There was a terrible irony in the fact that the recent cold snap came over the weekend that the Copenhagen climate conference ended in failure.
The anger that many people, including me, felt when the world’s leaders failed to reach a legally binding agreement was totally justified. At the level of the negotiations, the fault did not lie with the developed nations. The EU made a reasonable offer, Barack Obama took America further than it had ever gone before, and even Gordon Brown pushed for a deal harder than his more climatically telegenic predecessor ever did.
But we would be fooling ourselves if we swallowed our own propaganda that the fault lay entirely with the developing nations. And the cold snap showed us up.
Somehow we can’t accept that the weather sometimes slows us down. We have to do everything just as normal, so we get out our snow ploughs, we crank up the heating, we drive on icy roads causing accidents and dramatically increasing our fuel consumption.
Some of that can be justified, especially for emergency service workers, and for those making sure more vulnerable members of society can survive. But how many shops had their doors wide open in sub-zero temperatures? It would be easier to say how many hadn’t. And why was all the grit used first for roads and only afterwards - if at all - for pavements? Clearly motorists are more important than pedestrians.
I went to my daughter’s school play. It was about climate change awareness, and was exemplary in the message it promoted. Then, when it was all over, two doors – one on either side of the hall – were wedged open and the hall’s warmth was crushed by an invasion of freezing cold air. After that message!
It reminds me of that comical scene at the start of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. The priest is locked in his church, the loo is out of bounds and he’s desperate for a leak, so he drinks a bottle of wine so he can pee into the empty bottle, only to find that the wine provides a new call of nature. Our modern lifestyle has created pressures on our climate that are leading to extreme weather conditions, yet our response is a course of action that uses more energy and emits more climate changing gases!
Set against this background, is it any wonder the developing nations are suspicious about our willingness to address our lifestyle in a way that will seriously reduce climate emissions? They don’t want to forego their material prosperity while we’re still unwilling to compromise on ours – and frankly, why should they? Yet we need countries like China, India and Brazil to cut down on their emissions, or there’s no chance of limiting warming to two degrees Celsius.
That’s why the 10:10 campaign has caught the spirit of the times. It’s far from perfect, but it says ‘We must do something now’ and calls on people to reduce their own personal greenhouse gas emissions in 2010 by 10%. I have signed up to it, and I hope you can too.
Because without some major gesture, there is no way we are going to get the developing nations to make the concessions needed for the world to have a truly meaningful, legally binding climate agreement.
Tuesday, 22 December 2009
Monday, 16 November 2009
VOTE FOR CONSTRUCTIVE SCEPTICISM OR WITHDRAWAL - NOT FOR A MASSIVE FUDGE!
Several years ago I was covering a tennis tournament in Germany for BBC Radio when I was asked to escort a German MEP to the commentary box. He was taking part in a discussion on Radio 4, and as he was having a day at the tennis, they wanted him to be on the quality broadcast line rather than a crackly phone line.
Chatting to this corpulent gentleman as I escorted him breathlessly up three flights of stairs, I was struck by how little we had in common. He represented the conservative CDU party, and while I’m a great believer that there’s much that unites people of different parties, his view of the world seemed very different to mine.
So I was somewhat taken aback when I saw his face on page 2 of The Independent last week, writing a comment column about David Cameron’s pledge to renegotiate the Lisbon Treaty. What struck me as he laid into Cameron’s pledge was that I totally agreed with him.
To quote from the piece, the MEP (Elmar Brök) said, “The Conservative leader’s new warning that he will seek to ‘repatriate’ powers from Brussels to London is no more realistic than the referendum he has just given up on ... I do not see any chance of passing even the very first step of such a process.”
And he added, “The EU will, as a result [of the Lisbon treaty], be more democratic, more capable of acting and more transparent, because the treaty will strengthen the principle of subsidiarity as well as the role of national parliaments. This is the biggest paradox of Mr Cameron’s stance: the Lisbon treaty will actually massively strengthen the role of Westminster.”
