Picking Losers

What is it with our MPs? They are happy to impose laws on the rest of us, but seem to think that they are above actually abiding by them themselves. Take the smoking ban. I think you know where this is going... the 11.05 from Paddington to Plymouth last Friday morning to be precise. Good old Charles Kennedy - or “chat show Charlie” - was caught red handed having a cigarette on the First Great Western service. When I first heard this I thought poor guy - but good on him.

Government  

Paul Newman, an Islington Conservative, has admitted on his blog that Dave Cameron may not be being entirely frank with us. His response to my challenge that "You may buy the line that he can change the balance of the tax and welfare system to benefit married couples without disadvantaging unmarried couples" (based on DC's dance round the issue in his interview with Andrew Marr on Sunday AM) was:

"I do not.They will of course be relatively disadvantaged compared to the current position when they are absurdly favoured. How would you like him to put it. 'We're going to hand single mothers out to dry'. Be serious. Political language is artfully nuanced and you have to read the signs with some care."

What about the desirability, in my view, of "a politician who comes in talking about hard choices and being honest about (short-term) losers as well as winners":

"I think you entirely misunderstand the complexity of the relationship between words and the electorate. Possible losers set their antennae to detect any hints and these are in turn amplified by the opposition. Read the rhunes and he is offering a a softened Conservatism."

But, I believe, "we need a politician that is prepared to start being honest about that [i.e. the hard choices] to the public":

"How would you know when you see him. Isn`t this bordering on the childish ? I don`t wasnt to be rude but I think my mother would say( as she does) Oh for god`s sake their politicians ! Romantic would be a kinder way to describe your wishes."

To sum up: we, the electorate, couldn't tell an honest from a dishonest politician. It is childish (or romantic) to expect politicians to be honest, because that's just not how politicians are (for God's sake). What they are speaking is not normal English to be taken literally, but a political language whose symbols - words, signs (hieroglyphics?) or runes - provoke a complex reaction in the electorate, and which therefore need to be translated carefully by true believers to discover that it means what they want it to mean (e.g. softened Conservatism). The purpose of this language is to ensure that none of the electorate's antennae picks up the slightest signal that someone might lose out. That isn't going to give much of a mandate for reducing the size of government, nor to do much else for that matter, but never mind - it will get these cunning linguists elected to power, and that's the main thing.

Government

• The government has announced an extra £13.7m to help schools improve the behaviour of pupils. Children, schools and families secretary Ed Balls unveiled the funds, which will be delivered through the social and emotional aspects of learning (SEAL) programme over four years. The scheme, which is implemented in 60 per cent of primary schools, teaches pupils how to resolve conflict to help them develop socially and emotionally and deal with anger and anxiety. It encourages children to compete fairly and work cooperatively in order to boost employability skills, focusing on self-understanding, motivation and empathy.
• Government launches new plan to help parents by text messages and social networks. Parents will be able to receive text and instant messages to help them with their children, thanks to a £34m new initiative launched today by Children's and Families Minister Kevin Brennan. Using phone helplines and the internet, 'Parent Know-How' will signpost parents to information and support services. It will be targeted at people who may struggle to find the help they need - such as the parents of disabled children, fathers and those from disadvantaged communities.
• The union flag is flying over Downing Street after Gordon Brown scrapped a rule saying it could be flown only on certain days of the year. The prime minister said it will now be up to individual public offices when they fly Britain's national flag. He said: "When I came into government I realised that you could only fly the flag on 18 days in the year and I thought that was wrong."

Not everything on Picking Losers is about the bad side of government. For example, here is a heart warming tale of giving and kindness from the corporate hospitality boxes at Wimbledon. Spotted this week, lurking behind a bowl of strawberries and through the bubbling fizz of a champagne glass, was a Mr Jim Campbell. Jim who? You may ask. Jim Campbell. Mr Campbell is the civil servant in charge of regulating Britain's oil and gas industry, including responsibility for pollution and oil spills. So what? You may continue to ask.

This isn't new or amusing, but it is important. We hear all the time about the lowering of educational standards (JG posted on it only yesterday), but it is rare to find it set out so clearly and chillingly as in an open letter to the AQA exams board and the Department for Education from Wellington Grey, a secondary-school physics teacher. You would have to have little understanding of the importance of scientific rigour to read the examples given of the obfuscation, subjectivization, dumbing-down and politicization of science exam questions and not fear for the future of science and scientific understanding in this country.

