Jo Hayes

ELDR news from Palermo

2011-11-27T02:26:00.004Z

Here is my report back to Liberal Democrats who directly elected me (thank you!) to the party’s delegation to the European Liberal, Democratic and Reform Party (ELDR).

The second Council meeting of 2011 (there are two annually) and the annual Congress took place in Palermo, Sicily on 23-25 November at the invitation of the Italia dei Valori (Italy of Principles) Party.

There were resolutions and emergency resolutions proposed by member parties, too many to summarise here, of which the most significant was, I think, one from the UK Liberal Democrats on the prospect of war with Iran. The gist is that it expresses concern at military rhetoric, top-level consultations between military and political leaders and the stationing of military assets off the Iranian coast pointing to the possibility of pre-emptive attacks being launched by Israel and the USA against Iran., and it calls for steps to be taken in Europe to dissuade them. When the US military are still engaged in both Iraq and Afghanistan one might think that they would not contemplate such a thing, but the evidence is worrying. After the Iraq “dodgy dossier” saga we do not need another war based on dubious grounds.

The main theme resolution, emanating from the ELDR leadership, was on the EU budget. As amended and adopted, it is a long resolution but the gist is, I think, that it welcomes the European Commission’s proposals to reduce the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) support to 36.2% of the total budget for a new 2014-2020 Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) and affirms that on the expenditure side it must continue to move away from price support and export subsidies for agricultural produce. It calls for inclusion of funding for alternative areas of expenditure with the common feature of being areas where the Union can deliver more than individual countries acting alone (“European added value”). Climate change, renewable energy, water management, biodiversity and innovation are such areas. Research and development co-operation, avoiding wasteful duplication of effort, is a specific example. On the income side, the theme resolution as finally adopted contains a passage welcoming debate on reform of EU revenues but specifically rejects the European Commission’s proposals for new own resources to include a financial transaction tax or an EU-level VAT. Delegates were obviously worried that this might increase the overall tax burden on member states although it would not necessarily do so. Against the background of financial crisis as the world struggles to cope with the near-collapse of the banks by austerity measures meaning hardship for entire populations, Congress was in no mood to approve an increase in taxation nor in the EU budget overall. In failing to include wording from the UK Liberal Democrats referring to a possible EU-level tax on carbon, Congress in my view threw out the baby with the bath water, but I trust that we will bring this back to the next Congress.

The Congress elected British MEP Sir Graham Watson unopposed as its new President. In a speech too meaty to summarise adequately here, Sir Graham made it known that his Presidency would be energetic and ambitious for liberalism in Europe. He expressed a vision of our troubled times in which crisis is opportunity. His analysis was that socialism is in terminal decline and old political élites are reeling from electoral punishment for having contributed to the financial crisis that is bringing hardships to the people, while climate change poses an existential threat. He argued that liberal principles and values had the solutions and retreat into nationalism did not. He announced his intention to welcome more Democratic and Reform parties into our grouping. His aim was so that the ALDE bloc of MEPs in the European Parliament grows while the EPP and Socialist blocs wane. He also intends to press for changes that increase democratic legitimacy including the direct election of MEPs by one European election rather than 27 national elections.

ELDR’s business between congresses is managed by a Bureau, and Congress elected to it five Vice-Presidents, four in normal course and one to fill the seat vacated by Sir Graham Watson on becoming President. I have to mention one of these Vice-Presidents: Leoluca Orlando, of the Italia Dei Valori party. He, while mayor of Palermo from 1985 to 1990 and 1993 to 2000, courageously took steps to decouple public procurement from Mafia-owned businesses by removing their companies from the list of those allowed to tender for new contracts.

At this momentous time for Italians, emerging from the long bad dream of Berlusconi’s premiership, Italy of Principles Party leader Antonio di Pietro MP told us that the Berlusconi era had left deep scars. It was the end of Berlusconi but not of Berlusconism: a nexus of privilege, selfishness and giving precedence to local and family interests. He spoke of the need for cultural restoration of legality, public ethics and civic consciousness, which are the basis of every market economy. He told us that Italy of Principles supported the new Monti government of technocrats. This involved some sacrifice in that, had the scheduled elections taken place, the party would have done well.

Consistently with the theme of European added value, Sir Graham Watson spoke of some big-picture inspiring projects for Europe ELDR activists to campaign for. One example he mentioned is the European electricity supergrid, a means of connecting up and distributing Europe’s renewable energy long-distance for use throughout the region. These ideas were explored at a fringe meeting on the renewables revolution and an electricity supergrid, at which the management of a “smart” grid, fed by sources of renewable energy including solar, wind, hydro, biomass and geothermal energy, was discussed. He acknowledges the science that points to dangerous climate chaos from burning fossil fuels, and he has taken up the cause of the electricity supergrid as part of a solution to that. He also sees it as an answer to the security threat posed by dependency on fossil fuels from outside countries, evidenced by the behaviour of governments who have in recent winters not hesitated to turn off the supply pipe to Europe when it suited them, leaving Europeans shivering without fuel. In addition to these factors there is the relentless rise in the price of oil and in Europe’s energy bill, because world supply is finite while demand is growing. For these reasons even climate change sceptics can scarcely deny that it is in Europe’s interests to invest in the supergrid. And the beauty of the supergrid proposal is that it deals with objections (mainly aimed at wind energy) that renewable energy sources that are intermittent are no good. Even if the wind is not blowing in your area, wind energy from elsewhere in Europe can be brought to you via the supergrid. As for solar energy, the sun doesn’t shine at night, but its heat can be stored for use at night. The fringe meeting speakers explained that energy storage is in practice not difficult, provided that legislative changes permit electricity grid companies to build and be owners of storage facilities (which currently is not allowed). As people across the EU begin to see the Internet-like potential for a diversity of sources to feed energy into the grid, I believe this proposal will be a winner.

The Council accepted a membership application from the Democratic Alliance Party of Greece, a new party led by Dora Bakoyannis who was expelled from the Nia Demokratia party last year for voting with the Socialist-led government in favour of the EU-IMF backed financial stability loan. If the crisis bringing home to Greeks the impossibility of continuing previous high-spending policies is an opportunity for realignment of political forces away from alternating Socialist and Conservative government, it could just be that this new party emerges as a significant player in the liberal centre.

ELDR now offers associate membership applications to individuals for 25 euros per annum. If you are interested in joining, visit www.eldr.eu/associate

The next Council will be in May 2012. The next Congress will be in Dublin in November 2012, and its theme will be the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. It will be based on an excellent joint paper called “A Liberal Roadmap for Energy Transition” produced with ELDR backing by the UK Liberal Democrats, the Swedish Centerpartiet and the Netherlands D66 party. ELDR is doing good work.

And Palermo is a great place to visit!

Mendel, the great modest man, and his magnificent idea

2011-07-20T22:35:00.006+01:00

Today, or what's left of it, is Gregor Mendel's 189th birthday, and as he is one of my heroes, I feel the need to shout about it. Mendel was one of those people who led a modest life, saw and observed the same world as the rest of us, but did it so much better, more insightfully, more thoughtfully, and came up with an idea that is so simple, profound and right that the rest of us will spend the rest of time thinking: how come no one had thought of that before? In his case, it was a few rows of peas (round, wrinkled, etc) sown annually and the produce patiently counted and re-sown, plus maths, that revealed the solution to the bit Charles Darwin hadn't solved: how, from generation to generation, did heredity happen? The nuts and bolts of it? Nowadays we witter on about genes, DNA and all the rest of it, as though these ideas had always been there, but in Mendel's time hardly anyone had so much as a clue, and then Mendel wrote a clue. Some say he tweaked the maths, but even if he did, his clue was magnificent. Actually he sent a copy of his paper about peas and heredity to Darwin, but it was found in Darwin's library with the pages still uncut, so he never got round to reading it. Ships that pass in the night. So sad. Happy birthday.

On blogging (and grammarians)

2011-07-20T22:12:00.004+01:00

The Hansard report on bloggers a week or so ago got me thinking why I don't blog that often. Someone intimated that I did it all wrong, I didn't react quickly to events and it wasn't a proper blog unless it was a weblog, a daily (or more frequent) diary. So I was duly put down, until I asked myself: who are these people who set themselves up as experts on how blogging should be done? Like 6th century Latin grammarians. Good grief, it's only just been invented. So I will go on doing it the way I like, when a posting has ripened enough to be a fruit that someone somewhere might think worth picking.

The dystopia that awaits us all?

2011-06-23T10:34:00.005+01:00

After takeoff, as the aircraft gained height, Metro Manila gradually came into view: a grey jumble of human habitation punctuated by clustered skyscrapers, intersected by meanders of a noxious-looking, mustard-coloured river, sprawling across an enormous plain bounded on the west side by the sea and in other directions not at all, further than the eye could see, eventually obscured by pollution haze and clouds.

Making life bearable in this monster megacity is just one aspect of the problems faced by President Aquino's government. Already it is home to upwards of 15 million people and it is growing all the time as the burgeoning Filipino population drifts to the cities in hope of making a living. As it grows, so do the problems.

Is Metro Manila a premonition of things to come for our species? If global population growth proceeds as forecast, then yes. Population growth threatens to render all our efforts to tackle individual basic needs – food, water, housing, air fit to breathe, disease control – futile, and threatens to relegate our hope of improving quality of life for our species and conserving other species to mere pipe-dreams. Yet when I raised the issue of global population growth on the UK Liberal Democrats' Federal Policy Committee I was shut up: it has become politically incorrect to talk about it.

A shift in the spectrum of public debate has been engineered largely by the US extreme religious Right, whose support George W Bush courted during his presidency. Opposing contraception and abortion are key parts of their continuing agenda. And by silence, we are complicit in this shift taking place. Some think silence is the best policy, but it cedes this territory to the Right. Since when has not talking been an effective way to win a debate on anything? The territory of those issues needs to be fought over by vigorous debate. PC should not stand for political correctness, but for population concern.

Thoughts from Manila about remarkable people

2011-06-20T14:02:00.004+01:00

Even to me, a foreigner, here in Manila the significance of President “Noynoy” Aquino’s government having made today a national holiday to mark the 150th anniversary of José Rizal’s birth is obvious. Rizal was a man of many talents and republican convictions who opposed colonial rule until executed by Spanish firing squad in 1896. The current President’s father Benigno (“Ninoy”) Aquino was the Liberal Party leader who returned from exile in 1983 to oppose US-backed dictator Ferdinand Marcos, only to be assassinated as he arrived at Manila airport. I suspect that for ordinary Filipinos both murdered men have hero status bearing comparison with President John F Kennedy for Americans.

The current President took a little time off from affairs of state to welcome Liberal delegates from around the world to his palace last Saturday and give the keynote speech of Liberal International Congress. He seemed to me an unassuming man, and my impression is reinforced by reading that when asked what he would wear at his inauguration he is said to have replied: old glasses and a watch, a new fountain pen, a new barong [type of knife], old pants, decent underwear. But the words of his speech on Saturday were steely. He reaffirmed his intention to follow the “straight path” and to root out the Philippines’ notorious corruption. Not just words: news reports here during my short visit have daily confirmed that Aquino appointees are investigating scandals surrounding powerful figures during his predecessor Gloria Arroyo’s presidency, and recommending prosecutions.

He needs all his resolve. As popular uprisings plunge the Middle East into uncertainty, I am reminded that the first “people power” revolution – certainly the first in recent times – was in the Philippines. In 1986 millions of unarmed people poured into the streets and with courage and faith stayed there, facing down the army, until the rapacious and hated Marcos was forced to flee into exile. The murdered Ninoy Aquino’s widow, Corazon (“Cory”), was elected President and brought in a new constitution. But the interests that supported Marcos were still there, subsequent presidencies have been scandal-ridden, and currently the country is looking to Noynoy Aquino for real change. He was swept to power by popular vote; the first anniversary of his inauguration comes up on 30th June.

According to reports, Noynoy Aquino campaigned - wearing a trademark yellow shirt, which will resonate with UK Liberal Democrats - on the pledge “no corruption, no poverty”, mixing with the poor and listening to them. The painful memory of his father’s fate on the airport tarmac in 1983, as well as the torture and injustice suffered by friends and colleagues at the hands of Marcos cronies, are surely the motivation for the President’s decision to follow his father and mother into public life, although he is wealthy enough to live in comfort and safety. I admire his resolve, and wish him all the very best with the two enormous tasks of tackling corruption and poverty.

This is a time when it's right to get angry

2011-05-11T08:44:00.002+01:00

What’s the real story of the past year in a nutshell?
The country had had enough of Labour. Tired, bereft of ideas and saddled with an unpopular leader who had been in charge as the country blundered into the debt crisis, Labour was out of the picture.
So the Tories and Lib Dems did the responsible thing – did a deal on what they could agree on, to get a workable stable government and avoid financial meltdown for this debt-laden country.
If the country does not have good governance, all politicking over this or that policy is futile.
But our opponents don’t want people to think about this. They are talking constantly the language of Lib Dem “betrayal”. They would say that, wouldn’t they?
Labour wouldn’t say their party had gullibly let the City do whatever it liked under “light touch regulation”, spent public funds like there’s no tomorrow, and then left a note for the new chancellor saying there’s no money left, would they? But that’s what really happened. Labour betrayed the country.
The Tories wouldn’t say it was they who had persuaded our leadership to compromise on policies with big price tags such as higher education funding, in order to get a deal with our leadership on the fundamentals – dealing with the debt crisis and getting the real economy going in a sustainable way – and then turned round and stabbed our leadership in the back, would they? But that’s what they did, and that’s betrayal.
Of course they wouldn’t. Our opponents love repeating the words “Liberal Democrats” and “betrayal” in the same breath. Words that injure.
Most people have short memories for factual details, but they do remember how they feel about people. Do they like them? Can they trust them and rely on them? We need to go out fighting and challenge that mindset every time. I mean EVERY time. That means challenging the words.
I don’t do betrayal, and my party doesn’t either. Sometimes it is right to get angry, and now is one of those times.

