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Letter from Wales: the Welsh Language Society needs some decent PR!

23/08/2013, 09:00:13 AM

by Julian Ruck

I have been wrong.

And never let it be said that I will not listen to a fair and reasonable argument, albeit that I may well disagree with part of it.

On 21.8.13 I interviewed Tony Schiavone, a representative of the Welsh Language Society and I must say I was impressed. Indeed, the Society is to be commended for entering into a dialogue with me in the first place, which is more than can be said for Dyfodol, another Welsh language pressure group, but then they are associated with the taxpayer subsidised Welsh publisher Y Lolfa, so say no more.

The thrust of the interview concentrated on the WLS’s views on planning policy in Wales in respect of its impact on the development and preservation of the Welsh language eg how far should a 62% Welsh speaking community be considered when planners examine housing needs, be it private or public sector?

Would not an influx of non-Welsh speakers result in the possible denigration of the language?

As you can imagine, my immediate response to this was one of “hold on, this stinks of minority protectionism on a grand scale?”

Not so, as was duly pointed out by Mr Schavione. He made it clear that the Society’s view was one of “consideration” not enforcement and he gave me no reason to doubt his sincerity in this. I must also stress that not once during the interview did I feel I was dealing with a gentleman of extreme and unrealistic inclination.

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The farce of the “Bradford Spring” is over, but we should not forget its lesson for Labour

21/08/2013, 01:04:39 PM

by Rob Marchant

Ah, the excitement of the “the most sensational victory in British political history”, as its author so modestly put it, has all lasted a tragically short time, hasn’t it?

The surprising thing is not that George Galloway seems to have tired of Bradford after less than a year and a half in the job as its one of its MPs. It is that his five local Respect councillors, who resigned en masse last Thursday, ever thought that he had the slightest interest in the town; a town which he memorably referred to as “Blackburn” two days after winning the seat.

The reason for their unhappiness is that Galloway is reported to be considering leaving them in the lurch by running for London mayor in 2016; theBBC reports that his shocked colleagues “feel he is using Bradford as a platform for his wider political ambitions”. Having taken sixteen whole months to reach that insightful conclusion, one has to conclude that perhaps his party colleagues are not the sharpest tools in the box.

No, the hard work of local pavement politics – or even of showing one’s face in the Commons chamber from time to time – has all seemed a little much for dear old George. Especially when there were TV programmes to present for the propaganda mouthpiece of a repressive regime, or trips to President Assad’s little client state to make.

And that is even before we start talking about last Autumn’s semi-disintegration of the Respect Party triggered by Galloway’s comments on rape or, for that matter, the making of a tastefully-titled film called “The Killing Of Tony Blair”.

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What is the point of today’s Labour party?

21/08/2013, 10:01:17 AM

by Dan McCurry

Way back in 1992, at the TUC conference, John Prescott stunned the socialist movement, by making a forceful speech in favour of John Smith’s proposed trade union reform. He attacked the unions for even questioning the motives of the Labour leader. He shamed them into submission. He showed that his loyalty is to the party over the unions and as a result, was rewarded with the deputy leadership when Tony Blair later rose to power.

He is the closest thing there is to Labour party royalty, and he just accused the party leader of being ineffective. This is not unreasonable. Everywhere I look I see the government’s economic policy being attacked. The Economist magazine calls the right to buy policy “A daft new government-subsidy scheme”, but what did we hear from Labour? Nothing. Not a dickie bird.

Look at the way the non-aligned commentators judge Osborne’s policy. Here’s Frances Coppola, an economics blogger, and academic of the Cass business school,

As my regular readers know, I am determinedly politically non-aligned, so what I am going to say now will probably shock a lot of people. Osborne’s behaviour both angers and frightens me. He is playing brinkmanship with the UK economy to achieve political ends. Nothing he does makes much sense from an economic point of view – which is why the flagship Help to Buy scheme has been universally panned, even by his own department and by people from his own party. But if you view his actions as entirely determined by his desire to secure a Conservative victory in 2015, it all makes perfect sense. He is dangerous.

