Sunday:
Anyone who ever talks to Captain Clegg will tell you this about him: he is PASSIONATE about tackling the root causes of the big freeze in social mobility. You cannot get him to shut up about the subject. And, for him, this means getting in at the earliest possible moment to give the bright-but-poor as much opportunity as the comfortably-off.
So the Government is pleased to announce the Liberal Democrat's PUPIL PREMIUM will start this year at an ADDITIONAL £430 per pupil for every family earning less than £16,000.
To put that in context, that's about an extra 7% on top of the money per pupil that the government gives already.
Remember, that money per pupil is NOT being cut. It is being kept the same. Yes, you might say that there is INFLATION to consider: this money won't go as far next year when things cost more, so that's what we call a "real terms cut". (Where "real terms" means not actually a "real" cut ; it just feels like one.) But remember too that that will be largely offset by freezing public sector pay (including teachers), because salaries, obviously, form the largest part of what the education spending is spent on.
So it's not exactly TRUE to claim that the pupil premium "robs Peter to pay Paul". It would be more accurate to say that Paul gets an increase but Peter doesn't.
And ANYWAY, is it necessarily BAD to rob Peter to pay Paul when Peter is (by the very definition of the pupil premium) BETTER OFF than Paul to begin with. Is that not what we have a PROGRESSIVE tax and benefits system FOR? If anything, this EXAGGERATES the ENHANCEMENT for the least well off.
Look, I'm not, on the whole, in favour of the "levelling down" approach to social inequality favoured by the "just tax the rich more" brigade, but in this instance is it not the case that we are asking those with broader shoulders to bear the greater share of the cuts while those in most need are given a leg up to help them reach the same opportunities?
A secondary criticism of the pupil premium seems to come from the IFS report saying that "gains from this policy will only be modest". As a criticism, this appears to focus rather too much on the word "modest" and not enough on the word "gains". If someone were proposing a scheme that offered BETTER gains (IM-modest gains?) then it would be valid as a critique, but it seems that here we have a choice between the pupil premium that DOES offer a gain and doing nothing which DOESN'T.
If the hypothetical better scheme existed, you can bet that Captain Clegg would be advocating THAT. But it doesn't which is why he is proposing THIS. Without getting all ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT on you, a scheme that has the flaw of NOT EXISTING cannot be as good as one that does!
This last week we've been accused of cutting opportunities for working class and less-well-off people by increasing the cost of going to university.
I don't actually agree with that.
University funding is being PROTECTED in the fairest way we could devise even though the economic crisis means that the taxpayer will be paying one third LESS.
You probably keep hearing the opposition claim that we are CUTTING university money by 80%, while the Government says that the ratio of funding will ONLY be changing from 60% paid by the taxpayer and 40% paid by the students to the other way around. I thought about this and realised that it IS possible for both of these statements to be TRUE: if you have £1000 of funding, at the moment £600 comes from taxation; but not all of that is spent on TEACHING, rather a lot will be spent on RESEARCH. It's just a guess, but say £350 goes on research and £250 on teaching. But the Government has agreed to PROTECT the research funding. So under the NEW arrangement, the taxpayer ponies up 40% or £400, but the University STILL spends £350 on research, meaning that the money spent on teaching goes down from £250 to just £50, which IS an 80% cut. So the opposition claim can be both TRUE and MISLEADING at the same time, because they are only talking about one SLICE of the money. (To be fair: calling it a switch from 60:40 to 40:60 is spinning a 33% cut too!)
(NB: this is just an EXAMPLE to show how the figures COULD work. Variations are possible depending on the real mix of research and teaching spending, and there could be other costs, maybe admin or maintenance and so on, to consider also, but the solution must be something like this to account for the figures used by both sides.)
And you might have noticed that the opposition have already ROWED BACK from saying that the MONEY COST of the Coalition tuition fees policy will dissuade less-well-off people from going to university (probably because their own graduate tax proposals are so similar in effect), and they've fallen back to saying that the PERCEPTION of the huge debt will have a chilling effect. (And I'm not saying that they might not have a point there, although one of the things that is DOING the chilling is the opposition and the NUS banging on about how DAUNTING the debt will be!).
But clearly this Pupil Premium is a big step forward to proving that we DO want to increase opportunity for all.
And it's another LIBERAL DEMOCRAT policy DELIVERED.
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Monday, December 13, 2010
Day 3632: THIS is why we are in the Coalition, part 1 – Saving the World
Saturday:
After the disappointment of the Copenhagen Summit last year, when even President Barry O and Prime Monster Mr Frown could not wrangle a deal from the World Leaders… against pretty much ALL expectations that ANY progress could be made this year… the Climate Change Summit in Cancun has achieved a (moderate) success!
And Liberal Democrat Climate Change Secretary Mr Chris Huhney-Monster was right at the heart of the process.
Mr Huhney-Monster was proved RIGHT in his decision that it was more important to STAY and try and agree a deal than to come home to vote on Tuition Fees, in spite of Hard Labour's decision to deny him a pair for the evening of the vote. That he ending up with a pair ANYWAY was only down to another LIBERAL DEMOCRAT, and no thanks to Labour playing what can only be described as student politics.
Cancun has seen us contribute to REAL PROGRESS on IMPORTANT ISSUES for developed AND developing countries:
We've established a HUNDRED BILLION DOLLAR Green Climate Fund to help developing countries go low carbon and adapt to climate impacts. PLUS we've set up the mechanisms to help developing countries access low carbon technology, and adapt to climate change
We've agreed a deal on chopping down TREES, to slow, halt and reverse destruction of forests and to agree the rules for delivering it and for monitoring progress.
We've agreed a system for MEASURING, REPORTING and VERIFICATION – if that sounds dull just think how actually it's so important that we know how countries are living up to their promises to take action on emissions.
And ,perhaps most important, we've agreed the OBJECTIVE: to stop emissions from increasing and to limit global temperature rises to an overall target of 2 degrees.
On top of all that, Mr Huhney-Monster was personally responsible for negotiating an agreed way to continue the Kyoto Protocols for controlling CO2 emissions (give or take a couple of FUDGES to keep Russia and Japan on side).
This isn't a world-saving deal YET, but it shows the way and it shows that people can work together and WILL work together.
This last week has been dominated by arguments about how to pay for our kids' FUTURES, but with THIS DEAL we've taken BIG STRIDES towards ensuring that they have a future AT ALL.
And it's another LIBERAL DEMOCRAT policy DELIVERED.
.
After the disappointment of the Copenhagen Summit last year, when even President Barry O and Prime Monster Mr Frown could not wrangle a deal from the World Leaders… against pretty much ALL expectations that ANY progress could be made this year… the Climate Change Summit in Cancun has achieved a (moderate) success!
And Liberal Democrat Climate Change Secretary Mr Chris Huhney-Monster was right at the heart of the process.
Mr Huhney-Monster was proved RIGHT in his decision that it was more important to STAY and try and agree a deal than to come home to vote on Tuition Fees, in spite of Hard Labour's decision to deny him a pair for the evening of the vote. That he ending up with a pair ANYWAY was only down to another LIBERAL DEMOCRAT, and no thanks to Labour playing what can only be described as student politics.
Cancun has seen us contribute to REAL PROGRESS on IMPORTANT ISSUES for developed AND developing countries:
We've established a HUNDRED BILLION DOLLAR Green Climate Fund to help developing countries go low carbon and adapt to climate impacts. PLUS we've set up the mechanisms to help developing countries access low carbon technology, and adapt to climate change
We've agreed a deal on chopping down TREES, to slow, halt and reverse destruction of forests and to agree the rules for delivering it and for monitoring progress.
We've agreed a system for MEASURING, REPORTING and VERIFICATION – if that sounds dull just think how actually it's so important that we know how countries are living up to their promises to take action on emissions.
And ,perhaps most important, we've agreed the OBJECTIVE: to stop emissions from increasing and to limit global temperature rises to an overall target of 2 degrees.
On top of all that, Mr Huhney-Monster was personally responsible for negotiating an agreed way to continue the Kyoto Protocols for controlling CO2 emissions (give or take a couple of FUDGES to keep Russia and Japan on side).
This isn't a world-saving deal YET, but it shows the way and it shows that people can work together and WILL work together.
This last week has been dominated by arguments about how to pay for our kids' FUTURES, but with THIS DEAL we've taken BIG STRIDES towards ensuring that they have a future AT ALL.
And it's another LIBERAL DEMOCRAT policy DELIVERED.
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Friday, December 10, 2010
Day 3631: Did Yooooooo Betray Meeeeeee?
Friday:
To Paraphrase an old joke…
He delivers a Green Investment Bank, New Green Deal and cancels the third runway at Heathrow but is he known as Clegg the Green?
He delivers two-and-a-half BILLION quid for deprived school children but is he known as Clegg the Educator?
He delivers a tax cut to every basic rate taxpayer in the country but is he known as Clegg the Generous?
He delivers the AV referendum, an elected House of Lords and a fixed term Parliament but is he known as Clegg the Reformer?
But he screws-up over ONE pledge to the NUS…
The deed is done.
Have a HEART people.
We all LOVED him during the election, and thought he was totally magnificent. So what if it turns out that he CAN walk on water but he gets his SOCKS WET in doing so.
No, I realise it's more SERIOUS than that. For some people, this will be a burnt bridge too far – and a metaphor too mixed – and they won't be able to support Nick any more. And that's sad.
Remember, Nick has still delivered MORE from a Liberal manifesto than ANYONE since Mr Lloyd George, and he's not split the party nearly so badly as the boy David did! Er.
Look, in spite of the meeja's ALL-TOO GLEEFUL expectations of a three-way – or even FOUR-way – split, in the end the Liberal Democrat votes divided almost exactly into ministers who voted to keep their pledge to the Conservatories and backbenchers who voted to keep their pledge to the students.
And now we see why that UNPRINCIPLED OPPORTUNIST Mr Potato Ed put his own brand of student politics above the urgency of the Climate Change summit AND broke a long-standing tradition of which his own Party had taken advantage, when he refused to "pair" any ministers: he wanted to POSE and PREEN that every single Hard Labour MP voted against the rise. How sad that his response to the GROWN UP politics of the Coalition is to become more tribalist and isolationist.
It is typified by the accusation of "BETRAYAL", the worst sin – at least according to Mr Dante – the one that gets you sent to the NINTH and very DEEPEST circle of HELL.
Are we supposed to believe that Captain Clegg is, like LUCIFER, some fallen angel flung splat into uttermost perdition?
It's this constant refrain of "betrayal" that hurts the most. It doesn't hut US – our fluffy skins are thicker than that; I'm not made of ELEPHANT HIDE for nothing! No, it hurts the discussion, it hurts POLITICS. It reduces intelligent debate to the level of the PLAYGROUND: his fault, her fault, his fault, her fault!
And it ignores the fact that HALF of our MPs actually DIDN'T break the pledge; ignores that the rest of the Party has repeatedly restated our support for the policy; and just ignores, for that matter, that when we couldn't deliver on the pledge we KEPT ON FIGHTING for the best possible deal for students in the face of Conservatories who would not let us raise the extra cash to pay and a Labour Party that would rather play SILLY BUGGERS than engage constructively either in Coalition negotiations where they demanded an increase to SEVEN thousand, not SIX, or since when they've suddenly invented graduate tax proposals that would be LESS PROGRESSIVE than the deal WE negotiated.
It's not like the NUS are even keeping their OWN pledge, since their policy is just a RE-BRAND of student loans as a capped graduate tax. And yesterday's Tell-lies-o-graph revealed that, when pushed to the wall, odious little self-serving Labour-crats like Mr Aaron Porter would rather CUT GRANTS TO THE POOREST than have rich little princelings made to contribute more.
But never mind ANY of that!
You want to know who betrayed you? It was all those STUDENTS who said they'd vote Lib Dem and then didn't bother to turn out. If they could have been BOTHERED to "protest" for five minutes at a ballot box then we could have had a dozen more MPs and had the LEVERAGE to block the fees rise.
And it's worth reflecting that students ARE a PRIVILEGED class. For all that they shout the loudest. In all the hullabaloo the voices that AREN'T being heard are the more-than-fifty-percent of people who DON'T get to go to university.
I believe in abolishing tuition fees because I believe in greater OPPORTUNITIES for EVERYONE. And if there's one thing that I've realised in the debate over student fees it's that we haven't thought nearly enough about how to bring the same sort of LIFE-CHANGING opportunity to people OTHER than our most academically gifted. What has happened to our polytechnics? To apprenticeships? To the third of people LEFT BEHIND by Labour?
So we need to start thinking again about post 16/18 education and training and investment in our young people's future. And that is where we should start.
The deed is done. Let's move on. Together.
Captain Clegg asked his fellow MPs to walk through fire with him. So here is a CHEERY video to remind him how THAT works out…
Run VT!
.
To Paraphrase an old joke…
He delivers a Green Investment Bank, New Green Deal and cancels the third runway at Heathrow but is he known as Clegg the Green?
He delivers two-and-a-half BILLION quid for deprived school children but is he known as Clegg the Educator?
He delivers a tax cut to every basic rate taxpayer in the country but is he known as Clegg the Generous?
He delivers the AV referendum, an elected House of Lords and a fixed term Parliament but is he known as Clegg the Reformer?
But he screws-up over ONE pledge to the NUS…
The deed is done.
Have a HEART people.
We all LOVED him during the election, and thought he was totally magnificent. So what if it turns out that he CAN walk on water but he gets his SOCKS WET in doing so.
No, I realise it's more SERIOUS than that. For some people, this will be a burnt bridge too far – and a metaphor too mixed – and they won't be able to support Nick any more. And that's sad.
Remember, Nick has still delivered MORE from a Liberal manifesto than ANYONE since Mr Lloyd George, and he's not split the party nearly so badly as the boy David did! Er.
Look, in spite of the meeja's ALL-TOO GLEEFUL expectations of a three-way – or even FOUR-way – split, in the end the Liberal Democrat votes divided almost exactly into ministers who voted to keep their pledge to the Conservatories and backbenchers who voted to keep their pledge to the students.
And now we see why that UNPRINCIPLED OPPORTUNIST Mr Potato Ed put his own brand of student politics above the urgency of the Climate Change summit AND broke a long-standing tradition of which his own Party had taken advantage, when he refused to "pair" any ministers: he wanted to POSE and PREEN that every single Hard Labour MP voted against the rise. How sad that his response to the GROWN UP politics of the Coalition is to become more tribalist and isolationist.
It is typified by the accusation of "BETRAYAL", the worst sin – at least according to Mr Dante – the one that gets you sent to the NINTH and very DEEPEST circle of HELL.
Are we supposed to believe that Captain Clegg is, like LUCIFER, some fallen angel flung splat into uttermost perdition?
It's this constant refrain of "betrayal" that hurts the most. It doesn't hut US – our fluffy skins are thicker than that; I'm not made of ELEPHANT HIDE for nothing! No, it hurts the discussion, it hurts POLITICS. It reduces intelligent debate to the level of the PLAYGROUND: his fault, her fault, his fault, her fault!
