Today the uber-blogger Iain Dale launches his new site ‘Dale & Co.’ I’ll be chipping in for him on various topics from time to time. I’m still going to going to use guythemac.com for my more mundane, everyday witterings, I’ll just make sure I put my more considered stuff over on the new site where it will get more eyes. I’ll link anything I write over there, over here, so that everything remains archived.
Anyway you can check it out at: http://iaindale.com
Filed under Uncategorized
I just watched the BBC 10 O’Clock news. The lead story was the conviction of Levi Bellfield for the murder of Millie Dowler. The reporter was asked why Bellfield had proved so hard to catch and enthusiastically explained that Bellfield was what the police call ‘forensically aware’ and that he took several steps to make himself harder to be found. That’s a fair point to share and of interest to the news audience. And that is where a responsible broadcaster would have stopped. But this reporter didn’t stop.
He was keen to show he had been listening in court and so went on to list a couple of very specific things that Bellfield did while he was killing in order to leave no forensic trail. Wannabe serial killers the nation over will have enthusiastically been taking notes. Hard working police detectives the nation over will have been hitting their heads on their desks.
Responsible news coverage from our flagship broadcaster? Or titillating, smug showing-off that puts us all a little more at risk?
Filed under Uncategorized
The public ‘debate’ on the referendum for the alternative vote has been shameful. Red herring and dishonest arguments have been pushed by both sides. I’d have rather they kept the debate on the following terms:
The best case for the YES Campaign
Everything else – the gumpf about cost, simplicity, one person’s vote being counted more times than anothers etc. etc. is just bullshit frankly. As it happens I’m persuaded by the NO argument above as a case against full PR, but not quite as a case against AV. I think AV would be a small, incremental improvement to our voting system, and I don’t think we’g get a glut of coalitions at all. I voted YES already by post. However, I fully expect the NO vote to win – the YES campaign have had their chance to make their case in the face of a terrible NO campaign. They didn’t up their game, if/when they lose they need only look at themselves, I’ll not lose sleep.
Filed under Election, Politics, UK, UK Politics
…. in a very sorry field, goes to the YES campaign for this effort:
Filed under Election, UK Politics
So last week, the toddler had been watching ‘CBeebies’ on the iPlayer on my wife’s iPhone. She left it on our bed. My wife then went into do the laundry and gathered the bedsheets quickly…. you can guess the rest. One very shiny iPhone went right through an entire hot cycle in the washing machine. Unsurprisingly, it was dead. Pressing anything brought about nothing.
My wife in one of life’s optimists. She scoured google and decided that the thing to do was – and I am not making this up – place the iPhone in a bag of rice, and place in an airing cupboard for three days. Oh, how I laughed at her thinking that would work. This was an incredible piece of technological precision with highly advanced and sensitive silicon circuit boards whose connections had been flooded with water. Rice and time? Come on.
Oh, how my jaw dropped when a couple of days later she plugged it back in and it sprung back to life with no apparent ill effect. Amazing.
And so I leave you with this thought – when the iPhone first came out the techy geek types nicknamed it the ‘Jesus Phone’ – with my wife’s Easter iPhone resurrection I put it to you that it is a nickname it has now earned. Kudos to Apple.
One of the more worrying American imports in recent years is the so-called ‘internship’. Nick Clegg launched an attack on them yesterday, and has opened himself up to ‘hypocrite’ charges as a result.
For anyone with no idea what a internship is – basically employers offer a program that gives students, new graduates or ‘gap-year kids’ the opportunity to get ‘work-experience’ for the company, unpaid, often for a University summer, sometimes for much longer. The argument goes that that the company is doing the kid a favour – these aren’t real jobs, really just admin – but it gives the interns a ‘foot-in-the-door’, a ‘network of contacts in the industry’, the chance to check it is really the right industry for them and most importantly the magic ‘experience’ to add to their CV. This helps escape the job-seeker’s paradox that you can’t get a job without experience and you can’t get experience without a job. The employers are often so impressed with interns that at the end job offers may be made. When presented like that it sounds like the company is doing a great social good. ‘Helping job-seekers!’. Very worthy. The reality isn’t quite so straightforward nor is it the win-win for all it first appeared.
