Carelessly splitting his own party

"He's a leader carelessly splitting his own party" says Kevin Maguire, writing in the Daily Mirror about Ed Miliband's response to the Falkirk outrage-disgrace-frenzy:   http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/ed-miliband-needs-fight-real-2037789

This seems to be a very unlikely interpretation.  Ed Miliband in almost all his public pronouncements is careful not careless.  And in any case what would he have to gain since the electorate do not on the whole associate Labour as being in the hands of the unions (although that impression might start to change if this crisis develops).

Ed Miliband seems to me like an honourable man trying to untangle a farrago of dishonourable conduct.

Off the record briefings,  off the record counter-briefings, revelations of organised subversions, accusations of conspiracy by Sunny Hundal, possible criminal activity, factions of the party barely even talking to each other.

And that's just today's febrile activity.

And this evening we read of an organised attempt by Labour Students to silence the Twitter account of Independent writer Owen Jones by bombarding him with hostile messages (this is surely intimidation - mild intimidation admittedly, but intimidation nonetheless).

Falling apart at the seams

Blimey - this article on the Compass website actually says the Labour party is "falling apart at the seams" over the Falkirk scandal and its fall-out:

http://www.compassonline.org.uk/falkirk-the-end-of-the-fix/#.UdrAk4DZrnI.twitter

They dress it up later in the paragraph as a general malaise affecting all parties, but the words "Labour" and "falling apart at the seams" do appear in the same sentence.

Compass is an organisation (or faction would perhaps be a better word) associated with the anti-Blairite forces in the Labour party.

What will happen if Ed Miliband is unable to hold the warring factions together and the Labour party does indeed fall apart at the seams?

Will he follow the example of Ramsay Macdonald and lead Labour moderates into a government of national unity, leaving the extremists to huff and puff on their own.

Jiggery pokery

Joe Murphy in the Evening Standard writes about more corrupt selection procedures in Labour constituency parties - this time in Ilford North:

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/met-is-asked-to-probe-claims-of-unite-votefixing-in-london-seat-8695417.html

More corruption?

Is there no end to this jiggery pokery?

And what of candidates selected under a corrupt process who go on to win election to Parliament?  Are they not honour-bound to resign and stand for re-election (especially if they highlighted in their election literature the importance of integrity in public life).  Should the Speaker intervene and suspend these individuals? (fat chance - his election as Speaker was as dodgy as anything done by Unite).

If only we had the right of recall so that electors could express their displeasure with counterfeit candidates finessed into Westminster through a tainted selection process.

And can someone please establish whether the "parachuted apparatchiks" (to use an Owen Jones phrase) were parachuted in equitably and fairly or did the parachuting discriminate on the basis of ethnicity, gender, sexuality, gender, disability etc resulting in a Labour party that has no moral authority on these issues?

"Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!" (as Sir Walter Scott said).

Pope Francis

The Bishop of Rome says:  "We pray for a heart which will embrace immigrants. God will judge us upon how we have treated the most needy."

Excuse me Pope Francis, immigrants are not always (indeed, are not usually) the "most needy".

They are often the most greedy and most grasping of the world's population, wanting a better lifestyle for themselves whatever damage they do to the community they are leaving and the community they are going to.

Perhaps you are thinking of asylum seekers?  Of course asylum seekers should be given a temporary safe haven.  But this should not drift into permanent settlement - they have a moral obligation to return and help rebuild their communities.

Unworldly denizens of the general synod

If the Church of England general synod pushes through today a determination to create women bishops without safeguards for the sizeable minority who object as a matter of conscience what message will that send out into society?

Basically the Church of England will be saying to minorities "shut the fuck up".

Sorry to be so crude about this, but the unworldly denizens of the general synod may not be aware of how they are going to be interpreted.

If we are to say "shut the fuck up" to religious minorities are we also to say "shut the fuck up" to ethnic minorities, or gender minorities, or political minorities?

That would be a drastic change in society.

Of course, many would say it doesn't matter what the Church of England decides, it will have no impact on everyone else.

Personally I think they are wrong, and what the Anglican Church does has more influence than many media chatterers suspect.

For the record, I have no view on whether women bishops are desirable or not - I trust the church hierarchy not to lead people into error. 

Ban all donations for all political parties

Muddled thinking by Owen Jones in his article for the Independent:  http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/this-attack-on-labours-union-links-must-notsucceed-8693653.html

There is nothing to stop his "millions of dinner ladies and care assistants" from joining the Labour party as individuals - there is no need for mediation by trade unions (when I was a member of a union I found that the local union representative worked in cahoots with the managers, shared out the best shifts to his mates and was entirely uninterested in grievances).

