Any large public event is always a balance between freedom of expression and movement, safety, and civil liberty. The “Rile Widding” was no exception. Except it was – it marked a new watershed in the shifting of the balance away from freedom and towards outright repression. I have already remarked that there seems to be a disparity between Brian Haw camping in Parliament Square (not allowed) and thousands of people camping out in The Mall (allowed) and this double standard is indicative of the sneaky, insidious way in which major public events are used to undermine civil liberties. Presumably if Boris Johnson wants to prosecute the people who broke the law on Thursday night in the Mall, he has plenty of CCTV and TV footage to allow him to identify the offenders. I await his next action with interest.
These are the “facts” behind what was “hailed” as a “successful” security operation. I am going to quote this at length from the BBC because it bears some deconstruction. It is a curiously jumbled and un-focused piece that reads as if it is the police official statement merely rehashed and regurgitated.
Scotland Yard has hailed the security operation surrounding the royal wedding as an "amazing success" despite 57 arrests around its security zone. About half the arrests were for breach of the peace and a man was held for an alleged sex assault on a girl, aged 14.
OK, no-one would argue with that. Breach of the peace and a sex assault, it all sounds fairly straightforward.
Ten people carrying climbing gear and anti-monarchy placards were arrested near Charing Cross. Other arrests were for drunk and disorderly, criminal damage, theft and over a suspected environmental protest. Three people were held in the Covent Garden area over the alleged demonstration, police said.
To be frank, I am surprised that the BBC didn’t look into the anti-monarchy and environmental protests more closely. They seem to be accepting of the police lumping these in with drunk and disorderly, criminal damage and theft. In this manner, legitimate protest is subtly criminalised. Were these people charged, and if so, with what?
Anti-terror powers were used to arrest one man who was seen taking suspicious photographs of transport hubs and security personnel in the Charing Cross area.
This is the sort of thing that is an example of the insidious erosion of our civil liberties – and, of course, it will now continue right up to the Olympic Games and beyond, if they can get away with it.
Three others were held over drug offences and four for allegedly carrying an offensive weapon.
OK, we’re back to the straightforward stuff again. But why not make some effort to group the arrests by type? Why mix up protests with criminal activity?
Met Police Assistant Commissioner Lynne Owens said the success of the overall policing operation showed that the force could handle security for next year's Olympic Games. She said her 5,000 officers should be "immensely proud" of their role in the "happy and safe" event. She admitted to pre-event "nerves" and defended the decision to carry out a string of pre-event raids as "entirely justified".
“Entirely justified”? Justified to whom, justified by what? Is she saying she has some inside information that she is not telling us? Were the people who were arrested pre-emptively some sort of terrorist threat? Because I have a feeling that this is just the police justifying themselves to themselves, with no scrutiny.
Officers questioned masked anti-monarchy protesters in Soho Square as a huge security operation took place around Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey and The Mall.
So who were these masked anti-monarchy protestors? How many of them were there, were they charged with anything? Are they part of the 57 arrests?
Thousands of police officers created a "ring of steel" around the venues. Snipers took to rooftops and undercover officers mingled among the crowds
Sort of gives the lie to the “carefree, joyous celebration”, doesn’t it?
More than 90 people were banned from the area and up to 80 VIPs were granted personal protection.
Again – “banned from the area” – under what pretext, what law, what judicial process has been gone through to be able to ban people from walking through the streets of their own capital city. If we are getting to the state where we are having people “banned” then we need to be sure this is not just something being done on a whim or on a spurious assumption, there needs to be a proper legal process.
Over the past few days police have arrested three people believed to be planning to behead effigies at the wedding. They were detained by police in Brockley, south-east London, on Thursday night.
These people have presumably been detained under the law which says that planning a terrorist act is an offence? Again, the BBC doesn’t seem to have asked any further questions. Were they charged? What with? Or were they merely quietly released again after the wedding? Am I committing an offence if I am planning to burn an effigy on November 5th?
There were also several raids on squats across London, which drew criticism from one Labour backbencher. John McDonnell accused police of "disproportionate" action, saying the raids appeared to be "some form of pre-emptive strike".
These are presumably the pre-emptive arrests of which Teresa May spoke in her advance trail of the measures she was “considering” after the Black Bloc’s window-breaking protests on 26 March. The people arrested in the squats were arrested for electricity abstraction – bypassing the meter. They have probably been doing it for months, if not years. They could have been arrested at any time for it, but coincidentally, police swooped the day before the Rile Widding. Coincidence? You decide.