The Browne Report - where to go from here

2010-10-14T17:11:00.004+01:00

Dear Nick,
I believe that tertiary education should be available to everyone in the UK, rich or poor, especially poor, who can benefit from it.
But I have never supported scrapping tuition fees. That would involve using State taxation powers to compel the lower-paid, who are less likely to have benefited from tertiary education, to subsidise the higher-paid who are more likely. I don’t think John Stuart Mill would have approved.
People with degrees get paid more. It is only fair that a person who gets the benefit and is able without hardship to contribute to the cost, should do so.
In view of the huge expansion in tertiary education, I believe scrapping tuition fees is unaffordable. It was unaffordable before the banking crisis. It is even less affordable now that the country is burdened with a huge deficit caused by bailing out the banks.
That is my personal view but current Lib Dem policy, made democratically by vote at Conference, is otherwise. Scrapping tuition fees is party policy.
It is, however, not a fundamental value. Policies can change, values don’t.
So what’s to be done?
I have looked at the Browne Report, which is readily available for download by anyone with internet access. It states that allowing students to defer payment of fees is critical to takeup.
The Browne recommendations allow for this by making nothing payable by students for fees. Nothing is repayable unless they graduate and begin to earn a good income. If anything is repayable, it is related to their ability to pay.
That seems fair to me.
The Browne Report states that making funds available for maintenance by deferred loans is also critical to takeup.
That seems fair to me too. It is better than a grant system based on family income because it frees students from family circumstances.
The Browne recommendations propose the same provision for part-time students for the first time.
That seems fair to me as well. Currently they have to pay up front, which is a hardship.
The Browne Report states that the percentage of young people in tertiary education in the UK has risen from 6% in 1960 to 45% today. This is a huge number of people. The cost has rocketed. I don’t see how free tertiary education can be paid for.
People who want to learn, who want that qualification, will welcome the opportunity offered by the Browne proposals.
In May’s General Election the party campaigned on a policy of scrapping tuition fees but the party did not win a majority. It got only 57 seats. The policy is still party policy, but we cannot implement it.
So where do we go from here?
The fact that some MPs have promised on the record – whether in writing or not does not matter - to support scrapping tuition fees puts them in a dilemma. The promise cannot be unmade. But to vote that way would be futile in the sense that whether they do or not, scrapping tuition fees is not going to happen. The arithmetic of democracy has made sure of that.
I am not convinced that the obligation to keep their personal promises entitles them to give right-wing Tories a precedent for rebelling in future over other issues which may be even more important.
The arithmetic of democracy has given the MPs power but it rules them too.

First CGT, now VAT, what next?

2010-07-14T09:26:00.004+01:00

The Lib Dems are holding an awayday tomorrow on the coalition, which I can't go to because of my day job. As possibly the Federal Policy Committee's longest-serving member, I call on them to come up with a solution on how to handle our coalition partners (at Westminster level but certainly not at mine!) when they try to depart from the coalition agreement. A solution means stopping them from doing it. For me, it is hard enough to accept that we helped the Tories into Downing Street and are helping keep them there. I can accept it on the basis that each side did a deal whereby a mix of policies derived from each side would become the new programme, and that the coalition agreement sets out that deal. And an Englishman's word is his bond, or at any rate the best of them's is. But almost as soon as the ink was dry on the coalition agreement, the coalition started departing from it. I can understand this if a new unforeseen circumstance ("Events, dear boy, events") forces a new policy response. But what was new in the scenario affecting capital gains tax? We are told that the 28% CGT rate for non-business gains is the optimum rate because if any higher, the government would lose revenue. What is the new evidence for this and where is it from? I am sceptical whether there is any. I question whether that claim is more than, in reality, an excuse, no a pretext, for the Tories getting their way on keeping the tax light on the well-off in society who are their main support base. That is I suppose to be expected of them, but given that it is contrary to the express terms of the coalition agreement, why are our people supporting it? Equally puzzling is last night's vote on Value Added Tax or VAT, but for a slightly different reason - it is not mentioned in the coalition agreement at all. I have searched the entire coalition agreement and nowhere is VAT mentioned. Not once. So why are our Westminster MPs obediently voting for it? They have no obligation to do so if it is not agreed. What is going to be the next thing that is not Lib Dem policy, but that the Tories get our MPs to vote for? And can they justify that to the Federal Policy Committee, the party members (e.g. me) who worked and worked so hard to get them into Parliament and the electorate? If so, how?

Tory breach of contract on capital gains tax

2010-06-23T23:25:00.007+01:00

The Lib Dem-Con coalition agreement states: "We will seek ways of taxing non-business capital gains at rates similar or close to those applied to income, with generous exemptions for entrepreneurial business activities." The Treasury's budget report states: "Effective from 23 June 2010, capital gains tax will rise from 18 to 28 per cent for those with total income and taxable gains above the higher rate threshold... Basic rate taxpayers will continue to pay an 18 per cent rate on their gains. The 10 per cent capital gains tax rate for entrepreneurial business activities will be extended from the first £2 million to the first £5 million of qualifying gains made over a lifetime... The 50p rate of income tax took effect from April 2010 and will remain in place for the time being."
Spot the difference? Of course you do. This means that the Tories have already reneged on the coalition agreement for the sake of their friends the haves, and will do so again if allowed to get away with it. Meanwhile social services are slashed, so that elderly and vulnerable people who yesterday were acknowledged to need such services are today told they can't have them any more, which makes me choke. This feeble move on CGT is contrary not only to the coalition agreement but also to the advice of former Tory Chancellor Nigel Lawson who on the CGT rates question advocates reversing the economically unsound meddling of Gordon Brown. In this Lawson agrees with Saint Vince of Twickenham, a voice of sanity on this question regrettably unheard as he is silenced by loyalty and by parliamentary convention in his role as business secretary (though he ought to be chancellor).
What's to be done? My suggestion is that the Lib Dem leadership should find their backbones, which seem to have deserted them recently, and start playing the cards the electorate has dealt them, by which I mean the 57 Lib Dem MPs' votes, to see off the Tory right. Where are the Tory right going to go if they don't get their way?

What people are talking about

2010-05-13T23:39:00.003+01:00

The coalition has been the only topic of conversation on Westminster's streets for the last two days, or so it's seemed to me on walks between Victoria and Fleet Street. The novelty of the new setup attracts curiosity, unsurprisingly, but I also detect an unusual level of goodwill. It is as though a higher percentage of people than usual feel that they own a piece of this new government. And they can, because about two thirds of those who voted supported a faction that is now part of the government. Another factor behind the general air of optimism could be a response to enthusiastic fresh faces in ministerial posts. Or is it just because it's spring, and the grass is full of daisy flowers in St. James's Park? By the way, for those who rate omens, there was a rainbow over the Palace of Westminster on Tuesday evening.

The prize

2010-05-11T08:48:00.005+01:00

Remember that line about being wary of them even when they bring gifts? That is how I feel about the Conservatives with their very late offer of a referendum on the Alternative Vote system. Behind the courtesy at the negotiating table they thought the Lib Dems had no alternative to a Tory-LD deal. The Right were salivating at the thought of getting power back. It seems they thought they could get away with not offering a referendum. The offer was only dragged out of them when the LD team began to walk away. Clearly the Conservatives still love First Past the Post and that is not surprising - it has served them very well. But the national interest requires that the era of phoney majorities based on a minority of the popular vote must end. The electorate has this time withheld a majority whether in the Commons or in votes cast from any party. Many more people voted against the Conservatives than for. Even the inscrutable millions who could have voted and didn't were expressing something that could be interpreted as disillusionment and a feeling of powerlessness. This cannot go on. The arithmetic of an LD-Lab alliance could, just, work, as I don't see the minor parties rocking that boat if launched. So in my view, the LD team is right to talk now to Labour. The prize is an electoral system in which the people's votes really count, that could reinvigorate our democracy. The electorate has given the LD team a unique opportunity to bring both main parties to heel, and they are right to take it. But I'm wary of Labour bearing gifts, too.

It is so strange!

2010-05-08T17:17:00.005+01:00

Something enormous happened early on Friday morning, in an understated and very British way. The Lib Dems suffered casualties, but emerged from the latest contests with 57 MPs, who now block the entrance to 10 Downing Street for a humbled David Cameron (only weeks ago so confident of victory). It is so strange! How best to exploit the advantage handed to us by millions of individual choices made by the British people? Some object to a deal with Labour, others to a deal with the Tories, but this is not on: our MPs are not in a situation of their own choice and they have to deal with a reality that is not of anyone's making, or rather is of everyone's making. I cannot fault Nick Clegg's announcement so far that fundamental political reform is a sine qua non of any deal, and if David Cameron doesn't like it, tough: he will probably find minority government is worse. As for other conditions, like millions of people I would be relieved and glad to see Vince Cable as Chancellor because he deserves our trust at this difficult time. Do your best and go for it, Nick!

German Liberal Democrats poised to join Merkel-led government

2009-09-27T22:15:00.004+01:00

Exciting times for the European Liberal Democratic and Reform (ELDR) Party, to which the UK Liberal Democrats belong: fellow-members the Liberal Democrats (FDP) in Germany have done well enough in today's elections to enable the Christian Democrats, led by popular Chancellor Mrs Angela Merkel, to form a government in coalition with them, leaving out the SPD. Yes, Liberal Democrats are going to be part of the German government. Geddit, Jeremy Paxman?

From healthcare to climate bill - not grassroots but Astroturf

2009-08-14T20:16:00.003+01:00

Efforts to disguise co-ordinated campaigns by interested groups as apparently spontaneous public reactions are called astroturfing, after the artificial turf used on sports pitches, not to be confused with genuine grassroots. The anti-Obama, anti-National Health Service rhetoric is a case in point. It is diverting attention from what healthcare insurers do not want people to know: medical bills cause more bankruptcies in the USA than any other cause.
Hard on the heels of the healthcare astroturfing we can apparently expect for the rest of this month a series of so-called “Energy Citizen” rallies across 20 States of the USA, to which employees of oil companies and other rentacrowds will be bussed at the expense of the American Petroleum Institute with the aim of influencing US Senators to oppose the climate bill and the Obama administration’s tax increases on the oil industry.
At the rallies, the API participants will push two messages: job losses and energy cost increases. Participants will apparently be given extended lunch hours for this purpose and supplied with free refreshments in the form of junk food and drink.
In a leaked email that I have downloaded, the API has told member companies: “your facility manager’s commitment to provide significant attendance—is essential to achieving the participation level that Senators cannot ignore.”
As I said, consider the source.
Got your pinch of salt ready, everyone?

Consider the source

2009-08-13T17:51:00.002+01:00

Earlier this week I read a piece about the “revolting” use of “manipulative language” by the present government in order to “inspire fear” concerning Britain’s food security and prepare us all for Stalinist intervention with a view to imposing vegetarianism. (No, it was not in the Daily Mail: I don’t read the rag.) Naturally this brought on a panic attack, but I managed to recover enough to go online and find the culprit publication apparently referred to.
It is a report by DEFRA which gets right down to business in paragraph two with the sentence: “By any objective measure, we enjoy a high degree of food security in the UK today.” Are you frightened yet?
The report (entitled UK Food Security Assessment: Our Approach, available on DEFRA's website) strikes me as a sober and thoughtful document which is well worth reading by anyone seriously interested in public policy.
On the other hand, dear reader, if you are not seriously interested in public policy then by all means go on believing second-hand, or more remote, regurgitation of what is actually stated. And do by all means blog about it. Just don’t expect me to bother reading it.
While studying for the law, one of the best bits of advice I received, which I in turn like to pass on, was: never cite a case you haven't read.
Moral: consider the source.

"Corner" is not the name of a size

2009-08-11T09:38:00.009+01:00

As a character in the sci-fi novel Perelandra said, "corner" is not the name of a size. So a small event can be a corner for the world. A corner was turned in a Burma courtroom when a small frail lady crossed the room and told reporters that she looked forward to working with them for the sake of her country, freedom and world peace. The small lady brushed off the generals, the sham trial and the sham conviction as if fluff on her collar. She, the convicted defendant, became the judge. It is as if she said the generals will fall, as every tyranny does in the end. How it happens is obscure but fall they will because they have no legitimacy and no friends, and have killed so many good and innocent people. However that may be, the generals are going, and so the small lady did not speak of them, but contemplated what lies beyond, exemplifying the spirit of the Burmese people which I so admire. I think we, as members of the international community, should do whatever the Burmese opposition asks to help bring their freedom about.

The City of London - where all bankers and lawyers are above average?

2009-08-07T12:22:00.010+01:00

The Lake Wobegon effect was proposed some months ago as an explanation for Chief Executives' ever-increasing pay in the US. In Lake Wobegon (Garrison Keillor's fictitious town), all the children are above average.
The way it works is that all corporate boards want their executives to be above average. That cannot possibly be the case for everyone, but not to worry. Markets run on investor confidence and perception, so if a company gives its executives above average pay and bonuses, they will look above average, and this will make the company look strong. Hence an upward pay spiral.
Warren Buffett wrote in 2007: "CEO perks at one company are quickly copied elsewhere. “All the other kids have one” may seem a thought too juvenile to use as a rationale in the boardroom. But consultants employ precisely this argument, phrased more elegantly of course, when they make recommendations to comp committees."
Once the public has rumbled this, why don't companies get off the bandwagon and pay their executives a moderate reward for the job? Because, according to the analysis, a company that pays its executives moderately could be perceived as admitting that they are only average or below, which would harm its share price.
Taking this a bit further, it is argued that if lower-paid executives were in fact above average, they would have been poached by a company that is willing to pay more. So any executive that is lower-paid can't be above average.
But, I wonder to myself, as there are only so many banking jobs in existence, and if a lot of them are already occupied by average-or-below executives whose merits have been talked up by means of high pay, who are not going to be fired because that would involve the company admitting having been wrong, nor are they going to move in a hurry since they are already getting more pay than they merit, how do vacancies come up? Over to you, dear reader.
As I see it, the essential problem is that everyone involved in this process treats pay level as evidence of performance quality rather than looking at the actual performance itself. But looking at the actual performance is more complicated and difficult as well as presenting confidentiality problems, so most investors, I suppose, do not bother.
The Lake Wobegon effect has been blamed for the preposterous sums paid to some of the UK's top bankers who, it is now painfully obvious, were in fact worse than useless.
A similar thing happens in both branches of the English legal profession where lawyers with the chutzpah to demand silly money for their services often get it. This is then cited as evidence of brilliance.
It sounds a lot of nonsense doesn't it? Yet it is still happening.

Men are to blame for the crunch? Ridiculous - but hang on, that's what Peston is saying... er...

2009-08-05T22:49:00.007+01:00

I would like to know why it was that when Robert Peston blogged on 29th July that men were to blame for the crunch, there was not a peep out of anyone. When Harriet Harman said something not very different, she was scoffed at and insulted. Answers on a postcard please!

