Isn't it great they're so caring? The RIPA powers are preposterous in a modern democratic country. They are most closely akin to the powers that totalitarian states 'take' for themselves. And this 'democractic' government is also 'taking' them, according to the Prime Minister's own Official Spokesman at a lobby briefing on the subject:

Obviously these powers were not being taken lightly and were being introduced for good reason.

The phrase 'being taken' is chilling. Who are they being taken from? If it is 'from' Parliament, then the MPs who give their assent to this power, or who do not verbally oppose it, are effectively in dereliction of the oaths they give to Parliament and to the people they were elected to serve: it's that serious. The language of the Prime Minister's Official Spokesman is even more unpleasant when he talks about the supposed 'safeguards':

It was also important to recognise the safeguards that were being put in place. Data could only be sought under specific circumstances and only if it was judged to be necessary - for example, in the interests of national security, for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime or preventing disorder, in the interests of the economic wellbeing of the UK, in the interests of public safety, for the purpose of protecting public health, for the purpose of assessing or collecting any tax, duty or levy payable to a Government Department, for the purpose in an emergency of preventing death or injury or any damage to a person's physical or mental health.

Note the splendid catch-all at the end: any any damage to a person's physical or mental health. So if in the government's assessment (or the Food Standards Agency or my local council) that I could be receiving an e-mail or phone-call which could be injurious to my mental health, they are entitled to look at all my e-mail and tap my phones? East Germany at its most awful probably wasn't as bad as this. This is the nastiest thing this so-called Labour government has done yet. They have become totally seduced by power and are completely under the thumb of the most repressive elements of the bureaucratic state.  ¶ 6/17/2002 02:47:00 PM

  England expects Making a quick dash to the supermarket at lunchtime, it was noticeably quiet everywhere: the TV audience for the Ireland-Spain game must have been huge. I think it is reasonable to assume from this that there was very significant support for Ireland across England today. Which makes even more unpleasant the very negative approach of the Scots: virtually any Scots person interviewed made it very clear they would support any team other than England. Given the plethora of English flags everywhere, and not Union Jacks, there are strong signs that a proper Englishness is re-emerging. While it is not clear where this might lead, it does presage some potential trouble for the overwhelming domination of the UK government by Scots, from the Prime Minister down, and the preferential treatment they give to Scotland. Oh and a very nice touch by the BBC, who played an Irish lament to end of their World Cup coverage today. A magnificent performance by Ireland.   ¶ 6/16/2002 07:59:00 AM

  UK plc: CEO report to shareholders Watching Tony Blair being interviewed last night, very sedately, by Jeremy Paxman, in the first of three interviews, it struck me that he was trying to perform as he thought a CEO might. Apart from the very peculiar use of "I" in the reply:

I was paying out more on the interest payments in national debt than I was spending on the whole of the UK school system.

he tried to use detail to convince us that he was in control of everything, with a smattering of precise figures, and some unusual acromyns (what are PCTs?). But he rather let himself down, when asked about a ballpark figure for the percentage of true discretion on local medical spending with:

I can't because ...If you asked for a ball park figure, it wouldn't be an accurate one.

I wonder if he knows what a ball-park figure is? Although it wasn't vintage Paxman, Blair didn't look comfortable, and the style he has adopted since the first few months of being PM is defensive on all things domestic, while looking in command and positive about foreign relations issues. He gave the impression, while being questioned about the whole range of domestic issues and answering, in that whiny manner he has, that he was thinking: "Gordon [Brown] is really responsible for me having to answer like this"  ¶ 5/15/2002 04:16:00 AM

  Risks and the media A timely piece at spiked-online (Don't put safety first, Jenny Bristow). The sheer level of media-led agonising over a railway accident, however caused, and the creation of a witch-hunt atmosphere is a good illustration of the poverty of public life at present. On the historical average serious accidents have happened on the railways every eighteen months or so. With the significant increases in both services run, and passengers carried, it looks as though this frequency has increased a little, which would be normal, but still statistically the railways are safer than around twenty years ago. But there's something about rail crashes that makes them more interesting to the media than other transport accidents. Firstly they are sufficiently infrequent to have rarity value, as opposed to road accidents. Secondly they are accessible, unlike air crashes, thereby providing good pictures. Thirdly, most people survive them, again unlike air crashes. And fourthly, there is something of the deus ex-machina about them: with car and airline crashes, it is frequently a driver/pilot who is clearly to blame (I accept that the Paddington crash was mostly about driver error).   ¶ 5/15/2002 02:24:00 AM

  Media Money It's been rather sad listening to all the Labour ministers and MPs torturing the language as they try to justify the donation by Richard Desmond, proprietor of Express Newspapers. The claim that Tony Blair knew nothing about it just isn't believeable. When a newspaper proprietor wants to make a donation, I think anybody in the administrative section of the party would say: "We need to check this with the PM, just in case". Not to have done so would be dangerous. But when it is checked, the PM probably says: "It might be a bit dodgy, but I'm sure we'll manage to brazen it out when it becomes public". And they do, but again at serious cost to the general perception of political probity. I do have a problem with the idea that a newspaper proprietor can be allowed to make a donation: it doesn't feel right whoever is doing it. If the parties themselves can't see this, then there will have to some rulings by the Electoral Commission or the Committee on Standards in Public Life.   ¶ 5/13/2002 07:57:00 AM

  Dangers to democracy Stephen Byers' statement today, on yet another episode in the Sixsmith affair, demonstrates why politicians of his type are at the bottom of the trust rankings in this country (and elsewhere). He sounds wrong, he prevaricates, he uses weasel words and he blusters off-topic inappropriately. But it is the style of virtually all the Labour senior ministers, copying that of the Prime Minister. Perhaps only David Blunkett could be excluded. The bland language of both Labour and Conservative politicians is a grave threat to democracy in this country, because by being so bland they will provide the space for real extremists to get attention. Unlike in the Netherlands, our political system is constructed on the "big tent" principle. So far this has kept divergent views behind closed doors. I suspect that this won't suffice anymore. Politicians seem frightened. Possibly they should be. The sentiments of a Pim Fortuyn are a reflection of the concerns of a very significant proportion of the populations of the democracies of the EU. To pretend otherwise, as virtually all establishment politicians do, is to try to browbeat the electorate, and indicates how few instruments the existing political class has for dealing with these issues. To smear in a knee-jerk way, particularly Pim Fortuyn as a hard right extremist, as many politicians have, is also to indicate the emptiness of the toolbag of the current political elite. I am in principle strongly pro-EU, but the inability of the politicians to deal with the issues of enlargement, much more than the euro, are making me reconsider. It's not that we are likely to be "swamped" by people looking for better opportunities, since it hadn't happened much from the last enlargements (and Spain, Greece and Portugal had much lower GDP per head than the rest of the EU). But the combination of trying to manage an economic and social grouping of 20+ countries, and the consequent need to look for the lowest common denominator to have any chance to compromise, will have significant effects on all national cultures. Regulating cheese, beer and sausages will be minor by comparison. Later: I've read Martin Jaques now, in an article in the Guardian. Similar sentiments, more elegantly expressed.   ¶ 5/09/2002 08:38:00 AM

  Whose money is it anyway? Although the stories on the Queen Mother's will seem to focus on the will's being made secret, the real story is the avoidance of inheritance tax. And there's a simple solution to this: just withhold the appropriate amounts from the Civil List to the amount owing/avoided on the Queen Mother's estate. It would be a relatively easy thing to get through the House of Commons, even with, especially with, a Labour majority. If it meant the royal 'extras' did't get a free income, most people would be happy. The Queen's bureaucrats came out with an amazing statement:

"The sovereign must have an appropriate degree of independence from the government of the day to be constitutionally impartial and has no opportunity to earn a living through a full-time job," she said.

How do they think Republics manage this? The President of many republics is just as constitutionally independent and impartial: they pay tax in the normal way. And what full-time job would pay a 75 year-old the £7.9 million the Royal Family gets from our taxes, ostensibly to do the job? There's a very different mood about in the last few weeks, and the sympathy derived from the Queen Mother's funeral has now gone with this move. The Royal Family has probably shot itself in the foot, and the consequences could be important. Well, I'd like to hope so. We need more of the Queen as servant of the people, and less of the people as subjects of the Queen.   ¶ 5/08/2002 03:00:00 PM

  Telling it straight: help, not punish Roy Hattersley, always one of my favourite politicians, in his Guardian column today:

I have long suspected the prime minister of believing in original sin. Somebody ought to tell him that it is not innate wickedness that makes little boys and girls prefer to sit under railway arches or on building sites rather than go to school. Nor is it the devil who makes them loiter in pinball arcades. It is the failure of society to understand their wants and meet their needs. Truancy is not a problem at Eton or Winchester. It is a disease of the poor - a product of a home life that does not encourage discipline and industry, and of a society that has not convinced them that either of those virtues will be rewarded. The idea that a reduction in family income will change their view of life is lunacy.

  ¶ 5/06/2002 07:24:00 AM

  Why are politicians so unimaginative? The sad thing is...they think they are imaginative: each new policy is a bright new dawn, sprung from the fevered imagination of the concerned politico. Rather like the last sentence, the supposed results from these imaginations are most frequently just cliches. This story in yesterday's Sunday Times (registration required) that the latest wheeze to reduce teenage street crime is to "[support] a network of football schools in reproved areas, aimed at getting young thugs off the streets and onto the pitches" is a good example. Never mind that politicians of all shades have spent the last thirty years removing physical education from the curriculum, closing sports facilities everywhere, killing off showcase schemes for sports venues. Suddenly it's the new idea. The lead paragraph of the story says it all:

Premiership football clubs such as Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea are to be enlisted to play a central part in Tony Blair?s attempts to cut street crime among teenage tearaways.

