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It’s not often that a mere Progressive blogger finds himself having a central role in a BBC drama which exposes flaws in how this august institution works.
It all began about a year ago when I was watching Newsnight, as political nerds like us tend to do. The story, not uncommon at that time (or any time, come to that), was about the Blair-Brown rift over when the Prime Minister should go and how the government was falling apart as a consequence.
The item started with the usual sneering introduction by Jeremy Paxman, this time referring to government policy announcements (three weeks before the local elections) as if they were intended to be a distraction from the main media issue of when Blair should step down. A jocular film report followed in which a somewhat strained link was made between the “regeneration” process by which the actors playing Dr Who were changed and the change in the Labour leadership “something many in the Labour Party would dearly like to see right now”. It continued with a 10 second slot in which Tony Blair referred to the alleged divisions as “soap opera” that had been played up by the media. Then came interviews with two anti-Blair Labour Party members and a Daily Mail journalist who all demolished the position Blair had taken up. Finally there was a studio discussion with Andrew Rawnsley of the Observer and Peter Oborne of the Spectator who both agreed that the profound leadership split was real and that the government was more or less in meltdown.
All par for the course, you might say. Yet throughout the item there was no one at all putting the other side of the argument, not even in the winding - up discussion where “the other side” usually gets a hearing even if they are advocating that pigs can defy the law of gravity. Nor were there any of those challenging questions and grimaces that Mr Paxman seems to reserve for government ministers.
Knowing from previous communications with the BBC that such a blatantly one-sided presentation had to be in conflict with the BBC guidelines requiring them ”to avoid bias or an imbalance of views on controversial subjects” particularly in a period leading up to an election, I duly sent in a complaint on this basis. Nearly a year later, after the complaint had been dismissed at the BBC editorial level it was considered on appeal by the last meeting of the Governors’ Programme Complaints Committee (now the BBC Trust’s Editorial Standards Committee).
Their finding, which can be clicked on here (page 11 of the December ’06 report), was that the appeal was “not upheld”. More importantly the Committee’s explanation of their decision excluded any reference to the actual basis of my appeal i.e. that there had been an imbalance in the views presented. The technique (which those who have made complaints will be familiar with) was to spread the focus of my complaint to other largely irrelevant matters: then to tick off these more easily defended points and hope that no one will notice that the core of the complaint had not been addressed.
The only justification that came anywhere near to the actual terms of my complaint was their claim that they had been impartial because “a range of opinions had been sought”, notwithstanding that the only dissenting opinion they could come up with in the ten minutes that the piece ran was that of the Prime Minister himself in the 10 second slot that had been allotted to him . The fact that they say they also tried to get a Minister or MP to appear in the programme is no defence since the omission could have been made good in other ways. As regards the discussion, they “were satisfied with the choice of guests since they represented publications from different sides of political opinion and had written extensively on the working relationship between Blair and Brown”, again notwithstanding that both were renowned for writing up the relationship in terms of a deep and poisonous division.
When I challenged the Chair of the Editorial Standards Committee, Richard Tait, about how the decision had been justified the reply was that the decision did not need to be reopened because he was confident that “the Committee did absorb and consider all the material it received”. He also refused to change the website presentation of the case to reflect my objections to the rationale of the decision, as had been done on a previous occasion.
Now we all have our opinions on the importance of the differences at the top of this Labour government and Newsnight were perfectly entitled to run an item about them, even if the by-line was, in Paxman’s characteristic words, “how much longer can Tony Blair keep the day job without telling us when he’s going to give it all up?” What they are not entitled to do, under their own guidelines, is to present an almost completely unchallenged line of argument that the government of the day is in disarray, three weeks before local elections. Nor was the BBC Trust entitled to seemingly ignore the main thrust of the complaint in coming to their decision.
