May I take the opportunity of wishing a very happy New Year to all my readers and, in particular, to my regular contributors.
I’d guess that 2009 wasn’t the greatest year most of us have experienced. 2010 is going to be a big one, whatever happens. I hope it will also be a good one for you and your family.
David Taylor was a highly respected, independent-minded Labour MP who will be missed on both sides of the House.
His death was announced on his website earlier this afternoon. Couldn’t the Times have allowed just a short, decent interval to mark his passing, rather than crassly headlining its website report: Labour faces by-election test after MP death?
A wonderful start to Christmas yesterday evening, with the Christingle service at St Peter’s, Ruthin. We drove through the Elwy valley, thick with snow, looking like a Christmas card in the twilight.
Today, after morning service at St Paul’s, we returned home and put up the barricades against the cold. There is no better place on earth at this time of year than home, and I can’t imagine how utterly awful it must be to be without one.
No matter how depressing the economic outlook, how dreadful the political climate, most of us have a huge amount for which we should be deeply grateful.
A very happy Christmas to all of you.
Essi Ahari, District Inspector for Colwyn Bay, and Dewi Roberts, his colleague in Ruthin, have drawn my attention to the new North Wales Police “Balance your Bobbies” website, which enables users to feed back their local policing priorities and see how well the police are doing in meeting them.
The site is easy to use, and fun, and I’d recommend you to give it a go.
Only two months after Bob Ainsworth’s embarrassing U-turn on TA training, the Times this morning reveals that the Ministry of Defence has cancelled dozens of training exercises in an attempt to cut costs and was obliged to withdraw from a major Nato exercise, Bold Avenger 09.
The reasonable – and remarkably restrained – comment by Liam Fox, the shadow Defence Secretary, that: “The Government must reassure the Armed Forces that these cuts will not have any impact on their readiness for current operations or to respond to the unexpected” has provoked an accusation of “scaremongering” from Bill Rammell, the Armed Forces Minister:
“Any suggestion that Service personnel are not ready to respond to the unexpected is nonsense, as was seen in the fast and effective response to the flooding in the North of England last month.”
Maybe I’m missing the point; or perhaps Mr Rammell is. The Army undoubtedly did a wonderful job in Cumbria, but, as I would have thought it unnecessary to observe, Workington is a bit different from Helmand.
This morning’s Telegraph report that a rift has developed between the Prime Minister and Peter Mandelson comes as little surprise. It has been very obvious for some weeks that Mandelson deeply disapproves of the strategy of entrenchment that the Prime Minister, together with the likes of Ed Balls, Alan Johnson and Peter Hain have decided to pursue, and is showing his displeasure through his absence.
Indeed, little has been seen of Mandelson – who was virtually omnipresent in the media in the first half of this year – since the Labour party conference in September. It was then that he urged delegates that the only way for the party to stand a chance of winning the general election was by welcoming and embracing change:
This will be a “change” election. Either we offer it, or the British public will turn to others who say that they do.
Of course, we must celebrate our record and be proud of defending it. We did fix the roof while the sun was shining…
But let us remember that you win elections on the future, not the past.
No doubt to Mandelson’s dismay, however, Brown has apparently decided that the future is the past. The PM and his allies have pursued an extraordinarily crude, class-based campaign that appears rooted in the mid-1970s. Peter Hain’s speech to the Welsh Grand Committee last week was a prime example of this unsubtle approach, which must be utter anathema to the urbane, calculating Mandelson.
The Telegraph tells us that Mandelson is now rarely seen in the No. 10 war room, having seemingly become “disengaged”.
If that is indeed the case, it can only be to the Prime Minister’s detriment. He should remember that it was Mandelson’s recall to the colours that saved his bacon after his dreadful summer of 2008, when it was only David Miliband’s cold feet that prevented his being ousted.
This close to a general election, Brown needs Mandelson badly. He should make his peace with the First Secretary without delay.