And it ignores the fact that HALF of our MPs actually DIDN'T break the pledge; ignores that the rest of the Party has repeatedly restated our support for the policy; and just ignores, for that matter, that when we couldn't deliver on the pledge we KEPT ON FIGHTING for the best possible deal for students in the face of Conservatories who would not let us raise the extra cash to pay and a Labour Party that would rather play SILLY BUGGERS than engage constructively either in Coalition negotiations where they demanded an increase to SEVEN thousand, not SIX, or since when they've suddenly invented graduate tax proposals that would be LESS PROGRESSIVE than the deal WE negotiated.
It's not like the NUS are even keeping their OWN pledge, since their policy is just a RE-BRAND of student loans as a capped graduate tax. And yesterday's Tell-lies-o-graph revealed that, when pushed to the wall, odious little self-serving Labour-crats like Mr Aaron Porter would rather CUT GRANTS TO THE POOREST than have rich little princelings made to contribute more.
But never mind ANY of that!
You want to know who betrayed you? It was all those STUDENTS who said they'd vote Lib Dem and then didn't bother to turn out. If they could have been BOTHERED to "protest" for five minutes at a ballot box then we could have had a dozen more MPs and had the LEVERAGE to block the fees rise.
And it's worth reflecting that students ARE a PRIVILEGED class. For all that they shout the loudest. In all the hullabaloo the voices that AREN'T being heard are the more-than-fifty-percent of people who DON'T get to go to university.
I believe in abolishing tuition fees because I believe in greater OPPORTUNITIES for EVERYONE. And if there's one thing that I've realised in the debate over student fees it's that we haven't thought nearly enough about how to bring the same sort of LIFE-CHANGING opportunity to people OTHER than our most academically gifted. What has happened to our polytechnics? To apprenticeships? To the third of people LEFT BEHIND by Labour?
So we need to start thinking again about post 16/18 education and training and investment in our young people's future. And that is where we should start.
The deed is done. Let's move on. Together.
Captain Clegg asked his fellow MPs to walk through fire with him. So here is a CHEERY video to remind him how THAT works out…
Run VT!
.
Wednesday, December 08, 2010
Day 3629: Now Labour's Opportunism Threatens Climate Change Talks
Wednesday:
Once upon a time, back when HE was Climate Change Secretary, Labour Leader Mr Potato Ed said it would be "profoundly irresponsible" to use one "mistake" as an excuse not to act.
Well, today we learn that he won't let THAT get in the way of EMBARRASSING the Liberal Democrats.
Mr Potato Ed is REFUSING to allow the Liberal Democrat Environment Secretary, Mr Chris Huhney-Monster, a "pair" for the Tuition Fees vote tomorrow. So Mr Huhney-Monster has a choice: come home from the VITAL Climate Change Summit in Cancun OR miss the vote and risk letting the Government LOSE!
This is a MASSIVE breach of protocol by Hard Labour and a really dirty trick by Mr Potato Ed.
"Pairing" is a LONG-STANDING arrangement between Government and Opposition Parties for two MPs, whose votes would otherwise cancel each other out, both to be absent. This allows Government ministers to get on with important business on behalf of the country and in return lets a Labour MP, er, get a night off*.
It's done by a formal agreement between the Whips Offices (which is just one of the reasons you can't "pair" with a rebel on your own side – never mind that if they're wound up enough TO rebel, they're hardly likely to agree to taking a stand by not being there!)
It's been used for TIGHT votes before to allow Hard Labour ministers attend important events such as – not un-coincidentally – the 2004 Higher Education Act (which you MAY recall was a bit of a tight pinch itself with seventy-one Labour rebels opposing, er, the Hard Labour Government manifesto-pledge tripling of tuition fees).
So, with the extra concessions we've won, how close IS the Tuition Fees vote?
Liberal Democrats plus Conservatories make three hundred and fifty-two of the six hundred and fifty MPs in the House of Commons. BUT the five Sinn Fein members do not take their seats, and Mr Speaker Cashcow and his three deputies do not vote either. And Hard Labour have, er, misplaced a seat because Mr Phil Woolas is a CONVICTED LIAR. So at full strength, the Liberal Democrat/Conservatory Coalition has an effective majority of EIGHTY-FOUR.
That means it needs forty-two rebels to bring the Government majority down to nothing.
There are eighteen Liberal Democrat Ministers, and Captain Clegg has announced that they will all vote FOR the Tuition Fees policy. (Or all bar one, if Mr Huhney-Monster can't make it!)
So even if ALL thirty-nine other Liberal Democrats rebel (and they aren't going to - scores on the doors from Mr Paul) PLUS the one or two Conservatory rebels vote against, that's only forty-ONE. And the Government gets a majority of TWO.
And Hard Labour themselves are ALL OVER THE PLACE on the issue of funding for higher education, with only today their Shadow Chancer being arm-twisted into performing a tarmac-melting hand-brake turn on the graduate tax, a policy that will – of course – just put the SAME burden of paying for their education on future graduates, which is why it's been referred to as "infinite tuition fees". So they will ONLY be opposing this rise in order to try and score a mythical point over the Government.
Climate Change is MORE important that Tuition Fees; even the CONSERVATORIES think so, even if Mr Potato Ed clearly doesn't. We can demonstrate we've NOT lost all our principles AND show contempt for Hard Labour's opportunism AND just squeak through!
So personally, I say Mr Huhney-Monster should skip the vote and DAMN THEIR EYES!**
*Yes, unfair. Once in a while even Mr Potato Ed must get an evening engagement too.
**Mr Blackadder says this, so it MUST by okay!
.
Once upon a time, back when HE was Climate Change Secretary, Labour Leader Mr Potato Ed said it would be "profoundly irresponsible" to use one "mistake" as an excuse not to act.
Well, today we learn that he won't let THAT get in the way of EMBARRASSING the Liberal Democrats.
Mr Potato Ed is REFUSING to allow the Liberal Democrat Environment Secretary, Mr Chris Huhney-Monster, a "pair" for the Tuition Fees vote tomorrow. So Mr Huhney-Monster has a choice: come home from the VITAL Climate Change Summit in Cancun OR miss the vote and risk letting the Government LOSE!
This is a MASSIVE breach of protocol by Hard Labour and a really dirty trick by Mr Potato Ed.
"Pairing" is a LONG-STANDING arrangement between Government and Opposition Parties for two MPs, whose votes would otherwise cancel each other out, both to be absent. This allows Government ministers to get on with important business on behalf of the country and in return lets a Labour MP, er, get a night off*.
It's done by a formal agreement between the Whips Offices (which is just one of the reasons you can't "pair" with a rebel on your own side – never mind that if they're wound up enough TO rebel, they're hardly likely to agree to taking a stand by not being there!)
It's been used for TIGHT votes before to allow Hard Labour ministers attend important events such as – not un-coincidentally – the 2004 Higher Education Act (which you MAY recall was a bit of a tight pinch itself with seventy-one Labour rebels opposing, er, the Hard Labour Government manifesto-pledge tripling of tuition fees).
So, with the extra concessions we've won, how close IS the Tuition Fees vote?
Liberal Democrats plus Conservatories make three hundred and fifty-two of the six hundred and fifty MPs in the House of Commons. BUT the five Sinn Fein members do not take their seats, and Mr Speaker Cashcow and his three deputies do not vote either. And Hard Labour have, er, misplaced a seat because Mr Phil Woolas is a CONVICTED LIAR. So at full strength, the Liberal Democrat/Conservatory Coalition has an effective majority of EIGHTY-FOUR.
That means it needs forty-two rebels to bring the Government majority down to nothing.
There are eighteen Liberal Democrat Ministers, and Captain Clegg has announced that they will all vote FOR the Tuition Fees policy. (Or all bar one, if Mr Huhney-Monster can't make it!)
So even if ALL thirty-nine other Liberal Democrats rebel (and they aren't going to - scores on the doors from Mr Paul) PLUS the one or two Conservatory rebels vote against, that's only forty-ONE. And the Government gets a majority of TWO.
And Hard Labour themselves are ALL OVER THE PLACE on the issue of funding for higher education, with only today their Shadow Chancer being arm-twisted into performing a tarmac-melting hand-brake turn on the graduate tax, a policy that will – of course – just put the SAME burden of paying for their education on future graduates, which is why it's been referred to as "infinite tuition fees". So they will ONLY be opposing this rise in order to try and score a mythical point over the Government.
Climate Change is MORE important that Tuition Fees; even the CONSERVATORIES think so, even if Mr Potato Ed clearly doesn't. We can demonstrate we've NOT lost all our principles AND show contempt for Hard Labour's opportunism AND just squeak through!
So personally, I say Mr Huhney-Monster should skip the vote and DAMN THEIR EYES!**
*Yes, unfair. Once in a while even Mr Potato Ed must get an evening engagement too.
**Mr Blackadder says this, so it MUST by okay!
.
Monday, December 06, 2010
Day 3627: There SHOULD be a three way split on Tuition Fees… and lots of other issues!
Monday:
There was a lady on the BBC news last night saying that there might be "embarrassment" if the Liberal Democrats voted in different ways on Tuition Fees.
EMBARRASSMENT?
Are YOU embarrassed, Lady from the BBC? Because I'm not.
There are several very complicated and difficult-to-resolve issues in collision here and the Liberal Democrats are obviously and very publically trying to think them through and take opinion onboard. And, unsurprisingly when you ask a bunch of people ELECTED to be independent thinkers, some come to different conclusions.
This is called DEMOCRACY.
But the Lady from the BBC calls it "embarrassment".
I will tell you what is EMBARRASSING. A meeja who are either so ILL-INFORMED (and too LAZY to put themselves right) or so MENDACIOUS (not mentioning any names but she's a senior columnist for the Grauniad who now literally cannot write a column without actively distorting what Captain Clegg really says) that they think "MPs think long and hard about how to vote" is a gaffe rather than a FLUFFING JOB DESCRIPTION.
It seems to me that the MORE complicated and controversial an issue is – I won't say "more important"; in a week when North Korea is bombing South Korea and Iran has a fully functioning nuclear program, get a sense of perspective! – the HARDER the issue, the more political parties are expected to have INSTANT policy and UNANIMOUS agreement.
I mean never mind that Hard Labour don't actually HAVE a policy on this; that the Hard Labour leader, Mr Potato Ed, thinks that we should have a graduate tax and the Hard Labour Shadow Chancer, Mr Johnson and Johnson, thinks anyone who supports a graduate tax is a moron. Like THAT's not embarrassing AT ALL.
Here are just a few of the issues:
We made a promise to vote against any rise in tuition fees.
But we also got a better deal for students by being in the coalition than anyone else was offering.
From a purely pragmatic point of view, the pledge gave us LEVERAGE. The ability to say "this is going to be very painful for us" might not have been enough to get the increase in fees cancelled, but it certainly enabled us to demand a hugely BETTER deal for students than any that was on the table from Conservatories, Labour OR the NUS.
So do we break the pledge or say "get stuffed" to the better deal that we negotiated?
What would be the cost to students of any ALTERNATIVE that might have to be come up with if we DID keep the pledge and vote against?
We COULD vote with Hard Labour on this one – opportunistically, Mr Potato Ed will vote against the Browne report that his own former government commissioned because beating the Coalition is more important to him than having an actual policy – and together we could outvote the Conservatories and stop the rise.
But Master Gideon ISN'T going to find any OTHER money for Higher Education so wouldn't we see MASSIVE cuts in university funding, probably closing a number of departments and cancelling the courses of thousands of students. And what could we do about it? Nothing. Because we'd have surrendered our ability to negotiate on the issue.
So was it better to BREAK the pledge and get a better deal for students or KEEP the pledge and guarantee a worse deal?
And there's a BIGGER PICTURE: what are the consequences for the Coalition if we break the Coalition Agreement on this?
Do we get more good, more Liberal Democrat policies implemented by staying IN the Coalition in spite of this than we could possibly do outside of it? Does that outweigh ENOUGH the COST of breaking the pledge? Or is that just the ENDS justifying the MEANS?
These are DIFFICULT decisions to make and I expect our MPs to MAKE difficult decisions, and I expect them NOT TO ALL MAKE THE SAME DECISIONS.
Contrary to popular opinion – and meeja expectations – they are NOT a row of CABBAGES.
I think we were QUITE RIGHT to make the pledge to oppose any raise in Tuition Fees.
Was it naïve and possibly stupid and certainly bad POLITICS and will we pay a price for breaking the pledge? Yes to all of those things.
But it was also principled and noble and a little bit wonderfully mad and it was the RIGHT THING TO DO.
So I support President Tim Farronheit and former leaders Sir Mr the Merciless and CK1 when they say that they will keep their pledge and vote against any rise in tuition fees.
But I ALSO support Captain Clegg and Mr Dr Vince when they say that they will vote FOR the Coalition policy because they believe that it is the best possible deal they could have got.
And I EVEN support Mr Hugs if he wants to abstain because that is what we agreed in the Coalition Agreement.
I see the contradiction in that. But "Party Unity" is a RUBBISH reason for overriding disagreements when you should argue them out make your case and in the end see how many people you have convinced by taking a vote. That's democracy for you.
And it's NOT an embarrassment.
.
There was a lady on the BBC news last night saying that there might be "embarrassment" if the Liberal Democrats voted in different ways on Tuition Fees.
EMBARRASSMENT?
Are YOU embarrassed, Lady from the BBC? Because I'm not.
There are several very complicated and difficult-to-resolve issues in collision here and the Liberal Democrats are obviously and very publically trying to think them through and take opinion onboard. And, unsurprisingly when you ask a bunch of people ELECTED to be independent thinkers, some come to different conclusions.
This is called DEMOCRACY.
But the Lady from the BBC calls it "embarrassment".
I will tell you what is EMBARRASSING. A meeja who are either so ILL-INFORMED (and too LAZY to put themselves right) or so MENDACIOUS (not mentioning any names but she's a senior columnist for the Grauniad who now literally cannot write a column without actively distorting what Captain Clegg really says) that they think "MPs think long and hard about how to vote" is a gaffe rather than a FLUFFING JOB DESCRIPTION.
It seems to me that the MORE complicated and controversial an issue is – I won't say "more important"; in a week when North Korea is bombing South Korea and Iran has a fully functioning nuclear program, get a sense of perspective! – the HARDER the issue, the more political parties are expected to have INSTANT policy and UNANIMOUS agreement.
I mean never mind that Hard Labour don't actually HAVE a policy on this; that the Hard Labour leader, Mr Potato Ed, thinks that we should have a graduate tax and the Hard Labour Shadow Chancer, Mr Johnson and Johnson, thinks anyone who supports a graduate tax is a moron. Like THAT's not embarrassing AT ALL.
Here are just a few of the issues:
We made a promise to vote against any rise in tuition fees.
But we also got a better deal for students by being in the coalition than anyone else was offering.
