CentreRight

Diary: Under the weather

A Times journalist just described Tory party members as 'lizards'. Apparently we talk too much about broken Britain, and crime, when what we should be doing is celebrating the swimming results from the Olympics (apparently it's not possible to do both). He ends his piece by telling us The lizards may get their new government. Fellow lizardsactivists: dismiss from your minds the horror of your thoughts about that boy who fell from a Hackney towerblock, as he tried to climb away from those unbroken Britons who were chasing him. Of course there was a gap between losing his grip and hitting the ground, when he knew what was happening to him. Of course thinking about that gap makes you feel sick. Of course this death isn't even the latest gang-related murder in Britain - Ahmed Benyermak died last Wednesday, after all. But come come. Move along please. Nothing broken here. (I can't help but remember those others with concerns that lizards might take over the government.)

*

One thing I’ve loved about this summer’s weather has been its utter predictability. No, really. You don’t need to pause for thought when a friend asks you round for a barbecue. You know it’s going to be cold and you’ll need a raincoat. Saves a lot of fussing. We went to the Innocent Summer Fete in Regent’s Park the day after Alex Deane wrote about it on CentreRight. After an hour of being soaked to the skin, and only fleeing from under the (non) protection of a tree when lightning threatened to strike, we gave up and squelched home. Pah. You can stick yer fruit-pulp-based health refreshments where the sun don’t shine (i.e. Britain).

So I have that un-British characteristic of being made gloomy by rain. It gets me down, man. The summer’s weather has left me, well, under the weather. I wonder if that’s a particularly British idiom? The only other language I’m halfway good at is Italian but I can’t translate phrases: I doubt that sotto il tempo is correct – under the time? I must ask Lisa. [Time passes]. I asked her: no, there isn’t a direct Italian equivalent, which cheers me up, somehow. She offers mi sento a terra (I feel down on the ground), which makes sense if you live in the sun-kissed foothills of the Alps, or, even more appropriately for an Italian, I think, mi sento le ruote sgonfie: I’ve got flat tyres.

British Olympians have put our lost country back on the map

It is the most wonderful sense of individual and national achievement that every member of our Olympic team did so well in Beijing. They have put our old country back on the map which our own discredited Labour Government has so disgracefully trashed over the past decade.

Medals: 19 Golds, 13 Silver & 15 Bronze.

It is right that they come back with significant rewards of individual achievement and with an element of pride as the nation watches in support. It shall not be forgotten in a rush. Their endurance and fighting spirit to prove their abilities on such a grand stage, I would hope will provide inspiration for others to do the same in every walk of life.

If we are to ask what defines Britishness, I should think the potential for individual achievement at the very highest level is what we stand for, going beyond the given reality and defining the highest level of performance for the rest of the world. One only needs to have watched Team GB at the Beijing Olympics.

In particular, I was taken aback by the outstanding performance of Doctor Brabants in his kayak – the winner of our 18th gold medal – and have drawn him a picture in his honour. Well done Doctor Brabants and Team GB! Stunning performances.

Russia's Aggression is a challenge to world order

There's an excellent piece in today's WSJ by US Senators Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman on how we can't sit still following Russia's aggression in the Caucasus. The Senators have both just come back from a trip to Georgia, Ukraine and Poland, and their analysis is spot on: Russia has laid down the gauntlet and set a challenge to the free world - if we, led by the US, do not take substantive action now, we will pay the price for a long time to come.

Here's a key paragraph, but please do take a look at the entire article if you get a moment:

"Russia's invasion of Georgia represents the most serious challenge to this political order since Slobodan Milosevic unleashed the demons of ethnic nationalism in the Balkans. What is happening in Georgia today, therefore, is not simply a territorial dispute. It is a struggle about whether a new dividing line is drawn across Europe: between nations that are free to determine their own destinies, and nations that are consigned to the Kremlin's autocratic orbit."