There, in the first paragraph, the source: another ground-breaking initiative thought up by Tony Blair while he was shaving, and immediate government policy by lunchtime.  ¶ 5/06/2002 06:43:00 AM

  A failing press: a danger to the political process? Virtually all the print media, from red-tops to the so-called quality press, has reported the election of the new mayor of Hartlepool in a pathetic way. The fact that he chose to campaign some of the time in a monkey costume, from his role as the mascot of the local football team has been the entire focus of articles. The fact that he became a serious candidate, and the costume a comment on the lukewarm acceptance of the local traditional political parties to the threat to their hegemony, passed the newspapers by. By their attitude, they indicate that they are part of the problem. Venal, superficial, London-centered, elitist and greedy, they fail to see the hypocrisy they display as they throw scorn and calumny on politicians. It is hardly surprising that journalists are at the bottom of the trust ratings. "Motes and beams" comes to mind.  ¶ 5/04/2002 03:10:00 PM

  Five years on I remember, on this Friday five years ago, watching Tony Blair enter Downing Street (yes, I know it was actually May 2nd, but the Friday was the day after polling, always on a Thursday), and smiling broadly that the political world of the UK had certainly changed for the better. Five years on, it is just about possible to maintain that view. From a societal point of view, there has been little change: most of the key problems remain, with years more investment required before they work through to make permanent difference. The largest practical impact the Labour government has had so far is constitutional: devolution for Scotland, Wales and even Northern Ireland, and the start of a reform of the House of Lords. These major changes, implemented without much enthusiasm by the Blair government, will have long lasting effects,and we have not really yet seen any impact on the politics of the largest constituent part of the United Kingdom. Even with 5 years of administrative experience under their belt, the current government line-up seems only just competent. Their complete lack of experience of administration, coupled with the fact that most Labour MPs come from backgrounds that don't make them natural managers or strategists, means that they have little idea of how to make things happen. If Tony Blair is to be Prime Minister for another five years, then he should be looking this summer for significant change in his Cabinet line-up. I'd suggest strongly that he should be brave and insist that Gordon Brown move from the Treasury to either a social welfare ministry or to trade: if ten years is too long to be Prime Minster, then it is way to long to be Chancellor of the Exchequer. Anyway, Gordon Brown needs to get out more. The government has only tinkered with most of the deep infrastructural problems of the country: health, education and transport. These three are the framework for the day-to-day operation of the country, as well as providing the basis for steady growth. Blair's continuing infatuation with foreign affairs, often with a moral dimension that is at odds with the country's pragmatic past, is a serious flaw at the heart of his government. The are no votes in being seen as an actor on the world stage when the 8.35 from Stevenage is full, dirty, slow and late. When a significant proportion of school-leavers can't read or write adequately in this country, there is no point in hand-wringing impotently over the state of Africa. It is a managerial thing: it is just bad management to spend 20-30% of your time on things that you can't affect or don't matter to the short and long term survival of your business. The next election is likely to be in October 2005. By then, billions more of taxpayers money will have been thrown at health and education (and practically nothing at transport). Some small improvements will be visible, assuming no interference from "events, dear boy". We will have had a Labour government for 8½ years, and Tony Blair as Prime Minister for the same period. But it will not be possible for the government to approach the next election with any radical ideasto address the structural issues: this they needed to have done by now. There is a window of opportunity in the next few months: a Cabinet shake-up, with radical plans for structural reform, to be implemented over the next ten years, could be a platform for real renewal for the country. But in reality, it will now probably take a new Prime Minister to start this. Tony Blair has little interest in tackling anything controversial or difficult: he mouths the words, but even though he is not a classic politician, his instinct is still for the quick fix, the knee-jerk reaction, the slick sound-bite. He means well, but it's not enough.   ¶ 5/03/2002 03:56:00 AM

  A Le Pen for the UK? One of the reasons, I believe we need to acknowledge, for the high vote for Le Pen in France is that he has made himself a focus of attention, and been around for a number of elections. The far-right parties in the UK have neither a charismatic figure like Le Pen nor any consistency of presence. If and when the far-right parties (with the BNP the most obvious) get their act together behind a true identifiable leader with public presence, then it is quite likely that the latent extremist vote would coalesce and become significant in this country.  ¶ 4/29/2002 05:34:00 AM

  A time for politicians? There are real signs that the short era of the 'adviser' is coming to an end. David Blunkett's careful and aware use of the word 'swamped' in relation to one aspect of the handling of asylum-seekers is an example of the politician reclaiming some traditional ground. The sudden media visibility of Alastair Campbell with an interview used on news programmes today is another: he may be seeing that the time has come to move on from Downing Street and possibly establish his own political presence. The description by Andrew Rawnsley of a lively Cabinet discussion last Thursday on the subject of Le Pen is also a tiny indicator that politicians see the need to reclaim their 'business' from the unelected Downing Street apparatchiks. Real politicians connect to their electoral bases: the advisors have little but the Islington and Hempstead cliques. Tony Blair is unlikely to be a beneficiary of this: he finds getting along with other politicians hard and unpleasant: one of the reasons for surrounding himself with the large separate team in Downing Street.   ¶ 4/28/2002 05:33:00 AM

  Scots support the English Nice support for a renewed English nationalism from the Scottish National Party leader. Of course, it's in their long-term interest as well.  ¶ 4/23/2002 06:25:00 AM

  It's England Day:
otherwise known as St George's Day It shouldn't be provocative to show the Cross of St George: its most frequent current association with the English football team, and by extension with soccer hooliganism, needs to be changed. Also nobody sees the display of the Cross of St Andrew or the Welsh flag as displaying crude and xenophobic nationalism, which is often the case with the English flag. (Actually, we seem to share St George with Estonia). The IPPR report published today, which suggests an even greater tying of the flag to football, is just plain wrong: exactly the opposite should be the aim. Establishing the flag as a legitimate expression of simple English patriotism should be an important part of rescuing the English identity. The video essay by Billy Bragg is a good start at the rescue.   ¶ 4/23/2002 12:17:00 AM

  No, it's my government Here's Tony Blair, as reported by the Sun, on Breakfast with Frost yesterday:

"Five years ago I came to power. After I came to office, we inherited a difficult economic situation, we sorted that economic situation then we got investment into our public services. I promised that we would sort out the economy—we have." Critics On NHS improvements, he added: "I will be judged on this... If it fails, I will carry the can." His extraordinary repeated use of the word "I" infuriated Labour critics who dislike his presidential style.

In fact Blair used "I" or "my" 110 times in his twenty minute interview with Frost. It seems a clear attempt to out-do Gordon Brown, whose own use of the personal pronoun was so noticeable earlier in the week. All this seemingly petty stuff does point, though, to an increase in the tension between the two men, whatever their spin-doctors, staff and confidantes repeatedly say. It was already high, but it's getting higher—with potentially significant impact on the conduct of government over the next two or so years.  ¶ 4/22/2002 03:55:00 AM

  A healthier nation? The main result of the budget speech last week was the announcement of extra funds for the National health Service. The increase in funding, calculated at 7.5% in real terms for the five years from 2003, is much more significant than the means of gathering in the funds. Although Blair and Brown (and Milburn) always couple the idea of reform with any discussion on the way the money will be spent, the reality is that there is no time for reforms before the money gets spent. But the NHS is still a reactive institution: the whole ethos of Western medicine in the last fifty years has been towards cure, not prevention, and the inevitable use of additional funds will be to expand the facilities and drugs associated with illness at the acute and critical points. This is perhaps inevitable in a system which is thoroughly institutionalised: the largest institution in the world. Institutions seek to secure and prolong their existence: only under the severest threat do organisations voluntarily reform themselves. When it comes to the allocation of society's resources, we need politicians, who are charged with these decisions, to be brave and bold: I am afraid that the weakness of our current crop of politicians is made clear in their inability to do anything other than toss more money at the issue. As the King's Fund says in its press release after the announcement:

"The Government should also focus more of its efforts on preventing avoidable illness. By trying to involve themselves in the day-to-day running of the NHS, ministers have interfered too much in health care while giving insufficient attention to the public's health. The result is extra costs to the NHS of treating avoidable illness amongst the poorest and most vulnerable in society."

  ¶ 4/21/2002 07:36:00 AM

  Whitehall re-alignment The new Cabinet Secretary is to be Sir Andrew Turnbull, currently Permanent Under-Secretary at the Treasury. According to Sonia Purnell, writing on The Source, he will be glad to get out of there:

The Treasury permanent secretary Sir Andrew Turnbull is also tipped as a favourite for the job by his colleagues, anyway. Taciturn and hard to get to know, he lacks the effusiveness or bonhomie or either Sir Robin or Sir Richard, but is both very bright and capable. That said, he is not part of the Chancellor?s inner circle in the Treasury and insiders say he has made little impact in a department where Gordon Brown consults almost exclusively a tight cabal of personal favourites. Sir Andrew is not one of them. And the word is that Mr Brown would not be too upset to see him go. But at 57 just three years from retirement he could only be seen as a stop-gap candidate as most Cabinet Secretaries are in post at least five or six years. His departure would, however, make room for promoting Gus O?Donnell, John Major?s former press secretary and now a key Brown favourite at the Treasury where he is head of macroeconomic policy. Popular and approachable, he did, however, blot his copybook recently when he exposed Labour?s policy on the euro as a political rather than an entirely economic decision. This revelation might not have surprised anyone remotely interested in the matter, but it was careless of him to admit it in public. A promotion for Sir Andrew could also make way for Rachel Lomax, the only woman in the field and the current permanent secretary at Work and Pensions. A formidable operator with highly-valued experience in the US as well as here, her appointment as permanent secretary of the Treasury would send out useful, modern signals in an otherwise male-dominated Whitehall. Her stint in the US was fortunate as it meant she was out of the country and the Treasury during the EMU fiasco, from which many other reputations failed to recover.

The BBC piece on the appointment claims that this shows that Gordon Brown is increasing his power "at the heart of governmentl": rather at odds with Sonia Purnell's views.  ¶ 4/19/2002 07:54:00 AM

  Battle lines are being drawn? Jeff Rooker, one of the more combative of government ministers, and well capable of holding his own, went public the other day with a strong attack on the Treasury. This is quite remarkable in a government minister:

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, that in my experience as a Minister?that may be cut short due to the remarks I am about to make?the Treasury has virtually wrecked every good idea I have come across in the past five years due to the narrow, short-term view it takes. Sometimes it takes a Mr Gradgrind approach and does not seek value for the community simply because one cannot always say at the outset what sum of money will be involved in a measure although one knows that ultimately it will result in a saving and a better quality of life for people. I assure the noble Lord that the Home Secretary will not allow penny-pinching approaches to wreck the concept of community support officers as that government policy is accepted throughout the Government following the publication of the White Paper. There will be no acquiescence in any attempt to short-change the police service. That is not the policy of the Government.