Quite apart from showing how isolated David Cameron is across Europe, even from conservative opinion, this shows how the Conservatives in this country are using Europe to play a game, not to offer a vision of good governance. There are many things we don’t like, but those we cannot change we have to accept and work within the defined limits, not duck out of as if throwing our toys out of the pram is somehow OK.
The fact is that the Conservative leadership is as pro-Europe as we Liberal Democrats are, but it doesn’t dare say this in public for fear of alienating dyed-in-the-wood Tories who hanker after a bygone age of an isolated but powerful England. If the Conservatives want to represent business interests, they have to be largely pro-Europe, but if they come clean about this, they risk hacking off the traditionalists.
To be brutally honest, there is very little difference between the three mainstream parties on Europe. All three are in favour of the EU, but keeping a watchful eye over the development of the UK’s right of influence. They just sell this same policy to different ‘voter markets’. While we are enthusiastic but with reservations, the Tories are sceptical but with reluctant involvement, and express their scepticism by teaming up with neo-Nazis in the European Parliament.
If people really don’t want Britain to be in the EU, they should be voting Ukip. Ukip’s arguments are fatuously simplistic and have little basis in fact, but at least the party is clear that it would take Britain out of the EU. Therefore, any voter for whom Europe is a big issue should go either for the Lib Dems or Ukip – not the Conservatives, for whom Europe is one big and dangerous fudge.
Chatting to this corpulent gentleman as I escorted him breathlessly up three flights of stairs, I was struck by how little we had in common. He represented the conservative CDU party, and while I’m a great believer that there’s much that unites people of different parties, his view of the world seemed very different to mine.
So I was somewhat taken aback when I saw his face on page 2 of The Independent last week, writing a comment column about David Cameron’s pledge to renegotiate the Lisbon Treaty. What struck me as he laid into Cameron’s pledge was that I totally agreed with him.
To quote from the piece, the MEP (Elmar Brök) said, “The Conservative leader’s new warning that he will seek to ‘repatriate’ powers from Brussels to London is no more realistic than the referendum he has just given up on ... I do not see any chance of passing even the very first step of such a process.”
And he added, “The EU will, as a result [of the Lisbon treaty], be more democratic, more capable of acting and more transparent, because the treaty will strengthen the principle of subsidiarity as well as the role of national parliaments. This is the biggest paradox of Mr Cameron’s stance: the Lisbon treaty will actually massively strengthen the role of Westminster.”
Quite apart from showing how isolated David Cameron is across Europe, even from conservative opinion, this shows how the Conservatives in this country are using Europe to play a game, not to offer a vision of good governance. There are many things we don’t like, but those we cannot change we have to accept and work within the defined limits, not duck out of as if throwing our toys out of the pram is somehow OK.
The fact is that the Conservative leadership is as pro-Europe as we Liberal Democrats are, but it doesn’t dare say this in public for fear of alienating dyed-in-the-wood Tories who hanker after a bygone age of an isolated but powerful England. If the Conservatives want to represent business interests, they have to be largely pro-Europe, but if they come clean about this, they risk hacking off the traditionalists.
To be brutally honest, there is very little difference between the three mainstream parties on Europe. All three are in favour of the EU, but keeping a watchful eye over the development of the UK’s right of influence. They just sell this same policy to different ‘voter markets’. While we are enthusiastic but with reservations, the Tories are sceptical but with reluctant involvement, and express their scepticism by teaming up with neo-Nazis in the European Parliament.
If people really don’t want Britain to be in the EU, they should be voting Ukip. Ukip’s arguments are fatuously simplistic and have little basis in fact, but at least the party is clear that it would take Britain out of the EU. Therefore, any voter for whom Europe is a big issue should go either for the Lib Dems or Ukip – not the Conservatives, for whom Europe is one big and dangerous fudge.
Monday, 2 November 2009
STRCTLY COME OFF IT!
This is a truly terrible time for sensible decisions to be made – and you only have to watch the current series of Strictly Come Dancing to see why.