From a purely pragmatic point of view, the pledge gave us LEVERAGE. The ability to say "this is going to be very painful for us" might not have been enough to get the increase in fees cancelled, but it certainly enabled us to demand a hugely BETTER deal for students than any that was on the table from Conservatories, Labour OR the NUS.
So do we break the pledge or say "get stuffed" to the better deal that we negotiated?
What would be the cost to students of any ALTERNATIVE that might have to be come up with if we DID keep the pledge and vote against?
We COULD vote with Hard Labour on this one – opportunistically, Mr Potato Ed will vote against the Browne report that his own former government commissioned because beating the Coalition is more important to him than having an actual policy – and together we could outvote the Conservatories and stop the rise.
But Master Gideon ISN'T going to find any OTHER money for Higher Education so wouldn't we see MASSIVE cuts in university funding, probably closing a number of departments and cancelling the courses of thousands of students. And what could we do about it? Nothing. Because we'd have surrendered our ability to negotiate on the issue.
So was it better to BREAK the pledge and get a better deal for students or KEEP the pledge and guarantee a worse deal?
And there's a BIGGER PICTURE: what are the consequences for the Coalition if we break the Coalition Agreement on this?
Do we get more good, more Liberal Democrat policies implemented by staying IN the Coalition in spite of this than we could possibly do outside of it? Does that outweigh ENOUGH the COST of breaking the pledge? Or is that just the ENDS justifying the MEANS?
These are DIFFICULT decisions to make and I expect our MPs to MAKE difficult decisions, and I expect them NOT TO ALL MAKE THE SAME DECISIONS.
Contrary to popular opinion – and meeja expectations – they are NOT a row of CABBAGES.
I think we were QUITE RIGHT to make the pledge to oppose any raise in Tuition Fees.
Was it naïve and possibly stupid and certainly bad POLITICS and will we pay a price for breaking the pledge? Yes to all of those things.
But it was also principled and noble and a little bit wonderfully mad and it was the RIGHT THING TO DO.
So I support President Tim Farronheit and former leaders Sir Mr the Merciless and CK1 when they say that they will keep their pledge and vote against any rise in tuition fees.
But I ALSO support Captain Clegg and Mr Dr Vince when they say that they will vote FOR the Coalition policy because they believe that it is the best possible deal they could have got.
And I EVEN support Mr Hugs if he wants to abstain because that is what we agreed in the Coalition Agreement.
I see the contradiction in that. But "Party Unity" is a RUBBISH reason for overriding disagreements when you should argue them out make your case and in the end see how many people you have convinced by taking a vote. That's democracy for you.
And it's NOT an embarrassment.
.
Wednesday, December 01, 2010
Day 3622 (again): On World AIDS Day… Some People SHOULD be Ashamed
Wednesday:
December 1st is World AIDS Day.
Across the world, people with HIV continue to face not just the prospect of a horrible disease, but also genuine prejudice, that can cost them their jobs, their homes, even their lives.
And yet today, the former Beardy Weirdy of Canterbury has decided that he's going to IGNORE that and bang on about HIS so called "right" to EXTRA SPECIAL treatment being under attack.
These SPECIAL "rights" include the "right" to hate gay daddies, the "right" to ignore employment law and the "right" to a free seat in the House of Lords Club (where he very nearly never bothers to show up).
He has set up a special website to tell the stories of some of the people who have SUFFERED for their Christian faith. (Please note: like they say in the movies, no people suffered actual SUFFERING in the course of these stories.)
I should like to direct you to Mr Unity at the Ministry of Truth who can explain better than me why none of these people deserve anything but your choice of pity or contempt.
This morning the The Today Programme programme chose to interview one of these people, a Mr Gary McFarlane, a man who was sacked from his job when he refused to treat gay daddies with equal respect because it "conflicted with his religious principles". This decision was judged correct by the employment tribunal and by the court of appeal.
Would the Today Programme have interviewed a man who was sacked for erecting a huge burning cross on Mr McFarlane's front drive and claimed it was because HE was just expressing his "religious principles"? I rather think not.
Mr McFarlane's problem is not that he is BAD because he is a Christian; no, he is obviously bad because he is a BAD CHRISTIAN.
You are probably familiar with the story of the Good Samaritan. It is a PARABLE told by Mr Jesus, and in the story a Jewish gentleman is mugged. Several other Jewish gentlepersons go past and, shockingly, ignore the crime! And then along came a Samaritan gentleman and he looked after the injured man. Hooray, a happy ending. What you ALSO ought to know, though, is that the Jewish people and the Samaritan people did not get on. They had, what you might call, "religious differences". So you see the POINT of the story is that the Samaritan was GOOD not just because he HELPED a Jewish person, but because he OVERCAME PREJUDICE in order to do so.
I think you can see where I am going here.
Is it wrong of Christian people to say that they are not ashamed? No, not really.
I have no problem with the Beardy Weirdy wanting to wear a dress to work. Why shouldn't he, if he wants to.
The Liberal Democrats are VERY TOLERANT of WEIRD SEXUAL PRACTICES, even including CELIBACY. What you do or don't do in the privacy of your own home/dungeon/secluded part of the common is nobody's business but your own.
And if all two billion Christians worldwide are doomed to be fed to the RAVENOUS BUGBLATTER BEAST of TRAAL for their failure to appease the GREAT GREEN ARKLESEIZURE, then honestly that is a matter for their consciences and not mine. It's not like we can't all make up our own minds to believe our own made-up stuff. Just ask the FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER.
But today is a day for thinking about OTHER people who are worse off than you by LOTS, so it is TACTLESS and SELFISH and STUPID to try and stomp all over World AIDS Day.
And as Daddy said to Mr Paul earlier, it's not like you haven't GOT a Day in December for advertising your Christian beliefs, is it?
Best wishes for World AIDS Day!
.
December 1st is World AIDS Day.
Across the world, people with HIV continue to face not just the prospect of a horrible disease, but also genuine prejudice, that can cost them their jobs, their homes, even their lives.
And yet today, the former Beardy Weirdy of Canterbury has decided that he's going to IGNORE that and bang on about HIS so called "right" to EXTRA SPECIAL treatment being under attack.
These SPECIAL "rights" include the "right" to hate gay daddies, the "right" to ignore employment law and the "right" to a free seat in the House of Lords Club (where he very nearly never bothers to show up).
He has set up a special website to tell the stories of some of the people who have SUFFERED for their Christian faith. (Please note: like they say in the movies, no people suffered actual SUFFERING in the course of these stories.)
I should like to direct you to Mr Unity at the Ministry of Truth who can explain better than me why none of these people deserve anything but your choice of pity or contempt.
This morning the The Today Programme programme chose to interview one of these people, a Mr Gary McFarlane, a man who was sacked from his job when he refused to treat gay daddies with equal respect because it "conflicted with his religious principles". This decision was judged correct by the employment tribunal and by the court of appeal.
Would the Today Programme have interviewed a man who was sacked for erecting a huge burning cross on Mr McFarlane's front drive and claimed it was because HE was just expressing his "religious principles"? I rather think not.
Mr McFarlane's problem is not that he is BAD because he is a Christian; no, he is obviously bad because he is a BAD CHRISTIAN.
You are probably familiar with the story of the Good Samaritan. It is a PARABLE told by Mr Jesus, and in the story a Jewish gentleman is mugged. Several other Jewish gentlepersons go past and, shockingly, ignore the crime! And then along came a Samaritan gentleman and he looked after the injured man. Hooray, a happy ending. What you ALSO ought to know, though, is that the Jewish people and the Samaritan people did not get on. They had, what you might call, "religious differences". So you see the POINT of the story is that the Samaritan was GOOD not just because he HELPED a Jewish person, but because he OVERCAME PREJUDICE in order to do so.
I think you can see where I am going here.
Is it wrong of Christian people to say that they are not ashamed? No, not really.
I have no problem with the Beardy Weirdy wanting to wear a dress to work. Why shouldn't he, if he wants to.
The Liberal Democrats are VERY TOLERANT of WEIRD SEXUAL PRACTICES, even including CELIBACY. What you do or don't do in the privacy of your own home/dungeon/secluded part of the common is nobody's business but your own.
And if all two billion Christians worldwide are doomed to be fed to the RAVENOUS BUGBLATTER BEAST of TRAAL for their failure to appease the GREAT GREEN ARKLESEIZURE, then honestly that is a matter for their consciences and not mine. It's not like we can't all make up our own minds to believe our own made-up stuff. Just ask the FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER.
But today is a day for thinking about OTHER people who are worse off than you by LOTS, so it is TACTLESS and SELFISH and STUPID to try and stomp all over World AIDS Day.
And as Daddy said to Mr Paul earlier, it's not like you haven't GOT a Day in December for advertising your Christian beliefs, is it?
Best wishes for World AIDS Day!
.
Day 3622: It's Time to Say YES
Wednesday:
It's not every day you get invited to join a REVOLUTION. But this Saturday, you can!
It's time to OVERTHROW the old way of doing things, and give people some real CHOICE at election time.
Say "YES" to fairer votes; it's a small effort for a BIG change.
Maybe you saw the "No" Campaign launch with a herd of political "big beasts", aka DINOSAURS: old-school hacks with an average age of sixty-five million years (ish), urging you to keep the STATUS QUO that got them where they are today (wearing ermine, mostly).
The "Yes" campaign ISN'T LIKE THAT.
Remember all those purple placards petitioning Captain Clegg? That was GENUINE people power in action on the streets. More than a hundred and forty thousand ORDINARY PEOPLE have already signed up to help the "YES" campaign. This isn't the great and the good telling you what to do; this is a Barack Obama style people's movement. And as a GENUINE grassroots campaign, team "Yes" are going to have to rely on lets and lots of EVERYDAY FOLKS to do their part.
And that means YOU!
They want to do something EXTRAORDINARY: they want to talk to people. LOTS of people! In fact, they intend to speak to more people than all the Political Parties COMBINED managed at the 2010 General Election.
That's where they want YOU to help.
The first wave begins this Saturday, with over fifty phonebanks opening in cities all over the country, and then from January they will be opening "VIRTUAL phonebanks" giving people the chance to take part from the comfort of their own homes.
Follow THIS linky to sign up to the campaign, and your nearest organiser will soon be in touch to arrange a time that is suitable for you to come and see the phonebank operation for yourself.
This ISN'T just about the Liberal Democrats. It sometimes seems we'd be hardly ANYBODY's first, second or even third choice these days anyway!
I got interested in POLITICS when my Daddies explained that it was all about giving people OPPORTUNITIES.
And what Fairer Votes REALLY does is open up the OPPORTUNITY for PEOPLE, the opportunity to make their own voice heard more clearly by letting them choose to put a DIFFERENT Party FIRST, one that, at the moment, they might not think will get in, but one that has their specific concerns most in mind – one like the Greens for some people or like UKIP for others or a SOCIALIST Party or a LOCAL campaigner.
With more CHOICE in elections, politics can be more HONEST and even if your candidate doesn't get in, everyone gets a better picture of what people REALLY want, not what they have to say they want when they have to pick from best of at most three.
So the REAL beneficiaries will be the VOTERS. And that means YOU (again).
The British political system was designed for an age of steam trains, Brontë novels, Dickensian squalor and almost exactly TWO political parties: the reactionary one and the progressive one.
But things have MOVED ON. In the last fifty years, the number of people NOT voting for one of other of Hard Labour or the Conservatories has gone from under 2% to more than a THIRD. You wouldn't expect your TESCOs to offer you just two kinds of VEGETABLE; so, why should you just get two kinds of VEGETABLE from your political system?
So if you want to make a real difference, you want to make a real change: vote positive; get involved; say "Yes"!
.
It's not every day you get invited to join a REVOLUTION. But this Saturday, you can!
It's time to OVERTHROW the old way of doing things, and give people some real CHOICE at election time.
Say "YES" to fairer votes; it's a small effort for a BIG change.
Maybe you saw the "No" Campaign launch with a herd of political "big beasts", aka DINOSAURS: old-school hacks with an average age of sixty-five million years (ish), urging you to keep the STATUS QUO that got them where they are today (wearing ermine, mostly).
The "Yes" campaign ISN'T LIKE THAT.
Remember all those purple placards petitioning Captain Clegg? That was GENUINE people power in action on the streets. More than a hundred and forty thousand ORDINARY PEOPLE have already signed up to help the "YES" campaign. This isn't the great and the good telling you what to do; this is a Barack Obama style people's movement. And as a GENUINE grassroots campaign, team "Yes" are going to have to rely on lets and lots of EVERYDAY FOLKS to do their part.
And that means YOU!
They want to do something EXTRAORDINARY: they want to talk to people. LOTS of people! In fact, they intend to speak to more people than all the Political Parties COMBINED managed at the 2010 General Election.
That's where they want YOU to help.
The first wave begins this Saturday, with over fifty phonebanks opening in cities all over the country, and then from January they will be opening "VIRTUAL phonebanks" giving people the chance to take part from the comfort of their own homes.
Follow THIS linky to sign up to the campaign, and your nearest organiser will soon be in touch to arrange a time that is suitable for you to come and see the phonebank operation for yourself.
This ISN'T just about the Liberal Democrats. It sometimes seems we'd be hardly ANYBODY's first, second or even third choice these days anyway!
I got interested in POLITICS when my Daddies explained that it was all about giving people OPPORTUNITIES.
And what Fairer Votes REALLY does is open up the OPPORTUNITY for PEOPLE, the opportunity to make their own voice heard more clearly by letting them choose to put a DIFFERENT Party FIRST, one that, at the moment, they might not think will get in, but one that has their specific concerns most in mind – one like the Greens for some people or like UKIP for others or a SOCIALIST Party or a LOCAL campaigner.
With more CHOICE in elections, politics can be more HONEST and even if your candidate doesn't get in, everyone gets a better picture of what people REALLY want, not what they have to say they want when they have to pick from best of at most three.
So the REAL beneficiaries will be the VOTERS. And that means YOU (again).
The British political system was designed for an age of steam trains, Brontë novels, Dickensian squalor and almost exactly TWO political parties: the reactionary one and the progressive one.
But things have MOVED ON. In the last fifty years, the number of people NOT voting for one of other of Hard Labour or the Conservatories has gone from under 2% to more than a THIRD. You wouldn't expect your TESCOs to offer you just two kinds of VEGETABLE; so, why should you just get two kinds of VEGETABLE from your political system?
So if you want to make a real difference, you want to make a real change: vote positive; get involved; say "Yes"!
.
Day 3621 (again): Happy Saint Andrew's Day – Have a Scotland Bill and Some Real McCoy
Tuesday:
It is the feast day of Mr Saint Andrew, Patron Saint of Scotland on account of what was left of him allegedly being smuggled there from Constantinople and buried in, appropriately enough, St Andrews. He was done in by the Romans – not the ONLY Andrew to be crucified on this day – on an X-shaped cross, hence the Scottish saltire-shaped flag.
Meanwhile, here is Auntie Caron on the Lib Dem WIN for Scotland in the Scotland Bill.
