CentreRight

Some schools deserve special treatment on BSF cuts

Many parents and voters will have been upset by the announcement last week that the national Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme to an end.

But Michael Gove was right to make what must have been a very hard decision to end a wasteful programme. The subsequent problems with the list of what is going and what is being kept hardly made things any better, but the problems there are more likely to be the work of civil servants than the Minister.

Cutting BSF is part of the price that must now be paid to cover Labour's debts. Labour left us with the largest deficit in our peacetime history, and £1 in every £4 they were spending was borrowed. Investment in schools must continue and the proposals for "Free Schools" look promising what ever savings need to be found in the short term.

However, we should only look to cut where there are real savings to be made and recognise that some schools need the investment they have been banking on.

One example is South Camden Community School (SCCS), where I am a governor. There are many other schools like it across Britain: an inner city comprehensive with an ethnically diverse pupil mix.

SCCS is an example of one school that should be spared the cuts in BSF and so should a few other schools in a similar position where huge amounts of time and money have already been spent getting them close to breaking ground. The sunk costs are massive and it is widely recognised that new facilities will be needed.

In 2007 Ofsted noted the impact at SCCS of “the severe physical constraints of the site” and this will have to be addressed sometime, whatever the funding scheme is called. It should be now, when the half the work has already been done, rather than making cuts that will only lead to even more money having to be spent in future.

SCCS was one of the first schools to enter the BSF programme and while the national BSF programme has been a disaster of bad planning, bureaucracy and waste, SCCS has invested heavily with time and money in overcoming those problems. This investment cannot be clawed back if the programme is cancelled. Having invested so much already it would be foolish not to complete the process.

The work at SCCS is very close - only six weeks away from starting on site. Cutting the programme now would leave the school with an uncertain future as the new academic year starts in the autumn. Redeveloping SCCS will be much cheaper than building an entirely new school - about half the cost of some recent developments - but will still deliver the facilities and space that local children need. There are two new forms of entry due as part of the development in response to the growing number of children in the area.

There are other schools that are in a comparable situation where a similar case can be made, but not so many that it will derail national spending plans.

It was a brave decision to axe Building Schools for the Future. It will be a brave one to save those schools that, like South Camden Community School, deserve it.

Michael Gove, are you up to the task?

The Unintended Humour of the Lib-Dem Manifesto

There are some lovely comedy moments in the Lib-Dem manifesto launched, today.

Two random examples.

Firstly, they want to abolish HEFCE, which is the body that pays out money to universities for teaching and supporting activities. Apparently, this is a grossly inefficient quango. In my day job, I deal with HEFCE quite a bit and have to say they are a model of how to get it right! There are only about three people you ever have to deal with there, because there are only about three people, and they handle a huge budget and ask for light-touch reporting that actually asks only if the job is being done that should be being done and does not look for loads of stupid measures that do not indicate anything useful (unlike the regional development agencies, for example). Per employee, it must be one of the most cost effective arms of government.

Scrapping it just sounded good.

So, too, must the idea of a "regional" points based immigration system. Under their plans, if you manage to get into the UK, you would be allocated to a region. That means that if you come to the UK without a job, you are more likely to be placed in an area that has (relatively) higher unemployment (meaning not in London or the greater South East). This means that we will add to the competition for jobs in areas where it already high and not see the labour cost benefits in areas where wages are high. Thus, all the main benefits of immigration to the UK (of which there are lots!) are negated in one crude policy move.

This was not a manifesto, it was the script for a farce, in which a group of muppets get hold of a country and mismanage it completely. Hold on... maybe that makes it a documentary of the last five years?

Polls Are Quirky Things - But Not As Odd As Their Participants

There is an episode of the West Wing (much missed by many of us political anoraks) which sees Josh running around the White House quoting a statistic along the lines of 30% of Americans thinking that the US Constitution is broken and 21% wanting a new Constitution. (If anyone can remember the actual statistics, please add them below - it does not change my point here but not remembering it correctly is annoying me!). 

The point he makes, when no one seems to be as concerned as he is about these figures, is that it means there are 9% of people who think it is broken - but don't want to fix it!

Below the headline of the Tory lead being down to 2% in the YouGov poll in the Sunday Times today, is a pair of numbers I find as alarming as Josh found his poll stat but commentators are not really mentioning.

