn't make any sense for us to vote for them, because they are proxies for future people—they're there to express the votes that future people would cast if they could cast those votes. 

I suggest that actually all of us and none of us are equally well positioned to be these proxy representatives for future people.  We could say, Greens are the best place to represent future people, but that would be begging the question: "I'd like you to give me and my friends the power to veto all decisions made in our political system."  Hmmm… Not very convincing… It would never ever get through: it would be perceived as a cheat—it would be perceived, correctly, as utterly undemocratic.  We need, plainly, to draw these proxy representatives from across the entire population. I suggest that the only fair, reasonable and democratic way of doing this is through the same principle that animates the jury system: which is random selection. Such that anyone and everyone has an equal chance to be one of the guardians for future people. So what I'm suggesting can be put in this way: that we need a super-jury drawn from any and all of us to represent to us the interests of future people and to represent those/them by having a proxy power that enables them to veto decisions (that would affect future people adversely) that are made in our current political system. 

And that line of thinking really gives you exactly what my proposal is—I'm proposing guardians for future people, guardians for the fundamental interests -- for the basic needs -- of future generations, to be selected at random, as jurors are, to form a super-jury, which would sit above our]]> http://rupertsread.blogspot.com/2012/02/guardians-of-future-talk.html http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/03/labour-chose-ed-not-david-miliband

David Miliband rejects my pro-state policy ideas as 'Reassurance Labour'. That's why he's not leader

Rejoice. It is just possible that two not very original articles, which recently appeared in small circulation magazines, will stimulate the debate about Labour's principles and purpose that the party has needed, but lacked, for so long.

In the first article - published in the Political Quarterly - Kevin Hickson and I argued that Labour would only succeed if it based its programme on a coherent and consistent philosophy, that its ideological objective should be a more equal society, and that the Blair and Brown governments had made too little progress in that direction because of two crucial errors: they placed too much faith in the power of markets and they accepted the fashionable view that the role of the state should be drastically reduced. To us it seemed so blindingly obvious that we were not at all surprised when, for months after its first publication, the article was completely ignored.

Then along came David Miliband. His response, in the New Statesman, amounted to the rejection of what he called "Reassurance Labour" - his description of our strongly held belief that, far from being an electoral liability, genuine social democracy is what millions of disillusioned voters are waiting for.

Events conspire to prove our point. Who now believes that "light regulation" will encourage banks to contribute to the general good, or that the profit motive - as illustrated by the collapse of Southern Cross - is the best stimulus to high-quality domiciliary care? If "modernisation" - more often demanded than defined - means accepting that the world is constantly changing, it is a requirement of policy making. If it means that it is now impossible to mobilise a majority for the redistribution of power and wealth, the inherent pessimism is contradicted by the evidence.

There are points at which the two diagnoses coincide. David agrees that, when properly defined, liberty and equality are essentially related, rather than mutually exclusive, conditions. But if he does want a more equal society he has do more than extol its virtues. He has to support the means of bringing it about. And state power is essential to its achievement. We no more believe that the state is always benign than we believe in the extinction, or even the regulation, of a majority of markets. Our complaint against the Blair and Brown governments is that in both areas they lacked discrimination. Markets are often necessary to preserve liberty as well as to promote efficiency - but they are not the best method of distributing welfare, medical care and education. The state sometimes intrudes unacceptably into the lives of its citizens - but more often it is the best way of providing essential social services.

State action is vital to the achievement of a more equal society. It is the most efficient mechanism for the redistribution of power and wealth, and it enables a genuinely egalitarian government to destroy the institutions of inequality and replace them with systems which unite rather than divide the nation.

For some reason, which I cannot explain, David accuses us of wanting to diminish the role of local government. Perhaps he has a guilty conscience. The government in which he served invented "city academies: they are a perfect example of how - by replacing public provision with the individualism of the "choice agenda" - the interests of the articulate, self-confident and determined minority are promoted at the expense of the community as a whole. David ignores the state's basic duty to protect the vulnerable against private tyranny. So did the Blair-Brown governments. As a result, the bankers' greed and incompetence created a "lost generation" of the young unemployed.

Understandably, David bridles at criticism of the governments in which he served. We have no doubt that they did much of which the Labour party can be proud. We said so when we campaigned for its re-election. David makes the tired old jibe about the luxury of "principle without power". But we believe that future office will elude us until we establish a distinctive radical reputation. That requires a leader who has the courage and character to acknowledge the fundamental flaws in New Labour thinking. It is one of the reasons why we voted for Ed Miliband 18 months ago.

From bonuses to knighthoods, the leaders we put in high office prefer jaw-jutting certainty to thoughtful judgment

The laws of contempt demand that we tread warily when assessing the matter of Chris Huhne's judgment. We can wonder if the now departed energy secretary would have had to resign to spend more time with his lawyers had he played things differently. Perhaps if he had been less abrasive, declining to compare his Tory cabinet colleagues to Nazis during the alternative-vote campaign for example, he would have had more friends in high places saddened rather than cheered to see him go.

Not that they could have saved his job. Whatever the law says about innocent until proven guilty, politics has its own code - one that deems criminal charges incompatible with high office. If Huhne has any regrets at all, they probably relate to ... but no, the lawyer is hovering.

Still the Huhne resignation on Friday did one man a favour, diverting the spotlight from Sir Philip Hampton, the RBS chairman, who, with his knighthood still intact, did a round of morning interviews, mostly focusing on the bonus of very nearly £1m offered to, and then waived by, the bank's chief executive, Stephen Hester. "I think it's true that we underestimated the scale of the public reaction to the bonus award," Hampton conceded.

Think about that for a moment. This is the chairman of a huge institution, in a post so responsible he was himself deemed worthy of a £1.4m bonus, admitting that he was unable to predict that taxpayers would be agitated by the prospect of forking out a seven-figure prize to the head of a bank they all but own, even though that bank's share price had tumbled by 37% in a year. Only "in hindsight" could Hampton see what anybody who had opened a newspaper or listened to a phone-in over the past three years could have told him in advance.

Forget the outrage over rewarding failure and throwing millions at this one public employee, Hester, while everyone else in the public sector has to endure a pay freeze that is, in effect, a pay cut. Focus only on the admission of utterly defective judgment. A titan of British finance has confessed that he did not know what was obvious to the dogs in the street.

It recalled the round of interviews Peter Mandelson had given a week earlier, where the former Lord High Marshal - I forget his exact title - of the Brown government explained his new understanding of globalisation. He had once believed that globalisation would produce "rising incomes for all". Indeed, he said, "we took all that for granted". But, to his shock, "we've learned that markets, while indispensable ... can become volatile and unstable and have to be managed and regulated"; and, more shocking still, that "globalisation is also generating income inequalities within countries and between countries."

Now, perhaps we should applaud Mandelson both for changing his mind and coming clean about the gaps in his previous thinking. But it's not as if he has discovered a truth impossible to glimpse until now. He was a cabinet minister in the era of the great anti-globalisation protests in Seattle and elsewhere. All he had to do was listen to what those protesters were saying nearly 13 years ago, as they warned that the new economic orthodoxy was fuelling inequality and that markets needed to be tamed. For, as he has now admitted, their judgment was right and his was wrong.

He's not, of course, the only eminence to have erred. Alan Greenspan - yet another financial big to be knighted - was revered as the oracle, the sage who chaired the Federal Reserve for nearly 20 years. Yet he eventually confessed that he did not see the devastating sub-prime housing bubble coming - "I really didn't get it until very late" - and, what's more, that it was with "shocked disbelief" that he realised that bankers might not put the safety of their depositors' cash ahead of all other considerations, including, say, personal greed.

Hampton, Mandelson, Greenspan - all confessing that they got it wrong. Which would be admirable if judgment were not the very quality they were hired for. That, after all, is the deal. The eminent public official gets the titles, the salary, the status that separates him from lesser mortals because he is meant to be endowed with greater wisdom. That's their purpose. And yet, in Philip Hampton we have the lavishly paid chairman of a public concern cheerfully admitting that when faced with a critical decision he had less insight than any man or woman you might pick at random from the top deck of a passing bus.

The Mandelson case is graver. His first boss, Tony Blair, used the word "judgment" all the time, especially when defending the Iraq war, solemnly insisting that this was a judgment that ultimately he, as prime minister, had to make. But Blair's judgment proved to be fatally wrong: there were no WMDs and no plan for the aftermath of invasion. An unkind historian could seize on Mandelson's recent admission and conclude that, while right on so much else, on the two great questions of the age - the changing global economy and the "war on terror" - Blair's judgment was badly wrong. And yet it was precisely the quality of his judgment that he insisted qualified him to lead.

There are countless examples, in every direction. George Osborne slammed quantitative easing as "the last resort of desperate governments", before resorting to that very move himself. In 2001 Paddy Ashdown declared the idea of "a long drawn-out guerrilla campaign" in Afghanistan "fanciful". Earlier, Michael Gove wrote a pamphlet denouncing the doomed folly of the Northern Ireland peace process. Again and again, those who believe their judgment qualifies them to make great decisions of state get it wrong.

Perhaps Ed Miliband will draw comfort from this. He's made several judgment calls he's proud of: Murdoch, Hester and Fred Goodwin. The trouble is, it might not matter. Al Gore could always point to a good record - he supported the first Gulf war and opposed the second, for example - but it was not enough. It might not be sound judgment we crave, but the leader-ish appearance of it: the jaw-jutting certainty, the alpha confidence. Blair had that by the bucketload and so does Cameron. It may all be an illusion, covering an alarming pattern of misjudgment. But by the time the voters find out, it's often too late.

Twitter: @j_freedland

Amelia Gentleman should be congratulated on a powerful piece of journalism (After all the pep talks and CV workshops, where are the jobs?, 1 February) . It should be compulsory reading for the coalition government and Labour frontbench. Schemes to maximise people's CVs, job searching and employability skills may help some unemployed people. However, as she points out, the emphasis of these sorts of schemes is to make unemployment purely an individual problem, ignoring economic factors.

The danger is that many unemployed people start to believe that their failure to find work is solely due to defects in individual characteristics, rather than primarily a result of economic factors. Interestingly, at least one of the workers who are attempting to put people into work, Mark Harrison, acknowledged the shortage of jobs as a problem ("... there not being the jobs out there"). Incongruously, this realism frequently coexisted with a jargon-ridden, gung-ho approach from his colleagues when they were talking to clients and assuring them they would find a job.
Michael Somerton
Hull

o It was refreshing to read Amelia Gentleman's balanced report on what she saw of our work programme operations. In just six months G4S has already supported over 6,000 people into jobs through our management of the work programme. During turbulent economic times, providing quality support for long-term unemployed people becomes more important, not less so.

