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 The Guardian newspaper: Comment & debate | guardian.co.ukThe latest from The Guardian Comment & debateLast Build Date: Thu, 09 Feb 2012 21:30:01 GMT Copyright: Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. 2012
Islamophobia is America's real enemy | Daisy Khan Thu, 09 Feb 2012 21:30:01 GMT2012-02-09T21:30:01Z The hysterical campaign to stigmatise US Muslims poses a far greater threat than radicalisation to America's civic unionA report released this week has at last confirmed what we Muslim Americans have long known to be true: the threat posed to US national security by the radicalisation of its Muslim community is minuscule.The study, by the Triangle Centre on Terrorism and Homeland Security, found that only 20 Muslim Americans were charged with violent crimes related to terrorism in 2011, and of the 14,000 homicides recorded in the United States in that year, not one was committed by a Muslim extremist.We are thrilled that an objective, comprehensive investigation has revealed that only a tiny percentage of American Muslims support violent acts. However, we remain concerned that the greater danger to America's civic union comes from an increasingly organised campaign that portrays all Muslims as potential terrorists and traitors.Yes, there may be some Muslims who resort to violence; but it's clear that these individuals signify nothing more than a statistical aberration, and are no more representative of the Muslim community as a whole than Timothy McVeigh, Jared Lee Loughner, or Anders Behring Breivik represent Christianity.In recent years a network of politically motivated special interests has emerged that is determined to stigmatise and marginalise Muslims in all areas of American public life. After the Cordoba Initiative's proposal to build an Islamic community centre near Ground Zero were distorted into a manufactured controversy by one such group, we were called "stealth jihadists" and "wolves in sheep's clothing". One person even claimed: "They seem like nice people now, but they will probably turn into extremists in 10, 15, or 20 years."What began as the work of fringe groups with racist ideologies has moved into the mainstream. The Islamophobic film The Third Jihad was played continuously between training sessions for new recruits to New York's police. The film-makers were linked to an organised movement with a budget of more than $40m and sophisticated lobbying efforts in all 50 states.Republican congressman Peter King – even as opponents questioned his own ties to IRA and Catholic terrorism in Ireland – convened a series of congressional hearings on the radicalisation of American Muslims that can only be described as a witch hunt. And on the campaign trail, Republican presidential candidates from Herman Cain to Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum have used their platform to demonise American Muslims and question our loyalty to our country.It was not always this way. Following the 9/11 attacks President Bush, at the Islamic Centre of Washington, said: "The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam … When we think of Islam we think of a faith that brings comfort to a billion people around the world … America counts millions of Muslims amongst our citizens, and Muslims make an incredibly valuable contribution to our country."Our allies in the interfaith and civil rights communities are working to counteract the fabricated opposition to Islam that is gaining strength in America today. In response to King's hearings, a coalition of 150 interfaith organisations sponsored a rally proclaiming "Today I am a Muslim too". It is the Brennan Centre for Justice at New York University that took a lead in exposing the New York City Police Department's missteps with regards to the Muslim community.We know that the bulk of the American public recognises the truth of Islamic moderation and tolerance. The hysterical invective may be well-funded, but it does not capture the heart of the nation. By standing tall together we will overcome those who spread hate and suspicion and return respect and trust to their rightful place at the centre of American political and civic life.• Follow Comment is free on Twitter @commentisfreeIslamCivil liberties - internationalUnited StatesGlobal terrorismReligionRace issuesDaisy Khanguardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights rese[...]
These empty apprenticeship schemes are failing our young | Polly Toynbee Thu, 09 Feb 2012 21:00:01 GMT2012-02-09T21:00:01Z Apprenticeships touted as solutions to the grave crisis of youth unemployment are not remotely up to the jobApprenticeship – the word warms the cockles of politicians' hearts. David Cameron and Nick Clegg boast frequently of increasing apprenticeships by a remarkable 60%.It's National Apprenticeship Week – but the coalition should perhaps have quietly dropped it, along with so much support for the young. The new apprenticeships they claim are almost a lie, at least nowhere near the truth. As youth unemployment climbs – now at 22.3% – the number of apprenticeships for 16 to 18 year-olds fell in the last three months.Cameron and Clegg certainly know the truth about their "60% increase". They may get lost in thickets of vocational initials – BTecs, HNDs, GNVQs – while knowing every detail about whether an A* will help Oxbridge select the very best. But they love the word "apprenticeship", with its sepia image of a young man at a lathe under the watchful eye of a master craftsman, the sealing wax on his seven-year articles ensuring lifelong, worthwhile work. However, most "modern apprenticeships", as in secondary modern, are a world away from medieval guilds. The last government devalued the word, but this government trashed it when it took Labour's Train to Gain scheme for older employees, cut the funds and rebadged it as "apprenticeships". That created an instant 257% increase in "apprenticeships" as short courses for over-25s, most already working at Asda, Morrisons or McDonald's. Worthwhile maybe, but not "apprenticeships", wasting scarce state funds on company training.Here's an enjoyable statistic: in the last year "apprenticeships" for the over- 60s rose by 878%. Cuts in the training/apprenticeship budget are disguised by plentiful announcements of little pots of money for small new schemes: Cameron did it again this week with £6m for high-quality apprenticeships. The worst scandal is that so many "apprenticeships" are 12-week courses from private training companies, with no jobs at the end. That revelation forced the government to promise all future apprenticeships for 16 to 18 year-olds must last a year – but not for 19 to 24 year-olds.Britain is the only country that outsources apprenticeships: elsewhere they are a bond between employers and trainees. Take the retail apprenticeship, a weak, lowly esteemed course in generic basics. Professor Lorna Unwin of the Institute for Education says German retail apprentices learn the detail of, say, delicatessen, or electrical sales. "They learn all about the products they sell, along with maths and literacy. It's a regulated occupation, where you can only be apprenticed under a meister for at least two and often four years. No wonder Comet goes to the wall when staff have no idea what they're selling." That applies to low-grade social care courses: in Nordic countries nursery nursing is mostly graduate level. That goes to the heart of the matter, a reflection on a whole society's deep values.It's been a week of bad news for the young. David Miliband's commission on youth unemployment, for the charities' organisation Acevo, laid out the frightening future. In temperate language – Acevo is non-political, and charities want grants – it shows how the damage done to the lost generation who never found work in the 80s will be dwarfed by what is happening now.One in five has no job, with 600 hotspots where twice as many chase nonexistent work. Keeping them out of work costs £4.8bn a year, £28bn over the next decade, "a timebomb under the nation's finances". Quarter of a million have been out of work for a year. Training schemes and exploitative, unpaid work barely scratch the surface. The problem is deep and structural: there is too little demand for underqualified young employees, with too many out of work even in the good times.The state intervenes too little too late: the vaunted Work Programme takes only one in 10 of the young, with under-19s left out. There are just 50,000 subsidised jobs, spending half the [...]
In most countries the Harry Redknapp case wouldn't have reached a jury | Simon Jenkins Thu, 09 Feb 2012 20:30:01 GMT2012-02-09T20:30:01Z Redknapp's was the latest in a series of show trials – even if he had been guilty it could have been settled with a handshakeNow for 'Arry the Movie, a tale of fear and loathing in darkest Poole. It boasts a rags-to-riches hero – Harry Redknapp – along with Rosie his dog, a kindly Slav, Milan Mandaric, a villainous taxman and a Monte Carlo bank. Cheering from the terraces is a jury of 12 Londoners, good and true, who may know nothing of fiscal clawback but can tell a likely lad from an offside trap. With an uppity Italian leaving as head of the national soccer team, Redknapp's hour had come. Never did England's manifest destiny so beckon since Gordon left for Khartoum.The taxpayer should be spitting with anger. Premier league soccer is awash in money, not just pay but bonuses, bungs, kickbacks and abuse of tax shelters. In the past 10 years I can find no one prosecuted or disciplined for them. The City of London police, undaunted and eager to retain their strange independence, decided to make a thing of a supposed fraud, at least of one they could understand. The force ignored the credit crunch and lifted not a finger against their financers, the banks – but they have been fearless against horse-racing and soccer. It is like the Medellín police force suddenly clamping down on food hygiene.After failing to nail the jockey Kieren Fallon for race-fixing, the City police investigated football proprietors, managers, agents and players, including Redknapp's benefactor and co-defendant, the millionaire former Portsmouth chairman Mandaric. None of this had anything to do with the City, and all the trials failed at vast expense. Soccer, like racing, is wild west country, where witnesses do not talk. It is blessed and cursed by its public appeal and glamour, thanks to which heroes are judged by different standards to ordinary mortals and discipline poses a constant challenge to authority. So the police tried to get a couple of big fish for tax evasion.Redknapp is a charismatic and successful coach. He has brought a dash of Cockney pride to a world dominated by foreigners with egos as big as their bank accounts. His talents have been rewarded by one club after another, culminating in the phenomenal revival of Tottenham Hotspur, now near the top of the league. But even Redknapp's fans gulped to learn of remuneration that has reached £4m, and even "commission" for selling his own club's star players to rival teams.They gulped too at the prosecution claim that, on declaring himself unhappy at being paid only 5%, taxable, on selling Peter Crouch from what was then his own club, Portsmouth, Redknapp's chairman, Mandaric, put £186,000 in a secret Monaco bank account codenamed after his dog. Redknapp had himself described it as a bonus to a News of the World journalist, but the jury accepted his explanation at trial that he had been lying to the hack, and the money was in fact "seed money for investment", and therefore untaxable. In view of what he told the Sunday paper, it is easy to see why the revenue thought the case worth a punt.The prosecution was characterised by ridiculously crude police methods. Dawn raids, ransacked offices, five-year investigations, expensive QCs and theatrical show trials seem aimed more at film rights than at common dignity. These methods yielded sympathy in court for Redknapp, and aided his ingenious defence that he was hopeless at money and "writes like a two-year-old". The process of prosecution eventually cost money out of all proportion to the sums at stake, reportedly £8m. The law is the last realm of public service where concepts of cost-benefit are wholly unknown.British justice has turned show trials into a blood sport, as most recently with the August riots, the petty charge for which Chris Huhne has been humiliated and now the Redknapp case. I am sure this is why Britain sends to jail more people than anywhere else in Europe. Had Redknapp been found guilty, he could have gone to jail for [...]
China believes Syria needs a peaceful solution | Liu Xiaoming Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:10:01 GMT2012-02-09T15:51:57Z China's veto of the UN security council resolution reflects our conviction that we must calm, not inflame, the situation in SyriaRather a lot of megaphone diplomacy followed the recent UN vote on Syria. Confusion and anger flowed from British and western media. So why did Russia and China veto the UN security council draft resolution on Syria? As Chinese ambassador in the UK, I feel it is timely to give a more measured explanation of why China voted no. Also, I want to explain how together we can, must and should give peace a chance in Syria.Since day one of this crisis, China has been watching the situation very closely. We have consistently urged all sides to stop violence, avoid civilian casualties and restore order in the country. Central to any lasting solution must be a clear principle: the Syrian people's call for change should be heard, and their interests need to be protected. This is the best possible result for the Syrian people.For this to happen, China has backed the Arab League's efforts to find a political solution and maintain stability in the region. In addition, we encouraged all sides in Syria to respond positively to these efforts to mediate. The goal must be an immediate end to all violence; once that is achieved, we must encourage an inclusive political process led by the Syrian people. Peaceful dialogue is the best way to tackle differences and grievances and restore stability to Syria.The international community should act in a way that constructively helps this goal, not the opposite. It is fundamental that Syria's sovereignty, independence and territory must be respected. The security council should adopt a calm and measured response to the crisis; above all it must stand by the purposes and principles of the UN charter.Any decision the council makes must reduce rather than inflame tension, encourage reconciliation and contribute to regional peace and stability in the Middle East. Entrusted with a responsibility for world peace and security, the last thing the UN should do is to further complicate the crisis. What we need from the UN security council is a sustainable solution, not a rash decision. It was following the above principles that led China to vote no.China has been an active negotiator at the security council to try to produce a draft resolution on Syria. We continue to work hard to win a consensus. But imposing hasty deadlines on these debates will most likely lead to failure; this was particularly so at a time of sharp divide on the text and some members' insistence on further consultations. Furthermore, the Russian foreign minister had announced a visit to Damascus to begin a new round of mediation. This means it was, and is, not a good time for forcing a vote on Syria. The end result was anticipated by those members who pressed for the vote; the solidarity and authority of the security council is undermined as a result, and we are further away from a sustainable and lasting solution.Chinese people abhor the violence and bloodshed in Syria as much as those in Britain and other countries. China voted against the resolution for a simple reason: the resolution as drafted will not help cool down the situation. It does not facilitate political dialogue. It does not address distrust, or bring peace and stability to the region. Quite the contrary, China believes that forcing the vote only aggravates these tension and makes the situation more unmanageable.So what about the track record of no votes in the UN security council? In the 41 years since the People's Republic's return to the council, China has only cast a no vote eight times. This is a frequency far lower than any of the other four permanent members. China always strives for consensus and harmony; this attitude is embedded in our culture. So the low pattern of no votes by China shows my government thinks very hard before voting. It means that China's veto on Syria this time around was a very tough decision.China in this process has sh[...]
Hugh Muir's diary Wed, 08 Feb 2012 22:50:01 GMT2012-02-09T00:05:58Z The new approach to energy in the UK. Call for Arthur Scargill• A week of highs for eco-sceptic Tories. First Chris Huhne, their bete noir, retires hurt. Then there is ammunition for all who would debunk the current thinking on renewables. Led by backbencher Chris Heaton-Harris, 101 Tory MPs signed a letter to David Cameron attacking the government's renewable energy policy. They were egged on by a new report from the thinktank Civitas, which itself borrowed heavily from research conducted by Colin Gibson, the former power network director at National Grid. He's obviously a knowledgeable guy, though he did retire 15 years ago and freely admits in his web paper that his study needs "further work". Still, let's for a moment accept that his is an approach to follow. What else does Gibson say about the future of our energy generation? "We could reach a situation where we will not be able to afford to buy foreign gas", thus: "An obvious strategy to be considered is to reduce coal imports by using more coal from national sources." Oh my! Do 101 Tory MPs owe Arthur Scargill an apology?• Highs, too, for Tony Blair as he submits, via his interfaith foundation, to a Twitter interview. Some of the questions aren't what one would wish ("Did it feel good to be shopping in luxury stores during operation Cast Lead? Do the benefits of going to war alongside US presidents always include congressional medals?") But it's quite exciting, all the same.• Lows for Maria Miller, the minister for the disabled, who triggered outrage with her assertion that in this, the highest period of unemployment in 17 years, there is no shortage of jobs, just a lack of skills and fear of work. Whack – that was the right hook from Labour. Biff – that was the cross from the TUC. She probably meant well but it was pretty difficult, because she was being interviewed on Radio 5 Live, and when the red light glows, anyone can get into a bit of a muddle. Still, one does wonder about the thousands the department of work and pensions spent last year on giving Miller, among others, media training. How was that value for money?• Highs and lows, meanwhile, for BBC2's Newsnight. The high of Jeremy Paxman's interview with Katie Price last night. A low of sorts today, as head honchos at the BBC are forced again to fend off accusations that they dumped a viable investigation into sexual abuse allegations once levelled against the late Sir Jimmy Savile. First raised in the Sunday Mirror, the claims are expanded and re-ventilated in the Oldie magazine, of all places, by journalist Miles Goslett, who says the investigation was dropped to protect a clutch of tribute shows planned to mark Sir Jimmy's death. The Oldie claims that two celebrities other than Savile were responsible, that some of the misbehaviour occurred in Television Centre and that BBC director general Mark Thompson was involved in the recent discussions about what should happen. Not so, says the Beeb. Our inquiries did not relate to the allegations themselves – which were investigated by Surrey police in 2007 but not proceeded with. "The angle we were pursuing could not be substantiated." Sir Jimmy is gone; the controversies continue.• Finally, these are scratchy times. So let us be charitable and suggest that last week, when Dirty Des's Daily Star ran a photo taken from the internet of figures in white hoods and the text "Police launched a hunt for Ku Klux Klan thugs in Essex", they really did suppose that the lynch mob might have made its way across the Atlantic. And that it would have been able to parade without hindrance. Let's assume that when the Daily Mail got in on the act (The Only KKK Is Essex?), it really thought such a thing was likely. For we learn from the Church Times – and from the organiser – that the photos depicted nothing more than a harmless Candlemas procession, organised by Anglicans and Methodists. Nothing sinister. The Christian festival of lights[...]
