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« March 2007 |
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| May 2007 »
The Labour Party has upped the game in online campaigning by launching http://www.betterwithlabour.co.uk yesterday. A simple to use, yet sophisticated, website sets out the Government’s health successes - where and how improvements are affects our lives. You can see additional spending and fallen waiting lists by Primary Care Trust. The website gives the opportunity to ask Labour’s Health Ministerial Team questions on health policy and do your personal health prescription.
The information presented pictorially with Google Maps shows a reformed NHS system, with unprecedented government support and more nurses, doctors, midwives and consultants than any point in our history. Despite headlines of NHS decline – the NHS is still on good form and the Labour Party are being rightly unashamedly making it clear that Labour’s NHS is: saving lives, treating more patients, quicker than ever before.
The website shares the history of the NHS as an integral part of the Labour Party's history that was blighted by 18 years of Tory misrule. This website should be supported, promoted and distributed as far and wide.
It is good news to see the Labour Party continuing to lead on the agenda of online campaigning and more importantly giving party members and community leaders the facts to be equally confident in telling the success story that is the heavily invested in NHS that we can all be proud of. Well done Labour Party HQ!!!
The 90s are back. Or at least John Major is. As Steve Richards points out in an excellent piece, it is the tenth anniversary of his leaving office next week. Now, I wouldn’t go as far as Matthew Parris in today’s Times, suggesting Major for mayor.
But Richards is absolutely right in stressing Major’s incredible popularity with the British public. The press may have despised him, and his party may have been self-destructing, but he managed to win the 1992 election. Right to the end, he remained far more popular than his party. And the words he used at the beginning of his premiership, about a country at ease with itself, a classless society – these rang out widely.
In that sense it is unfair that it is his name that now denotes an era of political failure. It should be called instead after those in his party who couldn’t stop picking fights, briefing and plotting, albeit often in the name of ideological purity - perhaps 'the Bastard years' instead of the Major years. It’s a warning too, to any Labour MPs who want to populate their next leader’s cabinet with Portillos and Heseltines and arcane ideological battles over the private provision of public healthcare and education.
The English asparagus has started. After months of cabbages, turnips and greens, there is little to compare to the excitement a seasonal eater feels when the first steamed stems hit the plate. This valet will wear out his wrist whisking hollandaise and then make salads, soups, stir-fries and tarts. But by mid-June, when the season ends, I will be almost sick of the stuff. It’s too much of a good thing.
So it is, I am afraid, with Jane Austen. Yes, witty. Yes, wonderful characters. Yes, dry and yet deeply humane. But enough! After a complete set of her works on ITV, countless films, Bridget Jones, and even a fictionalisation of her life itself.. enough! It need a break. But I can’t have one because there is just something about the emerging field at the next election that reminds inescapably of Jane Austen.
I will walk you through it, gentle reader. Let us begin with George Osborne, the future baronet. Then there is David Cameron himself, an unmistakable esquire with good breeding and private income. These two young blades fluttered the collective heart of the Tory membership. But will our heroine, the electorate, choose them or Gordon Browne, who has far more often been compared to Emily Bronte’s brooding figure of Heathcliff?
Watching Cameron’s recent PPB of him walking round the country asking ordinary people questions – and then kindly answering them for them, I was remind of Mr Wikham’s appearance in Pride and Prejudice: “His appearance was greatly in his favour; he had all the best part of beauty, a fine countenance, a good figure, and very pleasing address. The introduction was followed up on his side by a happy readiness of conversation …”
However, tempting as it is, we can’t compare the next election to Pride and Prejudice. First, David Cameron is not the villain that Mr Wickham is. Nor can Gordon Brown stop playing Heathcliff and become Mr Darcy, stiff and proud but with a hidden heart and kindness. Wickham and Darcy are contemporaries, brought up together. The next election will be a battle between generations not siblings. So Pride and Prejudice is only superficially attractive as a comparison.
Let’s look Emma instead. Here’s the introduction of Frank Churchill, the much-hyped young single man:
“He was presented to her, and she did not think too much had been said in his praise; he was a very good looking young man; height, air, address, all were unexceptionable… She felt immediately that she should like him; and there was a well-bred ease of manner, and a readiness to talk, which convinced her that he came intending to be acquainted with her, and that acquainted they soon must be."
The family friend Mr Knightley is an older man, less winning man. But it is he, in the end, who succeeds in winning her love:
“Leaving Randalls, and falling naturally into a comparison of the two men, she felt, that pleased as she had been to see Frank Churchill, and really regarding him as she did with friendship, she had never been more sensible of Mr. Knightley's high superiority of character.”
Well, what ever the outcome, whether serious books on the meaning of courage or the romance of Notting Hill win out, let’s look to Andrew Davies to write the dramatisation of the next election campaign.