The total amount of jobs in an economy is not fixed. Labour market interventions like the work programme help create more jobs as well as match people to the jobs currently available. If we get it right, the work programme offers a unique opportunity to transform the present and future job prospects of a generation of unemployed people.
Sean Williams
Managing director, G4S Welfare to Work

o The headline on Amelia Gentleman's article encapsulates the problem: whereas there is much that is good in these schemes, it is clear that all this effort, at an apparent cost of £5bn, does not create a single job, apart from those of the individuals running them.
Philip Heselton
Hull

o Now we're having an intelligent debate on banking, can we also talk about the impact of the outsourcing and offshoring of jobs? What is the point of the work programme when the government is happy for both public and private sector work to move offshore to India or China? There will be no effective, long-term creation of jobs while this continues.
Tony Clewes
Walsall

o Amelia Gentleman's excellent article once again highlighted the total lack of vision in the government's approach to getting people into work. Rather than encouraging the unemployed to work unpaid for large companies, workshops should be run to help people of all ages identify the many gaps and new business opportunities that exist using modern technology and e-business models. I ran a two-year programme for Business Link Kent called e-quality for women entrepreneurs aimed at women over 50 wanting to start an online business. The response was amazing. They felt empowered when they realised that they could use their skills running a self-employed business and take control of their working lives.

Far more could be done to create mutually beneficial partnerships which could lead to employment or self-employment. Teach the young man being trained in making bird tables how to sell his products online. Get the 18-year-olds familiar with Twitter and Facebook to work with small businesses who are struggling to find the time to understand how social networking can raise their profile and create new markets. Arrange for the 60-year-olds with business backgrounds to mentor the young to start up a business. Too much time is spent focusing on traditional routes to employment.
Dee Alsey
Rye, East Sussex

o John Harris ('Being your own boss' is no alternative to a proper job, 23 January) is describing members of the new precariat - a combination of "proletariat" and "precarious". For women and ethnic minorities this is no new condition; altogether it's the growing class of those who live and work precariously, often in a series of short-term, insecure, low-paid jobs, and whose condition produces instability - like Occupy, riots and so on.

There are creative and egalitarian alternatives - work sharing, everyone working shorter hours rather than half the population out of work and the other half over-worked, co-operatives like Mondragon in the Basque country, where the highest earners are paid on average no more than five times that of the lowest, finance sector included. When are our politicians going to have a go at some of these?
Sue Ledwith
Ruskin College, Oxford

o Three months ago I was an employed IT professional and company director. I am now unemployed. I have applied for many jobs. Having paid tax into the system for many years, I feel entitled to my £60 per week unemployment benefit. To retain that I am now told by the Kingswood jobcentre in Bristol that I must make visits to offices/garages etc asking if they have any driving jobs. I am also told I must change my CV (dumb it down) and take any job that's offered to me. They say: "We know this is a bit demeaning but you are receiving taxpayers' money so this is what you must do."

Is it good for the UK economy for jobcentres to try to force highly qualified people to feel demeaned and undersell themselves simply because they have been unemployed for three months?
Mark Laridon
Bristol

o Please pass on to Amelia Gentleman my appreciation for the honesty and sensitivity she showed in her article on unemployment here in Hull.

It could only happen in Hull, the crucible of the anti-slavery movement and parliamentary seat of William Wilberforce, that unemployed citizens are expected to work without pay. Work without payment is my definition of slavery in the 21st century.
Mel Pink
Hull

o In Hull, there are apparently 58 applicants for each job. If each year, just over four of them do 12 weeks' unpaid "work experience", that job will disappear, and none will be able to gain paid employment. In the catechism I learnt at school, one of the sins crying out to heaven for vengeance was "defrauding labourers of their wages". It is a sin - and should be a crime - that has not gone away.
Frank Roper
Weymouth, Dorset

o The work programme does not save the government any money. When one benefit claimant finds work he simply fills a vacancy that would have gone to another claimant.
Janet Johnson
Rugby, Warwickshire

o It is all very well for the MoD to say that their purchasing policy does not preclude them from buying British (Fears for British jobs after BAE loses out on £7bn fighter contract, 2 February). The record of governments in the past of supporting development of ground-breaking work is abysmal - look at trains or windfarms or tidal power, where there has been virtually no support for British effort. What is the point of a scientific education if there are no British companies to provide employment? We will always be paying someone else to do the development work, so we will never have anything new to sell. The economy will never be rebalanced. Investing in R&D now is investing in our future. That must be government policy.
John Laird
Harrogate, North Yorkshire

o "Laughing at vocational jobs is a very British kind of snobbery, " writes Sarah Ditum ('Your kids aren't smart, posh, upper-class, whatever': a very British snobbery, 31 January). No it's not! It is stupid predjudice and active discrimination practised by people who should surely know better. Intellect and intelligence are not the same thing and most people now realise that the only way out of the economic impasse we find ourselves in will be by making things.

Creative industry needs to be the driving force of our economy rather than casino capitalism and low-taxed asset speculation. A change in attitudes is required that allows for the coming together of physical and mental intelligence working alongside academic intellect to create new goods and services that will enable a different economy to grow and prosper. Fortunately, the working class, with their myriad vocational skills and abilities, are usually quite good at this sort ]]> http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/feb/03/unemployment-job-creation-and-precariat http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/03/condone-child-rioting-admirable-parent

The trouble with blaming the parents is that you risk blaming people who have coped far better than you would have

Margaret Thatcher's famous remark, "There is no such thing as society," is often quoted out of context. That's a shame because, in context, it is even more absurd than it appears when naked and alone. Thatcher offered her observation in 1987, during an interview with Woman's Own: "There is no such thing as society. There is living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate." Yes, That's right. There is living tapestry, all woven together to make a big picture. Some people even call that picture "the big society", I hear.

Thatcher continues: "... we have these little innocents and the worst crime in life is when those children, who would naturally have the right to look to their parents for help, for comfort, not only just for the food and shelter but for time, for understanding, turn round and not only is that help not forthcoming, but they get either neglect or worse than that, cruelty."

Oh, dear. That bit is not so easy to ridicule, is it? That bit is quite right. It is appalling to have children and then to abuse or neglect them. There is no excuse for it. Not even the excuse that you were abused and neglected as a child yourself - an explanation not being the same as an excuse. We are all agreed on that, broadly?

Good. By agreeing that Thatcher is right in that second assertion, one proves that she is wrong in the first one.

If there were no such thing as society, there would be no such thing as criticising others for their own sovereign and individual behaviour. There would be no social norms, no agreed ethical standards. There would be no loom, no warp, no weft, no tapestry. That is the trouble with rightwing individualism. It is always poking its snout into other people's business to remind them that ... well ... that other people's business is not their business. The baleful Conservative paradox is that you go into public service to dismantle it, into government (ostensibly) to disempower it.

I recalled Thatcher's homilies on parenting as I watched a recording of David Cameron doling out similar blame-the-parents "wisdom" the other evening, at the start of Olly Lambert's excellent documentary, My Child, The Rioter, which interviewed parents of young people who had taken part in the summer riots, sometimes alongside their children, sometimes not. All of those parents were people who had tried to do their best. (No takers for going on telly to announce that you had neglected and abused your offspring and couldn't care less what they got up to, of course.) All the parents rued the day their children had got involved, except for Ryan's parents. All the children, in some way or another, expressed regret, except for Ryan. Ryan had no regrets at all, except that he had failed to take the opportunity to wreak more havoc.

Ryan, significantly, was the only child who claimed to have looted for political reasons. "There is such a thing as committing a crime for the right reasons," said Ryan. He wants to riot again, "because nothing's changed." Ryan isn't stupid. He is at Salford University, doing a course in "Culture, Power and Identity". Nevertheless, a lot of people agree that repeating the same action, and expecting a different outcome, is the very definition of stupidity.

That is exactly why Cameron's repetition of Thatcher's opinions grated so much.

Ryan, again significantly, was also the only young person in the group who had not been arrested, charged and convicted. At the time of writing, he still hadn't. But it would be no surprise now, after his televised confession, if that were to come. So why are his parents allowing him to risk arrest, six months on, by publicly admitting to have taken part in rioting and looting?

It is because they are proud of him. "He's out to make a difference." He is a political protester, in their eyes, and his, not a criminal rioter, and the family is frustrated that this message is being buried, because the establishment does not want to look at "deeper issues, social injustices, all that".

It would be easy to mock Ryan, and his parents. People have done so. Lambert says that Ryan has been very shocked by the vitriol with which their television appearance has been condemned. Ryan is right to be shocked. He is right to be hurt at the criticism that has been directed at his parents. Because, despite their indulgence of their son's romantic ideas about the political sophistication of smashing stuff and nicking stuff, Ryan's parents are in some respects both exceptional and admirable.

Each admits to having been "poorly parented" themselves, Ryan's mother by a violent, alcoholic father, Ryan's father by a violent, alcoholic boyfriend of his mother's. Ryan's father says he was out on the streets, smashing things up, committing crimes, by the time he was five. The pair have brought up their family determined not to repeat this pattern. "I'm just trying to get things right as a parent now. Break the cycle," Ryan's dad asserts.

Ryan's parents, broadly speaking, are doing the right thing, a thing that is notoriously hard to do. They are refusing to pass on a legacy of neglect and abuse to the next generation. They have not looked to "the government" to change things. They have taken the initiative to change things themselves. No doubt they have not always found that to be an easy task.

Like so many of us, Ryan's parents accept their responsibilities (in their own idiosyncratic way), but see wider societal problems that need addressing too (even if I don't agree that encouraging your child to riot is the right way of going about it). They have certainly made their own contribution to society's improvement. In one generation a self-admitted "feral child" has brought up a university student. (Ryan isn't Gandhi, it's true. But he's engaged and discursive and almost perilously secure.)

Perhaps, as parents, Ryan's are making their own mistakes. We all do. The mistake of encouraging your child to believe that opportunistic rioting is a mature and politically useful undertaking is a mistake that is greatly preferable to the "mistake" of beating and brutalising him.

Indeed, Ryan's parents' mistake is no worse a mistake than bringing up your child to believe that if there is a profit in it, then it is the right thing to do (which one could be forgiven for thinking had been the guiding principle of the life of Thatcher's son, Mark). The trouble with blaming the parents is that you risk blaming people who have coped far, far better than you would have, given the same start in life. Worse, like Thatcher, you risk believing that you know what's best for everyone, when you don't even understand that "everyone" needs a collective noun: Society.

The UK's ruinous experiment with austerity only highlights how good the US economic news is for Obama's re-election chances

There were two major pieces of good news Friday on the US economy. First, there was better-than-expected news from the non-manufacturing survey from the ISM, which added to a very positive sister survey of manufacturing earlier in the week. The combined message that can be drawn from the two surveys is that the US economy grew at the fastest rate for ten months in January. The surveys are broadly consistent with gross domestic product rising at an around 3.0% at the start of the year, setting the scene for a robust first quarter.

The ISM survey also brought goods news on employment, with a leap in non-manufacturing headcounts, following a more modest, though still substantial, rise in manufacturing jobs reported earlier in the week. The overall rise in employment was the largest since February 2006, with non-manufacturing jobs also showing the largest increase over that near-six-year period.