We have to assume that this represents a rare public sighting of the increasing strong backlash within the government to Gordon Brown's secretive and autocratic way of dealing with his colleagues. We have also recently heard David Blunkett, Rooker's boss, make disparaging remarks about the Treasury team, and clearly we are seeing a concerted attempt to create alternatives to Brown as the undisputed successor to Blair, when he goes.   ¶ 4/19/2002 06:46:00 AM

  UK plc: Accounts One of the most difficult aspects of the annual Budget 'event' is trying to make any sense of the statements about spending and revenues: the figures rarely relate to anything obvious to ordinary mortals. It ought to be possible to see exactly what has been spent and where, with the equivalent budgets for the next few years. The best company accounts and financial reporting requirements come close in the commercial sector. Without this, it is impossible to understand the tax arrangements and the welter of figures for different types of spending that the Chancellor and the Treasury put out. Apparently there is an attempt underway to get close to this, in the Whole Government Accounts project:

Our long term aim is to publish a fully audited Whole of Government Account (WGA) for 2005/06 based on Generally Accepted Accounting Practice (GAAP), covering the whole of the United Kingdom public sector

It's a pity we have to wait until 2005 or thereabouts for a first trial of the systems.  ¶ 4/19/2002 04:13:00 AM

  Gordon Brown's Budget: I'm the bee's knees, I am Listening to Gordon Brown on the Today programme this morning, it was quite striking how many times he used "I" or "my". (link to a RealAudio file of the interview; no transcript). Senior politicians and government ministers are usually much more inclusive, and indicate that by the use of "we". Gordon Brown, in his rare forays into a public presence, always makes it sound as though it's his country, and he knows best. Also striking was his sophistry over the need to wriggle out of his commitment on there being no increases in income taxes. I doubt there is anyone that thinks anymore that the National Insurance contributions, which have been significantly increased for a small proportion of the population, and by and additional 1% of income for most. Another great quote from the interview: "We are a party of enterprise and fairness". This may sound a little odd to the majority of the Labour Party.  ¶ 4/18/2002 06:36:00 AM

  Words, words, words The supposed basis for any NHS spending increases is the Wanless report conclusions, here. A first view of the recommendations suggests that it is not a real blueprint, but just the verbiage that its political initiator felt he needed:

The Review has concluded that the UK must expect to devote a significantly larger share of its national income to health care over the next 20 years. It has projected the likely costs of reversing the significant cumulative underinvestment over past decades, to catch up with the standards of care seen in other countries and to deliver a wide-ranging, high quality service for the public and individual patients. Given the starting point, this is a very ambitious aim, even over 20 years. Success or failure will ultimately depend on how effectively the health service uses its resources. They must be used more effectively than has typically been the case in the past. Chapter 6, and indeed this Report more generally, has sought to make a contribution to the necessary debate about how that can be achieved.

  ¶ 4/17/2002 06:18:00 AM

  Tax and stumble This may be the defining day for the New Labor project, and this Labor government. The intention, widely trailed, to raise taxes, mostly by indirect means or through the National Insurance back-door, in order to increase funding for the National Health Service, will cause the focus of the next three years to be the way this money is being spent. The way that this sort of funding works, it will be only at the end of the period that any evidence of improvements in facilities, staffing or performance will start to appear. Even increasing wages for existing staff, which can absorb significant amounts of any new funds, and probably deservedly, will be subject to intense scrutiny. And it will be a few years before the money works through to increased recruitment of mainstream staff, and even longer for specialist staff: doctors, and technicians. The political timing has to be correct though: any later and there would be no chance of any improvement. But it should have been done two years ago at the latest. The real difficulty now, as highlighted by many expert commentators, is that very little useful planning has been done or tested, and without this, there is a real risk that the increased funding doesn't get spent properly, as has apparently happened with the limited funding increases in many sectors of the government budget. But the new money is a still real risk for the government. It will focus the attention of the media very precisely, and the whole structure of government is not really up to the job of managing and monitoring reforms of this size and complexity in such a short time. Very few organizations could, and to try to make structural and organizational reforms at the same time would be catastrophic. I'm sure that in the welter of words from Gordon Brown this afternoon, in his usual hectoring "I know best" way, we will not get any nod to these management issues. But if he believes that the whole thing can be overseen from Fortress Treasury, he is going to be in for a political shock in the next three years. We will see shortly.  ¶ 4/17/2002 05:45:00 AM

  Still being carried away The media generally are claiming over a million people who lined the route between Westminster and Windsor Castle for the Queen Mother's funeral. The distance is a little short of 25 miles, using the A4, which gives 132,000 feet, 264,000 for both sides of the road. Using the same eighteen inches per person, this gives 174,240 'facings'. In other words, the route would have had to have been 5-6 deep along the whole route to have reached one million. Simple observation of the TV pictures gives the lie to this. The were one of two places were the route was 6-8 deep, but for probably not more than 5 miles in total. The rest of the route was more like one person for every three feet. The true total was much nearer 300,000 than one million. Still a respectable number, but not a million.  ¶ 4/11/2002 03:54:00 AM

  Let's not get carried away The numbers that are being quoted for those who turned out to watch the procession of the Queen Mother's coffin to Westminster Hall last Friday are wildly out: they have ranged from 250,000 to 400,000, with the latter number sticking. But...The route was around 1 mile long: say 5,280 feet. Two sides of the road: 10,560 feet. Assume each person occupies around 18 inches (quite tight). This gives 6,900 'facings'. Take the quoted eight to ten deep, and use the top-end ten, gives 69,000 people who were watching the procession. With certain places along the route where anyway 8-10 was not physically possible, and the actual number was most likely less than 50,000. The numbers passing through Westminster Hall for the lying-in-state seem much more reasonable: at 2,500 per hour for around 30 hours gives 75,000. With another eighteen hours to go the yield will be 120,000. Much closer to the media estimates of 180,000.  ¶ 4/08/2002 06:14:00 AM

  Scandal-mongering US-style While we in the UK wait for the next instalment of either the Mittal affair or Byers/Sixsmith, the altogether more vicious methods of political scandal-making in the USA are exposed in a fascinating extract from a book by David Brock Blinded by the Right:The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative. I doubt that even fraction of the appropriately scaled down amounts of money mentioned in his account of the right-wing smear campaign against Clinton are spent in this country. The nearest we might come is with chequebook journalism, and this is virtually entirely spent on self-appointed celebrities, not politicians. One of the chief accused in Brock's book, R. Emmett Tyrell Jr., the editor of The American Spectator, uses much of the same language and technique of the smears in an attack on a review of the book in the New Yorker (thanks to fortboise for the link to the New Yorker, not available from its site direct)  ¶ 3/12/2002 06:35:00 AM

  The second phase: a little late in arriving? The speech. It's a pity the instruction "Check Against Delivery" isn't the title of the speech. It might have been appropriate if it was.  ¶ 3/12/2002 06:04:00 AM

  Excitement: unspinned Blair speech due We are on the edge of our seats. According to the Lobby briefing yesterday:

Asked for a pre-brief of the Prime Minister's speech tomorrow, the PMOS said it was a Party event. In any case, we were doing a laboratory experiment of no pre-briefing which was based on the revolutionary idea that journalists could report what the Prime Minister said after he had said it.

It's to an invited audience of academics and thinktank representatives, according to epolitix.com. We'll see...how many sentences are vague and platitudinous, and how many say anything new. Again, it's worth noting just how direct Blair was when discussing Iraq etc. at the press conference with Dick Cheney yesterday.  ¶ 3/12/2002 02:05:00 AM

  First London, now Surrey, to be crime free This piece, by Simon Wane, on The Source suggests that the Surrey police approach is just to ignore crimes they don't feel able to deal with, not just to adopt displacement activity, as the London police do (see earlier piece). Their statement included for balance at the end of the article, is a classic public service non-response, just like their actions.  ¶ 3/08/2002 10:17:00 PM

  1 down...5,114,599 to go This amazing story, about a Scottish football supporter who has been banned from England for 5 years could be the start of a new era in English-Scottish relations. How soon before an Englishman is banned from Scotland? Devolution was a tame step compared to this!  ¶ 3/08/2002 09:44:00 PM

  LibDems go...where? For a political party with 53 MPs, the Liberal Democrats aren't doing much of a job at promoting themselves. They're having a Spring Conference in Manchester, so I hear from the radio, but a visit to their website reveals nothing on the front page. Yes, there's a 'Conference' on the menubar, but when you get there (and it wasn't my first port-of-call), you get a dry administrative page, with links on drafting gudelines and forms for submitting motions. Great that they have embraced the internet for carrying out political business, but they need to make more of a splash: of all media, the web requires less investment. I honestly believe that the LibDems could add at least another 25 seats at the next election, but they will need to move up a gear or two to achieve this, and they need to start early: the Tories can carry out a more controlled approach to the next election, and they look as though they are.  ¶ 3/08/2002 10:21:00 AM

  Tony talks It seems to me that there's a huge difference in the language that Tony Blair uses when he talks outside the country and inside, and when he talks about foreign affairs and internal. It was clear that when he was in Australia talking about Zimbabwe the language was straightforward, simple even (which is a good thing), and quite unambiguous. But when he talks about the UK and its problems, he becomes ellipitical, the language becomes vague and he even looks uncomfortable: his perfomance today talking about public services is a clear example of this.  ¶ 3/07/2002 07:20:00 AM

  Talking the Marr way Nicely done new political talk show with Andrew Marr on BBC FOUR on Monday evenings. The first one has just gone out, and it is much more in the continental European style than the usual confrontational political programmes that litter the weekends. Admittedly, his first guests, Peter Hennessey, author of the new The Secret State and Stella Rimington, ex-MI5, were not politicians, but the subject matter was effectively political. A first for this country, and a welcome relief both from both the sterile celebrity puff shows and the adversarial political contests. Talking of interviwers, Jeremy Paxman was back on Start the Week (hear it here) on Radio 4 this morning, and obviously had built up a head of spleen while he was away, because some quite innocuous guests were subjected to his worst hectoring aggressive questioning that felt quite out of place at 9am.  ¶ 3/04/2002 01:27:00 PM

  Lady-like language There's some splendid language in the report from Gwynneth Dunwoody's Transport Select Committee: talking about the 10 Downing Street units:

There is a serious danger that in their endless meddling in the work of departments, they reduce rather than increase the effectiveness of Government.

and about the government's grounds for stopping advisors giving evidence:

These arguments are remarkably feeble.

and on the way Downing street interferes:

A small number of people, often like Lord Birt with few relevant qualifications beyond the ear of the Prime Minister, second-guess the work of experienced civil servants. This meddling makes departmental civil servants' and Ministers' efforts to grapple with huge problems more difficult. Their work is inhibited by the attentions of the Prime Minister's Department, and their time is wasted, sorting out ill-considered interventions.