There is also a wider consideration here which is relevant to this kind of website since this story goes to the heart of how some parts of the BBC are interpreting the impartiality rule. It seems to me that huge efforts are made to provide a balancing view (however unrepresentative) to the “official line” (e.g. on climate change) but that this is not always the case where the balancing view needs to come from the government side. It’s almost as if some programme-makers regard certain “official lines” as so obviously wrong according to their conventional wisdom that they do not see the need for them to be properly represented in their programmes. Such arrogance is bad for the Beeb and even worse for our democracy. They should not be allowed to get away with it.
PS. The BBC Trust were given the opportunity to comment on the factual content of this post but declined to do so.
This simian apologies for its recent reticence and lack of posting. In truth, the uncovering of a vast right wing conspiracy has shattered this monkey's faith in the world. I have been huddled inside with the radio up to baffle the bugs. I have had my metal fillings changed for plastic. I have lined the inside of my homburg with tinfoil.
I had long know that Sir Patrick Moore has been a Tory and is now a supporter of UKIP - see him in scrofulous Churchillian mode. I remember him, of course, as the host of Gamemaster, on Channel 4. But I recently discovered that Johnny Ball, he of Playschool and Think of a Number, has been writing for the Freedom Association. That is, of course, the right-wing libertarian organisation set up by Norris McWhirter, himself a feature on Record Breakers.
That's been enough to send this monkey into a flip. Was the whole of children's broadcaster infiltrated... What seeds have been planted subliminally in this simian's cranium? And what next? Is Fred Harris a survivalist?
I've written before about the fact that Cameron's support for flexible working was only skin deep. Today's FT confirmed what we'd suspected for a long time. In the end, business is the Tories' Pied Piper, and the same old tune about how new flexible working rules will create a 'regulatory burden' has sent the rat Cameron scurrying away from earlier statements about his commitment to flexible working. Similar arguments were made about the Minimum Wage, so no surprise that Cameron failed to back that as well.
Instead Cameron will rely on that successful fallback of exhorting businesses to be fluffier in their employment practices because evidence shows that those companies with flexible working options have more committed staff and an improved bottom line. While this may indeed be true, relying on business case arguments for corporate social responsibility is a dangerous path to tread. What happens if worker's rights don't improve the bottom line, but are simply best practice to safeguard individuals in the interests of a better society? This is the whole problem with Cameron - he's only talking this talk because it butters up liberal opinion formers, but when the chips are down he doesn't actually believe any of it. If he did, he would be supporting Beverley Hughes' arguments that all workers should have some access to flexibility, rather than just those with young children or other relatives who need care.
Tories are wringing their hands about lack of family stability, poor levels of mental health, the commercialisation of children, etc. but are failing to look at practical ways of ensuring that citizens can balance their work with their caring responsibilities for others as well as themselves. Extending flexible working shouldn't be about bottom lines, it should be about enabling people to create wealth without damaging their ability to have a family, to care for a loved one, or to take a sabbatical to fulfill a dream of seeing the world. So far it's only Labour that has had the vision and power to put this into practice, and it doesn't look like the Tories will be following suit.
The Telegraph today prints the laws since 1997 its readers would most like to scrap. Since many of them voted to scrap the 1972 European Communities Act, maybe it wouldn’t be unfair to suggest that they are all living in a timewarp, and haven’t yet moved into the 21st Century. What is more a sign of the times, however, is their near unanimous desire to get rid of the Human Rights Act introduced in 1998. One such reader demands with a flourish that:
“A Conservative administration should repeal any law passed under Labour which removed or reduced our freedoms, so hard won by our forebears. It should remove the Human Rights Act from the statute book and repeal or amend laws granting supranational rights to others.”
It irks me that someone can talk about hard won ‘freedoms’ while in the same breath argue that we should abolish rights, and supranational ones at that. Freedoms and rights are inextricably linked. Most British people would agree that freedom of expression is an essential part of the make-up of our democracy and society. Our forbears did fight hard to guarantee it.
Thomas Paine was accused of sedition when his book The Rights of Man was published in 1791, was prevented from publishing it and fled to France. Such a freedom happens to be safeguarded now under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, incorporated into UK law through the Human Rights Act.