On Britishness

Panorama this evening was about Britishness.  The programme wanted to know whether Britishness was about race or about culture, and whether the notion of Britishness had any meaning in our multi-cultural (or is it now post-multi-cultural?) society.  The message appeared to be that no-one - except perhaps the BNP - really knows what even they themselves think "Britishness" means, that the idea was born in conflict and Empire, and that the concept is probably now redundant.

In my view, the programme had half a point.  Its half a point was that Britishness cannot coherently be understood in the kind of terms Gordon Brown seeks, other than racially.  But just because Gordon Brown is confused, we should not therefore conclude that there is nothing to being British other than race or platitudes.

Classic Drudge

He links to this Politico story about boiling tensions between the two top Democrats.

Meanwhile the Republicans introduce us to Debra; a Hillary voter who will be voting for John McCain in November.

Mark Halperin notes the forner First Lady's response: I'm Hillary Clinton and I do not approve that message.

The Hillary factor

Barack Obama was meant to be the best at using the internet but not everything is going to plan.   The leaking of his choice of VP pick meant that the people who gave his campaign their txt and email contacts in order to be "the first to know" were not the first to know after all. After the Biden pick leaked the Obama campaign rushed out a txt msg in the early hours of yesterday morning. It gives new meaning to the 3am call.  The other negative on the internet front for Team Obama is that more people are now watching McCain YouTube videos than are watching Obama videos.  McCain has a 5.3 million to 3.9 million lead.

One of the reasons is the McCain campaign's rapid deployment of attack ads.  A new one is playing across the networks here in the USA; it teases Barack Obama for not picking Hillary Clinton as his running mate:

Probably THE main challenge for Barack Obama is to get Hillary Clinton's former supporters to vote for him.  If all Democrat-leaners vote in this election there is no way that McCain can win.  McCain has done a good job at getting most Republicans to say they'll vote for him but Clinton supporters are still resentful at Obama's defeat of their candidate.  The Clintons themselves are rumoured to be disappointed that Obama has done too little to help her pay off her campaign debts.  There's lots of media questioning of why the former First Lady wasn't even on Obama's VP shortlist.  The Republicans are enjoying the continuing disunity and the YouTube ad attempts to capitalise on it.

PS My favourite McCain ad is 'The One'.

Vince Cable and the merits of more-than-100% mortgages

I heard Vince Cable on Radio 4 yesterday, doing his usual routine about how foolish and irresponsible the banks were lending people more-than-100% mortgages, and how policy in the future must not allow this to be repeated.

I'm not proposing today to dissect the history of the credit crunch, but one thing I will urge: the very last thing policy should do, starting from where we are, is to ban or discourage more-than-100% mortgages.  And, for exactly the same reason (which I shall explain in a minute) all those bankers we are seeing in the media saying "The above-100% mortgage is gone for the foreseeable future" are also wrong.  More-than-100% mortgages will be back very soon, and they will be vital to the health of the economy.

Let me explain.  Until the early 1990s, mortgage providers were not permitted to offer mortgages greater in value than the value of the property against which they were secured.  Presumably Vince Cable approved.  The consequence was that in the early 1990s housing crash, once people went into negative equity they were unable to move house, even if by doing so they would reduce their monthly mortgage bills.  So, for example, if they had a £200,000 mortgage on a house now worth £150,000, and wanted to move to a house now worth £100,000, it would make sense for them to be able to have a 150% mortgage on the new property, with their monthly mortgage payments reducing by one quarter.  But that was not allowed.  Consequently, people with negative equity found it very difficult to move without declaring themselves bankrupt.  Since they could not move, then if they became unemployed they could not seek a new job in another part of the country where the labour market was better.  This factor contributed materially to the growth in unemployment at the time.

Since house prices are falling at a much faster rate than in the early 1990s, and are likely to fall much further in the end and probably thrust materially more people into negative equity than back then, demand for more-than-100% mortgages is likely to grow rapidly within about eighteen months' time.  It would be economic lunacy to introduce any regulation, at this stage, to prevent more-than-100% mortgages, or for regulatory authorities to be instructed to discourage such lending.