If only all politicians, and perhaps especially the Blair cadre, could manage straightforward language like this more often.   ¶ 3/04/2002 06:34:00 AM

  London is now a crime-free city Very quietly, the Metropolitan Police in London have apparently solved all outstanding crimes in London, and have managed to negotiate an agreement with all known criminals and vice rings in the country not to offend in the coming months. This historic state of affairs can be the only explanation for the report in the Observer today that the police have been making enquiries about a potential on-screen blasphemy by Joan Bakewell in her recent TV series "Taboo".  ¶ 3/03/2002 04:53:00 AM

  No way Fascinating to hear from Tony McWalter (the philosopher MP who asked the difficult question on Wednesday) this morning on the Today programme that he had alerted the Prime Minister to his question about his philospohy. And he still couldn't summon up anything decent: clearly he has ditched the Third Way.  ¶ 3/02/2002 12:31:00 AM

  Will cynicism deliver better public services? Throughout my working life in the business sphere, I have always been known as a bit of a cynic (oh, alright, just a cynic). So I shouldn't really be surprised when it turns out that the person we elected in 1997 (I don't count 2001) to be Prime Minister turns out be even more cynical than we could ever have suspected. But it's the only conclusion we can come to after his performance over Mandelson, Byers and the ditching of a legislative program that had previously been called really important, in favour of a half-hearted vote on fox-hunting. The real issue, and one highlighted by Andrew Sullivan, is that the Prime Minister isn't driven enough. In the mid-90's this was seemingly OK, with everyone wanting a respite from the Thatcher years, even after the Major nothingness. But after five years of an administration which doesn't appear to have achieved much more than tinker with the constitutional stuff, it's hard to see what will have changed by the next election campaign in three year's time. It is now virtually certain that the education system will still be in turmoil, the Health Service will still not be able to spend money fast enough, and the trains will be worse not better. All three probably approaching the point at which things will be better in another five years, but not in time for the election. None of these critical services have really clear objectives set for them: thousands of targets, but these are the trees, not the wood. There is no political philosophy, and Blair was left high and dry when confronted with the question at Question Time this week:

Mr. McWalter: My right hon. Friend is sometimes subject to rather unflattering or even malevolent descriptions of his motivation. Will he provide the House with a brief characterisation of the political philosophy that he espouses and which underlies his policies? Hon. Members: Hear, hear. The Prime Minister: First, I should thank my hon. Friend for his question, which has evinced such sympathy in all parts of the House, about the criticism of me. The best example I can give is the rebuilding of the national health service today under this Government?extra investment. [Interruption.] For example, there is the appointment today of Sir Magdi Yacoub to head up the fellowship scheme that will allow internationally acclaimed surgeons and consultants from around the world to work in this country. I can assure the House and the country that that extra investment in our NHS will continue under this Government. Of course, it would be taken out by the Conservative party.

This was just embarrassing. Without a strongly held political philosophy, the problems are essentially management ones, and politicians are not managers. Certainly not these politicians. The only manager in the top team would seem to be David Blunkett: he has some tough experience running Sheffield City Council in very hard times. The rest of the bunch are rather inexperienced junior pliticians: my daughter, who I might expect to want to give a younger generation the benefit of the doubt, scoffs at the idea that an MP with less than ten years in the House of Commons can be a senior Cabinet Minister.   ¶ 3/01/2002 08:58:00 AM

  A reluctant Cabinet Minister In a piece yesterday on sourceuk.net (which contains a lot of revealing material), Sonia Purnell says that Stephen Byers enjoys a mutual loathing with Gordon Brown, and isn't enjoying himself as a Cabinet Minister:

...anyone meeting him at that time [of the BMW mess] would have heard about his dismay at the life of a Cabinet minister. He possessed no real power, was compelled to attend endless tedious meetings, was excluded from the political mainstream at Number 10 and the Treasury and barely ever got to see his girlfriend, Jan. Life as a Cabinet minister was not, he had bitterly discovered, what he had expected it to be. "I just don't enjoy it," he confided miserably. And it showed. Opposition was fun, this was funereal.

So when the time comes for the next reshuffle, Byers can be expected to say that he is happy to be returning to the backbenches, and mean it, and be thought by everyone to be lying through his teeth.  ¶ 2/27/2002 12:48:00 AM

  Vacancy at DTLR The DTLR website shows that they no longer have a Director of Communications. The post is shown as 'Vacant' in the section on the DTLR Board. A couple of weeks ago it had shown Martin Sixsmith as the occupant. If positive action has been taken to change this, and Martin Sixsmith has not resigned, this strengthens any case for constructive dismissal.  ¶ 2/27/2002 12:15:00 AM

  Think of it as papal infalibility Robert Harris, in The Daily Telegraph:

"...It is thanks to the "line", for example - pumped out daily to MPs via emails, the internet, text-messages and pagers - that so many New Labour ministers sound like robots. It heightens the impression that this Government is a one- or, at best, a one-and-a-half man band. It gives too much power to officials. And although its function is to keep Downing Street one step ahead of the media, the curious effect of it is the opposite: Labour often appears to be operating purely on the media's terms - jumping to meet their deadlines, responding to their values, endlessly pursuing the shadow of an issue rather than its substance..."

And the terrifying thing is that this seems to be exactly how Tony Blair wishes to govern. And he seems to think it is alright. Actually he probably does not see this at all, cannot even understand that others might think it. His own moral compass is pointed exactly North, so all is well, on our behalf. So the government and the country is hostage to something most closely related to a religious experience. And he gets to pick the next Archbishop of Canterbury.   ¶ 2/26/2002 02:10:00 PM

  Public hush money Isn't it amazing that the civil service can offer £100,000 of public money to ask someone to go quietly, after only about ten weeks in the job? This seems to be the amount that Martin Sixsmith would have got if he had kept quiet. It seems an odd thing to do, when his boss admitted that he had done nothing wrong, and in reality, if he does get sacked, then he has a reasonable claim either for unfair dismissal or constructive dismissal.  ¶ 2/26/2002 10:25:00 AM

  "It's a good day to bury rivals..." In today's Lobby briefing, Godric Smith makes reference to the The Mirror's story today about the Sixsmith affair, and his approval of it: "the PMOS said that the Mirror's account today put things into context." Key quotes from The Mirror article:

Martin Sixsmith wanted to take total control of the Transport Department's press operation. He had hoped to keep his plotting secret. But The Mirror is exposing his role after he misled us. Sixsmith wrongly claimed Moore was the main recipient of an email warning against burying bad news on the day of Princess Margaret's funeral. He also lied to us about the wording of the message.

The author of The Mirror story is Paul Gilfeather. The same journalist who in 2000 was voted Bigot of the Year by MIND, the mental health charity. The citation reads: "Paul Gilfeather's article was inaccurate and used twisted facts. He made the briefest attempt to get a balance, but this was a token. The worst part of the piece was the use of emotive language that confirmed old and ill-placed prejudices." Probably not the best source to rely on for accuracy, then. But it certainly suggests that there is more to come.   ¶ 2/25/2002 10:56:00 AM

  Permanent Secretary comes out in writing The published statement by Sir Richard Mottram of the DTLR is a small masterpiece, which is unlikely to be given proper textual analysis in the normal media. Sir Richard manages to get in a few thrusts to potentially discredit Martin Sixsmith:

...When he realised that this was the day of Princess Margaret's funeral, Martin Sixsmith took the unusual step of e-mailing the Secretary of State to advise against this course, which was of course not pursued. ...One of the two newspapers concerned has today alleged that Martin Sixsmith confirmed the details of the false allegation being made. ...Because he failed to return to the Department for some two hours after the time we had agreed, the detailed terms of his resignation had not been finalised nor put in writing by the time it was announced... ...discussions have always been confidential on my part. I did not, as has been alleged, leak them to the Financial Times. ...Mr Sixsmith's union representative approached me on a confidential and without prejudice basis confirming that Mr Sixsmith wished either to move as rapidly as possible to another post or to agree a settlement under his contract. I am revealing these discussions now only because a version of them has already appeared in the press.

But he aims at Byers as well:

On Friday 15 February, it was clear to me that this situation could not continue and that Jo Moore and Martin Sixsmith should both leave their posts, because relationships within the Department and with its Ministers had broken down. I discussed this with Mr Byers. He agreed with my proposal. We agreed he would talk to Jo Moore and I would talk to Mr Sixsmith.

This is as clear as a serving civil servant can probably get to saying that his boss is being less than truthful about his involvement. It is also very clear that under any reasonable definition, Martin Sixsmith has not resigned his post, nor has he been sacked: "The Department still stands ready to discuss with him the terms of his departure. Separately, it is interesting that in the much more detailed than normal published account of this morning's Lobby briefing by Godric Smith (PMOS), the PMOS (Prime Minister's Official Spokesman) is very careful to avoid a comment on whether Stephen Byers was involved in the decision to have Martin Sixsmith resign. It is unlikely that this is the end of this debacle.  ¶ 2/25/2002 10:06:00 AM

  A Permanent Secretary comes out I know that in the wonderful game of "he said, she said" nobody ever comes out well, but it will still be extraordinary to hear a Permanent Secretary account for himself in such short order. All the betting is that he will dump on Martin Sixsmith, and cleave to the side of his Secretary of State, but it is now common knowledge that he and Byers "don't get on" (probably a euphemism for outright contempt). All credit to Sir Richard Mottram, which he will undermine later today in his own recollection of events, no doubt encouraged by the 'poodle' Sir Richard Wilson. No credit to Tony Blair, who according to this morning's Lobby briefing, still has "full confidence" in his Secretary of State. If this really were true, rather than a pro-forma expression, it would demonstrate comprehensively that Tony Blair has attrocious judgement. But let's be honest, he probably doesn't care, because in a day or two, he's escaping off to Australia. If he takes Powell, Campbell et al with him, who can tell just how much more trouble the incompetent Byers can create for himself.  ¶ 2/25/2002 06:01:00 AM

  ePolitix.com A great resource for daily updates on UK politics. A daily briefing and a daily press review. Both available by email, as are some other good briefings.  ¶ 2/25/2002 02:17:00 AM