According to the poll, 31% think Cameron generally tells the truth. From a partisan point of view, like mine, that is a worrying number that we would want to see considerably higher. It is not that far below Brown's 35% rating, though, which is more of a comment on the general low-regard for politicians. 

But the next question asked whether Cameron "has the character to be an effective Prime Minister", to which the answer is 40%. This is better news for Conservatives.

What it says about the respondents is not that reassuring, though. That means that at least 9% of the respondents think Cameron does NOT generally tell the truth but still has the right character to be an effective Prime Minister. In other words, to do the job well they they he should general lie. 

Did the survey participants not think their responses through or is it indicative of the image of professional politicians that lying is now seen as a positive attribute? I hope it is the former.

Ahead of Conference, a Lesson from America: Rhetoric is Not Enough

It is not quite a year since the US Presidential election that brought Barack Obama into the White House.

Since then, the world has been treated to some spectacular rhetoric. My favourite (probably) was the Berlin speech of July last year, in which he talked of close US-European ties, a nuclear-free world and acknowledged man-made climate change. Lofty, Utopian stuff.

"As we speak, cars in Boston and factories in Beijing are melting the ice caps in the Arctic, shrinking coastlines in the Atlantic, and bringing drought to farms from Kansas to Kenya.... We must come together to save this planet..... This is the moment to give our children back their future.… This is the moment to stand as one.... This is our time.... Let us remember this history, and answer our destiny."

In April of this year, it was followed by another inspiring speech, where many of the same lofty aims were repeated, this time in Prague.

"So today, I state clearly and with conviction America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons. I'm not naive. This goal will not be reached quickly -- perhaps not in my lifetime. It will take patience and persistence. But now we, too, must ignore the voices who tell us that the world cannot change. We have to insist, 'Yes, we can.'"

While the speeches have been spell-binding, the actions have not always delivered. The Berlin speech itself was targeted at an audience at home, rather than at the 200,000 that were present, as the German media wryly observed. 

The Nationalisation of the Recession and the Worse to Come

President Obama launched yesterday, a strong attack on bankers and their role in the financial crisis and its aftermath. On both sides of the Atlantic, politicians should probably think, too, about their decisions and what they can learn.

There are few signs of that at the moment, though, and most are hoping that the recession may be over. Official statistics have yet to confirm this is the case and there are those that suspect it may get worse once again, but for now, sentiment is up and the outlook looks rosier than it has for many months.

If this turns out to be correct, then many will feel that it did not work out as badly as might have been expected. Anecdotally, many of my friends in business and finance read the runes, saw sales drying up and started preparing for a storm that never quite hit as hard as they had feared. So given the dire predications that were made twelve months or so ago, how has this come about?

There are two possible arguments. The first is that it was never going to be as bad as some feared and that the media over-blew things. There is probably some truth in that but it is not enough to explain the lack of short-term pain on its own. 

Transport matters matter

Yesterday's announcement from National Rail of the proposed new high-speed rail link along the West Coast route, is an apt prompt to think about transport policy. This may bore many people senseless, but those that know me well enough will tell you that I have a little propellor on my head that goes round when the subject of transport comes up for debate and have written elsewhere on this before. I should stress that I am not a Lord Adonis-type, train spotting my way around the country for fun. It is just that I believe that as an area of public policy, whether it is about investing in national infrastructure as a key part of being a competitive economy or just at the human level of getting to work and to see family, transport really, really matters.

There is a need for better transport policies

Numerous surveys of the general public show this to be a general view. Transport regular ranks in the top-five most important issues for a large majority of voters, along with the NHS, the economy and education and generally ahead of immigration, Europe and seemingly more sexy topics, such as foreign affairs.

This matters more than it might, partly because politicians have surprisingly little to say on the subject that is really new or has the power to swing electoral votes. Calls for an "integrated transport policy" are common and fair enough, but it would be an idiot who didn't think that different modes of transport should be integrated if anyone is to make use of them. Rail stations and airports need car parks and roads to allow people to get there. Trying to get people to get people off over-crowded roads in urban centres means spending money on public transport. These examples of integration are from the school of the blindingly obvious but count for policy commitments in some quarters. Nor is it all about public transport; roads are a key part of any serious national transport strategy.

So why is it so hard for politicians to offer us anything genuinely radical in the transport department? 

