Day 2781: Cities on the Edge of Forever aka Abandon hope all ye who enter Liverpool!

Tuesday:


Oh very fluffy dear. A lot of FUSS has been caused by the new pamphlet from the Policy Exchange.

Opinion has been divided between:

Northern Tuff: "Eee, ow very dare you! Appen our Northern cities r'as fine as any of yon poofy southen uns, by eck if they're not!"

and

Southern Jessie: "Ay say, what jolly poor show, we're too bally overcryded already! We don't want a hale load of oiks coming down ere ryning the hayce prices, dontcha know!"

But if Mr Balloon AND the Minister for Magical Accidents are rubbishing it, it must be doing SOMETHING right!


Mr Prescott, the former Magical Minister, was on the Newsnight Show defending his time spent pouring billions into centrally controlled redevelopment schemes and improvement gimmicks.

"Blah! Blah! Blah! Blah! Blah! Blah! Blah! THE TORIES! Blah! Blah! Blah! Blah!" he bellowed.

Just for once you wished Ms Waaaark had done her homework, 'cos she could have shot el Prezza down right there: "Mr Leunig ISN'T a Conservatory, you ignorant, prejudiced, half-witted buffoon," she could have said.

"And besides, didn't you 'improve' Hull so magnificently that the people of that fair city… ditched you for the Liberal Democrats?"

Now Mr Balloon has commented.

"Insane," says Mr Balloon.

Though of course, since the City of Liverpool is not a member of the Conservatory Party he cannot comment further.


The way it's being reported is that the report by a "Conservatory" think tank is suggesting that the cities of the North should be abandoned and their citizens moved to the South East where the jobs are.

You would think it said the entire North of England should be raised to the ground and the people led in chains to be paraded in loin-cloths before the Emperor Balloon before being fed to the cat-monsters in the new Olympic Stadium.

Instead, if you READ it, there appear to be two quite reasonable suggestions.

First suggestion: look at the evidence.

For all the money spent by the Magical Minister and his new layers of unaccountable quangocracy, has it actually helped the redevelopment cities to catch up? NOT has it had any effect at all – you cannot deny that there are many beautiful buildings, and many gainfully employed people, and many wonderful artistic projects in the development cities. But on average, wages are STILL lower and there is STILL more poverty there than in the South East where no redevelopment money has been spent. And in fact the gap is getting WORSE.

Second suggestion: stop spending all that money centrally. Simplify the system for allocating it and give it to the local councils to spend how THEY want, or more importantly, how the local people want it spent! If they still WANT the same redevelopment scheme then there's nothing to stop them. Or they could do something else. That seems like a very LIBERAL idea. Cut the state, devolve the power, put people back in charge.

Quite the OPPOSITE of abandoning the Northern Cities, the suggestion is to stop treating them like babies who need nurse-maiding by the Magical Minister in Whitehall and PUT THEM IN CHARGE of sorting themselves out!


Now, the OTHER part of the pamphlet also suggests allowing cities in the South East to expand – London, obviously, along with Oxford and Cambridge all get fingered.

Now it seems to me that this is about OPPORTUNITY and not about some crass "on yer bike" COMPULSION. Looking at the evidence (again): people are ALREADY coming to London from the cities and regions of the United Kingdom.

In free market economic terms, housing is THE barrier to entry in the South-Eastern labour market.

The shortage of decent housing in the South East is the key reason that people remain TRAPPED in poverty. If people who WANT to move are blocked from doing so, then there will be too many people and too few jobs in the North, and the reverse problem in the South.

That drives inflation too – because if there is a shortage of labour in the South then people can demand more pay (if only to cover the higher cost of living) and that means costs go up all over.

This drives up house prices too (AND leads to rip-off builders building smaller and smaller rabbit hutches in the knowledge that some poor sap is still going to be forced into buying).

And the North is left even further behind.

Now, you might quite legitimately argue whether people moving en masse to the South is a good thing or a bad thing. More people and more cities means pushing back the green belt and putting ever greater strain on resources like water and electrical supply, which means more infrastructure to move power and water around the country which means more greenhouse emissions which means melting icecaps and the whole of the South East drowning in the long term anyway, and THEN all the people still in the North can feel smug.

But at least look at the evidence and SEE that it is HAPPENING and then plan accordingly.

Mind you, I'm not going to include that as one of the "reasonable" suggestions… 'cos I’m not sure how you do that without contradicting the whole "return power to local people" bit earlier.