As I said at the start, any large public event carries with it inevitable issues of public safety and security, even on the basic level of making sure no one gets trampled in the rush. And yes, I accept that – given that we’ve annoyed every hothead east of the Euphrates and a good many nearer home – there might be some people who want to use such an event to cover terrorist outrages. It’s all very lamentable. And in any large gathering of people, statistically there are going to be a few lags, perverts and ne’erdowells. So yes, policing is necessary. Up to a point. But when it gets to the stage where we’re stifling legitimate protest, we have to say, I think, that it’s time to take a good long hard look at where this is going.
Personally, I would let the protestors protest. In the case of the more zany fringe groups, it would show some of them up for the unsupported talentless loonies that they really are. If the whole world can see that there are only twelve members of “Muslims against Crusades”, that shows the world exactly what you are dealing with here. I would have stuck them in some obscure corner of Horse Guards Parade, suitably policed, and let them get on with it. Because the freedom not to be part of this, the freedom to hold contrarian views, however far they are off the bus route, is still one of the things that makes us the good guys.
And personally, I can’t see how you can describe any event where it has to be stage managed to stifle those who disagree with it, and pushed through at gunpoint by the presence of snipers on rooftops, as in any way “happy”.
Good luck, if you want to pretend that the whole country rose up as one great spontaneous street party and boogied long into the night. It didn’t, but feel free to delude yourself. For my part, the Royal Family is only useful for one thing. As a constitutional wedge to stop the bastard politicians taking over forever and issuing a written list of everything you are allowed to do, and everything else is verboten.
So if we have to have the occasional Rile Widding to keep the unwritten constitution intact, so be it. But don’t use it as an excuse to stifle legitimate protest, and don’t expect me to enjoy it. Just pull my vest down when you’ve finished.
Saturday 30 April 2011
The Undeserving Power
I have seen and heard quite a few pronouncements on benefits from the Tories over the last year, but David Cameron’s latest “photo-opportunity” asking workers on the BBC News blatantly, outright, if they were happy with the fact that there are apparently 80,000 people on incapacity benefit because of drugs, alcohol, or obesity, takes the biscuit. The nasty implication was, of course, that these people are still continuing this lifestyle on benefits, and being funded in this excess by the hard-working taxpayer. In reality, it is more likely that these people are struggling to cope with the effects of previous addiction, in a landscape where the very programs and funding that might be able to help them are being cut left, right and centre – by the Tories!
We’re a long way from “we’re all in this together.” But then, so is he. His NHS reforms have been savaged, and the previously docile lickspittles in the Literal Dimwits are having trouble keeping the lid on their section of the pressure cooker, as their leadership seems to have finally woken up to the slaughter awaiting them in the local elections, plus there’s the factor of the AV referendum adding extra strain on an already strained relationship. He has very little to cheer about at the moment (which is probably why they seized on the 0.5% growth in GDP over the last quarter – in reality, flatlining, when offset against the previous quarter’s fall – and trumpeted it like it was the Second Coming).
I’ve never seen a more disgracefully, deliberately divisive speech from someone who would do well to remember that the Prime Minister of this country is the Prime Minister of all of us, and he should be doing his best to unite the whole country, even those of us who would rather cut our own toes off with a rusty knife and serve them up on toast to next door’s cat than ever vote for him. But Cameron isn’t interested in me, except as someone whose disability benefits he can possibly cut. He’s talking over my head, to white van man, the man in the pub, to bigot Britain, to the people who support the BNP and the EDL, who think there are “too many scroungers, too many people on benefits, and too many foreigners”.
“We’re all in this together” has been ditched, apparently, in favour of the resurrection of the Victorian idea of the deserving and undeserving poor. In Cameron’s Tory Bullingdon Club world, the idea of a universal entitlement to benefits under a welfare state is anathema. You should earn your benefits, dear boy, preferably by picking oakum in the Workhouse. He’s preaching the same baseless, anecdotal shit that you can hear from any pub bore at closing time in any working class boozer – and around quite a few middle class dinner tables as well. Or you can pay good money and read it in regurgitated form in The Daily Mail. “ A man in the pub told me once that he had a bloke in the back of his taxi who said there are thousands of them claiming benefits that they aren’t entitled to, they’re all immigrants, over here taking our jobs, etc. etc.”
It more or less writes itself, which is why being a Daily Mail journalist in these heady days must be such a cushy number under this regime. All of the statistics on which these speeches and photo opportunities are based are at best, suspect, and at worse, misleading, cooked-up and completely bogus. The figure of 80,000 people which Cameron used, for instance, for people claiming benefits who are victims of drugs, alcohol or obesity, is actually based on a “snapshot” of the figures, according to the original DWP press release.