In praise of Peter Weir

2009-08-02T10:00:00.012+01:00

Three of my favourite films are on the face of it utterly different, so it was a surprise when i realised that all were directed by the same man. In the first, Witness, an action thriller is metamorphosed into a meditation about simplicity and modernity, innocence and corruption, harmony and violence as a detective is forced by circumstances and his own decency to protect a young boy who was the sole witness to a murder and then has to go into hiding himself among the boy's Amish community that lives surrounded by the American way of life but apart from it. No pea-brained females with bee-stung lips in this film; instead we get a real woman, exquisitely played by Kelly McGillis. In fact everyone seems real. The police officer, played with grit, emotional intensity and depth by Harrison Ford, is trapped in the violent culture he comes from, and blows his own cover by challenging some young thugs who have picked on his Amish party on a trip to the local town. Ultimately in a gripping scene the policeman aided by the boy and the whole Amish community saves the boy and himself from assassins who come to look for them, but he and the woman he loves must part because he cannot cross the divide between the two worlds.
The second film is The Truman Show, which (imho) deserved the Oscar for Best Film but was perhaps meat too strong for the judges. The protagonist (played by Jim Carrey who makes credible a difficult and uncharacteristically serious role) is a young man unaware that he is the only real person in his entire small-town world which is in fact a 24-hour soap opera owned by a corporation and directed by a pitiless apparently all-powerful mastermind (played excellently by Ed Harris). In this world nothing is sincere and everything is fake except the hero. There are multi-layered audiences: the audience in the film, for whom the hero's entire life is TV entertainment, and the audience of the film, who are in on the secret before the hero himself, though its true awfulness is revealed only gradually, such as the moment when he has a domestic argument with his wife who blows her cover by speaking to her minders behind the hidden camera and then resigns from her contract, or the moment when his best friend asks whether he would lie to him - a line which is itself dictated through a hidden earpiece by the Ed Harris character. The film depicts the hero growing in maturity and understanding as cracks appear in the fake world, he gradually perceives the truth and eventually, with the help of a woman who loves him and manages to infiltrate the fake world to reach him (Natascha McElhone) makes his escape to the real world. What is this film about? Obviously it is a metaphor but one that defies definition. A mockery of soaps, of consumerism, of media manipulation, yes, but it also asks what is real, who and what can we trust? It is not really a comedy, either: almost every scene screams, "It's not funny!"
The third film is Master and Commander: the Far Side of the World in which we are in the Napoleonic Wars aboard an English warship. England and France are vying for mastery of the seas. The English vessel is seriously outgunned by a French privateer which is prowling the oceans, but the English commander (played by Russell Crowe) will not give up and admit defeat. Ultimately by a series of brilliant ruses the Englishman wins. However, that is only the bare bones of what the film is really about. It is really about the microcosm of life on an eighteenth-century ship, recreated in minute and often grisly detail, whether accurate in all respects I couldn't say, but utterly convincing. It is also about the Galapagos Islands and an opportunity to make great scientific discoveries missed because the English commander does not understand what they might signify, though his friend the ship's surgeon does. It is also about courage, ingenuity, friendship, music. Or is it about subverting all the norms of a Hollywood film? Remarkably there is not a single female speaking part in the whole film. Or is it about the love of the sea, and of film-making itself? The film is based on Patrick O'Briens Jack Aubrey novels, without being slavishly tied to any one of them. A jewel of a film.
So what do the three films have in common? A world within a world; central characters who are complex and intriguing and re forced to make choices and mistakes; masterly attention to detail; wonderful use of music; rejection of everything shallow and superficial; all these things and more.

A dishonourable regime

2009-08-01T20:06:00.007+01:00

According to many commentators including the BBC, Ahmadinejad's support is supposed to come from rural areas. But the CIA Factbook and other websites say that in 2008 around 68 per cent of the Iranian population lived in cities and the proportion is increasing at about 1.7 per cent a year. This is why I find the current regime's claim that Ahmadinejad won the election in June simply incredible. (The BBC, incidentally, has been very polite about the whole subject of the disputed election, but it does not stop a thinking observer from putting two and two together.}
Since the current regime is perpetuating such an enormous lie without shame, I suppose we should not be surprised that the trials going on today have been rushed to a hearing, doubtless in order to intimidate the population. Footage from inside the courtroom shows huge portraits of elderly ayatollahs hanging on the wall behind the judges as if to emphasise that there is no distinction between the political and judicial authorities.
The current regime is dishonourable and deserves no respect and I do not suppose it will get any from the people, no matter how many plainclothes thugs it lets loose on them.
By the way, I would like to know why the crowd let go the thug who killed Neda, and where he is now and why he is not on trial.

We are Neda

2009-07-30T18:09:00.002+01:00

Today in Tehran tens of thousands of mourners including Mr Mousavi have courageously gathered to remember Neda, who was shot dead by a sniper from a pro-Ahmadinajad faction militia - should I call it the Praetorian Guard? The world is watching.

Three pillars, three fundamental values

2009-07-30T13:03:00.008+01:00

The Liberal Democrats exist to build and safeguard a FAIR, free and open society, in which we seek to BALANCE the FUNDAMENTAL VALUES [N.B. plural] of liberty, EQUALITY and COMMUNITY. By joining the party we all sign up to these words, which commence the preamble to the party's federal constitution. Rather good aren't they? I like them. I like striving for balance between the three values. I have put in capitals the bits that don't get enough emphasis sometimes, yet I have not noticed anyone putting a constitutional amendment to the party conference to take them out. The preamble has lots more good stuff in it, such as that we believe each generation is responsible for the fate of our planet and, by safeguarding the balance of nature and the environment, for the long term continuity of life in all its forms. Hear hear. I'm all for that. I don't want to be a tadpole in a pond that's going stagnant. Also we champion the well being of individuals. Hear hear. Should we aim to be like Denmark? So the framers were rather avant garde. You can read the whole thing on the party website somewhere. But the fundamentals are a balance between freedom, equality and community. I feel enthusiastic about that. We should shout about it more.

A liberal response to the global population crisis

2009-07-30T12:42:00.004+01:00

To remind you, dear reader, of some excellent policy adopted recently I am posting the following text which was passed unanimously by the Liberal International Congress in May 2008.
"The 55th Liberal International Congress,
Noting that
(1) The human population of the world, currently about 6.7 billion, is more than double what it was in 1960, and is continuing to increase at a rate of an extra 1.5 million people per week;
(2) This rate of increase threatens the sustainability of the world’s resources;
(3) Population increases can enslave people in poverty;
(4) Reproductive health conditions are the leading cause of death and illness in women of childbearing age worldwide; and at least 200 million women want to plan their families or space their children, but lack access to safe and effective contraception;
Recalling that the 54th Liberal International Congress in Marrakech, 2006:
(A) Reaffirmed the absolute imperative at the beginning of the 21st century to raise the living standards of the extreme poor, in particular that half of the global population which struggles to survive on less than $2 per day,
(B) Reaffirmed its commitment to the eight Millennium Development Goals that were adopted by 189 nations during the Millennium Development Summit in 2000, which include the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, the education and empowerment of girls and women, the improvement of maternal and child health and ensuring environmental sustainability;
(C) Recognised that some cultural or religious practices in society hinder the contribution of women;
(D) Recognised that excessive population growth places enormous strains on agricultural land and available nutritional and environmental resources;
(E) Commended both freedom of choice for individuals and equal treatment of all citizens and residents, and non-discrimination;
Believing that:
(a) In order to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, especially the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, population growth and sexual and reproductive health and rights also need to be addressed;
(b) In particular, the present rate of consumption of the world’s resources is at odds with the Seventh Millennium Development Goal, namely environmental sustainability;
(c) It is vital to reverse the trend towards a burgeoning human population of the planet if real progress is to be made on the Millennium Development Goals, a better quality of life is to be shared by all, and the threats of worsening violence, epidemics and starvation are to be lessened;
(d) Parents have the human right and the freedom to choose to plan their families and thereby improve their health and quality of life, but there is an unmet need for education, family planning and reproductive health services;
(e) Where such unmet need exists, unwanted pregnancies can be obstacles to gender equality and subsequent social justice, economic growth and environmental sustainability;
Calls upon Liberal International's member parties to urge their governments:
(1) To especially promote the education of girls and women;
(2) To provide full access to comprehensive family planning and sexual and reproductive health services to all those who wish to access these services;
(3) To defend and advance gender equality and to eliminate all forms of discrimination, coercion and violence against women."

Hush - don't mention the central problem

2009-07-29T16:35:00.010+01:00

At a Federal Policy Committee meeting earlier this year I argued that the Lib Dems had a responsibility to talk about the threat to the environment from the growth in the world's population (which has more than quadrupled since 1900), and I mentioned in support that Sir David Attenborough had talked about this issue. To my surprise, I was denounced by another committee member for (allegedly) dragging Sir David into politics.
So even though the denunciation was twaddle, in that environmental science is not politics, and someone of Sir David's national treasure status is way above politics, I won't drag him in. I will just quote what he reportedly said when he became a patron of the Optimum Population Trust earlier this year: “I’ve seen wildlife under mounting human pressure all over the world and it’s not just from human economy or technology - behind every threat is the frightening explosion in human numbers.
“I’ve never seen a problem that wouldn’t be easier to solve with fewer people, or harder, and ultimately impossible, with more. That’s why I support the OPT, and I wish the environmental NGOs would follow their lead, and spell out this central problem loud and clear."

A small town becomes a signpost

2009-07-17T09:31:00.004+01:00

Bundanoon, in New South Wales, Australia, has voted to ban bottled water.

Iran: the minority that will not let go

2009-07-15T22:22:00.004+01:00

I am thinking about places in the world where women are oppressed. Iran for example. There, I gather, militia roam the streets intimidating and attacking women who behave or dress in ways of which they disapprove. In my country, such militia would be arrested and tried for public order offences. It is not that the British have no opinions about what is acceptable dress or behaviour in public and what is not. Of course we have opinions. But individuals behave in a way that is their own choice, provided that it does not contravene a specific law, and it may be a poor choice, but it is the individual's and not imposed. Live and let live, and mind your own business, are mottos here. And gangs who roam the streets trying to impose their own ideas on others tend to get arrested.
So what essentially is different about Iranians? I suspect, nothing is. A minority of society suppose they have a superior social and ethical code but that is normal in any society. The trouble is that in Iran, this minority has got hold of the levers of power and they will not let go. This minority is headed by people who claim to have special religious status and authority. How do they reconcile that with what seems from the news leaking out from Iran to be a clear case of electoral fraud? Not to mention the fact that in election after election they have disqualified most opposition candidates? In Britain people who commit fraud get put in prison, religious clerics included.
How these people feel they have the right to tell individual women how to dress and behave is worse than perplexing. To have the self-assurance to feel comfortable telling others what to do, or even physically force them to do it, does not mean you are right. It might be a sign of madness.

Ahem, about Trident, I told y'all so

2009-01-16T07:57:00.011Z

In today's Times three top military brass including Field Marshall Lord Bramall and two retired generals - write that Trident is - to summarise - dangerous, expensive and useless. "Our independent deterrent has become virtually irrelevant except in the context of domestic politics," they write. This is the fundamental political point, but Labour and the Tories cannot deliver sensible policy because they are trapped in their self-imposed imperative to talk tough. Outside the Palace of Westminster reality has broken through. Inside, when will it? Which party will be first to break ranks and acknowledge the facts? Lib Dem MPs, are you listening? Read, read!

Did Israeli politics engineer non-extension of Gaza ceasefire?

2009-01-10T12:09:00.010Z

A well-informed colleague informed me, and I have checked with reliable sources (including the BBC), that the Israeli military on 4 November seriously breached the Gaza ceasefire when it raided Gaza and it did so again on 17 November. Israel also sealed off Gaza leaving the 1.4 million inhabitants of this densely populated enclave in a dire predicament. My informant adds that on 23 December 2008 the Israeli government received a report from its own advisers that Hamas wanted to extend the ceasefire if the blockade was partially lifted. Ignoring this, the Israeli government launched the current campaign against Gaza. It is well evidenced that Israeli air force personnel had been doing air strikes training for months. I now believe that this current military action was cynically devised for the purpose of exploiting the interregnum between the departure of Bush and the inauguration of Obama and it looks to me as though the attack was pre-ordained whatever Hamas did. I suspect it was launched for the purpose of securing the victory of ex-Mossad hardliner Tzipi Livni (a friend of Condoleeza Rice, allegedly) in the forthcoming Israeli elections.

Meanwhile the Israeli invasion is radicalising countless people into more enemies. I have trawled several Middle Eastern English-language websites including Al Jazeera and it is clear that in comparison the coverage we are getting here in the UK is pretty sanitised. There, the images are of Gaza City against a horizon of smoke and fire; ordinary people distraught at the loss of their homes and loved ones; and worst of all, images of dead, dying and horribly injured children, including a particularly horrific image of the head of a four-year-old girl who was killed. Today's headline is that the number of Palestinian dead has passed 800 and of injured well over 3,000. This military action is not just criminal and murderous, it is stupid, stupid, stupid.

A committee that's extremely interesting

2009-01-08T01:09:00.011Z

On 6th January the Federal Policy Committee flexed its muscles in reaffirming opposition to university tuition fees - indeed extending the policy to opposition to part-time and further education fees as well. I was there, and I found it refreshing after quite a long period of that committee being rather tame. It has suddenly become extremely interesting. I don't think media observers really understand how the Lib Dem policy-making process works - they think the MPs do it. Not really. The party constitution is a dull read, but it was cleverly made, and it contains the key to where policy-making power within the party lies. The body that approves policy is the Conference, and the body that supervises policy preparation is the Federal Policy Committee, and the group with the built-in majority on that committee is, or are, the members directly elected by the grassroots. So the policy process is controlled by the grassroots all the way, although the grassroots don't always realise or use their power. But sometimes they do, which is (partly) why this is a very democratic party, and nothing like the Tory party, and never will be anything like it, I am glad to say. A pity the present FPC wasn't in situ when the Trident issue last came up...

Good for you, Nick

2009-01-08T00:32:00.003Z

I recall the day I told Charles Kennedy, then Lib Dem party leader, at a policy meeting in 2003 that the issue on the Iraq invasion was illegality (though that was not how it was being put at the time) and that despite the awful time Labour and Tory MPs were giving him, he should stick to his opposition. Well, he did, and he was right, and eventually most reasonable people realised he was right. And it was, indeed, an issue of illegality. Now there is a bloodbath in Gaza and the issue is illegality, and this time it is Nick Clegg who is saying what ought to be said. Good for you, Nick. You have the guts to speak out, and even if they give you a hard time now, you will remain right and they will remain gutless and wrong. What is being done in Gaza is appalling. It is collective punishment which was a practice much used by, ironically, the Nazis and was a crime then and still is now.