Day 2624: Healthy Debate

Saturday


So that was Liberal Democrat Spring Conference. This is the FIRST time that I have been there in the Spring – usually Daddy Richard is just too busy – but Liverpool '08 is a SPECIAL YEAR so we made a special effort.

The BIG controversy was SUPPOSED to be the debate on Health Policy. In the end, though, it was as dull as dishwater after washing some particularly dirty dishes. This is NOT to cast aspersions on any of the policy, or on the people who took part, but let's face it, the debate got a little SIDE-TRACKED by the amendments into a discussion about the pros and cons of giving local councils power to run local health trusts.

(To be honest, I thought that there were good points on both sides of that argument: We trust councils with schools and meals on wheels, why not doctors and hospitals? But then people would rather have a locally chosen health board, as one well-deployed bar chart ably demonstrated!)

But the real issue about health is that we have had to admit that we cannot pay for free care for the elderly. This has to be a disappointment, it was a GOOD policy, but we also have to be HONEST and say that Scotland has shown it to be much, much more expensive than we thought. Dr Evan urged us not to send Mr Norman Lamb naked into the fight… actually, and he was speaking as a doctor, he just urged us not to send Mr Norman naked…

Mr Norman himself came on at the end of the debate, with a pale blue shirt that almost matched his – in that light – pale blue hair. "Ooh! It is SUPER-LAMB!" said Daddy. Perhaps the YELLOW background could have been used for CSO to make him FLY! Or possibly just to add some DINOSAURS – that would have livened things up!

(Actually, Daddy Alex was telling everyone at conference how between speeches they should have played "Carry On Abroad" on the big conference screen: you know, the one where they arrive to find that the hotel is only half-built and then the big storm comes along… maybe it wasn't THAT funny…)

So anyway, instead of free care for all, we now have a universal care guarantee to make sure that even the least well-off can be sure of receiving treatment. It is a policy based on fairness, but also one that we can actually hope to deliver.

The policy also introduces the "Patients' Guarantee" (that you can opt to go private if the NHS fails to deliver) and individual care budgets so that patients with mental health problems can take control of their own regime of treatment, all aimed at taking control of money away from Whitehall and returning it to people.

That was a subject that Ms Julia Worth-Her-Weight-In-Goldsworthy talked about in her speech straight after. At the moment, Mr Frown's QUANGOs control more money than the whole of the NHS budget AND the Defence budget added together; more than ALL of the money controlled by accountable, elected councils. Typically, Mr Frown wants to control everything from his desk in Whitehall; while the Conservatories want to control everything from some privatised monopoly. Only WE Liberal Democrats are promising to CULL the QUANGOs and put people back in charge – starting with Health.

Mind you, I thought that the emergency motions – Mr Vince's on nationalising banks and protection for deposits that depositers believe in; Mr Ed's on the need for an inquiry into the whole Extraordinary Rendition business – were much more exciting! It is a shame that everyone had gone by that point.

Anyway, the REAL highlight was going along to the Gender Balance Blogger awards in my NEW RUCKSACK (courtesy of the VERY NICE Mr Brian's campaign to be Mayor of London), where we saw awards for loveliness in blogging go to the VERY lovely Ms Lynne Featherweight, and the VERY lovely Citizen Alix of Mortimer, and the VERY lovely Ms Jo Christie-Smith. HUGS all round.

Alix Blogger and the Goblet of Fire

Oh, and Mr Clogg gave a speech too.

Day 2623: Live from Liverpool

Friday:


It is Spring Conference weekend for us Liberal Democrats, and so My Daddies and I are off to Liverpool.

Your accreditied correspondent

Here we are, in the European City of Culture 2008 - this must be culture out of the window...

the elephant in the (hotel) room

Look! Trains!

Then it is off to Liberal Drinks...

(Do not worry, NO alcohol for me! Yuck!)

I'll have the Nuts, Please!

...to meet fluffy friends old and new!

The Republic of Mortimer provides a warm welcome

...and so does Mr Gladstone.

For SOME reason, most of the discussion is about BEER.

It would seem from what the bloggers told me that it the olden days, when working men would spend up to 27% of their annual earnings on the BOOZE, Great Britain was in a pretty much permanent state of INEBRIATION. So clearly, the problem nowadays is that we are just not drinking ENOUGH! After all, if the Labour and Conservatories are RIGHT and we want to go back to the GOOD OLD DAYS™ then never mind binge drinking... it is all this binge STOPPING that must be causing the problems.