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I am a huge advocate of the importance of both meritocracy and competition (see my philosophy page). Meritocracy is key to social mobility, which in turn is key to attaining social justice. As we drift to internships becoming a ‘cultural norm’ in the UK we’re creating a blocker to meritocracy. In the long run this will harm our economy and society.
When you listen to the work that interns really do they are typically not ‘work-experience’ in the sense of shadowing someone doing their day-job or having a go while the incumbent looks on. No, more normally they have interns doing ‘real jobs’. They’re expected to arrive and work set hours, and often kicked out of the program if they do not. They have set administrative duties to perform which keep the business going. To me this crosses the line from ‘work experience’ to outright exploitation. If the interns weren’t doing this work then somebody in paid employment would be. That person would then be off the unemployment register and paying tax and NI and pumping those earnings back into the economy. Instead we have them still on the dole whilst the student extends their debt and works for free with no guarantee of any reward at the end. I can only spot one real winner in the arrangement.
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We need to consider who has the means to take internships: Who can offer three months of their lives working without pay, living in a big city? Only people with alternative financial support. Straight away that excludes a whole chunk of society. The kids from the estates to who we’ve been preaching if they work hard they can achieve anything; who then put their heads-down, ignored the peer-pressure, worked hard, got the GCSEs and A-Levels, went to Uni and got the 2-1 or first degree’s now find themselves stuck in the old job-seeker’s paradox and flipping burgers, angry and disenchanted with society and saddled with university debt. Meanwhile, the well-to-do kid who scraped through their GCSEs and A-Levels thanks to the kind of one-on-one educational attention you only get at the best independent schools, who drank their way through uni but pulled their socks up just enough to get an OK 2:2 sails into the intern post because they can stay with Mum and Dad and have an allowance. They get the magic experience on the CV, they get the contacts and the reference, they get the end job. Now, they may well be ‘able’ enough to do the job, but the ‘better’ candidate has missed out. That stinks to me every bit as much as those well meaning, misguided affirmative action plans companies have in place. Both spit in the face of the idea of meritocracy.
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The trend is embedding. In some industries it is almost becoming a pre-requisite to entry that you have done an internship. We must level this playing field. It pains me to say it, because by nature I’m against regulation but to get proper meritocracy and competition working we should legistlate that if the internship has the characteristics of real employment then legally it must be treated as such with a formal contract, fair selection process, and at least a minimum wage salary. In the long run this will be a real win-win for every player in the economy.
Rather than wait for such regulation I hope the companies realise now that they are being short-sighted by saving pennies here which could cost them pounds later. The barrier to entry means they’re potentially missing out the very best, hungriest talent. The outlay of paying minimum wage for administrative support is minimal. The return on genuinely recruiting the best people into your firm for the long-run will pay back that tenfold. Meritocracy is not just good for society – it is good for business too.
Filed under Economy, UK, UK Politics
This diagram graphically represents the size of our daily spending on servicing our debt in comparison with our daily spend on other areas. It is a sobering reminder ahead of today’s budget of why eliminating the structural deficit must be a priority. The depressing thing is that controlling the deficit will not change the daily interest on the existing debt – it’ll just stop it getting bigger and bigger. We’re going to be paying for the party in the 90s for a long, long time to come.
Filed under Economy, UK, UK Politics
Today there has been an alarming headline that 1.6 million children in the UK live in ‘severe poverty’. Examples of the reportage can be seen at the BBC and Guardian. Every now and again a news stat sets off a little alarm bell in my head. This was one of those times – according to the Office of National Statistics there are somewhere around 12.1 million children in the UK (2000 census, I suspect little variation since then). So according to today’s reports approximately 13% of children in the UK must live in ‘severe poverty’. That little alarm in my mind was making a coughing noise which only thinly disguised the words ‘bull-shit’. I usually go off on one when pointing out the rotten state the UK was left in after 13 years of Labour but even with blue-tinted specs on I would never claim that they left us with 13% of all kids living in ‘severe poverty’. This figure needed some sniffing.