The issues are land and water

2009-01-01T23:40:00.004Z

Years ago a fellow-student at Yale Law School said to me that the mid 20th century was not a good time to set up a racist state. This startling comment returned to my mind as I listened to the radio news of Israel's government sending in the air force to bomb Gaza. In such a densely populated place this was bound to result in hundreds of Palestinian deaths (just over 400 was the last figure I heard - and the injured probably are in their thousands). Spokesmen are wooing the sympathy of the world but this latest action has crystallised my thinking in a way they won't like.
A racial supremacist assumption underlies this offensive, that Palestinian deaths do not count for much. The spokesmen's line is that the issue is Hamas rockets. That is just skimming the surface. The issues are, and have from the beginning been, land and water - the fields and groves that Palestinian farmers had tended for centuries, from which they have been ousted by various means, and the precious freshwater resources that are not enough to supply the ambitions of both the Jewish state and the Palestinian non-state. The injustice that was inflicted on the Palestinians gave rise to Hamas and their rockets.
The bombing offensive is not going to stop the rockets. The only thing that will stop the rockets is justice. Let there be no more lies and obfuscation about the land that has been and still is being illegally annexed by fanatical settlers. Quite simply the annexation must stop and the land must be returned. And there must be equal treatment of all people in the region whatever their origins and religion. If the fanatical elements in Israel will not wear this, then the threat of Hamas rockets will go on and on.
Increasingly I suspect that the increasingly embattled Jewish state may not be viable much longer. Israel has sought to protect itself by militarism, but it keeps making more enemies. The only thing that really protects minorities is the trio of liberty, equality, democracy, not setting up a militarist state. In my view, young Israelis would be well advised to emigrate.

Naomi Smith selected for Cities of London and Westminster

2008-12-17T00:15:00.004Z

Local Lib Dems have selected Naomi Smith as their next Prospective Parliamentary Candidate in the seat of Cities of London and Westminster. Naomi is already well known among young Lib Dems, as she is President of Liberal Youth as well as a party trainer. Possibly less well known is that Naomi shares at least one unusual skill with Paddy Ashdown - they can both speak Mandarin Chinese. In this most multicultural of constituencies that could come in handy. Congratulations, Naomi.

On being led by donkeys

2008-11-26T00:16:00.007Z

It would be nice to have confidence in the people in charge, but the Brown/Darling pledge to mortgage my future to the hilt to combat the present banking crisis, makes that impossible. Instead, it turns out that the people in charge are a load of blooming amateurs! Not one of them saw this coming. But Vince Cable did. And now they don't know what will happen next, and they don't know what to do. As for the official opposition, they seem no fitter to govern. Inherited wealth proves nothing. George Osborne as Chancellor? Don't make me laugh. At least, it would be funny if it weren't so frightening. Anyway, what can the party of the capitalists possibly have to contribute? It was unregulated capitalism that brought this mess about.

It's remarkable, really, that the government and official opposition get paid loads of salary and expenses for being so useless.

Now I can love America again

2008-11-05T17:29:00.003Z

President-elect Obama’s story could only have happened in America. Today every person on the planet who believes in democracy can walk taller. The power of democracy to effect peaceful change has just been demonstrated. Obama won by awakening a determination in millions who had not voted before, not even in the high water mark election of 2004, to willingly register to vote and then to use their votes, and to do that he had to get them on his side, to include them and to inspire hope. There is a lesson for us about leadership here. And there is more hope in the air than for years.

A sombre analysis of Russia from its former PM

2008-11-04T17:13:00.003Z

In a sombre address to the ELDR Congress on 31 October, Mikhail Kasyanov (former Prime Minister of the Russian Federation) characterised his country as a place where the democratic institutions had been replaced by imitations.
Mr Kasyanov was at the ELDR Congress as leader of the People’s Democratic Union and had earlier presented his party’s case to the ELDR Council for joining the ELDR as a full member. Mr Kasyanov impressed the Council with a trenchant analysis of the current political direction of Russia. He was extremely critical of the elections whereby former President Putin and his associates tightened their held on power earlier this year.
The Russian authorities refuse to accord legal status to the PDU and in January of this year they refused to register Mr Kasyanov as a candidate in the presidential elections. The reasons for these refusals seem flimsy in the extreme. Needless to say these refusals did not prevent the ELDR Council from considering the application for membership on its merits - there are plenty of experienced delegates from Eastern Europe who still remember that kind of authoritarian dirty tricks in their countries’ former governance.
The Council voted to admit both PDU and the longer-established liberal party Yabloko (which already had ELDR observer status) to full membership. Mr Kasyanov thanked the Council on behalf of the 56,000 members of his organisation.
In my opinion, the inclusion of the two Russian parties into the ELDR Party will undoubtedly add to the quality of debate on EU-Russian relations and the vexed question of a common EU security and defence policy.

Lembit or Ros?

2008-11-01T16:42:00.005Z

The winter before last I attended a Colchester Lib Dems' annual dinner at which Lembit was the guest speaker. His energy and infectious enthusiasm were obvious but what impressed me most was the speed and accuracy with which he astutely sized up the political situation locally. Last winter Ros was the guest speaker at the same event and she came across in a quieter way but with similar warmth and ability to communicate. Both have that vital quality, a good sense of humour. In their different ways they each have a very serious claim to be elected as President of the UK Liberal Democrats. In my view, anyone who does not see this - such as, for instance, the person who has been commenting anonymously in an unpleasant way against Lembit on my friend Linda Jack's blog - is either incapable of objectivity or a bit of an idiot. Possibly both.

I haven't a clue who is ahead in the election but I feel confident that whether the winner is Ros or Lembit, we in the UK Lib Dems will have a capable, likeable and dedicated new President.

ELDR adopts electricity supergrid policy

2008-10-31T16:58:00.002Z

This evening I feel satisfaction to have succeeded in getting the Congress of ELDR (short for European Liberal Democratic and Reform Party) to adopt an energy policy proposal that is hugely important. This is the creating of a new European electricity supergrid, transmitting electricity along high voltage direct current (HVDC) cables. Energy losses on DC lines are far lower than on the traditional AC ones, so the new supergrid will make it economic to transmit electricity over long distances. It is feasible and economic to transmit electricity for 3000 km or more using HVDC transmission lines. This will mean that the benefits of renewable energy can be shared throughout Europe. It could be, for example, geothermal energy from Iceland, tidal energy from coastal regions or wind energy from exposed regions. Energy could even be imported from hot desert regions, such as North Africa, by means of "concentrating solar power" (CSP) technology - a huge and inexhaustible source of energy. It is proven technology and economically feasible, too. Well done, ELDR Congress.

Westminster City Council's little mistake (worth £17m)

2008-10-20T21:57:00.007+01:00

Westminster City Council has, or had, £17m in Icelandic banks: £7m in Landsbanki and £10m in its UK subsidiary, Heritable. Nearly £10m of these deposits were placed in August. According to Councillor Colin Barrow CBE, Leader of the ruling Tory group on the Council, in August "both banks had excellent credit ratings of the highest standard". But on 30th January 2008 David Ibison, writing in the Financial Times about Landsbanki and two other major Icelandic banks, stated there was "increased uncertainty over the banks arising from their perceived reliance on wholesale funding, cross-ownership issues, an alleged lack of transparency, and macro-economic imbalances." How come this increased uncertainty had not come to the attention of Cllr Barrow? I am surprised, especially as according to his biography on the Westminster Conservatives' website (not yet updated to reflect his promotion to Leader), he "handles the Council's finances, as Deputy Leader of the Council. He has his own investment management business in Westminster".

Wrecking nature costs megabucks - official

2008-10-10T14:12:00.007+01:00

An EU report prepared by a Deutsche Bank economist studies the economic effects of not halting the loss of ecosystems and species and states that the financial cost of such loss dwarfs financial market losses. (But it isn't grabbing headlines because it isn't sudden but continues year after year.) The argument is that as forests decline, nature stops providing resources and services that it used to provide for nothing - you know, little things like food, water, getting rid of excess CO2, stuff like that - and there is a financial cost to either having to do without, or provide them by human efforts instead. The report, like the Stern Review, brings economics to bear on the biodiversity loss issue and maybe will help politicians to bring it into their policy deliberations. Plenty of them have been deaf to ethical arguments about the value of the natural world, but they are more likely to hear economic ones. Aren't they? The study (commissioned by the European Commission) is ongoing.

Forget the banks - extinction is for ever

2008-10-07T22:20:00.003+01:00

Although a member of a Least Concern Species (widespread and abundant), I am plunged in gloom by the news that the latest Red List of Threatened Species (published by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature) says at least 25% of the world's mammal species are at risk of extinction. Which is for ever. It is due to loss of habitat, including deforestation, which is the result of our own species' actions. The current financial crisis is as nothing compared with the biodiversity crisis. It is really, really urgent. Time for us to stop breeding like rabbits and give the natural world room again.

Government duplicity on green targets

2008-09-26T13:17:00.007+01:00

So Whitehall is quietly trying to undermine EU green targets by opposing the inclusion of aviation? Spread the word. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7636780.stm

Conference, climate change and priorities

2008-09-26T07:14:00.008+01:00

I duly addressed conference on melting polar ice caps and considering that it was the graveyard slot of 0915 on Sunday morning the turnout in the hall was admirable. I was one of those who put in a card in the debate on the Make it Happen document. I am one of the 16 reps who had proposed the amendment. I was not called = no surprise or complaint about that, but what I would have said, if called, was that the amendment should be passed because of the bit that most speakers ignored, except for Richard Grayson, mover of the amendment, and Duncan Brack. That was the bit that said that investment to combat climate change should have higher priority for the Lib Dems than tax cuts. As the party has spent the last few years insisting that a green thread ran through all our policies I am a bit puzzled that none of the Parliamentary big guns whom the leadership had lined up to zap the amendment mentioned the climate change bit, still less why they believed it was necessary to leave the leadership's hands untied with regard to the order of priorities on that. As for the chairing of the debate, I question whether the chair needed to weakly oblige the leadership by orchestrating a crescendo of the big guns as the debate approached the vote. (Incidentally, the gender imbalance was overwhelmingly towards male speakers because that imbalance is present in the Parliamentary party from which the big guns came. So no surprise there.) All in all, I conclude that the leadership won the vote but not the argument. As I write this, national treasure David Attenborough is talking on Radio 4's Today programme about a lecture he will give later today about the imperative of looking after the natural world and how the notion that homo sapiens can look after itself and let the rest of nature die out is really, really not on. Combating climate change is a lower priority than tax cuts? Come on, leadership, for goodness' sake get real.

Polar Ice is on the agenda on Sunday morning

2008-09-10T23:01:00.006+01:00

I am told the Urgent Issue I proposed has been selected for debate at the Lib Dem Conference. The title is 'Polar Ice Caps: Accelerating Climate Change'. The day is this Sunday and the time is 0915. I hope many conference-goers will set their alarm clocks and come to the debate.

Urgent Issue - unexpectedly rapid melting of polar ice caps

2008-09-09T16:36:00.002+01:00

I hope by this posting to encourage interest in a subject I believe to be of enormous importance, which I have today proposed for selection as an Urgent Issue for debate at the Lib Dems' Federal Conference in Bournemouth. Satellite images taken in the last couple of weeks show that melting Arctic ice has opened the North-west and North-east passages, evidencing that polar ice may have entered what one eminent environmental scientist has called a “death spiral”. Furthermore, a few weeks ago, the University of Alberta reported that not only had the ice shrunk in area but also its thickness had dropped by half in six years. This process feeds on itself: as ice is replaced by sea, the dark surface absorbs more heat, warming the ocean and melting more ice. The tipping point, when warming becomes irreversible and catastrophic, could be much sooner than expected. The conventional wisdom used to be that climate change would only happen gradually, giving life on this planet time to adapt, so there was little cause for immediate concern. I suggest that is no longer a credible view. Major policy responses are needed now.

Balkan spite and malevolence - in Watford?

2008-08-07T13:56:00.003+01:00

For a long time I had been aware that Federal Policy Committee colleague Sal Brinton had been the personal target of a harassment campaign in Watford, where she is Lib Dem PPC. It must have been a horrible experience and she has my heartfelt sympathy. Ian Oakley, the Tory PPC – as he was until unmasked by undeniable evidence – has now pleaded guilty to multiple offences, and they are repulsive. There is an almost Balkan intensity to the spite and malevolence that must have dominated his mind. I want to understand the motives that drove him to such extremes in our relatively kindly land. Looking at the bigger picture though, as a political footsoldier I feel deeply troubled. What other apparently respectable suits and ties conceal volcanoes of molten loathing for their fellow citizens? Every political party relies on volunteers and some of them are colourful, even oddball characters, but one expects there to be procedures for dealing with members who risk bringing the party into disrepute. In this case, the Conservative Party’s procedures and judgment are exposed as nothing less than disastrous failures – not only was Oakley not identified as a problem but he was actually selected as a campaign manager, a councillor and a parliamentary candidate. Did the party activists who worked with him all this time suspect nothing? Are they that lacking in perception? I find that hard to believe. Or was there a procedural failure so that warning bells were not heard? Either alternative is equally unpalatable. And if the Tories can’t run their own affairs, how can they be trusted to run the country? I have never heard of anything like this in the Lib Dems, but all the same the implications for me personally are quite profound. I have been involved in politics because I wanted to make things better. If I drop out, will people like Oakley and his friends (he still has some, amazingly, it seems) take over the field? Not acceptable. On the other hand, do I really want to stay involved in the only game for grown-ups if this is how some people play it? No, I don’t. It is not cricket. Not at all.

Liberal International - impressions from the 55th Congress

2008-05-21T09:48:00.010+01:00

My chief impression of Liberal International as I came away from its 55th Congress is of health and growth. The delegates comprised not only LI stalwarts from Europe and Canada, but also newer participants from Asia, South America, sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, Egypt and the Middle East, including Israel - over 50 countries were represented, and they included French-speaking nations as well as British. We heard a speech in French from a liberal President of an African country: Senegal. We heard a speech in Chinese from a liberal President of Taiwan. There were thoughtful workshops on issues going beyond the core LI subject matter of civil liberties and market liberalisation, which indicates that liberal parties worldwide are widening the scope of their interests. The contribution of the UK delegation and European parties, particularly on policy, drafting and procedural matters, continues to be important but it was clear that parties from the developing world are participating actively by submitting resolutions, organising workshops and valuably networking with one another.

Those who had been involved in the organisation’s beginnings commented that its recent growth and spread were extremely encouraging and the result of tireless work by, in particular, the current President, Lord Alderdice. He passionately believes in the possibility of a better world through rejecting violence and instead respecting and finding common ground to work with those with whom one disagrees, and he has proved it can work. He has been re-elected to a well-deserved further presidential term.

The Congress's theme was "Our Shared Future". LI members can be confident that their own shared future will be of growth and success.