Twice in the last couple of weeks we have had the government ignoring advice from experts and doing the opposite of what they recommend. First, the education secretary Ed Balls dismissed the Cambridge Academic Review’s recommendation that formal learning in primary schools shouldn’t begin until children are at least six, and then the health secretary Alan Johnson’s sacked Professor David Nutt after rejecting his advice on criminalisation of cannabis and ecstasy.
The common factor in both decisions is that the government wanted to look tough, and was willing to ignore advice on what would work best. With a general election no more than seven months away, it figured there were more votes to be won in making it look like it was getting kids doing ‘proper work’ earlier rather than playing, and in making it look like it was tackling drug abuse.
The reason for this is that many voters – especially many floating voters in the constituencies that will decide the next election – judge the issues emotionally rather than on the basis of information. And if you doubt this, look no further than the current series of Strictly Come Dancing.
For the benefit of those with lives on Saturday nights, the ‘Strictly’ format is simple. A group of ‘celebrities’ (the quote marks are obligatory this series) are paired up with a professional dancer and have to prepare short dances which are judged by a panel of specialist adjudicators.
Then the public is allowed to vote by phone. That’s when all reason goes out of the window, because the public clearly votes on the basis of emotion which has nothing to do with the issue at hand: the ability – or lack of it – to dance.
How else can one explain the survival of Craig Kelly, the Coronation Street actor who is utterly wooden in his body movements and thinks he’s smiling when he clearly isn’t? He has been pilloried by the judges, but he has survived at the expense of other contestants who have done much better on the dance floor. Why? Because Craig has an immense following among Coronation Street viewers.
That’s why Ed Balls dismissed the Cambridge paper on primary school learning before he or his staff had even read it, and why Alan Johnson fired Professor Nutt. The emotions of the voters were more important than what might be best for society. No wonder politics has a bad name!
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not opposing the principle that when you ask for advice you have the right to reject it. In all walks of life, we need to take responsibility for our own decisions, even if that means saying to a friend ‘Thanks for your advice, but I’ve weighed it up and on this occasion am doing the opposite.’
But if you’re a government minister who has spent thousands of pounds of public money on specialist advice, and you then reject it because it doesn’t fit with what your focus groups say voters will go for, then you must expect the kind of backlash Johnson is facing this week. It’s another version of bringing politics into disrepute, and I hope voters will see it as that, come the general election.
Twice in the last couple of weeks we have had the government ignoring advice from experts and doing the opposite of what they recommend. First, the education secretary Ed Balls dismissed the Cambridge Academic Review’s recommendation that formal learning in primary schools shouldn’t begin until children are at least six, and then the health secretary Alan Johnson’s sacked Professor David Nutt after rejecting his advice on criminalisation of cannabis and ecstasy.
The common factor in both decisions is that the government wanted to look tough, and was willing to ignore advice on what would work best. With a general election no more than seven months away, it figured there were more votes to be won in making it look like it was getting kids doing ‘proper work’ earlier rather than playing, and in making it look like it was tackling drug abuse.
The reason for this is that many voters – especially many floating voters in the constituencies that will decide the next election – judge the issues emotionally rather than on the basis of information. And if you doubt this, look no further than the current series of Strictly Come Dancing.
For the benefit of those with lives on Saturday nights, the ‘Strictly’ format is simple. A group of ‘celebrities’ (the quote marks are obligatory this series) are paired up with a professional dancer and have to prepare short dances which are judged by a panel of specialist adjudicators.
Then the public is allowed to vote by phone. That’s when all reason goes out of the window, because the public clearly votes on the basis of emotion which has nothing to do with the issue at hand: the ability – or lack of it – to dance.
How else can one explain the survival of Craig Kelly, the Coronation Street actor who is utterly wooden in his body movements and thinks he’s smiling when he clearly isn’t? He has been pilloried by the judges, but he has survived at the expense of other contestants who have done much better on the dance floor. Why? Because Craig has an immense following among Coronation Street viewers.
That’s why Ed Balls dismissed the Cambridge paper on primary school learning before he or his staff had even read it, and why Alan Johnson fired Professor Nutt. The emotions of the voters were more important than what might be best for society. No wonder politics has a bad name!