  Recipe for disaster Politicians are not managers. Managers are frequently politicians, but acclaimed managers have rarely, if ever, performed well at the highest level of politics in this country. So there are very significant differences between the two callings. And it is as well to remember this. Put a former polytechnic law lecturer at the head of a organisational behemoth such as the DTLR has become, and allowing him to interfere with its daily running, is a recipe for disaster. Thirty years ago, civil servants gave advice to ministers, and that was the main function of the highest level of the service. They were not expected to manage organisations of immense complexity. It is instructive that the DTLR has something called a Board of Management, which has a very familiar corporate structure, with members for Strategy and Corporate Services,Legal, Finance and Communications (currently vacant). And a chairman, Sir Richard Mottram, who is designated as "Board champion for stronger leadership with a clearer sense of purpose". How ironic! But the key point is that the department is made to think of itself as a corporate entity. Which it very clearly is not. But this government does seem to have arrived in power with a completely wrong idea of what the civil service is for. And the Civil Service itself has been badly led, with Sir Richard Wilson, as the Head of the Civil Service chosen by Blair, obviously totally failing to stand up for the Civil Service in front of Blair and his team. It seems that this leaves Permanent Secretaries such as Richard Mottram totally exposed in their relations with their immediate political masters. Sir Richard Wilson comes across as the lackey of the Prime Minister's Office, rather than the defender of his Service.   ¶ 2/25/2002 02:04:00 AM

  Civil servants, uncivil masters If I were Sir Richard Mottram, Permanent Secretary at the DTLR, I would be thinking very hard about another job. Not because I had done anything wrong, or even because I actually wanted to leave the Civil Service but simply because life is too short to have to deal, day-to-day, with a boss who you can't trust. And it seems apparent that it would be unwise to trust Stephen Byers, who at every opportunity fails to say anything that makes anybody want to trust him. He did it again in his interview with Jonathan Dimbleby this lunchtime. He obviously thinks that if he says something firmly enough, frequently, and tries to make sure that others, who may have a different story, are gagged or prevented by their employment contracts from speaking, his is the version that will stick. But maybe not. In an article reprinted in today's Sunday Telegraph, Sir Richard Parker, a retired Permanent Secretary, describes the sort of working methods the current government uses:

In reality, writes Sir Richard, officials are pressed into assisting individuals known to be favoured by ministers. "Prime ministers, especially this one, do not like their wishes to be questioned too closely by officials," he writes. "The ambassador . . . having learnt of Blair's interest in Mittal's endeavours, would have realised that examining Mr Mittal's precise entitlement to Government help would be only too likely to result in the Foreign Office being told that he was proving `unhelpful'." He also condemns Mr Blair's intervention as "grossly disproportionate" because Mr Mittal and his companies are foreign. He adds: "There is, therefore, a very big process failure to explain."

The article had originally appeared at www.sourceuk.net, an interesting venture, with more than one ex-civil servant writing.   ¶ 2/24/2002 08:23:00 AM

  The Department for Trouble, Lies and Resignations, again Martin Sixsmith is dangerous to the government. The revelations in The Sunday Times (registration required, and a lot of it), based on a dossier Sixsmith kept, could become very difficult for the government to manage. He feels he has been wronged, traduced would be a more appropriate term, and he has every reason and little impediment to see this affair play out. He says he hasn't resigned, and nobody has produced his resignation letter, unlike Jo Mooore's which was published by the DTLR. Also, if the version of the famous email which is shown in the Sunday Times is the real one, then it is very clear that it was not Sixsmith who was misleading everyone about its content and implications:

From: Martin Sixsmith To: Stephen Byers MP cc: Jones IanR, Moore, Jo Subject: Rail performance indicators You spoke about possibly making this announcement on Friday. We should not do it on Friday,as that is the day on which Princess Margaret is being buried. There are too many connotations to the word 'buried' for us to do anything on that day.

According to the Sunday Times, Godric Smith, the Chief spokesman in Downing Street, was prepared to release the correct version, above, but was stopped by Stephen Byers. If Martin Sixsmith were to appear before the Commons Select Committee on Public Administration on Thursday, as has been suggested, terminal damage to Stephen Byers could result. Will Byers himself be removed before then? Or is his membership of the 'North East mafia', as Margaret Jay dubbed them on Any Questions this week (archive available from Monday), going to save him yet again? The Civil Service is going to be fighting back very hard over all of this. Already Sir Richard Mottram, the Permanent Secretary at the DTLR, is having to be 'economical with the truth' to use Sir Robert Armstrong's great phrase. And if it is true that Mottram had discussed the affair at length with a journalist from the FT, then he is going to find life difficult too. If the goverment doesn't handle this very carefully, and limit the fall-out, it could eclipse the Mittal affair in its damage potential.  ¶ 2/24/2002 02:58:00 AM

  Two days in Stockholm The communiqué from the Stockholm Progressive Summit is numbingly long, for something which only lasted two days. Would it have been longer or shorter if Tony Blair had been there for the whole thing, rather then just one day? I will read all of it sometime in the next week or so, but for the moment, let's savour this:

"We aim to democratise globalisation, just as we aim to globalise democracy and human rights...
We advocate a new concept of citizenship. Our societies must hold together in face of radical change in the nature of the family, increasingly diverse life choices and the growing presence of different religions and cultures in our once homogeneous societies. That concept of citizenship depends on acceptance by all of clearly defined rights and responsibilities as the only basis for a commitment to tolerance of otherness and difference...
We will continue to take a firm approach both in dealing with crime, particularly violent crime, and in tackling its underlying causes. We believe that every citizen has a right to security."

You can just hear Tony Blair, can't you? Oh, and they have found something for Bill Clinton to do:

"We have the privilege to announce that former US President Clinton has accepted to chair a mission on behalf of us. The purpose is to identify the steps needed by the international community and African governments and people to tackle Africa's challenges in these fields. The Summit mandates him to make consultations he finds proper, to develop efforts and make proposals of specific or concerted character."

  ¶ 2/23/2002 10:27:00 AM

  The NHS: Unhealthy for the government Stirred by the sight of all three political parties saying that taxes will have to rise to provide extra funding for the NHS, I was going to write a long piece on about the political dangers of raising taxes specifically for the Health Service, given the difficulty of real delivery. But David Aaronovich, in the Independent, has said most of it. And an article by their Health correspondent, Jeremy Laurance, has some interesting comparisons with France and Scotland. As long as the NHS remains a remote, centralised system, very little will change for the average voter. The King's Fund paper in January had some useful proposals for moving the NHS away from central government and giving its customers more say.  ¶ 2/22/2002 04:41:00 AM

  Domino theory redux From Stratfor:

The Intensification of Global Instability With the outbreak of civil war in Colombia, another country has fallen deeper into the ranks of the unstable. This has been a week of destabilizations. Iran appears to be moving toward internal crisis, Venezuela's political problems are deepening and conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is entering a new era. This troubling spread of instability is rooted in the current structure of the international system. As the world's only superpower, the United States' inevitable obsession with al Qaeda has contributed to this process of destabilization.

  ¶ 2/21/2002 04:35:00 PM

  What is the world coming to? Mat Ridley, writing in the Spectator this week, discusses the vitriolic attacks on Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, a carefully researched rebuttal of many of the wilder claims of doom by the environmentalist lobby. He is not anti-environment, just against the misuse of data by people who claim to be objective scientists. The recent Scientific American attack on him, in its January issue (not available on its website, which is a miserable experience to deal with, with its pop-up windows), has caused a decent backlash, including from The Economist (see the articles 1,2,3 in the 2nd Feb edition). Ridley points out the pessimism of many vocal environmental scientists is often directly contradicted by simple practical evidence, and points out that:

If six billion people have both more food and more forest than their three billion parents did; if the prices of copper, wheat and natural gas are going down, not up; if there are 20 times more carcinogens in three cups of organic coffee than in daily dietary exposure to the worst pesticide both before and after the DDT ban; if renewable resources such as whales are more easily exhausted than non-renewables such as coal; if lower infant mortality leads to falling populations, not rising ones, then perhaps we need to think differently about what sustainability means. Perhaps the most sustainable thing we can do is develop new technology, increase trade and spread affluence.

. Julian Simon, on whose work Bjorn Lomborg's work is in effect built, wrote a splendid tome The Ultimate Resource 2. Lomborg's own website, www.lomborg.com , contains his refutation of some of the articles in Scientific American. A controversy with perhaps more relevance to the UK population than the pseudo hysteria of the Mittal letter affair.  ¶ 2/21/2002 04:22:00 PM

  Ha! 20:02 20/02 2002   ¶ 2/20/2002 12:02:00 PM

  Full cycle Not having made much obvious progress with rail, road or air travel, the government is settings its sights slower. A DTLR press release (yes, they are still able to function) yesterday on the government's new £2 million—that's million, not billion— support for cycling projects, through the National Cycling Strategy Board. It's chaired by Stephen Norris, with Philip Darnton, Prof Siân Griffiths, John Grimshaw, Oliver Hatch, Alan Jones, Roger Horton, William Rickett, Lynn Sloman, and Christian Wolmar as board members. A nice mixture of the great and good with transport activists. Not sure about Stephen Norris's other quoted affiliations though:"His commercial interests include Citigate and First Group London bus operations. He is a Director of a number of transport-related companies; an advisor to the Abbot Group plc and to Central Railways Ltd; and President of the Motor Cycle Industry Association"  ¶ 2/19/2002 03:15:00 AM

  Time for a break? It's interesting that there aren't to be any lobby briefings this week( 10 Downing street Newsroom):

Parliament is in recess this week (18 February). Therefore there will be no lobby briefings until next Monday morning (25 February), when Parliament returns.

