Month: Jan 2010

Categories
National politics

Andrew Marr paper review a farce

I didn’t listen to much news yesterday, on Sunday, I was more interested in getting out to Snakes and Ladders in Brentford to give the baby an outing. This morning, with the baby in nursery, I have a chance to catch up.

Yesterday’s BBC coverage of the Peter Watt revelations in the Mail on Sunday could only be described as a naked act of partisanship. The BBC, and the Andrew Marr show in particular, got this totally wrong. If you are a Conservative you have got to conclude that the BBC really is the enemy.

I have just been replaying the Andrew Marr show, see it here. The news bulletin was a very smart bit of editing (if your objective is to protect and promote the Labour party). The way they handled the Peter Watt story was to include it but only in a way that minimised its impact. The lead story was the snow. Fair enough. The second story was Brown’s own interview in the New of the World. The only substantial part of that interview was Brown’s comment that he would serve a full term. Surely it is not that news worthy that someone who has only been Prime Minister for two years and is intent on standing again will undertake to serve a full term?

The Peter Watt story came up third before the Togo football team ambush. The line they used on the Peter Watt story was he says that “it will be difficult for the party to win under Gordon Brown”. No reference is made to Watt’s claims that Brown lied directly over the election that never was in 2007, probably the most damming claim made by Watt. No reference to Brown’s lack of strategy.

The BBC website uses the same damage limitation technique. Their main website news story covering the issue leads on Brown’s “silliness” quote from the News of the World and refers to the Peter Watt story in the 3rd paragraph. Yes, suitably prominent but why? The line they use is so anodyne you have to question why it is the third paragraph.

But ex-Labour Party general secretary Peter Watt told the Mail on Sunday they were unlikely to win under Mr Brown.

The only answer can be that the BBC news editors want to be able to claim that they gave the story due prominence without doing any damage to Labour. You have to read through 600 words before they come back to the story:

Former Labour general secretary Mr Watt told the Mail on Sunday: “Gordon is a big political figure but he lacks the emotional intelligence required by a modern leader. If you cannot connect with people you will fail. Leaders like Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher were fantastic communicators. Gordon just doesn’t have those skills.”

In his memoirs he said Downing Street was a “shambles” after Mr Brown took over and said that the prime minister had spent £1.2m on the “election that never was” in 2007.

Mr Watt resigned as the party’s administrative chief in 2007 after admitting he knew businessman David Abrahams had been donating cash to Labour through third parties.

Mr Byrne dismissed the Mail story as “a bit of innuendo and gossip” which related to events that took place some years ago. He added that Mr Watt was “a thoroughly decent guy but the chap’s got a book to sell”.

Even at the bottom of the article they fail to cover Watt’s most damning revelations and go to the trouble of quoting Liam Byrne to further mitigate the damage (to Labour).

Back on the Marr show if you scroll through to 6:40 you get to the most egregious example of damage limitation. Why does Marr choose to discuss the papers with two Labour supporters? Both actress Maureen Lipman and historian Tristram Hunt are Labour people. Lipman is an avowed Labour luvvie and Hunt even worked for the party. Don’t forget that Marr has described himself in his youth as a “raving leftie”. Naturally enough they manage between the three of them to refer to the Peter Watt story without dealing with its implication that our Prime Minister is probably unhinged, that he has no strategy beyond being in power for the sake of being in power and he is quite prepared to lie if it suits him.

Categories
Ealing and Northfield

Grit Part II

Recently a lot of people have been asking why the Council does not grit residential roads and pavements. There are a number of reasons, the foremost being cost. A couple of days ago the council leader, Jason Stacey, explained that we grit 250Kms of main roads. Residential roads and pavements would run into many hundreds of kilometres and be prohibitively expensive even if we could find enough plant and/or day labourers to do the job at very short notice. Obviously there is a limit to how much expensive plant and storage space we want to have idle in case we have a once in ten years snow event.

There also comes a point where putting even more salt on the roads is going to play havoc with trees and gardens – they don’t like salt water. In parts of the world where they have more regular snow events they don’t recommend common salt (sodium chloride) as a snow melting agent. They go for calcium or potassium chloride as less environmentally damaging agents.

If this cold snap goes on much longer we will be glad we did not use all our grit on pavements – hopefully we will have enough left to allow us to keep food getting to shops.

I have visited Massachusetts in the winter and there most counties have local ordinances that demand that home owners keep the footpaths adjacent to their properties clear. Indeed it snows so often that people often have snow blowers for this job. Most of the work is done by homeowners with shovels. As a visitor I set to work to help my host meet her obligations. Unfortunately she had a corner house so it was double the work.

I did a quick scout around on Google and found this page from the Cambridge, MA’s Department of Public Works. It is their summary of owner responsibilities above, click to enlarge. If we decided to follow this model we could, as a community, deal with the problem for ourselves. It would take some culture change I suspect.

Categories
National politics

The “C” word

It seems that one of the main results of this week’s failed coup against Gordon Brown is that Alistair Darling has plucked up the courage to make a partial admission of the extent of the disaster that the Labour government has visited on our country. In an interview in the Times today he says:

Many departments will have less money in the next few years,” he said. “[The cuts] are utterly totally non-negotiable … We had a very constructive meeting on Wednesday about what we needed to do and wanted to do in the Budget. I have always been clear you have to level with people. We are talking about something like a £57 billion reduction in the deficit through tax increases and spending cuts. It is a change of direction.”

It is good to see a number from Darling but it is less than half of the amount required. On Thursday Philip Hammond, Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, roasted the Government in the debate of the Pre-Budget Report. The key section of his speech was:

Listening to the Chancellor and the Prime Minister yesterday, and to the Chief Secretary, one would think that the global financial crisis had caused the meltdown in Britain’s public finances, but that is not what has happened. According to the Treasury’s figures, the economic recession accounts for about a quarter of Britain’s deficit—that is the cyclical part of the deficit, which economic recovery will eventually eliminate—but three quarters of it is structural, and requires a structural response.