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not opposing the principle that when you ask for advice you have the right to reject it. In all walks of life, we need to take responsibility for our own decisions, even if that means saying to a friend ‘Thanks for your advice, but I’ve weighed it up and on this occasion am doing the opposite.’
But if you’re a government minister who has spent thousands of pounds of public money on specialist advice, and you then reject it because it doesn’t fit with what your focus groups say voters will go for, then you must expect the kind of backlash Johnson is facing this week. It’s another version of bringing politics into disrepute, and I hope voters will see it as that, come the general election.
Wednesday, 21 October 2009
LET’S HAVE A GREAT TIME – WITHOUT MUCH ALCOHOL
You want to have a good time? Yes, so do I. Like most people in this country, when I go out, I like to enjoy myself. But unlike many people, there’s one ingredient I like but don’t need – alcohol.
What is it about people that they feel they have to drink to have a good time? Why is it that when people talk about going to a party, there is an implicit assumption that they will get smashed and have a hangover the following morning?
It may all seem pretty harmless, with any damage being largely done to the self-inflicter. But consider this.
Recently it emerged that the number of people landing in accident & emergency wards in East Sussex for alcohol-related reasons had increased by 131 per cent in the last six years. In 2007-08, there were 6,064 alcohol-related admissions in Brighton, East Sussex Downs and Weald PCTs.
It was only in 2002-03 that statistics on alcohol-related admissions in the county began to be collected. In the first year there were 2,624, a figure that has risen every year to make for a six-year total of 24,520. Of these, 729 have been people under 18 years old, and that age group is rising too.
These statistics are truly alarming. And at a time when there’s precious little money in public coffers for essentials, why is the NHS having to spend money dealing with a problem that is largely avoidable?
It certainly is avoidable. I know of a case in which a woman was convinced her gin & tonic at 6pm was the key to letting go and enjoying herself. So one day her daughter gave her tonic without the gin at 6pm – and she still got drunk! In other words, it doesn’t take alcohol, only the belief that it’s OK to have a good time.
It’s easy to blame retailers for selling alcohol to under-age buyers, but let’s face it, if young people want alcohol, they’ll get hold of it somehow.
It would also be wrong to overreact and try to make alcohol the demon, when millions of people drink in moderation and get great enjoyment out of it. I especially enjoy locally produced drinks, such as a half-pint of Harvey’s, or a glass of organic wine from a Sussex vineyard.
No, alcohol isn’t the demon – it’s our attitude as a society towards it. It’s enjoyable and can take the edge off us, but we don’t need it, and certainly shouldn’t have so much that we suffer and make others suffer for our indulgence.
We’ve largely got the message when it comes to drinking and driving. Now we need to get the message that it’s OK to say no even when we’re not driving – and that it’s possible to have a great time without a hangover, let alone a hospital visit.
What is it about people that they feel they have to drink to have a good time? Why is it that when people talk about going to a party, there is an implicit assumption that they will get smashed and have a hangover the following morning?
It may all seem pretty harmless, with any damage being largely done to the self-inflicter. But consider this.
Recently it emerged that the number of people landing in accident & emergency wards in East Sussex for alcohol-related reasons had increased by 131 per cent in the last six years. In 2007-08, there were 6,064 alcohol-related admissions in Brighton, East Sussex Downs and Weald PCTs.
It was only in 2002-03 that statistics on alcohol-related admissions in the county began to be collected. In the first year there were 2,624, a figure that has risen every year to make for a six-year total of 24,520. Of these, 729 have been people under 18 years old, and that age group is rising too.
These statistics are truly alarming. And at a time when there’s precious little money in public coffers for essentials, why is the NHS having to spend money dealing with a problem that is largely avoidable?
It certainly is avoidable. I know of a case in which a woman was convinced her gin & tonic at 6pm was the key to letting go and enjoying herself. So one day her daughter gave her tonic without the gin at 6pm – and she still got drunk! In other words, it doesn’t take alcohol, only the belief that it’s OK to have a good time.