The good news on jobs kept on coming with the publication Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the latest data on the US labor market. An improving labor market boosts Obama's re-election chances, given that both his likely Republican opponents have argued that his economic policies have not been working. The data are starting to suggest otherwise.

The rise in non-farm payrolls of 243,000 was larger than the consensus of around 150,000, with all of the increase in the private sector (+257,000), and only a small fall in public-sector employment. There was growth in employment across almost all sectors, with especially large increases in manufacturing (+50k), professional and business services (+70k) and leisure and hospitality and even construction (+21k). Non-farm payrolls are now up by nearly 2 million on the year; private-sector job creation of 2.22m far outweighs public-sector job declines of 275,000.

These employment numbers are derived from a survey of firms. Data are also reported in the release from a survey of households, which also provides a count of the number of jobs. Employment counts from the firm and establishment surveys often diverge since the coverage is different. (The household survey has a more expansive scope because it includes the self-employed, unpaid family workers, agricultural workers and private household workers, who are excluded by the establishment survey.) According to that measure, which can be pretty volatile, employment has grown by an unlikely 850,000 on the month; but on the year, the increase of 2.3m is very close to that derived from the firms' count.

The household survey is also used to calculate the unemployment rate, which fell by more than expected, to 8.3%, the lowest level since February 2009. The number of unemployed also fell, by 340,000 on the month, and is now down by 1.1m on the year. Unemployment rates fell sharply for African Americans (from 15.8% to 13.6%), and somewhat for Hispanics (from 11.0% to 10.5%). Young adults aged 20-24 saw a sharp decline in their unemployment rates, from 14.4% to 13.3% on the month, as did high-school dropouts (13.8% to 13.1%) on the month.

Interestingly, the young, minorities and the least educated tend to do worst in slumps - and benefit, relatively, most in booms - as their unemployment experience tends to be more cyclically volatile than other groups such as the more highly-educated. So, these are all welcome signs and will alleviate some of the pressure on incomes at the low end of the US scale.

Of interest also is how the improvement in the unemployment rate is distributed across states. The latest data we have by states, up to December 2011, shows that 46 states registered unemployment rate decreases from a year earlier, while four states - Hawaii (6.3% to 6.6%); Illinois (9.2% to 9.8%); Mississippi (10.2% to 10.4%); North Carolina (9.8% to 9.9%); plus the District of Columbia (9.6% to 10.4%) - experienced increases. Currently, five states have double-digit unemployment rates - California (11.1%); DC (10.4%); Mississippi (10.4%) and Rhode Island (10.8%). But overall, the improvement is widespread and not limited to a few states, which should also help Obama in November.

An especially interesting comparison is between the United States and the United Kingdom, which implemented a package of austerity measures in 2010. US GDP growth for Q4/2011 was +0.7% compared with -0.2% for the UK. Both the UK and the US have large financial sectors and both were highly exposed to a financial sector shock. In March 2008, unemployment rates in the US and the UK were similar (5.1% and 5.2% respectively). The response in the US was for firms to shake out workers at early stages of the recession; thus, unemployment went up to 10% in October 2009 (see graph). UK firms appear to have hoarded labor, and by October 2009, it had only reached 7.9%; but they have now started to shake the tree.

So the situation has now reversed itself, and the two series are now moving in the opposite directions - US unemployment down and the UK's up. We only have data for the UK up to November, as their surveys are small, so they only report rolling three-month averages, but all indications are that the series will cross in the next couple of months. The UK is in a jobless, or even a job-loss, recovery.

It is likely that Obama will run on a platform for jobs against an obstructionist Congress and a Republican party committed to fiscal austerity and a weakening of the Federal Reserve. As far as I can tell, they have no credible plan at all for jobs. The lab experiment that has been conducted in the UK, which essentially has done what Republicans advocate, which provides great ammunition for the Democrats since austerity has demonstrably failed in the UK - and with more than 90% of the proposed cuts yet to come. Despite both countries having their own exchange rate, and central banks that have cut interest rates to the nominal bound and which have injected large amounts of quantitative easing into the economy, outcomes on the job front are very different.

Unlike Greece and Ireland who are stuck in monetary union, the UK coalition government voluntarily decided to run the experiment to see if there is such a thing as an "expansionary fiscal contraction". Now, they have found out that there isn't.

The UK cut public spending and fired public-sector workers; over the last year for which we have data, public-sector employment fell by 276,000, while private-sector employment grew by 262,000, giving a net decline of 14,000. There has been no private-sector resurgence and a "expansionary" fiscal contraction has turned out, in fact, to be contractionary.

Interestingly, the UK coalition government is hugely supportive of loose monetary policy and more quantitative easing, which, they have made clear, is their plan B. Next week, the Bank of England will do more quantitative easing - probably, another £75bn injection - to make up for the fact that cutting public spending doesn't work in a slump. Aren't Republican nomination rivals Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney (both pledged to implement, in large part if not all, the Ryan plan) proposing cuts in public spending? And are they not opposed to further QE by the Fed, a position that looks like a disaster to me, if the UK is anything to go by?

I suspect they would have a different view, if they were in power. But it is now starting to look as if we won't have the chance to find out.

Should the energy secretary have quit? From the point of view of justice and precedent, it is a pity he did not fight on

Should the energy secretary Chris Huhne have resigned? The answer may seem so obvious as not to be worth asking, especially now he has gone. Yet on the vital principle of justice that a person is innocent until proven guilty, a principle which his party has done much to defend in recent years, the answer is surely that Mr Huhne should not have quit. After all, in addition to the principle, the ministerial code clearly envisages that a minister may continue in office while being involved in legal proceedings in his personal capacity, including as a defendant, although the code also acknowledges that "there may be implications for them in their official position" if they do so. That was the exact situation in which Mr Huhne found himself when he was charged with perverting the course of justice. Yet Mr Huhne also protests his innocence, as he is absolutely entitled to do. Unless and until he is convicted, therefore, he was as fully entitled to try to stay as a minister as he also is to remain as an MP. His resignation leaves a bad taste.

From the point of view of justice and precedent, it is a pity he did not fight on. But from the point of view of politics, the consensus was that he had to go. That decision, though, lay with David Cameron, and to a lesser extent with Nick Clegg, not Mr Huhne, in the same way that the English football captaincy issue lay with the FA, not with John Terry. One of the overarching principles of the ministerial code, section 1.5, is that "ministers only remain in office for so long as they retain the confidence of the prime minister". The reality is that Mr Cameron should have sacked Mr Huhne because of perceived political necessity if that is what he thought best for the government. He should not have allowed the Huhne case to establish the dubious precedent that a minister who is charged with a criminal offence should automatically have to offer his resignation.

Was it, nevertheless, politically necessary for Mr Huhne to go? Again, the reflex answer is at first sight yes. Yet it depends on how you balance the contribution that Mr Huhne brought to the government as a senior minister, an architect of coalition, and as a particular type of Liberal Democrat politician against the damage which he inflicted on his ministerial work and on the government as a weakened minister facing a criminal charge. That is not as open and shut a judgment as it may seem.

The case in favour of Mr Huhne staying rests on two legs. The first is that Mr Huhne was a strong minister who ran his department well, stood bravely for the green agenda, and fought his corner effectively. It is to his credit that the UK is signed up to tough carbon emission cutting targets and that the green investment bank exists at all. He did a good job at the Durban conference and fought a strong rearguard action against Treasury efforts to weaken green goals in the face of recession and austerity.

The second is that Mr Huhne also played an important role in the coalition cabinet as the voice of the more social democratic wing of the Lib Dem team, putting pressure not just on the Conservatives but on Mr Clegg. Whether this was always the best way of advancing his party's interests is a moot point, since the Lib Dems sometimes seem at their strongest in getting their way in the coalition when they are at their weakest in the wider arena. It reassured the grassroots, though, to have their interests forcefully represented, and Mr Huhne did that. And the task of articulating distinctive Lib Dem priorities inside government is likely to grow, not diminish, as the general election nears.

It now falls to Ed Davey to help make that case. He begins with our good wishes. But as Mr Huhne, and David Laws before him, have found, coalition government is an unforgiving business, in which optimism and ability are not enough to hold back the punishing force of political reality in the wake of a serious error of either personal or ministerial judgment.

An anonymous source suggests Slugger look more closely at the position of Jim Nicholson who despite the parting of the ways between the Conservatives and the UUP is still apparently taking the Tory whip in Brussels and Strasbourg [Are they still here? - Ed].

However, at home he has, from yesterday at least undergone a conversation from a Conservative and Unionist to a UUP MEP on his press statements. So Tom, Jim, are you guys still taking the Tory whip after all that's been said in recent weeks/months?

This has been a turbulent week for the British banking industry.

On Sunday, Stephen Hester gave back his bonus, and on Tuesday, the forfeiture committee revoked Fred Goodwin's knighthood.

But these moments do really not change anything in themselves.

This is about more than one man, one bonus, or one knighthood.

These are symbols - and symptoms – of public discontent with a system that is not working as it should.

For our economy.

And for our society.

That is why these moments do not and should not signal the end of the debate.

Because, three years on from the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the debate is really only just beginning.

We need a banking system that serves a more responsible capitalism, working for the majority of people and enabling us to pay our way in the world.

Everyone can agree that the kind of tug-of-war we have seen in the past fortnight over bonuses is bad for the reputation of the banking sector.
Nobody in this country – neither the banks' most staunch defenders nor their most outspoken critics – believe that a public argument between executives, shareholders, politicians and the public is the best way for any sector to set pay.

London is one of the world's great financial centres and Britain's banking sector is one of our most important employers.

It is in all our interests to find a better way forward.

But if things carry on as they are, I believe the same row over pay and bonuses will erupt again.

So how do we make sure that that does not happen?

We need to learn the most important lesson of the week: we cannot have a banking sector so divorced from the rest of the economy and the rest of society.

We succeed or fail together.

It is not about the politics of envy.

It is about a culture of responsibility.

We need what you might call ‘one nation banking'.

We need banks that serve the real economy.

We need banking serving every region, every sector, every business, every family in this country.

And we need banks run in a way that people believe are consistent with their values - the values of Britain.

It is something I have been talking about for months: responsibility – from the benefits office to the boardroom.

But to understand how we get there, we must understand how we got here.

On almost any measure you choose, banking and finance is going through exceptional times.

Everywhere you look, pillars of the conventional wisdom which have stood solidly for thirty-odd years are crashing to the ground.

Until 2007, it was hard to imagine that: light touch financial regulation would be so thoroughly discredited; financial instruments designed to make each bank safer would make the banking system as a whole riskier; we would be facing interest rates lower than we have seen for decades without lending rising as a result; bank bonuses could be in the billions even as banks' share price fell; all the banks in this country would be backed by an implicit government guarantee; and two of the biggest would be largely owned by the Government.

We all know this has happened because something has gone deeply wrong.

My party has accepted responsibility, along with governments round the world, for not doing more to prevent the crisis with regulation.

We now must ask questions about the future of banking which have not been asked for a generation.

The banking sector can choose either to continue down the path which led us to big bonuses, busts, and bailouts.

