CentreRight

If crime has fallen...

...by 32% since Labour came to power, then why are our prisons full up?  I only ask.

Glass ceilings and a question of choice

I can think of a good many reasons for calling this Governmen hypocritical but accusing it of perpetrating  'gender inequality'  in the Civil Service would not be one of them.  Yes, Theresa May is quite right to complain of  government interference in the private sector, trying to impose gender pay audits - but wrong to blame Labour for the fact that only 13 per cent of the top jobs in a the Ministry of Defence go to women. As the Sunday Times explained yesterday, women have their own reasons for choosing not to move up the career ladder at the same rate as men, notwithstanding their equal (or superior) qualifications. The biggest factor influencing this choice is their desire to focus on their families, either by taking time out from the career track or by opting for part-time or less demanding work - a desire that remains more prevalent in women than men, whether through biology, neurology or simply because they like being with their children. Imposing targets for positive discrimination won't change this, and is more likely to damage the credibility of women who reach senior levels on merit and through choice.

Sportacus and the limits of government

Does the Right believe in smaller government or not? Is it for the state to decide how much we should weigh? Instead of arguing about whether fat people cost us more, could we please start from the assumption that individuals should take responsibility for their own BMI? A fat toddler is not a pretty sight. But I would rather the state concentrated its efforts on protecting children at risk of violence - a minimum duty of government which is currently far from being fulfilled.

Who do they think we are?

Six months ago no-one in the mainstream media seemed too worried about this Government's ability to track our lives through its relentless collection of data.  How times change. I've lost count of the 'Stasi' headlines over the last few days, Timothy Garton Ash in today's Guardian being the latest to call for a fightback. Garton Ash points out that the advance of information and communications technology goives the state 'possibilities of which the Stasi could only dream.' Which is perfectly true. And it's not just phone tapping and CCTV that gives the state too much information, but the much more innocuous-sounding 'personalisation' of public services which, as I point out in a new report for the Centre for Policy Studies , is designed to enable Government departments and Government agencies to share our personal data with a view to creating a 'package' of public services for each of us.

Described by Government advisers as the 'Tesco clubcard' model for public service reform, this agenda aims to provide Government with 'customer insight' based on our 'behaviour, experiences, beliefs, needs or desires' - so that services can be planned and allocated from the centre. Perhaps the most disturbing claim made for the agenda is that it is to be designed so that the public 'do not see this process.' Let us hope that the public, thanks to recent data loss scandals, do begin to see the process which Gordon Brown and his colleagues have embarked upon. The more light is shed on it, the better.

The post-bureaucratic age

I'm not the first commentator to remark the the Conservatives post-Blackpool have started to demonstrate a real appetite for ideas - and a much greater confidence in talking about their ideas. Today at a seminar co-hosted by the Centre for Policy Studies, exploring 'the role of the state in the post-bureaucratic age', the Party showed this confidence, which I hope will prove infectious. Our key speaker was David Cameron, taking up the narrative which he first explored in his speech to the Google Zeitgeist conference about the failures of the bureaucratic age and the new, more limited role for the state in the modern era - an era in which individuals expect to have much more freedom and control over their own lives and are no longer content to accept what the state tells them they should have.

More than half of the Shadow Cabinet also spoke, many of them with evident enthusiam for de-centralisation, handing power back to individuals and communities, and finding practical solutions to the problems created by top-down government.  Nick Herbert's session stood out, both for Nick's compelling analysis and Grant Shapps' pithy contribution; Caroline Spelman raised the key question of how, in a de-centralised state, do you respond to the pressure on government to guarantee minimum outcomes?  In fact, the seminar asked more questions than it could attempt to answer, but was none the worse for that - because the intellectual drive which ran through those questions showed a new seriousness about the power of ideas. Let's have more of it. 

Fat chance

Health Secretary Alan Johnson, writing in the Sunday Times, says he wants us all to 'own' the problem of obesity as he launches yet another cross-government strategy which will, he claims, reverse the 30-year 'obesity trend.' The strategy will set up expert panels, annual reports and an 'obesity observatory' (no, I didn't make that up).

I don't want to 'own' anyone's weight problems, I don't want to be told what to eat, or how often to exercise, and I certainly object to paying for an obesity observatory, whatever that might look like.  I do, however, have a craving for a slimmer government, to replace this bloated monster with its endless appetite for new initiatives.

So this is the British Council

*Posted by Tim on behalf of Jill Kirby*

Call me unfeeling but I couldn't seem to work up any indignation about the Russian police breathalysing Kinnock Jr - nor about the decision to close a couple of British Council offices in Russia. Far from being worthy of a diplomatic dispute I think the Russian authorities have done us all a favour. I for one had no idea that the once-esteemed British Council is now chaired by the noble Lord Kinnock of Bedwelty, Labour's top favourite failed politician and Eurocrat, and that his son is head of the Council's St Petersburg office. In fact I'd be quite happy to see a few more of their offices close down and the costs refunded to British taxpayers...