It’s easy to blame retailers for selling alcohol to under-age buyers, but let’s face it, if young people want alcohol, they’ll get hold of it somehow.
It would also be wrong to overreact and try to make alcohol the demon, when millions of people drink in moderation and get great enjoyment out of it. I especially enjoy locally produced drinks, such as a half-pint of Harvey’s, or a glass of organic wine from a Sussex vineyard.
No, alcohol isn’t the demon – it’s our attitude as a society towards it. It’s enjoyable and can take the edge off us, but we don’t need it, and certainly shouldn’t have so much that we suffer and make others suffer for our indulgence.
We’ve largely got the message when it comes to drinking and driving. Now we need to get the message that it’s OK to say no even when we’re not driving – and that it’s possible to have a great time without a hangover, let alone a hospital visit.
Wednesday, 7 October 2009
WE NEED IMAGINATIVE WAYS OF TACKLING LITTER LOUTS
Now here’s an idea. When you go into a takeaway food outlet, you should be charged a deposit on your cups, plates or burger boxes. You then take them back after you’ve finished your meal to get your money back.
The idea works with glass bottles, so why shouldn’t it work with disposal one-use receptacles? And why on earth am I asking this now?
Here in Wealden, rubbish is back in the news. In Hailsham in recent weeks, there has been a lot of talk about whose responsibility it is to keep the town centre clean, particularly litter-free. And last month Wealden District Council launched ‘a crackdown on litter hot spots in Wealden’, with a news release saying the council’s Street Scene teams will be ‘getting tough on litter louts after an increase in the number of litter hot spots’ in Crowborough, Hailsham, Heathfield and Uckfield.
I suppose it’s just unfortunate that the post of Street Scene Team Leader has been vacant since mid-July. It did rather make me wonder whether someone in the controlling group on Wealden District Council has said, “Look fellas, we know tackling litter is popular among the public, so let’s say we’ll launch a crackdown, even if there’s not much we can do.”
That's probably being too cynical, but let’s be clear about one thing. Litter is a big problem, costing us far too much, locally and nationally. But efforts to collect litter in our towns and villages, while part of the solution, can only deal with the symptoms. If we’re seriously going to tackle the problem, we need to get inside people’s heads about why they drop litter.
Because the fact is that far too many people think it’s entirely acceptable to drop whatever they’ve finished with wherever they’re standing, sitting or walking.
Only last week I was coming out of Uckfield Civic Centre and saw three youths walking across the grass. One of them was just finishing his McDonald’s drink, and after the last mouthful he tossed the cup into the air and let it drop on the ground behind him before walking off. I wish I’d been close enough to have told him he’d dropped something – I don’t know what response I’d have got, but it might have made him think.
And this week I was on the train, and found a used plaster left on one of the seats! By what moral compass is this acceptable behaviour?
Wealden’s news release quotes lead environment councillor Sylvia Tidy (there’s a name to match the task) as saying, “It is time we turned up the heat on people who idly toss litter from their cars, sweet papers on to the high street or throw cigarette ends on to the pavement.” And what heat is this? – £75 spot fines.
That might catch some people, but it won’t ultimately solve the problem. And it’s a stick, not a carrot. A much better approach would be my deposit idea. Anyone who dropped litter then would find some enterprising youngster picking it up to claim the deposit.
So much for incentives, but we must also try to tackle the ‘acceptability’ of dropping litter in many people’s minds. Two decades ago, a series of public information films turned drink-driving from a harmless peccadillo into an activity recognised as being a killer. The same could happen now with litter.
Of course that would have to be a government initiative. At local level we need to get into schools, not to tell children not to drop litter – they know that – but to explain what damage is done when you do. Show them films of a duck in agony after getting a piece of discarded plastic stuck round its beak.
We have to pick up litter, if only because a street with lots of litter will spawn even more litter. But if we’re serious about tackling the problem, we have to be more creative than just a couple of £75 spot fines.
The idea works with glass bottles, so why shouldn’t it work with disposal one-use receptacles? And why on earth am I asking this now?