In fact, I would ban all donations for all political parties apart from individual membership fees with possibly a discretionary annual £100 top up if someone feels particularly committed.

And if this income does not pay the cost of modern politics?

Hard luck. 

To quote Mrs Thatcher, if you can't afford it you can't have it.

If your party (that goes for the Conservatives as well as Labour) can't raise enough subscriptions to keep going you deserve to go under and have your place taken by parties who can raise the funds.

The ideology of pastoralism

I am collecting examples at the moment that I hope will contribute towards a piece I am developing about the ideology of pastoralism.  That the landscape in the British Isles is not just haphazard or accidental (although it can be that of course) but is unconsciously designed according to aesthetic principles that accord with a pastoralist lifestyle.  The majority of people in the United Kingdom not only want to live in the countryside, but live there close to nature in a specific and traditional way.

In today's Observer Rowan Moore puts forward "10 solutions to Britain's housing crisis".  He seems obsessed with urbanism and neglects one of the most obvious solutions - repopulate the countryside (entirely feasible since the internet has made commuting in many occupations redundant).  This could be done by building social housing in villages).

However there is a problem with social housing.  In the post-war period hundreds of thousands of council houses were built, only for the Labour party to manipulate the allocation process to ensure that these state assets were given away to Labour supporters (notably incoming migrants).  The Conservative response to this was to sell the assets off so that they could no longer be misused in this way.

The result is that we have no social housing - particularly in villages where young people can no longer live in the communities where they were born and brought up.

A solution would be to provide a fund to be used to construct social housing in villages, but to transfer those houses (and an endowment) to a parish trust in each area - houses being only available to people with a connection with the village (young families wanting to stay, retiring people wanting to return, essential workers etc).

Twenty houses of this kind, in each of the ten thousand or so villages we have, would go a longer way to replenishing the stock of social housing in locations where people want to live.

I am always touched by the commitment village communities have.  This embroidery was done in 1993 and lists all the families in her village.  I thought at first it was pen and ink, and only when I looked at it really closely did I realise it was made up of tiny tiny stitches.

How many of these families are still able to afford to live in the communities of their ancestors?

Cameron's blessing

Congratulations to Andy Murray on winning Wimbledon.

And can we have an apology please from all those who sneered about "Cameron's curse".

It was obviously Cameron's blessing that facilitated the win.

Corruption in the Labour party

On the front page of the Guardian, in an article about corruption in the Labour party, is the astonishing news that "one member of the shadow cabinet worked with a trade union leader to try to unseat another frontbencher".  What on earth is going on here?  Who were the individuals concerned? 

As three members of the shadow cabinet are paid public salaries (in addition to their salaries as MPs) this surely must warrant an enquiry to ascertain whether employment law has been broken in this "very unpleasant" episode.

If the Labour party had been in government this "unseating" attempt would have had serious implications for democracy.

Independent writer Owen Jones has just appeared on BBC News 24 (apparently wearing a vest under his shirt on what must be the hottest day of the year) and effectively thrown petrol on the flames of the Falkirk controversy by telling us one of the candidates in that benighted Constituency Labour Party was signing up new members "with a single cheque". 

And what are we to make of the Labour Uncut website publishing an article that hints at corruption in the Paisley Constituency Labour Party then withdrawing that article?  Do the police need to look at these allegations?  Is the Labour Uncut website suppressing evidence?

The Labour Party is a great institution, and Conservatives must surely take no pleasure in seeing it seething with scandal in this way.  We all suffer when there is not an effective Opposition in Parliament (and they cannot claim to be effective if their attention is distracted in this internal civil war).  To borrow a phrase from Winston Churchill, we are seeing a great ship sinking in a calm sea.

Another resignation

"Another resignation" says Isabel Hardman.

Martin Horwood MP resigns from Unite.

Isabel Hardman is an excellent journalist - accurate and perceptive and with a quiet humour (and with none of the intervening ego that often mars male journalists).

"Apparatchiks stitching up seats"

At last Owen Jones makes a statement about the Unite debacle / subversion / farce nexus:

"Years of Blairite apparatchiks stitching up seats, parachuting Special Advisors into constituencies they'd never been to. Media outrage? Nil"

Who are these questionable MPs, "parachuted" into constituencies against the wishes of the local party members?  I know Tristram Hunt was.  But who are the others?

And how does this Blairite behaviour justify subversive behaviour by the Unite faction?

Is the Labour party utterly corrupt?  Has there been a bitter internecine war waging since the Blair days?  And why was the Jones column today about Simon Danczuk and not about the most important issue facing the Labour party - Unite entryism.