Article 4 – The prohibition of slavery and forced labour – takes on added poignancy after this weekend’s 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade. Article 8 protects your right to a private life, while Article 11 protects your right to peaceful assembly.
The backlash against rights has been a result of the right-wing print media digging up scare stories about criminals being let loose on our streets, when the truth is that many of these are the result of system incompetence rather than the Human Rights Act itself. A good guide to debunking the myths about human rights has been produced by Liberty. Many of the myths are based on fears about the British way of life being eroded (hence the confused reader’s reference to our ‘forbears’). Yet these arguments have been made by conservative reactionaries for centuries – Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France argued that the concept of democracy and the ‘rights of man’ attacked the essence of the British constitution and psyche of the British people.
Given that David Cameron has suggested he would get rid of the Human Rights Act, those of us on the left should do more to celebrate what was, and remains, a piece of progressive legislation enacted to protect rights which our forbears truly did fight for.
Thanks to those of you who attended Progress's third First 100 Days event on Tuesday, More justice, more equality?
The panel comprised James Purnell, Jenny Watson of the Equal Opportunities Commission, Kate Green of Child Poverty Action Group, and Sadiq Khan, who we were particularly grateful to for joining the panel at the last minute. Jane Roberts, our patron, did an excellent job chairing the event.
All had excellent, interesting things to say on what is such a broad topic, notably on on family policy and rights at work, but the overriding concern on budget day was certainly economic inequality. All the panelists had something to say about this, as it so often feeds into other forms of equality: Jenny Watson, for example, pointed out that it was the poorest mothers who often took the maternity leave.
There was agreement that a the desire to make Britain a fairer, and yes, an economically more equal place was something that traditionally made Labour distinctive as a party. Kate Green argued for that the government's rhetoric and actions in recent years had not reflected this, despite the real gains made in lifting families and pensioners out of poverty. She pointed out that Labour had rallied the country behind the cause of social justice back in 1997, and called for it to rekindle this mood.
James Purnell agreed. He proposed an ambitious new goal for government, to set itself the long-term target of eliminating the relationship between birth and life chances, to be regularly audited, rather like climate change. Denmark had shown it was possible, he said, and it would provide a real dividing line with the Tories, seriously putting their newfound compassion to the test.
This dividing line, though - has the tax-cutting of Brown's last budget actually 'blurred' it, as Polly Toynbee argues in the Guardian today? This has to be the worry, especially when the Taxpayers' Alliance (of all people) have described Wednesday's budget as 'George Osborne's first' ...
Hastings Today carries a piece announcing the resignation of a second Tory Councillor in the beleaguered borough of Hastings. The first resignation from Daniel Poulter was on the grounds of pursuing a career in London. This time it's because Cllr Michael Lambrechs has been living for a number of months outside of the locality - in Spain. No wonder he's described as having "an easy going attitude" and "boundless enthusiasm". Wouldn't we all?
The Tory hierarchy in Hastings obviously don't give a monkeys for Cameron's hand-wringing over cheap flights - they flew Lambrech's back from Tarragona on the Med for a key budget vote which was on a knife-edge. Let's hope that the two by-elections in May deprive them of their majority.
In a recent speech to SERA Hilary Benn has argued that the Labour party must put the environment at the heart of its renewal.
Benn argued that all too often, environment campaigners have been on the sidelines of party debates and that green ideas have often failed to make it into the political mainstream. He told SERA that he agreed with David Miliband who has argued that the green movement has been seen, rightly or wrongly, as being anti-growth. Benn said that the idea that growth is bad is not only politically unpalatable but it is also immoral. Why? Because, argued Benn, it hurts the world's poor the most. During his stint at DfID Benn said he had seen first hand how economic growth is the surest way to lift people out of poverty, to provide them with jobs, with healthcare and with the chance to go to school.
