Creating a climate of despair and despondency

There isn’t much to be cheery about at present. Hardly a day goes by without another announcement from the coalition about cuts and meanwhile the demonisation of the public sector, and by extension those who work in it, continues apace.

“There is no alternative” we are told when there clearly is. “Local authorities are to blame for wasting money” says Eric Pickles when they clearly aren’t and “the bankers will be made to pay for the mess they’ve created” says Nick Clegg when they clearly won’t be. Against a background where citizens are marginalised by the political process and feel left out by a constant stream of bad news which they didn’t even vote for, unsurprisingly people feel isolated, powerless and despairing.

In large areas of the country people feel despondent and unable to influence what is going around them. This suits the government of course. They are content to allow potential opposition to dissipate into despair, but such quietism is not good for anyone. It has a negative effect on the wellbeing and health of those who feel marginalised and it’s extremely bad news for any chance of creating the participative democracy so beloved of politicians from all parties.

People are at their best when they feel that they can influence what’s going on around them. When they have a real say about decisions that are being taken that affect their lives, their health, their futures and that of their families. When they feel happy. Yes happy, remember that? Any government or political process that ignores these basic human desires and needs does so at its peril.

Creating a climate of despair and despondency may form a convenient backdrop to the cuts fest currently being undertaken by national and local government across the country, but it is storing up trouble and could well blow up in the politicians’ faces. Despair and anger are often close cousins and in an internet age where events in Egypt, Bahrain and elsewhere are acting as a beacon to those marginalised and carved out of the political process, don’t be surprised if we see something similar on the streets here before too long.

The politicians can’t say that they weren’t warned.

Me and my shadows – Ed names his team

After one of the most eagerly awaited (by the media and politicos) shadow cabinet announcements of recent times, Ed Miliband has named his team to take on the Tory/Lib Dem coalition.

So far the reaction from pundits and some Labour activists has been muted, with mutterings about missed opportunities from not putting Ed Balls into the Treasury or parking Yvette Cooper at the cul-de-sac of the Foreign Office. Having thought about today’s announcement for a while and taken a few soundings, I have to confess that I don’t share the pessimism of those who think that Ed could and should have chosen differently.

Maybe I’m mellowing out in my old age, but I think that It’s not necessarily the best move to go with the obvious choices from day one. Why go with what people (and your enemies) expect?

Lets face it, the Tories in particular but also the Lib Dems are in for a bruising battle after the announcement of the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) on 20 October. So, why not put some tried and trusted people in the key positions to take advantage of this. Johnson is generally acknowledged to be a smooth operator but one who is convincing. He should be a good match for Osborne and the Tories wont be able to use the Balls/Cooper angle on the crucial battleground of the economy.

Another useful move by Ed Miliband I think is to use the female ‘bloc’ where necessary against the coalition’s key performers. Yvette Cooper against William Hague and Caroline Flint against Eric Pickles should be very interesting and entertaining to watch. While I would have liked to see new faces in the shadow ‘nations’ posts, Ed has brought back Hain and Woodward because he didn’t have any other experienced alternatives for Wales and Northern Ireland.

Today’s announcements show that Labour’s new leader is more than prepared to show the coalition that they will not be able to have a go and portray him as someone who is a rabid left winger but a serious contender for PM. I think he sees the long game and I reckon he is preparing accordingly.

Phase one is to negotiate the CSR and come up with a credible alternative. Phase two should be to start to set the agenda in preparation for the next election. An election, by the way, which could still happen sooner than people think.

Politics has just got a whole lot more interesting.

Ideology, the NHS and the Big Society

Check out the lead batch of letters on the government’s plans for the NHS in the Guardian letters page today. Published in the wake of Polly Toynbee’s excellent piece yesterday, Charles Sharp’s in particular is very apposite.

Are we moving more and more to a pay-as-you-go health care system?

Taken alongside the ConDem coalition’s approach to public sector pensions and their accelerated cuts programme, it strengthens my belief that the government is looking more and more to individuals to ‘sort themselves out’ and will rely less and less on the state. It’s an ideologically driven agenda of which, frankly, the heirs of Margaret Thatcher would be justifiably proud.

I can’t see how actions like those above will stimulate the private sector economy – unless we are about to see a mushrooming of health service management consultancy provision to run the new NHS and a massive increase in private insurance firms to enable people to buy their way to the top of waiting lists and to sell pensions to public sector workers who no longer have them?

Is this the Big Society approach that we’ve heard so much about? Discuss.

Received opinion, ‘facts’ and the public sector

This morning, the media is falling over itself to present the Institute of Fiscal Studies’ (IFS) latest pronouncements on the economy as received fact. The three main parties are not being straight with us, according to the IFS. The key issue of the general election will be the economy and how the country weathers recessionary pressures, claims the think tank. So far, so blindingly obvious.

What’s less obvious though, is what the solution to our current economic woes are. “Cut, cut and then cut again” says the IFS. Meaning cut, cut the public sector. The sooner and the harder the better. This mantra of chopping public services is repeated over and over by the media as if such an approach is the only way out of the current economic malaise. It has become the received wisdom. The ‘established’ fact.