In other words, they have taken a small chunk of data, analysed it, then extrapolated the results to see what figure they could come up with if all of the remaining data followed the same pattern, and the answer is 80,000. Suddenly, that figure is enshrined in fact as if it was some kind of innate truth.
They followed the Cameron speech with another similar exercise, a story that “75% of incapacity benefit claimants are fit for work”. What actually happened, when you look into the figures behind the headlines, was that, of just over one million applicants over a given period of time, 39% were found to be “fit for work” but then 40% of this 39% actually appealed against these decisions – and won! [Not that there is any work, but that’s a separate gripe, let’s not get sidetracked here.] So the story didn’t go on to say that, because of that appeal, in fact, the real figure that were “fit for work” was nearer 19.5% of the whole sample, not 39% at all. A further 36% (the other bit of the spurious “75%”) gave up their applications uncompleted, and never bothered to pursue them. The implication from the ghastly Tories is that this is because they’d been rumbled and didn’t bother to go on because they knew the game was up and abandoned the claim, quitting while they were ahead.
Having had first hand experience of the convoluted process and the harassed and unhelpful DWP staff who administer ESA, I can imagine a more likely reason for this, easily. Although I am a “newbie” to the world of disability and benefits, I am a reasonably literate, educated, and fairly articulate person, able to fight my own corner, and even then I have struggled against the overwhelming torrent of forms, questionnaires, and bloody stupid fatuous standard letters asking the same old shit over and over again. It’s no wonder that people abandon their claims. Perfectly legitimate claims, I shouldn’t wonder. The system is set up with precisely that aim. To baffle you with bullshit until you snap and say “oh, sod it!” These mythical people that the man in the pub tells you about, the thousands of them that allegedly defraud the taxpayer of £1000s, must do it as a full-time job, and even then, they’d need a secretary and an accountant, just to keep track of all the paperwork!
So, at next week’s local elections, which is, in truth, what this was all about, had Cameron been honest enough to admit it, you have a choice. You can believe and swallow this hokum perpetrated by the Tories as part of their “divide-and-rule” tactics, if you really believe there are “deserving” and “undeserving” poor and “sturdy beggars”, go ahead and vote for him. If you think, however, that those who are ill through the effects of drugs, alcohol, and poor diet are just as deserving of universal benefits on medical grounds as the rest of us, in a civilised society, and that dividing people into deserving and undeserving poor on the basis of lifestyle “choices” is the thin end of an evil wedge (what about smokers, for instance? Cameron kept quiet about them because smokers might be highly represented amongst the white van man target group) then vote the bastards out, and give them the kicking they so richly deserve. It’s not all of us together, it’s us and them, and it always has been, because that’s their choice, that’s the way they want it, whatever they say otherwise.
We’re a long way from “we’re all in this together.” But then, so is he. His NHS reforms have been savaged, and the previously docile lickspittles in the Literal Dimwits are having trouble keeping the lid on their section of the pressure cooker, as their leadership seems to have finally woken up to the slaughter awaiting them in the local elections, plus there’s the factor of the AV referendum adding extra strain on an already strained relationship. He has very little to cheer about at the moment (which is probably why they seized on the 0.5% growth in GDP over the last quarter – in reality, flatlining, when offset against the previous quarter’s fall – and trumpeted it like it was the Second Coming).
I’ve never seen a more disgracefully, deliberately divisive speech from someone who would do well to remember that the Prime Minister of this country is the Prime Minister of all of us, and he should be doing his best to unite the whole country, even those of us who would rather cut our own toes off with a rusty knife and serve them up on toast to next door’s cat than ever vote for him. But Cameron isn’t interested in me, except as someone whose disability benefits he can possibly cut. He’s talking over my head, to white van man, the man in the pub, to bigot Britain, to the people who support the BNP and the EDL, who think there are “too many scroungers, too many people on benefits, and too many foreigners”.
“We’re all in this together” has been ditched, apparently, in favour of the resurrection of the Victorian idea of the deserving and undeserving poor. In Cameron’s Tory Bullingdon Club world, the idea of a universal entitlement to benefits under a welfare state is anathema. You should earn your benefits, dear boy, preferably by picking oakum in the Workhouse. He’s preaching the same baseless, anecdotal shit that you can hear from any pub bore at closing time in any working class boozer – and around quite a few middle class dinner tables as well. Or you can pay good money and read it in regurgitated form in The Daily Mail. “ A man in the pub told me once that he had a bloke in the back of his taxi who said there are thousands of them claiming benefits that they aren’t entitled to, they’re all immigrants, over here taking our jobs, etc. etc.”