The complicity of those institutions, like the Institute of Physics, and quangos, like the QCA, who should be fighting this lowering of standards, is illustrated in the IoP's response to the consultation on the change of the KS4 curriculum that legitimized this sort of pseudo-science in the GCSE curriculum. The IoP agreed or strongly agreed with most of the proposals, disagreeing only with the timing. But then, we know that the scientific academic establishment has been increasingly politicized on pronouncements on issues like Global Warming, so it should be no surprise to find them supporting the education of children in a way that drums these political views into them as accepted science.

Wellington is asking for your help to publicize this terrible trend. Please give him all the support you can.

(Hat-tip to Freebornjohn who spotted Wellington's amusing example of the subjectivization of physics questions.)

Government

Two excellent Camoronisms spotted yesterday:

Tim Worstall picked up Dave's ignorant currying of favour with the music industry. Hoping for some "Cool Britannia" credit at the next election? Or just dumb?

Government

Alan Johnson, aka the Fonz, has officially started the NHS game. He said yesterday "The reality on the ground is that there is a gloomy mood. There has been an awful lot of change in a short period. Staff feel overwhelmed by it. They feel it all flowed down from Whitehall." This is a moment I feared, but I'm afraid Mr Johnson, today is the start of the end of your credible political career, such is the suicidal nature of the DoH and its demand to make credible MPs spout absolute crap.

So what have Government Ministers been doing for the last week? Almost five working days after they were appointed, there are many junior Ministers who seemingly do not yet know what they are supposed to be doing. Only a handful of departments have published the responsibilities of their Ministerial team. So what have they been up to? Arguing over who is in charge of photocopying? Debating the wallpaper for their new offices?

And if they do not what they are doing - why haven't we been told?

A quick tale of an award winning government agency for you.  I haven't mentioned the Child Support Agency for a time and yet incredibly it has just won an award.  Of sorts.  The Child Support Agency has been condemned by MPs as “one of the greatest public administration disasters of all time”.  Now that, ladies and gentlemen, in a world of NHS IT systems and the Home Office, is truly a remarkable achievement.  So how have they won this dubious accolade?  Well, I will run you through just a few of its acts of incompetence to demonstrate:

The carrot or the stick?  Tax or tax relief?  Which is the best way to tackle climate change?  Well, not surprisingly, business would rather take the carrot.  So much so, in fact, that a report by Pricewaterhouse Coopers suggests that the current disjointed array of government policies aimed at tackling carbon emissions are simply ineffective.  A massive 71% of industry respondents to the scheme claimed that their behaviour had been changed.  But almost half said that Government policy and economic instruments - taxes, duties, the climate-change levy and investment allowances - are "no

Government

Government 

• Health secretary Alan Johnson has put NHS restructuring on hold "for the foreseeable future" to create stability and focus on improving care. In a statement to the Commons, he set out the government's new approach to the health service which will put a break on continuous structural reform. Johnson said that substantial improvements to the health service had taken place in the last 10 years due to increased funding, but he acknowledged that there were still problems and challenges.

There are many things in Gordon Brown's statement of constitutional issues to be developed by his Government, The Governance of Britain, that are more dangerous than the flying of the Union Flag. For instance, take the statement that one of the ideas "at the heart of British citizenship" is "that there is an appropriate balance to be drawn between the individual’s right to freedom and the collective good of all" (para 204, p.60). At first glance, it doesn't sound controversial. Of course we do not have complete freedom to do what we like, and must constrain our behaviour to avoid harm to others. As Justice William O. Douglas put it: "My freedom to move my fist must be limited by the proximity of your chin."

But this statement subtly extends that consideration in a way that has significant ramifications. It is not harm to another that is the constraint in Gordon's scheme, but "the collective good of all". This offers much more scope for governments to decide that freedoms may be limited for the "general good". In fact, one would find that all authoritarian and totalitarian governments would argue that their measures had been justified because they were in the interests of the "collective good".