The original report is from Save the Children. It can be downloaded here. It’s pretty hard to find how they technically defined ‘severe poverty’ for their ‘research’. After a bit of digging it turns out they define it as those living in households with incomes of less than 50% of the UK median income (disregarding housing costs). A median single income in the UK is circa. £20k. I have no idea how they then use their methodology to ‘disregard’ housing costs – but the top and bottom is that a couple with two kids who, after housing costs are paid, have an income of £12.5k a year are classed as in ‘severe poverty’.
When you look at the methodology the metric they use is not about poverty – it’s a about income distribution. Without wishing to belittle the quest for more equitable income distribution- I can’t help but think that such loose use of language cheapens the words ‘severe poverty’ and so insults those millions in the world (including in the UK) who, very literally, do not know where their next meal is coming from. We could have a very important national debate about income disparity and this data could be used to support the case of those who believe the gap is too wide – however to hijack the language ‘severe poverty’ is a distraction from all that is valid in that debate.
Now don’t get me wrong: that couple with those two kids on that income are going to have a horrible time. The report does do a good job of highlighting the very real issues they face. I am also under no illusion that genuine severe poverty exists in this country – the kind were parents go and beg on the street to feed their children – I see some of this here in Birmingham. Some stories that happen right now in my City would make you weep – but to say ‘severe poverty’ is anything other than at the very margins of our society is a fantasy. To suggest, as the words they have chosen do, that 13% of all children live in squalid, desperate circumstances is ludicrous. By overstating it, all Save the Children have done is muddle two debates and distract some focus from tackling those very real cases that do blight our society.
Filed under Center right, Centre Right, Economy, Politics, UK, UK Politics, Uncategorized
In 1993 I had my first sapping experience of what it must be like to live under a truly authoritarian state. My misfortune took place in Tahrir Square in Cairo. It is no surprise to me that this place has now become the focus of popular rage against the State. My own Orwellian brush with petty officaldom has left me with an aversion to ‘big government’ that still influences my politics today.
It was the winter months and the much younger, slimmer me was backpacking around that part of the world. I’d come down into Egypt by bus from Israel. My original plan was to stay a couple of weeks, maybe hit North Sudan then get a sail-boat back up the Nile, get over to Suez and then ferry over to Jordan. More aware travellers told me I had no chance of getting into Jordan with an Israeli stamp on my passport – the two countries were still technically in conflict so if I turned up with my current passport they simply wouldn’t let me in. No problem – I could get a clean UK passport from the embassy and carry on with my plan. Fair play to our consular staff, three days after I turned up at their door I had my nice new passport. I was told I would have to go to the interior ministry to get a replica entry visa in my new clean passport or I would have trouble leaving. The place I had to go to was called the ‘Mogamma Building on Tahrir Square’. Now my problems started.
The Mogamma was an enormous 1950s Soviet-style-architecture building which acted as the hub for all aspects of the operation of Mubarak’s state machinery. If you lived in Cairo and needed a licence for anything (and you needed a licence to do just about anything you may wish to do) this was where you had to go. It teemed humanity. Folk wanting permission to open shops, permission to import goods, permission to export goods, permission to go-to-university, permission to employ foreigners, planning permission for new buildings, permission to keep animals, permission to install satellite TV etc. all had to find the relevant official, with the relevant Government stamp somewhere in this building. They then had to convince the official to press that stamp on their piece of paper. That step, as I found, could never be taken for granted.
I expected a long haul. I got there at 9 in the morning and joined a queue. Three-and-a-half hours later I got to the front. I explained what I needed, I was given a desk number and told to report there. Another long trip through a seemingly endless Labyrinth and I found my ‘desk’. My heart sank. Another enormous queue of people with tickets for the same desk. I stood in line for another two hours. I got to the front and was confronted with a stout, middle-age lady with a black Islamic head-dress and as stern-a-face as I’ve ever seen. She looked me up and down and curled her nose and lips. Body language is broadly universal, so I don’t need translation to know when someone is looking at me with disdain. “What?” she barked. I explained I needed a new entry visa. She sighed. ”Give me your passport.”, she ordered. I passed it under the glass. She opened her top drawer, dropped the passport in and slammed the drawer shut. She did it in one fluid motion without breaking her gaze of resentment at me.. ”Come back this time next week – now go away”. She sneered. I tried to clarify. She looked around me and shouted what I assume is the Arabic equivalent of “Next!” – I tried to hold my ground and ask for a receipt at least. ”This time next week. Go Away.”.