It more or less writes itself, which is why being a Daily Mail journalist in these heady days must be such a cushy number under this regime. All of the statistics on which these speeches and photo opportunities are based are at best, suspect, and at worse, misleading, cooked-up and completely bogus. The figure of 80,000 people which Cameron used, for instance, for people claiming benefits who are victims of drugs, alcohol or obesity, is actually based on a “snapshot” of the figures, according to the original DWP press release.
In other words, they have taken a small chunk of data, analysed it, then extrapolated the results to see what figure they could come up with if all of the remaining data followed the same pattern, and the answer is 80,000. Suddenly, that figure is enshrined in fact as if it was some kind of innate truth.
They followed the Cameron speech with another similar exercise, a story that “75% of incapacity benefit claimants are fit for work”. What actually happened, when you look into the figures behind the headlines, was that, of just over one million applicants over a given period of time, 39% were found to be “fit for work” but then 40% of this 39% actually appealed against these decisions – and won! [Not that there is any work, but that’s a separate gripe, let’s not get sidetracked here.] So the story didn’t go on to say that, because of that appeal, in fact, the real figure that were “fit for work” was nearer 19.5% of the whole sample, not 39% at all. A further 36% (the other bit of the spurious “75%”) gave up their applications uncompleted, and never bothered to pursue them. The implication from the ghastly Tories is that this is because they’d been rumbled and didn’t bother to go on because they knew the game was up and abandoned the claim, quitting while they were ahead.
Having had first hand experience of the convoluted process and the harassed and unhelpful DWP staff who administer ESA, I can imagine a more likely reason for this, easily. Although I am a “newbie” to the world of disability and benefits, I am a reasonably literate, educated, and fairly articulate person, able to fight my own corner, and even then I have struggled against the overwhelming torrent of forms, questionnaires, and bloody stupid fatuous standard letters asking the same old shit over and over again. It’s no wonder that people abandon their claims. Perfectly legitimate claims, I shouldn’t wonder. The system is set up with precisely that aim. To baffle you with bullshit until you snap and say “oh, sod it!” These mythical people that the man in the pub tells you about, the thousands of them that allegedly defraud the taxpayer of £1000s, must do it as a full-time job, and even then, they’d need a secretary and an accountant, just to keep track of all the paperwork!
So, at next week’s local elections, which is, in truth, what this was all about, had Cameron been honest enough to admit it, you have a choice. You can believe and swallow this hokum perpetrated by the Tories as part of their “divide-and-rule” tactics, if you really believe there are “deserving” and “undeserving” poor and “sturdy beggars”, go ahead and vote for him. If you think, however, that those who are ill through the effects of drugs, alcohol, and poor diet are just as deserving of universal benefits on medical grounds as the rest of us, in a civilised society, and that dividing people into deserving and undeserving poor on the basis of lifestyle “choices” is the thin end of an evil wedge (what about smokers, for instance? Cameron kept quiet about them because smokers might be highly represented amongst the white van man target group) then vote the bastards out, and give them the kicking they so richly deserve. It’s not all of us together, it’s us and them, and it always has been, because that’s their choice, that’s the way they want it, whatever they say otherwise.
Sunday 24 April 2011
Privates on Parade
David Cam-Moron thinks PARLIAMENT should decide on privacy law, not judges. Great idea. While we're at it, let's put Count Dracula in charge of the Blood Bank.
Wednesday 20 April 2011
The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
I was going to write a long, passionately argued piece deconstructing Cam-moron's recent playing of the race card in his immigration speech, but to be honest, what he was trying to do is so transparent, it's hardly worth the effort of smashing. There is, as always, a subtext with these speeches. I know exactly what he was trying to do, politicians of all parties do it when they are cornered like a rat.
He can see that his party is going to get a well-deserved kicking in the May elections. So he reaches for his dog whistle, looks out over the heads of the benighted fools he knows will still vote for him anyway, and gives a good long toot in the general direction of the British National Party and the English Defence League.
White immigration is good, brown immigration is bad, is what he was trying to say but couldn't in so many words. And why don't they all learn English and integrate (because er, most of them do. I notice he wasn't quick to castigate Tesco when they started to have aisles of Polish food, labelled in Polish!)