There is a long tradition of debate on this issue, and it will no doubt continue for a good deal longer. But Gordon is objectively wrong on one aspect - this is not an idea "at the heart of British citizenship". At the most, the question of whether the rights of the individual supersede those of the collective remains unresolved in Britain. I would argue further than that - that Gordon's approach is an (admittedly, well-established) European cuckoo in the British nest; an attempt to shoehorn continental, Rousseauian and Napoleonic collectivism, into British Lockean, common-law, Enlightenment individualism.

We should not conceed this starting-point to Gordon. If we do, it is just a question of the degree of state intervention that is justified in the collective interest, a subjectivity that will always be abused by governments wanting to inflict their views on us. We must argue over the principle, not the detail. Or we end up in the position of the attractive girl propositioned by George Bernard Shaw to sleep with him for a million pounds, who, upon indicating that she might, was asked if she would sleep with him for five pounds. Offended, she objected "Sir, what kind of woman do you think I am?" Shaw replied, "Madam, we have already established what kind of woman you are. Now all we have to do is haggle over the price."

Britannia is not that kind of woman, I hope.

Gordon Brown has played the jingoistic card, by promising to review the regulations governing the flying of the Union Flag on public buildings. The Sun's George Pascoe-Watson, not surprisingly, over-reacted with delight, proclaiming that Gordon wanted to see the flag "flutter in Whitehall and around the country every day", and offering free flags to readers who sent in a stamped, addressed envelope, or Union-Flag "screensavers" (actually background images, but we shouldn't expect accuracy from The Sun) to download. The document on which Mr Pascoe-Watson's reporting was based (The Governance of Britain, published by No.10 yesterday) says very much less than he claims, promising only to "consult on altering the current guidance that prohibits the flying of the Union Flag from Government buildings for more than 18 set days in the year".

Perhaps Mr Pascoe-Watson is projecting, or perhaps he was briefed. Whichever, the inflation of this modest proposal has ignited debate, for instance on BBC Radio 5Live today, about the merits of flying our national flag. People seem to focus on whether it is British to display our national pride in such a vulgar way, and whether they are inclined to fly the Union Flag, or the flag of their respective regions (England, Scotland, and Wales - the issue is altogether more tricky in Northern Ireland, as the Government's document notes). This seems to me to miss the point.

I could care less how you choose to display your national pride - proudly with a Flag of the Union, St George, St Andrew, the Red Dragon or whatever outside your window, or quietly through deployment of the British characteristics of understatement, scepticism, humour, stoicism and so on. (Actually, that's not entirely true - I'd prefer the latter, but it really is up to you.)

But I do care about the conflation of the nation and the state. These are our national flags, not our governments' flags. The state (pace Rousseau) is not the embodiment of the nation, though one can see how Gordon might find much in common with that other Chancellor (of Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe):

The law is the true embodiment
Of everything that's excellent
It has no kind of fault or flaw
And I, my Lords, embody the law.

Too close association of nation and state has always been a mark of despotic government. If flying the Union Flag becomes an important symbol of patriotism, and a Union Flag waving by the front entrance becomes a hallmark of all government buildings, it is not a long step for some people to make the association that disrespect for and resistance to what is done within those buildings is unpatriotic. At the least, it gives spurious legitimacy to those activities.

Most people, being sceptical Brits, will not be that simple. But let's not give the idiots the excuse. Wrapping the state in nationalist garb is not very British.

And by the way, what happened to Gordon's incredible promise to put an end to spin?

Why is this government obsessed with educating everyone to first class honours degree standard?  Apart from it being of little use to the nation as a whole if everyone was educated to nuclear physicist standard, have they actually sat back and thought that maybe some people aren't that interested in advance or further education and want to get out and do start earning some money?  The Rathbone and the Nuffield Foundation, an education charity, have issued a warning in response to the government plans to introduce compulsory education for all 16-18 year olds. 

You probably haven't heard of the Waste and Resources Action Programme - or WRAP as they are cleverly known. But, on top of giving the public the deeply philosophical question of what came first: the name "Waste and Resources Action Programme" or the acronym "WRAP", it has also blessed the Great British public with its Real Nappy Campaign. The aim of this campaign was to encourage parents to use reusable nappies instead of causing waste (for want of a better word) by using disposable nappies. How very noble indeed.