Eco-fascism is no longer merely an irritant - it is fast becoming intolerable

Waitrose in Bury St Edmunds, a small but important bit of grocery shopping for the long weekend.  The place was packed as only a regional town centre can be on a Saturday afternoon.  When, finally, the head of the queue was reached and the goods were paid for, the pimply fellow on the till asked, "where are your bags?"

Well, we'd come shopping at a supermarket, so we didn't have any.

"You have to have your own," he said, smugly.  "This is a green till."

In his defence, there was a sign.  We hadn't seen it.  "Well, here we are now," we said, with the slightly-forced-jollity-oh-please-be-reasonable tone one adopts with the swivel-eyed petty bureaucrat when on his turf with a toe over the absurd line he monitors with zeal.  "So can't we please have some bags?"

"I'm not interested. I do not want to be asked"

The McCain camp has been quick to respond to Biden's selection, launching an advert containing footage in which Biden says he would be "proud to run with John McCain" and highlighting unflattering comments he has made about Obama's ability to do the job of President.

Get ready for the Barack-Biden bounce

It's nearly bedtime for me in Los Angeles and it seems increasingly likely that Senator Joe Biden will be Barack Obama's running mate.  Many Brits will remember Biden for plagiarising Neil Kinnock's 'I am the first person in a thousand generations' speech but he's a considerable figure who will bring foreign policy weight to the Democrat ticket.  Senator Biden (recommended today by David Brooks) will also help Obama reach Catholics and the voters of Pennsylvania.

The Dems will now enjoy a week of publicity and Team McCain is playing the expectations game by briefing that all of the attention will put Obama 15% ahead by this time next week. Anything less and they'll claim he underperformed.  Obama currently leads by 1.4% in the RCP average.  Only twice in recent history has a candidate received a 15% or more boost from his Convention: George Bush Snr in 1988 and Bill Clinton in 1992.  The graph below - clipped from The New Republic - compares recent bounces:

They appear to be getting smaller.  It's the debates that matter more now.

A quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing

Our friends over at Americaintheworld.com will be interested to see that isolationism is alive and well in at least a portion of the right in the USA, as evidenced in Pat Buchanan's most recent offering in which he says

If the Russia-Georgia war proves nothing else, it is the insanity of giving erratic hotheads in volatile nations the power to drag the United States into war.

and there's plenty more where that came from.

Sharing the proceeds of growth: RIP

"Sharing the proceeds of standstill" doesn't quite chime does it? But that's where the economy had got to at the end of June, and now it's probably in the first quarter of what will turn out to be a recession. Couple that to Eurozone holiday exchange rates, and the rising cost of more or less everything, and it must now, surely, be goodbye to what is probably the least recession-proof soundbite in the world?

In fairness, there's a significant psychological shift to be made in the Westminster village. Uninterrupted growth since 1992 makes for a naturally rosey outlook. But pretty much every household in the country has already made that very shift; people are feeling the budgetary squeeze and adjusting their spending accordingly. We need to do the same with public finances. The politics of recession are not the same as the politics of growth. That's why tax cuts are now back on the agenda. Bank balance outweighs work-life balance, now and for some time to come.

It would be good to hear that the Conservative front bench team has decided to put this particular phrase out of our misery. I am sure that a friendly think-tank could be persuaded to host a suitable memorial ceremony before the Party Conference. But I suspect I am being over-optimistic.

Women's group no friend to women

I'm not sure if I want the New York lawyer taking Columbia University to court for offering women's studies but not men's studies to succeed. But I don't think one has to in order to find this kind of response repugnant:

Kim Gandy, president of the National Organisation for Women, said: "They have a men's studies department: It's called 'history', 'politics', 'business'. It's the entire university. It's all about men's studies."

Yeah - history, politics, business. Obviously no woman would have any reason to take an interest in any of that. Ugh. Does it need to be said any more that militant feminism is so often the worst enemy of women?