Meanwhile, Mr Ed the talking horse, has admitted that Labour may have made one or two mistakes in the way they presented and monitored immigration (such as sucking up the to the middle classes in key marginals for a decade, while your traditional heartlands were recruited en masse by the BNP, you mean, yes, that would be one of the many mistakes...)
Of course, this has been seized on by the Tory press and regurgitated as "Labour: We Were Wrong On Immigration".
It reminds me of that old adage that you can always tell when a politician is lying because his lips are moving.
Any politician who says that they can do anything about this issue while we are still members of the EU Political Unity Project, is just that. A big, fat, howling, pants-on-fire, liar. I wish they would get a grip and deal with it properly, instead of leaving it to UKIP, who couldn't run a village fete, let alone extricate us from the clutches of Mrs Merton and President Teacozy.
And furthermore: the argument always focuses on the "shortage" of resources - why does nobody ever ask why there is a shortage of schools, hospitals and affordable housing? What did I pay all those taxes for? To fire missiles at Libya?
He can see that his party is going to get a well-deserved kicking in the May elections. So he reaches for his dog whistle, looks out over the heads of the benighted fools he knows will still vote for him anyway, and gives a good long toot in the general direction of the British National Party and the English Defence League.
White immigration is good, brown immigration is bad, is what he was trying to say but couldn't in so many words. And why don't they all learn English and integrate (because er, most of them do. I notice he wasn't quick to castigate Tesco when they started to have aisles of Polish food, labelled in Polish!)
Meanwhile, Mr Ed the talking horse, has admitted that Labour may have made one or two mistakes in the way they presented and monitored immigration (such as sucking up the to the middle classes in key marginals for a decade, while your traditional heartlands were recruited en masse by the BNP, you mean, yes, that would be one of the many mistakes...)
Of course, this has been seized on by the Tory press and regurgitated as "Labour: We Were Wrong On Immigration".
It reminds me of that old adage that you can always tell when a politician is lying because his lips are moving.
Any politician who says that they can do anything about this issue while we are still members of the EU Political Unity Project, is just that. A big, fat, howling, pants-on-fire, liar. I wish they would get a grip and deal with it properly, instead of leaving it to UKIP, who couldn't run a village fete, let alone extricate us from the clutches of Mrs Merton and President Teacozy.
And furthermore: the argument always focuses on the "shortage" of resources - why does nobody ever ask why there is a shortage of schools, hospitals and affordable housing? What did I pay all those taxes for? To fire missiles at Libya?
Alles Ist In Ordnung!
A big public ceremony is approaching. Suddenly, in the days before, hundreds of extra police appear, apparently from nowhere. In the days leading up to the event, the streets are cleared of protestors, vagrants rough sleepers and homeless people, the manholes are searched, the surveillance cameras checked, the shadowy men in shadowy bunkers do their comms checks in front of gigantic screens, firearms are issued with orders to shoot to kill if necessary, and known troublemakers are rounded up and arrested.
China? Iran? Saudi Arabia? the USSR at the height of the Cold War? Hitler's Germany?
No, this is once-Great Britain, 29th April 2011.
In a previous blog about the sinister way that major public events such as the Royal Wedding and the London Olympics were being used to further curtail civil liberties and crack down on the most disadvantaged victims of Tory cuts, I wrote:
Finally, of course, following those dickheads from Black Bloc smashing bank windows on Saturday, Theresa May must have been chortling into her Horlicks that night as she seamlessly began the process of tightening up the policing of demos, talking about barring "known troublemakers" (ie anyone who disagrees with Cameron) from the right to protest. Well done, Black Bloc. Home Secretary 1 (black bloc, o.g.) Black Bloc 0. The pretext currently being used for this is the upcoming Royal Wedding, but given that the Olympics is following on in relatively short order behind this, I doubt anything brought in for the Royal Wedding is going to be repealed before the Olympics (or after it, come to that!)
And, true to form, the BBC reported last night that the security forces and police were considering "pre-emptive arrests" of known activists, on the day of the Royal Wedding, to prevent them "causing trouble" - accompanied of course by footage of Black Bloc smashing the window of a branch of Santander [and is there anyone who seriously thinks the cost of that window won't go straight back on next year's bank charges?]
So, we have really come to this. You can be pre emptively arrested, sans trial, judge jury or charge, detained and denied your liberty, because you might cause trouble on the day of the Royal Wedding. Given that there are going to be 5000 police lining the route, I think they have probably got the security overkill well and truly buttoned up anyway, but what do I know eh?