Posted in Alan Johnson, David Miliband, Gordon Brown, Labour Party, Peter Hain, Peter Mandelson
Tagged Politics
Father Tim Jones, Anglican priest of the parishes of St Lawrence and St Hilda, York, has delivered a sermon to his congregation telling them that, in some circumstances, it is permissible to go shoplifting, provided they choose the right sort of victim – which, in Father Jones’s terms, means the Tesco or Sainsbury on the retail park, rather than the eight ‘til late on the corner:
“I would ask that they do not steal from small family businesses, but from large national businesses, knowing that the costs are ultimately passed on to the rest of us in the form of higher prices.”
I see; it’s a kind of redistributive self-help.
But what about the eighth commandment? I can’t recall that that was qualified in any significant way. “Thou shalt not steal” seems pretty unequivocal. Not a lot of wriggle room there.
Father Jones patiently explains:
“My advice does not contradict the Bible’s eighth commandment because God’s love for the poor and despised outweighs the property rights of the rich.”
Father Jones’s “advice”, in fact, is total, unadulterated baloney. A sensible priest who wished to emulate God’s love of the “poor and despised” would offer them tireless, unconditional succour, comfort and support, rather than encourage them to break the law, with all the potentially devastating consequences that might flow from doing so.
It can be done. And if he wants to see how, he could do a lot worse than visit his nearest branch of the Salvation Army.
Last Thursday, Sara and I were delighted to visit the community centre in Old Colwyn, where we enjoyed a dinner sourced and prepared by members of the Tan y Lan Kidz Club.
The meal was excellent: well cooked, presented and served. All the guests (who included ward councillors Brian Cossey and Cheryl Carlisle, community beat manager Mike Williams and parents of the hosts) thoroughly enjoyed themselves.
The club’s organiser, Jenny Hughes, plans to extend its activities next year by planting out a vegetable garden, so that the entire meal, from soil to plate, may be produced by the children.
The ability to cook is important and fundamental to a civilised society. Jenny is doing a wonderful thing by helping the Kidz Club youngsters to discover its delights.
A number of other papers have picked up the report in yesterday’s Times that the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, had £1.8 million in a Swiss bank account at the time of his conviction eight years ago. The information, as the Times with remarkable understatement observes, tends to cast doubt on Libya’s contention that Megrahi was merely a low-ranking airline worker.
Furthermore, it has emerged that the Scottish prosecuting authority, the Crown Office, refused bail to Megrahi only a year ago, for fear that he would try to gain access to the money.
The information casts still further doubt on the wisdom of the Scottish justice minister, Kenny MacAskill, in deciding to free the terrorist on compassionate grounds last August.
It is to be hoped that Mr MacAskill, who put on a particularly pompous, grandstanding performance when announcing Megrahi’s release last summer, will break into his Christmas vacation and explain to the families of the 270 victims of the outrage why he did not make the existence of Mr Megrahi’s nest egg public a lot sooner.
I am sorry to see that the Pontypridd MP, Kim Howells, will be standing down at the general election.
As a minister, he was always forthright, yet courteous. However, it was his outraged comment on the 2002 Turner Prize exhibition in Tate Britain that particularly endeared me and, I would guess, millions of others to the former Communist NUM official.
Having surveyed a display that included a suspended Perspex ceiling and a billboard describing a pornographic film, Howells left a note reading: “If this is the best that British artists can produce, then British art is lost. It is cold, mechanical, conceptual bullshit.”
I have a feeling that Turner himself would have agreed.
Apologies for the silence on the blogging front over the last few days. It’s been a manically busy period, with wall-to-wall select committees, as well as heavy constituency business.
Got home last night after midnight after winding up on a statutory instrument taken on the floor of the House. I tweeted that I had just done a 16 hour day and received a tweet in response telling me that I should feel lucky that I was not a serving soldier in Afghanistan. I think it came from a soldier’s wife. She was entirely right and I tweeted back saying so, feeling a little guilty.
Trawling through the blogs, I was surprised to see myself criticised by a Welsh language blogger for reading the Times, on the grounds that “there is almost never anything of interest in it”.
Sometimes you feel you just can’t win. I sent out a tweet saying as much and was amazed and amused to receive a reply (by now it was 1.00 a.m.) reading:
Wow.. what a criticism of an MP.. to read the Times. Sometimes I think the current Govn’t get their inspiration from the Beano.