Liberal Democrats can again enjoy the reflection in the mirror | Martin Kettle Wed, 08 Feb 2012 21:30:00 GMT2012-02-09T00:05:59Z Nick Clegg has taken the Lib Dems on a traumatic journey. But his battle-hardened party now has real grounds for confidenceIt is old hat to pretend that there's nothing new to say about the Liberal Democrats. Stereotypes about Nick Clegg and his party put down deep roots early in the coalition's life. Trying to do the right thing in tough times for the country, the Lib Dems assured themselves. Selling out their principles for a taste of office, thundered Labour. A distasteful but temporary necessity, sneered the Conservatives. Meanwhile, the Lib Dems' ratings and electoral support all plummeted.Some of that remains, of course. But time has nevertheless moved on since 2010. So has politics. And so, insufficiently noted by those who prefer their politics set in aspic, have the Liberal Democrats. The plummeting has stopped. The party is less traumatised than it was a year ago. There are signs of greater assertiveness and perhaps, viewed through some rose-tinted glasses, of politics beginning to move in their direction. Even the numbers are getting a little better, just about.The challenge in talking about all politics, and about the Lib Dems in particular, is always to get the balance and the words right. Rule one is not to exaggerate either the setbacks or the advances, as so many do. All honest Lib Dems have to accept they have taken a massive, potentially disastrous hit since May 2010. The parliamentary byelection record, once glorious, is abject. In local government the Lib Dems lose one in every two seats they defend, far worse than Labour or the Tories. The AV referendum was a humiliation.But the polling has levelled out and may even be inching very slowly up. In local government byelections the Lib Dems are running at a 17% average, nicely ahead of the 11% average in the national polls. Last week they took a seat from Labour in Newcastle-under-Lyme and one from the Tories in Amersham. Hardly the sunlit uplands. But at least the party now has room to breathe again.Indisputably the party is also less apologetic now. The shock of the new experience of being in government has worn off a bit. Insiders at last week's Eastbourne awayday say the mood is amazingly chipper. But the Lib Dems are still in a far worse position, and are facing much tougher problems, than they expected. Mood and predicament are out of sync. We're like a galleon that has lost a lot of rigging and masts in a tremendous storm, says one, before adding that the vessel is still afloat and immensely seaworthy.One small thing is clear, though. Chris Huhne's cabinet resignation last week, widely regretted even by those who disliked him, does not inflict wider damage on the party. That's not to say Edward Davey is a heavyweight in the way that Huhne almost was. Nor to say that Vince Cable is not now a little more isolated on the Lib Dem left in the cabinet. What it is to say, however, is that the Lib Dems, both in government and more widely, are a more resilient and coherent party than their critics generally allow. The Lib Dems are indisputably in a difficult place, but the party exists for reasons that still make sense. It's a more politically self-confident party than outsiders understand. Don't write them off.Instead consider three things that make the Lib Dems freshly interesting. The first is that it is increasingly public that the Lib Dems stand – albeit still within the agreed parameters of the coalition agreement – for priorities that are distinctly different from those of their Conservative partners. Different parts of the party highlight different things. The official line emphasises the recalibration of the economy away from financial services, the emphasis on early-years spending and, a little nervously, Europe. Others put the spotlight on banking reform, the rearguard action on the green economy, perhaps even on an alternative to Trident. A frequently heard line is that this is a party that can look at its[...]
Ignore the soporific jargon of procurement. Privatisation is a race to the bottom | Zoe Williams Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:30:01 GMT2012-02-09T00:05:55Z The outsourcing of state services always leads to workers being paid less. Instead our leaders call it an 'efficiency saving'The danger is not when a politician tells you a demonstrable untruth, straight to your face – perhaps an MP might say out loud that there is no shortage of jobs, or the prime minister might claim an increase in midwife numbers, having failed to mention the very much greater increase in the number of babies (I know! So unhelpful, but nevertheless, nice and transparent). I don't mind any of that; I think it hurts them more than it hurts us.What I mind more is a large, unverifiable statement, then some statistics that don't immediately knit into it. There's no better illustration of this than the persistent coalition line that, as the public sector is pruned back, the private sector will spring up in its place, providing jobs as the result of its suddenly unstrangled growth. I could only ever see this as a post hoc explanation for a boom gone by; it never seemed like a trajectory one could actually rely upon and plan around. It's a gardening metaphor, for one thing; they never work, not even in gardening.However, the confidence of the Treasury remained undimmed, and every quarter in which growth was not suddenly stimulated by the dwindling public sector was blamed on factors beyond a government's control – we're all pretty well familiar with them now: it's either too cold or too hot or there's a royal wedding or it's eurogeddon.But last October, Frank Dobson put an innocent sounding question to the chancellor of the exchequer: "What proportion of the increase in private sector jobs was represented by the contracting out of former public sector jobs?" This was salient for a number of reasons: for a start, that month followed one of the worst quarters on record for new private sector jobs, with just 5,000 posts filled between June and September 2011. From an economist's perspective, that is as good as standing still.So, if it were to turn out that any significant proportion of that 5,000 were actually just straight transfers of public sector workers, then that slightly gives the lie to the great productivity we were all supposed to expect, as the gladiator of market enterprise sloughed off the chains of the rotten state. And there are problems related to outsourcing that go way beyond distorting the buoyancy of the jobs market.First, if outsourcing represents a cash saving for the government department, exactly how is that money saved? I want to make a dainty point about whether or not it's a coincidence that chief executives of private companies are paid more than their public sector equivalents, but I just don't have time: very often, I am going to stick my neck out and say almost always, if the private sector is cheaper, that is not an "efficiency saving", that's because they've driven down wages in the middle and the bottom.If Reliance can do Ordnance Survey's admin and catering for less money than OS did it themselves, or Boeing can do IT for the Ministry of Defence, and that's cheaper, it seems like an obvious boon. But, especially in low-skilled work, you have to wonder how it comes to be cheaper. Nobody's invented a quicker way to do cleaning; it's more likely that wages are forced down, job security is destroyed, pensions are axed. The ludicrous thing is, we're told that we all win when other people's wages go down, because we all put into the public purse: actually, though, the difference in the cost of those services is piffling, set against the problems we store up for ourselves when people don't earn a living wage and can't save for their old age.Let's return to October for a second: Dobson's question was sent to Nick Hurd, who sent it to the UK Statistics Authority, who replied that they didn't know. Maybe that sounds evasive. It is amazing how common it is for major accounting bodies to just … not know[...]
Angela Merkel needs all the help she can get | Timothy Garton Ash Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:30:01 GMT2012-02-09T00:05:55Z Few had anticipated the leadership dilemmas of a European Germany in a German EuropeIn 1953 the novelist Thomas Mann appealed to an audience of students in Hamburg to strive for "not a German Europe but a European Germany". This stirring pledge was endlessly repeated at the time of German unification. Today we have a variation that few foresaw: a European Germany in a German Europe.Angela Merkel's Berlin republic is a European Germany, in the rich, positive sense that the great novelist had come to use the term. It is free, civilised, democratic, law-bound, and socially and environmentally conscious. It's far from perfect, obviously, but as good as any other big country in Europe – and the best Germany we've ever had.Yet because of the crisis of the eurozone this European Germany finds itself, unwillingly, at the centre of a German Europe. No one can seriously doubt that Germany is calling the shots in the eurozone. The reason we have a fiscal compact treaty agreed by 25 EU member states is that Berlin wanted it. Desperate, impoverished Greeks are being told to "do your homework" by Germans. More extraordinary still, the German chancellor is now telling French voters who to vote for in their own presidential election, through a series of campaign appearances with Nicolas Sarkozy. Everyone says that Europe is being led by "Merkozy", but the reality is more like Merkelzy.Germany did not seek this leadership position. Rather, this is a perfect illustration of the law of unintended consequences. German leaders, from Helmut Schmidt to Helmut Kohl, had envisaged advancing the European project through a European monetary union, but it was François Mitterrand's France that insisted on pinning Germany down to it, in the context of German unification.Historians can argue about how far the commitment in the Maastricht treaty was a direct quid pro quo for French support for German unification, but two things are clear. Both sides of the Rhine agreed that this was an important part of binding a newly united Germany into a more united Europe, in which France would continue to play a – if not the – leading role. And many Germans saw giving up their precious deutschmark as paying an economic price for a larger political good.Twenty years on from Maastricht, we see that the precise opposite has happened. Economically, the euro turned out to be very good for Germany. Politically, it is precisely the monetary union that has put Germany in the driving seat and relegated France to the front passenger seat.So far Germany is proving a reluctant, nervous and not very skilful driver. There are many reasons for this. One of these is not wanting to be in the driving seat in the first place. Another is suspecting that everyone else in the car wants you to pay for the petrol, the motorway meal and probably the overnight hotel too. On a panel at the Munich Security Conference last week, I and Robert Zoellick of the World Bank suggested in our different ways that Germany should show a little more economic and political leadership. The German defence minister, Thomas de Maizière, responded that Anglo-Saxon calls for more German leadership "usually meant … not leadership but money". He was wrong – but accurately reflected the way many Germans feel.Then there is the unhappy sense that they are damned if they do lead and damned if they don't. The terrible history that prompted Mann's postwar appeal plays a role here. If Germany suggests a commissar to oversee Greek budget cuts, he inevitably gets called a Gauleiter. Then there is the fact that the German elite simply is not used to playing such a leadership role in Europe, unlike the French elite, who like nothing better. The French want to, but can't; the Germans can, but don't want to.Above all, there is the perennial dilemma of Germany's awkward, inbetween size: "too big for Europe, too small[...]
French-style tax breaks are not the way to save the UK's small bookshops | Philip Jones Wed, 08 Feb 2012 13:59:00 GMT2012-02-09T00:05:54Z Subsidies cannot, and should not, save independent shops. Owners and publishers have to make them unique places to visitBookshop owners in Britain could be forgiven for casting envious glances across the Channel as they watch their French counterparts successfully fight government attempts to increase VAT on printed books. "Culture should be a political priority," the Socialist presidential candidate François Hollande has been quoted as saying, a view that has strong resonance in a country where discounting books beyond 5% is still forbidden and independent bookshops are supported by tax breaks.By contrast, independent booksellers in the UK feel only the cold air of commerce as they open their doors to the dwindling number of customers who still brave Britain's high streets and are prepared to pay full prices on books discounted to excess by Amazon and supermarket groups. The closest UK politicians – of whichever hue – come to supporting bookshops is when they flog their autobiographies through them. As a result many independent bookshops have simply closed their doors. There are perhaps just over 1,000 independents left in the UK; by contrast France boasts about 3,000.This has prompted some in the industry to call on the government to support independents in order to protect "the wellbeing of society". If that sound familiar, it is – the same argument is being made to save public libraries. Librarians may yet win their case, but it is hard to imagine politicians will rush to the support of a retail sector that still sells more than £1bn worth of books each year.Besides which, the picture from the bookshop floor is more complex. While there has been, without doubt, a decline in physical shops selling printed books over the last decade, this has come after 20 years of growth in shelf-space, as chains such as Waterstones and Borders overexpanded and supermarkets turned a lascivious eye to bestsellers.Roll-back 15 years, and it was this expansion that was killing indies, not the twin devils of digital and discount.Furthermore, the way readers buy and use book content is undergoing a revolution as digital reading grows. Over the next few years we are likely to see a rise in new booksellers such as Kobo, the Canadian ebookseller, and new ways of selling books, with social platforms such as Anobii and perhaps even Facebook becoming spaces where books are discovered, recommended, and sold.No amount of government subsidy will change this, or hold back the global giants such as Amazon, Apple and Google who are vying to become tomorrow's bookshops. And the problem with the French system is that it makes high-street bookselling appear uneconomic – fluffed up by artificially high book prices and state subsidies, with the attendant risk that bookshops will be left looking increasingly outmoded.Yes, independents are the life-blood of the book business – they can make and break authors and support fledgling publishers in ways non-stockholding retailers cannot. They help shape the nation's literary tastes and are the visible link between the reader and author. Without their tireless championing of new writing, literary diversity will shrink – yet aspic is simply not a good look for bookshops, and is unappealing for authors, who now have more ways than ever before to get their content to market.What independents really need from the government is a level playing field. Closing tax loopholes that allow Amazon to sell ebooks out of Luxembourg at a VAT rate of 3%, compared with the British VAT rate of 20% on ebooks, would be a start. Bringing forward the government's response to Mary Portas's high-street review would also help, particularly if rate relief was offered for smaller businesses, and the response helped usher in a planning environment that favoured local and individual retailing over out-of-town shopp[...]
Social care: Torbay or not Torbay, that is the big question | Sarah Wollaston Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:10:01 GMT2012-02-08T00:10:01Z The benefits to older people of integrating care services can be seen in Torbay. But they may vanish into a funding gapSocial care funding is a lottery: but one with an almost unlimited liability instead of a fabulous prize. As a former GP I remember the shock felt by families, used to free NHS treatment, when faced with eye-watering bills for the care of an elderly relative at home or in residential care. The dawning realisation that there would be absolutely no free assistance until their assets had fallen to £23,250 led some to decline any help at all until a crisis hospital admission made that inevitable. Sometimes, earlier help might have avoided the fall and fracture that led to the loss of independence.On Wednesday the health select committee publishes our recommendations for the future of social care in England and Wales. Negotiations are continuing behind the scenes about how to split funding responsibility between the state and individuals. The Dilnot commission, which provided an independent review of social care funding last summer, recommended a cap on the total contribution of somewhere between £25,000 and £50,000, together with a rise in the means-tested asset threshold to £100,000.But this will mean that those with a property valued at £200,000 will lose relatively more of their assets than those with a property worth £500,000. An alternative would be to set the cap based on the length of time that care has been received whilst adjusting for different level of care needs. The reality is that any system is likely to result in some feeling unfairly disadvantaged, and doesn't alter the fact that others will face no costs at all if they have never saved.The reason for setting these caps, however, is not just about fairness but to allow the development of financial products such as equity release or conventional pre-funded insurance. At present there is no market as the costs are unlimited. Even taking on the Dilnot proposals is no guarantee that such products will emerge or be trusted in the current climate.While for some the key question will be the level of the caps on future liabilities, the more important question should be how to make sure the care system is fit for purpose. Unless we have a clear goal of avoiding unnecessary admissions and encouraging elderly people to remain independent at home, then both the human and financial costs will continue to spiral out of control.The Law Commission found it difficult to define social care but easier to set out its purpose: "to promote or contribute to the wellbeing of the individual". That of course is also the purpose of the health service and social housing, and the long-standing separation of these three services for older people has resulted in fragmentation and inefficiency. Piecemeal progress has been made in areas such as Torbay, in Devon, where unnecessary emergency admissions have been reduced through rapid assessments and provision of equipment and support.But more needs to be done to protect and encourage these integrated care trusts. The social enterprise Turning Point identified that for every pound spent on integrating health, housing and social care, £2.65 was saved. Without integration, patients will continue to face delays or duplicated assessments and services which may be completely inappropriate for their own situation. And there is a risk that this issue will drop off the agenda as newly formed clinical commissioning groups take over the controls from dismantled primary care trusts.While it is painfully obvious to those caring for those with complex needs that there is a gap between the funding and provision of social care for older people, this has yet to be acknowledged by the Department of Health. Paul Burstow, the care services minister, cites the £2bn a year being transferred to soc[...]