Or it can take a different path.

Today, I want to talk about that different path.

Banking has to change.

Throughout most of our parents and grandparents' lives, banking was not prone to wild swings in value.

It directed lending towards businesses and entrepreneurs efficiently and soberly.

And the idea of a vote in the House of Commons to affect the pay of an individual banker would have been as outlandish as the idea of a vote to censure the pay of an individual doctor or lawyer.

Thirty years ago, the word ‘banker' was often used as a compliment to suggest solidity and reassurance.

Since then, however, the sector morphed from something our parents and grandparents would have recognized into something else, with the rise and increasing dominance of investment banks.

We can't turn back the clock.

This mustn't be about recreating a bygone era of banking.

But if the rules and norms of banking have changed before, they can change again.

And they must change.

After the crisis and the bailout, we are left in a situation which nobody would have wanted.

Where thanks to the crisis, ten per cent of this country's tax receipts fell away between 2007 and 2008 alone.

Banks have accepted they bear the burden of responsibility for helping to cause the crisis.

The consequences of their reckless irresponsibility in that era are felt every time a library closes.

Every time a school can't afford a new book.

And every time a policeman or policewoman is taken off the beat.

Those consequences are being felt by everyone in society.

The banking sector needs to understand this.

People who did not cause the financial crisis are paying the price.

And many feel that those who did cause the financial crisis are not.

When most people see their incomes stagnate, their bills go up, their public services cut, and their jobs increasingly become insecure, pay and bonuses at banks seem to carry on as if the crisis never happened.

The public services we rely on to educate our kids, look after us when we are ill, or help us afford a lawyer if we're in trouble, cannot go back to normal any time soon.

So when people see the pay of those who caused the crisis continuing to be so abnormal, they are understandably angry.

This is a call for banking to recognise that continuing on its current path will lead to further isolation from society, greater public anger, more years in which each payday is a newspaper headline.

This is a call on banking to recognise that it should take the path of change.

To recognise that it is not isolated from the economy or society.

To recognise that we succeed or fail together.

We have a proud history of banking in this country.

Banking has performed an invaluable service to the economy from Midland Bank's role restructuring the cotton industry in the 1930s, to Barclays' role in financing high tech start-ups in Cambridge in the seventies and eighties,

And since the crisis, we have seen some welcome steps.

Notably, the Independent Banking Commission's recommendations about the ring fencing of retail and investment banking.

And more recently, the way HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds, RBS and Standard Chartered have put up £2.5 billion for a business growth fund focused on British firms.

But there is still a long way to go before we achieve one nation banking.

Public discontent is, if anything, on the rise – as the long lasting impact of the crisis in living standards becomes clear.

For all the reform of the way bonuses are paid, they remain on a scale beyond the imagination of the vast majority of the population.

Although the Government has welcomed the Vickers proposals, their implementation remains a distant prospect.

And most importantly, business frustration with the banks they rely on is as high as ever.

Still, too often, they see the bank, not as a partner in a shared project, but as a problem to be overcome.

I saw this only on Monday in Scotland when a wind turbine manufacturer complained that while he had employed 20 people in his factory it could have been 30 if only he had got the loan he needed from a leading British bank.

Similar stories can be heard from thousands of other businesses around the country.

Banks must not be isolated from the rest of the economy.

Banks must lend to small businesses so we can get the growth and jobs we need for the future.

That is how Britain will compete in the world.

As things stand, that is still not happening enough.

Lending was down £10.8 billion last year.

There are two reasons why not enough capital currently reaches the small and medium sized enterprises in this country which are crying out for it.

The first is that it's always hardest to get credit when the economy is in a downturn, even though that's when small and medium-sized firms need finance the most.

And the second is that it is cheaper for banks to lend to big companies than small ones. Particularly when credit is already being rationed, lending to small firms is often deemed not worthwhile for banks.

The market on its own does not work for small businesses.

All the most successful economies around the world recognise this: from Asian capitalist states like Singapore, through active industrial states like Germany, to supposedly free market states like the USA.

And they make sure that the state helps finance to reach the small and medium sized enterprises which need it.

This isn't about picking winners.

It is about the state getting the market moving, like our most successful competitors have been doing since the fifties.

It's no coincidence that in Britain we haven't done as much to develop a Mittelstand like Germany.

Or fast-growing young companies like Apple and Intel – both of which got growth funding from the US government's Small Business Investmen]]> http://www.labourmatters.com/the-labour-party/we-need-what-you-might-call-one-nation-banking/ http://devizesmeltingpot.blogspot.com/2012/02/friday-opera-blogging.html http://devizesmeltingpot.blogspot.com/2012/02/friday-opera-blogging.html http://devizesmeltingpot.blogspot.com/2012/02/friday-cat-blogging-heidi-george.html http://devizesmeltingpot.blogspot.com/2012/02/friday-cat-blogging-heidi-george.html http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/feb/03/chris-huhne

Chris Huhne's divorce spiralled into political crisis after claims by his former wife that she took speeding points on his behalf

The acrimonious divorce of Chris Huhne and Vicky Pryce spiralled into a political as well as personal crisis when they were both charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, prompting Huhne's resignation as energy secretary and a call by Pryce for the case to resolved quickly.

Huhne described the director of public prosecution's decision to charge him as deeply regrettable and vowed to prove his innocence in front of a jury.

Pryce, in a brief statement from her lawyer, did not declare her innocence or guilt, saying she would now spend some time with her family and adding: "Obviously I hope for a quick resolution of the case." It is not known what plea she will submit to the charges.

In a day of personal turmoil and suspense for Huhne and Pryce, Keir Starmer, the DPP, announced he judged that sufficient evidence existed to charge the former couple. It is alleged that Pryce has admitted taking speeding points on behalf of her former husband in March 2003, an allegation she initially made in the Sunday Times during their separation.

It is the first time a serving cabinet minister has been charged with an imprisonable criminal offence in modern times, and represents a devastating blow to one of politics' most resilient figures, as well as potentially weakening the Liberal Democrats at a time when the party is hoping to stage a recovery. Huhne has been described as "the grit in the oyster", self-confident enough to challenge his coalition partners across the policy range.

Lawyers for the former couple will be summoned to appear at Westminster magistrates court on 16 February, with a full trial at the Old Bailey possibly in September, on the assumption that neither side pleads guilty or manages to get the case dismissed. There is a prospect that other Liberal Democrats could be summoned to give evidence.

In a letter accepting Huhne's resignation, Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem leader and deputy prime minister, said: "I fully understand your decision to stand down from government in order to clear your name, but I hope you will be able to do so rapidly so that you can return to play a key role in government as soon as possible."

David Cameron, however, made no mention of a possible return in his own letter accepting Huhne's resignation, saying only: "Like the deputy prime minister, I am sorry to see you leave the government under these circumstances and wish you well for the future." He added that Huhne had made the right decision to stand down in the circumstances, and praised his work on climate change.

In a typically robust response, Huhne said: "The Crown Prosecution Service's decision today is deeply regrettable. I'm innocent of these charges and I intend to fight this in the courts and I'm confident that a jury will agree.

"So as to avoid any distraction to either my official duties or my trial defence, I am standing down and resigning as energy and climate change secretary. I will of course continue to serve my constituents in Eastleigh."

Clegg spoke to Huhne on Thursday night and yesterday morning. Clegg's wife, Miriam, spoke to Pryce to express her sadness and offer her support. It was being stressed by Lib Dem aides that the Cleggs were not taking sides, but making a human gesture to two people who as a couple had been the only Liberal Democrats to attend their wedding.

Pryce is said to be disappointed at the decision of the Sunday Times to succumb to a police court demand to hand over emails between herself and a journalist on the paper. The Sunday Times had initially resisted the release of the emails, but changed tack, prompting some of Pryce's friends to claim that it had not protected its sources as newspapers are expected to do. News International sources said it had a written agreement with Pryce that it would protect her but if the court demanded material, the Sunday Times could hand that material to the police.

Cameron was informed at 9.10am of Starmer's decision and spoke to Huhne by phone at 10.40am, little more than half hour an hour after Starmer's announcement.

In a rapid, long-prepared response to the resignation, Cameron appointed the Lib Dem business minister Ed Davey to succeed Huhne. Norman Lamb, Clegg's parliamentary aide, has taken on Davey's former brief.

Lib Dem officials praised Davey's quick policy grasp and ability to get on with officials and said he would be his own man putting forward a strong green case. He said his three chief challenges were climate change, energy security and securing a better deal for energy consumers, a field in which he specialised at the business department.

The prime minister's spokesman said he did not expect to see any substantial change in policy as a result.

But some environmentalists voiced dismay at the loss of Huhne, described by Greenpeace as "a vocal advocate for the green agenda in a government whose green credentials are looking more than a little tarnished".

Other government changes resulting from the resignation saw the Lib Dem MPs Jenny Willott appointed an assistant government whip and Jo Swinson take Lamb's old post as parliamentary private secretary to Clegg. Despite speculation, there was no return for David Laws, who quit as Treasury chief secretary in May 2010 and was later suspended from the Commons for seven days after an expenses scandal.

Ed Miliband should think of some constructive ideas to reduce inequality rather than just putting the boot into bankers again

Scapegoats are easy targets and politicians who spend most of their time battering perceived enemies are usually only doing so because they have run out of ideas to improve the general malaise their leadership had created.

Well, that's what Ed Miliband's populist rantings about banking and corporate bonuses is beginning to feel like. It appears that he has nothing better up his shirtsleeves and the only thing that he can possibly get any consistent headline and public support on is his belief that bankers' bonuses and executive pay are too high.

Following the Royal Bank of Scotland chairman's and chief executive's decisions to forgo their respective bonuses, Miliband has had to move on to other enemies, the chief executive of Barclays, for instance, and of course now bankers in general, who "are further isolated" from society and provoking "public anger".

Anyway, the Labour leader managed some more headlines by launching his rather cynically branded "one-nation banking" concept, suggesting that we need a culture of responsibility in the industry that he doesn't think is there right now. If Miliband had been serious and wanted to make some constructive comments about policy for the industry, he wouldn't have named his vision after the Tory party's old "One Nation Conservatism" slogan.

The Labour party leader is intent on painting the industry and the people associated with it as the enemy of society and the only solution he offers in this entire exercise is to require employee members to sit on company remuneration committees. If he is not careful, his accusations might end in tears or at least show that he hasn't scored any more political points among voters than he had before. Whatever happens, the accusations have to stop and some more constructive policy ideas need to be generated by the Labour party.

Most people, including many corporate and banking boardroom members, cannot disagree that there is a growing gap between the rich and poor in the world, and even in the developed economies that gap is getting significant. Most also cannot disagree that it is obscene that some employees of large companies, particularly investment banks, are paid vastly inflated compensation that appears out of kilter with both the profits of the companies and also the real economic benefit these banks claim to provide. Though, it should also be pointed out that many people in professional service firms - solicitors, barristers, accountants, head-hunters, management consultants, doctors, dentists - can also earn very high salaries.