He argued that environmental politics had to be fair politics and said that David Cameron's proposals on air taxed would do little to cut emissions but would do a lot to take money from the poor. Labour politics must be green politics said Benn and green politics must be Labour politics. He said that Labour should make being a member make more attractive, that historically we have recruited a lot of people, only for them to drift away from the party. Labour should host debates on local issues in venues away from constituency party meeting rooms and offices. It should be talking about the things that the people we hope to represent are talking about. We need to listen more. According to Benn if we make Labour the party that makes the difference on environmental issues, it will bring more people, and more active people, to the party than anything else.
For Benn green politics offers Labour a once in a generation opportunity for renewal.
Is Gordon Brown about to unveil tax breaks for households that generate their own green energy? Will he use his eleventh - and possibly final - budget to challenge the environmental credentials of David Cameron?
I think the answer to both questions is probably yes. Most commentators think that the Chancellor will contrast his "carrots and sticks" approach to tackling climate change with the Tory party's planned clampdown on air travel.
To further highlight the difference in approach, Gordon Brown is expected to increase road tax on the worst polluting vehicles while reducing excise duties for owners of more fuel-efficient cars.
Education is expected to benefit substantially from this summer's comprehensive spending review with Brown probably announcing increased direct payments to all primary and all secondary schools.
Perhaps the single most important measure that can be introduced in the first 100 days of any government is one that makes democracy work properly. By that I do not mean making it more transparent or extending it beyond the present confines. What I mean is simply equipping people to use it rationally for the common good.
You can have the most perfect democratic processes imaginable but if they are being freely exploited by rabble-rousing radio and TV presenters, newspapers, bloggers, politicians, mad mullahs and potty priests to bend opinion their way then democracy per se can run counter to the benefit of all. You have only to look at the right-wing pieces on climate change referred to in Jessica Asato's latest post to see what I mean. Not to mention the twisted logic of most of the comments on a typical political website (not this one,of course).
In the final analysis the only way to combat such an abuse of the system is not to limit the expression of opinion (except in the most extreme of cases) but to give people the means of seeing through the debating tricks frequently employed by those seeking to shape public attitudes. In these days when thinking clearly can mean the difference between joining or not joining a terrorist group it is even more vital to immunise people in this way against the virus of false argument.
Fortunately there is a 'vaccine' in existence which does just that. It's Straight and Crooked Thinking, a classic book written in 1930 by a Cambridge psychology lecturer, Robert H Thouless which is as relevant today as it ever was. Those who have read it are effusive with their praise. Here are a few quotes from the reviews.
Reviewer (1)
"I last read this book about 15 years ago as a student and the lessons of the 38 dishonest tricks used in arguments detailed in the book have left a life-lasting impression on me."
Reviewer (2)
"Reading this book opened my eyes to exactly how badly crooked thinking runs our society today: how little emphasis we place on actual evidence and argument, what kind of dishonest argumentation our politicians and news providers use, etc."
Reviewer (3)
"This book should be required reading for anyone that takes public policy issues seriously. It explains the various techniques and ploys by which emotionally loaded words and various debating tricks can transform an intellectually honest debate into a propaganda campaign, and gives techniques to counter these ploys. I cannot recommend it highly enough"
Reviewer (4)
"This is one of the most useful books that I have ever read. The author points out how debates are often lead away from the main issues by using arguments that appeal to emotion rather than to facts.He clearly describes how it is done and how to avoid being lead away from the issues by such devices. Important reading for anyone who has been in a debate and wonders why the opponent didn't sound convincing and yet you were unable to answer him/her."
Although the book was written so long ago and is now out of print, it is no doubt possible to reprint it and bring it up to date with a view to giving it a prominent place in the school curriculum. Such a simple step could quickly transform the quality of our democracy and put many a political scoundrel out of a job. Maybe that's why the book has not been given the publicity that is due to it - until now.