Hugh Muir's diary Tue, 07 Feb 2012 22:50:00 GMT2012-02-08T11:59:36Z Dave and Vladimir. Vladimir and Dave. Democracy's great double act• At at time of rising intolerance, it seems doubly important that those who cherish democracy stick together. The Syria impasse shows that we have some way to go. But examples of good practice are spreading. "I propose introducing a rule for a mandatory parliamentary review of any legislative initiative that has more than 100,000 supporting signatures on the internet. A similar practice exists in the UK." So said Vladimir Putin, writing for Comment is free. He looks to us. The PM's ideas are his ideas. Makes you proud, doesn't it?• Great interest in the agreeable terms and conditions secured by Ed Lester, chief executive of the Student Loans Company. His taxation arrangements caused the biggest kerfuffle. But it was also noted that Lester flies from his home in Buckinghamshire to the office in Glasgow, and is billeted in a taxpayer-funded flat – benefits worth £500 a week. And it's not just him. Look at the 2010/11 accounts for the Serious Fraud Office, and arrangements for the chief executive there, Phillippa Williamson. "The benefit in kind for the chief executive officer is estimated to be £27,600 for the payment of travel and hotel costs for home to work travel incurred from 1 April up to 31 March 2011." She lives in the Lake District. The office is in London. Still, can't blame Williamson, even if her deal is one that Prospect union members at the SFO can only dream of. Get on your bike and look for work, was the mantra, so she did.• A difficult time too for our European mascot, Godfrey "Eight pints" Bloom, Ukip's man for Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire. There he was last week, riding high, proud as a peacock, baiting the pre-eminent lobby group for gays and lesbians in Europe. But then poor old Godders, he came a cropper. Into the chamber of the European parliament he went, a bit squiffy on something less than eight pints, and – as he admitted to the website Political Scrapbook – a little bit high on prescription drugs to alleviate the pain from a riding injury. Didn't go well. He rambled on about women's rugby clubs while colleagues shook their heads in sadness and disbelief. If he had any credibility to lose it would have all gone.• Bauble time again at the Oldie Awards, where collective wisdom and longevity are celebrated with an alcohol-fuelled gathering at Simpson's-in-the-Strand. It's a good lunch for the high priest of lunch, justice minister Kenneth Clarke, who emerges as Oldie of the Year. And for Sir Peregrine Worsthorne, named Fashion Icon of the Year. He presents in glowing purple. Also for Baroness Trumpington, named Peer of the Year for youthfully showing her middle digit to the former defence minister Lord King. The gags come courtesy of Sir Terry Wogan. He wells knows his audience. "After many years of marriage," says Sir Terry, "a wife calls from the kitchen for her husband to come downstairs and make mad passionate love to her. He does so, then asks: 'What was that all about?' 'Oh, the egg-timer's broken,' she replies."• And while people complain that the standard of British comedy is not what it was, an honourable mention to the Local Government Information Unit. On the back of the £7m spent dealing with the Dale Farm debacle, with all the rancour and controversy, and bearing in mind the fact that many of the travellers merely skipped on to the site next door, occasioning another round of eviction notices, whoever nominated Basildon council leader Tony Ball for leader of the year award has timing not seen since the demise of Eric Morecambe. That's the gift. Being able to raise a laugh without even trying.• Finally, with the move to Salford and the prospect of impending change at the top of the BBC, staff seek reassurance on issues that most[...]
Intervention in Syria will escalate not stop the killing | Seumas Milne Tue, 07 Feb 2012 22:30:00 GMT2012-02-08T10:04:15Z Russia and China blocked a bid to force regime change. But a negotiated settlement is the only way out of civil warThere is no limit, it seems, to the blood price Arabs have to pay for their "spring". After the carnage in Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain and Libya, Syria's 11-month-old uprising grows ever more gruesome. Four days of bombardment of rebel-controlled districts in the Syrian city of Homs have yielded horrific images and reports from the embattled Bab al-Amr opposition stronghold: of mosques full of corpses, streets strewn with body parts, residential areas reduced to rubble.Television footage broadcast in the Arab world is still more graphic, and the impact convulsive. Whatever the arguments about the number of dead on either side, the scale of human suffering is unmistakable – and comes after almost a year of continuous bloodletting, torture and sectarian revenge attacks.So when Russia and China vetoed Saturday's western-sponsored UN resolution condemning Bashar al-Assad's regime, requiring his troops to return to barracks and backing an Arab League plan for him to be replaced, US and British leaders and their allies, echoed by the western media, felt able to denounce it as a "disgusting" and "shameful" act of betrayal of Syrians.But that assumes externally imposed regime change, which is what the resolution entailed, would either work, have legitimacy or actually stop the killing. By decreeing a "political process" with a predetermined outcome, the withdrawal of the Syrian army from the streets with no parallel demand on armed rebel groups, and full implementation within 21 days – with a provision for "further measures" in the event of "non-compliance" – it also paved the way for foreign military intervention.It's been widely claimed that the double veto has given Assad the green light to intensify repression and made full-scale civil war more likely. But by ruling out UN-backed intervention, it could just as well be argued that it puts pressure on the main opposition group, the western-backed Syrian National Council, to negotiate – given that its whole strategy has been based on creating the conditions for a Libyan-style no-fly zone.Russia and China have used Syria to challenge the west's attempt to corral the Arab uprisings for its own interests. The veto has strengthened Russia's hand with the Assad regime, while Russian officials have privately assured opposition leaders that the quarrel is with the US, not them. And Barack Obama has now pledged to "try to resolve this without recourse to outside military intervention".But that's a long way from ruling it out. Already US, British and French leaders are busy setting up a new coalition of the willing with their autocratic Saudi and Gulf allies, satirically named "friends of democratic Syria", to build up the opposition and drive Assad from power.Intervention is in fact already taking place. The Saudis and Qataris are reported to be funding and arming the opposition. The Free Syrian Army has a safe haven in Turkey. Western special forces are said to be giving military support on the ground. And if that fails, the UN can be bypassed by invoking the "responsibility to protect" civilians, along Libyan lines.But none of that will stop the killing. It will escalate it. That is the clear lesson of last year's Nato intervention in Libya. When it began, the death toll was 1,000 to 2,000. By the time Muammar Gaddafi was captured and lynched seven months later, it was estimated at more than 10 times that figure. The legacy of foreign intervention in Libya has also been mass ethnic cleansing, torture and detention without trial, continuing armed conflict, and a western-orchestrated administration so unaccountable it resisted revealing its members' names.Russia and Chin[...]
Why India needs aid | Praful Bidwai Tue, 07 Feb 2012 21:00:05 GMT2012-02-08T00:06:07Z Most of its population are still poor. The row over British aid shows how many people confuse rapid growth with wealthUnderlying the debate raging over British aid to India is the myth that the subcontinent's strong, market-driven growth of the past two decades has pulled hundreds of millions out of poverty. The economy is taking off; its people no longer need much aid, it is said.In reality, since 1991, during which time India has experienced the highest growth in recent history, there has been no significant reduction in poverty or hunger. Two in every five children remain malnourished. A third of adults have an abnormally low body-mass index. Half of women of childbearing age are anaemic, a proportion far higher than in sub-Saharan Africa. More than 500 million Indians have no electricity, and less than a third have toilets.The neoliberal policies unleashed by the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, when he was finance minister in the early 90s, have widened class disparities obscenely. Numbers such as 8% growth, and the fact there are 153,000 dollar millionaires, mean little to most Indians. The Ambani, Mittal and Tata families don't live on their planet.The debate in the UK was fuelled by anger at India's decision to buy French Rafale jets rather than the Eurofighter Typhoon, prompting shrill accusations of "ingratitude". International development secretary Andrew Mitchell even admitted that the focus of aid to India included "seeking to sell the Typhoon" – in violation of the stated rationale of British overseas aid, to fight poverty and promote health and education.So if India can spend billions on nuclear weapons, aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines, and on a moon mission, does it deserve aid? As was revealed this weekend, India has itself told Britain it doesn't want aid.But this confuses the nature of aid – which is about poor people, not poor countries. Many Indians question the government's ballooning military expenditure, which has more than tripled since the 1998 nuclear blasts. Instead they want substantially improved public services, including food security, drinking water, healthcare (India's public health spending proportionate to GDP is among the world's lowest), sanitation, and education at affordable prices. Great struggles are under way on these issues, which have the potential to reshape Indian politics.Besides, aid is much less wasteful than commonly thought. A small part of the international development department's budget might go towards GPS devices on buses in Bhopal, with dubious benefits. But more than 60% has gone in recent years into education and healthcare.In 2003, India kicked out all but six aid donors in a fit of pique. The Bharatiya Janata Party-led government was upset at the worldwide criticism of the 2002 Gujarat pogrom of Muslims and some EU countries' efforts to support the victims. Such refusal of aid is morally reprehensible in itself. A government which presides over persistent destitution and has failed its most vulnerable people for 60 years has no right to refuse aid which could help them.And though India has launched a modest aid initiative for the least developed countries, this shouldn't be cited as an argument to stop aid to India. There are even poorer people than Indians in several countries, but without India's wherewithal or skilled manpower. There is no reason why India shouldn't be donating food to Niger or Libya, or training technicians, policemen, diplomats and lawmakers in Afghanistan. This would only be wrong if India did nothing for its own people, and merely exploited business opportunities through tied aid.Britain would be morally and politically wrong to terminate aid to India, home to the largest number of the world's poo[...]
Deport Abu Qatada: or if not, give him the law's full protection | Simon Jenkins Tue, 07 Feb 2012 20:30:00 GMT2012-02-08T00:06:07Z Qatada champions al-Qaida and delights in terrorist outrages. But Britain is robust enough to tolerate madcap clericsThere is no argument. The Muslim cleric Abu Qatada is as unpleasant a character as ever graced Britain's shores. Wanted on terrorism charges in eight countries, including his own of Jordan, his championing of al-Qaida and his delight in terrorist outrages puts him beyond any reasonable pale. He propounds violence and seeks to corrupt the young. There is no obligation on any country to tolerate such a guest. He is a citizen of Jordan and has forfeited any serious claim on the hospitality of the British judicial system.As for the European court of human rights, its role in helping him avoid deportation is otiose. The convention it claims ponderously to enforce prohibits anyone's removal to places where there is "a real risk" of torture. No one says Abu Qatada risks torture, so the court, frantic to administer Eurosceptic Britain a bloody nose, conflates opposition to torture with article six on getting "a fair trial", where a plaintiff might be vulnerable to evidence derived from torturing someone else. The fair trial article is so vague it could plausibly be invoked against any justice system. The ECHR is bogged down in empire-building and is a mess.That the risk of Qatada not getting a fair trial back home in Jordan should override the risk of his continued pro-terrorist activities in Britain is inherently absurd. Meanwhile, the government's failure to win deportation – permitted by British judges up to the supreme court – is justifying Britain's increasingly odious methods of holding Qatada and others like him in various forms of detention, without the necessity of bringing them to trial.The antics of Whitehall lawyers in Belmarsh jail are like those of President Obama in Guantánamo Bay. This week they found themselves in the bizarre position of being ordered by a judge to release Qatada on "control order" bail, with total release in three months if there was no progress in the negotiations to have him face trial in Jordan. This is under rules that the Home Office itself drew up. The result has been a real crisis of confidence between judges and public opinion. Ministers might reflect that it is easy to stray from the rule of law, but hard to retrace one's steps.I can't see why the government does not dump Qatada on the next plane to Amman and have done with him. He has been declared a public menace, and charged with a serious offence back home. Britain is entitled to treat the ECHR finding as advisory and put its security first. Qatada broke his last bail condition and is as cast-iron a candidate for expulsion as can be imagined. The ECHR can go eat muesli.So far so simple. But there are deeper implications to this affair. While I would happily deport Qatada, as long as he is in this country he is entitled to the full protection of the law. Lord Hoffmann in the 2004 law lords' "Belmarsh judgment" warned parliament that the steady erosion of habeas corpus and extension of detention without trial threatened "the very existence of an ancient liberty of which this country has until now been proud: freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention". That liberty also extends to free speech, however odious.The judgment was opposed by the then home secretary, Charles Clarke – one of a succession of ministers who have struggled and failed to marry Westminster's weak commitment to civil liberty with the howling of the securocrats and media for extrajudicial action. Clarke sought refuge behind parliamentary sovereignty, code for securocrat capture. The illiberal Home Office misses no chance to extend executive discretion.Britain's post-9/11 edifice of detention wit[...]
Martin Rowson on the veto of the UN security council's Syria resolution - cartoon Tue, 07 Feb 2012 01:15:00 GMT2012-02-07T08:55:59Z Recall of Syria envoys by Britain and US follows day of continued violence in which at least 50 people were killed in Homs, according to activists 07.02.12: Martin Rowson on Russian and Chinese veto of UN security council's Syria resolution Photograph: Martin Rowson
Hugh Muir's diary Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:50:00 GMT2012-02-07T15:08:36Z Hooray for the Big State, says Mili major. As long as it is in the Middle East• Beware the "political dead end of the Big State", warned Miliband major in his now celebrated New Statesman piece. But some big states are more appealing than others. He seems quite taken with the big authoritarian, monarchic state of the United Arab Emirates. In January Miliband announced another job to add to his role as an MP. He became an adviser to the foreign office of the United Arab Emirates in January. They pay him £64,475. In particular the royal family of the Emirates wants Miliband to be an adviser to its "Sir Bani Yas Forum", an international conference held to bolster claims that the UAE royals are modern and forward-looking. The last forum took place in November at the luxury Qasr al-Sarab desert resort. Mili major and his mentor Tony Blair were there. Mili got £25,000 from the Emirates last year for just one lecture. They obviously like priming his pump, almost as much as they like throwing their own citizens in jail for demanding democracy. One sees the appeal. It's definitely no namby-pamby reassurance state.• And we are contacted by many who praise the integrity of Mili major during interviews over the past 24 hours. He pops up on the Today programme and Breakfast News, and fans laud the clear support he offers to his victorious brother. A contrast, it would appear, with his more questionable behaviour as foreign secretary, when the rendition scandal saw many carted off to various dungeons. But then, blood is thicker than water-boarding, isn't it?• Trouble, meanwhile, at the Spectator, where the promise of salon-style debate confronts the reality of scratchy cyberspace and comes off worst. The mag's CoffeeHouser's Wall was to host stimulating high-level discussion on politics and the arts. Instead it has been overwhelmed by less-than-erudite types hurling low-grade abuse. What about that Lib Dem MP, asked one contributor, the one with the "face which resembles an indignant Coypu", "as devoid of twinkling humour as most rodents?". Ah yes, said another. "She resembles a flabby haggis with the stuffing falling out." Many, many, lowlights. "The blacks are VICTIMS, VICTIMS, VICTIMS, Feel sorry for the blacks, feel sorry for the blacks, feel sorry for the blacks. This of course is complete brainwashing and indoctrination." Last week, the exasperated Speccie threw in the towel. "It's now been decided that the Wall should come to a permanent end," said the announcement. "Sorry to all those CoffeeHousers who have contributed, in a civilised manner, to the debate on here." They've now flounced off to set up a rival talking shop. Both are gutted.• And the debate about footwear worn by the pope continues back and forth among learned types who read the London Review of Books. Last week, a defence of the pontiff from Donald Sassoon, professor of comparative European history at Queen Mary College, who moved to attack the "Godless Darwinians" and squash the claim that His Holiness wears red slippers made by Prada. This week, a repost from the GD brigade. "Am I the only 'Godless Darwinian' among LRB readers to reflect that the 'specialist shoemaker based in Piedmont' presumably advertises his 'By Appointment' business with that phrase beloved of staunch Protestant areas of Northern Ireland, and indeed elsewhere: 'Cobblers to the Pope'," asks Bob Hall of Berkshire. Clear fatwa material in other circumstances, but Prof Donald and the pontiff will probably just pray for him.• Finally, when the Lib Dems' earnest history society met the other day to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their famous byelection victory at Orpington in K[...]