Many bank board members and executive staff cannot forget that they lost their sense of reality and allowed the companies that appointed and employed them to be so over-exposed that their respective capital bases collapsed and caused the greatest economic slowdown since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

And many of the newer breed of bank board members have noticed that few bankers have shown any remorse for what happened.

Bank board members and politicians, too, also have to admit that the banking industry is part of a massive global construction and Britain cannot go it alone. In the absence of any internationally agreed approach to resolving the issue of big bonuses, they will be part of the financial services world's compensation schemes. If American, Chinese, or Brazilian companies compensate through high bonuses then banks and corporate entities in Britain and Europe will have to do the same thing.

What British policymakers can do is try to manipulate the local market through special taxes, which could in turn be used to try to stop the gaps between the rich and poor from expanding and reallocate money to those who really need it. If we want to punish the unrepentant banking industry for causing the economic downturn then why not impose a transaction tax, or continue the special bonus taxes that have been paid by the banks for the past few years.

The policymakers could try something more radical and tax bonus payments differently, especially those that are above a certain proportion of the base salary. And, yes, policymakers can put employees on compensation committees if they want to - but it should be pointed out that even German banks, where employees sit on compensation committees, pay large bonuses to investment bankers.

Lib Dem leader voices approval of new energy secretary after strong record at Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

Ed Davey confides on his website that it was his strong views on the environment that first pushed him towards being politically active, so it seems fitting that he now joins the cabinet as the new secretary of state for energy and climate change.

His promotion will be seen as a reward for what is widely viewed as doing a good job at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills where he had responsibility for Royal Mail privatisation, employment relations, consumer policy and competition rules. Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, described Davey as "the right man" to take up from where Chris Huhne had left off.

Davey, who originally foresaw his career prospects being in journalism or as an agricultural economist, has come a long way since he became MP for Kingston and Surbiton in 1997 after three recounts.

He has held a series of frontbench roles under different Lib Dem leaders. He was the chair of campaigns and communications after Clegg was elected party leader and was shadow foreign affairs spokesman before the 2010 general election.

The 46-year-old married father of one grew up in Nottingham and lived with his maternal grandparents after both his parents died - his solicitor father when he was four and his mother, a teacher, when he was 15.

He went to Oxford University, where he gained a first-class degree in philosophy, politics and economics, graduating in 1988 and joining the Lib Dems as an adviser six months later. He would leave four years later to to work as a management consultant until he became an MP.

Before becoming an MP Davey received awards from the Royal Humane Society and the chief constable of the British Transport police in 1994 for rescuing a woman from the path of an oncoming train at Clapham Junction. He speaks French, Spanish and German, and supports Notts County FC.

Mr Goodwin, Mistletoe & Wine and the compelling case for temporary knighthoods

?I very much like the idea of withdrawing knighthoods. Why not make them all temporary? Few of us expect to have the same job all our lives, or drive the same car, or live in the same house. And just as members of the public can write in to nominate people who deserve honours, we should be able to suggest the names of those who ought to lose their gongs. I'm sure you have a few ideas yourself. If not, why don't you take a train to Manchester at a busy time, and ponder "Sir" Richard Branson?

(By the way, I was surfing the net, looking for videos for the Guardian's excellent online feature, Old Music, when I found myself at Amtrak, the American railway. Riding on the City of New Orleans, as in the famous song, all the way from Chicago would cost $115 for the 927-mile trip - £73, or 8p a mile. Riding on the Branson Pendolino to Manchester from Euston at peak time, standard class, costs £126, or 64p a mile.)

Then we could reverse all the usual cliches. The Sir Fred Goodwin figure would arrive at Buckingham Palace with his family smartly dressed. He'd smilingly show off the medal, or whatever it is. Then he would go inside, kneel in front of the Queen, who would lift her sword from his shoulders, and announce, "Arise, Mr Goodwin!"

And how about stripping Sir Cliff Richard too, as punishment for Mistletoe & Wine?

?I went to the huge annual Australian wine-tasting the other day. It's been a difficult year or so for the happy country - drought and the strength of their dollar have pushed prices up fast, and allowed the French to reclaim some of their market share here.

One way the Aussies have fought back is with bizarre names, no doubt in the hopes of catching attention on the shelves. Here are a few of their wines: Skuttlebutt, The Opportunist, The Pugilist, Bootstrap, Giles, Riposte, Ten Miles By Tractor, Skillogalee, Running With Bulls, The Last Straw, The Cover Drive, and The Trial of John Montford, which sounds more like a novel than a bottle.

Mind you the most off-putting wine name I know is Fat Bastard, and that's made in France.

?On my desk lands a slim volume, called Among Booksellers, by David Batterham, who I have never met, and of whom I hadn't even heard. He has collected all the letters he sent from his travels, mainly round Europe and America, to his friend, the artist Howard Hodgkin.

It is a strange book, but beguiling - you meet the weird people who inhabit the world of antique bookselling (my friend, the late Derek Brown, loved old books, and fantasised about a rare book shop with a sign, "All incunabula in this bin, £5,000"). And there are old crones serving terrible meals in French hotels, crab-like people who try to cheat him but halve their prices when he insists, the discovery of amazing volumes he can sell in London for 10 times what he paid. I expected to toss it aside, but couldn't put it down.

The book is, of course, self-published. Something such books usually have in common is that there is one really interesting section. They were in Bomber Command, or had a spell playing the piano in a Turkish brothel, or worked with Margaret Thatcher. One of these days, if I have time, I shall read a hundred of these books and put the good bits into a single volume. (The authors will cheerfully sign over the rights, since they will think it will sell some of the 4,927 books they have left over from the 5,000 they had printed. But of course no one will buy their book, since they'll know they've already got the only interesting part.)

The fascinating bit in Mr Batterham's book is about the Duke of Edinburgh, who apparently is a bibliophile. He has a secretary who orders books for him. "The duke keeps a cupboard of goodies, such as the books he buys from me, so that people who want to give him a present can choose something he is known to like! Then they buy it from him, and give it back."

What a wonderful idea! You get both the present, and the money.

"Happy birthday, Simon! What would you like?"

"Let's see what we have in the cupboard. Ah yes, how about this signed first edition of Pride and Prejudice? Or a bottle of Skuttlebutt."

?Friends held their Burns Night supper last weekend, just three days late. Lots of haggis, one of those really delicious peasant dishes. I was asked to make the speech to the Immortal Memory - not easy since Burns was not always a good boy. He spent some time in Jamaica, working as a bookkeeper on a slave plantation, no doubt using his spare time to write some of those stirring poems about freedom and the rights of man.

So I read out a little-known poem including this typical verse:

"An' will ye lie by crambo clink?

An' bitter frae the hoggie?

A' wha can live by sowps o'drink,

An' mirkest blast a scroggie!"

It was, of course, entirely made up, though from words which do occur in Burns's real verse. What delighted me is that it also fooled the several Scots who were there.

?Labels: Pam and Dennis Saunders have just bought an electric kettle: "Do not use in the bathroom, near water, or outdoors." They ask, how can they possibly use it without going near water?

Jamie Woolley bought six jumbo toilet rolls from Sainsbury's, marked "toilet tissue for everyday use". He asks, "Do they also sell satin-finish toilet paper for birthdays and bank holidays?"

Christopher Hallgarth suggests a new strand: song titles rewritten for these hard times, such as Gladys Knight's Midnight Replacement Bus To Georgia. Others welcome, if they come to mind.

o Energy secretary says CPS decision 'deeply regrettable
o Huhne and ex-wife due in court on 16 February
o Nick Clegg praises Lib Dem minister's 'trailblazing' work
o Ed Davey to take over cabinet post
o Read a summary of events so far

4.45pm: Ed Davey has made an upbeat statement on the steps of his department.

It's a sad day for many people in the department and the Liberal Democrats, because Chris Huhne had a vision for a green economy, and he's done fabulous work as the secretary of state.

I've now got to take up the challenges of climate change ... of energy security... and I'm particularly conscious of the impact on consumers' households across the country of high energy bills.

But I'm determined to work to follow on Chris's priorities, the Liberal Democrats' priorities, the coalition government's priorities, and make them my priorities.

I want us to have a green economy, where there are lots of green jobs, to help grow our economy.

3.29pm: Ed Davey will now face the spotlight as the man tasked with the government's climate change policies. Here's a profile piece on him from 2007 in which he talks extensively about his experience of being an orphan.

Edward Davey was four when his father died of Hodgkin's disease. Eleven years later, his mother too died of cancer, leaving behind 15-year-old Edward and his two brothers. Davey is now the Libera Democrat MP for Kingston and Surbiton and campaigns for improved services for bereaved children.

"The death of my parents was tragic, but in a way I was lucky: after my mother was diagnosed with bone cancer, my brothers and I looked after her and we got to talk for a long time. I didn't need counselling because my mother had been able to prepare me for a life without her.

Child bereavement services in this country are very good where they exist, but there are not that many of them. It's part of a very British problem: we don't always put children first. There is, for example, no obligatory training for teachers on how to deal with children who are bereaved.

3.15pm: Hélène Mulholland weighs up what Huhne's resignation means for the make-up of the cabinet.

David Cameron's mini reshuffle following the resignation of Chris Huhne as energy secretary represents a missed opportunity to improve the gender profile at cabinet level.

Though the shakeup sees an additional woman entering government in the shape of Jenny Willott as assistant government whip, the decision to promote Ed Davey to the vacancy left by Huhne, and in turn hand over Davey's previous job in the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills to Norman Lamb, means the gender gap remains a sore point at senior ministerial level, with just five women - all Conservative - in the 23-strong cabinet.

When the Conservative defence secretary Liam Fox resigned last October, and amid polling suggesting the Tories had a problem with women voters, Cameron used the mini-reshuffle to promote Justine Greening to the role of transport secretary to raise the tally of women cabinet ministers to five.

This time, the fact that the third cabinet minister to resign since the coalition government was formed was a Liberal Democrat meant Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, had the say in who would fill the seat - albeit a decision that Cameron would sign off.

2.03pm: Huhne's mother was the voice of the speaking clock. His real surname is Paul-Huhne. He worked at the ratings agency Fitch. He may have in fact won the Lib Dem leadership election over Nick Clegg, but his votes were delayed in the post. He claimed a Corby trouser press in his MPs' expenses.

These and other gems in this illuminating profile of Huhne by Michael White.

1.33pm: Political editor Patrick Wintour has more details of how Huhne's departure was handled by the coalition:

David Cameron was informed of the DPP decision at 9.10 on the way to the airport at Northolt before a regional tour in the south-west.

He spoke to Huhne at around 10.40 for about five minutes where it was agreed that Huhne would resign from the cabinet to fight his case. It was stressed that the coalition agreement gives powers for the cabinet and ministerial posts to be distributed approximate to the size of the the two parliamentary parties.

Number 10 did not elaborate on why the prime minister had not in his letter suggested that Huhne could be brought back into cabinet if he was found innocent.

It was stressed that the deputy prime minister has responsibility for nominating his appointments, so Nick Clegg might have the prerogative to decide whether Huhne should return.