Slashing the public sector will affect real people, real jobs and the services we all depend on.

But just hang on a minute here. It wasn’t too long ago that the established wisdom was that the last thing you needed to do was saddle the banking system with more regulation. Banks are complicated institutions. Politicians shouldn’t be intervening and tying up these wealth creators with red tape. Left to regulate themselves, all will turn out for the best, we were told by the ‘experts’, who included many of the IFS’s friends. And look where that got us.

I’m no economist or wannabe think tank self-publicist, but what I am is terrified by all this talk of slashing the public sector in a country that still depends on it to a very large extent in many areas as a significant driver of the economy. In the North West, where I live and work, as a result of the new fiscal constraints in which local government is working, it’s estimated that employment won’t get back to 2008 levels until 2018. Further massive public sector cuts now would take a still fragile recovery and throttle it. People would lose their jobs, more businesses will fail, life enhancing initiatives will be shelved, families could be turfed out of homes they can no longer afford, futures will be ruined.

These are facts, not opinion. I should know. I’ve seen the effects of ideologically driven cuts before. At 46, I’m old enough to remember the 80s and 90s where cuts in the public sector had a knock-on effect on the entire economy, including in the private sector. Some communities in the UK are still suffering from the legacy of that era. Do we really want to go through all that again?

Remember that when it’s just you, a piece of paper and a pencil on 6 May.

Remembering Harry Carpenter (1925-2010)

I was sad to hear of the death today of the BBC’s ‘voice of boxing’ Harry Carpenter. A true master of his craft, Carpenter was perhaps best known for commentating on Frank Bruno’s fights and interviewing the boxer afterwards when Bruno would inevitably utter his memorable catchphrase “Know what I mean Arry”

Harry Carpenter was the BBC's voice of boxing for half a century.

He also interviewed Muhammad Ali, describing him as “not only the most remarkable sports personality I have ever met, he is the most remarkable man I have ever met”. Carpenter was one of the BBC’s top sports commentators, a true wordsmith alongside such masters of the microphone as David Coleman, Alan Weeks, Ron Pickering, Ted Lowe and Jim Laker.

Many of the tributes to him describe Carpenter as being humble and totally unflash. It’s something I can vouch for, having met the great man in 1990 on a standard class train carriage en route from Newcastle to London. It was the day of Margaret Thatcher’s resignation and on hearing the news from a passenger who had just got on the train, Carpenter looked up briefly from reading his paper and said simply: “Quite remarkable”.

He was himself a quite remarkable broadcaster. He’ll be greatly missed.

We need more ordinary people in Parliament and less career politicians

I’ve just read today’s Guardian editorial “Byers for sale” taking former cabinet minister Stephen Byers to task for allegedly offering, on camera, to use his access and influence to lobby for private clients for up to £5,000 a day.

While condemning Byers for his greed and stupidity, interestingly, the Guardian also feels let down by the sight of a leading “centrist” being so eager to enrich himself. The paper also sees a potential conspiracy in Byers being exposed by The Sunday Times and Channel Four’s Dispatches, all the more so given that other MPs similarly identified as ready to make a fast buck included Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon, ‘architects’ of the botched coup to remove Gordon Brown earlier this year.

The Guardian suggests that the last thing one should expect from “progressive centrists” is a willingness to dip their noses in the parliamentary trough like all the rest. Byers’s actions, the paper says, are a setback for progressive politics and he, Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon should know better. But, should we really be surprised when MPs of whatever political colour continue to feather their own nest?

A Parliament more representative of the general population is an essential step in addressing sleaze.

The problem as I see it is an old one. We have MPs who are far removed from the lifestyles of the people they represent and who are so out of touch with the daily grind faced by their constituents that they act as if it’s almost ‘normal’ to look to enrich themselves at every opportunity. Until we have elected representatives who are more in tune with the lives, hopes and aspirations of their electorates then we will continue to see MPs mired in a tide of scandal and sleaze.

To those who say that we need to pay MPs more in order to get the right calibre of individual into Parliament and to prevent them taking well paid jobs elsewhere, I say that these ‘career politicians’ are precisely the sort of people who we do not want taking decisions on our behalf.

Personally, I’d rather see a few more health workers, community campaigners, teachers, construction workers, administrative assistants, engineers and bus drivers in Westminster. Perhaps then we’d get a better politics, with decisions more in tune with the lives lived by the majority of the population and not the privileged few.

Ashok Kumar MP (1956-2010)

I was very sad to hear of the death of Dr Ashok Kumar MP today at the tragically young age of just 53.

I remember Ashok when he was a local councillor when I lived in Middlesbrough in the late 1980s. He was a passionate campaigner and a genuine, gentle man, who always had time for people and was willing to discuss political ideas. I recall him being particularly keen to encourage young people and I’m sure that he influenced many on Teesside to get involved with politics and to campaign to change things for the better.

Ashok Kumar, pictured with Redcar steelworks in the background.