Labour and Olympic success

I totally agree with Alex Deane's post.

It must make athletes in Beijing furious that the government is trying to claim credit for their success. The real credit should surely to our superb athletes and no one else.

In fact lottery funding for grassroots sport has been virtually cut in half since 1997. If you add in government spending, there has been a real reduction of £135m per annum going into sport, mainly caused by Labour's lottery raids for ministerial pet projects.

Grassroots sport is not the same as elite sport, but just as vital when it comes to London 2012, where we won the bid on the basis that we would inspire young people through sport.

But even the funding for elite sport has been a shambles. In March 2006 the government promised a £600m package of which £100m would come from the private sector. They have failed to raise this money, and yesterday a government minister said this was because at that time it was "unclear" which rights the government would have to sell off. A few phone calls to the BOA and the IOC could have cleared things up - instead of which they persisted with a promise they are now struggling to fulfil.

The harsher economic climate doesn't make things easier either, but they might have had a chance if they had started two years ago. Since then we are on our third Culture Secretary which I suspect is the real reason why this particular ball was dropped.

PS I have the honour of having riled Labour so much over my criticisms of their sport funding that today Labour MP Michael Connarty called on me to resign.

Labour has no right to crow about British success at the Olympics

Perfectly timed with Brown's gladhanding trip to the Olympics comes a great little article from Brian Moore (who was, IMHO, one of the greatest Union players of his generation) on New Labour's attempts to claim glory thanks to (ahem) "Team GB":

The Government claim their tripling of funding for elite sport, to £265 million, is, in part, responsible for the success of Team GB in Beijing.

However, the claim compares funding over four-year cycles between Games. Until two years ago, extra funding was only £2 million above the Sydney cycle of £63 million; the £200 million extra funding was announced in the first budget after London was awarded the 2012 Games.

This hike in funding had more to do with having to back the London Games with solid cash, rather than a conscious effort to increase the chances of those presently competing.

Not all of this extra sum has been distributed to athletes and in any event, the long term preparations untaken by the members of Team GB started when funding by the Government had increased imperceptibly.

The main reason for the increased success is the professionalism of those sports that have given their athletes the best possible preparation; that, and money from the National Lottery, the creation of which Labour opposed

Regression to the Mean

Next month I'm taking a day out of work to give a workshop to A-level maths students in east London. A colleague and I will try to convince 120 young people that sticking at their mathematical studies will do them good in later life. (And how could it not? They could end up like me. Well. Perhaps best to stick to theoretical material on the day).

Rachel (my colleague) suggested we use our workshop to introduce the students to the concept of "regression to the mean". We're going to simulate a drug trial by asking the students to each roll a dice and record the score four times. These numbers will represent the number of headaches which four patients present with when they visit their GP. Aha! says the GP, I know about a clinical trial for a new medicine to cure headaches. I'll send those patients who had five or six headaches - the most serious cases - to take part in the trial. We then get the students to roll the dice again, for those severely ill 'patients' only. Surprise surprise - across the class of 120 students - we can expect with extremely high probability to show that the number of headaches after the 'drug' is less than the number before. Of course this has nothing to do with the 'drug' at all (as I hope is obvious, unless there is some hitherto unsuspected therapeutic benefit to be gained from rolling a dice - perhaps this is the basis of holistic medicine?) but is a simple example of regression to the mean. (The phenomenon has the - for statistics - poetic name, because Francis Galton first noticed that the sons of tall fathers had heights closer to the population average, and vice versa).

Twice as many voters want Tories, but what about Europe?

Given that twice as many electors said they would vote Tory as Labour (48% to 24%) at the next general election, it is now time for the Conservative leadership to reflect on what they want to do with Europe, particularly following the undemocratic ratification of the Lisbon Treaty.

If the Treaty is not implemented before the next general election, will the Tories strengthen their opposition by demanding a post-ratification referendum in a manifesto?