The NHS bill could finish the health service – and David Cameron | Polly Toynbee Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:00:00 GMT2012-02-07T00:06:14Z The market ideology of the health and social care bill shows that the pragmatic prime minister is on another planetAndrew Lansley's last refuge is his most disreputable argument so far: his health and social care bill must pass as so much has already been implemented without waiting for royal assent. None can recall such flagrant flouting of parliament.All but abolished are 151 primary care trusts – replaced by 279 clinical commissioning groups – while strategic health authorities are to become four hubs. The new national commissioning board already has a chief executive and finance director with seven board members recruited on salaries of up to £170,000 before the bill is passed. Brass plate shifting has squandered £2bn, while the NHS suffers cuts of £20bn. McKinsey and KPMG already have fat contracts to take over much commissioning supposed to be done by GPs. Which sector will they instinctively favour for contracts? Yet none of it has yet passed into law. The health economist Professor Kieran Walshe says £1bn could still be saved by stopping it now."Too late," the health secretary says with grim glee, and Lansley's alarmed party believes it's so. Of course it's not and the bill could be withdrawn. A U-turn would be greeted with guffaws by the opposition, but that would be less politically dangerous than the cataclysm likely to engulf the NHS shortly. Andrew George, the Lib Dem MP and member of the health select committee, puts it like this: "It will now cause havoc either way, but going ahead is even more catastrophic".The government has gone to the extreme remedy of the law to resist the information commissioner's instruction that the risk register on the bill should be published. If leaks to Dr Eoin Clarke's website prove correct, the main risk is of costs becoming unaffordable as private companies siphon off profits and GP commissioners lack the expertise to control costs. The risk for David Cameron is that this will finish him. Those great big posters declaring his devotion to the NHS will be reprised over and over as the health service becomes his nemesis. Anyone who thinks Cameron is a pragmatist need only look at how he risked all on the marketisation of the NHS: ideology came first.Opposition is unprecedented as the government scrapes around for support from insignificant medical groups, most with commercial links. The BMA tends to oppose change, from Nye Bevan to Ken Clarke and Blair. But it's remarkable that so many royal colleges are opposed, even the Royal College of GPs, supposed to be a beneficiary. Editors of the three medical journals object. The health select committee, dominated by coalition MPs, issues dire warnings.In the Lords this week, Lansley is set to concede an important change to his own powers: he wanted devolution and no responsibility, so he need not answer in the Commons to any of the closures and crises about to crash in on him, handing all to the NCB. But Shirley Williams has won the case for the secretary of state to stay fully accountable for providing a universal service, with local commissioners accountable to him.Joining Williams and the Labour peers is a formidable phalanx of ex-Tory ministers. Crossbencher and doctor Lord Owen has marshalled a powerful case against it for fellow medics. Can they knock out the most pernicious elements? For Lansley will get his bill.Most toxic is the role of commercial competition, with Monitor acting as enforcer. By opening every NHS corner to "any qualified provider", the whole service can be taken over by private companies, with a few token charities and mutuals. NHS hospitals, cherry-picked of lucrative wo[...]
The Children Act is an act of kindness | Liz Trinder Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:45:00 GMT2012-02-07T08:22:04Z There's no systematic bias against fathers in family courts, so no need for ministers to tinkerShould there be a change in the law on shared parenting after relationship breakdown? The government has now published its long-awaited response to the Family Justice Review chaired by David Norgrove, which spent 18 months considering exactly that. The Children Act 1989 currently requires that the "child's welfare shall be the paramount consideration" in family court decision-making. The Norgrove review decided against a stronger statement on shared parenting, based mainly on the Australian experience where shared-care legislation had not worked as intended and had shifted the focus from children's needs to parent's rights.Although the report was widely welcomed by those who work within the family justice system, it was not by fathers' rights groups. And now the government has rejected the recommendation, with ministers to formulate "a legislative statement of the importance of children having an ongoing relationship with both their parents after family separation, where that is safe, and in the child's best interests".In theory that sounds entirely sensible. However, we know from the Australian experience that this type of formulation makes it harder for courts to focus on the needs of an individual child rather than the rights of parents. The Norgrove review understood this. So why is the government not listening?One powerful driver for the government's position appears to be an attempt to address public perceptions that the courts don't recognise the joint nature of parenting. This seems to be based on the repeated claims of fathers' rights groups like Fathers 4 Justice, frequently repeated in the media, that the courts are biased against men. But there is no evidence to back claims that fathers are disadvantaged in court. Under the Children Act both fathers and mothers have parental responsibility, incorporating rights and responsibilities for their children. Since the mid-1990s courts have bent over backwards to try to ensure contact takes place.In 2010 the courts refused only 300 of 95,000 such applications. Careful research based on analysis of court records finds that the great majority of fathers get the contact they seek and often do better than mothers. Indeed, the contact presumption is so strong that research studies have found concerns raised by mothers – especially about domestic violence – are not being addressed adequately by the courts.The research evidence is clear, then, that the claim of systematic bias against fathers is a myth. Indeed the justice secretary, Ken Clarke, said on the Today programme that he does not believe there is any bias. So it is worrying that this entirely unnecessary change is likely to lead to poorer outcomes for children.Behind much of the debate is a set of unhelpful myths about wicked, vengeful women and innocent, bewildered fathers. While these stereotypes might exist in small numbers, they do not stand up to empirical scrutiny. As Oscar Wilde put it "the truth is rarely pure and never simple". It is no surprise that lawyers, judges and researchers who hear all sides of the family story – men, women and children — do not support changes to the law.Only 10% of separated families go to court about contact. They are a highly conflicted group, with multiple problems and where both parents feel unheard. Finding ways to make contact or shared parenting work for these children is not about giving parents more rights but about helping them fulfil their responsibilities, and finding ways to give children a voice. The beauty [...]
The right's stupidity spreads, enabled by a too-polite left | George Monbiot Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:30:00 GMT2012-02-07T00:06:03Z Conservativism may be the refuge of the dim. But the room for rightwing ideas is made by those too timid to properly objectSelf-deprecating, too liberal for their own good, today's progressives stand back and watch, hands over their mouths, as the social vivisectionists of the right slice up a living society to see if its component parts can survive in isolation. Tied up in knots of reticence and self-doubt, they will not shout stop. Doing so requires an act of interruption, of presumption, for which they no longer possess a vocabulary.Perhaps it is in the same spirit of liberal constipation that, with the exception of Charlie Brooker, we have been too polite to mention the Canadian study published last month in the journal Psychological Science, which revealed that people with conservative beliefs are likely to be of low intelligence. Paradoxically it was the Daily Mail that brought it to the attention of British readers last week. It feels crude, illiberal to point out that the other side is, on average, more stupid than our own. But this, the study suggests, is not unfounded generalisation but empirical fact.It is by no means the first such paper. There is plenty of research showing that low general intelligence in childhood predicts greater prejudice towards people of different ethnicity or sexuality in adulthood. Open-mindedness, flexibility, trust in other people: all these require certain cognitive abilities. Understanding and accepting others – particularly "different" others – requires an enhanced capacity for abstract thinking.But, drawing on a sample size of several thousand, correcting for both education and socioeconomic status, the new study looks embarrassingly robust. Importantly, it shows that prejudice tends not to arise directly from low intelligence but from the conservative ideologies to which people of low intelligence are drawn. Conservative ideology is the "critical pathway" from low intelligence to racism. Those with low cognitive abilities are attracted to "rightwing ideologies that promote coherence and order" and "emphasise the maintenance of the status quo". Even for someone not yet renowned for liberal reticence, this feels hard to write.This is not to suggest that all conservatives are stupid. There are some very clever people in government, advising politicians, running thinktanks and writing for newspapers, who have acquired power and influence by promoting rightwing ideologies.But what we now see among their parties – however intelligent their guiding spirits may be – is the abandonment of any pretence of high-minded conservatism. On both sides of the Atlantic, conservative strategists have discovered that there is no pool so shallow that several million people won't drown in it. Whether they are promoting the idea that Barack Obama was not born in the US, that man-made climate change is an eco-fascist-communist-anarchist conspiracy, or that the deficit results from the greed of the poor, they now appeal to the basest, stupidest impulses, and find that it does them no harm in the polls.Don't take my word for it. Listen to what two former Republican ideologues, David Frum and Mike Lofgren, have been saying. Frum warns that "conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics". The result is a "shift to ever more extreme, ever more fantasy-based ideology" which has "ominous real-world consequences for American society".Lofgren complains that "the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital centre today[...]
Syria between two massacres: Hama's memory endures | Wadah Khanfar Mon, 06 Feb 2012 12:45:00 GMT2012-02-07T00:06:04Z As Syrians find their voice to mark the 1982 massacre, their resolve to overthrow this brutal regime is clearWhile Russia and China were using their veto to abort a UN security council resolution against the Syrian regime, the news of a massacre in Homs came thick and fast. In an unprecedented escalation, the Syrian regime sought to exploit the international hesitancy to have a bloody showdown with its opposition.This came after Syrians had observed for the first time in 30 years the anniversary of the massacre carried out in Hama in February 1982. It is regarded as one of the most gruesome events in Syria's modern history. On that occasion, former president Hafiz al-Assad decimated most of the city of Hama with aerial bombings and tanks. About 30,000 inhabitants perished, while a similar number were detained, tortured and many killed in prisons. All this occurred in the shadow of the cold war and with the cover of the Soviet Union, which was then allied to Hafiz al-Assad's regime.Last Friday, Syrian protesters rallied under the slogan "forgive us Hama, we apologise"; a clear reference to the abject silence that has overshadowed that massacre throughout the last three decades. Although Hama was an ever-present bleeding wound in the Syrian popular conscience, and a humiliating disgrace that shook their souls, people were prohibited from remembering or mentioning it throughout the entire period of Hafiz al-Assad's rule. When his son assumed power in 2000, many were optimistic that he would at least give some consideration to the victims or reveal the fate of the thousands who were swallowed up in the prisons. But the young president chose to follow in his father's footsteps; he perpetrated another massacre in Hama and many others in Homs and other Syrian cities and towns. However, this time Bashar al-Assad has miscalculated. The Syrian revolution, which has so far sacrificed more than 7,000 dead, will not end unless the regime is overthrown.Hafiz al-Assad's regime managed to get away with the massacre of Hama in 1982 because of the international silence dictated by the balance of forces during the cold war and a media blackout, which denied the victims a voice and prevented them from presenting the images of their calamity.It is true that the regional and international balance of power continues to play a negative role in ending the suffering of the Syrian people. But the Syrians – as other Arab people in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen – have now become the most important actors in the flow of events. This would enable them to overcome all external factors in their quest for freedom from tyranny and repression.Regional and international hesitancy in dealing with Syria stems from two main factors. The first relates to the regional balance of power and what would happen if the regime collapsed. The second is linked to the alternatives that would replace the Ba'ath regime.On a regional level, Syria represents the cornerstone of a strategic axis that extends from Tehran through Baghdad to Damascus and ends in Beirut. A change of regime in Syria would result in a fundamental change in this regional political configuration and alliances. In such a scenario, Iran would lose an important ally, which would affect its influence in Lebanon and Iraq. Therefore, Iran has a strong interest in defending the Syrian regime until the bitter end.As for the possible alternatives to the regime, this is another problem confronting the main players in the region. Despite the theoretical state of "war" between Israel and Syria, the [...]
The art of recession-dodging | Sarah Thornton Sun, 05 Feb 2012 22:45:00 GMT2012-02-05T22:45:00Z The super-rich are relying on bronze spiders, balloon flowers and abstract paintings to escape volatile timesIn this troubled economy, Christie's and Sotheby's are doing a booming business. Christie's year-end results were £3.6bn, up 9%. The percentage rise in sales of contemporary art was even better, at 22%. Sotheby's doesn't announce its complete results until the end of February, but its total auction sales increased by 14.5% with contemporary art up a significant 34%.The gravity-defying surge of this segment of the art world is surprising, but only at first glance. The bulk of revenues comes from "ultra high net worth" individuals, many of whom operate at a level far above national economies. Even those who have taken blows in recent years remain super-rich. If they were worth £3bn in 2007, maybe they're worth £2bn now. It's not like they're feeling the pinch.The burden for the stinking rich is what to do with their money. There is currently no interest to be earned on cash, so they can't leave it in the bank. The property market is nearly paralysed and, for these globetrotters, the drawback of real estate is that it is tied to specific currencies. A Mayfair flat sells in pounds, but the Francis Bacon painting that hangs on its wall could sell in Hong Kong dollars and take up residence on a yacht in the South Pacific. Like historic or extra-large diamonds, works by artists with international recognition are a hedge against volatile currency fluctuations.Fifteen years ago financial advisers were not in the practice of recommending that rich people diversify their portfolios by buying art. Now it is the norm. While buying emergent art is high-risk, speculative investment, acquiring established masterpieces is perceived as the opposite – a back-up in hard times. If all goes wrong in the world, if the eurozone cracks, the Middle East erupts in war, and a tsunami hits Manhattan, that rare, portable 1964 Marilyn by Andy Warhol will still be worth something.The auction houses are fostering a globalisation of taste with the help of galleries with international outposts such as Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth and now White Cube. While wealthy Belgians used to spend their money differently from wealthy Indonesians, this is decreasingly the case.During the contemporary sales that will take place in London on 14 and 15 February, bidders from four continents are likely to converge on many lots, including a classic red squeegee-blurred abstract painting by Gerhard Richter (estimated at £2.5m-£3.5m at Sotheby's) and a black and white canvas by Christopher Wool emblazoned with the giant word "FOOL" (expected to fetch £2.9m-£3.9m at Christie's). Both works are tipped to exceed their estimates. Christie's and Sotheby's are superlative marketers who are getting better at funnelling demand for objects by a small group of well-tested artist brands.A decade ago, few would have predicted that the most insatiable buyer of record-priced contemporary art would be the Qatari royal family (who are sponsoring the forthcoming Damien Hirst retrospective at Tate Modern). In 2007 they bought Hirst's Lullaby Spring pill cabinet for almost £9.65m, then the highest price ever paid for a work by a living artist.Last year they bought the most expensive contemporary lots at both auction houses, paying £24m for a Roy Lichtenstein at Christie's and £39m for a Clyfford Still at Sotheby's. Behind the scenes, they have paid even higher prices in private transactions – most recently, as revealed on Friday, a gobsmac[...]
Putin's veto sets Russia apart | David Hearst Sun, 05 Feb 2012 22:00:02 GMT2012-02-06T00:05:32Z Ignore Russia's public relations machine: Putin has misread the turmoil in Syria as much as he has the protests at homeIf anyone thinks the international opprobrium heaped on Russia and China for vetoing the UN resolution condemning Syria's violent repression of its people is unusual, they should cast their minds back to 13 July 2006. George Bush and Tony Blair spent the best part of the following 33 days dismissing calls for an end to Israel's bombardment of southern Lebanon in response to a cross-border raid by Hezbullah.On 3 August Sir Rodric Braithwaite, a former British ambassador to Moscow, wrote that Blair's premiership had descended into "scandal and incoherence". Nor were serving Foreign Office officials quick to leap to Blair's defence. The government's policy of resisting calls for a ceasefire was "driven by the prime minister alone", they said.Such a position is today occupied by Vladimir Putin, Russia's prime minister and next president who, on the day tens of thousands of his countrymen turned out in temperatures of -18C to shout slogans like "Russia without Putin", ordered Russia's envoy to the UN to wield the veto.Russia's normally wooden public relations machine went into overdrive to explain the decision. Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov gave three reasons: the western drive for a stronger crackdown on Syria was preparation for a "Libyan scenario"; despite efforts to tone it down, the draft was unilateral, and did not set enough demands on anti-government armed groups; and it demanded the withdrawal of Assad's forces from towns and cities. "This phrase, without being linked to a simultaneous termination of violence on the part of armed extremist groups, is absolutely provocative, as no president with self-respect, no matter how treated, will agree to surrender inhabited localities to armed extremists without resistance," Lavrov said.Insurrections in the Middle East have now turned the international tables full circle. Whereas western powers supported the status quo of Israel surrounded by Arab autocrats with whom it had made peace, and Russia had maintained diplomatic and defence links with Syria and Iran which backed the "resistance" movements to Israel, today Russia finds itself defending the autocratic status quo in the form of Assad.Putin, backed by the siloviki who run the military and have invested billions in Syria, may think his policy on Assad is good tactics. It stops an intervention that the west was never going to make. But it makes for terrible strategy.The veto sets Russia on the opposite side of the table from the Arab League; it lifts the international responsibility for failing to staunch the blood flowing in cities like Homs off Barack Obama's shoulders, and assumes that burden itself. And if defecting Syrian soldiers are to be called "armed extremist groups", who exactly are the militias currently running Libya, whom Russia belatedly recognised as a legitimate authority? If Islamists are by their nature extremist, and in Putin's eyes they are, what does that make the elected transitional authority in Tunisia?Lavrov and the foreign intelligence service chief Mikhail Fradkov will be in Damascus tomorrow to "stabilise" the situation in Syria and persuade Assad to implement "democratic transformations" which both Russians recognise as long overdue. In so doing, Russia will attempt to persuade the Arab League to extend the mission of Arab observers in Syria – a policy it has already abandoned. This lacks any sense of[...]