Tsvangarai and environmentalists address LI Congress

2008-05-16T16:06:00.008+01:00

I am attending the Liberal International Congress in Belfast. This morning Morgan Tsvangarai, courageous leader of the Zimbabwean MDC and Presidential challenger to the disastrous rule of Robert Mugabe, was enthusiastically welcomed when he spoke at the opening session of the Congress. We were told that Mr Tsvangarai was persuaded to attend by President Aboulaye Wade of Senegal: this clear public support from a leader of another African state is perhaps an early sign that African nations are getting over the paralysis that has affected them for so long over Mugabe and the Zimbabwean crisis.
After the opening session I attended a workshop session with an African Environment Panel, of whom I was particularly impressed by Mr Wavel Ramkalawan, leader of the Seychelles National Party. He spoke of the terrible implications of global warming for his country, consisting as it does of low-lying islands that are directly threatened by rising sea levels. He also spoke of the de-oxygenating effect of ocean warming, which is posing a massive threat to marine ecology including fish stocks and coral reefs. It was clear from what he said (in response to a comment from my UK Lib Dem colleague Chris le Breton) that increasingly, he and others in Africa are coming to the view that aspiration to planet-wrecking Western-style lifestyles is simply not a feasible option: instead, our species has to act as the guardians of the well-being of nature itself, if we wish to have a future. But effective governance is necessary first, and in addition, the scale of the rethink that is now required of policymakers is breathtaking.

Mayor of London result

2008-05-04T21:59:00.004+01:00

Well, the people of London felt - rightly, in my opinion - that Ken and his cronies had to go. I am disappointed but not surprised that Boris was the winner. Fingers crossed that he does a decent job (and doesn't keep cluttering up Trafalgar Square with bread-and-circuses events at vast expense). The man can't be all bad: at least he rides a bicycle without a chauffeur-driven limo following...

Colchester council election upset

2008-05-02T13:17:00.006+01:00

Lib Dems last night gained from the Tories four of the 20 council seats being contested in Colchester, ending Tory control. In Shrub End, Nigel Offen snatched victory by just 11 votes after two nail-biting recounts. In Mile End ward no recount was necessary - Martin Goss's margin of victory was astounding, as he received 1500 votes, nearly twice as many as the Tory, from which we can deduce they didn't like his performance as regeneration supremo. The Tory planning portfolio holder was defeated in Stanway ward. The fourth gain was Wivenhoe Cross. In Berechurch only 53 votes separated Lib Dem John Stevens from the Labour winner, while the Tory was well beaten into third place. In Highwoods the BNP candidate was trounced into a poor fourth place behind the Independent, Tory and Lib Dem; Labour was fifth. In Castle, Lib Dem Henry Spyvee easily saw off the renewed challenge from the Greens and is now on course to be Mayor soon. What fantastic teamwork! I am delighted for my colleagues and good friends here.

Leafletting at bluebell time

2008-04-27T23:39:00.005+01:00

The last few days I have been in a flurry of leafletting - for Brian Paddick in Westminster and for local council candidates in Colchester. The Greens are intervening erratically in both places. In London they are encouraging supporters to vote Labour in the mayoral contest, which is odd given Labour's dismal environmental record, while in Colchester they have adopted a strategy that seems brilliantly designed to defeat their own objectives by leaving the Tories in control.
I was leafletting in north Colchester's Highwoods ward, currently represented by Independents. The area was once a royal hunting forest, of which the town managed to preserve over 300 acres from property developers, with the result that ranch-style executive homes exist next to ancient woodland and open space now designated a country park. To the east of all that there is the inevitable Tesco, and beyond that the ward shades into mixed private and social housing with some spectacularly ugly and smelly grot spots which no doubt will give the winning candidate something useful to do. It is the only ward in the borough where a BNP candidate is standing though I have had no explanation how the BNP agenda is even relevant to, let alone a solution for, problems there.
On Saturday I whizzed to and from the ward by bus, but as the buses are infrequent on a Sunday I walked from the town centre to the ward across the country park, which the dog enjoyed. After walking for some time along a grassy ride between woods, I took a side path which promised to be a more direct route, though involving some ducking under branches, but after a few minutes the path became indistinct. I could see houses above and not far away, so I carried on, assuming I must be near an exit, but that way was fenced off, so I followed the track round to the left, towards increasingly tangled undergrowth. Suddenly a fox sprang out from some low bushes a few feet ahead and away at an easy canter. I descended a slope to a little stream where I paused to decide where best to cross. Thus it was that in this unlikeliest of places I found myself surrounded by the glory of an English bluebell wood in April. It was quiet except for bird song, and some idea of the hazy blueness can be got perhaps from pictures, but no words or picture can possibly convey the delicious fragrance.

Hang in there, Hilary Clinton

2008-04-23T13:36:00.004+01:00

I welcome Hilary Clinton's decisive win in Pennsylvania because I think the world has suffered enough from a Republican-run White House, and I think Clinton can beat the Republican, but I don't think Obama can. Obama has the funding advantage and the backing of Democrat establishment big names, but for several reasons I don't believe enough Americans will vote for Obama when it comes to the crunch. This is supported by the fact that in the decisive big states Clinton has beaten Obama as traditional Democrat voters have turned out in her support. They know that if they elect Mrs Clinton it's the nearest they can get to having Bill back in the White House, whose astonishing approval ratings when President testify of his political genius. So I hope Hilary Clinton will hang in there and ignore those who tell her to quit the race.

I go to Estonia, and return

2008-04-22T17:42:00.002+01:00

As a directly elected member of the UK Lib Dems’ ELDR (European Liberal Democratic and Reform Party) Council delegation, I went to their meeting in Estonia, on the far side of the EU and on the edge of Russia, the weekend before last. The meeting got some good preparatory work done, we made some good contacts and our Estonian hosts were most hospitable.
What a remarkable city Tallinn is. In a long visit to the Occupation Museum there I learned something of the terrible ordeal the Estonians endured following the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, whereby Hitler and Stalin agreed that Russia could have the previously independent Baltic States – a deal between treacherous crooks that soon fell apart. As a result the Estonians were occupied three times - first by the Russians, then by the Nazis, then by the Russians again, this time until 1991. Despite terrible oppression they retained their spirit and in 1991 got their independence back. What a wonderful people.
I returned to England the eco-friendly way by ferries and trains via the Baltic and Scandinavia. This trip has vividly demonstrated to me the vast geographical size of the EU and the scale of its achievement in uniting so enormous an area by voluntary and peaceful means.
The ferry from Tallinn to Stockholm was a glittering, extremely comfortable palace, the weather was calm and as the sun set over the silvery Baltic Sea the scene looked idyllic. The following morning, in pale sunshine, the ferry glided quietly between the islands of the eastern Swedish archipelago. It was an entrancing voyage. This made it all the more shocking to learn that the Baltic is now an endangered sea, where swimming in summer is dangerous due to poisonous algae blooms. No matter how far I travel, I find it impossible to escape the signs of our planet’s sickness.
In Stockholm I boarded a fast inter-city train that travelled south-west across Sweden, then changed to a local train that crossed a causeway over the sea between Sweden and Denmark - a remarkable engineering feat - to Copenhagen. I had a few hours to look round there, then took another inter-city train travelling west, crossing Denmark from island to island via tunnels and bridges. In Zealand I changed trains for Esbjerg where I boarded MS Dana Sirena for Harwich. This ship, too, was extremely comfortable. In addition to passengers the ship carried a cargo of sea containers, the kind that hurtle through Colchester station on freight trains and make you feel like a midget. I counted 29.
The micro-economics of all this were crazy as returning by cheap flight would have been many times cheaper, but I would have missed out on so much that I have seen and learned.
Back to leafletting for the local elections…

In praise of Evan Harris MP and evidence-based policy

2008-04-05T14:16:00.005+01:00

I have just had the pleasure of hearing Evan Harris, Lib Dem MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, acquit himself superbly on BBC Radio 4's Any Questions. It was good to hear the case for evidence-based policy-making, with which I enthusiastically agree, put so well, and wittily, too. What a star!

I am nominated

2008-04-04T22:16:00.002+01:00

I am standing for election to my local borough council. So many leafletting opportunities, so little time...

Forgotten Chernobyl? I haven't

2008-03-28T12:28:00.002Z

It is as if the entire Government has forgotten the Chernobyl disaster - because it is too inconvenient to tell the public to contemplate a reduction in "living standards". Well, here is a reminder.

From The Guardian:

"When a routine test went catastrophically wrong, a chain reaction went out of control in No 4 reactor of Chernobyl nuclear power station in Ukraine, creating a fireball that blew off the reactor's 1,000-tonne steel-and-concrete lid. Burning graphite and hot reactor-core material ejected by the explosions started numerous other fires, including some on the combustible tar roof of the adjacent reactor unit. There were 31 fatalities as an immediate result of the explosion and acute radiation exposure in fighting the fires, and more than 200 cases of severe radiation sickness in the days that followed.
Evacuation of residents under the plume was delayed by the Soviet authorities' unwillingness to admit the gravity of the incident. Eventually, more than 100,000 people were evacuated from the surrounding area in Ukraine and Belarus.

"In the week after the accident the Soviets poured thousands of untrained, inadequately protected men into the breach. Bags of sand were dropped on to the reactor fire from the open doors of helicopters (analysts now think this did more harm than good). When the fire finally stopped, men climbed on to the roof to clear the radioactive debris. The machines brought in broke down because of the radiation. The men barely lasted more than a few weeks, suffering lingering, painful deaths.

"But had this effort not been made, the disaster might have been much worse. The sarcophagus, designed by engineers from Leningrad, was manufactured in absentia - the plates assembled with the aid of robots and helicopters - and as a result there are fissures. Now known as the Cover, reactor No 4 still holds approximately 20 tonnes of nuclear fuel in its lead-and-metal core. No one knows what is happening with it.

"For neighbouring Belarus, with a population of just 10 million, the nuclear explosion was a national disaster: 70% of the radionucleides released in the accident fell on Belarus. During the second world war, the Nazis destroyed 619 Belarussian villages, along with their inhabitants. As a result of fallout from Chernobyl, the country lost 485 villages and settlements. Of these, 70 have been buried underground by clean-up teams known as "liquidators".

"Today, one out of every five Belarussians lives on contaminated land. That is 2.1 million people, of whom 700,000 are children. Because of the virtually permanent presence of small doses of radiation around the "Zone", the number of people with cancer, neurological disorders and genetic mutations increases with each year."

Harrowing eyewitness accounts are collected in Voices From Chernobyl, by Svetlana Alexievich, published by Dalkey Archive Press at £13.99
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2005/apr/25/energy.ukraine

I am worried

2008-03-27T22:10:00.002Z

I don't know about you, dear reader, but I am worried sick about Labour Industry Minister John Hutton's plans to build a vast number of nuclear power stations thus diverting resources from renewables; about collective and individual political failure to do anything about the destruction of natural habitats and wildlife both here and everywhere on our planet; and about the fact that the world population has more than quadrupled since 1900, more than doubled since 1960 and is increasing at a rate of 80 million a year. This cannot go on - that is what the scientists warn, but the political class of all nations has its head in the sand.

Tibetans have a just claim to self-determination

2008-03-24T22:49:00.006Z

The Chinese premier's talk is of smashing and crushing the Tibetan rebels. It is as if the UN's principle of self-determination of peoples had never been heard of. The Chinese regime is doubly illegitimate - without any democratic legitimacy in its own country, and an invader in Tibet. Why are Western leaders and diplomats so keen to humour the Chinese leadership's obsession with saving face? To call a spade a spade, it seems to me the Chinese Government's stupid and oppressive policies are entirely to blame for the current crisis in Tibet. The Tibetans are desperate and their demands for self-determination are just. If you jam a lid on a boiling kettle, you will get an explosion. I have no ill will against the Chinese people but in order to make my protest against their Government I am going to avoid buying goods from China until there are free and fair elections in both Tibet and China. I think I will write to the major UK retailers to inform them of my decision.

My new pets (the sequel)

2008-03-23T23:21:00.004Z

The wormery is a success: teabags, vegetable peelings, bits of newspaper etc have been converted into dark, crumbly compost that will be great for my plants, and it's free. The worms are plump and thriving. They don't like onion, though.

Zhang Qingli's pitiable ignorance: Vaclav Havel's wisdom

2008-03-20T14:42:00.005Z

A Western tourist in Lhasa, Tibet, has told the BBC: “The violence may have begun on Friday at 2pm but it felt like it had been brewing for 50 years. It was frustration that had spilled over. People had taken too much. That was the impression we got.“
Meanwhile Tibet's Communist party chief, Zhang Qingli, has reportedly told officials: "The Dalai is a wolf in monk's robes, a devil with a human face but the heart of a beast." Such ignorance is pitiable. Anyone who has read any of the Dalai Lama's publications knows that he advocates non-violence and compassion towards all sentient beings - even those who are trapped in a mentality of aggressive militarism and materialism.
Former Czech President Vaclav Havel writes: “Even as we write, it is clear that China's rulers are trying to reassure the world that peace, quiet, and "harmony" have again prevailed in Tibet. We all know this kind of peace from what has happened in the past in Burma, Cuba, Belarus and a few other countries - it is called the peace of the graveyard.
"Merely urging the Chinese government to exercise the "utmost restraint" in dealing with the Tibetan people, as governments around the world are doing, is far too weak a response. The international community, beginning with the United Nations and followed by the European Union, Asean, and other international organisations, as well as individual countries, should use every means possible to step up pressure on the Chinese government to allow foreign media, as well as international fact-finding missions, into Tibet and adjoining provinces in order to enable objective investigations of what has been happening; release all those who only peacefully exercised their internationally guaranteed human rights, and guarantee that no one is subjected to torture and unfair trials; enter into a meaningful dialogue with the representatives of the Tibetan people.
"Unless these conditions are fulfilled, the International Olympic Committee should seriously reconsider whether holding this summer's Olympic games in a country that includes a peaceful graveyard remains a good idea.”

I agree.
See http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/vclav_havel/2008/03/tibets_peace_of_the_grave.html

Chinese Government's disinformation fails to deceive

2008-03-18T12:27:00.008Z

So the Premier of China is still trying to blame the Dalai Lama for the Tibetan people protesting against Mao Tse Tung's "liberation" of Tibet in 1950 and China's continuing repression of Tibetans? Come off it, we are not deceived. This is the era of the Internet. We share information! Dear reader, do tell your friends to log on to the BBC and "listen again" to first hand evidence about torture and murder of Tibetan women in prison, at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/
And do read the Chang/Halliday biography of Mao, which will give you a shrewd idea what Mao meant by "liberation". It is high time the Chinese Government admitted that Mao was a remorseless tyrant, not a hero.
I believe Tibetan people are entitled to real freedom - to speak their opinions, live in their villages and practise their peaceful way of life. Instead they are forcibly moved into horrible Communist-style housing, arrested for speaking their minds, given enormous prison sentences just for peaceably demonstrating and tortured or even murdered while in prison. This is imperialism not liberation.