The real danger, the real acid test, the thin end of the proverbial wedge, is whether, once a docile population have got used to the idea, this sort of thing will just become the norm, long after the last Olympian has left Walthamstow.
China? Iran? Saudi Arabia? the USSR at the height of the Cold War? Hitler's Germany?
No, this is once-Great Britain, 29th April 2011.
In a previous blog about the sinister way that major public events such as the Royal Wedding and the London Olympics were being used to further curtail civil liberties and crack down on the most disadvantaged victims of Tory cuts, I wrote:
Finally, of course, following those dickheads from Black Bloc smashing bank windows on Saturday, Theresa May must have been chortling into her Horlicks that night as she seamlessly began the process of tightening up the policing of demos, talking about barring "known troublemakers" (ie anyone who disagrees with Cameron) from the right to protest. Well done, Black Bloc. Home Secretary 1 (black bloc, o.g.) Black Bloc 0. The pretext currently being used for this is the upcoming Royal Wedding, but given that the Olympics is following on in relatively short order behind this, I doubt anything brought in for the Royal Wedding is going to be repealed before the Olympics (or after it, come to that!)
And, true to form, the BBC reported last night that the security forces and police were considering "pre-emptive arrests" of known activists, on the day of the Royal Wedding, to prevent them "causing trouble" - accompanied of course by footage of Black Bloc smashing the window of a branch of Santander [and is there anyone who seriously thinks the cost of that window won't go straight back on next year's bank charges?]
So, we have really come to this. You can be pre emptively arrested, sans trial, judge jury or charge, detained and denied your liberty, because you might cause trouble on the day of the Royal Wedding. Given that there are going to be 5000 police lining the route, I think they have probably got the security overkill well and truly buttoned up anyway, but what do I know eh?
The real danger, the real acid test, the thin end of the proverbial wedge, is whether, once a docile population have got used to the idea, this sort of thing will just become the norm, long after the last Olympian has left Walthamstow.
Friday 15 April 2011
Local Cuts for Local People
Eric Pickles is Satan. Or the Antichrist. Or possibly both, if that’s theologically possible. After seeing his performance on Newsnight the other night, I was only surprised that Gavin Essler didn’t start projectile vomiting, or that his head didn’t swivel through 360 degrees. It used to be only Michael Howard out of the Tory top brass that had a whiff of sulphur about him, but this is no longer the case. Roll over Beelzebub, tell Baphomet the news.
Pickles was being grilled on “localism”, which is Tory-speak for “you’re on your own, chum”, as the savage cuts to local government budgets, disproportionately targeted so the heaviest ones fall on the poorest authorities (a point made in the programme) are now starting to bite across the country.
Much of the interview, sadly, focused on “transparency”, which in the Pickles world involves publishing details of expenditure, regardless of any extra cost incurred in so doing. Even more sadly, Pickles was able to deflect the main thrusts of any attempts to call him to account, by focusing in turn on an error in the research, which led Essler to assert that the Department for Communities was only listing expenditure over £25,000 on its own web site, while expecting councils to list all items over £500. It emerged in the course of the debate that the DCLG is now also employing the £500 yardstick. [Actually, there is some interesting stuff on that web site, which repays further study, and I think I will have a closer look, and come back later to report my findings.]
Anyway, this is how localism works. You cut the rate support grant to the councils, taking care to make sure that the leafy suburbs (where the Tory voters live) “friendly” councils (such as the odious regime in Westminster) and key marginal targets are all protected, leaving the brunt to fall on the most deprived areas (coincidentally, many of them traditional Labour heartlands).
Then you meddle, selectively, as follows: when the council, faced with a decision which involves having to make drastic savings, cuts frontline services, and these cuts are unpopular, you make sure (if you are Eric Pickles) to blame the council for the cuts, as if the sudden, dramatic cut in income was nothing at all to do with you. When the council (quite rightly and sensibly) refuses to spend scarce resources on the extra cost of putting the items of their individual expenditure over £500 online, you criticise them for a lack of transparency. [So far, only Nottingham, out of all the councils, has had the cojones to do this. Shame on all the others.]
Funny stuff, transparency. Pickles seems to be remarkably opaque when it comes to admitting transparently that the transparent reason for these councils up and down the country being forced to cut to the bone and beyond, is, er, Eric Pickles. And localism, that’s a funny concept, too. It only works when the local decisions are exactly those which central government would have made and approved of. Central government in the form of, er, Eric Pickles. Any spending decisions taken at local level which don’t accord with the Tory plan for “slash and burn” are dismissed as “irresponsible”.