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The foolishness of “fairness”

19/08/2013, 07:28:08 PM

by Sam Fowles

Iain Duncan Smith has said he won’t apologise for trying to make our welfare state “fairer”. But “fairness” is both an impossible and irresponsible goal in public policy.

The “silly season” is upon us and, unlike Labour (who appear to have collectively gone on holiday to another dimension, so deafening has been their media silence) Ian Duncan Smith has decided to use it to sell (or resell) his welfare cap. Unfortunately, while – in keeping with the season – the policy itself is silly in the extreme, its effects will be terrifyingly serious.

But the welfare cap is merely symptomatic of a wider misconception, one which is endemic in both public policy and public discourse: that public policy can or should ever be “fair”. “Fairness” is an unachievable goal and aiming at it only leads to bad policy making. It encourages a skewed view of the role of government and the function of the individual in society. A government which aspires to make “fair” policy will always be reduced to distributing different shades of unfairness. A better conceptual framework for public policy is based, not on fairness but responsibility. Government should be a facilitator, allowing citizens to discharge their intrinsic responsibility to society.

The welfare cap offers an excellent illustration of the contradiction inherent in the idea of public policy “fairness”. Duncan Smith claims that he is eliminating the unfairness that some people on benefits have a higher income than the average working family. The power of this argument lies in its truth. If one is in the position of a lower middle class working man (Mr A) then it is not fair that you must pay taxes so that some people can live, without working themselves, on a larger income than your own family.

However if one takes a different perspective, for example, a child (Child B) in a large family whose father (the sole earner) has just become a victim of the civil service or army job cuts then it is unfair that your quality of life should plummet dramatically (perhaps just as you are taking A-levels, thus jeopardising your university place) because of this government’s attempts to impose the one ideology they can remember from their Oxford politics lectures. The total income of a family (regardless of the number of children or any special needs they may have) will be limited to £500 per week which will include, among others, carers allowance, child benefit and severe disablement allowance. The cap is patently unfair on those, such as the severely disabled, who require a larger income to maintain a basic quality of life.

When considered on this micro level, public policy will always be unfair on someone. The public debate is often distorted by a focus on the outlying data; the super rich or willfully unemployed. But this often distracts from the real impacts of policy on the majority of people which means we rarely get to see the big picture. When the public debate about welfare focuses on Mick Philpott it presents the misleading idea that the welfare cap is simply a matter of preventing abuse of the system. Actually it’s a matter of the government distributing unfairness.

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Letter from Wales: Here come “Carwyn’s Carriers,” the new Welsh budget airline!

16/08/2013, 11:00:05 AM

by Julian Ruck

It seems that Carwyn Jones now fancies himself as a latter day Biggles, without the goggles.

Allow me to give you yet another classic example of Welsh Labour’s fantasy economics.

On the 27^th March 2013, the Welsh Government announced it had purchased Cardiff International Airport Ltd from TBI Ltd as a going concern for £52,000,000, claiming that technically, this was not a “nationalisation” as TBI was a “willing seller” and not being compelled to flog the asset – a bit of Carwyn’s legal training here if you ask me, semantic gymnastics at its best.

First minister Carwyn further announced,” The airport will not be operated by the Welsh government. It will be managed at arm’s length from government on a commercial basis and over time, I expect to see a return to the public purse on the investment.”

The £34,311,000 valuation in 2010 (calculated as shareholders funds minus intangible assets) – the accounts of Cardiff international airport filed with Companies House in 2011, showed a £319,000 loss – seemed to have passed Carwyn by, he was probably too busy with his tailor trying to work out what colour robes to wear at his next druidical extravaganza.

For the record, the chief executive of Cardiff’s main rival, Bristol airport, one Robert Sinclair, observed that the £52,000,000 paid was “well above market value when compared to recent transactions involving UK airports – it gives us concern that ongoing government involvement and support is highly likely.”

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Labour must expose the Tory wealth trap

14/08/2013, 11:05:13 AM

by Dan McCurry

The Tory wealth trap is making the rich richer, while the rest of the population either stands still or gets poorer. There is no trickle down effect caused by the squeezing the real economy with ill-timed austerity, while flooding the financial markets with cheap money, QE. All this achieves is to boost asset wealth while eroding wages, through pay freezes and inflation.

