End of Blair

The day Blair became Prime Minister the weather was beautiful and sunny. Brown steps up and it is dull and grey. Perhaps there is a higher power after all and he is trying to tell us something.

Faceblog

Ok, I admit it. I am a slave to fashion and have jumped on the passing bandwagon that is Facebook, and consequently have been ignoring my blog. I guess I have been seduced by its easy interactivity neat design, not like the do-it-yourself chaos of blogger. But I doubt my facebook pals (some of whom are real friends) are terribly interested in my various ramblings so here is my composite entry on the current political scene.

Gordon Brown - it is all very weird. Why is he not yet PM? He can command a majority of the House of Commons - and he is de facto leader of the Labour Party. This slow handover is yet another constitutional outrage and pure indulgence. For what? So 6 non-entities can indulge in a deputy leadership contest. Surely a strange and pointless Labour Party quirk if there ever was one. In most political systems, a potential leader and deputy present a united ticket and stand together - e.g. President and Vice-Pres in the USA. What is the point in foisting a deputy on Brown who he might not even have in his cabinet - a deputy party leader on the backbenches would be the equivalent to the Tory chairman of the 1922 committee - influential, maybe, but hardly worth the national attention it is being given.

And like many others, I live in constant wonder every time Hazel Blears comes on television: how on earth did she make it past security - surely she is masquerading as an MP, otherwise standards are even lower than I feared.

On the opposition benches, and in the letters pages of the Daily Telegraph, there is much excitement about the "abandonment" of Grammar Schools. I recall that Maggie closed more of these in the 1970s than anyone else, but clearly this is a conveniently forgotten fact. Is anyone seriously considering turning the clock back to the old two tier state education system? Apparently so. There I was thinking that Cameron would have difficulty finding a policy on which he could make a stand in favour of progress and thereby add some substance to his image. Speaking of which, I have been told about half a dozen times recently that I look like him (wrong colour hair, of course, and I didn't go to Eton, oh no, actually I did), including by a wedding singer in Torquay. I guess I will have to keep out of trouble in case it hits his poll ratings.

Second Life

I have never explored Second Life, and don't have any particular desire to do so, my first life is keeping me more than busy, thank you. However, two stories about this cyberworld recently caught my eye. The first was the law firm, Field Fisher Waterhouse, has opened "an office" in Second Life. The second was that the authorities are concerned that Second Life, and other such communities, are being used to launder money - i.e. "virtual credits" are bought and then transferred back into another currency, disguising their original source or moving the money around outside the traditional banking system.

I am not sure if the concern is that serious, given that in order to buy credits, the dirty money needs to be in a bank account in the first place, and therefore (in theory at least) the bank would have completed money laundering checks on it. However, law firms cannot rely on the fact that their fees are paid out of a bank account, they have to undertake their own "know your customer" procedures and other anti-money laundering checks. Quite how FFW is proposing to take on virtual clients is therefore beyond me - the KYC procedures practically insist that you meet your customers face to face - and not in a virtual reality world. I guess it is a nice marketing gimmick for FFW to show that they are down wid da kidz, but may be they should make it clear that they will not take on any "virtual clients" in the near future?

22 hours in San Juan

Another trip to the Virgin Islands has resulted in a long journey home. Unable to catch any direct flights back to England from Antigua last night, we have routed via San Juan where we have spent the night before journeying onwards to New York this afternoon and then home on the red eye. It could certainly be a lot worse, but it is nonetheless a surreal experience to come from the simplicity of BVI - only 30 minutes away on a small turboprop - and then be confronted by a massive hotel/casino. The beach this morning, was however, very pleasant.

Seemed to have missed most of the outpouring of Blair specials in the papers, so another plus side, I suppose.

I will be back again in a few weeks... and so it continues.