The prime minister's spokesman said: "It was Chris Huhne's decision to resign and and he accepted his judgment. They had a good working relationship and he was a valued colleague".

The spokesman stressed that Cameron had not considered undertaking a wider reshuffle, and added that he did not expect Ed Davey, the new energy secretary, to impose a significant change of direction in policy after he has read himself in.

12.48pm: Confirmed: Ed Davey will become energy and climate change secretary, with Norman Lamb, Nick Clegg's parliamentary aide, taking over from him as business minister.

Jenny Willott, MP for Cardiff Central, will become an assistant government whip. All three, it should be stressed, are Lib Dem MPs.

The net loss for the party in cabinet is nil, although clearly Huhne's experience will be missed.

In a brief statement, Nick Clegg has said if Huhne cleared his name he would like to see him back in government in a key position.

12.29pm: Some reaction coming through from green groups to the Huhne resignation, mostly regretful.

John Sauven, Greenpeace's director, said the former minister would be "a tough act to follow".

His achievements in getting the "green bank" and stricter legally binding carbon targets are a physical legacy of what he was able to accomplish.

He has been a vocal advocate for the green agenda in a government whose green credentials are looking more than a little tarnished."

Friends of the Earth's executive director, Andy Atkins, struck a similar tone:

Chris Huhne has championed the environment in an administration that's shown little enthusiasm for keeping David Cameron's pledge to be the greenest government ever.

He should be commended for insisting on tougher climate targets and fighting for a green investment bank - but his department's incompetent handling of solar cuts has put 29,000 jobs at risk.

The new energy secretary must stand firm against George Osborne's anti-green agenda and make the case that protecting our environment ns a way to boost not hinder our economic recovery.

12.15pm: Huhne has written a rather more expansive letter to Nick Clegg, his party leader, in which he says: "It has been a privilege to serve with you in the first group of Liberal ministers in a British government since 1945".

"The Liberal Democrats under your leadership are playing an essential role in ensuring the coalition government reflects liberal values at home and abroad."

Clegg's reply is here. He writes: "I fully understand your decision to stand down from government in order to clear your name but I hope you will be able to do so rapidly so that you can return to play a key role in government as soon as possible."

12.09pm: Cameron's letter of reply to Huhne says he has "made the right decision under the circumstances".

He adds: "Like the deputy prime minister, I am sorry to see you leave the government under these circumstances and wish you well for the future."
The full text is here.

11.58am: A quick summary of events so far:

o Chris Huhne has resigned as energy and climate change secretary, after the director of public prosecutions Keir Starmer announced he would be charged with perverting the course of justice.

o Vicky Pryce, Huhne's estranged wife, has also been charged with the same offence. The charges relate to an incident in 2003 when, it is alleged, Huhne persuaded his wife to accept a speeding penalty on his behalf.

o In a statement, Huhne continued vigorously to deny the charge, but said that "to avoid any distraction to my official duties or my trial defence]]> http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2012/feb/03/chris-huhne-speeding-penalty-energy-secretary-live-updates http://kirkunity.blogspot.com/2012/02/young-wired-and-angry-revised-portrait.html

What makes the network even more valuable for Jobbik is the fact thatits users are not people who are poor and socially frowned upon. Many politicalscientists initially viewed Jobbik as]]> http://kirkunity.blogspot.com/2012/02/young-wired-and-angry-revised-portrait.html http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2012/02/on_vigilante_mo.html http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2012/02/on_vigilante_mo.html http://twitter.com/julianhuppert/statuses/165511490428866560 http://twitter.com/julianhuppert/statuses/165511490428866560 http://twitter.com/adriansandersmp/statuses/165509697099661313 http://twitter.com/adriansandersmp/statuses/165509697099661313 http://twitter.com/julianhuppert/statuses/165509055782203394 http://twitter.com/julianhuppert/statuses/165509055782203394 http://twitter.com/GregMulholland1/statuses/165506648801165312 http://twitter.com/GregMulholland1/statuses/165506648801165312 http://twitter.com/GregMulholland1/statuses/165506315010048000 http://twitter.com/GregMulholland1/statuses/165506315010048000 http://lesbonner.mycouncillor.org.uk/2012/02/03/ed-davey-appointed-secretary-of-state-for-energy-and-climate-change/ Edward Davey MP has today been appointed Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change.
Arriving at DECC's headquarters in London, Mr Davey said:

"This is a sad day because Chris Huhne has had a real vision for a green economy and he's done fabulous work as Secretary of State.

"I've now got to take up the challenges – the challenge of climate change, the challenge of energy security.

"And I'm particularly conscious of the impact on households across the country of high energy bills.

"I'm determined to work to follow on Chris's priorities, the Coalition's priorities and to make them my priorities.

"I want us to have a green economy, with the green jobs and investment we need to help grow our economy."

]]> http://lesbonner.mycouncillor.org.uk/2012/02/03/ed-davey-appointed-secretary-of-state-for-energy-and-climate-change/ http://lesbonner.mycouncillor.org.uk/2012/02/03/labour-has-been-deceiving-the-voters-of-north-east-lincolnshire/ I was appalled to hear that Labour have been lying to us about what they would do to tackle the economic mess the Coalition Government inherited from Blair and Brown.

The almost comic duo of Ed Miliband and Ed Balls have let the mask slip and made clear that they have no Plan B on the economy.

For the last year and a half, local Labour activists have been pushing leaflets through your letterboxes which have now been exposed as lies. They have made clear they are not going to reverse any of the cuts the Coalition Government has been forced to make to restore economic stability.

This is the worst kind of politics: creating confusion by campaigning against policies which they have no intention of doing anything about in Government. They have gone from being in the wrong place, to all over the place.

It is time the local Labour party came clean themselves, apologise for the economic mess they left behind by letting the banks run wild and losing control of the nation's finances. They need to explain what they would do in Government."

Liberal Democrat Party President, Tim Farron said:

"This admission by the Eds leaves the Liberal Democrats as the only political party with the backbone to tackle the country's problems, but with the heart to do everything to ensure that fairness, compassion and justice are written through everything we do.

"In the Coalition Government, Liberal Democrats are the party delivering tax cuts for working people, we are the party investing in the poorest school pupils, we are the party delivering the largest ever state pension rise and most importantly, we are the party prepared to take the tough decisions needed to get this country back on track.

"Don't hold your breath waiting for an apology from Labour - but rest assured Liberal Democrats will continue to do the right thing on your behalf."

ENDS

Notes to Readers:

1. On BBC Radio 4's The World at One, Ed Balls said: "As shadow chancellor, I can say to you unequivocally we can make no commitment to reverse any of the Government's tax rises or spending cuts."

2. In an interview with the Guardian on 13 January, Ed Balls said: "My starting point is, I am afraid, we are going to have keep all these cuts. There is a big squeeze happening on budgets across the piece. (...) We are going to have to start from that being the baseline. At this stage, we can make no commitments to reverse any of that, on spending or on tax. So I am being absolutely clear about that."

Ed Balls continued: "It is now inevitable that public sector pay restraint will have to continue through this parliament. Labour cannot duck that reality and won't. There is no way we should be arguing for higher pay when the choice is between higher pay and bringing unemployment down."

3. Interviewed on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show Ed Miliband supported Ed Balls: "If I were to come on your programme and say well take the cuts, some of the cuts that are being made, I can promise you now that I would restore them, you'd say, 'Well where's the money going to come from? You don't know the circumstances you're going to inherit.' Ed was making an important point."

He went on to say that "This is responsible, this is absolutely responsible opposition."

]]> http://lesbonner.mycouncillor.org.uk/2012/02/03/labour-has-been-deceiving-the-voters-of-north-east-lincolnshire/ http://www.libdemvoice.org/chris-white-write-the-next-local-elections-after-may-this-year-will-be-in-november-26948.html It is likely that a number of our cities will, by Government diktat, be holding referendums in May as to whether to move to a mayoral system. Some of these will give the go-ahead and Liverpool is anyway likely to jump straight to a mayoral system by use of a council resolution. The mayoral contests will be on the same day as those for Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs).

There are still some who, in relation to PCCs, are fondly imagining that Liberal Democrat candidates won't be needed. This is despite the fact that it abundantly clear that the Conservative and Labour parties will be contesting these elections and despite the go ahead from the Federal Executive, overturning the English Party's efforts to prohibit Lib Dem candidates.

The announcement of key mayoral contests makes abstentionism even more bizarre, but no doubt there will be some jungle fighters out there still in denial about whether a political party should contest political elections.

By Christmas massive budgets for policing and city services will, like it or not, be in the hands of single individuals, only loosely scrutinised by councillors. There is a danger that the Party may have made itself irrelevant not only failing to field candidates in some parts of the country but by having policies which are now dangerously out of date.

We know that we are opposed to elected mayors and PCCs. We should perhaps remain so. But we need to ask ourselves why we are opposed and what this means for the growing numbers of directly elected politicians.

Key questions now need to be asked:

• how do we ensure that power is not concentrated to such a degree that corruption becomes possible?
• how do we have democratically justifiable mechanisms for removing powers from those who misuse it or just fail?
• how do we make sure that minority parties get a reasonable voice?
• In what ways should we press for the strengthening of the astonishingly limited powers of Policing Panels to challenge the decisions of a PCC?
• Should we insist that a Mayor's Cabinet should be cross-party?

Meanwhile, what about the shires? The Government has done good work in preparing the devolution of important powers to cities and city regions.

But why should a county council, which might have a population of well over a million, not have similar powers? If that is the case is not time that we pressed for the first county mayors (or should we call them 'sheriffs?').

And in two tier areas how are district councils going to fit in? Do we still believe unitary authorities are preferable to the two-tier system when the most recent creations have seemed huge and remote? Does the city region model offer an alternative?

This may not seem to come up much on the doorstep. But it is a live agenda on which we need to provide new thinking.

* Chris White is Liberal Democrat Group leader at Hertfordshire County Council and Deputy Leader (Policy) of the Liberal Democrat Group at the Local Government Association

]]> http://www.libdemvoice.org/chris-white-write-the-next-local-elections-after-may-this-year-will-be-in-november-26948.html http://www.libdemvoice.org/nick-clegg-on-being-nick-clegg-in-the-house-magazine-26937.html Deputy Prime Minister gave a wide-ranging interview to The House magazine, in which he discusses how it's right for the two coalition parties to differentiate themselves once a stable government was formed:

In the run-up to the general election, you may remember, the tabloids were screaming, saying that if there was a hung Parliament locusts would descend from the sky and the sun would be blotted out, you know... so we needed for those first few months to show the most important thing of all, which is this is a government that works, and actually works rather well.

Of course, after that phase you then get [that] we're different parties, we do have different instincts, we do have different values. I just think we are quite relaxed in government that we have our differences - sometimes they are played out in private, sometimes they are played out in public.