This wealth trap is caused by the desire of the Tories is to preserve their own wealth, but is exacerbated by the failure of George Osborne’s original economic policy, of expansionary austerity, whereby companies would be inspired by the cuts to invest. When that didn’t happen and the economy froze for three long years, he resorted to creating a debt bubble through subsidised mortgages.

The Tory policies are about to get worse. The current mortgage subsidy is £3.5bn. But this was only to buy new builds, which is excusable if it helps create shovel-ready jobs. However, the £3.5bn is about to be expanded to £12bn for all mortgages, just for the year running up to the general election. There couldn’t be a more blatant bribe than pumping up house prices in the run up to an election, without a care for the damage this will do to the economy in the medium and long run.

The most cynical aspect is that the pumping up of debt is all done “off-balance sheet”. George Osborne used to accuse Labour of not regulating the banks, who did off-balance sheet accounting, so who is regulating George Osborne, when he does exactly the same as a cover for his failed policies? The total amount of mortgage guarantees should be added to deficit, not recorded off-balance sheet, as this is the amount we are liable to if they go wrong.

It has always been Labour’s policy to invest in the real economy, the place where people have jobs and businesses. The original QE program was limited to creating liquidity in finance, oiling the wheels following the banking crisis. The Tories have transformed it into a massive hand out for the rich, at the expense of the rest of the economy.

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A tale of two very different Guardian interviews: Darling and Burnham

13/08/2013, 10:54:24 AM

by Jonathan Todd

Decca Aitkenhead reported this weekend on Andy Burnham telling her that Labour must shout louder or risk election defeat. Some twitter reaction suggests that this would help Labour on the doorstep. As with Chris Bryant’s Monday morning Today appearance, we might wonder, however, whether it is content more than volume that is causing Labour to fail the Daz doorstep challenge.

Almost exactly five years ago, Aitkenhead interviewed Alistair Darling. Maybe there is something about the summer heat that causes Labour politicians to unbutton themselves around her. “Now Alistair,” Aitkenhead records his political advisor imploring when they sat down for the interview, “tell her everything. Make sure you tell her everything.”

This instruction implies, unsurprisingly, prior calculation. And for all the conviction that Burnham was eager to display to Aitkenhead – for the NHS and for comprehensive schools, in particular – we should probably also assume, as is the way of serious politics, calculation on the part of Burnham. We might, therefore, wonder what the calculations of Burnham and Darling were intended to accomplish.

“No one had any idea,” Darling replied when asked whether anyone had anticipated the scale of the financial crisis that was still unfolding at the time of his interview. He warned that the economic climate of 2008 was “arguably the worst … in 60 years. And I think it’s going to be more profound and long-lasting than people thought.”

This remains the weakest economy on record and, as Mark Carney noted last week in his first press conference in charge of the Bank of England, those records go back more than one hundred years.

This speaks amply of Darling’s prescience. We might wonder whether so many would now blame Labour for the state of the economy if we’d done a better job in 2008 of getting across what Darling’s interview sought to communicate: we’re being hit by a unprecedented, global shock, which we must travel a long, hard road to recover from.

Darling was doing what Labour does at our best: being honest with the country about the scale of the challenges that confront us and providing leadership to meet them. He was, however, rewarded with “the forces of hell” from Gordon Brown’s operation next door. Presumably, they either didn’t accept that things were as bleak as Darling contended (but Carney’s assessment bears out Darling’s judgment) or reasoned that to acknowledge as much would reflect badly on Labour (but while reality can’t be denied, as Bryant discovered, it can be explained, and better in terms of the inefficiencies of global capitalism than the Labour government).

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Union backed change to Labour rules set to wipe out party groups like Labour Women’s Network

12/08/2013, 07:29:58 AM

by Atul Hatwal

It started as an attempt by sections of the union movement to target Progress. But Uncut understands that a rule change, submitted by ASLEF and initially intended to outlaw Progress, has been drafted so broadly that it would in fact wipe out a range of Labour party groups.