Here in Wealden, rubbish is back in the news. In Hailsham in recent weeks, there has been a lot of talk about whose responsibility it is to keep the town centre clean, particularly litter-free. And last month Wealden District Council launched ‘a crackdown on litter hot spots in Wealden’, with a news release saying the council’s Street Scene teams will be ‘getting tough on litter louts after an increase in the number of litter hot spots’ in Crowborough, Hailsham, Heathfield and Uckfield.
I suppose it’s just unfortunate that the post of Street Scene Team Leader has been vacant since mid-July. It did rather make me wonder whether someone in the controlling group on Wealden District Council has said, “Look fellas, we know tackling litter is popular among the public, so let’s say we’ll launch a crackdown, even if there’s not much we can do.”
That's probably being too cynical, but let’s be clear about one thing. Litter is a big problem, costing us far too much, locally and nationally. But efforts to collect litter in our towns and villages, while part of the solution, can only deal with the symptoms. If we’re seriously going to tackle the problem, we need to get inside people’s heads about why they drop litter.
Because the fact is that far too many people think it’s entirely acceptable to drop whatever they’ve finished with wherever they’re standing, sitting or walking.
Only last week I was coming out of Uckfield Civic Centre and saw three youths walking across the grass. One of them was just finishing his McDonald’s drink, and after the last mouthful he tossed the cup into the air and let it drop on the ground behind him before walking off. I wish I’d been close enough to have told him he’d dropped something – I don’t know what response I’d have got, but it might have made him think.
And this week I was on the train, and found a used plaster left on one of the seats! By what moral compass is this acceptable behaviour?
Wealden’s news release quotes lead environment councillor Sylvia Tidy (there’s a name to match the task) as saying, “It is time we turned up the heat on people who idly toss litter from their cars, sweet papers on to the high street or throw cigarette ends on to the pavement.” And what heat is this? – £75 spot fines.
That might catch some people, but it won’t ultimately solve the problem. And it’s a stick, not a carrot. A much better approach would be my deposit idea. Anyone who dropped litter then would find some enterprising youngster picking it up to claim the deposit.
So much for incentives, but we must also try to tackle the ‘acceptability’ of dropping litter in many people’s minds. Two decades ago, a series of public information films turned drink-driving from a harmless peccadillo into an activity recognised as being a killer. The same could happen now with litter.
Of course that would have to be a government initiative. At local level we need to get into schools, not to tell children not to drop litter – they know that – but to explain what damage is done when you do. Show them films of a duck in agony after getting a piece of discarded plastic stuck round its beak.
We have to pick up litter, if only because a street with lots of litter will spawn even more litter. But if we’re serious about tackling the problem, we have to be more creative than just a couple of £75 spot fines.
Tuesday, 15 September 2009
THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT GETS POLITICIANS A BAD NAME!
Just when you thought some lessons might have been learned from the MPs' expenses scandal, we get a crass piece of politicking that will make people even more sick of politics than they are already.
This week, the Conservatives' spokesperson for communities and local government, Caroline Spelman, sent a letter to Conservative 'colleagues' (leaders of Tory-controlled councils, basically), telling them what an in-coming Conservative government would do on planning issues and giving them some advice on what to do with regional planning over the next few months. And for good measure she made sure the letter reached a far wider audience, including (indirectly) the likes of me.
Now let's be fair here. I am not having a go at Caroline Spelman for her inability to tell the difference between a nanny and a secretary; you may recall at the height of the expenses scandal that she was found to have been paying a nanny out of public funds while calling it secretarial work. That left a bad taste in the mouth, but she's been moved from party chairman to this new role, and she's entitled to start with a clean slate.
Nor do I disagree with everything the Conservatives are proposing to review, as I believe the regional spatial strategies are flawed and should be reviewed in some shape or form.
What I am objecting to is the cavalier approach she takes to guidance from central government simply because it's not a government of her party. She is effectively asking Conservative councils - well, any councils really - to disregard what the government is asking them to do, and play for time so they can be rescued by a new Conservative administration sometime next spring.