The SNP Question

Last week the SNP became the largest party in the Scottish Parliament by "the narrowest of margins". Apparently, this means the other parties which got the smallest number of seats must now decide whether or not to work with the SNP to form a coalition government. As I have made clear from my earlier post on the subject, I am not overly bothered by Scottish politics insofar as it has no effect on me or my life, but being a soft hearted Southerner, I would offer the following advice to the other parties, should they care to consult me:

The Liberal Democrats: You are clearly in a quandry. You realise that nobody who voted for you wants independence for Scotland as otherwise they would have voted SNP so you do not want to be seen to be allowing the SNP to get their way. However, you can hardly go back into coalition with Labour as they are clearly a busted flush and you would be blamed for putting them back into power, when only a minority of Scots wants them there. The solution is simple. Go into coalition with the SNP but demand that the promised referendum on independence be called immediately - get it out of the way early in the parliament. The voters will reject the proposition (assuming the ballot papers are pretty straightforward to fill in - even a drunken Glaswegian should be able to decide to tick "yes" or "no"), then you can spend the next three and a half years in power with the issue resolved.

Conservatives: OK, I realise that the SNP would probably prefer to be photographed en masse coming out of a swingers' club than to be dependent on Tory support to form a government, and vice versa, the feeling is no doubt mutual (although, after the Tommy Sheridan libel trial, I trust the analogy still carries weight in Scottish political circles). BUT.... Conservatives could form common cause with the Nats on one important question, and that is the inadequacy of the current Scottish constitutional settlement. On the basis that there is a Scottish Parliament and there is no going back, the Conservatives could work with the SNP to press for greater powers for it. This could be combined with a pincer movement by a Cameron led government in three years time, to enshrine these powers in law (via the Westminster parliament) and strip Scottish MPs in Westminster of the ability to vote in London on matters pertaining to England where those matters are reserved in Scotland to the Scottish Parliament. Probably too radical and the Tories and SNP would disagree on just about everything else so it would not be workable as the basis for a complete coalition, but it's just a thought.

Greens: Power! You know you want it. Now's your chance. Don't screw it up!

Labour: do everything possible to scupper the vote of a first minister, and force a new election. If you can't do better next time with Gordon Brown as your leader, then you really are in trouble.

I'm an uncle, again!

Over on Francesca and Georgina's blog, there is news of the newest arrival in the family - a second daughter for my brother and sister-in-law - and the sixth granddaughter for my father. Congratualtions to all...

Hazel Blears - a worthy successor to Prescott

Newsnight last night contained a very funny interview by Paxman of Hazel Blears, Labour Party chairman (chairperson?), and wannabe Labour deputy leader.

Paxman asked Blears if she could remember when Labour were last more unpopular than they are now. "Probably in 1983" came the answer.

So there you have it, Labour are more unpopular now than they were in 1987 or 1992 - according to their Chairman, sorry, person.

I guess we'll find out on Friday morning. Fingers crossed.

How to speed up terror trials

From today's Times, which reports that the recently completed terrorist trials cost over £50m:

"The trial was supposed to last six months, but began six months late and lasted for more than a year. During that year the court sat for only 35 weeks, with 7 weeks of timetabled breaks and 10 weeks lost to sickness and logistical problems. Barristers tried to have one juror discharged because he took so much time off sick. During Ramadan, the court sat for only 3½ hours each day because of concerns that the defendants would not be able to concentrate while fasting. The judge wanted to sit earlier, to make up for lost time, but one juror could not be in before 10.30am because of childcare commitments."

How about giving the court the power to allot funds to jurors to meet any reasonable expenses caused by longer sittings? How much time and money would that have saved? Only in the public sector - utter madness!

Yes, M&S should fire Ferry

Bryan Ferry has recently got himself into hot water by praising the style of Nazi architect Albert Speer (whose brilliant biography by Gitta Sereny, I heartily recommend) and film maker Leni Riefenstahl. He apologised or clarified his remarks by saying: "I apologize unreservedly for any offence caused by my comments on Nazi iconography, which were solely made from an art history perspective. I, like every right-minded individual, find the Nazi regime, and all it stood for, evil and abhorrent" (from Wired News).

As far as I am concerned, these comments just compound his crime. The Nazi machine systematically crushed modern art. The book burning is well known, but more obscure now is the exhibition launched in Munich in 1937 entitled "Entartete Kunst" or "Degenerate Art", which was held to lambast the art of the Weimar years and included works by Chagall, Max Ernst, Paul Klee and Kandinsky to name but a few. This was contrasted with an exhibition of approved Nazi art which mainly contained sterile neo-classical works of muscular figures doing heroic things. Amusingly, the crowds flocked to the degenerate exhibition whereas the approved one was empty.