And here is the ONLY Dr Woo from Scotland (hush your mockney mouth Mr Dr David), the amazing Mr Dr Sylv, keeping shtum about his secret role in "The Hobbit" (he's playing Radagast the Brown; don't tell anyone) but making a big noise about hoping to return to the series for the Fiftieth Anniversay in 2013 for "TheEight Living and some CGI revenants Eleven Doctors".
(Though, personally, I suspect it will be EASIER to get Mr Billy, Mr Pat and Mr Jon to appear than it will be to get Dr Eccythump back in the TARDIS!)
I do hope Mr Dr Sylv DOES get to appear in the Anniversary adventure. It would be – forgive me – ACE!
And a Happy Mr Saint Andrew's Day, to all of you at home!
.
It is the feast day of Mr Saint Andrew, Patron Saint of Scotland on account of what was left of him allegedly being smuggled there from Constantinople and buried in, appropriately enough, St Andrews. He was done in by the Romans – not the ONLY Andrew to be crucified on this day – on an X-shaped cross, hence the Scottish saltire-shaped flag.
Meanwhile, here is Auntie Caron on the Lib Dem WIN for Scotland in the Scotland Bill.
And here is the ONLY Dr Woo from Scotland (hush your mockney mouth Mr Dr David), the amazing Mr Dr Sylv, keeping shtum about his secret role in "The Hobbit" (he's playing Radagast the Brown; don't tell anyone) but making a big noise about hoping to return to the series for the Fiftieth Anniversay in 2013 for "The
(Though, personally, I suspect it will be EASIER to get Mr Billy, Mr Pat and Mr Jon to appear than it will be to get Dr Eccythump back in the TARDIS!)
I do hope Mr Dr Sylv DOES get to appear in the Anniversary adventure. It would be – forgive me – ACE!
And a Happy Mr Saint Andrew's Day, to all of you at home!
.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Day 3621: Is it Time to Recall… Aaron Porter?
Tuesday:
The Coalition proposes that new graduates pay an amount every month proportional to their ability to pay, with additional help for the lowest earners, repayments to be capped at either thirty years or a maximum total payment ("paying off the loan").
The NUS proposes that graduates pay an amount every month proportional to their ability to pay, with additional help for the lowest earners, repayments to be capped at either twenty-five years or a maximum total payment ("for fairness").
So can ANYONE explain to me why the NUS' proposals are fair and reasonable but the Coalition's are wickedness incarnate?
Today, Captain Clegg has written to the Leader of the National Union of Students, Mr Harry Porter, to ask him to stop gathering elves and pixies and warlocks to march onHogwarts Cowley Street and instead really consider the actual proposals.
So consider the actual proposals is what I did.
Mr Porter has been getting a lot of facetime in the media recently, leading demonstrations against the government's tuition fees proposals, condemning the Liberal Democrats for breaking their pledges and generally being "the chosen one".
But has anyone told the people marching behind him that his own proposals are FUNCTIONALLY IDENTICAL to the Coalition's?
A quick comparison:
Graduates earning less than £15,000 would pay nothing under EITHER scheme.
Graduates earning between £15,000 and £21,000 would pay MORE under the NUS scheme: yes, that's right MORE under the NUS scheme. Graduates on £15,000 to £21,000 would pay 0.3% of their earnings under the graduate tax and nothing under the coalition's proposals.
Graduates earning over £40,000 would pay LESS under the NUS scheme. Yes, again, it's not the way around you would expect. Top earners would only pay 2.5% under the NUS's tax proposals but would pay 9% under the government's loan and repayment scheme.
Now, I may be being THICK here, but the NUS appears to be proposing a system that is much more generous to the RICH than to the less well off.
Isn't that just a little bit… dishonest?
But how does Mr Porter manage to magic up enough money from the scheme, given that the better off will pay so much less? Ah, well he thinks that he has discovered a cauldron of free money.
You see, the NUS scheme will apply to ALL graduates, not just people starting new degrees in 2012. That's what they call "retroactive taxation", or changing the rules after people have already made their choices. After all, it's not like you can give your university degree BACK. Oh, but they've "had the benefit" of further education, says Harry Porter, it's only FAIR that they pay up now.
Well is it fair? The deal for those people was, surely, they would get an education paid by other taxpayers, and then they would pay their taxes to fund their children's education (not to mention their parent's pensions and their own health service and so on). Haven't they kept their side of the bargain? Isn't this just a sly tax increase on a lot of people who don't actually earn all that much extra for their time at university, a lot of nurses and teachers and, well, university lecturers?
Isn't that just a little bit… dishonest?
Then there's the time horizon. By which I mean, what happens as time goes on and your pool of graduates who didn't pay for their degree at the time gets smaller and smaller. At them moment, say Peter wants to go to University. Peter is going to pay for his tuition from graduate taxes he pays in the future, but he won't need to put in as much because the pool will also be getting contributions from Peter's dad.
In the fullness of time, at most once they have their twenty-five years of tax-paying, the pool won’t be getting that "extra" income from Peter's dad. When it's time for Peter's kids to go to university, they'll have to pay their tuition fees from their own tax contributions just like their dad… but they WON'T benefit from any extra contributions from Pete himself, 'cos HE'S already paying for his own education.
Isn't this pushing costs onto the next generation… which is rather what the NUS accuse the Coalition of doing.
Isn't that just a little bit… dishonest?
Mr Porter is trying to get a head of steam behind the idea of taking the Liberal Democrat's own proposals for "right of recall" for dealing with corrupt MP's who break the law and using them to "recall" Liberal Democrats who signed the NUS pledge (and, one assumes, subsequently break that pledge).
(Never mind the STUPIDITY of a proposal that would open EVERY SINGLE Opposition MP – all of Hard Labour and that Green and the Scots and Welsh Nasties and all – open them ALL to recall for failing to implement THEIR manifestos. Oh yes it would. Since CLEARLY failure to achieve an overall majority is not an excuse for not fully implementing your manifesto.)
In the words of one Student Union president, Mr Joshua Forstenzer of Sheffield University (no doubt quoted for IRONIC reasons):
I have to say, the FUNDAMENTAL democratic principle is that if you think your representative told you one thing and then did another then you will get a chance to throw them out in less than five years anyway. But perhaps you think that deceiving your electorate is SO heinous that you just HAVE to take a pop at them earlier.
But if DISHONESTY is your measure for facing a RECALL, then shouldn't the first person on the list be… well… Mr Harry Porter himself. For being just a little bit… dishonest.
I think that a university education ought to be available to everyone. But I think that it should only be taken up by people who are academically inclined. Other people should have other opportunities.
The system we have at the moment means that fewer than half of young people get their opportunity because all the effort goes into getting as many as possible squeezed into a university course that won't necessarily be any use to them.
If you're not going to provide those opportunities to the people who DON'T get to go to university, then your system IS transferring a benefit, money in fact (the cost of subsidy), from the unprivileged to the privileged.
I suppose in those terms it's kind of fair to ask graduates to bear some extra cost of their education rather than raising general tax and getting people who never went to university to pay for it. (Though as I say, I'd rather have a RANGE of opportunities so there's something for EVERYONE)
The NUS proposals recognise that. That's why THEIR system isn't so very different from the Coalition's. It just seems that they want to make things easier for themselves by squeezing people who are already pretty squeezed.
And it seems they want to BLAME the Liberal Democrats a system that Hard Labour commissioned, that the Conservatories support and that they agree with.
Only WE made the government proposals FAIRER than theirs.
Remind me: what have they got those students marching for again?
I cannot recall.
.
The Coalition proposes that new graduates pay an amount every month proportional to their ability to pay, with additional help for the lowest earners, repayments to be capped at either thirty years or a maximum total payment ("paying off the loan").
The NUS proposes that graduates pay an amount every month proportional to their ability to pay, with additional help for the lowest earners, repayments to be capped at either twenty-five years or a maximum total payment ("for fairness").
So can ANYONE explain to me why the NUS' proposals are fair and reasonable but the Coalition's are wickedness incarnate?
Today, Captain Clegg has written to the Leader of the National Union of Students, Mr Harry Porter, to ask him to stop gathering elves and pixies and warlocks to march on
So consider the actual proposals is what I did.
Mr Porter has been getting a lot of facetime in the media recently, leading demonstrations against the government's tuition fees proposals, condemning the Liberal Democrats for breaking their pledges and generally being "the chosen one".
But has anyone told the people marching behind him that his own proposals are FUNCTIONALLY IDENTICAL to the Coalition's?
A quick comparison:
Graduates earning less than £15,000 would pay nothing under EITHER scheme.
Graduates earning between £15,000 and £21,000 would pay MORE under the NUS scheme: yes, that's right MORE under the NUS scheme. Graduates on £15,000 to £21,000 would pay 0.3% of their earnings under the graduate tax and nothing under the coalition's proposals.
Graduates earning over £40,000 would pay LESS under the NUS scheme. Yes, again, it's not the way around you would expect. Top earners would only pay 2.5% under the NUS's tax proposals but would pay 9% under the government's loan and repayment scheme.
Now, I may be being THICK here, but the NUS appears to be proposing a system that is much more generous to the RICH than to the less well off.
Isn't that just a little bit… dishonest?
But how does Mr Porter manage to magic up enough money from the scheme, given that the better off will pay so much less? Ah, well he thinks that he has discovered a cauldron of free money.
You see, the NUS scheme will apply to ALL graduates, not just people starting new degrees in 2012. That's what they call "retroactive taxation", or changing the rules after people have already made their choices. After all, it's not like you can give your university degree BACK. Oh, but they've "had the benefit" of further education, says Harry Porter, it's only FAIR that they pay up now.
Well is it fair? The deal for those people was, surely, they would get an education paid by other taxpayers, and then they would pay their taxes to fund their children's education (not to mention their parent's pensions and their own health service and so on). Haven't they kept their side of the bargain? Isn't this just a sly tax increase on a lot of people who don't actually earn all that much extra for their time at university, a lot of nurses and teachers and, well, university lecturers?
Isn't that just a little bit… dishonest?
Then there's the time horizon. By which I mean, what happens as time goes on and your pool of graduates who didn't pay for their degree at the time gets smaller and smaller. At them moment, say Peter wants to go to University. Peter is going to pay for his tuition from graduate taxes he pays in the future, but he won't need to put in as much because the pool will also be getting contributions from Peter's dad.
In the fullness of time, at most once they have their twenty-five years of tax-paying, the pool won’t be getting that "extra" income from Peter's dad. When it's time for Peter's kids to go to university, they'll have to pay their tuition fees from their own tax contributions just like their dad… but they WON'T benefit from any extra contributions from Pete himself, 'cos HE'S already paying for his own education.
Isn't this pushing costs onto the next generation… which is rather what the NUS accuse the Coalition of doing.
Isn't that just a little bit… dishonest?
Mr Porter is trying to get a head of steam behind the idea of taking the Liberal Democrat's own proposals for "right of recall" for dealing with corrupt MP's who break the law and using them to "recall" Liberal Democrats who signed the NUS pledge (and, one assumes, subsequently break that pledge).
(Never mind the STUPIDITY of a proposal that would open EVERY SINGLE Opposition MP – all of Hard Labour and that Green and the Scots and Welsh Nasties and all – open them ALL to recall for failing to implement THEIR manifestos. Oh yes it would. Since CLEARLY failure to achieve an overall majority is not an excuse for not fully implementing your manifesto.)
In the words of one Student Union president, Mr Joshua Forstenzer of Sheffield University (no doubt quoted for IRONIC reasons):
"If they flip-flop or do a U-turn on this issue, they are betraying the electorate. It is a fundamental democratic principle that we should be able to remove them."I'm sure Mr Joshua will be calling for the removal from their Parliamentary seats of Mr Andy "crash and" Burnham, Hard Labour's education spokesperson, and Mr Ed "Bully" Balls, Hard Labour's former education spokesperson… and Mr Alan Johnson and Johnson, one time Hard Labour education minister… and Mr Blanket the Security Blunket one time Hard Labour education minister, all of whom stood on a manifesto promise to not introduce top-up fees and then voted to introduce top-up fees. Otherwise, of course, he'd be flip-flopping and U-turning HIMSELF!
I have to say, the FUNDAMENTAL democratic principle is that if you think your representative told you one thing and then did another then you will get a chance to throw them out in less than five years anyway. But perhaps you think that deceiving your electorate is SO heinous that you just HAVE to take a pop at them earlier.
But if DISHONESTY is your measure for facing a RECALL, then shouldn't the first person on the list be… well… Mr Harry Porter himself. For being just a little bit… dishonest.
I think that a university education ought to be available to everyone. But I think that it should only be taken up by people who are academically inclined. Other people should have other opportunities.
The system we have at the moment means that fewer than half of young people get their opportunity because all the effort goes into getting as many as possible squeezed into a university course that won't necessarily be any use to them.
If you're not going to provide those opportunities to the people who DON'T get to go to university, then your system IS transferring a benefit, money in fact (the cost of subsidy), from the unprivileged to the privileged.
I suppose in those terms it's kind of fair to ask graduates to bear some extra cost of their education rather than raising general tax and getting people who never went to university to pay for it. (Though as I say, I'd rather have a RANGE of opportunities so there's something for EVERYONE)
The NUS proposals recognise that. That's why THEIR system isn't so very different from the Coalition's. It just seems that they want to make things easier for themselves by squeezing people who are already pretty squeezed.
And it seems they want to BLAME the Liberal Democrats a system that Hard Labour commissioned, that the Conservatories support and that they agree with.
Only WE made the government proposals FAIRER than theirs.
Remind me: what have they got those students marching for again?
I cannot recall.
.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Day 3613: There Was This Englishperson, Irishperson and Bank Manager…
Monday:
It sounds like a JOKE, doesn't it, giving all of the seven billion pounds that we have cut from our spending away to save Ireland's banks.
But it's NOT.
If we can BORROW money at 2% then cutting seven billion pounds from OUR SPENDING cuts the amount we spend on interest by 2% of seven billion pounds.
BUT if we borrow money at 2% and then loan it to Ireland at 4%, we make a PROFIT on the deal and the extra interest that we earn cuts the amount we spend on interest by… 2% of seven billion pounds.
So, we use our greater financial strength to leverage a deal where we are no worse off, Ireland gets seven billion pounds of support for her banks, and in return Ireland doesn't default on the FIFTY billion pounds that she owes to British banks.
This SOUNDS like everybody wins, and that sounds too good to be true… and it IS.
What has happened is that we have taken on more of the RISK of Ireland defaulting. The British taxpayer is directly in line for the hit if Ireland cannot pay back that seven billion, and her ability to do so is moderately uncertain, and remains so as long as this trouble in the markets remains.
The house price crash in Ireland was much deeper than in Britain, and it is far from certain that the losses from money poured into overpriced equity have yet worked their way through the system.