Leaving aside the fact that I'm not entirely sure a Conservative government would abolish the house-building targets in the regional spatial strategies - after all, does the Tory party receive no contributions from developers, who would want their pound of flesh if the colour of the governing party changes? - this is tantamount to making Britain ungovernable!
We have an elected government, and however much we dislike that government, or find the system by which it is elected unfair and unrepresentative, it is the government. So when it orders councils like Wealden District Council to undertake a consultation on where future housebuilding should be concentrated, who is Caroline Spelman to say 'Oh, just play for time, we'll write it all off when we come to power'? She's effectively wasting the taxpayers' money that Wealden is spending on its consultation.
It's cynical - and hypocritical, as she would be spitting blood if non-Tory councils adopted the same approach if her party were in power.
However flawed the South East Plan is, we will have to have a certain amount of house-building to avoid serious social problems. Even the Conservatives signed up to 8000 houses for Wealden by 2026; the figure has since been raised to 11,000. Of course we must fight to protect the integrity of rural life, but that integrity will not be upheld by figures who want to be entrusted with power telling councils to ignore the will of our elected government.
Once again, I find myself wondering just how fit the Conservatives actually are to run the country.
This week, the Conservatives' spokesperson for communities and local government, Caroline Spelman, sent a letter to Conservative 'colleagues' (leaders of Tory-controlled councils, basically), telling them what an in-coming Conservative government would do on planning issues and giving them some advice on what to do with regional planning over the next few months. And for good measure she made sure the letter reached a far wider audience, including (indirectly) the likes of me.
Now let's be fair here. I am not having a go at Caroline Spelman for her inability to tell the difference between a nanny and a secretary; you may recall at the height of the expenses scandal that she was found to have been paying a nanny out of public funds while calling it secretarial work. That left a bad taste in the mouth, but she's been moved from party chairman to this new role, and she's entitled to start with a clean slate.
Nor do I disagree with everything the Conservatives are proposing to review, as I believe the regional spatial strategies are flawed and should be reviewed in some shape or form.
What I am objecting to is the cavalier approach she takes to guidance from central government simply because it's not a government of her party. She is effectively asking Conservative councils - well, any councils really - to disregard what the government is asking them to do, and play for time so they can be rescued by a new Conservative administration sometime next spring.
Leaving aside the fact that I'm not entirely sure a Conservative government would abolish the house-building targets in the regional spatial strategies - after all, does the Tory party receive no contributions from developers, who would want their pound of flesh if the colour of the governing party changes? - this is tantamount to making Britain ungovernable!
We have an elected government, and however much we dislike that government, or find the system by which it is elected unfair and unrepresentative, it is the government. So when it orders councils like Wealden District Council to undertake a consultation on where future housebuilding should be concentrated, who is Caroline Spelman to say 'Oh, just play for time, we'll write it all off when we come to power'? She's effectively wasting the taxpayers' money that Wealden is spending on its consultation.
It's cynical - and hypocritical, as she would be spitting blood if non-Tory councils adopted the same approach if her party were in power.
However flawed the South East Plan is, we will have to have a certain amount of house-building to avoid serious social problems. Even the Conservatives signed up to 8000 houses for Wealden by 2026; the figure has since been raised to 11,000. Of course we must fight to protect the integrity of rural life, but that integrity will not be upheld by figures who want to be entrusted with power telling councils to ignore the will of our elected government.
Once again, I find myself wondering just how fit the Conservatives actually are to run the country.
Sunday, 30 August 2009
LOOKING AT THE RICH IS NO BASIS FOR BUILDING A NATIONAL MEDICAL SERVICE
Have you ever experienced one of those moments when you feel like utterly railing against something or someone? They’ve let you down, they’ve treated you badly, and you’re determined to do what you can to draw the flaws of the whole system to as many people as you can?
I have, and there’s a fine line to tread between, on the one hand, acting on a natural – and often legitimate – sense of injustice, and on the other, being aware that mishaps happen in life and one’s own indignation isn’t always the best guide to social injustice.