For heaven's sake the party has just lost it's election co-ordinator.  It may have escaped the notice of the Labour leadership but we are in the run-up to the General Election campaign (indeed, in many ways the campaign is already underway).  This is the stage when the Labour party needs to be pencilling in events in their top target seats, fine-tuning the arguments that will win over waverers, putting the last few touches to their co-ordinated army of activists - not bungling around with recruiting a new head of electioneering while frantically trying to beat down the flames of an internal civil war.

Dan Hodges was interesting on the Today programme this morning - can we hear more from him please.

A miasma of accusation and counter-accusation

On a rational level it is very satisfying to see the Labour party floundering around in a miasma of accusation and counter-accusation, losing their election co-ordinator twenty-three months (700 days) away from the General Election.

But nevertheless there is a feeling of sick dread seeing how easily a political institution can fall apart at the very time it needs to hold together.

And one suspects there is a lot more to come out (otherwise why not publish the Falkirk report?).

Thank goodness it is happening to them and not to us.

According to Tom Newton Dunn (The Sun's Political Editor) this is "the most self-indulgent and patronising resignation letter ever written":  http://labourlist.org/2013/07/tom-watson-resigns-from-the-shadow-cabinet/

Lord Freud and foodbanks

On the whole I agree with Zoe Williams and her article about Lord Freud and foodbanks.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/04/lord-freud-food-banks

Except for the last paragraph.

How is Lord Freud "a Tory"?

He is a Vicar of Bray figure, cosying up to Labour when Labour was in power, insinuating himself into the Conservatives now the Conservatives are in a Coalition government.

Chairing a review here, advising a New Labour minister there, picking up a peerage along the way.

The Freud family are like that.

Part of the amorphous mass of self-interested self-obsessed people that float around the British establishment attaching themselves to whoever happens to be in power.

He might be technically a member of the Conservative party at this precise moment in time, but who knows where he will be post-2015.

Certainly you could not call him a Tory in the traditional understanding of that word.

"Selling places at UK state schools to foreigners"

"Cameron letter suggests he wants to explore selling places at UK state schools to foreigners" says Tim Montgomerie, referring us to an article by Sam Coates in today's Times: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/politics/article3807521.ece

The article says it is "a controversial plan pushed by David Cameron" but I think Sam Coates misunderstands how the civil servants in Whitehall and Downing Street operate.

These are politicians in all but name, and pursue policies of their own devising, usually without the government knowing what they are up to.

The letter was not from David Cameron, it was from the Prime Minister's Private Secretary - and I would guess that the Prime Minister did not know of its existence.

Indeed, is it likely that such a crazy internationalist policy would be advanced by a Conservative Prime Minister?

Is this not a textbook example of David Goodhart's argument that an internationalist pro-liberal elite is controlling immigration policy against the wishes of the democratic majority?

The letter in full is worth reading carefully.  The only mentions of the Prime Minister are a conventional expression of thanks in the opening line and an innocuous reference (in Point 4) to a discussion the Prime Minister had about foreign universities opening in the United Kingdom.  Otherwise the "we" in the letter could be anyone - the wording does not indicate in any way that these ideas are coming from David Cameron himself.

Also note that the letter is copied to other senior civil servants, not to Cabinet Ministers (and remember that civil servants in Whitehall departments answer to the civil servants in Downing Street NOT to the minister that heads their department).

Read the letter for yourself:

 http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/multimedia/archive/00428/FOR_SAM_428564a.pdf

BBC admits to bias

I find it very shocking that the BBC admits to bias in reporting immigration for the past nine years:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/jul/03/bbc-deep-liberal-bias-immigration

The most serious social change of our lives is not being reported and discussed responsibly by the state broadcaster.

It makes you wonder what is the point of having a state broadcaster if this is going to happen.

I am very keen to read the report and yet it does not seem to be available on the BBC website.

If this report has been paid for by public money I think we should be able to see it.

Silence about the report from Sundar Katwala on his Twitter stream.

Silence about the report from Jonathan Portes on his Twitter stream.

Silence about the report from David Aaronovitch on his Twitter stream. 

Bonnie Greer is reviewing the newspapers on BBC News 24 this evening - can she please have her attention directed to coverage of the BBC bias in case she is also one of the pro-immigration cheer-leaders who are pretending not to notice the report.

And does this not prove that David Goodhart was absolutely spot-on in his thesis on how migration has been pushed through against the wishes of the majority.