The housing bubble – in Britain AND in Ireland, not to mention the USofA – was driven by cheap credit on the back of the Chinese booming economy. But in the UK it was, at least partly, supported by supply falling short of demand. In fact, our house prices and rents REMAIN unnaturally high because we STILL have a shortfall in family-sized housing, but that's a DIFFERENT problem. In Ireland, they too borrowed money cheaply but they built an AWFUL lot of houses that NO ONE needs.
So people borrowed a lot of money to build "ghost estates" which may as well just be knocked down. That's as good as borrowing money just to burn it. And at some point someone has to take a hit for those losses.
On top of that, though, the fundamental difference between Britain and Ireland is that we still have billions if not trillions of pounds worth of overseas assets. In spite of running a trade deficit for thirty years and more, we still haven't finished burning up the Empire. Ireland does not have such a lucky position. Their major assets remain their people, as I was reminded when the Irish finance minister was on the radio last week saying:
"We still have a highly educated and motivated young workforce and our exports are rising."
Yup, that's because you are exporting your highly educated and motivated young workforce!
Therefore Ireland's creditworthiness looks highly dodge to the markets: they've got nothing to mortgage but their own futures, and they've already done that!
This lack of state resources also makes it very difficult for the Irish government to consider coming out of the Euro and floating their own currency. A currency is only worth what the government can afford to pay to back it and in Ireland at the moment, that's paper! A floating Irish currency would NOT be the "correction" that commentators of the Europhobic persuasion contemplate; it would be a flat plummet. The consequences would be a huge spike in inflation as import prices went through the roof. Raising interest rates to control inflation would only make the government's debt situation worse. And if the government had to start printing currency to meet its day to day needs, well we're into Zimbabwe territory.
Ironically, in this way being in the Euro could actually be PROTECTING the Irish economy, not damaging it.
The argument that Britain has done very nicely, thank you, by staying out of the Euro remains UNPROVEN.
The ability to make our exports more competitive by letting our currency fall in value did not save us from the longest and deepest recession of any country in Europe (although for reasons probably unconnected to the independence of Sterling). And now the Euro is falling relative to pound making our exports more expensive in Europe, and therefore harder to sell, just at the time we are looking for export driven growth. So, yes, being outside the single currency looks like a TERRIFICALLY good plan there. That was SARCASM, by the way.
In Great Britain, interest rates are set very much with the South-East in mind, and this has often done great harm to the export potential of Wales, Scotland, the North even the South-West. Higher interest rates to keeps DOWN inflation in the South-East keep Sterling UP, making exports from the regions HARDER. But do the Europhobes suggest that those parts of the country would be better off outside the pound? No, of course they don't because the advantages of a single currency WITHIN the United Kingdom VASTLY outweigh the losses from differential export potentials.
The SAME is true in Europe.
The problem for the Eurozone, therefore, is NOT the one the Europhobes think it is. The problem, and it IS an intrinsic problem, is that BORROWING at the periphery is unregulated by the European Central Bank, in exactly the way that borrowing by Wales or Scotland or the English regions is NOT unregulated by the Treasury and Bank of England.
This is in fact the EXACT REVERSE of the Europhobic position that interest rates decided at the centre are set at rates inappropriate to the needs of countries on the edges.
(And, ironically, it's a restatement of the more regulation/less regulation argument that we all had about the banks before the collapse of 2008 proved that less regulation was every so very much WRONG.)
The Conservatories, who are supposed to be MONETARISTS, ought to know better. According to THEM, more credit = adding to the money supply = more inflation = BAD! Therefore it is RIGHT for central banks to LIMIT credit and prevent exposure like what has happened in Ireland, Greece and, well, here.
To be fair to the Conservatories in government, they haven't let ideology get in the way of doing the right thing. Master Gideon has been heard to say: "who would have thought Danny Alexander would be rolling back the Frontiers of the State while I was saving the Euro." And I have to admit that's very nearly witty.
In fact, with his put-down to the gloating Eurosceptics – "'I told you so' is not much of an economic policy." – I MIGHT have to think about reappraising the Chancer. Clearly, since getting into Government, he's been getting some good advice from somewhere. Or "Danny Alexander" as we in the Liberal Democrats call him.
The response from the left has, perhaps unsurprisingly, been rather more confused, with a mix of more Blame the Bankers rhetoric and some little-Englander why are WE saving the Irish.
There have been some calls for Ireland to be forced to increase the rate at which companies pay tax. I notice that Ms Pollyanna Toytown is joining the chorus with a piece in the Grauniad, decrying the Irish for luring companies to relocate to Dublin with their scandalously low tax rates. The hussies, she very nearly adds.
This is obviously LUDICROUS.
It's typical of the left wing to demand, nay COMPEL, an increased tax burden as the solution to ANY problem to hand.
But the case for Ireland raising their Corporation Tax rate SHOULD NOT reduce to: "it's not FAIR!"
The bloated public sectors of other European countries are hardly the fault of the Irish. Their OWN bloated public sector is another matter.
The reason Ireland OUGHT to consider raising Corporation Tax is because her government is spending TWICE as much as they raise in tax! That means sacking half the public sector or squaring up to a tax rise.
If – and only if – Ireland can pay for her public sector spending without raising further taxes then that is to be ENCOURAGED. Reducing the tax burden encourages GROWTH, which long term is the only way out of this hole. We can't all be Honk Kong, for example, which has excellent public services AND negligible corporate taxes AND astronomical growth. But we can step away from the Hard Labour model of the ever-increasing Corporate State, provider of everything and crushing wealth creation under the burden of taxes to pay for it.
What Ireland was doing wasn't BAD. They just made a FUNDAMENTAL error about where the MONEY was coming from. Be fair: so did WE!
Take away the reliance on cheap credit and a housing bubble, and Ireland could STILL be a model for a low tax, high entrepreneurship future.
And that's no joke!
.
It sounds like a JOKE, doesn't it, giving all of the seven billion pounds that we have cut from our spending away to save Ireland's banks.
But it's NOT.
If we can BORROW money at 2% then cutting seven billion pounds from OUR SPENDING cuts the amount we spend on interest by 2% of seven billion pounds.
BUT if we borrow money at 2% and then loan it to Ireland at 4%, we make a PROFIT on the deal and the extra interest that we earn cuts the amount we spend on interest by… 2% of seven billion pounds.
So, we use our greater financial strength to leverage a deal where we are no worse off, Ireland gets seven billion pounds of support for her banks, and in return Ireland doesn't default on the FIFTY billion pounds that she owes to British banks.
This SOUNDS like everybody wins, and that sounds too good to be true… and it IS.
What has happened is that we have taken on more of the RISK of Ireland defaulting. The British taxpayer is directly in line for the hit if Ireland cannot pay back that seven billion, and her ability to do so is moderately uncertain, and remains so as long as this trouble in the markets remains.
The house price crash in Ireland was much deeper than in Britain, and it is far from certain that the losses from money poured into overpriced equity have yet worked their way through the system.
The housing bubble – in Britain AND in Ireland, not to mention the USofA – was driven by cheap credit on the back of the Chinese booming economy. But in the UK it was, at least partly, supported by supply falling short of demand. In fact, our house prices and rents REMAIN unnaturally high because we STILL have a shortfall in family-sized housing, but that's a DIFFERENT problem. In Ireland, they too borrowed money cheaply but they built an AWFUL lot of houses that NO ONE needs.
So people borrowed a lot of money to build "ghost estates" which may as well just be knocked down. That's as good as borrowing money just to burn it. And at some point someone has to take a hit for those losses.
On top of that, though, the fundamental difference between Britain and Ireland is that we still have billions if not trillions of pounds worth of overseas assets. In spite of running a trade deficit for thirty years and more, we still haven't finished burning up the Empire. Ireland does not have such a lucky position. Their major assets remain their people, as I was reminded when the Irish finance minister was on the radio last week saying:
"We still have a highly educated and motivated young workforce and our exports are rising."
Yup, that's because you are exporting your highly educated and motivated young workforce!
Therefore Ireland's creditworthiness looks highly dodge to the markets: they've got nothing to mortgage but their own futures, and they've already done that!
This lack of state resources also makes it very difficult for the Irish government to consider coming out of the Euro and floating their own currency. A currency is only worth what the government can afford to pay to back it and in Ireland at the moment, that's paper! A floating Irish currency would NOT be the "correction" that commentators of the Europhobic persuasion contemplate; it would be a flat plummet. The consequences would be a huge spike in inflation as import prices went through the roof. Raising interest rates to control inflation would only make the government's debt situation worse. And if the government had to start printing currency to meet its day to day needs, well we're into Zimbabwe territory.
Ironically, in this way being in the Euro could actually be PROTECTING the Irish economy, not damaging it.
The argument that Britain has done very nicely, thank you, by staying out of the Euro remains UNPROVEN.
The ability to make our exports more competitive by letting our currency fall in value did not save us from the longest and deepest recession of any country in Europe (although for reasons probably unconnected to the independence of Sterling). And now the Euro is falling relative to pound making our exports more expensive in Europe, and therefore harder to sell, just at the time we are looking for export driven growth. So, yes, being outside the single currency looks like a TERRIFICALLY good plan there. That was SARCASM, by the way.
In Great Britain, interest rates are set very much with the South-East in mind, and this has often done great harm to the export potential of Wales, Scotland, the North even the South-West. Higher interest rates to keeps DOWN inflation in the South-East keep Sterling UP, making exports from the regions HARDER. But do the Europhobes suggest that those parts of the country would be better off outside the pound? No, of course they don't because the advantages of a single currency WITHIN the United Kingdom VASTLY outweigh the losses from differential export potentials.
The SAME is true in Europe.
The problem for the Eurozone, therefore, is NOT the one the Europhobes think it is. The problem, and it IS an intrinsic problem, is that BORROWING at the periphery is unregulated by the European Central Bank, in exactly the way that borrowing by Wales or Scotland or the English regions is NOT unregulated by the Treasury and Bank of England.
This is in fact the EXACT REVERSE of the Europhobic position that interest rates decided at the centre are set at rates inappropriate to the needs of countries on the edges.
(And, ironically, it's a restatement of the more regulation/less regulation argument that we all had about the banks before the collapse of 2008 proved that less regulation was every so very much WRONG.)
The Conservatories, who are supposed to be MONETARISTS, ought to know better. According to THEM, more credit = adding to the money supply = more inflation = BAD! Therefore it is RIGHT for central banks to LIMIT credit and prevent exposure like what has happened in Ireland, Greece and, well, here.
To be fair to the Conservatories in government, they haven't let ideology get in the way of doing the right thing. Master Gideon has been heard to say: "who would have thought Danny Alexander would be rolling back the Frontiers of the State while I was saving the Euro." And I have to admit that's very nearly witty.
In fact, with his put-down to the gloating Eurosceptics – "'I told you so' is not much of an economic policy." – I MIGHT have to think about reappraising the Chancer. Clearly, since getting into Government, he's been getting some good advice from somewhere. Or "Danny Alexander" as we in the Liberal Democrats call him.
The response from the left has, perhaps unsurprisingly, been rather more confused, with a mix of more Blame the Bankers rhetoric and some little-Englander why are WE saving the Irish.
There have been some calls for Ireland to be forced to increase the rate at which companies pay tax. I notice that Ms Pollyanna Toytown is joining the chorus with a piece in the Grauniad, decrying the Irish for luring companies to relocate to Dublin with their scandalously low tax rates. The hussies, she very nearly adds.
This is obviously LUDICROUS.
It's typical of the left wing to demand, nay COMPEL, an increased tax burden as the solution to ANY problem to hand.
But the case for Ireland raising their Corporation Tax rate SHOULD NOT reduce to: "it's not FAIR!"
The bloated public sectors of other European countries are hardly the fault of the Irish. Their OWN bloated public sector is another matter.
The reason Ireland OUGHT to consider raising Corporation Tax is because her government is spending TWICE as much as they raise in tax! That means sacking half the public sector or squaring up to a tax rise.
If – and only if – Ireland can pay for her public sector spending without raising further taxes then that is to be ENCOURAGED. Reducing the tax burden encourages GROWTH, which long term is the only way out of this hole. We can't all be Honk Kong, for example, which has excellent public services AND negligible corporate taxes AND astronomical growth. But we can step away from the Hard Labour model of the ever-increasing Corporate State, provider of everything and crushing wealth creation under the burden of taxes to pay for it.
What Ireland was doing wasn't BAD. They just made a FUNDAMENTAL error about where the MONEY was coming from. Be fair: so did WE!
Take away the reliance on cheap credit and a housing bubble, and Ireland could STILL be a model for a low tax, high entrepreneurship future.
And that's no joke!
.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Day 3602: THE PRISONER 42nd 43rd ANNIVERSARY: The General
Wednesday:
A year ago, my Daddies started watching THE seminal 'Sixties spy psychedelia: "The Prisoner". Or, more accurately, a year ago my Daddies missed a week because they were busy… and never looked back.
But you can never REALLY escape from the Village!
So, one year later*…
*Well, one year and one week, actually, 'cos obviously even though Daddy Richard WATCHED this episode at the right time… and again a year later than the right time, he STILL didn't manage to get his review written for a week!
.
A year ago, my Daddies started watching THE seminal 'Sixties spy psychedelia: "The Prisoner". Or, more accurately, a year ago my Daddies missed a week because they were busy… and never looked back.
But you can never REALLY escape from the Village!
So, one year later*…
Coming again to "The Prisoner's" amazing title sequence, with its irresistible pounding Ron Grainer theme – and just six months after the General Election when most nights I was doing that very drive past the Houses of Parliament and into the Abingdon car park – I'm reminded just how perfectly composed it is. Just one example: as the Prisoner pulls up outside his home after resigning, the title card "Starring Patrick McGoohan" appears, and then he rises heroically into shot, perfectly framed, and then he leans back out of the picture and, still perfectly framed, reveals the sinister hearse arriving behind him.
It struck me, on this occasion that, with that sort of attention to detail, the casual-seeming appearance of the series' title over a scene of McGoohan hurriedly packing cannot, in fact, be as random as it seems. And it's not. This is a picture of a man trying to escape; he is a Prisoner, but the title sequence is telling us that he's already a Prisoner and the prison is his life.information
A special announcement from the General's department presages the arrival of Speed Learn, a programme fronted by "the Professor" promising a three-year degree course in three minutes.
The Prisoner, observed by the sinister-seeming Number 12, is contemptuous and, typically kicking against the Village, refuses to sign up to their aim of 100% enrolment, 100% success, and goes for a walk instead. This leads to him coming across the sight of a man fleeing across the beach, pursued by Villagers. Going down to investigate, it turns out that the fleeing man is the Professor himself. The Professor is recaptured and dragged away, but not before the Prisoner has discovered (and concealed) a tape-recorded message from the man.
Warned off by the guards, and with the curfew falling, the Prisoner returns to his house and, intrigued, watches the Speed Learn broadcast. It appears to consist of no more than thirty seconds of a green light.
After the broadcast, Number 2 pays an unexpected house call. Ostensibly looking for the missing message from the Professor, Number 2 takes the opportunity to ask the Prisoner about the Speed Learn course, and presses him with a series of questions about the course which, to the Prisoner's surprise and horror, he finds himself answering correctly.