How neat for a beleagured Downing Street.  ¶ 2/18/2002 10:22:00 AM

  Time to go? It is quite easy to see how, from the Downing Street 'bunker', the behaviour of the UK press leads the Prime Minister to talk about 'hysteria'. Their intense pursuit of the story has mostly highlighted all the wrong things. But Downing Street has only itself to blame. The Prime Minister ran scared of press reaction to Peter Mandelson's possible careless involvement in the Hinduja affair, and in one of the knee-jerk reactions that so characterise Tony Blair, forced his second resignation too early. So it comes across to the media that Blair can be bullied: and like all good bullies they take this as a signal for more. Having acted precipitately once, Blair's team is reluctant to get caught again: so they stall. Godric Smith, the PM's spokesman, is reported as saying they have Mittal fatigue: in other words they can't think through to the appropriate response. It gives the idea of a tired team. And perhaps they are tired. Perhaps this is the real story.  ¶ 2/18/2002 10:12:00 AM

  Who needs facts when there's a good story? The case for fact-checkers in British journalism, in the American tradition, has grown much stronger after the very poor performance of virtually all UK national newspapers over the Mittalgate affair. The normally reliable Andrew Rawnsley, on The Westminster Hour last night was positively wilful in his wish not to understand what Claire Short was saying about the EBRD loans process: it was clear that he just didn't have any understanding of the procedures, and even though he has written at length on the affair, obviously had not thought that facts were important: better a story about the British government directly lending the money. And other journalists have carried on the process: the Evening Standard today is running headline in earlier editions about the government providing more more to the LNM steel company for the Romanian project, under a headline "Mittal asks for more cash". It's simply wrong to mislead its readers in such a manner.  ¶ 2/18/2002 09:59:00 AM

  Themes for this week:

• Simple straightforward management
• Transport (even more than health)
• Government honesty

Actually, these were the themes for the year. It just seems a good idea to restate them at the beginning of this week. The House of Commons isn't sitting, so the government has the opportunity to take a deep breath and try to re-establish some credibility with the electorate and the media. The Prime Minister is off on his travels again, in Stockholm at the International Network for Progressive Governance, but he should still have the time to reflect on what needs to be done. I suspect that the week will go by without any obvious signs of a change in approach. But somebody needs to get a grip, quickly (Tony Blair, Alastair Campbell, Gordon Brown, Charles Clarke?).  ¶ 2/18/2002 01:22:00 AM

  What do we do with our aircraft? According to this week's Flight International (link without the data), the NATO countries excluding the US, have 14,000 military aircraft, with the US having 18,300. But the closeness in numbers conceals the appalling disparity in capability and value. It seems that although the numbers are quite similar, the ability of the European members of NATO is effectively close to zero when it comes to combat and mission capability. I don't have the exact mission statistics, but over the last ten years, I suspect that in the European sphere of influence (and I'd include Afghanistan) the European proportion of missions is below 20%. Apart from a tiny number of support bombing raids and refuelling missions, the NATO countries aren't contributing any air activity to the Afghanistan theatre (OK, the Brits are bombing Iraq). What's the point of the huge investment and ongoing budgetary cost of these airforces, if they can't do anything? Once upon a time every country had its own 'flag carrier' airliner. That's now disappearing. How long before country's airforces go the same way? And shouldn't we be asking questions about the costs of these aircraft if most of them are just toys for generals?  ¶ 2/16/2002 12:43:00 PM

  Blair v Brown I get the sense of a bunker mentality in 10 Downing Street. You can almost hear the thrashing rage of the Alastair Campbell's and Jonathan Powell's. But the fact is that since the Prime Minister works in the way he does - increasingly disengaged from the overall management of his government, it probably cannot be otherwise. He has deliberately created a supposed control centre approach that cannot 'command' delivery. When this structure comes up against those who do have direct ability to affect delivery, and inevitably resent the arrogance of the center, the balance of power in the medium term is with the departments. And the chief department is the Treasury. It is notable that Gordon Brown runs a much tighter team than the Prime Minister, and dealt with the presentational problems caused by his highly visible press-fixer, Charlie Whelan, very early. The coming week is a critical one for government policy and delivery: the final bids and decisions on finances for government departments are made. The reality of day-to-day politics is that the Prime Minister's office, with its mess of advisors and overlapping briefs, is hopelessly outclassed when set against the focussed power of the Treasury. It is going to be interesting to watch the briefing and counter-briefing by departments that goes on over the week, especially with Parliament on half-term for the first week (school holiday?).   ¶ 2/16/2002 01:50:00 AM

  Two down, one to go? Journalists are in danger of telling a partial story over the 'resignations' of Jo Moore and Martin Sixsmith. Martin Sixsmith was appointed to his job on 26th November 2001. In other words he had been at a desk in the DTLR for 11 weeks, with Christmas presumably taking up to two weeks out of any practical management time. The Guardian City Diary of 29th November 2001:

...there's bad news for the transport secretary - he has the "black spot". How do we know? Because Martin Sixsmith has just become director of communications at Stephen's department. Let's look at Martin Sixsmith's career: Oxford, Harvard, the Sorbonne ... gosh ... BBC correspondent and, er, director of communications for Harriet Harman during her hugely successful spell at the department for social security. Martin's next job? Director of external communications at GEC, which became Marconi, which became ... a share price worth less than a Mars bar.

The Guardian Society section, January 21st 2002:

...sources said that last week Mr Byers had an angry meeting on the issue with Martin Sixsmith, his head of communications. Mr Byers argued that he was not happy with an official recommendation that Mr Jones should be appointed and suggested that Ms Wallis, who had lagged far behind in the interviews, should be seriously considered. Ms Wallis is known as a close friend and colleague of Ms Moore. They both worked for Westminster Strategy, a political lobbying organisation with close ties to the Labour party. Mr Sixsmith has had the job a matter of months, having replaced Alun Evans who was removed by Mr Byers last October.

Note the 'removed'. And it would be better to characterise the job tenure as 'weeks' rather than 'months.' It seems clear that there was a significant amount of fighting over 'turf' and operational style, and that Stephen Byers was afraid of not being able to bully civil servants. Although the initial focus will be on Jo Moore and the status of special advisors, the real story, and one which will develop over the coming weeks, is the ineffectiveness of Stephen Byers. As long as he remains in place, critical issues for government performance will be endangered by media attention to the presentation: and let's face it, whenever Stephen Byers makes a media appearance he blusters rather than presents. Blair loyalist he may be, but as a highly visible example of the genre he reflects badly on his boss. But his boss mostly likely doesn't care: better to be in Rome while London burns.  ¶ 2/15/2002 10:08:00 AM

  The Department for Trouble, Lameness and Remorse Some of the problems that afflict Stephen Byers may not of his own doing. The department is simply too broad in its responsibilities: Transport, Local Government and the Regions. A look at the website is also an eyeopener: the department is a ragbag of additional responsibilities.The "This is the DTLR" page lists The Fire Service College, The Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, and The Rough Sleepers Unit. The organisation also has a "Board Champion for a dramatic improvement in diversity". The organisational chart was last updated on 1st November 2001, and shows the post of Board Member and Director of Communications as vacant. Martin Sixsmith took up his post on 26th November. Perhaps it is telling of the state of communications in the department that its website is not updated to reflect the new appointment. The contrast between the DTLR website and, for instance, the Health Department site is instructive. The definite impression is that the DLTR isn't really on top of things. And while this may come from the top (what does Stephen Byers really care about?), it also implies that the communications function isn't in great shape.  ¶ 2/15/2002 06:19:00 AM

  "No, you can't have a new plane!" A nice piece of timely briefing (Independent, Telegraph), by Gordon Brown's team: the Treasury is blocking a new plane for the Prime Minister-"Blair Force One". Designed to demonstrate who is really calling the shots, and staying at home minding the pennies while Tony jets off yet again (this time to Rome). The Buckingham Palace element is wonderful: the Queen won't use a new plane since it will be too expensive.  ¶ 2/15/2002 06:09:00 AM

  More Moore What does Jo Moore have on Stephen Byers, Tony Blair or the New Labour faction? It is hardly credible that after being the cause of so much fuss, and increasingly serious political complications, she is still in her position. But it all fits with the notion that Tony Blair is a poor manager. In management terms, rather than political, and after all day-to-day government is more management than anything, this kind of visible banana-skinning should be expunged. When Alistair Campbell understood he was becoming more than the message, he removed himself. Practical management expediency demands the same for Jo Moore. If Stephen Byers or Tony Blair can't see this, and don't act, then it is reasonable to repeat the question: what does she know, and what deal has been concocted to keep it submerged?   ¶ 2/14/2002 02:16:00 PM

  The Thomas Friedman soundbite There's plenty to feel uncomfortable about in the current US Administration, but Thomas Friedman, in his NYTimes article today has a point:

"...Meet Don Rumsfeld - he's even crazier than you are." There is a lot about the Bush team's foreign policy I don't like, but their willingness to restore our deterrence, and to be as crazy as some of our enemies, is one thing they have right."

As a management, not political, device, this is about right. Scare the opposition. But you have to work hard to communicate to your friends. And not just politicians, but their voters.   ¶ 2/14/2002 01:13:00 PM

  Stumbled across Namebase, during a Google search set off by a trawl for coverage of Jonathan Moyle, a British journalist found dead in Chile in strange circumstances in 1990, with possible intelligence connections. Found that others (Vacuum Weblog, Miko Matsumura) had very recently come across Namebase, too. Try "Jonathan Aitken" for a few interesting potential connections.  ¶ 2/12/2002 01:13:00 PM

  The enormous media fuss being made about the MMR vaccination, fuelled principally by the Prime Minister's maladroit handling of the issue in relation to his own child (and possibly the result of some matrimonial discord on the subject), means that attention is being focused on the wrong subject. The real concern is the steady rise of children diagnosed as having some degree of autism. The numbers in all developed countries have been rising for over three decades, and there is very little real useable medical knowledge on the subject, but plenty of theories. Nick Hornby in an article in the Observer, illustrates some the complete lack of resource being devoted to the subject, either to current sufferers or to researching the underlying causes. It seems clear that much of the problem from the government's side is financial, although in relation to specific issues of an individual's health, they will run a mile from saying so. Firstly, separate injections would cost the Health Service more money. Secondly, increasing resources for autism is potentially open-ended, and in the short term can only happen by reducing resources elsewhere: just not possible in the current political environment. Better just to ignore it. But it might be that media interest might shift to autism, helped by some of the high-profile parents who are affected.   ¶ 2/10/2002 02:40:00 PM

  Parliament and the web: making politics accessible It's worth commenting that I linked to the Select Committee's report in the previous entry without thinking, having picked it up from the BBC News site. But it is wonderful that these reports are now more or less instantly available to be read in full. It is not so long ago that they would have cost serious amounts of money, and if you didn't live near to a HMSO shop, taken weeks to obtain. Altogether, the UK Parliament web site is a great resource. A real, if small, contribution to freedom of information. The Research Papers section of the House of Commons site is a real treasure trove.  ¶ 2/08/2002 06:45:00 AM

  Why do MPs do it? Listening to Michael Foster MP's commentary on the proposed suspension of Keith Vaz from the House of Commons, and the squirmy way he tried to downplay the verdict of the very committee he is a member of (Select Committee on Standards and Privileges, link to Keith Vaz report), you have to wonder what prompts them to seek this kind of publicity. OK, so he is a Parliamentary Private Secretary (to the Law Officers), and therefore on the ladder to government office. But still, it's this sort of political ducking and weaving that increases the electorate's disillusion with the political process. And after the Select Committee had tried hard to do the right thing. Perhaps not too many people will have heard it. But I still recommend a listening, while it stays on the BBC site, as a crass example of the genre.   ¶ 2/08/2002 06:18:00 AM