Civil servants of Sir Humphrey vintage were amusing: but Whitehall's changed | Jackie Ashley Sun, 05 Feb 2012 21:10:00 GMT2012-02-06T17:09:59Z Sniping between Whitehall and MPs prompted by revelations over spending goes to the heart of governmentWhitehall has become a frontline. The elegant boulevard, stretching from Trafalgar Square down to parliament, is now a political no man's land: to the north side, the civil service, the "permanent government"; to the south side, the MPs of key select committees. There has been sniping for some time. But just before Christmas, the outgoing head of the civil service, Sir Gus (now Lord) O'Donnell, threw the first grenade.He aimed it at the public accounts committee, whose robust inquiries into government spending disasters have made headlines. But civil service anger about a new steeliness among MPs is not limited to the PAC. Since the rules changed to allow select committee chairs to be elected by MPs rather than chosen by the powers that be, several committees have been making waves. This confrontation goes to the heart of parliament's role and authority.Let's start with a little recent history. The PAC has been investigating the so-called "sweetheart" deal between Revenue & Customs officials and Goldman Sachs. At stake is a tax liability of £20m that was not collected. That's just a fraction of the billions of pounds of unresolved tax bills, many of them owed by large, litigious and wealthy companies. The committee decided to use the Goldman Sachs issue, which came through a whistleblower, to crack what was going on inside the department: why were the powerful corporate players getting away so easily, while small companies and private taxpayers faced a tougher regime?It proved to be a long, complex and difficult inquiry. The head of Revenue & Customs, Dave Hartnett, has been hugely resistant to criticism, attacking MPs' accusation of systemic failures as based on "partial information, inaccurate opinion and some misunderstanding of the facts". Others disagree: the inquiry has won the PAC chair, the former Labour minister Margaret Hodge, "MP of the month" in the most recent issue of Total Politics magazine.During the inquiry, HMRC lawyer Anthony Inglese was the subject of an unusual exchange when the committee called for a Bible to be brought in for him to swear on – a rare but critical moment in establishing the truth of what had happened in a tax deal he described as perhaps "unconscionable". This seems to have been the cause of the angry letter from O'Donnell to Hodge, and a wider campaign against the committee now being waged.O'Donnell accused the PAC of being "a theatrical exercise in public humiliation" and argued that civil servants were not accountable to parliament, but only to ministers. This goes back to Whitehall conventions, most recently asserted by one of O'Donnell's predecessors, Lord Armstrong. The PAC, because it investigates how public money is spent, rather than policy issues – which clearly are for ministers – has always been an exception. O'Donnell argues that this only affects the person at the top, the "accounting officer", not advisers such as Inglese. The committee wonders, in that case, how they are possibly supposed to get to the bottom of failures in an organisation like HMRC.Hodge is hitting back, and has support from unlikely allies: the rightwing Conservative MP Douglas Carswell says she is "spot on" and declares: "Elected by the whole house, select committee chairmen have taken to asking the mandarinate what it is that they are doing for the rest of us – rather than churning out patsy repo[...]
How Britain's migrants sewed the fabric of the nation | Robert Winder Sun, 05 Feb 2012 19:42:00 GMT2012-02-06T09:04:32Z History shows it's hard to pick out which migrants will be good for the UK. It is risky for the state to tryImmigration minister Damian Green last week said Britain did not need any more unskilled workers or family dependents; instead it should accept only migrants of substance. "We want only the brightest, top of the range professionals" who will "add to the quality of life".As chance would have it, his remarks coincided with the opening of a new exhibition at London's Tate Britain designed explicitly to showcase the profound impact migrant artists have had on the native tradition. The show traces the way whole genres that seem typically British – landscape painting, for instance – were brought here by migrant painters before being naturalised.The only surprise is that anyone should be surprised. A similar case could be made for literature, architecture, music and sport – as well as industry and finance. But a Conservative minister seeking to raise the barrier to entry even higher than it is at present should pause for thought. Firstly, on a straightforward humanitarian issue, it is neither easy nor likable for a government to want to bring in a Wolfgang Mozart while refusing his wife leave to remain. Nor is it high-minded to wish to lure highly qualified people – doctors and engineers – away from their home countries. It was said not long ago that there were more medical practitioners from Malawi in the Manchester area than there were in Malawi. It may not be wise or right to sponsor brain drains on this scale.The second objection is pragmatic. Just as governments are not good at predicting the exact week in which crops will ripen – and therefore when short-term seasonal workers are needed – so they are fallible when it comes to predicting which migrants should qualify. One lesson in the story of migration is that it is not a uniform experience.Who would have guessed that an uncouth 17-year-old boy called Michael Marks, a Jewish refugee from Poland, would amount to much when he landed in Hull in 1882? He didn't speak English – often seen as a fundamental qualification. But he set up a network of market stalls that grew, eventually, into Marks & Spencer, and stitched himself – as St Michael – into the fabric of the nation.Two of David Cameron's most significant supporters are themselves children of migration. Steve Hilton, director of strategy, is the son of Hungarian refugees who came to Britain in 1956, and it makes sense that his biography led him to the right-of-centre, since his family brought an understandable distaste for totalitarian politics. Their name was Hircksac – they took their new one from the first hotel they stayed in, perhaps unaware that Conrad Hilton himself was Norwegian-American.And Daniel Finkelstein – Times columnist, an adviser to William Hague and one-time Conservative candidate – comes from a similar background. His Jewish family fled Poland and national socialism. He once said that Thatcher made the Tory party more immigrant-friendly by making it more meritocratic.If both men promote ideas and values that seem "typically" British, they are mirrored at the head of the Labour party by the Miliband brothers, whose grandparents left Jewish Warsaw and whose father, Adolphe, escaped the Nazi invasion of Belgium in 1944. The fact that Britain was his salvation did not, however, inspire in Ralph Miliband anything like political gratitude: he was a fiery lef[...]
Domestic violence blighted my home. That's why I support Refuge | Patrick Stewart Sun, 05 Feb 2012 17:34:00 GMT2012-02-06T08:47:43Z Women who live in fear are being abandoned by the government, whose cuts are devastating charities like RefugeI grew up in a home darkened by domestic violence – which I wrote about two years ago. My father was an angry and unhappy man who was not able to control his emotions, or his hands. I witnessed violence against my mother and felt powerless to stop it. When Refuge, the national domestic violence charity, asked me to become a patron, I accepted without hesitation. I accepted for my mother. As a child, there was little I could do to help her. But now I can give support and encouragement to women who live in the same sort of fear that she did.Forty years ago Refuge opened the world's first safe house for abused women and children in Chiswick, west London. Since then it has grown to become the country's largest provider of domestic violence services. On any given day its services support more than 1,600 women and children. Refuge, and other women's charities in the UK, are vibrant, innovative and resilient. But they are being stretched to breaking point. I was shocked to read a new report, by the Trust for London and Northern Rock Foundation, whichhighlights how cuts are crippling vital services such as women's refuges. Local authority funding has been slashed by 31%, and Refuge has shouldered cuts to 50% of its contracts. On an average day last year 230 women were turned away from refuges because there was simply not enough space for them.The impact of these cuts will be devastating. The financial footing of women's charities has been shaky for many years; now it is in real danger of slipping into the abyss. Let me be quite clear about what is at stake here. Without services such as refuges, more women and children will be trapped in violent relationships. Domestic violence rarely peters out. On the contrary, abuse tends to escalate over time. If they can't get help – preferably at the earliest opportunity – their stories may well have the most tragic of conclusions.Last year I met an incredibly brave woman called Sharon de Souza. In 2008 Sharon's daughter Cassie was brutally murdered by Cassie's former partner in front of their two small children. At the time of her death, Cassie was trying to flee to a refuge. Sadly, her story is not an isolated one. Domestic violence kills two women every single week in England and Wales. If we don't preserve vital escape routes for victims, this number – already horrifically high – will only rise.My mother had no escape route. There were no refuges she could run to; no helplines to call; no advocates to speak out for her. No one came to help, even though everyone knew what was happening behind our closed doors. The small houses in our road were close together, and every Monday morning I walked to school with a bowed head, praying that I wouldn't run into a neighbour who had heard the weekend's rows. The police, when they were called, were little help. I remember hearing them say things like "She must have provoked him", or "Well, Mrs Stewart, it takes two to make a fight". They had no idea. My mother did nothing to provoke the violence she endured – even if she had, violence is an unacceptable way of dealing with conflict.Enormous progress has been made since then. Brick by brick, year by year, pioneering organisations like Refuge have built up a broad network of services that respond to the needs of victims sensitively an[...]
Big cats in Stroud is better than nothing | Jenny Diski Fri, 03 Feb 2012 22:00:01 GMT2012-02-04T00:09:37Z The hype over suspected big cats at Woodchester Park reveals how we all need some wilderness in our tidy, civilised livesLast month, samples were taken from a dead deer at Woodchester Park near Stroud, in the hope that the DNA would prove to be evidence of a big cat. The media got busy. The "Beast of Stroud," said the Mirror, while the Sun announced "Big cat has eaten three wallabies" a few miles from the dead deer. This week it was reported by the evolutionary geneticist who tested the samples that the deer was actually done to death by a not very alien fox. If you're disappointed, maybe you can do something with the notion of wild wallabies bouncing dangerously around the Cotswolds.I don't think the English try hard enough. In Scotland they have thick-necked Nessie occasionally popping up from the prehistoric depths of her loch. The Indonesians knew about their nine-foot Komodo dragon long before it was first officially sighted in 1910. Canada has the hairy sasquatch, whose 24- by eight-inch paw prints regularly make the news. The Norwegians have their giant super-squid, the kraken, with tentacles large and powerful enough to crush a ship. And the English have … a big cat somewhere near Stroud. Our hankering for a wild, mysterious beast in our civilised midst is pretty suburban, although it gets a little more exciting when people likely to benefit from the PR describe them as "puma- or panther-type cats, even if they do add that they're talking quite small pumas or panthers".There are so many believers in beasts in Bodmin or Stroud and other places, that the super-pussies have their own acronym: ABCs, emphasising that these alien big cats are from a long-ago time when nature ran wild, men draped in animal skins risked their lives to bring home the warthog, and Stroud was merely a glimmer in the Creator's eye. A little danger is important. The National Trust has issued a warning: "If anyone does see a big cat in the wild they are advised to stay composed and back away." Our atavistic longings are nicely encouraged by this. In spite of the paradox of a National Trust whose job it is to keep carefully managed nature showrooms neatly in the right places, their language encourages the idea of the wild. And we want the idea of wilderness and whatever it might once have harboured – just a little, and, when it comes to big cats, more of a sighting than a close encounter.David Attenborough's nature epics have fed our need to feel that something is lurking in the shrubbery. Those bits at the end, showing how the filming was done, are becoming more interesting than the main show. The camera people look like old-fashioned heroes, albeit with incredibly intricate technology, who brave injury, death and even madness to get naturalistic-seeming pictures of exotic creatures and extreme landscapes most of us are unlikely to confront. Even if you spend an hour and a half every morning commuting from Stroud to London, you can dream. In fact, you'd better dream. And even if you're never going to explore a scorpion-infested bat cave in Borneo, or battle with a sabre-toothed tiger back in the mists of time, why not wonder about big cats camouflaged in the passing landscape?Doubtless there are evolutionary psychologists who would claim that we are the carriers of genes adapted to staying alert for wild beasts jumping out at us, and that our regular sightings and belie[...]
Roy Hattersley: Why Labour chose Ed not David Miliband Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:30:00 GMT2012-02-04T00:09:37Z David Miliband rejects my pro-state policy ideas as 'Reassurance Labour'. That's why he's not leaderRejoice. It is just possible that two not very original articles, which recently appeared in small circulation magazines, will stimulate the debate about Labour's principles and purpose that the party has needed, but lacked, for so long.In the first article – published in the Political Quarterly – Kevin Hickson and I argued that Labour would only succeed if it based its programme on a coherent and consistent philosophy, that its ideological objective should be a more equal society, and that the Blair and Brown governments had made too little progress in that direction because of two crucial errors: they placed too much faith in the power of markets and they accepted the fashionable view that the role of the state should be drastically reduced. To us it seemed so blindingly obvious that we were not at all surprised when, for months after its first publication, the article was completely ignored.Then along came David Miliband. His response, in the New Statesman, amounted to the rejection of what he called "Reassurance Labour" – his description of our strongly held belief that, far from being an electoral liability, genuine social democracy is what millions of disillusioned voters are waiting for.Events conspire to prove our point. Who now believes that "light regulation" will encourage banks to contribute to the general good, or that the profit motive – as illustrated by the collapse of Southern Cross – is the best stimulus to high-quality domiciliary care? If "modernisation" – more often demanded than defined – means accepting that the world is constantly changing, it is a requirement of policy making. If it means that it is now impossible to mobilise a majority for the redistribution of power and wealth, the inherent pessimism is contradicted by the evidence.There are points at which the two diagnoses coincide. David agrees that, when properly defined, liberty and equality are essentially related, rather than mutually exclusive, conditions. But if he does want a more equal society he has do more than extol its virtues. He has to support the means of bringing it about. And state power is essential to its achievement. We no more believe that the state is always benign than we believe in the extinction, or even the regulation, of a majority of markets. Our complaint against the Blair and Brown governments is that in both areas they lacked discrimination. Markets are often necessary to preserve liberty as well as to promote efficiency – but they are not the best method of distributing welfare, medical care and education. The state sometimes intrudes unacceptably into the lives of its citizens – but more often it is the best way of providing essential social services.State action is vital to the achievement of a more equal society. It is the most efficient mechanism for the redistribution of power and wealth, and it enables a genuinely egalitarian government to destroy the institutions of inequality and replace them with systems which unite rather than divide the nation.For some reason, which I cannot explain, David accuses us of wanting to diminish the role of local government. Perhaps he has a guilty conscience. The government in which he served invented "city academies: they are a perfect example of how – by[...]
Chris Huhne, David Cameron and the RBS boss don't have it, but Al Gore did | Jonathan Freedland Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:15:01 GMT2012-02-04T00:09:59Z From bonuses to knighthoods, the leaders we put in high office prefer jaw-jutting certainty to thoughtful judgmentThe laws of contempt demand that we tread warily when assessing the matter of Chris Huhne's judgment. We can wonder if the now departed energy secretary would have had to resign to spend more time with his lawyers had he played things differently. Perhaps if he had been less abrasive, declining to compare his Tory cabinet colleagues to Nazis during the alternative-vote campaign for example, he would have had more friends in high places saddened rather than cheered to see him go.Not that they could have saved his job. Whatever the law says about innocent until proven guilty, politics has its own code – one that deems criminal charges incompatible with high office. If Huhne has any regrets at all, they probably relate to … but no, the lawyer is hovering.Still the Huhne resignation on Friday did one man a favour, diverting the spotlight from Sir Philip Hampton, the RBS chairman, who, with his knighthood still intact, did a round of morning interviews, mostly focusing on the bonus of very nearly £1m offered to, and then waived by, the bank's chief executive, Stephen Hester. "I think it's true that we underestimated the scale of the public reaction to the bonus award," Hampton conceded.Think about that for a moment. This is the chairman of a huge institution, in a post so responsible he was himself deemed worthy of a £1.4m bonus, admitting that he was unable to predict that taxpayers would be agitated by the prospect of forking out a seven-figure prize to the head of a bank they all but own, even though that bank's share price had tumbled by 37% in a year. Only "in hindsight" could Hampton see what anybody who had opened a newspaper or listened to a phone-in over the past three years could have told him in advance.Forget the outrage over rewarding failure and throwing millions at this one public employee, Hester, while everyone else in the public sector has to endure a pay freeze that is, in effect, a pay cut. Focus only on the admission of utterly defective judgment. A titan of British finance has confessed that he did not know what was obvious to the dogs in the street.It recalled the round of interviews Peter Mandelson had given a week earlier, where the former Lord High Marshal – I forget his exact title – of the Brown government explained his new understanding of globalisation. He had once believed that globalisation would produce "rising incomes for all". Indeed, he said, "we took all that for granted". But, to his shock, "we've learned that markets, while indispensable … can become volatile and unstable and have to be managed and regulated"; and, more shocking still, that "globalisation is also generating income inequalities within countries and between countries."Now, perhaps we should applaud Mandelson both for changing his mind and coming clean about the gaps in his previous thinking. But it's not as if he has discovered a truth impossible to glimpse until now. He was a cabinet minister in the era of the great anti-globalisation protests in Seattle and elsewhere. All he had to do was listen to what those protesters were saying nearly 13 years ago, as they warned that the new economic orthodoxy was fuelling inequality and that markets needed to be tamed. For, as h[...]