China cracks down on Tibet news coverage

2008-03-17T21:26:00.004Z

The Chinese authorities' deadline has passed for Tibetan protesters to give themselves up. Instead of asking why the protests are happening and questioning whether just maybe their policies need to change, the authorities are blocking websites that report what is going on. To help spread the word, tell your friends to visit http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/video/2008/mar/17/china.media

Glacier melt rate has more than doubled

2008-03-17T18:42:00.003Z

I read on the Beeb that data from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) shows glaciers are melting more than twice as fast as they were between 1980 and 1999. This is a key climate change indicator. Average glacial shrinkage has risen from 30 centimetres per year between 1980 and 1999, to 1.5 metres in 2006 with some of the biggest losses in the Alps and Pyrenees.

Experts have called for "immediate action" to reverse the trend, the Executive Director of UNEP saying that the glaciers are the canaries that are making the most noise in the climate change coal mine "and it is absolutely essential that everyone sits up and takes notice... The litmus test will come in late 2009 at the climate convention meeting in Copenhagen.

"Here governments must agree on a decisive new emissions reduction and adaptation-focused regime. Otherwise, and like the glaciers, our room for manoeuvre and the opportunity to act may simply melt away."

It is scarcely reassuring then to be told that the vast majority of voters still don't put a high priority on this.

Where is Tibet's second spiritual leader?

2008-03-17T17:47:00.004Z

Some years ago Tibet's second most important spiritual leader, the Panchen Lama, was chosen by the traditional Tibetan process, supervised by the Dalai Lama, The chosen boy, whose name was Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, has not been seen since his detention by the Chinese authorities in 1995. He must now be over 18. Where is he? Can the BBC talk to him? If not, why not?

Colchester is spared another nightclub - phew

2008-03-16T23:15:00.006Z

Today I was delivering Bob Russell MP's Annual Report in Colchester's historic Dutch Quarter, on the northern side of the hill where the town centre is. The Dutch Quarter is laid out as I guess towns used to be before they invented Urban Sprawl. It has narrow streets and alleys and everything you need within walking distance. When most of us can't afford to run a car any more we will appreciate places like this properly. Colchester is Bob's home town, and mine too. I learn good news - an appeal against refusal of planning permission for another town centre nightclub has been dismissed by the Inspector. Congratulations to our local Lib Dem councillors for their successful campaign on that one. Maybe residents are starting to get their town back.

Listen to the Dalai Lama - a great man

2008-03-16T14:52:00.012Z

The Dalai Lama is the wisest, most admirable human being I know of: truly a great man. I have read several of his works for lay readers. He teaches of the futility of greed and aggression, and of how to attain happiness through kindness and compassion for all sentient creatures. In one book he remembers the Tibet of his youth, its forested mountains inhabited by almost tame creatures, because they were not hunted. Then the Chinese invaded, bringing with them their creed of Communist materialism - as if mastery of the whole of mainland China were not enough. In 1959 a brutal Chinese repression of the Tibetan people forced the Dalai Lama to flee his homeland. He has watched from exile his people's gentle culture being stamped upon, the forests destroyed and the wildlife killed. How ironic to hear a witness tell the BBC's The World This Weekend how the present leader of China, formerly governor of Chinese-occupied Tibet, admitted to feeling dislike of Tibet and contempt for Tibetan people. If that is so, why not just withdraw from Tibet and let the Tibetan people get on with their lives? The Chinese people have a great and ancient culture but the Communist leader Mao Tse-Tung who caused suffering and death to untold millions was a monster, and the current Chinese Government has no democratic, or any other, legitimacy in Tibet nor, for that matter, in mainland China. What right has the Chinese Government to profess superiority, to claim legitimacy, to kill over 80 Tibetan protesters? None. Its current actions are contemptible. It should withdraw its troops, call elections and let peaceful transition take place to democratic government.

Liverpool gets to me

2008-03-13T22:39:00.004Z

Liverpool is a building site, much of the building being at sea level. Pity it will be submerged in 50 years, at the rate we are going in melting the polar ice with our not-so-clever, climate-wrecking inventions. The city is also the home of the International Slavery Museum which I visited last Sunday. I particularly remember an engraving of a scene in which a man is branding a woman captive with a hot iron. She twists to look up at him in terror and bewilderment, as animals also do, when people are cruel to them. There was also movie footage of a man being hanged by a lynch mob in the American South in order to maintain a reign of terror. I learned, too, that in at least one State of the American South a law was passed making it a crime to teach any negro to read and write. Later the US Supreme Court ruled that black people could not be citizens of the United States.
In retrospect all this solemn jurisprudence looks barmy. I muse upon the shamefulness of the legal system. How did the common law ever entertain the notion that a human being could be property that could be bought and sold? All too easily. All you need is a system of rules in which someone stretches the concept of a "chattel" a little. From that flows the idea that one man can have the right to buy, sell, punish or destroy another. Slavery itself had been around since ancient times, well entrenched in other cultures (Roman and Islamic for instance) but not in the common law. In the common law it started with indentured labour, where individuals would buy their passage to the New World by promising to work for a specified number of years when they got there. But it could not have developed into the elaborate system of rules that sustained the trade in human captives without the fiction of racial superiority. That, the fiction went, made it okay for people to brand, torture and kill people. Laws arrived by rigorous reasoning at outrageous conclusions because they were based on assumptions that no decent society should ever have entertained.
No amount of elegant reasoning will stop some ideas from being an abomination. We pass laws banning the causing of unnecessary suffering, but I think in time future generations will look in amazement at the disgusting intensive farming methods that inflict misery on our sentient fellow creatures, which we can see are a moral outrage if we exercise our critical faculties for five seconds, and wonder how this could ever have been condoned.

I make a little progress

2008-03-10T00:35:00.005Z

I am back from the Lib Dem Conference in Liverpool, pleased that on Friday the Federal Policy Committee approved my draft resolution on the global population crisis for submission by the UK Liberal Democrats to the Liberal International Congress in May. Lindsay Northover, who speaks on international development in the Lords, has been an enormous help in drafting it. Did you know the world's human population has more than doubled since 1960 and is increasing at a rate of 1.5 million per week? More on the resolution anon.

Memoirs of a busy February

2008-03-05T23:15:00.005Z

I've been a bit quiet recently, and when wondering why this was, drift into musing over how busy February was, quite apart from the day job. Another opportunity missed to get my allotment into shape before the spring, though I have planted a quince tree, some blackcurrant bushes, a few broad beans and mangetout peas (in makeshift cold-frames, though they are okay in cool temperatures). It's the dratted leafletting that gobbles up time - Sunday 3 Feb (and much time beforehand): spent much time dashing about preparing newspaper deliveries in my patch for Brian Paddick. My day was ruined by pickpockets who nicked my purse in Starbucks. Don't anyone tell me crime is not a problem...
Cannot remember weekend of 9-10 Feb specifically, but suspect it was spent on domestic projects. Weekend of 16-17 Feb: very frosty; on 16th I tended my allotment wearing 2 fleeces and an overcoat and was only just warm enough, then as fog descended I went home for tea, then out again to Colchester Lib Dems' annual dinner with my good friends Liz and Chris Hall, fellow blogger Nick Barlow and many other local friends and colleagues. Baroness Ros Scott gave a speech that included a most entertaining account of how she came to be a working peer. It cost quite a lot (joke). No, seriously, she won it in a raffle (joke). More seriously, apparently Charles Kennedy phoned her one Sunday morning when she was cooking lunch for her mother. As she had to keep the contents of the conversation confidential, on putting the phone down she gasped, "I think I'll have a sherry!" Always a good move at such moments. A sombre note, though, when Bob Russell MP reminded the gathering of the thousands of lads from the Colchester area who were going out to serve in the grim conflict in Afghanistan, not all of whom would return.
The following morning, 17th Feb: I took an early train to join the ongoing deliveries for Brian Paddick in south Westminster. Sunny, excellent leafletting weather. 21st Feb: I announced to a startled International Relations Committee my proposal for a policy resolution on the global population crisis - a subject I have been brooding over for many years, and the situation's getting worse. Did you, dear reader, know that the planet's human population has more than doubled since 1960, when (at 3 bn) it was, according to some respected scientific opinion, at a feasible level for sustainability? Cause for deep pessimism. I try to keep my carbon footprint down, but with a net population increase of 1.5 million people per week, obviously there is a serious question what is the point, what difference can we make, unless the absolute number of humans using resources is reduced to a manageable level.
Rest of February blurs together rather, but the 25th stands out - the evening of the Chinese Lib Dems' New Year feast, near Russell Square. The feast was excellent, and many political friends were there in what is undeniably an upbeat mood among activists.
Oh yes, and I spent most of the last Saturday of February travelling to and from, and delivering leaflets in, Highgate where our by-election candidate is, I learn, a fellow-allotmenter. A good sign, I feel.
.

Planes over London - not a good idea

2008-01-18T16:38:00.000Z

The near-disastrous crash landing of the Boeing 777 just short of the runway at Heathrow yesterday highlights the danger to the city below that is posed by flights to and from this exceptionally busy airport. What if a plane did crash on London? A terrible disaster, especially if it were densely-populated central London. This is not a far fetched possibility: if I remember rightly, not many years ago a cargo flight from Schiphol airport crashed on to a suburb of Amsterdam. That the victims were mostly impoverished immigrants whose loved ones were not best placed to make a fuss may be why we did not hear a great deal about it afterwards.
We hear plenty from the well-funded PR people in favour of airport expansion, mostly talking about employment and economic benefits, but far less about the arguments against. Such disasters do happen. How do you weigh employment and economic benefits against such a risk - to say nothing of the accumulating weight of the environmental case against air travel?
For my part, my opposition to expansion of capacity at Heathrow has just hardened.

Russian "guaranteed" rights are trampled

2008-01-17T17:36:00.000Z

The regime in the Kremlin is out to annoy the UK as much as possible, but the actual losers are Russian citizens. Article 44 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation provides:
"(1) Everyone is guaranteed freedom of literary, artistic, scientific, intellectual and other types of creative activity and tuition. Intellectual property is protected by the law.
(2) Everyone has the right to participation in cultural life, to the use of institutions of culture, and access to cultural values."
This provision is in practice waste paper as individuals lose the opportunity to use British Council services. And the British Council's local employees particularly suffer as they lose their livelihoods for no reason - security men visit them late at night and make it clear on flimsy pretexts that they had better not turn up for work any more.
Will any Russian citizens take steps to get redress against this affront to their rights? Will any of them win, or even bring, a court case over the loss of their rights or their jobs? I'm not holding my breath.
In the case of State of Mauritius v Khoyratty (2006) the Privy Council said: “The idea of a democracy involves a number of different concepts. The first is that the people must decide who should govern them. Secondly, there is the principle that fundamental rights should be protected by an impartial and independent judiciary. Thirdly, in order to achieve a reconciliation between the inevitable tensions between these ideas, a separation of powers between the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary is necessary."
I do not believe any of these concepts applies in the Russian Federation today. Whatever kind of state it is, it is not a democracy.

The pupil premium? We've had the debate

2008-01-16T18:02:00.000Z

Being a veteran of the Federal Policy Committee ("FPC") and party conferences, and having read the party's constitution - yes, really! it's dull, but not that dull - which is downloadable from the party website, I'd like to put Nick Clegg's speech on public services last Saturday into context. First, the pupil premium, which I warmly supported at FPC, is Lib Dem policy already - it was adopted by the Federal Conference in September 2007 as part of a package on redressing poverty and inequality, backed by a paper which explains the concept at some length. Second, the party is distinctively democratic in its policymaking: policy, under the guidance and supervision of the FPC, is debated and adopted or rejected, and to a large extent proposed, by Voting Representatives at the party's conferences. Third, the Federal Policy Committee resolved some months ago to set up a policy working group on schools. The working group is being assembled now and will be working on its proposals over the coming months.
Therefore, it is premature to spend hours over-analysing Nick's speech. Members who have ideas to contribute on schools are welcome to get involved in the policy process. We believe in democracy in this party.

Keep going, British Council

2008-01-15T17:32:00.001Z

In my experience, generally in litigation when your side is being reasonable and the other unreasonable, the wise strategy is just to go on being reasonable. After all, sooner or later each side's behaviour will be considered by a judge who is professionally reasonable and fair, and will take a dim view of the unreasonable side. So it was good to hear about our ambassador in Moscow's polite but firm stance yesterday when the Kremlin gave him a reprimand for the fact that the British Council offices in St Petersburg and Yekaterinburg (somewhere in the Urals, I gather) have reopened, despite an order from the Russian Government to close them. Russian officials have described the action against the British Council as a retaliatory measure. If the British Council is really doing something wrong then the Russian Government should deal with the problem by fair and proper procedures. And if, as seems on the cards, in due course this comes before the International Court of Justice, the judges are unlikely to be impressed by bullying tactics.
In English law, unless I am mistaken, government by edict was proclaimed illegal during the reign of Charles I (by Sir Edward Coke, CJ, who told him he only had such powers as the law of the land allowed: see The Case of Proclamations, 1611). If the Russian legal system cannot enforce such a principle, it is scarcely functioning as such.

Our tainted coasts

2008-01-12T22:26:00.000Z

This year has not started very well for me: my reaction to the Government’s announcement of the go-ahead for a new generation of nuclear power stations is a feeling of dread. I was brought up near the north Essex coast, and in my teenage years the view from my home across the estuary encompassed Bradwell power station. Though not particularly significant visually, it was in fact a Magnox type nuclear reactor which had been a source of plutonium for use in the manufacture of nuclear weapons. And, as we locals knew, it had a crack in it, so it had been shut down.
I often wonder whether my late father’s cruel and unexpected death from leukaemia was connected with the fact that he used to go sailing in the waters off Bradwell. Because I have learned that it discharged radioactive water used for cooling into the estuary. Radiation causes mutations and mutations cause cancer, geddit?
Now the Government wants to build a new reactor there - in fact lots of them, in lots of places. Our beautiful coasts will be tainted for (in practical terms) ever.
I hope you guys who would rather cause that contamination than confront the nation with its own energy wastefulness, will have a really bad day, in fact lots of bad days, unless and until you change your minds. Have you ever seen someone dying of leukaemia? Try it. Or rather, I hope you won't have to.

Racing post

2008-01-12T22:19:00.000Z

In horse racing terms the favourite got off to a good start with the advantage of a lighter handicap (from MPs and journalistic pals, you understand) but soon began to flag badly, and it was just as well for him that the race was a sprint and not a steeplechase because the challenger was gaining on him fast by the home straight. I never believed the hype about a 60:40 lead. If the course had been a week longer, I believe the favourite would have lost.
But the ballots have been counted, and under the rules of the course the favourite won by a short nose.
Congratulations Nick, say I. The members have made their choice: you are the leader now. I’m following! This is the start of the real race.

Regent's Park saved from rubber crumb menace

2007-12-14T13:07:00.000Z

Last night at a packed meeting Westminster City Council rejected the controversial planning application by a PLC for permission to cut down a copse of trees and construct five-a-side football pitches with rubber crumb surfacing for private hire in Regent's Park. I blogged about this on 13th July. Apparently only one councillor (Labour, Church Street Ward) voted in favour. A convincing victory for a coalition of local opposition.