He was one of the few engineers in Parliament and I also remember him attending various industry-related functions in the House when I worked in the construction industry as communications director with the Association for Consultancy and Engineering. Ashok helped the association make contacts with supportive MPs and was always willing to fight the corner of engineering in the Commons.

I also think that Ashok may have been one of the first Indian men ever to win a by-election in the UK when he won the Langbaurgh seat in 1991. Although he lost the seat to the Conservative candidate in the 1992 election, he returned to Parliament when he won Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland at the 1997 election and held it until his untimely death today.

Ashok was also a great supporter of the British Humanist Association, an active member of the All Party Parliamentary Humanist Group and a self-described life-long “liberal humanist”. He campaigned prominently in Parliament for a national holiday on the anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth, to honour one of the fathers of modern science. As a chemical engineer, science was one of Ashok’s great passions and he took every opportunity to promote it during his time in the House.

When I knew him, he always had time to talk to people and even when he did not agree with you he was still willing to debate and argue in a friendly and fraternal manner. His death at such a young age is truly a tragedy, for his family and for all who knew him.

Gooses and golden eggs at the News of the World

So, Max Clifford has accepted £1m from the News of the World in return for him dropping his legal action against the paper over them intercepting his voicemail messages. That’s illegal phone tapping to you and me – an offence that would see us prosecuted and probably sent to prison quicker than you could say: “press three to delete”.

A profitable relationship: Max Clifford and the News of the World

Clifford and the News of the World’s cosy cover-up (sorry settlement) means that the downmarket tabloid may now avoid having to disclose court-ordered evidence that was likely to reveal the involvement of its ‘journalists’ in illegal information gathering (phone tapping of celebrities and others) by shadowy private investigators.

So far so grubby. It’s par for the course for a so-called newspaper that apparently believes it can buy the silence of people who had their phones hacked. Apart from wondering whether the paper will now hand back the various awards it has won over the years for ‘investigative journalism’, I can’t help wondering about Max Clifford’s motivation in helping the News of the World avoid further embarrassing disclosures.

Over to you Max. “I’m now looking forward to continuing the successful relationship that I experienced with the News of the World for 20 years before my recent problems with them,” said Clifford after the settlement was announced. I’ll bet he is.

Gooses and golden eggs anyone?

In defence of the BBC

I’ll declare an interest from the off. I’ve always been a BBC man. One of my earliest memories was sat on the stairs at home, aged four, ignoring Zebedee’s “Time for bed” instruction from The Magic Roundabout so I could sneak a listen to Kenneth Kendall or Richard Baker reading the early evening news. Listening to the news aged four? No wonder I ended up working in PR!

We were a BBC family in our house, you see. Blue Peter not Magpie for us. David Coleman not Brian Moore. Frank Bough not Dickie Davies. Robin Day not Bryan Waldon. Look North not Calendar. TV choices were much easier back in the day. Our old Rediffusion wall clicker switch hardly ever moved from position Beeb. No multi channel, multiple choice then. It was all so simple.

Would you trust this man with the BBC?

I like the BBC. At it’s best it provides quality entertainment, sport, documentary and news output that is rightly the envy of the world. Yes, it has its faults. What massive organisation that has existed for years and years wouldn’t? And of course it can be improved. But the latest statements coming from the BBC’s current director general Mark Thompson represent something much more than a corrective trimming of the Beeb in the face of difficult economic times.

Thompson’s plans, cheered on by a voracious pack of vested interests in the commercial, terrestrial and satellite media, represent an assault on public service broadcasting as we know it and should be resisted. Do we really want to see the increasing Murdoch-ification of our media? I don’t and I hope there are enough ex-followers of Peter Purves, Valerie Singleton and John Noakes who keep the faith to stop this madness.

If you feel the same, register your opposition here and join the fightback!

Can supporters really run football clubs successfully? Germany says “yes we can”

Following the ‘green and gold’ protest by Manchester United fans at the League Cup Final at the weekend and Portsmouth being the first Premier League club to go into administration, the issue of fan power is firmly back on the agenda.

On Saturday, I attended a “Beyond the Debt” rally at Bury’s Gigg Lane organised by FC United of Manchester, the fans’-run and owned club formed in 2005 in the wake of the Glazer take-over of Manchester United. Over 300 supporters of various teams packed into the Bury supporters social club to hear a range of speakers arguing the case for fans’-run clubs.

No debt here: Fans at FC United of Manchester own and run their club.

I was particularly struck by a Schalke 04 representative who spoke about the membership and governance structure at his club. All German Bundesliga clubs are membership organisations; sporting clubs where the fans feel a part of what happens because they are members and involved in the decision-making process. As a result, ticket prices are generally much lower in Germany and a wider social mix is able to afford to attend matches. The cost of a standing ticket at Schalke is just 13 Euro.

Funny how we don’t hear about the success of fans’ involvement in Germany in the media over here. To listen to our TV and press, you’d be forgiven if you thought that the ownership and governance choice for football clubs was between rival sets of businessmen, usually from overseas. Well, it isn’t. There is a better model.

As the German example shows, football supporters can run their clubs – and very successfully too.