Nick goes on to discuss what he sees as significant achievements for the party in government, and, in a telling line, describes the difficulty Lib Dem peers face in supporting legislation they wouldn't under different circumstances:

Let's be blunt: I am asking, day in, day out, Liberal Democrat peers to vote on things that they wouldn't do in a month of Sundays if it was a Liberal Democrat government.

The interview covers such ground as reform of the upper house, Nick's stance on the Middle East and changes to the tax system.

You can read the whole interview here.

]]> http://www.libdemvoice.org/nick-clegg-on-being-nick-clegg-in-the-house-magazine-26937.html http://disgruntledradical.blogspot.com/2012/02/john-stuart-mill-proved-right-but-not.html http://disgruntledradical.blogspot.com/2012/02/john-stuart-mill-proved-right-but-not.html http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1889004.html http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1889004.html http://miss-s-b.dreamwidth.org/1204935.html http://miss-s-b.dreamwidth.org/1204935.html http://localfocusnews.blogspot.com/2012/02/fog-bell-marshside-road.html http://localfocusnews.blogspot.com/2012/02/fog-bell-marshside-road.html http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1888707.html http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1888707.html http://gibbs-barton.blogspot.com/2012/02/blyth-town-council-meetings-for-week.html http://gibbs-barton.blogspot.com/2012/02/blyth-town-council-meetings-for-week.html http://lansonboy.blogspot.com/2012/02/uncollected-rubbish.html http://lansonboy.blogspot.com/2012/02/uncollected-rubbish.html http://brontides.com/2012/02/parliamentary-tactics-for-fun-and-profit/ http://brontides.com/2012/02/parliamentary-tactics-for-fun-and-profit/ http://scottish-liberal.blogspot.com/2012/02/chris-huhne-resigns.html http://scottish-liberal.blogspot.com/2012/02/chris-huhne-resigns.html http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2012/02/charles-dickens-mr-dick-and-mental.html This Week. Alastair Campbell was impressive, but I am not sure that Ruby Wax's insistence that poor mental health means that there is something wrong with your brain and you need drugs reflects the most enlightened view.

Because other ways of understanding mental illness are possible, and I have come across a particularly interesting one in my day job.

The clinical psychologist Caroline Cuppitt writes about Charles Dickens' view of the topic and the character of Mr Dick in David Copperfield in particular:

There is no suggestion that Mr Dick should be cured of his unusual ideas; indeed, they are never directly challenged by anyone. At first the young David finds them hard to accept, but as Mr Dick proves his worth and, most importantly, finds his place within his community, they become increasingly irrelevant. 

Indeed, it is even suggested that he is able to bring about a reconciliation between Dr and Mrs Strong that someone with a more conventional mind would find impossible. As Mr Dick puts it himself: "a poor simple fellow with a craze, sir … may do what wonderful people may not do." 

By the end of the novel Mr Dick has recovered, not in the sense that his 'symptoms' have changed, but that they no longer define him. Miss Trotwood tells David that by using the strategy of copying documents Mr Dick can keep King Charles at a respectful distance and live his life free and happy. He is one of the novel's heroes and an exemplar of recovery for the modern age.

The bicentenary of Dickens' birth falls on Tuesday 7 February. He was a remarkable man.

]]> http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2012/02/charles-dickens-mr-dick-and-mental.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheDevilsKitchen/~3/AWJp9ezlKiU/three-strikes.html JuliaM but, since she appears to be the unofficial record-keeper of the underclass, it is sometimes rather depressing. One of the most irritating things is the number of people who come before the court who have tens and tens of convictions for burglary, violence, etc.

Your humble Devil is now of the opinion that we should adopt something similar to the USA's "three strikes" rule. It would go a little like this:

1. Three convictions for any unexpended crime automatically means prison.


2. Three custodial convictions--suspended or otherwise--means life imprisonment. By which I mean that you will be eligible for parole after 25 years, but released on licence for the rest of your life: another conviction puts you straight back in the cells.

Any objections?

]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheDevilsKitchen/~3/AWJp9ezlKiU/three-strikes.html http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/archives/010217.html http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/archives/010217.html http://pauledie.blogspot.com/2012/02/no-knives-autism-discussions-and.html It has been another pretty intense week. My posting has not been as frequent as I would have liked. Sometimes it is difficult to decide what to post about out of so many issues going on at once.

Fred Goodwin lost his knighthood but the global financial crisis was not all his fault - and the list of those who erred is long

In 2000 it was the $164bn (£103bn) AOL takeover of Time Warner in America. In 2007 it was the then Sir Fred Goodwin's £49bn acquisition of ABN Amro that signalled that the markets had peaked and were about to crumble.

Every financial crisis has its totemic moment; a decision that even at the time seems to defy logic and in retrospect is seen as an act of gross stupidity.

Yet it takes more than one individual banker, no matter how powerful, to make a crisis and when the historians come to chronicle the Great Recession of 2008-09 the list of guilty men and women will include more than one former knight of the realm.

Here, then, is a (far from exhaustive) list of those who might be considered most culpable - who caused, exacerbated or failed to prevent the worst downturn in the global economy since the 1930s.

Laughably given an honorary knighthood in 2002 for his "contribution to global economic stability", Greenspan's responsibility for the crash cannot be underestimated.

A fanatical believer in the self-righting qualities of financial markets, was the bubble king who allowed the dotcom boom of the late 90s to get out of hand and then, when plummeting share prices pushed the economy into recession, started the whole process off again, this time in the housing market.

As chairman of the Federal Reserve, he cut interest rates and left them at rock-bottom levels for two years. Cheap borrowing costs encouraged Americans to load up on debt to buy homes, even when they had no savings, no income and no job prospects.

These so-called sub-prime borrowers were the cannon fodder for the biggest boom-bust in US history. The housing collapse brought the global economy to its knees.

Britain was mini-me to the US in the days of grand illusion before the crash, having its debt-fuelled party where growth was concentrated in the speculative sectors of housing and finance.

King became Bank of England governor in 2003, and while he has subsequently been one of the most pro-active central bankers with a refreshingly robust approach to the banks, the case against him is that he failed to "lean against the wind" during the economic upswing, leaving interest rates too low, and then waited too long when the economy was nosediving into its most severe postwar recession before cutting bank rate.

Under the government's tripartite system of regulation, the Old Lady was supposed to ensure developments in the City did not pose a systemic risk to the economy. It failed in that task.

We have abolished Tory boom and bust, Brown said repeatedly in his 10 years as chancellor of the exchequer. He hadn't.

His last big speech before becoming prime minister, made at the Mansion House in June 2007 just as the financial crisis was about to break, praised the bankers for their remarkable achievements and predicted "the beginning of a new golden age for the City of London." It wasn't.

Brown presided over the loss of a million manufacturing jobs and an ever-widening trade deficit while cosying up to the City. He used to quip that there were two types of chancellors: those who failed and those who got out in time. He got that one right.

One Democratic president, Franklin Roosevelt, put a cage round Wall Street after its excesses in the 20s led to the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression. Another Democrat, Bill Clinton, gave Wall Street the cage keys.

After a fierce lobbying campaign, Clinton agreed to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act, which ensured a complete separation between investment and retail banks. The move heralded the coming of superbanks, huge behemoths that took in retail deposits and used them to take highly-leveraged punts in the markets.

To make matters worse, Clinton beefed up Jimmy Carter's 1977 Community Reinvestment Act to force lenders to take a more relaxed approach to disadvantaged borrowers. Liberalised banks plus millions of new sub-prime customers equalled one big problem.

The economics profession failed to cover itself in glory in the runup to 2007. Not only did economists fail to spot that financial institutions were loading themselves up with vast quantities of toxic sub-prime debt, most of them thought it was theoretically impossible for a crisis to happen.

In large part, responsibility for that lies with Fama, a Chicago University economics professor who in the 70s came up with the Efficient Markets Hypothesis (EMH), which stated that financial markets price assets at their true worth based on all the publicly available information, encouraging the belief that the best thing to do was to pile in when prices were rising. Bubble think, in other words.

Just as many trends in modern popular music can be traced back to the Beatles, so politics was shaped by the activities of Reagan and Thatcher, the Lennon and McCartney of deregulation, market forces and trickle-down economics.

The changes pushed through in the US and the UK in the 80s removed constraints on bankers, made finance more important at the expense of manufacturing and reduced union power, making it harder for employees to secure as big a share of the national economic cake as they had in previous decades.

The flipside of rising corporate profits and higher rewards for the top 1% of earners was stagnating wages for ordinary Americans and Britons, and a higher propensity to get into debt.

The US treasury secretary in 2008, Paulson was the Sir Anthony Eden of the financial crisis. He had all the necessary credentials a Republican president would consider necessary for the job - chief executive of Goldman Sachs with an MBA from Harvard. He was considered the brightest and best of his generation. Like Eden over Suez, he was faced with a monumental challenge. And he blew it.

Paulson's big mistake was to put Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae into conservatorship, wiping out the stakes of those who had invested $20bn in the two government-backed mortgage lenders over the previous 12 months.

Unsurprisingly, there was no great rush among private investors to rescue Lehman Brothers when it ran into trouble the following week, and when the US treasury allowed the investment bank to go bust every financial institution in the world was seen as at risk.

Fred the Shred destroyed a bank; Paulson triggered the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression.

No rogues' gallery of the crisis would be complete without a representative of the credit rating agencies. These were the bodies that took fees from the banks while giving the top AAA rating to collateralised debt obligations, the hugely complex financial instruments that bundled together the toxic sub-prime mortgages with the sound home loans.

Corbet was CEO of Standard & Poor's, the biggest of the rating agencies, and she left her post in a "long-planned" move in August 2007 just as the financial markets were shutting down.

The justification for the top-notch ratings was that the poor-quality loans would be lost in the mix, but when the crisis broke the reality was more like a food scare, in which supermarkets know there are a few dodgy ready-made meals on their shelves but must bin the lot as they are not sure which ones they are.

"Some people look at sub-prime lending and see evil," said this senator in a debate on Capitol Hill in 2001. "I look at sub-prime lending and I see the American dream in action."

Gramm, who thinks Wall Street a "holy place", was the main cheerleader in Congress for financial deregulation, putting pressure on the Clinton administration to ease restrictions (not that it needed much persuading).

The fact that he had been the biggest recipient of campaign fund donations from commercial banks and in the top five for donations from Wall Street from 1989 to 2002 was, of course, entirely coincidental.

Was it Fred Goodwin at RBS or Adam Applegarth at Northern Rock - the first UK high street bank to suffer a full-scale run on its branches since the 1860s? Was it Dick Fuld, the man in charge at Lehman Brothers when it went belly-up? Jimmy Cayne, who spent the first month of the crisis playing bridge rather than running Bear Stearns?

Or Stan O'Neal, whose attempts to rid Merrill Lynch of its fuddy-duddy image saddled the bank with $8bn of bad debts?

How about Andy Hornby, the whizzkid running HBOS? Or perhaps the man chosen by Gordon Brown to be HBOS's white knight - Sir Victor Blank, chairman of Lloyds?

Choose any one from a very long list.