Labour spin was unfair to Lord Drayson

2007-12-10T13:08:00.000Z

Remember Lord (Paul) Drayson, who resigned on 7 November from his post as Minister of State for Defence Equipment and Support to spend more time motor racing? How did we ever fall for that improbable story? Drayson is a multi-millionaire businessman. According to Sunday Times correspondent Mick Smith, Drayson resigned after Defence Minister Des Browne refused to back him in rows with Bill Jeffrey, the Ministry of Defence’s top civil servant; the motor racing story was a cover-up put out to save Gordo from embarrassment. Gordo’s addiction to spin seems as bad as Tony Blair’s.

According to Smith, Chief of General Staff General Sir Richard Dannatt (among others) was calling for new armoured personnel carriers for the army, but the purchase was repeatedly postponed for lack of funding. Drayson got involved, announced a shortlist of three vehicles – a British, a French and a German-Dutch – and decided to speed things up by selecting the French one. This led to the rows with the top civil servant, who wanted the British one. So the Army has to wait longer for its armoured personnel carriers. The word “Afghanistan” comes to mind.

Thanks to the spin, Lord Drayson came in for quite a bit of press criticism last month for such apparently irresponsible behaviour, that now seems totally unfair. With friends like that....!

Lord Drayson devised the Defence Industrial Strategy published in December 2006 – see http://www.official-documents.gov.uk/document/cm66/6697/6697.asp
- under which, put shortly, business acumen was used to come up with significant changes in Ministry of Defence equipment purchasing practices to increase the pace of the defence acquisition cycle, which was hailed as important for improving cost effectiveness, to the benefit of the Armed Forces as well as us, the taxpayers. Sounds like a good idea to me. A second document on the Defence Industrial Strategy – DIS 2 – was due to be published on 13 December but there is a funding problem, so, as predicted by industry-watchers, on 21 November Baroness Taylor, Drayson’s successor, announced that DIS 2’s publication was postponed.

All this makes the Government's commitment to pressing ahead with replacement of dangerous, expensive and useless Trident seem even more questionable.

Why so enthusiastic?

2007-12-10T00:06:00.000Z

If you put a high priority on a certain policy outcome as a matter of ethics, it makes sense to vote for the leadership contender who favours that outcome, and since policy is about actions not thoughts, it does not matter whether his reasons for that policy position are pragmatic or ethical. For this reason, given my friend Linda Jack's principled support for unilateral nuclear disarmament, I am unable to understand her enthusiastic cheerleading for Nick Clegg's leadership campaign that endorses the policy of wait and see on Trident. The Trident issue is extremely important on numerous grounds: it is a symptom of how the United Kingdom sees its place in the world; it has the potential to divide Scotland from the United Kingdom; it could influence whether the future will bring nuclear disarmament or proliferation. It is the issue that started me blogging as a reaction to the Lib Dem parliamentary leadership's methods of influencing the conference's decision on Trident: I felt that the Lib Dems' policymaking process had been subverted and the wrong policy reached. I would not be able to support enthusiastically a candidate who was so uncritical of it.

Grosvenor Square in the rain

2007-12-08T20:03:00.000Z

I joined the Campaign Against Climate Change march in London today, calling for action now – a far stronger Climate Change Bill, annual carbon emissions to start going down instead of up, annual not five-yearly reports, renewable not nuclear energy and no third runway at Heathrow. And we deplore US President Bush’s failure to attend the Bali talks. We marched past Downing Street to Grosvenor Square, and listened to rousing speeches in the rain. One of the speakers in the rain, getting a big cheer, was leadership contender Chris Huhne. If anyone is still undecided how to cast their vote and wants the Lib Dems to go places, they can rest assured that they won’t go wrong with him. This man’s ability, energy, commitment and radical edge are beyond question.
The rally was peaceful, and the marchers were a nice bunch, even including some people from the Eden Project, as well as some charming children who were very taken with the dog. My umbrella packed up though, in the gusty wind. On the whole too cold and wet to be fun, but who knows, we may have done some good. Fingers crossed.

Vince Cable - an absolute star (Part Two)

2007-12-07T21:31:00.000Z

Ha! I am proven right again! I blogged in September that Vince Cable was an absolute star. Tonight on BBC Radio 4's Any Questions Vince shone like an absolute star (again). Eat your hearts out, you sad Tory and Labour supporters. And by the way, this proves that people of all ages can emerge as fine leaders.

Blasphemy claim refuted

2007-12-05T16:04:00.000Z

Lots of cheers for District Judge Caroline Tubbs, the unsung heroine at the City of Westminster Magistrates' Court who refused to issue a summons against BBC Director-General Mark Thompson for blasphemy for allowing Jerry Springer- the Opera to be broadcast. Now Lord Justice Hughes and Mr Justice Collins have refused to overturn her decision. Lots of cheers for them, too! And lots of boos for Christian Voice, the pressure group that tried to prosecute. Christian Voice are a joke, but the threat of prosecution is not funny at all. The mock-opera featured Jesus as a guest on Jerry Springer's TV chat show. According to leading counsel for the Christian Voice group, the case was about “protecting the constitution of the nation which is built on the Christian faith." (???) But human rights pressure group Liberty has commented that the decision has "critically weakened outdated blasphemous libel laws". As their legal officer said, this ruling is a blow to bigotry, and the obvious next step is to repeal this outdated offence. Yesss!
The BBC News Front Page has filed this under Entertainment, which is probably what it deserves.

Help pioneering work become mainstream

2007-12-05T14:12:00.000Z

No other issue weighs on my mind as heavily as the destructive impact our species is having on other life on this beautiful planet. Therefore I welcome the news that my former Federal Policy Committee colleague Adam Carew, Chair of the Green Lib Dems, is supporting Chris Huhne for leader. Adam said: "Chris is special… Chris is our green champion - his record on green issues is unrivalled.” See the full article at http://chris2win.org/news/165.html

I completely agree with Adam. Chris Huhne's contribution has been terrific during my years on the Federal Policy Committee. But I have learned that it goes back long before then – a fellow-supporter has confirmed that she was reading Huhne’s work on environmental economics eighteen years ago when she was doing her PhD. She writes: “What was pioneering back then is about to become mainstream. Vote Huhne!” Hear, hear.

Homage to Vince Cable

2007-12-04T16:31:00.000Z

I learned on Sunday morning that Vince Cable thought up the "Stalin to Mr Bean" line himself, in the bath. Vince disclosed this significant snippet during a guest appearance on BBC Radio 4's Broadcasting House. What creative genius! The man's awe-inspiring.

Nick Clegg's lecturing - when and where?

2007-11-30T15:39:00.000Z

No one has contradicted the information I was given that Nick Clegg’s degree was a lower second (see my posting on 26 Nov). If that was the case, then here’s a puzzle. His constituency website states: “Nick stood down from the European Parliament in 2004 and lectured part time at Sheffield and Cambridge Universities.” That seems to mean that in 2004-5 Nick had part-time lecturing jobs at both of those prestigious universities. I find that surprising, if he only had a lower second, in view of the intense competition for academic jobs. However that may be, the Royal Society of Arts’ website, advertising a lecture given by him, states – presumably based on a briefing from his office - that he has been “a part-time lecturer at Sheffield University and a guest lecturer at Cambridge”, which is different. And the Independent, reporting the Clegg leadership campaign launch on 19 October 2007, stated that Clegg was a part-time lecturer at Sheffield University in 1996-99 but with no mention of lecturing there in 2004-5, nor any mention of lecturing at Cambridge at all. Spotting inconsistencies is a habit I've acquired from the day job. So: when was he a part-time lecturer at Sheffield University? Was he a part-time lecturer at Cambridge University or a guest lecturer, and when? How did part-time lecturing differ from guest lecturing? Can someone clarify the facts please?

I receive leaflets

2007-11-26T15:30:00.001Z

The three leaflets I have had from the Clegg campaign devote a lot of space to listing his backers, who are his main asset. This listing resembles a medieval procedure (called compurgation) whereby a defendant would get a dozen freemen to swear he was a good bloke, as distinct from dealing with whether the allegation was in fact true. They are largely the same group as only 19 months ago backed Ming Campbell, none more vehemently than Clegg himself (see e.g. Guardian 20 Jan 06). By last month their support had melted away.

The other feature of Clegg’s leaflets that struck me as a bit of a waste of space was his denunciation of the Japanese WW2 prisoner of war camps. Surely this is motherhood and apple pie stuff. Who – in any party – would disagree?

In one of the leaflets Lord Ashdown was quoted praising Nick Clegg’s intellect. He may be right, but this claim makes me wonder whether it is true that, as I have been told, Clegg’s university degree was a lower second - which after such an excellent school education seems a bit disappointing - and if so, what is the explanation. Exams aren’t everything, but they are something, and I would like to know. (Brown, Cameron and Huhne all have firsts.)

An intense, watchful cat

2007-11-26T14:57:00.000Z

I enjoyed this comment in Saturday's Times piece on Huhne: “He would not fall for any of our tricks because he knows them all, and more: interviewing Mr Huhne is like circling an intense, watchful cat that seems perfectly friendly but is probably quite dangerous.” I liked the fact that the writers had - correctly, I believe - detected a quality that, very relevantly for this contest, would mean that Brown and Cameron wouldn't dare take their eyes off him in case they got a mauling.

Audit reveals Government business incompetence

2007-11-23T14:37:00.000Z

The business incompetence of the Ministry of Defence and the Labour Government is put in the spotlight by a National Audit Office report on the 2003 privatisation of the defence technology business QinetiQ.
Initially there were seven bids for QinetiQ valuing the business at between £450 million and £600 million. The private equity firm Carlyle purchased a 37.5% stake for £42 million. That valued QinetiQ at only £374 million. That was in 2003. The value of the stake rose to £372 million.
How did this happen? The NAO press release states: “Carlyle were appointed as the preferred bidder in September 2003 despite price sensitive issues still being outstanding. This turned a competitive process into one of negotiation.” To rephrase that, once the other would-be buyers were ruled out, there was only one person left in the saleroom – a situation any self-respecting business person would exploit, and Carlyle did. The situation was made even more favourable to Carlyle by Treasury pressure for the sale to go ahead. Carlyle bargained the price down following negotiations concerning QinetiQ’s pension fund deficit and the Long Term Partnering Agreement (LTPA). The NAO states, “the commercial value of the LTPA was not fully understood”. The mind boggles.
(By the way, why was a UK defence technology business sold to a US firm?)
The report also reveals that the MoD made up to 20 per cent of the equity available to management and employees in an incentive scheme, but did not seek specialist advice on the scheme. Apparently the top ten managers (former civil servants) negotiated the incentive scheme with Carlyle while it was still bidding for the business. Sounds like a conflict of interest to me, but with no one on the Government's side properly safeguarding the taxpayers' interests, the managers seem to have run rings around the MoD, as they acquired shares worth £107 million by the time of flotation in 2006, from their initial investment of a paltry £540,000. That is over £200 for every £1 they invested. Chairman Sir John Chisholm got shares worth £26 million and Chief Executive Graham Love shares worth £21 million.
This Government will eventually sink by the weight of its own incompetence.

This time, get it right

2007-11-22T17:38:00.000Z

I do not hold Nick Clegg responsible as head of Ming Campbell’s leadership campaign in 2006 for the false, and damaging, claim made by telephone canvassers that none of Chris Huhne’s former colleagues in the European Parliament were supporting the 2006 Huhne leadership bid. (In fact, three Lib Dem MEPs were supporting Huhne.) Equally, I do not hold Huhne responsible for the “Calamity Clegg” tag used in a briefing document sent out by someone in his team.
So let’s back to what’s important, which is this: the Tories must crush the Lib Dem vote if they are to regain power. In order to do that, they must destroy the Lib Dem leader. And they will do their darnedest to. They thought, rightly or wrongly, that they could do that while Ming Campbell remained leader; they even regarded his leadership as a Tory asset. The Tories are a ruthless power machine.
Therefore, we now need a leader who avoids pitfalls, is steady under fire, is, in a word, tough.
Which of the contenders fulfils that need? In TV interviews and hustings during the last few weeks, time after time, Huhne has remained cool under fire, while Clegg has not. This is no nine days’ wonder. I have observed Huhne from the sidelines for many years. He is always well briefed, always clear, always focused. He doesn’t make mistakes. He can be charming and persuasive, but can be lethal in debate.
Clegg is intelligent, charming and able. But he is not yet tough, or not tough enough. He is only 40 and he has not faced adversity. He is not ready to be leader.
Huhne is the heir. He knows the Lib Dems through and through and is the right man to lead us at this time. He should have won in 2006. I was right then, and I’m sure I am right now. Mark my words.

European Parliament adopts climate change goals

2007-11-16T12:57:00.000Z

I welcome the announcement that the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats in Europe (ALDE) MEPs are fully behind ambitious goals adopted by the European Parliament in yesterday’s resolution on the EU strategy for the forthcoming UN Climate Change Conference. The EU has a vital role here that overshadows all grumbles about the drawbacks of membership. And I am relieved, but not surprised, that naïve economic liberal opposition to any market intervention, even to correct market failures in respect of environmental damage, has lost the argument.
ALDE coordinator on the European Parliament’s Temporary Committee on Climate Change Lena Ek (Centerpartiet, Sweden) commented that the situation was “critical” and that “Ambitious goals are absolutely necessary.” She also stressed the importance of forests and the need for sustainable forest management.
ALDE-member Vittorio Prodi (Margherita, Italy), TCCC Vice-Chair, said that we would have to decrease our CO2 output drastically and in order to do that: “we may have to consider more radical suggestions that allocate a number of carbon emission rights per individual. A system like "One person, one emission right" may be necessary in the near future."

Clegg on school vouchers - the evidence

2007-11-14T18:51:00.000Z

Did Nick Clegg endorse school vouchers or didn't he? Well, the evidence that he did is rather strong. Not only Rachel Sylvester in the Telegraph on 29 October but also self-confessed Clegg fan Jasper Gerard, writing up an “exclusive interview” in the Observer on 21 October, state that he did.
Gerard writes, quoting Clegg: "'I want a sense of empowerment on a daily basis for people accessing health care and good education.' Well that's clear. But he differs from free marketeer Tories in that 'having lived in Europe and had children born in hospitals in Europe, they have a far greater sense of equity in health and education. It is not like a supermarket but the patient, pupil or parent has entitlements which the provider of services has to meet.' So according to his 'pupil premium', parents would be given a voucher to spend in their preferred school; but while a flaw in such schemes is often that the savvy middle class pack the best schools, Clegg would increase the value of the voucher for the needy - making the poorer child a more attractive proposition to good schools.”"
So there we have it. Unless Jasper Gerard and Rachel Sylvester were both wrong. which seems improbable, Nick Clegg expressed approval of school vouchers for parents. But the Lib Dem "pupil premium" concept is extra money that goes to schools for each pupil they take from a deprived background.
It seems pretty clear that Nick Clegg (1) did endorse school vouchers for parents and (2) either did not understand or did not like the "pupil premium" idea which is not Clegg's idea but that of the Federal Policy Committee's policy working party chaired by Baroness Barker. And a brilliant idea it was.
I find all this rather discouraging.