John Terry's captaincy is irrelevant – England will be hopeless whatever | Marina Hyde Fri, 03 Feb 2012 20:45:00 GMT2012-02-04T13:40:44Z The football captaincy is a role less significant than regimental goat. By obsessing over it we keep setting ourselves up for a fallFor possibly only the second time in its history, the England football captaincy has become fleetingly relevant. You'll have guessed the dateline and details of the single other occasion on which it has been worthy of discussion on Moral Maze (Bogotá, 1970, Bobby Moore and the "stolen" bracelet). But back in the present day, John Terry has been stripped of the armband for a second time, with the Football Association board taking the decision to stand him down until his trial on charges of racially abusing Anton Ferdinand is over.The first thing to say to anyone remotely disquieted by the loss is: don't worry. England will be just as hopelessly flawed without Captain Fantastic.The second is to acknowledge that the FA board were placed in a position that even competent people would find difficult, so you can only imagine what a brain-melt it must have been for the likes of them. The blazers were required to balance two grave but conflicting moral issues: the presumption of innocence, and the need to treat allegations of racism with the utmost gravity. Alas, the fact that Terry had been stripped of the captaincy once before, over his apparent affair with Wayne Bridge's former girlfriend, muddied the waters in the most unfortunate of ways. The Bridge situation was a pathetic bros-before-hos farce which would have been funny had it not been taken so excruciatingly seriously by much of the media and the powers that be – and for some, this latest sacking will imply an equivalence for a public figure between alleged racism and alleged shagging your mate's ex.At least on this occasion the FA were right, though mostly for the wrong reasons. John Terry shouldn't be captain because these days he almost always shouldn't assume his place in the starting line-up. His myth-making about being a big-game player is bewilderingly successful, particularly given that he didn't seem to even be in shot for a good 75 minutes of England's last major tournament match, when they lost 4-1 to Germany in Bloemfontein in 2010.But the most wrong thing about the FA's right decision is the part of their statement that says it all. "This decision has been taken due to the higher profile nature of the England captaincy, on and off the pitch," it runs, "and the additional demands and requirements expected of the captain leading into and during a tournament."Thus they set themselves up for the next fall, which will be the same as all the other falls.Forgive the return to a wearingly familiar furrow, but nothing ever changes. The England cricket captaincy is of immense importance, given the operational nature of the role. The England football captaincy is a position marginally less significant than that of regimental goat. Actual responsibilities include wearing a dress harness – the armband – and not making any malodorous deposits while on parade.Other, more successful, footballing nations realise this. The last time Terry lost the captaincy, there was a Newsnight discussion about it all – obviously – in which the wise former Chelsea player Pat Nevin pointed out that club football is very different from international football, and in the latter there should be plenty o[...]
Martin Rowson on Chris Huhne's resignation Fri, 03 Feb 2012 18:28:00 GMT2012-02-04T18:48:07Z Energy secretary quits cabinet after being charged with perverting the course of justice 04.02.2012 Martin Rowson Photograph: Martin Rowson for the Guardian
Chris Huhne's resignation: the destructive result of love turned sour | Gaby Hinsliff Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:49:03 GMT2012-02-04T00:09:59Z Huhne made himself vulnerable to his enemies the minute he left his wife for his mistress. It's a curiously undignified way to goFor a man so shrewdly political to his fingertips, the great irony of Chris Huhne's downfall is that it should have so little to do with politics.No grand gesture of principle, no ideological difference, not even a foiled plot: just a messy divorce, and its toxic fallout slowly smothering the career of the man who came within a whisker of leading the Liberal Democrats. It's a curiously undignified way to go.The lazy parallel is with Robin Cook, that other proud man humbled by a vengeful ex-wife, but it's misleading. Margaret Cook certainly embarrassed her former husband with toe-curling revelations about his brusque ending of their marriage (just as Huhne reportedly told his wife it was over halfway through a football match) but she didn't dislodge him. Cook's ministerial career ended on terms of his choosing, with a resignation over Iraq that ultimately enhanced his reputation: even if Huhne is now found innocent, it is hard to see him emerging stronger from this unedifying saga.The suggestion of a possible return one day, made in Nick Clegg's farewell letter to his erstwhile rival, feels more like a pragmatic recognition of the trouble he might make from the backbenches were he cleared than a longing to have him back. Comebacks are rare even for outstanding talents, as the continued exile of David Laws makes clear: for every Mandelson or Blunkett, there are many more ex-ministers – some deservedly fired, some just unlucky – who find themselves rapidly left behind as new talent rises to fill the gaps. Ed Davey, the big winner this time, is not just competent but also notably a team player, who has been careful to forge a good working relationship with close Tory counterparts such as Maria Miller.And whisper it, but the truth is that the coalition can get by without Huhne. He was a competent but not particularly revolutionary minister, one whose life was only likely to become more difficult as the formerly husky-hugging prime minister's green enthusiasm waned. While he played a critical part in bringing the coalition into being, he had lost trust among colleagues who suspected him of self-serving leaks – and Clegg himself would be an unusual politician if he didn't feel some tiny, secret relief at the downfall of such a close rival.The role of a Murdoch-owned newspaper in all this, just as the relationship between politicians and press is being rewritten by the hacking scandal, won't be lost on some indignant Lib Dems. But they might consider – alongside those fuming against Vicky Pryce, in her role as vengeful Fury – how far Huhne made himself vulnerable to his enemies the minute he left his wife for his mistress. It's unlikely that the allegations against him, whether true or not, would have surfaced had he never given in to an affair.We await a jury's verdict, of course, on precisely what happened between the Huhnes. But one reason this story is so gripping is that it illustrates a broader truth about many other marriages: hidden inside many long-term relationships are secrets large or small which, were they to become public, would hurt. The reason men and women are both appall[...]
Martin Rowson on welfare reform – cartoon Thu, 02 Feb 2012 23:41:00 GMT2012-02-03T18:36:02Z The government used a rare parliamentary procedure to overturn seven key Lords amendments to its welfare reform bill Martin Rowson on overruling the lords on welfare reform Photograph: © Martin Rowson 2012
Hugh Muir's diary Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:50:02 GMT2012-02-03T00:07:07Z Labour's spads remembered good times and bad. Then Alastair Campbell spoke – and they remembered the fear• When Labour's special advisers (spads) met for a reunion in the shadow of Big Ben, they knew it would be eventful. And it was. Sue Nye, famed gatekeeper for Gordon Brown, was nice, defending spads as an unfairly derided breed. Lord Mandelson, who bankrolled the event, gave them the benefit of his advice. Your road back to government is steep, he said. But it's nothing. Long ago, ours was steeper still. Then came Alastair Campbell. This is a fundraiser, he declared, so get your wallets out. And some of you have let your party memberships lapse. Sort it out and quickly or I'll name names. Direct he was, uncompromising; on the edge of brutal. Just like the good old days.• Questions perhaps for Ed Lester, chief executive of the Student Loans Company, and those who nodded through the unorthodox arrangement that allowed him to go without being taxed at source. On Thursday Danny Alexander, chief secretary to the Treasury, ordered a review of the tax affairs of top civil servants. Ministers, meanwhile have ended Lester's agreeable tax deal. Explanations sought all round. Documents released to our troublesome friend David Hencke show that Lester would have had quite a commute from his home in Buckinghamshire to the loans company headquarters in Glasgow, but was spared that by an agreement providing him with a flat in the city for use three and a half days a week and air fares – benefits estimated at around £500 a week. Of course, with the office in Glasgow and Lester rooted in Buckinghamshire, it might have been more sensible to employ a Scot. Officials told Whitehall that they searched, but it was useless. "There were no suitable candidates residing in the area," noted one. Those Scots, they're just no good at this sort of thing.• The Davos jamboree is over for now, but those who were there are working hard to reap the rewards from all that schmoozing. As one might expect, the CEOs littered the place with business cards. Not just for themselves, but also, this year, for their kids. "They're trying to get internships," one source said disapprovingly. And there are two reasons to worry about this. One is the unfairness of it all. The progeny of the world's leading pointyheads tend to have an inbuilt advantage. Two: if the most privileged kids in the world can't get proper jobs, what are the chances for everyone else?• So farewell Top Totty beer, the blonde beer distinguishable from all the others by the cartoon of the bikini-clad blonde barmaid. It was abruptly removed from the Strangers' Bar at the House of Commons yesterday after complaints from such as Barbara Keeley, the MP for Worsley and Eccles South, Sally Bercow, and Kate Green, the shadow minister for equalities. This was its second appearance as a guest beer. Tory MP Jeremy Lefroy arranged for its reappearance, for the beer is brewed in his Staffordshire constituency. "I can understand that some people may take offence to the marketing," he conceded yesterday. And they were right to do so. Still, he may feel that his greatest blunder is to be behind the times. For in 2007, when his[...]
The Oscars season of self-hatred | Tanya Gold Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:30:01 GMT2012-02-03T00:07:21Z As the film awards approach, our fatal attraction to Brad Pitt et al grows, just as interest in their films diminishesIt is film award season, where the role of the viewer is to be amazed or repelled, depending on one's ability to see pathology everywhere. My own Oscar grief this year is all about George Clooney and Brad Pitt. These two, who can't stretch to a metaphor, are fighting for best actor when neither can do much but pull a face to match an idea. But 2012 is not the saddest Oscar year. That will always be 1950, when Gloria Swanson lost for Sunset Boulevard and Bette Davis for All About Eve. Perhaps these movies, which were essentially about mad actresses digested by their own PR, were too truthful for Hollywood. The town didn't like the mirror and the Oscar went to Judy Holliday instead, in Born Yesterday.If we must have awards, surely the best chameleon should win? But the Oscars are a marketing device, swelled by the truism that the more worthless the product, the more grandiose the chatter, and every year sentiment dictates the outcome, and is dressed with significance. In an industry of narcissists the film PR is an apex predator of bullshit. "I have the whole of the world's press on the other line," one once told me, "Why do I need you?" It's a good point, but only a film PR would say it. Only a film PR would expect gratitude for offering 10 minutes with Denzel Washington, barely enough time to throw yourself on your knees. Then comes the order: "Only ask Denzel about the film." No one cares "only" about the film. No one.Movies have become the least interesting thing about cinema, unless you want to watch actors pretending to be bats, or spiders, or, to quote the trailer from The Avengers, "a playboy billionaire philanthropist" with rockets attached to his bum. (That would be Iron Man speaking. He is part weapon, part Robert Downey Jr). All big movies are B movies now, which makes acting a very silly profession, and this fact has another ghastly outcome – the morbid depression of the critic. When a mainstream "art" film like Shame escapes, the critics clap from pure starvation, just because the protagonist is not half bat, or half weapon, or half fork. Shame was about a man masturbating while listening to Bach, and it was very silly. Even sex addiction is not that joyless. But the critics recognised something in the protagonist's despair and loved it. Not that Shame will win an Oscar. Michael Fassbender has too much penis.So, in this wilderness of bats and Bach, the true meaning of movies is found in watching actors interacting with the rest. Elizabeth Hurley had an insight when she called non-actors "civilians", because the relationship of movie star to viewer is, as with all obsessions, more to do with hate than love. It is a war, full of pens and explosions and high walls and helicopters. We made our movie stars gods and they must be punished; it is clear from Sunset Boulevard that the great lights are the sun, and beware the mortal who flies too close. And so it is now – their imperfections are pictured in Heat, the modern equivalent of having your liver devoured. Our malice is explicit. Is it coincidence that the [...]
Still Britain rattles sabres. Nothing has been learned from Afghanistan | Simon Jenkins Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:00:03 GMT2012-02-03T00:07:08Z As we 'withdraw' from Afghanistan across the Taliban's golden bridge, we could be heading for catastrophe over IranThe Afghan war, the longest in US history, is "scheduled to end" a year early, according to the Pentagon. Wars these days run to electoral timetables. The endgame is couched not as victory, let alone defeat, but as "expedited withdrawal".It is obvious that Taliban commanders are reading Sun Tzu, and "building the enemy a golden bridge across which to retreat". They are talking to go-betweens, opening offices in Doha and giving soothing interviews. This week's leaked American intelligence report, The State of the Taliban, shows that the Afghan people, too, are coming to terms with the return of their former rulers, and might even welcome some stability and order after 10 years of Nato-induced chaos.The US president, Barack Obama, has always hated this war of neocon fantasy, and is now calibrating his departure. Militarily, the path to defeat has been straightforward. While it is easy to bomb a capital and deploy armies to topple a regime, occupying foreign countries for any length of time is usually disastrous. Soldiers become brutalised, allies desert, operations become costly and counterproductive.Nato strategists did not need Napoleon or Hitler for a warning, merely Soviet experience in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Even after Mikhail Gorbachev saw the writing on the wall and decided to withdraw in 1985, it took him four years to do so. As also indicated in this week's report, the Pakistanis, supposedly allies of the west, have long sided with the Taliban. Even Kabul's ruler and western puppet, Hamid Karzai, has said he would support Pakistan in any putative war with the US. It does not matter what America or Britain does. The logic of a prolonged occupation of a Muslim country is remorseless.More alarming about the Afghan war has been its psychology. It has generated some two dozen books on my shelf, and every one of them warns, cautions, criticises, condemns. The Pashtun Taliban should not be underestimated. Defeating them by main force flew in the face of all experience. Pakistani intelligence would offer them sanctuary and support. Nato should not drive al-Qaida, a tiny Arabist cell in 2001, into alliance with the Taliban. The idea that force of western arms could turn a corrupt Muslim statelet into a sanitised, pro-western democracy was arrogant and unreal.Every warning was disregarded in a classic of "cognitive dissonance". The Afghan war has been sustained by years of mendacity and deceit from western governments. Elected representatives, the media and public opinion were induced to buy the line that success was "just around the corner". Embedded journalists would report that the army was "winning hearts and minds" and the Taliban were on the run. Sooner or later Nato would "retrain" the Afghan army, despite constant reports of the hatred and unreliability this army felt towards the occupation. Just last week, the British government bizarrely pledged to build "an Afghan Sandhurst", presumably as a palace for some future Taliban warlord.All military and diplomatic[...]