Normally what stops politicians doing anything about problems we all think need fixing, is that they are too worried about being politically outflanked when they propose electorally unpopular solutions. In that sense the publication of the draft Climate Change Bill and the Tory announcements on related issues this week, give rise to great cause for optimism. Forcing people to change their behaviour when it comes to flying, driving, and using less energy in their homes may be electorally difficult, but at least disgruntled voters won’t have anywhere else to go.
But hold on a minute. Enter stage right last week’s Channel 4 documentary, and a vociferous response from right wing newspapers. All of a sudden the consensus looks less secure. Today’s headline in the Express raged ‘Now green spies will snoop in your homes’ while an op-ed piece by Leo McKinstry had the audacity to claim that ‘green fascists plan to crush your freedoms’. (And while we’re on the subject of fascism, read Leo McKinstry on Michael Howard’s ‘mild’ immigration proposals). The Mail today argued that ‘so much of the science upon which the green politicians base their campaign is at best unproven, possibly even wrong’ and suggested that people who challenge the facts on global warming are unfairly being branded in the same way as Holocaust deniers. Even measures which will end up saving some households hundreds of pounds a year on energy bills are transformed by right-wing writers into irrational panic responses to unproven science.
Well it isn’t proven science in the sense that all scientists agree on exactly how global warming happens, although almost all the proper peer-reviewed literature thinks that human carbon emissions have played a big part. There are some scientists who challenge one or other link in the chain of evidence, but in a field where there is almost no such thing as certainty, I’d rather take my bet on the 80% who argue the link between climate change and carbon emissions is proven. To put it another way, you can find people to say that Genesis in the Bible is literally true and that evolution is ‘just a theory’; you can find scientists to challenge the link between smoking and cancer; but we would be wrong to base policy on these minority hypotheses.
George Monbiot (not someone I tend to agree with that often) made the same point in his Guardian piece yesterday. The Daily Mail et al would have us wait for the link between carbon and climate change to be proven beyond all doubt. But what if it’s too late by then? Any rational and responsible government would look at the evidence and act in order to create an insurance policy for its citizens. In any case, there are reasons why even without the threat of global warming we ought to be taking steps to reduce our reliance on energy. Not least because fossil fuels are running out and we need to give time to develop alternative energy production. Moreover it’s the Daily Mail nimbys who moan about the incursion of new housing into the countryside, but if we continue creating the amount of waste we currently do, there will be more landfill and less land.
I’d like to hope that David Miliband is right when he writes in the draft Bill that there is ‘no longer any real debate over the fact that climate change is happening and that man-made emissions are the main cause’. I guess it’s too much to hope that the right-wing press which was responsible for scares over the MMR vaccine could try and be responsible when it came to climate change science. But one thing is clear, the draft Bill is a giant step forward in taking the lead on reducing carbon emissions, the difficult part will be convincing the general public to act in their best interests.
According to the Tory Shadow Scottish Secretary David Mundell MP: There is a "simple lack of thinkers" on the Conservative benches at Holyrood, they don't have the capacity to formulate their own policy independently. The next Holyrood manifesto will recycle existing policy positions and that the Scottish party "don't get" the new moderation of the Westminster party.
In a memo - leaked to the Daily Record - reveals Tory chiefs have completely lost confidence in their Scottish team, including leader Annabel Goldie. Mundell's confidential briefing to David Cameron emerged as the Tory leader prepared to head to Perth for a pre-election speech to rally the party faithful. The four-page memo claims there is a "simple lack of thinkers" among the 17 Tory MSPs and they are incapable of coming up with new policies. Mundell, an MSP from 1999 to 2005, also told Cameron that Goldie has been slated for "lack of activity" and MSPs have failed to embrace the party's moderate new approach, saying they "don't get it".
No wonder so many Tories are keen on an English parliament!