Entartete Kunst was mirrored by a ban on left wing and Jewish playwrites, such as Brecht and a complete ban on jazz on account of its "unpure" black roots.

Of the few things I am quite proud of, for my history A-level project, I wrote an essay on why the Nazis reacted the way they did to Weimar culture. I managed to find one of the few surviving artists from the 1937 exhibition, Hans Feibusch, who was in his 90s but was still working and living in St John's Wood. He gave a couple of hours of his time to a pretentious 17 year old to talk about his experiences in the 1930s and how he had got the hell out of Germany once Hitler came to power. He also reflected on modern art and on how even he had his limits - I don't think he was a Tracy Emin fan.

I guess there will always be people who say "at least he made the trains run on time" or think black leather has a certain something, but to praise the Nazis for style when they did so much to destroy the defining art and style of the 20th century is sadly ignorant. No, M&S should not fire Ferry for his crass remarks but M&S should fire him for his lack of artistic knowledge revealed by those remarks.

Poll Tax Rubbish

If the success of the Thatcher years were fairly measured by the protests against her then the fact that the single biggest incident of civil protest in ten years was over a reform to local government finance must surely indicate that in 1990, things were pretty good for the average Brit. As I have always understood it, the objection to the Poll Tax was that it was unfairly regressive in that within each local authority everyone over 18 paid the same amount of tax regardless of income or other wealth. The Council Tax, which replaced it, is charged in relation to the value of the house against which it is levied, with discounts for people living alone and consequently is regarded as being completely fair, or at least not worth rioting over.

In the current climate of climate angst, green taxes are the sine qua non of contemporary politics. Local authorities have risen to the challenge by suggesting they should tax more heavily those households which produce more than a certain amount of waste each year. It is said that such a system would encourage people to use less packaging and recycle and compost more. Whether it is also designed to ensure that we finish what’s on our plate has not been revealed, nor, if it is, how this would gel with the government’s drive against obesity. But I digress.

With the exception of a few good people who grow all their own food and then compost what their own, or their dog’s, digestive system simply cannot accommodate, most of us generate a certain amount of rubbish mainly in the form of plastic, paper and glass packaging as well as the remains of last night’s takeaway. But there’s the rub: which households are producing the most sacks of rubbish? Is it (a) the single person living off takeaways and M&S meals for one; (b) the young couple who are never at home; or is it (c) the family with small children who never go out.

Speaking from personal experience, it is (c) by a rubbish strewn country mile. Yes, my family recycles, we would love to compost (but without a garden we have no intention of opening a branch of Dickens World in our own kitchen) and we have food delivered in environmentally friendly cardboard boxes. But we still generate an absolute ton of rubbish each week for the good bin persons of K&C to collect.

There are five of us living under one roof: three adults (including the au pair) and two babies. We would be heavily penalised by a rubbish tax, I am sure. The first irony and unfairness is that such a tax would effectively be per person - not even per adult, and would be no less regressive than the Poll Tax - even less so if there were no exemptions for students or the unemployed. Where are the rioters when you need them? Secondly, the demand for new houses - driven in no small part by desire of a large number of people to live alone - is a massive source of carbon emissions and pollution so much so that sole occupancy should really be penalised rather than rewarded. Unless, of course, you think the answer to global warming is for us all to stop breeding, in which maybe we should all live alone slowly going sterile whilst eating pizza and watching Vicar of Dibley repeats on UK Gold +1.

Scotland be brave?

The last time I clearly remember an April as glorious as the one we are currently having was precisely 10 years ago and I spent almost all of it desperately trying to help the Tories cling, if not to power, then at least to the Bristol West constituency. Of course, they did neither. Like the devil, back then Labour had all the good tunes. Our charge that one of the "New Dangers" of New Labour was constitutional damage to the UK as Scotland would get a vote on whether or not to have its own parliament was greeted with the unanswerable - "its only a vote - why shouldn't they vote on it". Ok, not unanswerable - we had the answers, but it was obvious that nobody cared even what the question was as they started humming D-ream's "Things can only get better" at you - "so that's an undecided then, sir?".