You couldn’t travel outside Cairo without a passport so I spent the week exhausting the city’s charms. The Egyptian museum is truly astounding – but other than that the technical description I would use for the place is ‘a shit-hole’. The next Tuesday could not come fast enough. I got there even earlier. There was still an hour and a half queue to see my charming lady. ”You.” she said. For a small moment I was pleased she recognised me, it saved having to explain why I was there again. ”It’s not ready. Come back next week.”. I was dejected. Again, I tried to protest. She again looked around me and called the next person, and told me in perfect English to “Shut your mouth and go away”.
Another week to kill. A miserable time, the local food had got to me, and I spent the week reading in the hotel room not able to get very far from a bathroom. For my next weekly visit I had to bung up on stomach drugs in the hope I could last out the queue without disgracing myself. A very uncomfortable queue (usual couple of hours). Exactly the same script. It required my every ounce of self control not to lose my rag. I decided I was not going to move. I demanded to see a superior. She barked behind the glass to someone in her office. They muttered to each other in Arabic. The man came around to my side of the screen and told me “Sir, you must go. Your passport will be processed by next Tuesday.” I pointed out I’d been waiting two full weeks. He looked at me earnestly “Sir, if it is urgent we can have an express service for 100 dollars. It would be ready by end of day.” Suddenly I realised I was being shaken down. Two things stopped me just paying up. The first was I was actually on quite a tight budget, the second was that I was still quite ill and realised that even if I got my passport that day I would still probably be stuck in my hotel recovering for another few days going nowhere fast. I told him I didn’t have that sort of money, and would come back next week – when I expected it to be ready. He said very politely “As Sir wishes”. That was it for another week.
I was feeling much better on the final week. I’d spoken to the embassy for advice and had my plan. I got to the building before it opened. I raced to the desk and was still beaten by a couple of others but this time the wait was only 15 minites. As predicted, we went through the now usual weekly ‘not yet ready – so piss off’ dialogue. I smiled, and told her I ‘would see her later’ – and made my way to the Egyptian Tourist Police Station. The ‘Tourist Police’ in Egypt are an agency dedicated to stopping Tourists from being ripped off. Mubarak knew that Tourism was vital for his country’s economy and anyone who went home bad mouthing Egypt could harm that revenue. So he had a whole separate police-force just to look after people like me. I explained my story. The captain sighed wearily. “Come with me.” We marched over the Square, back into the building, up to the desk, he ignored the queue, banged on the glass and gestured with his thumb to the ‘lady’ to head to a corner office. Her eyes narrowed and she snarled at me as she went to join him. You could see through the window her standing arms folded as he jabbed his finger at her whilst shouting. She half-shouted back, and for a moment I thought he was about to punch her. She walked out the office, back to her desk, opened the drawer where she had dropped my passport three weeks earlier, pulled it out, opened the back page, picked up a rubber stamp on her desk and pressed it down. She passed it through the glass and said. ”It’s done. Go away.”
The passport had never had to go anywhere. The stamp could have been done in five seconds flat entirley at her gift. She waited three full weeks and would have kept going until I paid her. The policeman shouted at her once more and we left. ”Enjoy the rest of your stay in our Country” he wished me as he went back to the station.