Returning to the beach after dark, the Prisoner finds the message gone before encountering Number 12. Number 12 returns the message to him, and reveals that it contains a warning about Speed Learn, and "the General".
The Prisoner determines to discover who "the General" is, and begins by attending the Professor's house, where his wife is conducting a free-form art class. He sketches her in a General's uniform. She is not amused. Slipping away from the class, he explores the house and discovers a collection of busts, before the Professor's wife discovers him and tries to throw him out. Instead, he barges his way into the Professor's bedroom and in a sudden strike attacks the man, only for it to turn out to be a wax bust in the bed. The real Professor, it seems, has been taken away for some therapy.
Back in his own living quarters, the Prisoner finds the lighting has been sabotaged, a ploy by Number 12, it would appear, to arrange a quiet tête-à -tête. Number 12 offers the Prisoner the opportunity to broadcast the Professor's warning in place of the next lecture, and arranges for the Prisoner to come to the Town Hall the next day.
With security passes and an alternative broadcast provided by Number 12, the Prisoner succeeds in reaching the broadcast suite, but is injured in a fight with the projectionist. The blood on his arm alerts Number 2, who aborts the broadcast and has his guards seize the Prisoner.
Coming to in the council chamber, the Prisoner is interrogated by Number 12, but Number 2 knows he'll never break and proposes they ask the General instead. Marching them through the Town Hall to the General's Office, where they find the Professor typing up his latest notes, Number 2 reveals that the General is, in fact, a giant computer.
Created by the Professor, used to program the Speed Learn broadcasts, it is, boasts Number 2, capable of answering any question. Number 2 intends to have the machine unmask the traitor in the Village, but before he can, the Prisoner challenges the assertion that the General can answer any question. Rising to the bait, Number 2 allows the Prisoner to program a question for the computer and has the Professor feed it in. The General, unable to answer the question "why?", explodes, killing the Professor and Number 12 and leaving Number 2 struck dumb.what's your number, please
I've already explained how episodes of "The Prisoner" appear to fall into three distinct groups or phases: first he tries direct escape attempts and the Village treat him with kid gloves; then he has to hold up under increasingly psychedelic forms of mental attack; finally, he's the old lag, knowing many of the Village's tricks and conscious that escape is an illusion he seeks to bring the whole system down from within. Or more broadly: Resignation, Resistance and Rebellion.
The mind control theme – although never far from the surface in "the Prisoner" – is at its strongest in these middle period episodes: the identity-swapping of "The Schizoid Man" and the dream manipulation of "A, B & C" are of a piece with the implanted learning experienced here. Of course, it's not just learning: when asked the right question, people don't just know what the answer is, they appear compelled to regurgitate it, repeating by rote. It's less question and answer and more trigger and programmed response, post-hypnotic suggestion, and we're into "Manchurian Candidate" territory.
And although he says he's interested only in learning how to get away, the Prisoner's real interest here seems to have moved from escape to active subversion. There's a clear sign of this when Number 2 appears to offer the Prisoner his freedom in return for the Professor's missing message, and the Prisoner turns him down. They've both got bigger fish to fry now. Instead, alerted to a "danger" in the Village – in this case the power to implant thoughts in people's minds – the Prisoner investigates and eventually eliminates it. We'll see more of that sort of thing as we move into the third and final phase.
Under "The Schizoid Man" I discussed how the four episodes that we call the second phase have only really one possible order. The General is first mentioned in that episode, and appears here. Colin Gordon's Number 2 appears as "the new Number 2" here, and appears as "Number 2" in "A, B & C".
And in fact, "The General" was broadcast the week after "The Schizoid Man", although a week earlier than in our scheme, and followed by "Many Happy Returns", "A, B & C" having already been shown as the third episode.
But that order is barking mad (although, you might argue by looking at the series, that could almost be a point in its favour).
A small note on dates. As I mentioned before, only two episodes use dates, and they are "The Schizoid Man", which purports to begin on 10th February followed by days or more likely weeks of aversion therapy.
"Many Happy Returns" claims to end on 19th March after many days on a raft as the Prisoner "escapes" by sea.
In between those two, we have set this episode, "The General", which takes three days – starting on the evening of one day, the following day the Prisoner visits the art class and has his assignation with Number 12, and on the third day infiltrates the Town Hall and blows up the titular machine – and "A, B & C" which also takes place on three successive days (or rather nights).
Now it's just about possible that "The Schizoid Man" takes just three weeks, from 10th of February to 3rd March, followed by a week for the other two, making it 10th March and then a week-and-a-bit on a raft taking him to the 19th… possible, but wildly implausible, and breaking the (entirely unsupported by evidence) rule of thumb that one episode on TV represents one month in the Village.
The most logical explanation is that calendars in the Village are meaningless. They manipulate minds; altering the date is hardly going to tax them.
The alternative is that there is an entire year passes between "The Schizoid Man" and "The General".
But that would be absurd… [MM: tumbleweeds, daddy]the new number two
This is the first of two (in our sequence, consecutive) appearances by Colin Gordon as the increasingly-twitchy Number 2 with a taste for drinking milk, presumably in an attempt to calm his dyspeptic nerves (it doesn't).
Interestingly, we don't see this Number 2 in the Green Dome: he's running operations from the Council Chamber, as seen in "Free for All", with its huge throne with watchful Illuminati eye, although we do see him popping into Peter Swanwick's observation room for a quick "orange alert!". (And next week, he'll be in and out of the special psychiatric unit instead of sat in the comfy chair too.)
He starts off supremely confident, casually strolling into the Prisoner's home-from-home and confounding him by, get this, asking questions which the Prisoner unhesitatingly answers (as I've already noted, this discomfits the Prisoner himself as much as it does the audience).
His slogan: "The freedom to learn – the liberty to make mistakes. Old-fashioned, Number Six."
His first appearance of nervousness is when he is on the telephone – not the big red special phone, but clearly to someone important – reassuring "someone" that the plan will work flawlessly.
It's not until he spots the Prisoner in the broadcast suite before the Professor's next broadcast that he is shocked from his complacency, but he is roused to anger rather than fear. He's quite smart enough to figure out that Number 12 gave the Prisoner the pass to get in, and vindictive enough to drag everyone over to "the General" to "prove" his suspicions by feeding the machine an obviously loaded question.
He's starting to tip over the edge into ranting Bond-villain as he explains the plot.
"You know what you'll get… a row of cabbages," accuses the Prisoner.
"Indeed," replies Number 2, with an admirable mad-eyed gleam, "knowledgeable cabbages!"
He's proud of turning people into cabbages.
So even now, he's so supremely overconfident in his giant adding machine that he foolishly allows the Prisoner to ask it the obvious solipsism.
Thus this Number 2 has the singular honour of being the first Number 2 to be roundly beaten by the Prisoner. Even Anton Rogers managed to come from behind to make a score draw in "The Schizoid Man", but here, 2 is left with his plans – not to mention his big expensive machine – in flaming ruins.
"Don't underestimate me, Number 6," said Number 2 at the head of the show… before immediately underestimating the Prisoner.follow the signs
It could hardly be more Nineteen Sixties, with its "wonder technology" crossed with the evils of mind control and, what else, a great big computer behind it all. This being the 'Sixties, almost anything would have been a greater shock. When the Professor is pursued across the beach by the mob, it's hard to know whether they are warders or, in a surge of Beatle-mania, his hordes of adoring fans.
And yet, it's oddly superficial, as hollow as the wax cast of the Professor's head.
There are almost too many symbols, striving for 'Sixties "kooky" weirdness, exemplified by the undertakers costumes with sunglasses worn to the Town Hall, or the novelty ghostly hand that grabs the "security pass" tokens, and of which the director is entirely too fond. Yes, we get it!
The room of busts at the Professor's house is clearly trying to be heavily symbolic of… something. Though I admit I really enjoy McGoohan's triumphant flourish when he thinks he's unmasking the General… and it turns out to be a bust of, ah, Number 1.
This week, the cheeky holiday-camp tones of silky seductress Fenella Fielding are replaced by the accents of an American, with all the 'Sixties coding of crassness and commercialisation that comes with it. To make matters worse, he has the temerity to appear on screen, in the person of a smarmy little man with a nasty 'tache; rather than the implied superiority of an invisible, all-present radio announcer, he is, shudder, a television presenter.
The episode is surely not very subtle with all of its implied criticism of educational technique that favours rote learning over applied thought, but with this… salesman fronting the operation, there's a sense of saying there is something grubby and mean about a process that makes learning a commodity. McGoohan, you can feel sure, would have no truck with Tuition Fees!
Then there's some rather heavy-handed stuff about man's relationship with machines very quickly glossed over in a line about the Professor both loving and hating his creation, no doubt tossed in to try to explain the Professor's confused actions rather than explore the dichotomy.
And equally, the Prisoner's solution couldn't be any more 'Sixties either: on the brink of the information revolution, people can cope with the idea of machines that can "think" but not the way that they will "think". That is to say that they assume that computing machines will be thinking at all, and that they will therefore necessarily do this better and faster than humans (just as the machines that "work" have superseded their human builders). The General blows up because, as a machine, it has no soul and therefore can't cope with a sudden rush of existential ennui. Rather than simply replying: "bad command".
It's almost funny, because Number 2 – of all people – clearly does get the idea that what you get out of the computer depends on what you put in, when he composes a "question" for it: 1. There is a traitor; 2. Number 6 got a pass; 3. Passes come from administration; 4. Number 12 works in administration. You hardly need to be Deep Thought to join the dots, do you.
Number 2 boasts that the General can answer any question "given the basic facts", which is tantamount to saying it can answer any question to which it knows the answer.
But in fact it's the computers very ability of synthesis, this process of feeding in facts from which the machine will draw an inference, that is, I'm sure with deliberate irony, exactly what Speed Learn is taking away from people.
In a way, I suppose, it's handy to get the "machine in charge" trope out of the way here, so we can avoid the possibility that Number 1 is a robot brain.
Instead of the usual escape-of-the-week, this time the Prisoner is given a "mission" that he has to "solve". This makes it the first time that an episode of "the Prisoner" isn't really about the Prisoner.
Or does it?
It's not impossible that the whole affair is one big set-up. We see Number 12 observing the Prisoner before any of the events kick off. We can't know how much of what follows is staged for his benefit.
Who, for example, is the wax head in the Professor's bed supposed to be for? We might assume that it is there to keep Mrs Professor fooled while the Village have him away to the Hospital for some "therapy". Only it turns out that she herself made the fake head. So who are we fooling? The doctors at the bedside must be in on the act; Number 2 has clearly been briefed… we come to the conclusion the only possible person meant for this fraud is… the Prisoner.
We've no way of knowing whether the Professor's warning was genuine or scripted by Number 2. For that matter, we've no way of knowing whether the Prisoner hears the original message or one that Number 12 has switched for it.
Number 12's plan to sabotage the broadcast certainly plays out like it's all a set-up. He is blatantly in a better position to switch the broadcasts himself. If he's using the Prisoner as a catspaw, someone to destroy the experiment and take the blame, then he's really not very good at it, and Number 2 sees though him right away. But if he's a fake, why does Number 2 try to hang him out to dry?
Well, what would have happened if Number 12 hadn't been killed trying to save the Professor from electrocution? That is, what would have happened if Number's 2's ego hadn't allowed the Prisoner to feed the fatal question into the General?
I suggest that Number 2 would have had the "infallible" machine "prove" that Number 12 was a traitor… and therefore prove him as a trustworthy ally for the Prisoner, something we know he's been trying to find a way to determine ever since "Checkmate".
So was that the aim of the scheme? To fake the entire Speed Learn experiment in order to fool the Prisoner into thinking he had an ally?
Unfortunately, he seems to be trying much too hard to be too good to be true until he finally proves himself trustworthy in the usual way of "The Prisoner" by being mildly heroically dead!
I think I'm in danger of reading a more interesting story into the episode than the one that is there.
The observant will notice that Number 2 asks the Prisoner "Who was Bismark's ally?" (to which the answer is "Frederich of Augustenberg") whereas the Prisoner asks the telephone operator "Who was Frederich of Augustenberg?" (and is told he is "Bismark's ally).
It's only a little continuity error, but significant when Number 12 makes the point of asking: "what (not "when") was the Treaty of Adrianople", to which the Prisoner parrots the (wrong) answer: "September 1829".
But then Alex suggests that perhaps it's not an error at all, but a more subtle clue. Because Frederich of Augustenberg was Bismark's ally only for a brief period during which the Prussian Chancellor found him useful. That is, it was useful to promote Frederich's case as heir to the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein as it led to the uprising that gave Bismark the excuse to invade and annex the duchies back to Germany. But after that, Bismark quickly removed Frederich from power. So "ally" is a bit of an over-description, and "patsy" might be a better word.
So the answer to the first question – "Who was Bismark's ally?" – is complete; but the answer to the second – "Who was Frederich of Augustenberg? – while technically correct, tells you nothing more than a tiny sliver about Frederich, which is at best misleading.
In other words, this difference points up the limitations of this parrot-learning, even when it isn't 'wrong'.
And it occurs to me that the form of the two questions is interesting: Number 2 poses the question about doing; the Prisoner asks a question about being. Compare the relative stances of Village and Prisoner: "Who was Bismark's ally?"/"Why did you resign?" as opposed to "Who was Frederich of Augustenberg?"/"Who is Number One?"
Of course, I shouldn't have to point out that everyone spends the whole episode discussing the infamously intractable Schleswig-Holstein Question; typically, no one understands it.who is number one?
Well it's tempting to give it to the old man at the café, merely because he's credited as "Ian Fleming" but he's not that Ian Fleming, so I won't.
A more worthy contender would surely be a (very young) John Castle as brooding Number 12. His sulky glower (those lips! almost a pout!) makes him stand out from the saccharine happiness of the Villagers, and he's never uninteresting to watch. He plays enigmatic very well, and you can never be sure whether he's genuinely on the side of the Prisoner or the Village. We're never given any clue to his motivation for betraying the Village, almost as though he's an embodiment of the Prisoner's unanswerable question "why?".
Why is Number 12 killed at the end? (Or at least, why beyond "it's the end of the episode now" tidying up – if he'd survived, we'd have had to have him and the Prisoner overpower Number 2 and make an escape attempt.)
It doesn't actually make sense whether he's true or false: why try to save the Professor if he's spent the whole episode trying to bring the Speed Learn experiment to an end? Or why does he try to save the Professor if he's really a cold-hearted Village guardian and it's all a set-up to trick the Prisoner into trusting him?
(is he trying to rescue the Professor, too – he knows about the message, so did they secretly collude)
And if it's just simple human compassion that gets him killed (something he's kept well concealed up till now, though maybe that's his motive) then surely that runs against the whole spirit of the episode, that the cold-hearted machine is evil, but having no soul destroys it.