If the Treaty has been fully implemented before the next general election, will they seek a long-term renegotiation or rebalance of our relationship with the EU via a manifesto commitment? Perhaps this could imply the need for putting our own House in order first – even a new Act (or amend the European Communities Act 1972) to assert UK parliamentary supremacy over European legislation for circumstances when it is clear to our own judiciary that UK and European law has conflicting demands?

These, however, are not mere provisos because …

Christine does it

Back in the UK now on the early morning flight, and to a pile of correspondence to catch up with.

Can't help mentioning that I was in the stadium last night for Christine Ohuruogu's big moment in the 400m. It felt like she cut it pretty fine. According to Seb Coe, different runners follow different strategies, but it is normal to stay "in the pack" rather out in front as long as you gauge the distance between yourself and the leaders and make sure it is always closeable in your final push.

When it was over, the ecstacy on her face seemed to fill the whole stadium. She was also generous stopping to talk to supporters with Union Jacks on her victory lap.

If the point of 2012 is to inspire young people with sport, we need lots of moments like this.

Back in the UK now on the early morning flight, and to a pile of correspondence to catch up with.

Can't help mentioning that I was in the stadium last night for Christine Ohuruogu's big moment in the 400m. It felt like she cut it pretty fine. According to Seb Coe, different runners follow different strategies, but it is normal to stay "in the pack" rather out in front as long as you gauge the distance between yourself and the leaders and make sure it is always closeable in your final push.

When it was over, the ecstacy on her face seemed to fill the whole stadium. She was also generous stopping to talk to supporters with Union Jacks on her victory lap.

If the point of 2012 is to inspire young people with sport, we need lots of moments like this.

McCain pulls ahead of Obama

A Zogby/Reuters poll published this morning continues to point to a close race for the Whitehouse between Senators John McCain and Barack Obama. 

According to the poll, McCain now leads Obama 46% to 41% amongst likely voters, as opposed to the same poll which last month showed Obama leading by 7%.

The poll - the results of which can be viewed in detail here - makes for interesting reading:

• Over the past month, McCain's support has increased by 6% whilst Obama's has fallen by 6%.  Crucially, however, neither candidate has managed to tap into the 13% of voters who describe themselves as "undecided" - this figure remains unchanged from last month. 
• Obama's support has decreased amongst all social categories, most markedly amongst under thirty-fives (-12%), Catholics (-11%), university graduates (-11%), southerners (-11%) and those living in cities (-11%).
• Obama continues to lead McCain 52% to 40% amongst voters aged 18 to 29 despite slipping 12% in this age-group over the past thirty days.
• McCain now holds a 9% lead amongst those who list the economy as their top concern, as opposed to a 4% lead Obama lead amongst this group last month. 
• McCain has the support of 81% of self-proclaimed Republicans with Barack Obama picking up 74% of the Democratic votes.

Commenting on the poll, John Zogby said:

“Since Obama returned from his overseas trip, it seems like McCain has thrown all the punches. Clearly, the blows have landed. In recent days, Obama is fighting back, going after McCain on the economy, the issue voters care about most. McCain has changed the dynamic of the race heading into the two conventions. That puts more pressure on Obama to go to Denver and effectively define himself and McCain.”

We're a long way from the means of production...

Only today, I've seen adverts for car insurance comparisons from comparethemarket.com, gocompare.com, moneysupermarket.com, tescocompare.com, confused.com, uswitch.com and fool.co.uk.  I'm sure that there are others.

I'm confused.  Is there a site to compare the comparison sites?

What is it about insurance that attracts this kind of site (and competition)?

Remembering Leo Abse

Obituaries elsewhere are saying plenty on the politics of Leo Abse, the former Labour MP who died today, and they were certainly interesting. A convinced unilateralist, Abse opposed even the Falklands war – but he had no time for Tony Benn and appeared to think John Smith the ideal Labour leader. He sponsored the private members bill that legalised homosexuality - and he was a passionate opponent of abortion. As I say, an interesting set of convictions.