International women’s day should be a time to reflect the achievements for women but to also remember the stark inequalities that women still face. 40 years after legislation to allow legal abortions – the rights are under attack; 30 years after equal pay legislation – the gender pay gap is at 17% for full time working women and 38% for part-time; on representation, participation in postgraduate education, and treatment in the criminal justice system the inequality continues. The agenda for women's equality must be a truly international one, woman across the world still suffer most from illiteracy, ill health, low wages, domestic violence, HIV and poor representation.
This weekend Action for Southern Africa (ACTSA), NUS Women’s Campaign and Amicus the Union are teaming up to hold a rally in solidarity with the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions who are campaigning against the regressive regime for President Mugabe. The campaign is calling for Dignity for Zimbabwean women who have had their right to sanitary protection removed after tax hikes on tampons and the like. Women in urban areas are using newspaper instead, in rural areas bark or nothing at all, sentenced to sitting outside for days at a time. This indignity means women’s role in civil society is seriously diminished, women are becoming infected my the alternatives they are using and as a result being beaten by their husbands who believe the infections to be sexually transmitted.
The demonstration and rally is from 1pm to 4pm in Trafalgar Square, this Saturday (10th March 2007). Speakers include:
- Lovemore Matombo, President, Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions
- Lucia Matibenga, Vice President, Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions
- Baroness Amos, Leader House of Lords
- Frances O'Grady, Deputy General Secretary, TUC
- Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London
- Joan Armatrading, Singer
- Gillian Anderson, Actress
- Glenys Kinnock, MEP
- Kat Stark, NUS Women's Officer
- Ruqayyah Collector, NUS Black Students’ Officer
- Kate Hoey, MP, Chair APPG Zimbabwe
- Anna Chancellor, Actress
- Henry Olonga, Cricketer and Musician
I look forward to joining other progressive women and men this weekend. For more information see: http://www.actsa.org/Pages/Page.php?pID=1022&title=WomenDignity!Period.
Last night’s Progress debate on the women’s vote was instructive for those people who are gloomy that women are reverting to type and swarming back to the Conservatives. Julia Clark from Ipsos-MORI told us that in fact women’s satisfaction with Cameron is pretty low at 0 or –1. In particular, women in focus groups raised the hypocrisy of Cameron on his bike trailed by chauffeur episode and the fact that as an Etonian, he doesn’t seem to be particularly in touch with their lives. Many of the speakers, who included Meg Munn and Tessa Jowell, exhorted us to keep thinking positive and highlight the many excellent things the government has driven through which benefit women. But the fact is that even though women aren’t switching to the Tories, they aren’t particularly enamoured with Labour either and one of the reasons which was highlighted again and again in the meeting was the problems women face in accessing high quality, affordable childcare.
This is underlined by a report out today by PricewaterhouseCoopers which cites the increasing cost of childcare as being responsible for a 40% fall in women holding senior management positions in FTSE 350 companies in the last five years. The other explanation, which the report authors suggested could be a factor, is a growth in the number of women who want to become entrepreneurs thereby ditching the traditional corporate ladder model. While it’s tempting to think that women who strike out on their own are a symbol of the ‘new economy’ of sole traders selling their ‘knowledge’ and reaping the financial, and flexible working, benefits, it’s also important to highlight the pitfalls. As a freelancer myself, I know the dangers of taking on too much work. Your employer can’t physically see you in the office every day and it’s easy to forget the sheer amount of time that goes into managing your own accounts, stationery etc.
On top of that, women miss out on the corporate pension, storing up poorer times in their old age. They are unlikely to have recourse to a union to guarantee them fair wages, and the opportunity for collective bargaining is non-existent. If you’re working on your own you also often lose out on the sociable aspects of the working environment. While it’s true that you have the joys of being your own boss, you also don’t have colleagues to bounce ideas off, and you have to work harder to keep your industry knowledge up to date. If you have children, work and home life can merge, making life more stressful not less. This is why the Government must make the provision of affordable, high quality childcare a reality, rather than just an ambition. Senior women shouldn’t be forced into taking the option of setting up on their own – they should have the same opportunity to become entrepreneurs as men, i.e. when they are ready and if it’s in the interests of their career.