It's deja vu all over again, as Labour, having let the Nationalist genie out of the bottle is forced to argue why the Scottish people shouldn't be granted their second wish. Right now, on the front of Labour's campaign website is their slogan "Not breaking up Britain". Aside from the use of "Not" at the start of any slogan being disastrous ("Not doing much" etc), is the smug and arrogant assumption that their third way namby pamby hotch potch of a parliament is a perfect constitutional creature and not some evolutionary blip on the road to something altogether more natural - perhaps something that stands on its own two feet and possibly with opposable thumbs to boot.

At this point I have to declare my interest: none whatsoever. Like most southern conservatives, I pretty much regard Scotland as a foreign country. I have spent more of my lifetime in Belgium, Sweden, Germany - even Bermuda, than I have in Scotland, and I cannot see that changing for a while. I have nothing against the Scottish people - I even married into a Scottish family, but all this indifference makes me highly sympathetic to the idea that if the Scots want to vote themselves into economic and political oblivion by choosing independence and in one fell swoop inflict a deadly blow against the Labour parliamentary party by casting out (or perhaps reclaiming?) 39 MPs including Brown and Browne, then who am I to quibble?

In any case, independence for the Scots makes more sense today than it ever did. Traditionally, hard working and enterprising Scots got the hell out of there and came down to London. In these times, what chance do they have, when for the price of a one bedroom flat in the Royal Borough of K&C you can purchase several hundred acres of blasted heath and a property with a moat, turrets and probably a coven of witches if you drive a particularly hard bargain.

Go back to a land down under...

...where the women blow and the men chunder... as the song might have said.

Australia - land of my fathers, or grandfathers at least, Baillieu HQ so to speak. Last week her government announced a doubling of its troop commitment to Afghanistan and in a recent Spectator article, Australian volunteers were praised by the Territorial army's City of London branch for their enthusiastic contribution to our forces.

How does the UK repay this friendship? By reverting to a policy from 200 years ago - shipping young folk (back) to Australia for the crime of wanting to stay, work and pay taxes in the UK for more than one year. A few years ago the tight two year visa offered to young Australians was altered so that out of the two years, only one year could be spent working. I don't know about you, but I would be hard pressed to find a year's worth of travelling to be done inside England, Scotland and Wales - so what is the other year for, other than working illegally?

This is the plight of the very nice boyfriend of our German au pair. He has been working for my sister's payroll business (www.paycheck.co.uk) for the last six or so months, and by all accounts has been an exemplary and valued employee, to such an extent that my sister's company went to the trouble of making a visa application so that he could extend his stay. However, his lack of formal higher qualifications meant that the Home Office turned him down, so he has to leave.

No doubt, there will be those who say this is fair as the Australians apply similar restrictions to our (lightly qualified) young people. Two points: first, two wrongs don't make a right and if we relaxed, may be they would as well. Second, we have a booming economy crying out for hard working young people with a variety of skills and qualifications - we don't just want Polish builders, Slovakian waiters and Latvian (whatever Latvians do)... Young Aussies come with no (serious) language barrier, are all properly educated to GCSE or more likely, A Level or degree standard.

Not the most sexy campaign at the moment, I know: more immigration! But it is a serious issue: my wife successfully sponsored her architectural assistant to stay in the UK recently (at some financial cost), whereas in my office, we lost two excellent Australian secretaries when their visas ran out meaning that time and money had to be spent recruiting and training new people (who are also excellent) and I hate to think of the number of brilliant nurses who must leave the NHS to go home when their visas run out - hopefully they're exempt, but I doubt it.

Celebrity neighbours

I know that we live very close to Tara Palmer-Tomkinson as I have been told this by neighbours and I have seen her with my own eyes coming out of the local coffee shop. I was quite pleased that in a recent interview, her flat was described as being in the middle of South Kensington, as this sounds a lot better than Earls Court and should help the re-sale value no end (not that we need it given the craziness of the current housing boom in West London). I have also spotted Jonathan Aitken walking rather slowly along the Earls Court Road a few times, but that was not half as exciting as once passing Roger Moore on the Old Brompton Road. The celeb I see on a regular basis though, is fellow blogger Evan Davis, who is often heading to the tube in the morning at about the same time as me. As a fan of his blog as well as his TV and radio work, I sometimes mull over an opening gambit with a view to striking up a conversation with him - however, not wanting to be a creepy stalker type, I don't. Tonight, I saw him on the way home from the tube and we sort of criss-crossed eachother as I took the initiative by crossing the busy road in a daring manouevre but then he overtook me as we approached the bus stop near the turning to my road - he is surprising lanky and walks very fast, which is perhaps another reason I never strike up a conversation with him. But up ahead of me he did get stopped by someone else wanting to speak to him. About the BBC's view of the current housing boom in West London? What the Dragons are really like outside of the Den? No, just for directions to the tube station. Oh, the fickleness of fame....