There’s a debate raging in the USA about reforming the system of medical care. The only headlines it has made over here came when Daniel Hannan, the Conservative MEP and supposedly a rising star of the party, described the NHS in an American TV debate as ‘a terrible mistake’ which we have lived through for 60 years.
I don’t know what Dan Hannan’s experiences of the NHS are. I can only assume he’s had some bad ones, and in this he’s not alone. But can anyone really justify calling the NHS a 60-year mistake?
He also said the NHS ‘makes people iller’. What, everyone? A majority even?
I sometimes get frustrated with the NHS, and in my more cynical moments feel it should be called the National Sickness Service, because by and large it only wants to know you if you’re sick. I wish it concentrated more on ‘health’ and did more preventative work like its excellent babies/toddlers health visitor service, and its many screening programmes, but is that sufficient ground for calling it a 60-year mistake?
There are two indisputable facts about the British system compared with the American. Firstly, the average person is better off under the NHS than in America. The NHS is geared up for catching everyone, regardless of circumstances – you don’t find poor people here having to hold fund-raising events to pay for operations, as frequently happens in the USA.
Secondly, we pay only 8.4% of GDP on healthcare, compared to the 16% of GDP spent by Americans, and all like-for-like comparisons show the NHS as better than the sum total of American medical care. Because we pay for the NHS through our taxes, the cost is spread across the entire country and so isn’t nearly the burden that insurance is for Americans.
What Hannan has done is to compare the medical care the rich of America get with the medical care the rich of Britain get. On that comparison, I wouldn’t be surprised if the US system comes out better. But that’s not the basis on which I want to build a national medical insurance system, thank you.
And this lies at the heart of why the Conservatives still haven’t won people round to the idea that they would be a more benign government than they were in the 1990s. Personally I think David Cameron is a fundamentally decent guy, but he has some nasty people in his cabinet, and Dan Hannan’s outburst merely shows how difficult it is for a Conservative leopard genuinely to change its spots.
I have, and there’s a fine line to tread between, on the one hand, acting on a natural – and often legitimate – sense of injustice, and on the other, being aware that mishaps happen in life and one’s own indignation isn’t always the best guide to social injustice.
There’s a debate raging in the USA about reforming the system of medical care. The only headlines it has made over here came when Daniel Hannan, the Conservative MEP and supposedly a rising star of the party, described the NHS in an American TV debate as ‘a terrible mistake’ which we have lived through for 60 years.
I don’t know what Dan Hannan’s experiences of the NHS are. I can only assume he’s had some bad ones, and in this he’s not alone. But can anyone really justify calling the NHS a 60-year mistake?
He also said the NHS ‘makes people iller’. What, everyone? A majority even?
I sometimes get frustrated with the NHS, and in my more cynical moments feel it should be called the National Sickness Service, because by and large it only wants to know you if you’re sick. I wish it concentrated more on ‘health’ and did more preventative work like its excellent babies/toddlers health visitor service, and its many screening programmes, but is that sufficient ground for calling it a 60-year mistake?
There are two indisputable facts about the British system compared with the American. Firstly, the average person is better off under the NHS than in America. The NHS is geared up for catching everyone, regardless of circumstances – you don’t find poor people here having to hold fund-raising events to pay for operations, as frequently happens in the USA.
Secondly, we pay only 8.4% of GDP on healthcare, compared to the 16% of GDP spent by Americans, and all like-for-like comparisons show the NHS as better than the sum total of American medical care. Because we pay for the NHS through our taxes, the cost is spread across the entire country and so isn’t nearly the burden that insurance is for Americans.
What Hannan has done is to compare the medical care the rich of America get with the medical care the rich of Britain get. On that comparison, I wouldn’t be surprised if the US system comes out better. But that’s not the basis on which I want to build a national medical insurance system, thank you.
And this lies at the heart of why the Conservatives still haven’t won people round to the idea that they would be a more benign government than they were in the 1990s. Personally I think David Cameron is a fundamentally decent guy, but he has some nasty people in his cabinet, and Dan Hannan’s outburst merely shows how difficult it is for a Conservative leopard genuinely to change its spots.
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