Hipsters

I am disgusted that the East End is becoming colonised by hipsters:  http://www.yelp.co.uk/wordmap/london/hipster

They have ALWAYS been political figures

Mehdi Hasan (Huffington Post) draws attention to the Cabinet Secretary's apparent role in deciding policy:  http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/07/03/jeremy-heywood_n_3538983.html?1372847568

He quotes Paul Flynn MP as saying:  "Civil servants such as Heywood... have become politicized..."

Paul Flynn is wrong.

Senior civil servants (and most of all the Cabinet Secretary) have not "become" politicized, they have ALWAYS been political figures, unaccountable and unattributable and wielding enormous power in every Whitehall department.

As soon as you start to research political history in the post-war period you can see this - often it seems that the Cabinet Secretary is as important as the Prime Minister.

Even in Mehdi Hasan's own article we can see an example of this when the Cabinet Secretary is quoted as saying:  “This is not a two-year project or a five-year project. This is a 10-year project, a 20-year generational battle to beef up the economy... there is no alternative."

What is the Cabinet Secretary doing planning ten year projects and twenty year generational battles?

This is why governments change and yet the policies stay the same - to the anger and disillusionment of both the Labour and Conservative parties.

Sir Jeremy Heywood's biography (from Wikipedia):

"...promoted to be the Principal Private Secretary to Prime Minister Tony Blair in 1999. He stayed in this position until 2003, when he left the civil service in the wake of the Hutton Inquiry where it emerged that Heywood claimed to have never minuted meetings in the Prime Ministerial offices about Dr David Kelly, a job he was required to do. He emerged to become the Managing Director of the UK Investment Banking Division at Morgan Stanley where he became embroiled in the Southern Cross Scandal that almost saw 30,000 elderly people being made homeless.  Upon Gordon Brown becoming Prime Minister in 2007, Heywood returned to government as Head of Domestic Policy and Strategy at the Cabinet Office... On 11 October 2011 it was announced that Heywood would replace Sir Gus O'Donnell as the Cabinet Secretary..."

Is this, one wonders, Britain's real prime minister?

How many infectious foreigners are entering the United Kingdom

"Stigmatising foreigners accessing NHS creates a public health risk" says Diane Abbott MP.

Can Ms Abbott please expand on this?

How many infectious foreigners are entering the United Kingdom and what are the diseases that they are bringing in? 

Lassa fever?  Necrotizing fasciitis?  Chagas disease?

London has been plagued recently by bed bugs that have come into the country from overseas, so we know that this is an area of concern to ordinary people.

And it must obviously be a significant issue for this to be raised by the Shadow Public Health Minister.

Just as an aside on this subject:  given the huge number of foreigners now working in restaurants in London, and given that the majority of the world's population are infected by parasites ("worms"), does it not follow that a large percentage of kitchen assistants and waiters/waitresses working in London have worms?  One hopes of course that stringent hygiene procedures are followed at all food establishments.  But considering the ease with which worm eggs can be conveyed from a dirty restaurant operative onto the food of a diner I am hoping that the Shadow Public Health Minister can ask some questions about this potential health threat.

Excessively long hours for effectively no payment

There is condemnation (and rightly so) of companies that use unpaid interns, work them to death, and then throw them away without offering a permanent position.

There is condemnation (most certainly righteous condemnation) of companies that take JSA (Job Seekers Allowance) labour and use these people as a sort of updated version of indentured servants - unable to leave (without penalties) and yet paid nothing extra for their "work experience".

Can we please have some investigation and intervention into "subsistence retailing" corner shops (often in BME areas, but not exclusively so) where young children are compelled by family authority figures into working long hours often for a pittance.

And not just corner shops.

In Greetings From Bury Park Sarfraz Manzoor describes how his two sisters worked excessively long hours for effectively no payment (the money was taken by the father).  He was writing about Luton in the 1970s and 80s.  Has this culture of family exploitation passed, or are children in these environments still being exploited?

Is anyone looking into this, or is political correctness inhibiting investigation into BME girls (it is usually girls) who are having their childhood stolen from them?

Liz Kendall MP on the issue of charging migrants

Statement by Liz Kendall MP on the issue of charging migrants for the health services they use:  http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1rl56ra.

Surely the answer is to insist everyone coming into the country has comprehensive health insurance for the period of their stay.

No health insurance, no entry to the United Kingdom.

Is that so difficult?

Update:

Patrick Butler (Guardian) says that a healthcare levy for foreigners will mean "UK closed for business".

What sort of businessman/woman cannot afford a £1,000 health levy?

And if they can't afford a health levy are they really the sort "wealth-creating individuals" we are being told we must let into the country?

Article by Alan Travis:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk-news/2013/jul/03/immigrants-levy-healthcare?CMP=twt_gu