But I really only know Abse from his books. I think it was Iain Dale who described Abse's Margaret, daughter of Beatrice as the weirdest book one is ever likely to read on the former Prime Minister. Abse seemingly let his Freudianism inform every page – and so everything from Thatcher’s polices on inflation to her attitude to nuclear weapons is predictably brought back to, well, you can guess.

The irony is that Abse himself was a brilliant observer of other politicians. When he abandoned the mumbo-jumbo and applied his own thinking to those he encountered, he showed himself to be a far better psychologist than Freud (of whom the best mainstream scientists are likely to say today is that he was on to something). In his book on Thatcher, and in others like Private Member and Blair: The Man Behind the Smile, Abse profiled figures he knew such as Sir Keith Joseph, Hugh Gaitskell and Enoch Powell so well that some years later I remember his accounts as if I read them this morning. All this backed up by a vocabulary that, though not 'accessible', was brilliant. I think I’ve observed elsewhere on this blog that of all who observe and write on modern British politics, only Leo Abse and Matthew Parris seem to have any real insight into the psychology of politicians. Now, sadly, we’re down to one.

Union (in)activity in Scotland

Three very large public sector unions are currently striking in Scotland.  Whilst one might wonder why some of the areas for which they are responsible are in the public sector at all, that withdrawal of labour is their right, of course.

However, given that the strikes cause widespread disruption to many services, which certainly gets their point across, one wonders about the effectiveness of extending the strike to crematoriums, as they have done. 

Certainly, workers in those facilities have the right to strike just like the others.  But the point is being made very widely anyway, and their wages shall rise or fall depending on the success of negotiations across the board.  Their strike adds little to their cause; on the other hand, the thought of the bereaved being unable to carry out the funerals they've been preparing themselves for is horrible, isn't it?  It rather harms the strikers' cause rather than aiding it, IMHO...

Three cheers for the Competition Commission

The news today that the Competition Commission wants to see BAA forced to sell three airports is fantastic.  Best of all is the suggestion that (I assume) Stansted and Gatwick must be sold. BAA is a lazy, slug like beast, oozing with primordial incompetence (in my opinion).  For them improvements are always tomorrow and tomorrow.  We need not have a problem with that except that they have damaged our country's reputation by making such a hash of Heathrow and often mess up our holiday and business travel plans.

Three cheers also for Shadow Transport Secretary Theresa Villiers MP who helped make the weather by calling for the effective break up of BAA.  She stands vindicated today - making a ballsy case with great success. Now the third runway must be stopped and, I hope, a closer look taken at extra capacity in places like East Kent's Manston airport.

Vive la France!

This morning we wake up to the sad news that France yesterday lost 10 of her men (with a further 21 injured) fighting for freedom in Afghanistan.  They were ambushed by a resurgent Taliban just on the outskirts of Kabul.  Like the US, UK, Canadian and other NATO soldiers in Afghanistan that have lost their lives, these men will go down in history as brave soldiers who fought at the front-line of the War on Terror so that we can all ultimately live in a safer world.

We should take this opportunity to thank the French people for electing Nicolas Sarkozy, who has well and truly put the days of the weak Jacques Chirac behind us.  For the first time in decades, the French have a leader that understands the value of a strong Western alliance, in the face of an unprecedented threat from global terrorists.  One of the first acts of Sarkozy on the global stage was to announce that French troop numbers in Afghanistan will boosted by 700, and that they will no longer take on passive peace-keeping missions only.  Despite the sad news of today, Sarkozy has announced that he will make an immediate morale boosting visit to Afghanistan. That's leadership.

We need France in the Western alliance more than ever, so thank god for Nicolas Sarkozy.  At a time when our own leadership in so weak (as we just saw over the Georgian crisis), Sarkozy is more welcome than ever.  Vive la France!

China and human rights

It is wonderful to see how well the British Olympic team is doing in Beijing.

However, here is a different side to the story - Even under the spotlight, repression continues

Feel free to contribute to the blog following the article :)