Of course, the Pickles plan is for the massive deficiencies his cuts will cause in councils to be picked up by the Big Society, for free, and for the massive job cuts in the public sector to be mopped up by the private sector. Neither of which is going to happen. Like all Faustian pacts, it has a sting in its tail. And possibly the horns of a dilemma.
Pickles was being grilled on “localism”, which is Tory-speak for “you’re on your own, chum”, as the savage cuts to local government budgets, disproportionately targeted so the heaviest ones fall on the poorest authorities (a point made in the programme) are now starting to bite across the country.
Much of the interview, sadly, focused on “transparency”, which in the Pickles world involves publishing details of expenditure, regardless of any extra cost incurred in so doing. Even more sadly, Pickles was able to deflect the main thrusts of any attempts to call him to account, by focusing in turn on an error in the research, which led Essler to assert that the Department for Communities was only listing expenditure over £25,000 on its own web site, while expecting councils to list all items over £500. It emerged in the course of the debate that the DCLG is now also employing the £500 yardstick. [Actually, there is some interesting stuff on that web site, which repays further study, and I think I will have a closer look, and come back later to report my findings.]
Anyway, this is how localism works. You cut the rate support grant to the councils, taking care to make sure that the leafy suburbs (where the Tory voters live) “friendly” councils (such as the odious regime in Westminster) and key marginal targets are all protected, leaving the brunt to fall on the most deprived areas (coincidentally, many of them traditional Labour heartlands).
Then you meddle, selectively, as follows: when the council, faced with a decision which involves having to make drastic savings, cuts frontline services, and these cuts are unpopular, you make sure (if you are Eric Pickles) to blame the council for the cuts, as if the sudden, dramatic cut in income was nothing at all to do with you. When the council (quite rightly and sensibly) refuses to spend scarce resources on the extra cost of putting the items of their individual expenditure over £500 online, you criticise them for a lack of transparency. [So far, only Nottingham, out of all the councils, has had the cojones to do this. Shame on all the others.]
Funny stuff, transparency. Pickles seems to be remarkably opaque when it comes to admitting transparently that the transparent reason for these councils up and down the country being forced to cut to the bone and beyond, is, er, Eric Pickles. And localism, that’s a funny concept, too. It only works when the local decisions are exactly those which central government would have made and approved of. Central government in the form of, er, Eric Pickles. Any spending decisions taken at local level which don’t accord with the Tory plan for “slash and burn” are dismissed as “irresponsible”.
Of course, the Pickles plan is for the massive deficiencies his cuts will cause in councils to be picked up by the Big Society, for free, and for the massive job cuts in the public sector to be mopped up by the private sector. Neither of which is going to happen. Like all Faustian pacts, it has a sting in its tail. And possibly the horns of a dilemma.
Wednesday 6 April 2011
Second Opinion
David Cameron is going to "pause for reflection" in his ill-judged reform of the NHS. What a pity he didn't pause for reflection before he even started, as he could have saved the money wasted on this project so far. In fact, the more I see of Mr Cameron, the more I wish his parents had paused for reflection.
In fact, I strongly suspect that the reflection, if any, during this period will be more concerned about how the Tories and mini-tories can sell this deeply flawed crock of shite to a) the Liberal Dimwits at large, who have already showed a marked inclination to defenestrate Clegg over this at their Spring conference b) the House of Lords, who are queueing up to amend it with a chain saw and c)a skeptical public, who are being told that we have no money, and yet see us firing rockets costing £800,000 at Libya and giving £650 million to Pakistan, and are starting to ask "what is this reorganisation of the NHS costing?
In his glossy, smarmy, airbrushed election posters this time last year, Cameron said "We can't go on like this - I'll cut the deficit, not the NHS". If the cost of this reorganisation is coming from existing NHS budgets, then that is a de facto cut. And if the cost is coming from elsewhere, then I can think of a thousand better uses for extra money for the NHS than a reorganisation that nobody wants. Apart from David Cameron of course, to whom it is a shibboleth almost as sacred as "The Big Society".
In fact, I strongly suspect that the reflection, if any, during this period will be more concerned about how the Tories and mini-tories can sell this deeply flawed crock of shite to a) the Liberal Dimwits at large, who have already showed a marked inclination to defenestrate Clegg over this at their Spring conference b) the House of Lords, who are queueing up to amend it with a chain saw and c)a skeptical public, who are being told that we have no money, and yet see us firing rockets costing £800,000 at Libya and giving £650 million to Pakistan, and are starting to ask "what is this reorganisation of the NHS costing?