Some time ago I filled in a questionnaire for Compass as part of the input for their excellent, if controversial, publication, The Good Society (a review of which can be accessed on the Progress home page).The questionnaire covered all aspects of the kind of society we should be aiming for and in the belief that my answers might be of interest to a wider audience I am reproducing them here, with the kind permission of Compass. My overall stance is what I call "pragmatic idealism", which inevitably means that some will see my responses as too pragmatic whilst others will regard them as too idealistic. What do YOU think?
1 What do you think are (or will be) the five or six principles that a good social democrat government should use to guide it?
1Sustainability.
2 Promoting individual and social well-being (encompassing a better work-life balance and harmonious human relationships).
3 More democracy and a greater distribution of power.
4 Equipping people to use the aforesaid in a responsible manner.
5 Greater equality
2 What do you think are (or will be) the key issues the democratic left needs to deal with in the next 20 or 30 years?
1 Effectively addressing global warming by reining back rampant consumerism.
2 Securing and holding on to power in an increasingly selfish, acquisitive and competitive society.
3 Achieving the right balance between personal liberty and protection from anti-social behaviour and terrorism.
4 Raising public consciousness on the major issues in a materialistic society dominated by trivial distractions.
5 Getting the media to act in a more responsible way (to enable democracy to work properly).
3 If you could enact three policies what would they be?
1 A properly formulated 35 hour week.
2 The compulsory introduction of logical thinking, emotional intelligence, and life skills into the school curriculum.
3 Stringent controls on advertising.
4 How should we approach the issue of immigration?
By thinking it through in an ideologically -free manner in terms of the ability of the indigenous population to accomodate greater numbers and different cultures at any one time (taking account of the local "carrying" capacities and prevailing levels of consciousness).
5 How should we govern our public services? What should be the role of the private providers?
Public/private provision should be determined by what works best to achieve the desired outcome and by what people are prepared to pay in taxes. Thus if people are not prepared to pay the higher taxes required for having an excellent school or hospital in every neighbourhood then the government has to be more discriminating about how limited public funds are to be used, bringing in the private sector to supplement them if necessary. PFI's are acceptable if the end result is an affordable, better service even if someone is making a profit in the process.
6 What are the key implications of environmental sustainability for policy? In particular what can we do as a country unilaterally?
The main implication is that we shall all have to learn to live with less than what profit-hungry Big Business is trying to foist upon us.. As a country we can set an example by aiming for a higher all round quality of life even if this makes us slightly less competitive and produces a slightly lower material standard of living than would have otherwise been the case.
7 How should we pay for what we want to do? What can we tax and in what way?
By ceasing to refer to the tax burden and recognising that taxes are the price we pay for civilisation. We should tax the "bads" in society whilst ensuring that this does not adversely affect the worst off.
8 How should Labour reform itself in order to take social democratic politics forward?
The Labour Party should continue reforms designed to ensure that it will not be hi-jacked by ideologically -pure zealots who seem to prefer the freedom of opposition to the responsibilities of power. We should identify with progressive causes but resist utopian demands. Always rember that politics is the art of the possible and that the search for perfection is the enemy of the possible.
Yorkshire Tory candidates for the local election in May are clearly embarrassed by having David Cameron as their leader. On the walls of the offices of Haltemprice and Howden Conservative Association you will find photos of Margaret Thatcher, William Hague and David Davis - strangely there is no photo of the current Tory leader.
According to the Times none of the local Tory campaign literature for the May elections feature David Cameron's name let alone his photo. One local Tory candidate - a Mr Ros Jump - told the Times: “Cameron is seen as a southern softie. I don’t go out of my way to talk about David Cameron. As far as everyone around here is concerned, David Davis is the leader.”
We've always known the Tories have been good at raking in the money, but Conservative Way Forward's latest bash really shows the lengths they are prepared to go. On June 7th, Conservatives are gathering together at a black tie ball, price £100 a head (just under two week's worth of JobSeeker's Allowance) at a 'prestigious Central London venue', to celebrate 25 years of invading the Falkland's. The pitch for the dinner being run by Symposium Events, outlined in full here, reads like the opening to a Mel Gibson epic:
On the 5th April 1982, a large British task force set out on a 7,500 mile journey to liberate a group of tiny windswept islands in the South Atlantic. On 1st May, 25 years ago this spring, the Royal Navy embarked upon the biggest combined military action to take place since the Second World War. In the subsequent battle for the liberation of the occupied British territory - more than 1,000 men lost their lives.
So to commemorate the loss of more than 1,000 lives the Conservatives thought it would be good to have a jolly good knees up, with no less than the Lady herself in attendance. Whether or not the invasion of the Falklands was a good idea in the first place, this strikes me as a particularly disgraceful way to commemorate it.