John Castle makes a great guest star, but ultimately it's all a little bit too obvious. Like giving him the Number 12 badge again, he's another double for the Prisoner. He might as well be carrying a placard saying "You can't trust me… or can you? Or can't you? Or can you?"
So actually, I'm going to name Betty McDowall who plays the Professor's wife. She has some rather wonderful moments scattered through her scenes: when she discusses her art group's wacky 'Sixties methods – blatantly nicked by Doctor Who, by the way, for "The Green Death" and the inhabitants of Professor Jones' Nut Hutch – her bubbling new-age enthusiasm is delightfully faked, but on top of that, is her anger when she finds the Prisoner prowling around her home also part of the act?
Like Number 12 – but more subtly – you can never be quite sure just whether she is complicit or compromised.
Ostensibly her motivation is love for her husband, and she does what she does to keep him in line so that the Village won't kill him.
And yet, there are times when it seems she's gone further than that. Her expression, when Number 2 casually suggests that the Prisoner has destroyed her masterpiece (the wax head? or the deception?) is enigmatic.
The final scene of the episode, almost a tableau, is possibly its best. Played in the now-empty courtyard of the Professor's house, it features just a long-shot of the Prisoner attending the Professor's wife. It has an air of epitaph to it, the warrior delivering the dreaded news; the victor honouring the fallen enemy. It's the only time we ever see him going to a woman at the end of an episode – the only time there might be room for an ellipsis. And like the Professor's wife it is enigmatic, ambiguous in its meaning. Does the Prisoner express regret? Forgiveness? Reproach? We can't see their faces and we are left to read our own ending into the story. Subtle and moving.next time…
That would be telling.
Be seeing you.
*Well, one year and one week, actually, 'cos obviously even though Daddy Richard WATCHED this episode at the right time… and again a year later than the right time, he STILL didn't manage to get his review written for a week!
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Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Day 3604: To FPC or not to FPC, that is the Election
Saturday:
And now for a word from Daddy Richard…
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And now for a word from Daddy Richard…
So, I stood for the FPC…
That might come as a surprise*, because I've not mentioned it on Millennium's diary, but the rules of the election said I couldn't use the Internet so I kept quiet.
So, I stood for the FPC and didn't get elected.
But I'm not downhearted.
It was (obviously) STV, and I was eliminated at stage 47; but Alex assures me that means I came "23rd" out of 63! Or seven short of elected!
And that's better than a slapped face, so I'll stand again in 2012.
After all, it took five tries to win Blogger of the Year, didn't it?
So, what are the lessons learned?
Firstly, I think I had good reasons for standing: we need a policy committee that can hold us to Liberal policies even as our ministers are being dragged to the right by the Conservatives.
I think I'm qualified to do that because: (a) I have a good grasp of economics, thanks to a background in mathematics and accounting, and I think that's vital in the current circumstances; (b) I have a good grasp of core Liberal Philosophy, thanks to years of teaching from my beloved Alex, who learned everything there was to learn (that he didn't know already) all from Sainted Conrad Russell of blessed memory; and (c) I've interviewed Nick Clegg several times and I think, think I could stand up to him if I had to.
It's easy to exceed expectations when you're expecting something fairly humiliating, but the result was (at least in my head) modestly respectable.
Even without the ability to flash Millennium's award-winning Very Fluffy Diary around, I got nineteen first preference votes (and thank you to each and every one of you) and after transfers that went up to 37.17 (and thank you as well to everyone who gave me transfers).
In both cases, looking at the figures, I reckon that's almost halfway to what I would need to get elected. Which is a decent start.
It's an STV election, so looking at the effect of transfers, on first prefs alone I started in joint 29th but finished six places higher. In fact only Gareth (who jumped up twelve places to get elected) and David Hall-Matthews (who climbed eleven places, probably with a lot of Social Liberal Forum transfers) did better from transfers. Which I think shows I have a certain amount of cross-over appeal.
So lesson number one is probably: actually I might be in with a chance if I work at this.
But looking at who actually got elected, of the fifteen people with most first preferences, all but one got on.
So lesson number two has to be: get more first preferences.
That means putting my face about more, getting more involved at a regional and conference level and (horror of horrors) making some speeches(!). But also, encouraging some people who might have voted for me had they been Conference Reps to take the step and be Conference Reps.
It also means doing a bit of what might be called "campaigning" were there an election on. Not spending money – that would be silly – but exchanging e-mails with people to see if I can get some support.
The thing is. I have to do this now, after the election because, as I said, the rules don't allow it while the election is on.
Those rules said I must not use the Internet, or specifically: "use e-mail, e-groups, cix conferencing or websites during these elections to promote [my] candidacy".
(Although oddly, the rule against using websites appears not to have been enforced for some people using the Twitter website, nor certain others.)
So I buttoned it for the course of the election.
In fact, I felt constrained from even mentioning it in any form of written electronic communication, even personal e-mails. I didn't feel able to submit questions to other candidates, in case this was seen as self-promotion. And I didn't bat any ideas around online on e-mail lists with people who might have voted for me anyway, just in case.
Which is a shame because I do a lot of my communicating by e-mail. I'm a writer: I feel more comfortable, more eloquent if I can put my ideas down in writing and hone my words. (Judge for yourself if that's successful, of course, but it's the way I feel.) And of course it's cheaper than a lot of phone calls.
I'd like to say "cheaper" may (once) have been the point. It does seem likely that in fact the rule against using the net is historical (archaic, even), rooted in the notion that it would give an unfair advantage to the well-off, those rich enough to be able to afford to make websites.
There'd be an irony there, that in the last five to ten years with the rise of free blogging sites, and Facebook and Twitter, the absolute reverse is true. The Internet provides a hugely democratic and virtually free platform: giving any candidate the ability to lay out positions on all areas of policy, without the constraints of having to squeeze everything in to a single side of A5, and with a great deal more interactivity for the voter (you can post replies and comments or e-mail the author or hyperlink to other views). Ironic, but an innocent irony.
So I'd like to say that, but a little bird tells me that actually these rules are all quite new, just introduced in the last half-dozen years (not, say, dozen or more).
When we have the Federal Executive making the rules for their own election, there's a great danger that they appear to neither like nor understand the opportunities for participation that modern technology continues to unfold. And that they can get elected very nicely on the old rules, thank you very much.
We seem to be actively ruling out the greatest form of democratic access of our age. And when one candidate is able to say "look for my column in the Guardian", that's really not a level playing field. (And that's really not to have a go at Evan, who is a much loved and unjustly-defenestrated former MP, but come on…)
The rules aren't even consistent: candidates for the Peers' panel were permitted electronic campaigning, and to set up websites; candidates for FE and FPC and so on were not.
It's all grown up organically, which is lovely and very Liberal, but it's a hotchpotch, a mess.
It's like the changes to the Presidential election rules, expecting a much larger number of nominations to be gathered in the same small window (which is what, apparently, kept Jennie out of the race, I think unfairly): it favours the people with power and access (and who are tipped the wink) over those at the bottom starting from scratch. And that's not very Liberal at all.
People have been looking to see if there's an "alphabetical bias" (i.e. do you do better if your name is at the top of the list) and with such huge lists it's easy to see how that can happen, particularly if – like me – you filled in preferences all the way down. Those difficult middle rankings are where it's all too easy to just list one or two people in the order they appear on the paper. I imagine.
But surely it's clear that there is a bias: a bias in favour of "the great and the good" (and a bit of a regional bias too). And that's a problem, because MPs already have representation on the FPC, and Peers already have representation on the FPC and the regions already have representation on the FPC.
Fully one third of the elected members are accounted for by two former MPs, a nearly MP, a Peer and a former leader in the Welsh Assembly. All of them decent people, but we need these committees to be cracking open the establishment, not acting as consolation prizes for the establishment.
So we need to regularise the rules so everyone plays by the same rules, and open things up much more to the grassroots members by allowing much greater use of the Internet. I'm not alone in this: Mat and Jennie have said similar things and I've already got one or two others working along similar lines: keep an eye out for more pieces on Lib Dem Voice and other blogs. And I notice today that the lovely Honourable Lady Mark has also added a voice of authority along the same lines.
At the very least, Internet-based campaigning would crack down on some of the inanities of the manifesto booklet.
My third place pet peeve for the manifestos is people – some of whom are lovely – standing for, and getting on, multiple committees, reducing their own effectiveness and reducing opportunities for other people. Show a little heart for those of us who can't even get on one, guys!
My number two peeve is the "I'll be a strong voice for… (name your compass point)" line. It seems bizarre to me, and yet it's clearly successful, that people can bypass policy discussion by appealing to regional solidarity. It concerns me that it is possibly code: either code for policy positions – perhaps opposition to fishing quotas or support for shipbuilding or affordable rural housing; it's not like there aren't policies that would be of greater significance to one region than others and that should be voiced… but then voice them! – or and I think this would be worse, code for "we're not those London elite".
Besides, I'm all for some geographical diversity, but (e.g.) "The North" could mean anywhere from Manchester to Orkney. Some people think it means Islington! Someone standing up to say "I'm a proud Yorkshireman, and I believe in greater diversity, youth engagement, and pies" gets my vote; someone saying "I am the voice of the Angel of the North" goes straight to the bottom of the list, thank you.
But running some way ahead, I must admit, my number one peeve is the tendency to write up "my faaabulous CV" rather than anything suggesting why you should or could do the job you're applying for. If places on these committees are not consolation prizes, they certainly shouldn't be long service awards, either – I don't care how many Focus you've delivered since joining the party as a foetus, if you're standing for the FPC what will you contribute to policy?! Sorry…
Aaaaanyway, does any of this mean that I think that the FPC will not do its job?
Not necessarily; there are good people on there. But I am concerned that there is a strong "establishment" presence, accidentally shored up by the system, and that the voices of the grassroots members may end up marginalised as "wacky".
These next two years, this new FPC have the opportunity – and obligation – to set the groundwork for how we are going to be distinct from the Tories at the next election.
So what should they be doing?
Well, here are some key areas for starters, for a bit of joined-up Lib Dem thinking:Economy+Energy+Apprenticeships:
As a country we're already falling behind in the green revolution, when we have nothing but opportunities and this should be looking to be the manufacturing growth area of the Twenty-First Century. We already have the suggestion to use old shipyards as the new wind turbine factories, but we should go further and look to the next generation of North Sea rigs not prospecting for oil, but using wind-generated electricity to crack hydrogen from sea water. Hydrogen, like oil, can be used in fuel cells or in zero-emission cars, to make energy when we need it, not at the whim of nature and is the logical next step in renewable technologies. Those next-generation rigs can be a whole new start for manufacturing, from the shipbuilding areas of the North East and Scotland to new electric car plants in the Midlands, and we can repay some of our debt to the next generation by supporting engineering and manufacturing apprenticeships in those new industries.Crime+Economy+Health:
We need a structured plan to withdraw from wasting lives and billions of pounds in cash on the "War on Drugs". In Afghanistan alone we make the situation impossible by fighting both the Taliban and the peasants who grow poppies, when we would be better off buying the crop ourselves and, for example, considering more reasonably the medical use of opiates in alleviating terminal pain. And even while remaining mindful of the dangers of schizophrenia, particularly in young black men, the case for looking again at cannabis is surely now unanswerable. Speaking as someone whose flat was nearly blown up by an illegal cannabis farm on our estate, I'd much rather see some licensed (tax-paying) farms, perhaps in the South-West of England where the economy could do with the lift.Defence+Europe+Economy:
We should not be wasting money on Trident; we should not be wasting lives in Afghanistan; and a Strategic Defence Review based on the premise that we need to "project power" globally is a joke. Instead we should be looking to bring Germany and Italy and Poland (for starters) into the defence pact recently signed with the French.Economy+Pensions+Housing+Youth:
More than anything, we have got to begin the work of addressing the intergenerational divide that sees more assets held by and more resources tied up supporting an ageing generation of baby boomers at the expense of overworked, under-rewarded young people. We as Liberal Democrats are going to get a kicking for breaking our pledge on tuition fees. And we deserve it. We need to break with Labour's prescriptive target of 50% university entrance – academia isn't for everyone anyway – and offer genuine alternatives, like the apprenticeships mentioned above, like support for City and Guilds, like more overseas service. We can't honestly say that it's essential to cut the country's debt and at the same time pile debt onto graduates. It may be better than Labour's scheme but it looks absurd. And in the long term, we have got to start figuring out how to say "no" to the grey vote before the situation slips from unfair to impossible.
*Of course, it might come as a surprise because you only think of me as the "larger" gentleman who wanders around conference with a big stuffed toy and what's he doing standing for a serious Party committee… in which case you've probably not read much of the blog… and didn't get a chance to in the election, for reasons stated above.
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Friday, November 05, 2010
Day 3594: What's Depressing About the American Mid-Terms…
Wednesday:
…is hearing some Tea Party Wing-Nut exclaiming that:
"it's time for a bit less Big Government; it's time to cut the deficit; it's time to cut taxes for small businesses"
…and thinking, isn't that COALITION policy, these days?
Sigh.
The reports of the US Mid-Terms, (including his own!) all say that President Barry O has taken a SHELLACKING in these elections, which is harsh for a man who wasn't even standing and whose popularity remains more than double that of the only Replutocrat anyone has even heard of. (Oh you know – the OTHER one who isn't a WITCH.)
The FIRST thing to remember after this result is that actually it was NOT the President but CONGRESS who got a KICKING from the electorate, and that is because CONGRESS was who they blamed for the ongoing crisis.
(So if the crisis is STILL ongoing in two years, then the now-Replutocrat Congress may find it's THEM that gets a kicking AGAIN!)
The SECOND thing to remember is that for the last two years, Barry O has had almost as much OBSTRUCTIONIST behaviour from his own Dumbocrat party as he has from the toy-from-pram-flinging brigade opposite. NOW he's got to find a way to work with the Replutocrats but the same is true for them – they've got to find a way to work with HIM.
And if they DO work together, he looks like a MASTER POLITICIAN like Mr President Billary-Hillary. And if they DON'T work together, then THEY end up looking like a bunch of spoilsport rich SOBs (Son of… OBamas…. Obviously).
Meanwhile, as Americaland embarks on a second round of Quantum of Easing, people ask: "is this throwing good money after bad?"
No of course not! It is throwing IMAGINARY money after bad!
But it IS a fascinating TEST CASE, as President Barry O continues, at least for the moment, to try fiscal STIMULUS compared to Great Britain activating AUSTERITY.
Americaland and Great Britain are not DIRECTLY comparable, even if their economy WASN'T hugely greater than ours (US GDP is more than FIVE TIMES greater than UK GDP). Their unemployment is higher than our (10% as opposed to 7%); they're more reliant on a manufacturing sector in decline than we are (ours is already declined); and most of all their housing sector is mired in deep, deep do-do because of the sub-prime mortgaging fiasco.
These are the things that Barry O is blamed for, because it is HARD when the unemployment rate is 10% to see that the stimulus saved you from an unemployment rate of 20%.