Now as ‘police state experiences’ go I got off lightly. I don’t even register on the scale of possible abuse of power. I was merely delayed for a few weeks in a crappy hotel. I wasn’t held in a cell, or tortured with electricity or any of the other nightmare things that citizens of dictatorships endure. But it did give me a tiny glimpse of how crushing to the soul it must be live in the kind of place where your every interaction with government has the potential for you to be held to ransom simply because some minor official is bored by their pointless job and wants to show off their minor power or increase their pathetic state salary. I imagine all of those thousands of people in that building, all chasing their licenses for this and that, and all being frustrated unless they had the means to pass on the expected ‘baksheesh’ to grease-the-wheels. I imagine the hundreds of thousands of people who must have been frustrated by officialdom in that building over the last 18 years. Those people who would have no ‘Tourist Police’ agency to help them solve their nightmare. The collective frustration. The accumulated economic damage to the Egyptian economy. The simmering resentment of Mubarak and his elite.
So it is no surprise to me at all that they camp in their thousands outside the Mogamma building in Tahrir Square. That the place hasn’t been flattened or burnt to the ground by the protesters is, in my view, testament to extraordinary restraint of the Egyptian people. I wish them well.
Filed under Indulgent, Politics, Uncategorized
The last time I heard Baroness Warsi speak her big thing was to make sure the Conservative party was “a political party, not a dining club”. The sentiment was spot on. New members (like myself), will have realised the party is good at getting money out of you, good at getting you to post leaflets, good at organising social events – but not so good at giving you any sense of voice or influence. It’s not unreasonable to suppose that many people who might feel motivated to join a political party may have as much or more of an interest in policy as they do in giving money, stuffing leaflets or attending BBQs.
Today Warsi took a step to address this by re-launching the Conservative Policy Forum. 100+ activists from across the UK gathered at the old Custard Factory in Birmingham. The event got off to a bit of a stilted start, the morning session was a succession of speakers (Warsi, Jeremey Middleton, Fiona Hodgson and Natalie Elphick) who were individually good, but unfortunately had very repetitive content. The gist was:
It needn’t have taken more than 10 minutes to tell us all that: It took an hour and half. The irony in launching something to enable members to talk, rather than be talked to, by lecturing the same message four times wasn’t lost. It contributed to a little frustration in the audience which bubbled over into the first question and answer session. I actually quite felt for Baroness Warsi – here she was launching a sincerely positive initiative yet was getting criticised for the ‘lack of democratic involvement’ - as a flavour she was asked: “who elected the regional co-ordinators? Who elected the forum council? Who elected you Madam Chairman? Why is this kick-off the first I’ve heard about it?”. Leadership in a voluntary organisation is an exercise in herding cats and I don’t envy anyone who has to perform that role. Warsi handled the more direct comments with self-deprecating aplomb and just about managed to stop the moaning minnies from sapping the energy out of the room.
Oliver Letwin came after lunch and did a sterling job in properly positioning the intended focus of the CPF. He was crystal clear that the CPF must not become a forum to critique current policy implementation – that’s the opposition’s job. Current policy is current policy and it is the Government’s job to properly implement it. The CPF is there to inform the 2015 manifesto and respond to the needs of Britain as it will be then. Letwin comes across as a bit of a policy wonk on TV and his manner on the box is not everyone’s cup of tea. In the flesh he was very convincing in his narrative. He talked about the eyes-wide-open choices the current government has made, the strategic reasoning for doing the more ambitious stuff early in the Parliament and why there will be no respite in this current pace of policy implementation until mid 2012 (“After 13 years preparation, I don’t know why people find it surprising that we actually had a well prepared plan we’re putting into play”). For me, the gold of the day came when he put up a straw-man of the possible priorities for the 2015 government – the CPF is expected input to a manifesto that will help:
I found it reassuring in the age of the 24-hour-news cycle that at least some politicians still do some forward thinking. It’s not a bad first stab at what challenges we will face in 2015– he was also at pains to express this list was not exhaustive, and the CPF could well add to it.
Launching something is not the same as delivering on it – but I have high hopes for the CPF. It is absolutely a step in the right direction for letting ‘membership’ of the party mean more than the right to be mugged for more cash. The instinct that solutions and great ideas need not come from smoke-filled rooms in Whitehall, but can come from the collective wisdom of the huge pool of motivated, bright people outside the Westminster bubble is something that could really differentiate Conservatives from the heavily centralised Labour Party. We’ve always claimed to be different in that way – if we can make this work – then we can make that claim demonstrable.
Filed under Centre Right, Politics
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