Keith Ingram

I have noticed a fair number of visitors to this blog coming via a search for Keith Ingram. If you are one of those and are looking for information about his memorial service, here are the details:

Thanksgiving Service for Keith Ingram, ‘Inky’

Sunday 3rd June 2007

A Service of Thanksgiving for Keith Ingram, ‘Inky’, will be held at the School on Sunday 3rd June 2007 at 11 am. We anticipate that a great many of Inky’s friends, former colleagues, and pupils will wish to attend and, whilst we plan to accommodate as many people as possible, as it is during term we will have to manage numbers very carefully. Therefore this will be a ticket-only event and applications will be processed in the order of receipt. Whether you are able to attend the Service or not, we would welcome your recollections of this remarkable man. Please email ods@dragonschool.org or return the enclosed form to the OD Office as soon as possible.

Inspiring stuff

I recently wrote about my friend Jo who is recording her battle with lymphoma on her blog, and alluded to another friend who has been diagnosed recently with cancer. The other friend is Shara, who married Olly almost exactly a year ago, who has breast cancer. The prognosis is good, I hear, in a recent email, Olly wrote: "we are both feeling upbeat and confident that she will get over this. If she deals with it like everything else in her life there will be no problem at all." Olly is a brave man, as he has decided to run the London Marathon to raise money for the charity, Breakthrough Breast Cancer. If you want to support him, you can do so here:

Normal service to be resumed shortly

I have not given up blogging it is just that I have been incredibly busy at work and rarely getting home much before 8.30/9pm so have had no time to post any of my profound thoughts.

However, I thought I should also put out a plea for anyone who knows of some office space in the Earl's Court/SW5, SW7 area which Sarah could move into as she is now spilling out of our sitting room having taken on a second architectural assistant and needs some proper space for her practice. If you do, please email me.

Auntie nicked my blog

OK - not my whole blog, but I think they nicked my idea about Rory Bremner committing a breach of the Fraud Act in his spoof call to Margaret Becket.

In a bid to drum up interest in my latest post, yesterday I commented on Nick Robinson's blog, which mentioned the issue. I said: "I am concerned that if you make money out by tricking people into doing something or revealing information which they would not have otherwise done, you are committing fraud, under the Fraud Act 2006, or previously, the Theft Act. Has anyone looked into this?"

So imagine my surprise when I saw an article on the BBC News Magazine section today, entitled: "Is it legal to impersonate a minister?". The article concludes that it isn't a crime and quotes various criminal solicitors. I wonder if they have given the subject much thought. Clearly a crime could be committed by phoning up one government minister, pretending to be another. What if there were a breach of the Official Secrets Act? What if price sensitive market information were revealed and then used?

Anyway, I commented on the article and asked if they nicked my idea, but of course, no answer from Auntie.

Rory Bremner and Margaret Becket

The papers have been full this weekend of the "sting" on Margaret Becket by Rory Bremner who duped her into thinking he was Gordon Brown before she went on to say a number of mildly degrogatory things about some of her cabinet colleagues.

The stories I have seen have focussed on Ofcom's refusal to allow this to be broadcast, as it breaches its guidelines. Guidelines, indeed. What about the Fraud Act 2006 (which has, in this respect, replaced the Theft Act). Section 2 reads:

"2 Fraud by false representation
(1) A person is in breach of this section if he-
(a) dishonestly makes a false representation, and
(b) intends, by making the representation-
(i) to make a gain for himself or another, or
(ii) to cause loss to another or to expose another to a risk of loss.

(2) A representation is false if-
(a) it is untrue or misleading, and
(b) the person making it knows that it is, or might be, untrue or misleading.