And let's not forget how the whole episode arose in the first place. The Argentine junta would almost certainly not have invaded - and a thousand lives would therefore have been saved - if they had believed the British government had the will to defend the Falklands (let alone come and take them back). Ministers had warned Mrs Thatcher in 1980-81 that the Government needed either to give the islands to Argentina or turn them into a fortress; she had refused to do either. The 1981 Defence Review had slashed the surface fleet, and the withdrawal of the last ship stationed in the South Atlantic, HMS Endurance, was the final signal the Argentines needed. The official Franks Report into the events leading up to the war was full of damning criticisms of failings by the MoD and the Foreign Office in failing to anticipate or forestall the Argentine invasion (although somewhat redundantly, it gave the ultimate blame for the invasion to General Galtieri). Recapturing the Falklands was a remarkable feat of arms by the British armed forces, but the whole episode was hardly Her Majesty's Government's finest hour.
It is hard to feel anything but immense sympathy for Natalie Evans, who lost her fight in the European Court of Human Rights this week to use frozen embryos from a previous relationship as her only hope of having a child that was biologically hers. Her desire to have a child is undeniably strong, a point proven by her determination in taking the case against her ex-partner, Howard Johnston, who had refused his consent to use the embryos, as far as she did. As the embryos were originally created as an insurance against infertility as a result of treatment for ovarian cancer, it seems particularly cruel that Evan's chance of being a mother should now be denied, based on the apparent whim of her ex-partner. Had the embryos been conceived with an unknown sperm donor, or had Evans just had her eggs frozen, then presumably that possibility would remain, as the issue of the other partner’s consent would not have entered the equation. Now, because Johnstone has refused his persmission for the embryos - which are after all half his - to be implanted, they are likely to be destroyed, along with Evan's hopes of being a mother.
None the less, given that these were the circumstances in which the embryos were conceived, it's hard to see how the judges could have reached a different conclusion in this case. No matter how tragic the situation for Evans, or how much the verdict may offend our natural sympathies, the right of Johnston to refuse his consent to have a child with her, whatever his reasons, must be respected.
It is a point somewhat lost on much tabloid and even broadsheet opinion, which has tended to side with Evans against Johnstone in the inevitable tug-of-war of human emotion. As Shiela McLean points out in an excellent post for the Guardian’s Comment is Free, ‘there is sometimes an air of "why doesn't he just say 'yes'?" about the commentary on his refusal to allow the embryos to be implanted.’ But, as McLean highlights, ‘his reason for refusing is essentially the same as her reason for wanting to proceed. She wants to have children; not, it appears, any children, but ones that are biologically linked to her. The biological link, therefore, seems to be central to this case. That link is precisely why Mr Johnston has refused to allow the implantation. In other words, whether or not she expects anything from him in terms of emotional or financial support, the fact that his biological child or children might be out there somewhere is deeply troubling for him and might reasonably be expected to affect any future relationships he may enter into.’
The philosopher Aristotle famously wrote that ‘the law is reason, free from passion’. No more is it applicable than in this case, where a verdict on the side of passion would have resulted in denying the entirely legitimate and reasonable right of someone to choose whom they should father (or indeed mother) a child with. Whether Johnstone can live with the fact that his choice has effectively denied Evan's the chance - and here 'chance' must be distinguished from 'right' - of having her own biological child is a matter for his own conscience. It is not an area where the law, or indeed tabloid editors, should be involved.
These are dark days for Labour, in the press at least. The only comfort is that the long period of drift is over soon, one way or the other. For the last two years every act or statement of every minister has been interpreted as a piece of internal communication and seen through the glass of the leadership succession. Whenever the government has tried to walk forward out of the mire, the press has contrived that it actaully moonwalks right back in. And let's remember too, the position that Gordon Brown is still in. Although the press are judging him as though he were leader, he's still tied up like Gulliver by a thousand ropes. He cannot take the inititive without seeming disloyal to Blair.
Polly Toynbee has an interesting take on the current row. She's right to talk about the Republican tactic of ventriloquism for negative campaigning. It's vital that the ranks of the disappointed in the Labour party don't become the dolls. But it's also vital to remember that the Republican target is always the strongest aspect of their strongest enemy. The fact that they are attacking Brown so fiercely is a mark of their fear.
According to Tony Blair one day every secondary school will be either a trust or a city academy. He may well be correct and I am of the view that it may not be a bad thing. As long as Academies remain in the depressed hearts of the old towns and cities and, perhaps most importantly of all, maintain their all-ability intake then progressive thinkers on the Left should not worry too much.
I think that it is just possible that in the setting up of so many of these new academies in areas of significant social and economic deprivation, that the government has re-found what many used to call "compensating measures".
For communities trapped in a cycle of failure such schools can offer new energy, new purpose and new opportunities for the young people who deserve better. But it is an obligation for all of us to ensure that such ambitious and expensive programmes benefit the communities that they are intended for
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