Feeling sorry for Crash Gordon

OK, so I have not reached that point, yet, but it can't be far away. We are moving from a state of collective anger to one of pity - the final nail in the coffin of any political career.

Poor old "Crash" Gordon thinks he will regain the political initiative and bullish media coverage with a dramatic package of parliamentary and electoral reform proposals. He trailed this before the elections last week with an appearance on the Andrew Marr show where he hinted at a desire to bring in an AV-plus system. The details remain sketchy this evening, partly because the objective of reclaiming the media's attention failed.

Firstly, the BBC News at Ten led with a story about the NHS running out of cash as a result of all of the other demands on the government purse caused by Gordon's lack of prudence and cash management. His big story came second but just sounded confused.

Then, Newsnight, who had had another half an hour to pull the story together, thought about it enough to lead with point that a proposal designed to "reinvigorate" our democracy was a bit rich coming from a government that has just been decimated in two nation-wide polls and whose cabinet contains more unelected members than any since Churchill's, with seven Peers holding the right to attend.

There is nothing here that will win over the general public. They seem to have more sense than the remnants of the administration. They understand the danger of decisions made in haste and know that it is they, and their children, who will have to bear the brunt of this political suicide note just as they are the ones paying the cost for Gordon's financial hubris.

Crash Gordon has done it again. Can't you just hear that Queen soundtrack...? Crash - Ah! He'll save every one of us!

Poor Crash Gordon. Poorer us. 

MPs Expenses in the Light of History

If anyone was to ask what the defining political debate of the moment is, it would be hard for them to answer anything other than MP's expenses.

Personally, I am not in favour of larger salaries and an end to expenses. I think we need more openness, but the need for a second home is fundamentally sound and there should be an allowance for it. However, this has been abused by some and they should be punished for doing so. 

But others have said this already. The truth is that, sadly for bloggers and pundits of all types, there is not much new to be said after two and a half weeks of coverage, beyond yet more expressions of astonishment at the crassness of some of our elected representatives.

Elsewhere on ConHome, today, Tim Montgomerie has written on Michael Gove's desire to see more children learn British history in our schools. I read history at university and believe it to be invaluable in applying the lessons of the past to the present. By chance, an email arrived in my inbox over the weekend concerning Oliver Cromwell, that united these two strands of thought on MP's expenses and the light that history can shine.

Oliver Cromwell, like me, used to live in Ely. Unlike me, he had something new to say when faced with the sight of MP's gorging themselves on the contents of the public purse.

Oliver Cromwell's Speech on the Dissolution of the Long Parliament
Given to the House of Commons
20 April 1653

It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.

Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter'd your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth? Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defil'd this sacred place, and turn'd the Lord's temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices? 

Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress'd, are yourselves gone!

So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors. In the name of God, go!

Luton and Tatton are not the same

The Daily Mail has a story that Esther Rantzen has been inspired by Martin Bell and is considering standing against the expense-abusing Labour MP Margaret Moran in Luton South. Tim Montgomerie has written elsewhere on ConHome this morning that unless we clean up our worst MPs, we face a barrage of independents standing against sitting MPs. Tim is right about that, but thought should be given to where it happens.

Let's start with the case at hand: Luton South and why it is not the same as Tatton.

Martin Bell beat Neil Hamilton because his independent status allowed other parties to get behind him to unseat a sitting MP with a huge majority.

In Luton South, there is an excellent local Conservative candidate in Nigel Huddleston who was on the way to beating Moran even before the scandal of her expenses broke. Nigel should now ask Esther to come out and campaign for him if she wants to clean up politics!

An independent simply is not needed in Luton South. As the Daily Mail points out, Moran already faces "a furious backlash in her constituency" and the "narrow 5,650 majority" means Nigel must be odds on favourite to win even if Moran decides to stand again, which is surely open to doubt given her dreadful behaviour.

Independents can never quite deliver the impact at Westminster that traditional MPs can but are great where mainstream politics has failed. It will not do so in Luton. Esther should let Nigel run in Luton and she should stand where she is needed. There are plenty of sitting MPs that she could target. According to the Sunday Times, yesterday, nine out of the top-ten expense claimants are Labour (and all of the top five). Maybe there is someone there to set her sights on where an independent would be needed to clear out the dead wood as was needed in Tatton.

If it was up to me, I would encourage her to consider the constituency of Speaker Martin as one good place to begin!