The welfare reform bill will incentivise people: to turn on David Cameron | Polly Toynbee Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:30:02 GMT2012-02-03T00:07:22Z David Cameron's cuts have barely got going yet. That's the frightening truth about austerityWhile Tory and Lib Dem MPs were contemptuously rejecting all seven Lords amendments to the welfare reform bill on Wednesday, I was at a credit union in London's East End, listening to low earners and unemployed people struggling to save small sums to avoid loan sharks. Admirable, but little protection from a tidal wave of cuts heading their way. For people like them, this year's rolling housing benefit cuts will take £17 a week.That same morning the Institute for Fiscal Studies delivered its verdict: double-dip recession and a miserable 0.3% growth rate. Worry about shut libraries? Then this should make your hair stand on end: only 6% of public service cuts have happened yet. Another 94% are still to come, with cascades more public servants sacked. In benefits, 88% of cuts are still to come. But Tory and Lib Dem MPs voted through an £18bn benefit cut for the "squeezed" bottom half with few qualms, taking £1,400 from disabled children and £94 a week from the sick who don't die or recover within a year.The IFS says these cuts are "almost without historical or international precedent". "How deliverable these will prove remains to be seen," it adds. The answer is blindingly obvious. Cuts of these dimensions are impossible. Austerity will not be politically tolerable in a rich country in peacetime where boardrooms pay themselves 49% rises. The Attlee government was toppled by peacetime austerity that voters no longer trusted. The government reassures itself that the country is muddling along, coping with cuts, getting by. But the frightening truth is that it's hardly begun.The IFS chart showing the sunny uplands of 2016-17, with a 0.4% current spending surplus, is hard to credit. It's a dereliction for forecasters to ignore the political reality. A miraculous growth spurt might save the day: but how, when George Osborne's hyper-austerity smothers all oxygen in the economy? What of a 2015 election, plumb in the middle of this seven-year run of cuts? The irony is that the best hope of hitting that surplus and restoring more growth is that many of these cuts never happen. Cameron will bend or snap or both.The NHS tops No 10's risk register, but a close second should be the benefit cuts now being railroaded through by claiming "financial privilege" to avoid another bruising Lords encounter with angry bishops and former Tory cabinet ministers. Cameron's government by opinion poll tells him he's on terra firma: the public thinks £26,000 is more than enough benefits for any family. But the public is fickle: starting last month, 670,000 households lose an average of £13 on housing benefit occupancy rules. In council tax benefit, because pensioners are exempt, the rest of low earners will pay an extra £330 a year. In April tax credit cuts take £305 from 2 million households, while the bottom half are already £427 a year worse off in spending power, says the Resolution Foundation. With long-term unemployment set to rise even higher than already predicted, this bill touches millions more voters than [...]
I'll ensure our schools have no excuses for failure | Michael Wilshaw Thu, 02 Feb 2012 19:36:19 GMT2012-02-03T00:07:22Z Last year's riots proved that the schools in our most deprived areas need leaders with drive and high expectationsThose who took part in the riots last August were overwhelmingly young and from disadvantaged backgrounds. Half of those who appeared in court were under 21, and three times more likely to be entitled to free meals when they were at school.The sad truth is that these are the very young people most likely to attend a weak school and receive a substandard education. This is not acceptable any more. If we don't give more of our young people a good education, then more will end up in jail, and more communities will fracture. If we don't give our young people the skills they need for employment, their communities can't thrive.Let's be honest. We don't have a good enough schools system yet. Almost a third of the schools in England were not judged to be good by Ofsted at their last inspection. Three thousand schools, educating a million children, were judged "satisfactory" at both their last two inspections. Previous chief inspectors have identified the same problem of too much stubbornly satisfactory, mediocre provision, yet we haven't made enough progress.So what about some solutions? We need to do something different, which is brave and radical. That's why I have made clear my intention to do away with the false label of "satisfactory" and replace it with a clear statement that a school "requires improvement". There will be greater clarity about what the school needs to do to improve, and faster re-inspection to check on progress. I want to set a clear expectation that a school requiring improvement will do so rapidly, or find itself in special measures.We know it can be done in the most difficult circumstances. My former school, Mossbourne Academy, has four in 10 children on free school meals; 30% on the special educational needs register; and 38% of children with English as a second language. It now achieves results much better than the national average and sends pupils to Oxbridge – not because of a bright new building, but because of good systems and structures, good teaching, and staff who work hard and make no excuses for failure. The school often acts as a surrogate parent, providing wraparound care, enrichment and support for pupils who don't get enough of this at home. And I'm proud to say no pupil at Mossbourne, as far as I am aware, was caught up in last summer's problems.Of course, there are many schools like Mossbourne. But they all share some crucial features: a rigorous approach to improving the quality of teaching, and a relentlessness in the pursuit of improvement. They have leaders who drive up the performance of staff. They make no excuses, and they have high expectations of every single pupil. So shouldn't we have high expectations of every single school? We know what works, for schools as well as pupils.Last year alone 85 schools serving the most deprived communities in our society were judged to be providing outstanding education. If they can do it in these challenging circumstances there is absolutely no reason why other sc[...]
Martin Rowson on the stripping of Fred Goodwin's knighthood - cartoon Wed, 01 Feb 2012 22:58:07 GMT2012-02-01T22:58:07Z The former head of Royal Bank of Scotland had his honour removed after intense political pressure Martin Rowson cartoon, 2.2.2012. Photograph: Martin Rowson
Hugh Muir's diary Wed, 01 Feb 2012 22:57:01 GMT2012-02-02T00:05:55Z They seek them here, they seek them there – Chris Huhne's staff go everywhere• A tough life coping with the challenges of global warming. Especially for a coalition hampered by deniers and sceptics. And so, as they work out how to deal with a demanding public and sniffy types in the Commons, officials find that every now and then they need to get away. Different feng shui, that sort of thing. Still, it costs a pretty penny. It has cost 70,000 quid since May 2010 just for the Department for Energy and Climate Change. There was that team-building day at the National Physical Laboratory, the strategy meeting at Fulham FC's Craven Cottage, the planning meeting at the Commonwealth Club, and the £7,000 spent discussing climate change surrounded by the flora and fauna of the London Wetlands Centre. All very well for thinking out of the box, but as critics such as Luciana Berger – Labour's climate change shadow – point out, it's all a bit rum when money is tight and jobs are being cut in the solar industry. Didn't coalition types give the last government a kicking for this sort of thing?• How quickly they forget. But then MPs have so much info to retain. Now they have a way to do it. Ministers have red boxes. Now humble backbenchers are being offered their own equivalent – green boxes. They can have their names and/or constituency written in gold leaf inside the box or outside. Or add a leather strap available in bright party colours. And the box without the extras: just £1,175.• The prestige is the thing. Ministers prize their boxes. John Reid, who moved around the ministries, famously kept all of his. But then he was willing to buy them. One former minister reached an impasse over the price of hers and refused to return it. The Commons authorities had to send no-nonsense staff to get it back.• Day 35 of the Leveson inquiry but we have heard nothing yet from Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe. The learned judge must address this. "I once read l was having my own beer brewed by Belgian monks," Radcliffe tells ShortList magazine. What else? "The SAS were apparently walking my dogs at one point." Protecting them from Lord Voldemort, one suspects.• Much soul-searching at the BBC, meanwhile, as they discover that the widely lauded adaptation of Sebastian Faulks's Birdsong was historically inaccurate. "I eagerly awaited the TV adaptation of Sebastian Faulks's novel," writes viewer Peter Lines to the Radio Times. "However, the first major scene between our two lead characters Stephen and Isabelle during a walk in a wood, presumably near Amiens, was somewhat dramatically interrupted for me (a keen birdwatcher), by a very prominent and lengthy burst of charming 'birdsong' from a collared dove. This was originally an Asian and Near East species that did not start its western invasion until the early 20th century, not reaching Germany until 1945 and the UK by the early 1950s. It was inaccurate to place it in a northern European wood before the onset of the first world war." He's right, says the RSPB. [...]
Just like Scotland, Britain needs its referendum too | Timothy Garton Ash Wed, 01 Feb 2012 21:30:03 GMT2012-02-02T00:05:55Z David Cameron wants devo max for Britain in Europe. His fear of direct democracy will land us with the worst of both worldsDavid Cameron may yet go down to history as the man who pushed Scotland away from England and England away from Europe. That would earn him a place in the schoolbooks, though not the one he might like. On both Scotland and the EU, his stance risks triggering a dynamic that he cannot control.Blairishly brilliant at presentation, supremely self-confident, handling the premiership as if he had been born in 10 Downing Street, Cameron radiates firmness, charm and competence. Initially, I bought it. His politics are not mine, but I thought Britain could do worse than to have a competent, pragmatic, liberal conservative prime minister, in coalition with liberals. But as the months go by, as mistake has followed mistake – over the EU, Scotland, benefits reform, NHS reform – a still, small voice has been nagging in my ear: maybe he doesn't know what he's doing, after all?On Scotland and the EU, his positions are contradictory. When Scotland's nationalist leader Alex Salmond wants a three-way referendum, including the option of "devo max" (maximum devolution) as an alternative to full independence, Cameron says: that's nonsense – a referendum needs a clear, binary choice. He's right about that.Yet devo max is precisely what he seeks for Britain in relation to the EU. He insists on a clear "in or out" choice for Scotland in relation to the British union. He ducks and weaves, rubbing all our European partners up the wrong way, to avoid a clear "in or out" choice for Britain in relation to the European Union.And what has he got for his pains? In December, when he "vetoed" the German proposal for an all-EU treaty to endorse a fiscal compact for the eurozone, he was cheered to the echo by Eurosceptic backbenchers at Westminster. Most of our European partners were angry and dismayed. Asked at Davos last week why more was not being done to ensure the full involvement of all EU members and institutions in arrangements for saving the eurozone, Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister, said: "I would like to give you the mobile number of David Cameron."But if you look at the fiscal compact treaty agreed in Brussels on Monday, you find it pullulating with references to EU institutions – commission, council, court of justice, even the parliament. It is more complicated than it would otherwise have been (the preamble alone runs to more than three pages in my printout), but essentially this is most of the EU going ahead with a German-led framework for saving the eurozone.Whether it's a good way forward is another question. Were it not for Angela Merkel's need to reassure German public opinion, we would not have a new treaty. Most of this could be done under existing treaties and the so-called "six pack" of EU regulations. As macroeconomic policy, the German prescription is not sufficient to pull the European economy out of crisis. If across-the-continent budget cut[...]
The mood in Britain is to muddle along | Martin Kettle Wed, 01 Feb 2012 21:00:07 GMT2012-02-02T00:06:10Z This may be an era of economic turmoil, but people have little appetite for a radical alternativeThe words of a young poet still speak down the ages to new generations who also believe that the world cannot continue like this. "Now, God be thanked who has matched us with His hour, / And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping, / With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power, / To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping, / Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary."Convulsive periods inevitably feed brave new moods, to which Rupert Brooke gave a voice in 1914. Whether the convulsion is of war, political upheaval, technological revolution or, as today, economic turmoil, many respond by concluding that the world which brought things to this pass must be purged.Financially wracked Britain in 2012 sometimes feels like one of those convulsions too. Many on the left write about it in such terms. Even David Cameron has recently talked about a crisis of capitalism. And when has any British prime minister ever done that before?Yet it is important not to get carried away. There are at least three immense objections to the claim that this is a moment for wholesale change. The most important of these is that there is no consensus in Britain that liberal democratic capitalism has irrevocably failed, as opposed to having let us down, let alone any agreement about the alternative which might be put in its place. Serious specific problems, yes. But even losing a wheel doesn't necessarily mean scrapping the car.It's not just the political class but the voters who want, more than anything, to get the show back on the road. Socialism still has adherents, but it is a religion, not a programme. There is no credible socialist alternative nor any growing support for it. Green politics, the great hope of some, remains even more marginal. Nationalism, as Paul Mason suggested, may eventually be a bigger gainer from the current global economic turmoil, with wider consequences that are hard to predict. Religious fundamentalism has nothing that approaches a widespread hold.So, while it is reasonably straightforward to describe what has gone wrong in global markets and boardrooms, and in the eurozone and the failed UK banks in particular, it remains extraordinarily hard to conceptualise a plausible alternative. The failure of socialism has a lot to do with this. But it is also extremely striking that almost no one anywhere in the western world has argued that China, the most obvious available example, offers a preferable alternative to the western model.The second objection is that we have very few genuinely useful historical models to draw on either. In an era of economic collapse like ours, many naturally look for answers to the inter-war period of the 20th century, in which the global capitalist model last appeared to face an existential challenge. But, with the large exception of Keynesianism, which itself needs to be handled with care, the lessons of the 1[...]
Britain after the break-up | Carwyn Jones Wed, 01 Feb 2012 20:30:01 GMT2012-02-02T00:06:09Z Devolution demands a new constitutional settlement, perhaps even a US-style senateThere is a stark choice before us: on the one hand we have a new vision for Britain, on the other nothing less than the break-up of the United Kingdom. We cannot allow this important debate to be dominated by the SNP. Likewise, it cannot be addressed by a "Little England" mentality which seeks to build walls around the Tory heartland. That is why I've called for a convention to debate a new constitutional settlement for Britain. This is not just overdue, but is now a political and constitutional imperative.In 1997, the example of Scotland helped give the people of Wales the confidence to vote "yes". Since then, both countries have made devolution work to the benefit of our people. A Welsh Labour government led the way by introducing free prescriptions, and free bus travel for pensioners and disabled people, while Scotland found a more generous approach to student tuition fees.We have learned from each other, adapting policies to suit our own situations – delivering different approaches to meet our respective needs and aspirations. Wales does not need independence to follow a progressive path. However, devolution has to deliver, and the UK government must play its part, if we are to remain a constitutional entity. In Whitehall, devolution has for too long been viewed as a sideshow, a distraction. However, as we are now witnessing, this approach has failed spectacularly. Old certainties are being shaken by the independence debate in Scotland. I believe a constitutional convention will allow us to begin to redefine a modern UK and to reshape the context in which we all co-exist.There should now be an open debate about how the UK might function more responsively to the needs of its constituent nations. It must consider all options. I don't want the UK to break up into different parts, but it is better we consider this possibility now and not in two years' time. You can't just take Scotland out and expect the UK to continue as before.One option could be for the House of Commons to be balanced by a new upper house with equal representation from England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. This newly shaped Lords would be similar to the Senate in the United States. I realise this would move us to a more federal structure, but it would allow full and equal representation of the individual nations.However, this re-definition and re-shaping is not just the responsibility of the government, parliament and the devolved nations. There is a heavy onus now on the fourth estate too. The coverage of the regions in the London-based media is woefully inadequate.Lip-service is often paid to informing and educating readers, listeners and viewers as to what devolution is and what it means to constituent parts of the UK. But health and education stories, for example, emanating from London, almost always ignore the fact that Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland [...]
Fred Goodwin's disgrace may not feel great but it's a good place to start | Zoe Williams Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:30:01 GMT2012-02-02T00:06:07Z Of course the stripping of Goodwin's knighthood leaves a hangover, but if it's the beginning of accountability, it's worth itEven though I share the Scottish affection for Alex Salmond, one of my favourite quotes to emerge from the Fred Goodwin affair is from the letter of support that the SNP leader wrote to the banker on the occasion of RBS's ill-fated ABN Amro takeover: "Yours, for Scotland", he signed it, mistaking the escapade for an episode of Highlander.There are no winners in this story, there are only degrees of loserdom – the RBS board wasn't paying attention (yet they still have their knighthoods) and the Bank of England and the Financial Services Authority were practising their "light touch" (it is business-speak for "swing").MPs might, in an ideal world, have been wondering what the downside may be of a bank whose asset sheet was greater than the nation's GDP, but they were too busy looking for the receipt for that Kit Kat because, never mind the John Lewis list, it is fiendishly difficult to recoup your snack purchases if you don't keep records.And what were you doing? I was just assuming everything was OK, because there was a man in charge and nobody was screaming, exactly as I do when I get on a plane. Nevertheless, this remains the responsibility of the person who, as CEO, said: "I'll take responsibility"; this doesn't mean that there's nobody who could have intervened, and it doesn't mean that the collapse of RBS is the only factor that went into the financial crisis.It doesn't mean that now Fred's a mister our financial problems are over, or indeed in any way altered. But he was awarded the honour for services to banking, and he built a ho-hum high street bank into an institution the proportions of which we'll be paying for – if you start at the initial debt, proceed to the austerity agenda to which it contributed, thence to our current political polarisation, the fiscal contraction, the unemployment – for decades. So whether we look at this as criminal irresponsibility or a simple bad run from a flamboyant high roller, we should be able to agree that he didn't provide much of a service.For a decision so straightforward, it has provoked a lot of dissent. The former chancellor Alistair Darling called it "tawdry". Tory MP Mark Field said it was a "sideshow", and we should concentrate on his pension. Business leaders worried about what this would do to our international reputation, what it said about our consistency, whether or not it made the peerage system look like a political plaything. To take those in order: it would be tawdry if we stripped him naked and ran him from Edinburgh to London strapped to the inside of a cartwheel, but to withdraw an honour because you realise you'd honoured someone's talents erroneously is not tawdry.We could concentrate on his pension, but tearing up contracts is a dangerous thing, and the rule of law will always be worth more than the thr[...]