Little pause to remember that, once Mr Dr Vince had guided them into it, Hard Labour's economic stimulus WAS right… AT THE TIME. Big question is whether that time has PASSED.
For Americaland, the engine of the economy STILL isn't firing properly – and that's a big risk for ALL of us. So we better hope that Barry O and the Congress can get their acts together!
.
…is hearing some Tea Party Wing-Nut exclaiming that:
"it's time for a bit less Big Government; it's time to cut the deficit; it's time to cut taxes for small businesses"
…and thinking, isn't that COALITION policy, these days?
Sigh.
The reports of the US Mid-Terms, (including his own!) all say that President Barry O has taken a SHELLACKING in these elections, which is harsh for a man who wasn't even standing and whose popularity remains more than double that of the only Replutocrat anyone has even heard of. (Oh you know – the OTHER one who isn't a WITCH.)
The FIRST thing to remember after this result is that actually it was NOT the President but CONGRESS who got a KICKING from the electorate, and that is because CONGRESS was who they blamed for the ongoing crisis.
(So if the crisis is STILL ongoing in two years, then the now-Replutocrat Congress may find it's THEM that gets a kicking AGAIN!)
The SECOND thing to remember is that for the last two years, Barry O has had almost as much OBSTRUCTIONIST behaviour from his own Dumbocrat party as he has from the toy-from-pram-flinging brigade opposite. NOW he's got to find a way to work with the Replutocrats but the same is true for them – they've got to find a way to work with HIM.
And if they DO work together, he looks like a MASTER POLITICIAN like Mr President Billary-Hillary. And if they DON'T work together, then THEY end up looking like a bunch of spoilsport rich SOBs (Son of… OBamas…. Obviously).
Meanwhile, as Americaland embarks on a second round of Quantum of Easing, people ask: "is this throwing good money after bad?"
No of course not! It is throwing IMAGINARY money after bad!
But it IS a fascinating TEST CASE, as President Barry O continues, at least for the moment, to try fiscal STIMULUS compared to Great Britain activating AUSTERITY.
Americaland and Great Britain are not DIRECTLY comparable, even if their economy WASN'T hugely greater than ours (US GDP is more than FIVE TIMES greater than UK GDP). Their unemployment is higher than our (10% as opposed to 7%); they're more reliant on a manufacturing sector in decline than we are (ours is already declined); and most of all their housing sector is mired in deep, deep do-do because of the sub-prime mortgaging fiasco.
These are the things that Barry O is blamed for, because it is HARD when the unemployment rate is 10% to see that the stimulus saved you from an unemployment rate of 20%.
Little pause to remember that, once Mr Dr Vince had guided them into it, Hard Labour's economic stimulus WAS right… AT THE TIME. Big question is whether that time has PASSED.
For Americaland, the engine of the economy STILL isn't firing properly – and that's a big risk for ALL of us. So we better hope that Barry O and the Congress can get their acts together!
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Day 3593: These Tuition Fees STILL Don't Add Up!
Tuesday:
This is what it comes down to: where do we find twelve billion pounds?
With slightly under two million students, and fees between six and nine thousand pounds per year, apparently, plus some living allowances, at a BARE MINIMUM that's two million lots of six grand. Twelve billion quid.
Where can we find the cash?
More cuts? Twelve billion pounds is a tenth of the NHS. Or a third of the defence budget. Surely we can't slash more benefits!
So the government has chosen instead to tax students out of their future.
We've GOT to do BETTER than THAT!
Liberal Democrats, I KNOW it is NAUSEATING to be lectured by Hard Labour on this. They gave a manifesto commitment to not introduce fees… and then introduced fees. We don't need lessons from Labour about broken promises.
But it's EVEN WORSE when the two-faced, lying, bandwagon-jumping hypocrites are RIGHT.
They say we should be ashamed and we SHOULD be ASHAMED.
We DID promise to oppose rises in tuition. WE promised to get RID of the cost of tuition. And we SHOULD keep that promise.
The ONLY excuse for breaking our pledge would be if we could do something BETTER, and – even with the 30% worst off students paying LESS under this scheme – this still ISN'T BETTER ENOUGH.
The proposals now revealed by the Coalition for funding higher education are an at-least-doubled fee paid for by a loan repayable once you are earning over twenty-one thousand pounds (£21,000), with an escalating rate of above-inflation interest.
The simple consequence of this is that people earning up to a certain amount – for you standard three-year degree it's probably about thirty-three thousand pounds (£33,000) – will NOT pay off the loan within thirty years: for those people this is simply a GRADUATE TAX of 9% of your earnings over the twenty-one thousand pound (£21,000) threshold.
People earning above that amount will pay higher monthly contributions, but they will pay off the loan, so they won't be paying for the full thirty years, and in consequence will pay less in TOTAL.
You end up paying the MOST if you very-nearly-but-not-quite pay off the loan. So, for the hypothetical "standard" degree (3 years at £6000 a year, i.e. £18,000), people earning roughly £33,000 would JUST pay off the loan with their last repayment, having paid a total of slightly less than thirty thousand pounds (£30,000).
So the system proposed is moderately progressive. Up to a point, the more your earn, the more you pay back in.
The rather IRONIC fact is that INCREASING the fees actually makes the system MORE progressive.
Increasing the fees increases amount up to which you know you're not going to pay the fees off, i.e. increases the number of people for whom the graduate contributions is a straight 9% tax (limited to 30 years).
For example, at £9,000 per year, or £27,000 for a three year course, only people earning more than thirty-EIGHT thousand pounds (£38,000) will finish repaying.
AND people earning less than £33,000 do not pay any more than they would if the fees were £6,000 (because they have the SAME repayments – for them, it's just a bigger amount written off by the government at the end).
So, why stop at £9,000 then, you may ask. Why not make the fees £90,000 and make the scheme progressive all the way up to the few people earning two hundred grand who are the only ones who will ever pay it all back?
The answer to that one is that what the government calls "writing off" actually means repaying what's left of your loan out of general taxation, and this would be setting up yet another ridiculous bill for future taxpayers.
Which of course brings me back to the point.
This is just DISGUISED GOVERNMENT BORROWING, with a hidden TAX RISE on the poor future graduates to cover the repayments.
The MOST SERIOUS FLAW in our model of government spending is that over the last fifty years, we have been taxing fewer and fewer YOUNG people in order to keep spending more and more on health and pensions and care for OLD people!
We've tried increasing taxes; but the spending on the welfare state kept going up.
We've tried cutting everything else; but the spending on the welfare state kept going up.
We've tried borrowing until the government credit card smoulders.
I'm a bit of a HERETIC and I suspect we DO spend more than is good for us on the health service: it's grown from an essential protection to a national comforter, which we cling on to because it's there, making ever more use of overstretched services BECAUSE they are free-at-the-point-of-need when we might just occasionally be able to cope on our own if there wasn't a giant nanny there to make it all better for us.
But a LOT of our health spending is going on making sure that ever more retired baby-boomers have healthy comfortable and very, very LONG retirements in which to enjoy all the property they bought up before house price inflation made it impossible. And we expect a dwindling pool of working age people to pay more and more taxes to fund this.
And now, on top of that, we're expecting them to pay for their OWN education as well as the cost of OUR retirement AND cleaning up OUR mistakes.
It's really not on.
Instead of dumping the problem in the lap of the next generation, we should be addressing the real problems.
Firstly, Labour's dogmatic target of 50% of people to receive a degree has very badly served both students AND universities. Ridiculously academic qualifications are now widely seen as entry-level requirements to the jobs market. Half of the country get into universities; half are marked as failures. Well done, Labour: you've basically succeeded in recreating the 11+ only at 18.
We need to STOP trying to force every young person into the straight-jacket of a degree. 20% would be a more realistic target, and if you went to a state-funded school, you shouldn't have to pay.
But that's NOT a money-saving scheme, because we ALSO need to provide alternative routes, apprenticeships, city & guilds, incentives to employers, so that instead of the Hobson's Choice – degree or not degree, that is the question – people have GENUINE OPPORTUNITY to get into employment be it at 16, 18 or 21.
So we come back to where we started. Where DO we get twelve billion quid?
Well, almost regardless of the question of higher education, we have got to address our national addiction to the NHS and the welfare state before we lose control completely.
And at the same time, we need to look again at unlocking the amount of unproductive WEALTH bound up in property and investments benefiting very few.
And I'm afraid it means taking head on the power of the GREY VOTE. We've got to stop making promises to pensioners and start KEEPING our promises to young people.
Or sooner or later, they may just turn off the life support.
Also, these calculations don't work for AVERAGE salaries; there's just no way my simple maths can take account of the way people's salaries grow: e.g. imagine Jane earns £20,000 a year for three years, so pays nothing, but June earns nothing for two years and then £60,000 in the third year, so pays £3,510 in year three even though she's earned the same ON AVERAGE as Jane.
This is what it comes down to: where do we find twelve billion pounds?
With slightly under two million students, and fees between six and nine thousand pounds per year, apparently, plus some living allowances, at a BARE MINIMUM that's two million lots of six grand. Twelve billion quid.
Where can we find the cash?
More cuts? Twelve billion pounds is a tenth of the NHS. Or a third of the defence budget. Surely we can't slash more benefits!
So the government has chosen instead to tax students out of their future.
We've GOT to do BETTER than THAT!
Liberal Democrats, I KNOW it is NAUSEATING to be lectured by Hard Labour on this. They gave a manifesto commitment to not introduce fees… and then introduced fees. We don't need lessons from Labour about broken promises.
But it's EVEN WORSE when the two-faced, lying, bandwagon-jumping hypocrites are RIGHT.
They say we should be ashamed and we SHOULD be ASHAMED.
We DID promise to oppose rises in tuition. WE promised to get RID of the cost of tuition. And we SHOULD keep that promise.
The ONLY excuse for breaking our pledge would be if we could do something BETTER, and – even with the 30% worst off students paying LESS under this scheme – this still ISN'T BETTER ENOUGH.
The proposals now revealed by the Coalition for funding higher education are an at-least-doubled fee paid for by a loan repayable once you are earning over twenty-one thousand pounds (£21,000), with an escalating rate of above-inflation interest.
The simple consequence of this is that people earning up to a certain amount – for you standard three-year degree it's probably about thirty-three thousand pounds (£33,000) – will NOT pay off the loan within thirty years: for those people this is simply a GRADUATE TAX of 9% of your earnings over the twenty-one thousand pound (£21,000) threshold.
People earning above that amount will pay higher monthly contributions, but they will pay off the loan, so they won't be paying for the full thirty years, and in consequence will pay less in TOTAL.
You end up paying the MOST if you very-nearly-but-not-quite pay off the loan. So, for the hypothetical "standard" degree (3 years at £6000 a year, i.e. £18,000), people earning roughly £33,000 would JUST pay off the loan with their last repayment, having paid a total of slightly less than thirty thousand pounds (£30,000).
So the system proposed is moderately progressive. Up to a point, the more your earn, the more you pay back in.
The rather IRONIC fact is that INCREASING the fees actually makes the system MORE progressive.
Increasing the fees increases amount up to which you know you're not going to pay the fees off, i.e. increases the number of people for whom the graduate contributions is a straight 9% tax (limited to 30 years).
For example, at £9,000 per year, or £27,000 for a three year course, only people earning more than thirty-EIGHT thousand pounds (£38,000) will finish repaying.
AND people earning less than £33,000 do not pay any more than they would if the fees were £6,000 (because they have the SAME repayments – for them, it's just a bigger amount written off by the government at the end).
So, why stop at £9,000 then, you may ask. Why not make the fees £90,000 and make the scheme progressive all the way up to the few people earning two hundred grand who are the only ones who will ever pay it all back?
The answer to that one is that what the government calls "writing off" actually means repaying what's left of your loan out of general taxation, and this would be setting up yet another ridiculous bill for future taxpayers.
Which of course brings me back to the point.
This is just DISGUISED GOVERNMENT BORROWING, with a hidden TAX RISE on the poor future graduates to cover the repayments.
The MOST SERIOUS FLAW in our model of government spending is that over the last fifty years, we have been taxing fewer and fewer YOUNG people in order to keep spending more and more on health and pensions and care for OLD people!
We've tried increasing taxes; but the spending on the welfare state kept going up.
We've tried cutting everything else; but the spending on the welfare state kept going up.
We've tried borrowing until the government credit card smoulders.
I'm a bit of a HERETIC and I suspect we DO spend more than is good for us on the health service: it's grown from an essential protection to a national comforter, which we cling on to because it's there, making ever more use of overstretched services BECAUSE they are free-at-the-point-of-need when we might just occasionally be able to cope on our own if there wasn't a giant nanny there to make it all better for us.
But a LOT of our health spending is going on making sure that ever more retired baby-boomers have healthy comfortable and very, very LONG retirements in which to enjoy all the property they bought up before house price inflation made it impossible. And we expect a dwindling pool of working age people to pay more and more taxes to fund this.
And now, on top of that, we're expecting them to pay for their OWN education as well as the cost of OUR retirement AND cleaning up OUR mistakes.
It's really not on.
Instead of dumping the problem in the lap of the next generation, we should be addressing the real problems.
Firstly, Labour's dogmatic target of 50% of people to receive a degree has very badly served both students AND universities. Ridiculously academic qualifications are now widely seen as entry-level requirements to the jobs market. Half of the country get into universities; half are marked as failures. Well done, Labour: you've basically succeeded in recreating the 11+ only at 18.
We need to STOP trying to force every young person into the straight-jacket of a degree. 20% would be a more realistic target, and if you went to a state-funded school, you shouldn't have to pay.
But that's NOT a money-saving scheme, because we ALSO need to provide alternative routes, apprenticeships, city & guilds, incentives to employers, so that instead of the Hobson's Choice – degree or not degree, that is the question – people have GENUINE OPPORTUNITY to get into employment be it at 16, 18 or 21.
So we come back to where we started. Where DO we get twelve billion quid?
Well, almost regardless of the question of higher education, we have got to address our national addiction to the NHS and the welfare state before we lose control completely.
And at the same time, we need to look again at unlocking the amount of unproductive WEALTH bound up in property and investments benefiting very few.
And I'm afraid it means taking head on the power of the GREY VOTE. We've got to stop making promises to pensioners and start KEEPING our promises to young people.
Or sooner or later, they may just turn off the life support.
PS:
I should emphasise: all these figures are EXCLUDING the effects of INFLATION, which would make the REAL terms cost of the loan LESS. That is, repaying £100 in a year's time is less onerous than repaying £100 today (suppose you HAD the £100 – if you repay it today it's all gone, if you put it in a back and get a tiy little amount of interenst you will have something left when you repay the £100 in a year). It will – I guess – also affect the starting-to-pay point and thus the amounts repaid as you go along.Also, these calculations don't work for AVERAGE salaries; there's just no way my simple maths can take account of the way people's salaries grow: e.g. imagine Jane earns £20,000 a year for three years, so pays nothing, but June earns nothing for two years and then £60,000 in the third year, so pays £3,510 in year three even though she's earned the same ON AVERAGE as Jane.
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