What a strange world we inhabit.
The pre-Budget report was delivered by Alistair Darling in his customary hypnotic monotone. Darling is now such a master of mind-numbingly boring declamation that you almost fail to appreciate how truly awful is the state of the British economy:
Because of the severity of the recession, my forecast for this year’s borrowing is £178 billion. Next year it will fall to £176 billion. As the economy recovers and the deficit reduction plan starts to take effect, it will fall to £140 billion and then to £117 billion, and will reach £96 billion in 2013–14—a slightly lower level than I forecast in April—before falling to £82 billion in 2014–15. As a share of GDP, borrowing will be 12.6 per cent. this year, 12 per cent. next year, then 9.1 per cent, then 7.1 per cent., and 5.5 per cent. in 2013–14. It will fall to 4.4 per cent. in 2014–15. If we exclude public sector investment, or capital spending, and take the economic cycle into account, the budget deficit is expected to fall to 1.9 per cent. at the end of the forecast period.
And so it went on, one grim statistic after another.
The eye-catching measures – well trailed – were the windfall tax on bankers’ bonuses and the freezing of inheritance tax thresholds, all part of Labour’s core vote strategy of being seen to punish the City fat cats and the landed toffs.
Yet drill down in the PBR and you will see that the real targets of Labour’s attack are the middle-income coping classes. In 2011, national insurance contributions of both employers and employees earning over £20,000 will be increased by a further 0.5 per cent – a tax both on jobs and on moderate earners.
Labour’s tax increases amount in total to about £7.8 billion, or £370 per annum more per family – all postponed, of course, until after the general election.
So today’s PBR was indeed a declaration of war. But, so far as Labour are concerned, the real enemy are the aspirational middle classes. New Labour really is dead.
I am delighted to welcome the former Plaid Cymru Assembly member, Mohammad Ashgar and his daughter, Natasha, a former Plaid European candidate, to the Conservative party.
Mr Ashgar told a news conference today that he felt “out of tune” with Plaid policies, in particular its desire for an independent Wales, and believes in “the Royal family and one United Kingdom”.
In other words, Mr Ashgar considers Plaid to be a subversive, separatist party that wants to break up our country and render Wales an insignificant province of a European superstate. Which, of course, it is.
I am sure that Mr Ashgar will soon find himself completely at home in the Conservative party, which wholly reflects his own values.
Spoke yesterday in the debate on the second reading of the Energy Bill, a slim document that even Labour’s Alan Whitehead called a “modest” measure. Given the importance of the issue, many Members had turned up to speak, mostly about what was missing from the Bill.
Sparse as it is, the Bill does, however, contain provisions aimed at encouraging the development of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, to be funded by a levy on the electricity supply companies, which will undoubtedly be passed on to consumers. CCS will be a vital tool in addressing carbon emissions, but the Government’s plans are really too timid. Britain has the potential to be the world leader in this field, but other nations are already powering ahead of us and unless we can come up with something considerably bolder, we will be left behind,
I told the House that I approved strongly of provisions in the Bill that make the reduction of carbon emissions one of the principal obligations of both the Secretary of State and Ofgem. However, I was disappointed that more was not being done to encourage the development of reliable renewable technology.
The biggest obstacle to progress is the way that Renewables Obligations certificates (ROCs) are structured, giving developers every incentive to opt for wind power, a relatively cheap and well established but inefficient technology, rather than invest in potentially more reliable renewables such as tidal power.
ROCs are very blunt instruments. One ROC is awarded for every megawatt hour of renewable generation, irrespective of the technology used to produce it. This tends to favour wind farms and to discourage investment in new technologies.
The Government recognises the problem and intends to address this by “banding” ROCs, giving additional ROCs to innovative technologies. However, onshore wind will continue to attract ROCs at the current rate, providing an attractive return that will mean that wind farms will continue to proliferate and the development of tidal power, like CCS, will probably go overseas.
The Bill is very much a missed opportunity and I have no doubt that the issue will have to be revisited by the next Government soon after the general election.
Advertising billboard in railway station.