  Government is really hard The continuing fuss over the MMR vaccine and the Chinook helicopter crash are a good illustration of the difficulties of government at the beginning of the 21st century. The huge increase in the availability of all types of information, good and bad but always incomplete, mean that the governing clan can have no monopoly, and must operate in a continually disturbed pool. And deference to the 'elite', elected or otherwise, has gone for good. So the paragraph below is in this vein. Presumably the two Air Marshals who reviewed the report on the Chinook crash in 1994 in complete disregard for the Air Force's own rules about such things thought they could get away with it, and maybe they nearly have on this occasion. Bearing in mind the Computer Weekly investigations under Tony Collins that have shown that some of the Chinook software was less than fit for its task at the time, and the RAF's own procedures :"Only in cases in which there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever should deceased aircrew be found negligent", it is hardly surprising that a lot of people now think that something else was being hidden. But is also clear that the politicians who are supposedly in charge at the Defence Ministry are either completely under the thumb of the military, or complict in a potential cover-up. But thebe should be no reason for the current occupants of these political positions to be like this, since the events took place under a previous administration. Perhaps the seniority of those killed (a significant slice of the intelligence top brass) makes the military wary of agreeing that their own systems and magement was significantly to blair. Better to blame two dead pilots. But politicians should be brave enough to do better than this. On MMR, the issues are similar. The evidence for any link between the MMR vaccine and autism is tenuous, and based as much on a potential spurious correlation than anything else.(See this US website for a non-UK view) It certainly suits the government and its medical specialists to keep the status quo, but the handling of the presentation of the issues from the government side has been very poor. The Prime Minister's approach, of course, has made things worse, and it was notable that he finally got round to saying what he should have weeks ago, on a noisy jet on the way to Nigeria. But the Department of Health team have been hopeless in the face of media hysteria. It is fascinating that while this government has recognised that presentation is now probably more than 50% of the job of governing, their abilities have steadily gone downhill since they took office. Perhaps this is why the prime Minister is trying to find a way to get Peter Mandelson back into the official loop again. He may be hopeless in his own cause, but the government's presentation of its case misses him dreadfully.  ¶ 2/08/2002 04:59:00 AM

  Nice piece on the state of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, in the Weekly Standard, a US news magazine. It makes interesting comparative reading against the shrillness of not just the UK red-top press, but also the broadsheets as well. Granted the Weekly Standard is a 'conservative' (read seriously Republican oriented) publication, but it is still a useful antidote.  ¶ 2/04/2002 02:52:00 PM

  The government is clearly rattled. While everybody has decried the performance of Ian Duncan Smith, particularly at the weekly Prime Minister's question-time, in fact the Tories have effectively controlled the political agenda over the last three weeks, with the National Health Service, transport and education, all putting the government on the defensive. It is interesting that the lack of effective response and very poor media relations coincides with the absence of Gordon Brown from the center. From today he is back, and Blair is off to do his 'saviour' bit in Africa. My guess is that over the next few days we will see a shift in the way the government responds to its current presentational problems and some of its policy difficulties. The real test for Brown is the decision on the London Tube financing, due to be announced later this week. Will the decision be a pulling back from previous unbending position? It will also be a good indicator of how Gordon Brown will behave during the remainder of the Blair premiership.   ¶ 2/04/2002 01:48:00 PM

  Charles Clarke, interviewed by David Frost on Sunday, says emphatically that the whole relationship with Enron "was entirely proper". And he's probably right: but the Labour Party cannot really expect to have doubters suspend their doubts, after the Ecclestone affair and the, essentially irrelevant but media hyped, Hinduja mess. Roy Hattersley tries hard, in this morning's Guardian, to downplay the problem by saying that the government's so-far unshakable attachment to the Private Financial Initiative, saying "but it is a far worse crime than accepting a few thousand pounds from a crooked energy company and using it to finance a party." Which is where he hangs his piece, on the day that the papers report that the Labour Party is reported to be asking its MPs to contribute 2% of their parliamentary salaries to fund the party's huge overdraft. Charless Clarke (again) is quoted in the Independent: "It is important to have properly financed political parties for our democracy, and we have to manage our money properly, which is what we are doing." I doubt that an impost on their MPs is the proper way to do it, but perhaps the idea of the publicity is to shift the attention away from the corporate support to the fact that our political parties cannot operate in the 21 it century in the way that they used to, and some form of direct democratic funding from the state is more appropriate than the regular sleave stories the current begging bowl approach produces.  ¶ 2/04/2002 11:51:00 AM

  Writing in the Guardian today, Peter Preston says that Blair is having to invent enemies: the 'wreckers' he railed against at the weekend, and which brought out the unions who felt they among were the targets. Preston say that the Tories and Liberals are nowhere in providing political alternatives, and he implies that they will not get anywhere. But there are still over three and a half years to the next election, and for the moment it does not make sense for the others parties to take a defined stand on issues that are dominating the political areas right now. The government is apparently quite capable of making lots of errors, and has set itself up to fail spectacularly. Not that it necessarily will, but of the delivery lead-times for its key tests?health, transport, education?only education is likely to be amenable to real change in that time period. The rest will require fudging of the numbers, and that will not play well at the next election, given the government's record on moving the statistical goalposts over the last five years.  ¶ 2/04/2002 01:44:00 AM

  As a follow-on from the Washington Post series on the Bush Administration post 9/11, this article suggests that the CIA are complicit in the murder of Chief Bola Ige of Nigeria. If Mr. Blair is the moral person he always tells us he is, does he really condone this sort of activity, which is much more connected to the US's insatiable focus on oil than a terrorist threat. Sure it keeps the CIA's hand in, but does it really further any worldwide stabilisation? Mr Blair's on an African safari this week. I wonder if the subject will come up?  ¶ 2/03/2002 11:24:00 AM

 

Hmm...
"evisioning psephology"
Another Googlewhack, and a perfectly good sentence that could use it: "I would have no trouble envisioning psephology as a central feature of all politcial science department curriculae."

  ¶ 1/28/2002 03:48:00 PM

 

A second Googlewhack<br>And another apposite Googlewhack:
dynastic dysteleology
Dysteleology is the doctrine of purposelessness in nature

  ¶ 1/28/2002 03:39:00 PM

  I wonder what the mainstream media column centimeter ratio will be for coverage of the World Economic Forum in New York later this week and the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, will be? 100:1, or worse?  ¶ 1/28/2002 10:34:00 AM

 

For a usually sardonic view of the world of the office and the ways of the unthinking corporate, I recommend Lucy Kellaway in the Financial Times each Monday. Today's notes include a look at some 'wise words' of Donald Rumsfeld on a DoD website, revised in September 2001, apparently.
She's often criticised for her sharp commentaries by those who generate corporate bamboozle and hype, but just before the shenanigans of another World Economic Forum, it's worth re-reading her commentary on the 2000 WEF.

  ¶ 1/28/2002 09:52:00 AM

 

My first Googlewhack: gourmandize daintily
It has the extra benefit of being an oxymoronic Googlewhack: maybe the first!
I have a feeling that this is addictive!

  ¶ 1/28/2002 09:19:00 AM

  It's rather odd that the Tories have a story headlined "Labour Party Activist fronts smear campaign" as their main piece on their website. The fact that Professor Malone-Lee is a Labour Patry member, and has done useful work for the party in the past, shouldn't be used to attack him in his paid employment as the Mediacl Director of teh Whittington Hospital. It's a very dangerous ploy that could seriously backfire in the future.  ¶ 1/27/2002 12:22:00 PM

  The National Health Service: a normal day On an average day, the National Health Service in England handles 35,000 new patients in Accident & Emergency units, and 46,000 in new outpatient visits. Ignoring for this purpose the 150,000 people in beds on an average day, if the service to 99.9% of these 'customers' was beyond complaint, then there would be the opportunity for 230 people every day to have a grievance. In fact the average level of written complaint to NHS Trusts is 6 per 1000, which is one in 170. It's hardly surprising that a number of these could form the basis for more strenuous complaint than the merely written. Actually, written complaints running at a rate of 1 per 170 patients is a cause for concern. It's very high, and does suggest that there are patient handling issues over and above those stemming from long waiting times. The government will need to be careful that it doesn't provoke more examination of these issues, which come back to the key issue of whther the services are there at the convenience of the proviers rather than the users. It will be interesting to see if the Tories home in on this.   ¶ 1/27/2002 10:56:00 AM

  John Robb's Radio Weblog John Robb makes an important point about the way the world works:

This is an interesting tidbit of news on Al Qaeda. It shows that even in a tightly controlled country like Singapore, capturing Al Qaeda cells is mostly based on luck. So, the lesson for the US is: don't spend a lot of money and time clamping down on individual freedoms, focus on improving the information transfer between citizens and the government. Better information flow, not less, is the route to improving security.

Unfortunately, politicians don't want to understand any of this. If they acknowledged the possibility it would say that there's a lot in the world they can't do much about in the short term. It is much easier to be seen to be doing something by making new regulations in knee-jerk responses, regardless of the longer term consequences..  ¶ 1/27/2002 02:08:00 AM

 

Lucas Marshall  says:

I remember that we were required to keep a commonplace book in English in high school. I really did find it useful in writing - it's a place to keep all the interesting quotes or concepts that you hear about so you can refer back to them later in life for inspiration, a means to back up an argument, or somesuch.

Is a weblog an online commonplace book? To me it seems to be a different sort of animal, because while a commonplace book is for personal reference, weblogs seem to me to be a place to share ideas and observations with the world.

I'm prepared to accept this as a distinction between a commonplace book and a weblog, since I very nearly decided that my 'commentary' should be a commonplace book.