(3) "Representation" means any representation as to fact or law, including a representation as to the state of mind of-
(a) the person making the representation, or
(b) any other person.

(4) A representation may be express or implied.

(5) For the purposes of this section a representation may be regarded as made if it (or anything implying it) is submitted in any form to any system or device designed to receive, convey or respond to communications (with or without human intervention). "

As much as I like Rory Bremner and would hate to see him prosecuted over this, I would have thought he is bang to rights if anyone thinks of making a complaint to the boys in blue. Presumably he gets paid for his work, so he was (potentially) intending "to make a gain for himself" - and if the statements made were more juicy, he could be found to have "caused a loss to another". The false representation bit is beyond doubt.... Maybe Rory might be a bit more careful in future - and if I am right, it could be the end of Sasha Baron Cohen's career as well.

Jo's blog

2007 got off to a bad start when I heard that an old, but far too young, friend had been diagnosed with B-cell Hodgkins Lymphoma. Jo went to Australia in 2002 on an extended holiday and ended up staying and marrying an Australian guy, so I have only seen her a few times in the last few years.

Here she is, a couple years ago at Ham polo club.

Today, we got the fantastic news that her chemotherapy is doing its work and the tumour on her chest has shrunk to half its original size.

But despite everything, Jo is clearly remaining amazingly cheerful and has started a blog. I asked her if I could link to it as I think it is a great blog, although deeply personal; as she said "it is only really about me and my family and of course Bree the labrador features large!!"

Lymphoma is a terrible cancer and Jo is the third person I know in recent times to have it. The first was Gregor Mackay (famous for being William Hague's press secretary) who succumbed far too quickly at the end of 2005, and the other is still fighting. If there is anything I can identify which connects these people is their popularity and vibrant personalities - I am not sure what this signifies.

UPDATE: For the life of me, I do not know why the link will not take the full address of Jo's blog, so I have taken it off. If you want to take a look at it, paste this link into your browser and it will work:

http://web.mac.com/joanna_buckley/iWeb/Jo's%20site

Thanks

The best form of welfare is work

In my final year of university I took a course which covered the welfare state from 1943 to about 1954. Bit of a narrow subject for a history degree, but was quite fascinating. My main problem with it was that the reading lists were dominated by lefties who started from the position that the welfare state was the best thing since sliced bread - or possibly before sliced bread - I was never much good with dates.

I recall being more than a little confused by the assertion that one the biggest providers of welfare was "private business" -- meaning that people had jobs which provided them with money and sometimes fringe benefits such as health insurance. From one point of view, I can understand the argument, but I had to disagree with the concept of putting state support on a par with earned income.

New Labour's flagship "Welfare to Work" scheme has been missing in action, presumed dead for many years now, but it did recognise the simple truth that it is better for the economy to have people working than claiming benefit. The problem with the New Deal and "Welfare to Work" scheme in general is that they are always overly bureaucratic and costly for the employers to administer.

One defining feature of the British economy is the success of small business. A culture of enterprise and entrepreneurs has allowed Britain to generate jobs in new industries as old industries decline and fall. The boom in house prices has allowed the middle classes to unlock the wealth contained in the bricks and mortar of their properties and use that money to start endless small ventures. Those without the funds can turn to an increasingly efficient (if often ruthless) banking sector or turn up on Dragons' Den to beg for the cash from those with an eye for a good opportunity.

For many businesses, the biggest single cost is paying wages. Under the current government, the cost of paying wages has gone up as National Insurance contributions have been increased and income tax bands and relief have risen slower than wages.

A simple scheme to boost employment and small businesses would be to give exemptions from NI to all businesses for their first one, two or three employees (starting with the lowest paid). The cost of this tax break might be substantial, so could be met with a slight increase in employers' NI contributions. The beauty of this tax break, unlike everything done by Gordon Brown, is that it would be no-questions-asked available to all. No forms to fill, no accredidation process, nothing more than a head count of employees: one, two, three - ok now pay...

Of course, I am not expecting an immediate annoucement of this proposal from David Cameron, but if the Conservatives are to win the next election, they need some eye-catching policies which are easy to explain and, more importantly, easy to understand. Either that, or just phase out NI altogether and add the difference onto income tax, which would probably be much fairer as it would hit unearned income as well.