If Cameron is Clegg lite...?

2007-11-13T17:20:00.000Z

The comment that “Cameron is Clegg lite” troubles me a lot, especially because Nick Clegg said it himself.
Lite is a low-calorie, slimmer, weaker, more dilute, more basic, version of the original. The converse of lite is heavy, full strength, even “classic”. If Cameron is “Clegg lite”, what is the full-strength version?
With Nick Clegg, if you turn the sound off, you see someone who looks like Cameron, without a doubt. The similarities of age and physical characteristics between the two men are not something Nick Clegg can do anything about; but I wish he would give the way he dresses and his hairstyle a makeover, to make himself more distinct from Cameron. It would be a miscalculation to think that being easily mistaken for Cameron was an electoral asset. After all, Sir Winston Churchill deliberately cultivated an unmistakeable appearance; being short and bald didn’t matter at all.
More importantly than appearance, if you close your eyes, what do you hear? In January 2006 Matthew D’Ancona wrote in the Telegraph, apparently quoting from Nick Clegg: “He does not think that "clobbering middle England is the solution to our problems either economically or politically"”. D’Ancona added: “In an interview last September - long before Mr Cameron had said he would never endorse an insurance-based health service - Mr Clegg was warning that "it would be really, really daft to rule out any model from Europe or elsewhere" and that "breaking up the NHS is exactly what you do need to do"”. The implication that Clegg talked like Cameron was clear.
The Telegraph perceives Nick Clegg as like Cameron. In May 2007 the Telegraph comments page said that Clegg was: “a free marketeer with a commitment to localism. The Left-wing activists distrust him, but that perhaps is no bad thing.”
Last month, again in the Telegraph, Simon Heffer wrote: “Mr Clegg is felt to be more of a "Tory" than Mr Huhne. This is not just because he once worked for Leon Brittan, but because his belief in traditional liberal values of the sort adopted by Margaret Thatcher in her economic programme is thought to be rather strong.”
In January 2006 Nick Clegg told the Daily Telegraph that “slightly callow packaging and re-packaging” had been “the hallmark of David Cameron's leadership of the Conservatives” and that Cameron had been engaged in “rather hollow, presentational manoeuvres”. Absolutely; but if Clegg wins the leadership election, I hope his own style of leadership will not just be a heavier-gauge version of that.

Court will hear challenge to halting of BAE fraud inquiry

2007-11-09T14:29:00.000Z

Three cheers for Lord Justice Moses and Mr Justice Irwin, who have given two pressure groups - Corner House Research and the Campaign Against the Arms Trade - permission to seek a judicial review of whether the Serious Fraud Office's decision to stop its inquiry into the BAE Al-Yamamah arms deal was lawful. The decision to be reviewed was taken last year when the Government made the SFO drop its investigation into the huge deal to provide military aircraft and equipment to Saudi Arabia in 1985. Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, said that the investigation was threatening the UK's national security. I understand it is not denied that huge sums of money were paid by the MOD to a member of the Saudi royal family in relation to the deal.

Sands, Huhne and Trident

2007-11-08T20:15:00.000Z

In an article on the Guardian website on 5th November Philippe Sands states: “…the Liberal Democrat spring conference in Harrogate rejected a ballot effort calling for the abandonment of Trident. Instead, the conference narrowly voted in favour of a resolution calling for a delay on the Trident decision.” Oddly enough, in that debate in March (as well as in literature distributed beforehand), the Lib Dem leadership strenuously insisted that the amendment to the main motion (the “ballot effort”) did not call for the abandonment of Trident but for its retention until it rusted to bits. I thought at the time that this was not what the amendment, fairly and properly construed, meant, but the accusation that the amendment was “flawed” and “badly drafted” seems by repetition to have become the current wisdom. Who is right: Sands or the leadership?
Sands goes on, in his article, to claim that the “minimum deterrent” that leadership contender Chris Huhne favours as one of two alternative options after the 2010 talks under the 1968 Treaty on non-proliferation of nuclear weapons (“NPT”) – the other option being no renewed system of nuclear weapons if there is a genuine improvement in the international environment - “raises serious problems with the NPT”. Huhne said that he did not intend to replace Trident, but if it were imperative to do so other delivery options would be considered with a smaller nuclear warhead than the UK’s current warheads. According to Sands, Huhne “appears to have adopted a policy in support of enhanced targeting that would bring the United Kingdom into conflict with its obligations under the NPT”.
The main problem I have with Sands’ criticism is that the NPT is not and has never been concerned with delivery systems (missiles and so forth): it is concerned with what they deliver – the nuclear warheads (the bombs). Hence the UK would not be a breach of the NPT if it acquired new delivery systems. Whether their targeting was better or worse than that of the present missiles would not be within the scope of the NPT.
Sands also writes: “Developing a new range of smaller nuclear weapons…would enhance the UK's nuclear deterrent, rather than diminish it” by tending to increase the prospects for the use of UK nuclear weapons, by establishing a tactical capability where none previously existed. He argues that this would be contrary to the “commitment to pursue a diminishing role for nuclear weapons in security policies, as agreed by the parties to the NPT in 2000.” Thus according to him a proposal – such as Huhne’s – to replace the UK's existing numerous and enormously powerful nuclear warheads with a minimum number of less powerful ones would be a breach of the NPT. Leaving aside what the “commitment” in 2000 was and what effect it has, the conclusion seems startling, so is there a flaw in the argument? I think so. Sands slips in a tacit assumption that the Huhne proposal involved a shift in security policy towards greater willingness to use such weapons. But that is plainly not the case: certainly the Huhne manifesto says nothing of the sort.

From bad to worse in Pakistan

2007-11-04T22:12:00.000Z

President Musharraf has declared a state of emergency and fired the chief justice and other senior judges. Commentators say he has done so to prevent the Supreme Court from delivering a ruling that as a military officer he was ineligible to stand in the recent presidential election. Why is Pakistan such a mess, yet neighbouring India manages to keep its democracy together despite a population of over a billion?

Congratulations to Claire Kelley

2007-11-03T20:32:00.000Z

We Lib Dems have been rightly criticised for not selecting more women for winnable seats. But today for a change some good news - I am delighted to learn that the membership of Lib Dem-held Harrogate and Knaresborough have selected Claire Kelley to contest the parliamentary seat when Phil Willis stands down. Hearty congratulations, Claire.

Chris Huhne's Trident Policy Stands Up

2007-11-01T15:05:00.000Z

The Trident system has three parts: the missiles, which are American-owned, the 192 warheads, which are British-made and owned, and four British Vanguard-class submarines that carry and fire the missiles. Chris Huhne, if I understand him rightly, thinks there is no convincing case for replacing the Trident system with a system of equal capacity. So the preparatory work now being carried out on a new generation of submarines can be cancelled.
As I understand his views, Chris Huhne does not advocate scrapping Trident now because he is not a unilateralist. However, Trident has a finite life, and he thinks a replacement system of equivalent scale and performance to Trident is unnecessary in relation to the threat, its expense is unjustifiable and it would mean technical dependence on the United States which should be avoided. He thinks that we should decide in 2010 after the next round of disarmament talks between either having no renewed system, or having a minimum deterrent.
I gather it has been suggested that a minimum deterrent would be nearly as expensive as replacing Trident and would have to be land-based but from information I acquired as a member of the Trident Working Group I do not believe these criticisms are sustainable. In the event of failure of the 2010 disarmament talks, even if the UK’s current nuclear weapon stockpile were dismantled the UK could assemble small fission weapons quickly using plutonium from the stockpile of about 70 tonnes at Sellafield, much of which comes from reprocessing fuel from the Magnox reactors in operation since the 1950s. The UK would continue to operate nuclear powered submarines whether or not Trident was replaced so it would only need to purchase a delivery missile from the US or France or alternatively use aircraft.

It's a no-brainer!

2007-10-31T17:18:00.000Z

Well, nominations have closed and there are just two candidates. When deciding who has the necessary leadership skills, don't just listen to what they say, look at what they've done. Deciding whom to vote for is a no-brainer!
When I asked what Nick Clegg offered that could compete with Chris Huhne's vastly greater experience of the wider world, I got no answer. So I am backing the candidate who didn't go into the public sector but instead chose to get out there and cope with the wider world - not looking at the water but swimming in it. And I look forward to seeing Chris Huhne wipe the floor with Gordon Brown and David Cameron, because he is the man to do it.
Here are the reasons why:
Proven team builder with ability to best use the talents of others? Chris Huhne, definitely yes - look at his successful business record. Nick Clegg, not proven.
Proven formidable debater and media performer? Both candidates are good but Nick Clegg can be pushed on to the back foot, and then he tends to start talking too fast. Over many years I have never seen or heard Chris Huhne flustered; his intellect, coolness under attack and mastery of his brief make him a formidable debater. And his media knowhow is tremendous because he was a journalist for 19 years.
Proven grittiness of character to overcome adversity? Chris Huhne, proven - his first job after university was as an undercover foreign correspondent in India. Nick Clegg, not proven. He has not yet done anything that made such demands on his character or resourcefulness. But at 40 he has plenty of time.
Chris Huhne is passionate about the environment, and as the Lib Dems' environment spokesman has been highly praised. With his help, we are now the party with by far the best environmental policies of the main parties. I believe people will recognise how important that is, and our distinctive policies will prove to be winners.
During my years on the Federal Policy Committee, of the two candidates Chris Huhne has made by far the greater contribution to policy ideas. Specifically, he rejects the current procrastination and fudge that passes for Lib Dem policy on the UK nuclear deterrent. What would Nick Clegg do when the decision could not be delayed any longer? I have no idea. But Chris Huhne's stance is typically thoughtful, based on cost and benefit to the country. He cannot conceive of a justification for the huge cost of a replacement system as powerful as Trident, and he acknowledges the implications for UK foreign policy of being dependent technically on the United States. Therefore, for him, the choice is between a minimum nuclear deterrent and none.
That is the way we should make policy - with rational, open debate based on evidence.
We are fortunate that Chris Huhne has chosen to use his formidable talents in public life when he must have many alternative opportunities. This leadership election offers a great opportunity for the Lib Dems. This time I hope we take it.

Vince Cable boycotts Saudi state visit

2007-10-28T20:39:00.000Z

I welcome the news that acting Lib Dem leader Vince Cable MP is to boycott this week's state visit to Britain by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, due to Lib Dem opposition to the Al Yamamah arms deal. It is reported that Vince has declined to meet King Abdullah or attend a banquet by the Queen at Buckingham Palace.

What troubles me

2007-10-27T22:12:00.000+01:00

I resolved not to make up my mind on the leadership contest until after nominations close, because one shouldn't be hasty (as an Ent would say) but it is constantly on my mind because the politics of the future are not just going to be about party "positioning" (that ghastly word) but about averting disaster, and our party could be crucial in forcing through big changes. Today I was musing on the training I once received in good recruitment practice. First you define the qualities required for the job and then you look at the candidate's track record, which is the best evidence of those qualities. And the higher in the organisation the job is, the more important it is that he/she must have those qualities. Pretty obvious really.
So we should define what qualities to look for, and then look for them in our dynamic duo's CVs. I think we should be choosing a proven team builder, able to best use the talents of others, and himself or herself a formidable debater and media performer, with the grittiness of character to overcome adversity, the vision to see what needs to be done and the boldness, even daring, to go for it. And what troubles me about Nick Clegg is that his CV just doesn't measure up. He is too inexperienced, particularly of the world outside Parliament, and has never as far as I can see had to overcome adversity. I am looking to Nick's campaign team for an explanation of what he offers that can compete with Chris Huhne's vastly greater experience of the wider world, because at the moment, I just don't see it.

Not a herd animal

2007-10-25T15:12:00.000+01:00

I have every sympathy with Cllr Peter Tyzack whose letter to last week's Lib Dem News pleaded: "This time can we not have a procession of party grandees telling us who we should be supporting". But some grandees are falling over themselves to do just that, as if trying to start a stampede. Judging from their track record in late 2005-early 2006, they do not have the monopoly on wisdom on this subject. The febrile atmosphere of the Palace of Westminster doesn't help. And who knows what deals have been done to secure their support? No, I am not a herd animal, and I find this procession irritating rather than anything else. I have been trained to base decisions on evidence, and that is what I will do - in due course.

Comparing Gordo, Dave, Nick & Chris

2007-10-23T16:45:00.000+01:00

I've been collecting for comparison a few relevant facts about Gordon Brown, David Cameron, and the current Lib Dem leadership contestants. Here are the results so far.
Date of birth: Brown 20/2/51. Cameron 9/10/66. Clegg 7/1/67. Huhne 2/7/54.
First degree, university and year of graduation: Brown history Edinburgh 1972. Cameron PPE Oxford 1988. Clegg social anthropology Cambridge 1989. Huhne PPE Oxford 1975.
What they did between graduation and becoming MPs: Brown 1972-1982 postgrad student of history of Scottish Labour Party (PhD - eventually! - 1982), 1976-1980 politics lecturer, 1980-1983 journalist/editor, Scottish Television current affairs dept; elected as MP 1983. Cameron 1988-1992 Tory research dept; 1992-1993 special adviser to Tory Government ministers; 1994-2001 PR man at Carlton Communications; elected as MP 2001. Clegg 1989-1990 postgrad student of political theory, University of Minnesota; 1990 trainee journalist in New York; 1991-1992 trainee in European affairs, Collège d'Europe, Bruges; 1992-1993 political consultant in London; 1994-1996 worked at European Commission; 1996-1999 adviser to Sir Leon Brittan (vice-president of European Commission); 1999-2004 MEP for East Midlands; elected as MP 2005. Huhne 1975-1994 foreign correspondent (including a spell undercover in India), later financial/economics journalist on various newspapers including Guardian, Independent, Independent on Sunday; 1994-1999 founded then ran economics consultancy firm in London; 1999-2005 MEP for South East England; (dates unknown) wrote some books; elected as MP 2005.
My conclusions so far: (1) I have found no evidence to back the claim that Gordon Brown was a distinguished economist; (2) David Cameron's CV is the perfect CV for a shallow and glib careerist; (3) I want to know what strengths Nick and Chris respectively propose to bring to the job of wiping the floor with the other two leaders.