In his glossy, smarmy, airbrushed election posters this time last year, Cameron said "We can't go on like this - I'll cut the deficit, not the NHS". If the cost of this reorganisation is coming from existing NHS budgets, then that is a de facto cut. And if the cost is coming from elsewhere, then I can think of a thousand better uses for extra money for the NHS than a reorganisation that nobody wants. Apart from David Cameron of course, to whom it is a shibboleth almost as sacred as "The Big Society".
Easy Git
Oliver Let-Wind has apparently been letting wind again. This time it was out of his mouth rather than his arse, but since he frequently talks out of both of them, any confusion is understandable.
Apparently, and up to the time of writing, he has not denied this, in an argument with Boris Johnson over airport development, he said that he didn't want to see any more families from Sheffield taking cheap holidays.
Notwithstanding that this was a private comment, my first thought, when I heard that this was in the context of an argument, was that it was a pity it didn't escalate and come to blows.
As it is, it shows up the Tory mindset brilliantly. We don't want these oiks having holidays, not people from Sheffield, no, they should work for free as interns, send their children up chimneys, and be bloody well grateful that we're only cutting some of their libraries, schools, police, and refuse collections, and not all of them. We've already got Sir Digby Jones, of CBI fame, suggesting that unemployed people should volunteer and work for nothing, the Tories love this sort of thing. Cut the benefits, starve them into non-existent jobs, or leave them in the gutter to starve. Pardon me, but is this 1811, or 1911 all of a sudden? Only, I thought it was 2011, that's all.
Welcome to the mind of the Tories. Work for nothing, get on your bike, and don't expect a holiday! If it wasn't for the fact that there are no jobs anyway, and many people now won't be able to afford holidays, cheap or otherwise, it would be laughable. As it is, it's a pathetic insult to the low paid and the unemployed.
It's also an insult, of course, to the people of Sheffield, and Clegg has apparently told Let-Wind to watch his mouth - ha ha ha hardy ha. If Clegg couldn't stop the Tories cancelling a loan (a loan, not a grant) to Sheffield Forgemasters in his own constituency, I hardly think Let-Wind is going to be quaking in his boots at anything Clegg says, especially as he probably thinks that everyone in Sheffield says "eee bah goom", keeps whippets in the bath, and wears a string vest, and a knotted handkerchief on their head.
Personally, I think all the people of Sheffield should take a holiday in Let-Wind's garden. And shit in his fishpond, except I don't believe in cruelty to fish, and he'd only put the cost of cleaning it out on his expenses and charge it back to us.
Apparently, and up to the time of writing, he has not denied this, in an argument with Boris Johnson over airport development, he said that he didn't want to see any more families from Sheffield taking cheap holidays.
Notwithstanding that this was a private comment, my first thought, when I heard that this was in the context of an argument, was that it was a pity it didn't escalate and come to blows.
As it is, it shows up the Tory mindset brilliantly. We don't want these oiks having holidays, not people from Sheffield, no, they should work for free as interns, send their children up chimneys, and be bloody well grateful that we're only cutting some of their libraries, schools, police, and refuse collections, and not all of them. We've already got Sir Digby Jones, of CBI fame, suggesting that unemployed people should volunteer and work for nothing, the Tories love this sort of thing. Cut the benefits, starve them into non-existent jobs, or leave them in the gutter to starve. Pardon me, but is this 1811, or 1911 all of a sudden? Only, I thought it was 2011, that's all.
Welcome to the mind of the Tories. Work for nothing, get on your bike, and don't expect a holiday! If it wasn't for the fact that there are no jobs anyway, and many people now won't be able to afford holidays, cheap or otherwise, it would be laughable. As it is, it's a pathetic insult to the low paid and the unemployed.
It's also an insult, of course, to the people of Sheffield, and Clegg has apparently told Let-Wind to watch his mouth - ha ha ha hardy ha. If Clegg couldn't stop the Tories cancelling a loan (a loan, not a grant) to Sheffield Forgemasters in his own constituency, I hardly think Let-Wind is going to be quaking in his boots at anything Clegg says, especially as he probably thinks that everyone in Sheffield says "eee bah goom", keeps whippets in the bath, and wears a string vest, and a knotted handkerchief on their head.
Personally, I think all the people of Sheffield should take a holiday in Let-Wind's garden. And shit in his fishpond, except I don't believe in cruelty to fish, and he'd only put the cost of cleaning it out on his expenses and charge it back to us.
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