And of course none of this is as difficult for those women who don’t have the opportunity to work in a FTSE 350 company in the first place. With a typical nursery place having risen by 27% in the last five years according to the Daycare Trust, poorer women may not have the choice of working at all. It is obvious that this is something the next leader of the Labour party will have to make a priority if we are going to guarantee that the progress women have made in the workplace isn’t going to go backwards, and to ensure that mothers who up until now haven’t had the opportunities of working, do so in the future.
MPs are voting as I type on the options for reform of the House of Lords, with the possibilities ranging from 100% elected to 100% appointed, as well as a motion on abolishing the Lords altogether, as well as a motion on giving the remaining hereditary peers the boot (coupled with a motion from David Cameron — little noticed, this — to retain the hereditaries until Lords reform is completed). It's crucial that this time around, MPs vote for substantive reform of the Upper House — and don't leave us with what Jack Straw has described as the "train wreck" of February 2003, when all options for reform were rejected and the issue was once again kicked into the long grass.
The only acceptable outcome from tonight's votes is a majority elected Upper House of some description. This is necessary not because of some of the politically-motivated arguments that some MPs have been making these last two days — that we need to, for instance, "restore trust" in a democracy which has been, they say, tarnished by this Government — but because of simple arguments from first principles. As David Furness posted on these pages a few days ago, "it is time to assert the principle that those who make our laws should be chosen by the people".
Other countries are entitled to look at Britain's governance and wonder what on earth we're doing when it comes to the Second Chamber. Its average age is 68; there is a massive bias in favour of peers from London and the south of England; there is representation for one faith group but no others; and there is no accountability to the electorate in the form of ballots, except for a laughable method by which hereditary peers canvass among each other for one of the 92 places should one of them expire. In no other country in the world with second chambers is there this level of patronage. It is past time that it ended.
Supporters of the status quo — and they are mostly Tories, who delight in the manner in which the Lords defeats Labour Governments with depressing regularity, while bowing to the whims of Conservative Governments with similar consistency — have to answer a simple, irrefutable question: why should those who make the law of this land not be able to be thrown out by the people of this land?
Everyone has their own favourite method of composing the Upper House. My own is for a 100% elected House, renamed the House of Representatives, with precisely the same number of Members as the Commons, elected on the same constituency boundaries in the middle of a Commons term. They would be banned from taking up casework, and the Upper House would be a revising and amending Chamber only, with no legislation first introduced there and no Ministers being drawn from its ranks. It can still have Committees, and call experts before it to examine the Government's proposals. But those experts do not deserve to sit in our Parliament without putting themselves before the people first. This is not unthinkable; despite the slander thrown their way, some MPs are, believe it or not, experts in their respective fields.
To give Parliament more legitimacy, it is crucial that MPs choose the progressive path and decide to support as high a percentage of the Upper House being elected as possible. It is not a panacea to restore trust in our political process. But it is a decision which would be derived from the most basic democratic principles of all.
In my previous post I drew attention to the new politics of well-being as the Big Idea of the 21st century. Here I provide a brief outline of how we might live in a society where the priority is maximising such well-being rather than maximising the Gross National Product .
The year is 2020. Despite the best efforts of Cameron's Conservatives and the oppositionist Left New Labour is still in office. It has achieved this by cleverly adapting its policies to the well-being agenda that dramatically captured the public's imagination in the later years of the first decade. Initially, the temptation was to dismiss these ideas as left-wing loonery or New Age nonsense (particularly as they were being championed by the touchy feely Tories). However,in the end, wiser counsel prevailed and by showing how only they could deliver on what needed to be done New Labour has reigned supreme.
The first thing to be noticed about this new social landscape is that there is less hurry and scurry. With a better work-life balance, people have time to dawdle and day-dream. Congestion charging and the slower pace of life have much reduced the flow of traffic. The wail of emergency claxons is no longer the backdrop to street sounds. Road and other kinds of rage are a thing of the past. Hospitals are fewer, doctors surgeries are emptier as stress-related illnesses subside.