  ¶ 1/20/2002 02:37:00 PM

  Jonathan Freedland, writing in the Guardian, points out that the political landscape of Britain is changing. The second chamber debate sees the Tories pushing democractic solutions, while the government runs scared: seemingly displaying a lack of trust in its electorate that could have major repercussions in a few years. The New Labour programme was all about ensuring that people could learn to trust the Labour politicians after years of thinking them completely at odds with ordinary voters' straightforward approach to politics. The government is storing up increasing numbers of areas where it is showing it cannot be trusted to do the "right thing".  ¶ 1/16/2002 01:30:00 AM

  Christian Wolmar, writing in The Independent, makes some critical, practical, points about the railway strategy unveiled yesterday that will undoubtedly not be mentioned by ministers and their coteries: The sad truth is that a railway with more trains carrying more people on it will be a slower and less reliable one. (It is also likely to be less safe as the risks of accidents are increased with more trains and more stress on staff.) That is the hard fact contributing to the demise of Railtrack, which was not rewarded with extra cash for carrying more trains and people. As more and more new services were introduced by train operators eager to profit from the rise in demand, the infrastructure deteriorated and Railtrack was forced to spend extra funds on maintaining it. British Rail used to solve this problem quite simply. During boom times, when the numbers on the rail network threatened to become unmanageable, it raised the fares, to push some passengers back into their cars or to deter them from travelling at all. Now fares are partly regulated to prevent that type of action and, in any case, the Government wants to see more people on the rails, not fewer.  ¶ 1/15/2002 03:03:00 AM

  Hugo Young, in The Guardian, says it all, really, about the way this government operates. The key point is "When this government says it can focus on only one or two big problems at a time - schools but not universities, education but not rail - what it means is that Mr Blair and his office can only do that much. The rail fiasco is in part a price paid for presidentialism, and Downing St's destructive pretensions to micro-management".  ¶ 1/15/2002 02:00:00 AM

  I know that Nick Denton, or Dave Winer may have already linked to Nick Robinson's BBC News Newsblog, but it's worth saying that he is producing on the web, in a slightly stuttering fashion, which means not quite frequently enough (but isn't that a general problem?) something which is rarely seen in print, except in the newspapers' diary columns: a personal view of what makes the news by a political journalist. Good stuff.  ¶ 1/14/2002 03:10:00 PM

  It's not exactly British politics, but this piece in The Observer, by Peter Beaumont, which although I read the newspaper every Sunday I had missed until pointed to it from the Progressive Review's Undernews, is a frightening reminder of where we could be heading in this country too, with increasing threats to civil liberties such as reductions in the rights to jury trials and the use of arbitrary powers for detentions. With a hopelessly weak House of Commons, we have to rely on the House of Lords, and the Labour administration is trying to palm us off with an even more emasculated version in its so-called "reforms".  ¶ 1/14/2002 02:11:00 PM

    ¶ 1/14/2002 10:30:00 AM

  Oops! The link to the transcipt was pointing to the interview with Robin Cook (now updated). But Cook is a perhaps a more interesting politician than the Prime Minister.  ¶ 1/13/2002 07:52:00 AM

  Tony Blair's appearance on David Frost this morning (Breakfast with Frost BBC1), was instructive. The familiar rictus smile attempted to cover up what seemed to be real nervousness. David Frost is not exactly the most fearsome of interviewers - he seems to ask hard questions but since he never follows-up there is little point to them. The Prime Minister gave a performance of great defensiveness. He may believe that he is growing in stature on the "world stage" (a number of today's newspapers have pieces about his potential as Secretary General of the UN) but he is shrinking on his home turf. And a general feeling in the writings of many commentators is that he probably doesn't care about most of the political issues that are at the top of the daily agenda in the country at present. And Afghanistan was not really mentioned: the political spotlight moves on... The 'reshuffle' word is around too. From any management standpoint, now is not the time to bring on the inevitable disruption that moving peole around in jobs causes.   ¶ 1/13/2002 03:23:00 AM

  British political themes for 2002: Simple straightforward management Transport (even more than health) Government honesty —more honesty with electorate  ¶ 1/02/2002 12:40:00 PM

  The only other story that gets an airing today is that Ian Duncan Smith has refused membership of the Carlton Club, an ex-officio offering to all Tory leaders, on the grounds of their refusal to admit women members. I think this is an old story, since it came up at the time of his election, possibly as speculation, but it is what a number of newspapers have picked up from IDS's interview with Peter Oborne in the Spectator .  ¶ 12/28/2001 10:51:00 AM

  Although there have been some newspapers over the last two days, we have had four or five days without any real political news. Slightly ruined by pictures on many front pages this morning of Mr & Mrs Blair hand in hand in front of the pyramids.  ¶ 12/28/2001 03:46:00 AM

  What is a country?: Can Afghanistan be a country? John Simpson on the BBC News site.  ¶ 10/08/2001 07:56:00 AM

  Tory leadership battle resumesWill Ken Clarke actually put some effort into this, or is his plan to let IDS win, and then mount a campaign of resistance? Probably unlikely, but whatever IDS says, I doubt that there could really be room in his Tory party for somebody like Clarke.  ¶ 8/14/2001 03:49:00 AM

  What was all the fuss about? Portillo faces betrayal claims. The video diaries of Amanda Platell were rather anodyne. If there were thirty hours, then we only saw her talking for around 20 minutes in the 50 minute programme. Was the rest either less interesting or more? Certainly the comments about Michael Portillo's "people" (who, exactly—we should be told), and more cleanly, Francis Maude, are really rather tame, and no more damaging than the stories about differences of opinion amongst the New Labour team, both in 1997 and 2001. A cynical view (and why not?), might be that the advance spinning was to hype the thing up so that when it happened it was not seen to be so bad, therefore doing Portillo less damage. Amanda Platell came across very sympathetically, but it would have been better TV if we had had much more of her, and particularly looking back on the things she said in the heat of battle. A good opportunity to make politics feel real has been lost.  ¶ 7/15/2001 12:14:00 PM

  Davis quits Tory leadership race. Now things get interesting. It was possible to calculate that had David Davis stayed in the race, he would have lost some votes and that the top three would have ended up very close to one another, in the low fifties. This might have led the Chairman of the 1922 committee to say that all three candidates should go through to the members ballot. Now that almost certainly cannot be achieved, and one of the candidates will be left out having polled only one or two votes less than the two front runners. This will not play well within the broader Tory party, and since the outcome of a Portillo/Duncan Smith race looks to favour Duncan Smith, not a happy short-term future for the Conservatives. The BBC Radio4 programme last night covered the problems the party needs to address over the next two years: it is clear that Ian Duncan Smith will find this harder than most.   ¶ 7/13/2001 05:06:00 AM

  BBC News | ANALYSIS Marker for piece on the Tory party around this broadcast  ¶ 7/12/2001 03:29:00 PM

  Cook defends committee sackings Interesting that Downing Street briefings this morning tried to "distance" Blair from the mess. It will be interesting to see whether there is any form of challenge to the government nominees next Monday when the new committees are voted on. Also interesting in the affair are the comments by Robin Cook setting out changes in the way committees can work. Surely this should be the right of the Commons itself to decide how its committees work, not the Leader of the House, who is really only in charge of the government's business in the Commons.  ¶ 7/12/2001 07:18:00 AM

  Blairs critics pay their price Well, it's case of if you have the power, use it. But the real issue is not the government's cackhandedness, but the complete neutering of the House of Commons, mostly at its own hands, through lack of concern and the nature of the most recent two crops of MPs. To see a debate on the Parliamentary Channel at 11pm being attended by three MPs and a junior government minister is truly depressing.  ¶ 7/11/2001 02:43:00 PM

  The weekend papers carry a number of commentaries about the government's ignoring of London and particularly the state of transport systems. While clearly this has a number of origins, the fact that the government is top-heavy with Scots and pseudo-Scots (the Prime Minister) has something to do with it, as well as the government's complete blind-spot over Ken Livingstone, the London mayor. But commnetators pretty universally identify that this lack of interest in London, following on from Mrs Thatchers well-known antipathy, will have political consequences, and if it is still continuing in three year's time, could prompt independent candidates in a number of London constituenceies, following the example of Kidderminster.  ¶ 7/09/2001 08:44:00 AM

  Two pieces in this week's Spectator point towards Tony Blair's giving up of the Premiership. It is not clear when, but the signs are there. David Owen, at the end of a Boris Johnson interview about his times with Milosevic, says "Tony Blair wants to be President of Europe, and may step down sooner than you think". And Bruce Anderson: "The on dit around Whitehall is that Tony Blair is finding the premiership an increasing strain. The ratio of problems to solutions seems to mount daily, and this is a man who always lives on his electoral nerves. To win next time he will have to deliver, and he does not know how. Life in Brussels would be so much easier."  ¶ 7/06/2001 12:18:00 PM

  The legalise cannabis movement has achieved effective victory. It is clear from both the radio coverage (nothing much on TV) and the weeklies, that the call for debate, and the highlighting of the police experiment in Lambeth has set the seal on the inevitable. Of course, the governing classes, currently rather puritanical Labour limited thinkers, will ignore the calls, but the reality is that from now, there will be no public support for repression of cannabis use. Expect parliamentary legislation within ten years to put into law hat will be commonplace by then.The longer the legislation waits, the more sensible it will be: to legislate early will probably guarantee stupid exclusions and lots of supposed safeguards and limitations: politicians will take at least a generation to catch up.  ¶ 7/06/2001 12:02:00 PM

  Hugo Young's comment in today's Guardian "Ministers blandly go where no one wants to follow" is spot-on. They do not feel themselves to accountable, either to the electorate, or Parliament. It would be great to call it arrogance, but there is insufficient real character to bless it with the term. Hugo Young very accurately catches the lack of real understanding. There is also a long comment due on the inability of the current generation of British politicians to manage. Actually make that most politicians anywhere: it's not what they are for, anyway, but the current governmental arrangements, and the decline in the civil service's capabilities in the face of an increasingly complex world just compound the problem.  ¶ 7/03/2001 03:18:00 PM

  Given the opportunity of a good platform in this evening's Westminster Hour on Radio 4, Michael Ancram offered nothing: no views on the way the Conservative Party might change, no ideas about policies that a new Conservative Party might introduce under his leadership and no sense that the Party might be able to move forward. It's clear that if the Parliamentary party votes for Ancram in large numbers, then the Tories are likely to be in opposition for a more than just another two parliaments, simply because the Tory MPs are so removed from any sense of how the voting population of this country thinks about practically every issue of concern, and that this does not include Europe. Ian Dale's piece in the New Statesman , seems relevant to this: he quotes an edited version of a conversation between William Hague and an aide: "You do realize that [Ancram's] a complete chump, don't you?". "Yes, I know but...he's very solid" says Hague. A future leader of the country, NOT!  ¶ 7/01/2001 03:20:00 PM

  Many of the political commentators in the Sunday press note that the government seems lost, and that Tony Blair, in particular, is not performing well. This can be put down to either 'end-of-termism' (parliament is shortly to go on its summer holidays), or just post-election anti-climax. But it could also be a splendid piece of spinning by the Gordon Brown squad, since he is hardly mentioned at all in the pieces, which is odd since most of what is happening or not happening is down to his interference all over the place. "This government appears to be losing the initiative and running out of momentum when its new mandate is less than a month old. Bizarre isn't the only word for it". Andrew Rawnsley in the Observer  ¶ 7/01/2001 07:12:00 AM

  This is a proper attempt to put togther a weblog on British Politics on a day-to-day basis, recording comment and opinions on the activities and performance of the government and other political actors. British, but probably rarely Scottish, Welsh or Irish.  ¶ 6/29/2001 09:08:00 AM