Hugh Muir's diary Tue, 31 Jan 2012 22:50:01 GMT2012-02-01T00:06:04Z He was famously denounced as Mr Bean. But Whitehall stillremembers Gordon as Stalin• Given all the cuts in the civil service, one might have thought the big beasts of Whitehall would hanker for a bygone age. But for some, the sight and sound of Gordon Brown's great clunking fist was so traumatic that life with Dave and co seems tranquil. Certainly, Sir Suma Chakrabarti, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Justice, seems more at ease. "The culture that's been changing particularly since the election is a sense of less – should we say, Stalinist – central control and much more about frontline professionals exercising their experience and being able to make judgments," he told the justice select committee today. Commendable frankness. Perhaps a sign that he'll be long gone before Labour wins another election.• And with Labour flip-flopping over pay freezes and cuts, thank god for the Greens, and a measure of consistency. They refuse to shake the dead hand of austerity. Unless they are in power. Then who knows? Certainly there is confusion in Brighton, where they've watched party leader Caroline Lucas standing with the Occupy protesters at St Paul's and attacking government austerity measures on Question Time, but where they also see her acolytes on the city council pushing ahead with cuts of £35m. Members don't like it. "It is particularly disturbing to learn that Green party councillors in Brighton and Hove intend to proceed with budget plans that will cut millions of pounds from local services," said a statement from Green Left. "The first Green-led council should be drawing up a budget which not only defends existing service provision but which also reverses the cuts made by previous councils." Better opposition than this, they say, but there's no sign of a U-turn. Always respect to be gained taking the tough decisions. Look at the Lib Dems.• Look at the mayor of London, Boris Johnson. He took a tough decision, a momentous decision, at the start of his tenure when he struck out against his own party and endorsed a minimum salary, the London Living Wage. It's currently set at £8.30 an hour, and paid by the likes of KPMG and Barclays; even at the mayor's own fiefdom, the Greater London Authority. But it's all a bit different when he removes his mayoral hat and wears the party rosette. What happens then, as pointed out by the campaign group Graduate Fog, is that ads go out for a "full-time campaign assistant" on his re-election campaign, the salary being no more than travel expenses and the daily treat of lunch at Pret A Manger. That sort of decision isn't tough to take at all.• We have done well but we must do better on the tuition fees front, says the government. There to lead the charge, as it were, is Simon Hughes, the Lib Dems' deputy leader and advocate for access to education. But does he know what he is talking about?[...]
Green jobs: a utopia we nearly had | Anne Karpf Tue, 31 Jan 2012 22:00:00 GMT2012-02-01T10:04:08Z Workers in a failing 1970s arms factory created a revolutionary jobs plan. We need their vision nowWhat's wrong with us all? Why aren't we spending? In Athens, it was reported this week, shoppers are looking but not buying. The buzzword in Brussels these days, says the Economist, is growth. Everyone seems to be agreed: we need to spend our way out of deficit.Mere months ago we were urged to pay off personal debt; now, apparently, our future wellbeing requires us to Shop for the Economy (as a slogan, not quite as morally compelling as Dig for Victory). But can the economy really depend on my daughters buying more Topshop leggings? Or my going to the pub more often?Protecting our environment used to be seen as essential, with investing in a green future a means to sustainably rebuild our economy. Now it seems this was merely a luxury item, only affordable until economic difficulty came to town. Polluting, maiming and drugging are good again, because making more cars, arms and fags means more economic growth (and who cares that the UK lurks behind every Middle Eastern tyranny? Certainly not Prince Andrew). Whatever their differences, both right and left seem locked into an assumed consensus about the need for (indiscriminate) economic growth. Is there no alternative?Four decades ago, a green way out of recession was proposed. Lucas Aerospace, a major designer and manufacturer of combat aircraft and missile systems, planned to close a number of factories and make 20% of its 18,000-strong workforce redundant. The shop stewards combine committee, representing the 13 different trades unions in the company, decided to draw up "an alternative corporate plan for socially useful and environmentally desirable production". It sent out a questionnaire to the company's 17 plants, as well as outside experts, asking for an inventory of skills and machinery that already existed, and ideas about what they should make.The company's workers – both blue and white collar – responded enthusiastically. Of the 150 ideas that poured in, the committee chose 12 to present in its 1976 plan, among them a portable life-support system, a safer braking system for buses and coaches, robotic devices for remote-control firefighting and mining, and hobcarts to help people with spina bifida get around. Some of the products look dated today; others, such as a hybrid car (essentially a Toyota Prius), were prescient; still others, such as a road-rail vehicle of particular use in developing countries, remain innovative.The plan generated enormous excitement. The MP Bob Cryer described its strategy of jobs for peace instead of destruction as "one of the most important moral crusades that this country has seen in the 20th century". Another MP wanted to propose the combine committee for the Nobel peace prize. Until he was sacked by Harold Wilson, the then industry minister Tony Benn[...]
With a ban on bonuses, Fred Goodwin could even have kept his knighthood | Simon Jenkins Tue, 31 Jan 2012 21:00:00 GMT2012-02-01T12:22:14Z Even bankers want the bonus culture outlawed. It's a conspiracy to extract money from firms that properly belongs to othersBan bonuses. They are mad. Discretionary gifts to top executives from company funds should be considered a malpractice. Most British directors are paid exceptionally well – over 40% more last year according to one report – and if the result is exceptional that is right and proper. Profits should be returned to those who own them, the risk-bearing shareholders. That is capitalism. If shareholders want any money held back for staff after a good year, it should be shared equally. Governments pass laws on insider dealing, takeovers, labour discrimination and health and safety. Any minister who can't ban bonuses should pack up and go.This subject has become politically poisonous in the case of banks not, as Sir Roger Carr of the CBI said on Tuesday, because MPs and others are "corroding trust in the industrial and commercial fabric of our society" by tainting big business as "run by the greedy few at the expense of the many". As David Cameron has said, the poison is because bonuses in Britain (not elsewhere in Europe) are "out of hand". It is the bonus culture – not high pay, recklessness or incompetence – that has polluted banking's public image. Cut out bonuses and I guarantee the rage would subside. Fred Goodwin might even have kept his knighthood.Bonuses entered British corporate culture in the 1980s as a device for enabling bosses to line their pockets with some of the cash swilling through newly deregulated balance sheets. The habit spread fast, infecting the professions, the civil service, local government, the NHS and even universities. Bonuses became rampant wherever size allowed "HR consultants" with opaque reward packages to run riot. Thus did the ratio of average pay to executive pay at Lloyds bank rise from 1:13 to 1:75. Most big companies followed suit, but banks were way out in front.The concept of pay incentive is pure sophistry. Top executives are said to be unlike ordinary workers in needing a Pavlovian prize at the end of each year to tempt them to do well what they have already been paid to do well. In some banks, senior staff are being awarded half the gross profits of their divisions. This is not their money. As Tony Shearer, boss of Abbey Protection, boldly remarked on Monday's BBC Newsnight, a normal person should regard being offered "an incentive bonus" as an insult.Figures out last week showed that the 1,265 top staff in the eight leading London banks received an average of £1.8m each in 2010, as they struggled to rectify the shambles into which they had plunged their industry two years previously. They are now clamouring for bonuses totalling billions. This cannot be a response to need or entitlement, or even a reward for risk, since the formulas are always fudged[...]
Occupy London's eviction is a failure for the church, not the camp | Giles Fraser Tue, 31 Jan 2012 20:30:01 GMT2012-02-01T00:06:15Z The protesters about to be removed from the steps of St Paul's could have helped the cathedral find a compelling new narrativeInstitutions like St Paul's Cathedral live or die by the myths that surround and define them. In St Paul's case, several narratives remain powerful. Dominant among them is the story of the Blitz. As German bombers pummelled London with thousands of tons of high explosives, the survival of the great dome of St Paul's became a symbol of national defiance. Which is why Winston Churchill repeatedly phoned up the chief fire officer to tell him: "Whatever happens, you must save St Paul's!" I have lost count of the number of cabbies who have proudly boasted that their grandfather was a fire watcher on the roof of the cathedral. Many who have never been inside the place still think of it as their own.A more recent narrative is that of the wedding of Charles and Diana: the people's princess in the nation's church. This narrative remains especially powerful for Americans and other visitors from overseas. Despite the fact that Westminster Abbey has the official royal connections, St Paul's has a more populist feel. "Robbing Peter to pay Paul" was the original complaint of the abbey (official name, the Collegiate Church of St Peter, Westminster) at the cost of building St Paul's, but the best way to feel the difference between them is to hear the choristers sing. St Paul's: powerful, energetic, Dionysian. Abbey: note-perfect, restrained, Apollonian.The war, the wedding and the choristers – these are all engaging narratives, but they are mostly old ones. And they can easily play into the idea that St Paul's is a concert venue run by the National Trust. As the Bishop of London has rightly pointed out for several years now, St Paul's needs to find new stories about itself and what it's for. Which brings me to Occupy.St Paul's is not the parish church of the City, with its banks and livery companies. It is the cathedral church for the whole of London – for Hackney and Hammersmith and Hounslow. Its constituency includes some of the most deprived inner city estates in the whole of Europe. It does not exist as a gilded dressing-up box for the 1%, nor simply as a place of protest for the 99%, but a place of prayer for the 100%.And that means there are some huge social divisions for the church to bridge. No doubt this is a tricky business. But the response of St Paul's to the Occupy movement has been a lost opportunity to reach out to a wider demographic and thus to construct a new and compelling narrative for itself. As Occupy faces eviction, St Paul's remains trapped in stories of past glory.Occupy does not herald the beginnings of a world revolution. But it has given many world leaders a good kick in the pants and made them know, in no uncertain terms, the degree of fr[...]
David Cameron has allowed Europe to say FU to its people | Daniel Hannan Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:49:49 GMT2012-02-01T00:06:14Z The decision to let EU institutions police fiscal union is a massive missed opportunity for Cameron, and for BritainWhen David Cameron refused to sign the EU's fiscal compact last month, there was a loud cheer. The Conservatives jumped five points in the opinion polls, and 70% of Tory activists named the veto as David Cameron's single greatest moment.Yet those cheering the most lustily were often vague about what they were cheering. I say this in no slighting spirit: the summit took place behind closed doors, and it took several days for the text to emerge. That, though, didn't much bother anyone. It was enough to know that, for the first time since the budget rebate in 1984, a British prime minister had said no to Brussels.Still, it's worth reminding ourselves of precisely what Cameron refused – and what he accepted on Monday. As usual, most commentators are framing the story as a battle between the prime minister and those pantomime villains the Tory Right. According to this narrative, the PM is under pressure because of some abstruse issue about whether the new pact will apply to Britain.In fact, there was never any question of Britain – or any other non-euro state – being bound by its terms. The PM was quite relaxed about whether the eurozone members adopted tighter fiscal rules. If anything, he mildly favoured the idea. But he entered the December summit wanting something in return. If the euro members wanted to use EU institutions and procedures to invigilate their pact, they would have to give Britain assurances that its financial services industry, which is openly resented by some of the other member states, would not be subject to vindictive regulation. When no such assurances were given, agreement broke down.The integrationist states, however, made clear that they had no intention of allowing Britain's objection to stand. In theory, their accord is an intergovernmental agreement among 25 countries that just happen to be EU members. In practice, it draws fully on the EU's institutional structure, specifying regular meetings with the European parliament, for instance, and laying down that penalties will be applied by the European court of justice. Such things have absolutely no legal basis. A sub-group of EU states can no more decree meetings with the European parliament than with the Japanese diet; no more rely on the ECJ for arbitration than on the supreme court of Mauritius. Yet Britain has raised no objection to this flagrant illegality.To be clear, this was the entirety of the dispute at the Brussels summit. The denial of the use of EU mechanisms was not part of Cameron's veto; it was his veto. In one important sense, we are now in a worse position than we were before December. We have set the precedent that, if some integr[...]
Hugh Muir's diary Mon, 30 Jan 2012 22:49:01 GMT2012-01-31T00:07:05Z The newest chant in soccer: 'Who's that Berkeley in the black?'• Many challenges confront the culture secretary, Jeremy "Berkeley" Hunt, each day, but still he seeks to learn. Last year he started training as a soccer ref, the better to understand the people. It's going well, he told a ConservativeHome function. He finally qualified as a level 7 ref last month, and thus was given the responsibility of officiating a real match. One player did, he said, call him the word that rhymes with Berkeley Hunt – as James Naughtie did in 2010 – but unlike Naughtie, the footballer's abuse was deliberate. Berkeley chose leniency. "I only gave him a yellow card – not a red – because it wasn't entirely unjustified," he said.• A quiet year so far for Godfrey (never less than eight pints in a single sitting) Bloom, the Ukip MEP for Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire. Once you have damned women for failing to clean behind the fridge, and the president of the European parliament for being a "Nazi", it's not clear where you go next. Broaden the canvas perhaps, and with that in mind, we see Godders is now taking aim at funding given to Europe's main organisation for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, ILGA-Europe. A slew of questions to the European commission about the funding criteria and the group's legitimacy. He's receiving brickbats from all sides, of course, but vilification has never stopped him before. A panto villain available all year round. That's Godfrey.• And after the gladiatorial clash at the high court between Roman Abramovich and Boris Berezovsky, we wait for a verdict. And wait. And wait. Just as draining for them, we suspect. And as Judge Elizabeth Gloster mulls it all over, London-based Boris offers advice to those still stuck in his homeland, oppressed by his enemy Putin. Church leaders must play a bigger role in events, says Boris. Alas, the church is unconvinced. "The past activities of this man lead one to believe that you should listen to this man attentively and do exactly the opposite," says Orthodox church spokesman archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin. Harsh. But we say much the same of Godfrey.• Throughout a stellar career in Fleet Street, Donald Zec was peerless. He was the Daily Mirror's man to beat for showbiz scoops. Bogart, Kirk Douglas, the Beatles; when they talked, they talked to him. Same goes for Marilyn Monroe. That's a fact. Assert the contrary at your peril. Perhaps the message has now got through to the various arms of the Murdoch empire. They do keep taking on the legendary reporter; each time they come off worst. At issue are the memoirs of Colin Clark, the inspiration for the all-star movie My Week with Marilyn. Clark didn't much like Zec – "little creep", he called him. And what really irked[...]
Scared out of university? | Simon Hughes Mon, 30 Jan 2012 22:00:03 GMT2012-01-31T00:06:56Z Analysed properly, the latest application figures show that students are not distracted by myths about new tuition feesOn Monday we saw the first reliable data on the effects that the changes in higher education policy have had on applications to universities in England. Given the huge public debate on this issue, the background of mass protest and violence against which this decision was taken and the inevitable politicisation of this decision, it is no surprise that some people have decided to use the latest official Ucas figures and the top-line 8% decline in the number of applications to make the case that higher university fees have put off young people from applying to university. Some of these people, like Sally Hunt of the University and Colleges Union, seem to delight in this analysis because it fits better with their ideological opposition to the coalition government.However, a more objective analysis of the data shows a clearer picture. Although applications were down by a significant number, the total number of 18-year-olds in England this year is significantly down as well. If you adjust the figures to take account of changes in demographic, the application rate in England – which is where the changes in higher education policy have the greatest effect – has declined by only 1%. Just as important, the decline is proportionately higher in areas where more people go to university and which tend to be more affluent (where the figure is 2.5%) compared with more deprived areas, which very encouragingly have hardly seen any decline at all (0.2%). Both of these figures compare with a 3.5% population-adjusted decline in applications across England when the Labour government introduced top-up fees for the 2006 academic year.I was one of the Liberal Democrat MPs who did not support the rise in tuition fees in 2010. My fear was that although nobody going to university for the first time would pay up-front fees, this message would be lost among the political fallout and the headlines of £9,000 fees. I was worried particularly about young people from very mixed and traditionally working-class inner city communities such as those I represent in Bermondsey and Southwark.There was certainly a huge amount of disinformation immediately after the vote which suggested university would become unaffordable. Much of this completely ignored the fact that repayments would be entirely dependent on future incomes and that every graduate would pay less every month than graduates under the current system.However, once the 2010 decision had been taken, I was determined to make sure that every young person received the best information possible to make their decision. After being appointed advocate for access to educatio[...]
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