In the high-street, there is less advertising. Amidst the hoardings that remain are posters proclaiming that "happiness is not having what you want but wanting what you have", "enough is enough!" and "meet needs not greed". Some betting and off-licence shops have been replaced by well-being centres, a supermarkets by a local produce and health food store, a burger-bar by a healthy eatery. Parks outnumber car-parks and they ,not the pub, are the first port of call to calm down.
In the workplace (where the guiding principle is there's a place for work but work must be put in its place), absenteeism and presenteeism is a rarity. With the spread of co-ownership and greater emphasis on welfare at work, employees are more contented and therefore more productive. Job-sharers are finding that two heads are better than one. Larger numbers in employment working shorter hours mean that there's even someone to answer that telephone call! And there has been a shift to the relatively lower-paid educational, caring and creative professions as the culture of sensible consumption gains ground.
In the economy at large the changes have not produced the dire consequences that the pessimists feared. Working smarter has, for the most part, offset the impact of reduced working time and global competitiveness has been maintained. Certainly the growth rate is not as high as it could be but it's sufficient to improve material standards without harming the quality of life.
Public spaces are alive whatever the time of day or day of the week. In well frequented cafes and bars, people are engaged in long animated conversations. Binge drinking and other forms of anti social behaviour are in sharp decline thanks to character-building lessons now being taught in the schools. Relationship skills also learned at school and conflict resolution centres are helping them to be nicer to each other.
Subsidised theatres, museums and art-galleries are milling with enthusiastic spectators. Generously public-supported sports facilities are in much greater use. Musical groups, dancing, street theatre, arts and crafts are thriving as people have time to get themselves another life away from the workplace - aided by the emphasis in the education system on learning how to live..
People are discovering that their incomes go further as they become more choosy about what they buy and have more time for DIY. Community allotments are flourishing. PTA, and community groups are hives of activity. Political involvement has escalated due to the adoption of EDD (Electronic Deliberative Democracy) where issues are brought to life on-screen with attention-grabbing graphics followed by a balanced debate and electronic voting. Generally, political discourse is being conducted with less personalisation, exaggeration and distortion thanks to the introduction of logical thinking and emotional intelligence into the school curriculum. This is reflected in the media which is now providing a better balance between the good news and the bad news.
At home, gadgets are powered from rooftop photovoltaic panels or mini-wind generators. Less television is being watched, families are not so fragmented into their virtual reality worlds and books are actually being read. People are also finding time for each other and for doing things for themselves rather than just buying life over the counter all the time. With getting and spending no longer the dominant activity there is also time for all those extra tasks associated wth "going green" to combat global warming and carrying out other social responsibilities. Helping hands are being extended to the family and the less fortunate as the ethos of "being warm" replaces the ethos of "being cool".
Beyond the treadmill society life is about what REALLY matters!
The Tories may be desperately trying to rein in their unruly Policy Commissions with promises that any future policies will have to pass “sound money tests”, but they should be just as worried about whether their policies pass ‘sound’ tests full stop.
Despite talking the good talk about flexible working, for example, I’ve just found out that one of the members of the Tories’ Social Justice Policy Commission is Kathy Gyngell, a Thatcher groupy and founder of the ‘let’s go back to the 1950s’ group, Full-Time Mothers. Their website asks visitors insightful questions such as “Are you tired of seeing your family's taxes diverted towards encouraging more childcare and absentee parenting?” According to a document put together by Hazel Blears, Kathy Gyngell has said that "When a child's mother dies, that is a terrible tragedy. But we impose that tragedy on every child when we leave them to go to work". So she’d not have much truck with Cameron’s pledge that: “flexible working and high quality, affordable childcare (should) become the basic entitlement of every working family”. I guess Cameron’s choice of Gyngell to sit on the Commission shows just how deep his commitment to flexible working goes…
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