These include Labour Women’s Network, all of the Labour Friends groups (such as Labour Friends of Israel and Labour Friends of India) and even TULO – the trade union and Labour party liaison organisation.

Under the terms of the amendment, all of these organisations would have to transfer half of donations received, above the first £25,000 per annum, to the central party, crippling their ability to operate. The amendment states,

“Delete rule 5.B and insert:

B. Political organisations not affiliated or associated under a national agreement with the party, but whom engage in internal activity, shall be required to:

(i) Notify the national party of all legally reportable donations received.

(ii) Transfer 50% of all donations received beyond the first £25,000 per annum to the national Labour Party.

C. Incorporated organisations that engage in internal activity shall be required to provide upon request all legal, constitutional, and financial documentation to the National Executive Committee to ensure that they meet acceptable standards of democracy, governance and transparency. These organisations are expected to abide by the authority of the NEC in such matters.

D. The NEC shall be responsible for the interpretation, implementation, and enforcement of these rules.”

Labour party officials have confirmed that this drafting has an extremely broad application. On this basis, if the rule change were passed, thousands of pounds would be slashed from groups, as funds would be appropriated by the national party.

This would have a major impact on the operation of the Labour party.

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Labour history uncut: “They didn’t tell us we could do that”

09/08/2013, 06:14:56 PM

by Pete Goddard and Atul Hatwal

“We are like marooned sailors on a dreary island”

Not a Morrissey lyric, but the upbeat analysis of Ramsay Macdonald, leader of the new national government, as he pondered the position of the small group of Labour ministers who had stood with him.

They had reason to feel lonely. Macdonald was still prime minister, but when Parliament returned, his government benches would be dominated by Tories and Liberals. Across the floor of the house, former Labour friends and colleagues would glare at him in angry opposition.

Meanwhile, over at Transport House, headquarters of the Labour party, the Transport Union (T&G) and the TUC, the mood was punchy. Ernest Bevin of the T&G declared, “this is like the general strike, I’m prepared to put everything in.” Although if it was like the general strike, he’d then take everything out again after a week and experience total defeat.

On the 27^th August, two days after the fall of the Labour government, the party issued a manifesto. Something that clarified Labour’s position on the big issues.

It said, “We oppose the cuts.”

It then said, “Yes, the same cuts we were actually proposing two weeks ago. What? What? Shut up.”

Montagu Norman, governor of the Bank Of England – never trust a man whose names are the wrong way round

On the 28^th, the parliamentary party was due to meet to ratify the manifesto and elect a new leader.

As a meeting of the PLP, invites went to all Labour MPs. In a moment of supreme administrative awkwardness, this included Macdonald and the rest of the splitters

It was a pivotal moment.

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Letter from Wales: Potty Plaid rewrite the rules of marketing

09/08/2013, 11:29:41 AM

by Julian Ruck

To those of a more shall I say rounded, political persuasion, I appreciate that what goes on in Wales may sometimes appear to be delightfully farcical, if not plain dotty and believe me, the vast majority of Welsh folk would probably agree with you.

A typical example of Taffy complicity in keen but intuitive “Wales forever” slippery slopes, occurred last week.

The headline hitting the Welsh press went as follows: “Tourist video voiceover Is ‘too Welsh’ for English.”

Seriously, and we’re not talking here about the Welsh language.

Apparently, the story goes, Carmarthenshire county council’s marketing and tourism department (remember, that Carmarthenshire is a hot-bed of Plaid Cymru nationalism, it swung the “Yes” vote to devolution by a margin of .6% in a miserable turnout of 35.4% back in the 1997 referendum) had commissioned a video clip to help Welsh accommodation providers pull in English customers.

A young boy was employed to do the sales pitch, there was just one problem – no-one could fight their way through his worthy Welsh accent! It was concluded by the powers that be– and after some market research in Sheffield, I’m not kidding – that the target market in England would have one hell of a job understanding what the young fellow was going on about and like I say, he wasn’t even speaking in Welsh!

It gets better.

A spokeswoman for the council said, “the voiceover was changed as the young boy had lost his two front teeth just prior to filming, which made him more difficult to understand.”

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