The MP for North Norfolk is taking over as minister for employment relations, consumer and postal affairs

Norman Lamb's previous life as an employment lawyer will stand him in good stead as he tackles his in-tray in his new role as minister for employment relations, consumer and postal affairs.

The MP for North Norfolk, who takes over the reins from his Lib Dem colleague Ed Davey, who has been promoted to energy secretary, will be responsible for overseeing the review of employment law and implementing the privatisation of the Royal Mail.

His new boss, Vince Cable, the business secretary, said it was a fitting appointment in light of the fact it was Lamb who pioneered the Lib Dems' policy to privatise Royal Mail and establish employee share ownership in the business while serving as the party's trade and industry spokesman.

Well liked across the party, the 54-year-old married father of two held a trinity of titles as chief parliamentary and political adviser and parliamentary private secretary to the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, and assistant government whip, after failing to secure a ministerial portfolio when the coalition government was formed.

Lamb, who worked for a year as a researcher for the Labour MP Greville Janner in the early 1980s, was elected to parliament in 2001 at his third attempt, wresting the seat from the Conservatives. He went on to hold a succession of policy briefs for the Lib Dems in opposition: deputy spokesman for international development (2001-02), Treasury spokesman (2002-03), shadow trade and industry secretary (2005-06) and shadow health secretary (December 2006 until the general election). He served as parliamentary private secretary to the then party leader Charles Kennedy (2003-05), and did a stint as chief of staff for Kennedy's successor, Sir Menzies Campbell (March to December 2006). It was Davey who replaced him in this role when Lamb became shadow health secretary.

After the election the new Conservative health secretary, Andrew Lansley, blocked a role for Lamb in his department because of a falling out during the campaign over the financing of long-term care for the elderly.

Eleven months later, when the backlash against Lansley's planned reforms prompted a two-month listening exercise, Lamb drew on his expertise of health policy to demand four key changes to the health and social care bill, making clear he was prepared to resign as a whip if these were not met.

A keen Norwich City supporter, Lamb lists his other interests as travel and art. He is the son of the late Professor Hubert Lamb, who was the first director of the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia.

Vicky Pryce, who also faces charge over speeding case, is said to regret actions in wake of breakup from now former minister

The former wife of Chris Huhne has been consulting lawyers and preparing for a break with her children after learning that she and Huhne face criminal charges that could lead to jail sentences.

Vicky Pryce, an economist, is to be charged with perverting the course of justice after allegations that she took speeding points on Huhne's behalf.

The possibility of jail has, according to sources close to Pryce, led her to regret some of her actions in the wake of the breakup of her 27-year marriage to the former energy secretary.

In particular, she is said to have wished that she had never spoken to the Sunday Times while still emotionally raw - an interview which led to the publication of allegations that she had taken Huhne's speeding points. She is also said to be dismayed at her treatment at the newspaper's hands.

Pryce, 59, was the first to release the news that they faced charges when she told the BBC at 9.30am on Friday. Half an hour later, she released a statement through a solicitor which read: "As the CPS [Crown Prosecution Service] has decided to prosecute, it would not be appropriate to comment further at this stage. "Obviously I hope for a quick resolution of the case. In the meantime, I will be taking a little time off over the next few days to be with my family."

Unlike Huhne, she has not yet stated whether she will contest the charge. The decision to prosecute follows an eight-month investigation by Essex police. The case could take a year to come to trial.

Born Vasiliki Courmouzis in Greece, Pryce is the daughter of a Greek businessman and the middle child of three. She moved to Britain at 17 and five year later married a student union president from the London School of Economics whose surname she has retained.

By the time she married Huhne in 1984, she had built a high-flying career at KPMG and later Exxon Europe.

Huhne was an economic journalist, working for the Guardian and the Independent, having attempted to become an MP. Pryce already had two children from her previous marriage.

They were married in a Greek Orthodox ceremony in west London. At their wedding, "there were lots of jokes about how we'd be discussing GDP figures in bed," Huhne later recalled.

She then took a senior job at the Royal Bank of Scotland, before becoming the first woman chief economist at the Department of Trade and Industry and the first female Master of the Worshipful Company of Management Consultants.

She shouldered the majority of the burden of bringing up their three children Nico, Peter and Lydia while Huhne established a property portfolio and stood for office, according to reports.

In 2005, Huhne achieved his ambition with his election as Liberal Democrat MP for Eastleigh and five years later became a cabinet minister. Then, in 2010, he became cabinet minister. She stood down from her prestigious government post at the time that he entered government.

Weeks after praising her husband for achieving office, Pryce has said she was "absolutely shocked" when it emerged that Huhne had been having an affair with his former 44-year-old press aide, Carina Trimingham.

She later told the BBC that he announced their marriage was over during the half-time break of a televised World Cup match in June 2010. He then immediately went to his study to write a statement and sent it out to the press, she said.

When the news of the affair broke, she thought about running away to Greece, she told the Guardian in October. "But my friends said I couldn't hide, that it would be the worst thing to do ... It was incredible. You know, the loyalty of your friends and your colleagues, and of course your kids, that's what you live for."

She also said that she wanted to stand as a Lib Dem MP. Those political ambitions may well have been shattered following the CPS's announcement on Friday.

Huhne has denied the allegations throughout.

I spent Thursday tramping round a piece of London where there is great and justified concern about violent youths, postcode rivalries and gangs. I spoke to a range of people, including several good citizens who are trying to sort the problems out. They had both very positive and very negative things to say about the police, depending on what sort of officer and what sort of police work they were talking about.

It was made plain by some that the intensive use of stop-and-search, especially when conducted by officers who weren't local or known, did not improve matters at all, especially when officers were arrogant or rude.

I'll be writing about the situation in the part of town in question in weeks to come. In connection with that project I've been doing looking into the Met's use stop-and-search in recent times. Here's an excerpt from a BBC News report from 1999:

The number of police stop and searches in London has halved since the Lawrence inquiry, according to an independent report...

The power of stop and search was introduced for all police in 1984. Since then, it has accounted for about 10% of arrests. But the high incidence of stop and searches among the black population has led to charges of police racism, and even police chiefs have admitted it is a "blunt instrument".

[An] interim report, compiled for the Home Office pending a full report in October, was based on seven pilot areas in London in which the police said newer, more systematic methods were used. The report shows the methods improved arrest rates, which rose to about 18%.

The Metropolitan Police welcomed the figures, saying they showed stop and search could target the right people. Assistant Commissioner Denis O'Connor said the practice remains an "essential tool for community safety", but he said the police were trying to use it in a "more sophisticated" way.

Now here's the Guardian's Vikram Dodd, reporting last month on the Met's moves towards using stop-and-search in what commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe had previously called a "smarter" way:

As part of the reforms, senior officers will reduce by 50% the number of times they authorise an area to be the target of section 60 stops that do not require reasonable suspicion. They said more intelligence would be needed before this power could be deployed in the future.

The Met also said that the force's commissioner, Bernard Hogan-Howe, wanted the arrest rate from all stop and searches carried out to increase from 6% (at this rate the lowest for an urban force) to 20%.

The question that comes to mind is why a fall to an arrest rate of 6% has been allowed to occur when 13 years ago one of 18% was cited as evidence that the tactic was being used in a "more sophisticated" way against the right people. "Smarter" now means getting the recent arrest rate up to 20%. How did it become OK for so many of the wrong people to be subjected to it?

The contexts for the two changes in the tactic's use are different: the reduction of stop-and-search in 1999 followed the Macpherson report while the adjustments being made now come amid concerns about legal challenges to the use of powers under section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. So has the commissioner made the latest change only reluctantly, or has he truly accepted that the Met's use of stop-and-search of late has not been smart at all? It would be helpful to be absolutely sure.

He must get to grips with energy suppliers and green campaigners - but the toughest challenge for the new climate and energy secretary is likely to come from cabinet colleagues

Ed Davey, the new secretary of state for energy and climate change, faces a daunting in-tray of policies that will create battles with industry, electricity consumers, anxious renewable energy investors and green campaigners - but the toughest challenge of all is likely to come from his cabinet colleagues.

Chris Huhne was one of the few heavyweight champions of the green agenda within the coalition government. His departure sparked immediate fears that without him, the voices within cabinet - and among the Tory rank-and-file - that have been calling ever more loudly for a watering down of environmental policies will prevail. Those calls have been led by George Osborne, the chancellor, who vowed the UK would do no more than the minimum to meet environmental goals, and could revise current targets downwards.

Andrew Simms, fellow at the New Economics Foundation, urged: "Davey must face down the economic and environmental self-defeating destructiveness of the Treasury, which is preventing the UK from becoming a world leader [in green industries]."

Matthew Spencer, director of the Green Alliance, said it was time for David Cameron and Nick Clegg to speak up: "This creates a moment for the prime minister and deputy prime minister to assert their ownership of the green economy, and for the new secretary of state to build a broader coalition for action across government. It's important that the top tier of government speak publicly to correct the misunderstanding that the leadership are giving up on this agenda."

Speaking in Westminster today, Davey said: "I've now got to take up the challenges, the challenge of climate change, of energy security and I'm particularly conscious of the impact on consumer households across the country of high energy bills."

He added: "I want us to have a green economy where there's lots of green jobs to help grow our economy."

Here are the key policies in Davey's in-tray:

The government's ability to influence bills, which have soared on the back of international fossil fuel prices, relies mainly on attempts to bully and shame the big six suppliers. Its answer has been to bring forward a new flagship policy, the "green deal", for cutting consumer charges by encouraging insulation and other low-carbon home improvements. The bad news is the green deal is in trouble, as several analyses show its appeal is likely to be limited when it launches this autumn.

Subsidies for renewable energy are under fierce attack, from free-market thinktanks and sections of the rightwing media. The government was humiliated when it tried to cut feed-in tariffs for small-scale renewables, in a hasty move that judges ruled unlawful, and that stirred up turmoil and job losses among solar companies. But the promise of hundreds of thousands of green jobs, billions of pounds in investment, and meeting our EU obligations on renewable generation all hang on a strong showing of government support for the sector.

For Liberal Democrats, nuclear power is always a tricky issue. Huhne tried to finesse his party's long-standing opposition to new reactors with Tory enthusiasm for them by pledging that they would receive no public subsidy. Critics pointed out that policies to aid "low-carbon" generation would also provide financial support to nuclear. As nuclear projects inch forward, Davey will have to walk a similar tightrope.

Under pressure on his green credentials, Cameron agreed last summer to carbon-cutting targets for the UK that will be some of the most stringent in the world when they take effect in the 2020s. Osborne wants to review them within two years. This will be a key test for Davey - if he is still around by then.

The next two years will see some of the toughest negotiations over climate change within the European Union and globally in the long-running United Nations talks. In Brussels, member states must thrash out the next set of renewable energy and carbon targets by the end of 2014. Under the UN, countries have committed to forge a new global climate change treaty by the end of 2015. Both these punishing forums require a combination of high statesmanship and low guile. Huhne was widely praised for his skilful performances - Davey will have a tough act to follow.