The deficit is £178 billion right now. So three quarters of that is £133.5 billion not the £57 billion figure mentioned by Darling.

Categories
Communications disease Ealing and Northfield

Local MPs “communicating”

I have seen various reports lately complaining about Labour MPs using their £10K a year Communications Allowance to promote themselves. As I reported on Tuesday Andrew Slaughter doesn’t like the Conservatives spending their own money to win your vote but he is quite happy to spend your money doing the same thing. According theyworkforyou.com he spent almost all of his £10K last year, £9,899 leaving £101 unspent.

Ian Gibb, the Conservative candidate for Ealing North, has been unimpressed with Stephen Pound’s latest missive, paid for by you, which talks about how good he has been with expenses but fails to admit that last year he spent £9,854 leaving £146 unspent.

This week Iain Dale also has stories of a Labour minister and an ex-Labour minister using the Communications Allowance to campaign against their own government’s health policy.

When this matter was voted on by Parliament all but two Conservative MPs voted against it. Those two have since left the party. The Conservatives are committed to doing away with the Communications Allowance.

Categories
Ealing and Northfield

Grit

As we all struggle to get around today here is an update from the Council Leader, Jason Stacey, on where we are at with grit:

I thought it might be helpful to let you know about the issue of grit, where the Council grits, etc during this cold spell.

The Council will grit all primary and secondary roads – a primary road would be for example the Uxbridge Road or Mandeville Road and a secondary road something like Greenford Avenue or Castlebar Hill. The primary and secondary roads equate to a network of around 250 kms of road. It is not unusual for gritters to need to cover this distance twice during a night – especially when there has been snowfall. To put this into some sort of context – if our gritters are required to do two rounds during a night this comes to 500 kms of road being gritted – about the same distance from the Town Hall to the Eiffel Tower in Paris!

In addition to the gritting process, footpaths in major footfall areas will be gritted – so for example all of our town centres, areas around major transport hubs, shopping parades, etc. To achieve this we effectively suspend ‘zone 1’ cleansing operations and these crews are directed on to footpath gritting. Yesterday there were 29 teams out in the borough.

Our priority for the time being has to be to work on these priority areas. As you will be aware, this is not a simple do it once job and then it is done, but rather we have to keep continually doing them to ensure the priority areas keep clear.

In terms of grit levels, the Council currently has around 2,000 tonnes of the stuff. The Council has actually been gritting pretty regularly since before Christmas when stocks were at 3,000 tonnes and each gritting round uses around 100 tonnes. We therefore consider our levels at present to be pretty sound though it is quite high compared to many other London boroughs.

Categories
Communications disease Ealing and Northfield National politics

Slaughter doesn’t like it up him

For all of those of a certain age you will remember the catch phrase of Dad’s Army’s Corporal Jones: “They don’t like it up ’em!”.

Andrew Slaughter, who will represent a bit of our borough until the last possible minute, is complaining today about his opponent in Hammersmith and Shepherds Bush, the excellent Shaun Bailey. According the the Times today the Bailey campaign has outspent him. No doubt when Slaughter voted for the Communications Allowance he thought he was voting to keep his job forever with a £10K a year incumbents self-promotion allowance paid for by taxpayers. At least the cash the Tories are spending is their own money.

We know Slaughter is a bit of a chicken because he didn’t go for the Central Ealing and Acton consituency and has instead left the boy Mahfouz to stand against the redoutable Angie Bray. Angie will make a great MP, and eat Mahfouz for breakfast as she would have done Slaughter.

Meanwhile Slaghter got himself selected to fight the Hammermsith and Shepherds Bush seat to the east. I have seen Bailey in action a couple of times – he is very impressive. A straight talking, local lad made good who has practical ideas and bags of experience of the social issues of that part of London. He is backed by the incredibly enthusiastic Hammersmith Tories. Slaughter is right to be frightened but it is not the money that will unseat Slaughter, it is 13 years of poor Labour government and a much better alternative locally as well as nationally.

Here is Bailey’s video which is the source of one of Slaughter’s complaints. Slaughter could do the same and distribute it virally for next to nothing – the trouble is that Slaughter just would not have come across as well as Bailey does. Bye, bye Andy!

Categories
Ealing and Northfield

We can’t go on like this

This morning I went to the Conservatives’ NHS draft manifesto launch event. It felt very like the Boris events in the run up to the 2008 London elections. It was very well done and the Tory team came across well.

Having been distracted with looking after baby and travelling up to town this morning I had missed the Chancellor’s black hole document.

The Chancellor’s document has been an effective spoiling tactic although it demonstrates some chutzpah after Brown’s expanding public expenditure claim on the Andrew Marr show on Sunday. It seems that it has somewhat put the Tories on the back foot having to defend themselves, although Osborne has been quick to rebut the Labour claims.

It seems to me that the Tories are pursuing a strategy whilst Labour have had some luck with a tactic. It is always a mistake to talk about what your opponents are doing. The Tory message is not as clear or as simple as some would like but at least they are devoting their energies to their own agenda. Labour isn’t.

This was one reason this morning’s event felt like a Boris one – Livingstone made the same mistake. Boris was sunny and people liked him whilst Livingstone spent his time talking about Boris. Another reason was that I sat next to a new party member – an older Welsh bloke – an experience I had more than once attending Boris events. I am not sure that Darling was talking to many new members this morning. Boris’s step-by-step roll out of his manifesto was an impressive feature of his campaign which also seems to be being repeated now.