Taking a Break

Hey all

I'll be at the New Word Alive conference in Prestatyn this week (getting back Thursday), so no updates from me.

See you in a week

Oh Look. A Scandal.

So. Anyone got a spare £250,000 lying around I could borrow? According to the (ex) Tory treasurer Paul Cruddas that is the current going rate if you’re interested in meeting the PM or getting involved in policy making. Seems reasonable doesn’t it?

David Cameron, portraying an amazing amount of insight, once said that after Cash for Honours and the Expenses Scandal lobbying would be the next big problem to engulf Parliament. He might have thought it was dealt with after the Bell Pottiger fiasco, but no. The question of party donations and what is expected in return for those donations is one that is going to haunt Parliament for some time to come.

A video emerged on Sunday of the above mentioned Mr Cruddas saying that for a “premier league” donation of somewhere between £200,000 and £250,000 he could arrange times to sit down and eat with either the Prime Minister or the Chancellor. The Tories immediately went into overdrive. Cruddas resigned, and Cameron not only distanced himself from the affair but promised a full inquiry.  Ed Milliband then weighed in for Labour, arguing an internal investigation would be a “whitewash” and demanded a full and proper public investigation.  

Since the Conservative party that has been trying to distance itself from the image of a party that only cares about the rich – one reinforced by the budget - Cameron has sensibly grabbed the initiative here by not only releasing the names of all the people who have both donated to the Tories and have been guests of his, but also announcing the formation of a cross party panel chaired by Nick Clegg to look into the issue of donation reform. But whatever the Tories do now, the damage from this has been done.

The obvious way to reform party donations is by making it publicly funded. Set a cap on it and let the each party receive a set amount of tax payers’ money which they can put towards running costs. This would enable the parties to distance themselves from the lobbying industry – as they would no longer need the money – and mean that the Tories would no longer be beholden to Big Business nor Labour to the Trade Unions. It would also benefit the Lib Dems as it would put them on an equal footing with the other parties in terms of funds raised.

Of course it won’t happen. No party would want to limit the amount of funding they can receive as alongside, you know, principles and policies, having a large amount of money – and the ability to raise more than your opponent – is the second best weapon in a political party’s armoury came election time.  If they all had the same amount to spend they might have to start making it clear precisely what they would do once in power and what their actually beliefs were in order to get people to vote for them. And they fear that the population isn’t yet ready for that kind of grown up political discussion involving hard choices about the use of limited resources in difficult circumstances.

There is, however, one good thing that has come out of all this. Labour now has a ten point lead over the Tories in the latest ComRes poll. Can I please get a WOOT?

What happened to Bipartisanship?

I’m not sure when it died, but I can imagine Bipartisanship’s obituary going something like this.

Bipartisanship: Ancient World – 2012.

The spirit of Bipartisanship died today after a long battle against modern politics. This follows the recent deaths of its close friends, Common Sense, Firm Belief and Public Good. Their work will be continued by Ambition, Greed and Ignorance.

Now I’ve been fascinated and enchanted by politics since the first time I stepped into an A-Level politics class. It’s a cut throat, mile a minute world, which dictates how and why the world keeps turning. But recently I have found myself being more and more disappointed by the actions of our elected politicians both at home and abroad. It seems they have taken the concepts mentioned above – bipartisanship, co-operation, belief in a cause – and bludgeoned them to death in favour of power and money. Rather than being servants of the people, they have become servants of a small subsection of the people.

You see it in the US, where the Democrats consistently portray the Republicans as heartless, chaotically evil monsters, while the majority of  Republicans –  seemingly doing nothing to try and contest this view – contentiously block Democrat bills and attempt to upset or embarrass the sitting President. In the UK, the default at Prime Minister’s Questions has become Labour attacking the Tories for their upper class out of touch status, while the Tories just keep harping on about the economic mess Labour left behind – Yes, okay they fouled up. Now drop it and get on with fixing it – while the Lib Dems just sit there, slowly trading in respect in exchange for power.

When exactly did politics become more about gaining power than about helping people? Maybe I’m simply being naïve but I cannot believe that the majority of politicians are more interested in power than in helping their constituents. It might be true that power corrupts, but somewhere underneath all the ambition, that grain of compassion and desire to help those less fortunate, that drive to make the country a better place for everybody, must still exist.

I don’t know why this has started bothering me at this particular moment. Something to do with seeing friends unable to see the bigger picture, getting too caught up in partisanship, to be able to see that not everyone on the other side is chaotically evil all the time. Yes the majority of Republicans seem to have gone insane, but that can’t be true of all of them. Similarly just because the majority of Tories seem to exist in the back pocket of bankers and big businesses doesn’t mean that they all do.  Similarly not everyone on the Labour side is that interested in further the opportunities of the lower classes.

I think my feelings on this matter can be best summed up by this quote from The West Wing

“I live in the real world, where the object of these hearings is to win…….This is bush league. This is why good people hate us. This  right here. This thing”

People despise politics and politicians because it has ceased to be about helping people and just become about winning.

Maybe I’m just adding optimism to my naivety but perhaps one day people will realise that mutual co-operation, reaching outside the boundaries of party politics, reaching across the aisle is the only way to achieve anything.

Maybe then bipartisanship might get a second chance. 

It's not exactly News is it?

One of the things you tend to find yourself doing when you’re a journalism student/wannabe professional blogger is trawling news sites, trying to find something to write about. This naturally brings a lot of headlines to your attention.

Now I have a lot of respect for headline writers. Trying to come up with a snappy one liner that sums up a story is quite difficult. But sometimes I come across headlines that are so incredibly clichéd and predictable that my options are tweet it or curl up in a ball on the floor laughing. Yesterday, for example, we had “Tories will fight hard for seat.” According to the story, Conservative party chairman Baroness Warsi had said that the Conservatives would fight hard for Chris Huhne’s seat if he was forced to resign, rather than simply let the Lib Dems have it. While the headline is a perfectly good one, it’s also predictable. Of course the Tories are going to want to increase their majority. You don’t need to say it.

This week however we’ve had a set of headlines so amazingly clichéd, predictable and ridiculous that I just have to bring them to your attention. First off:

Cameron willing to take Hit over NHS Reforms

In this story the Prime Minister outlined how he expected, and was, indeed, quite willing, to “take a hit” over his proposed changes to the NHS. He meant of course to his popularity and polling numbers.

Oh. David!

If you think this demented course of action is just going to result in a dip in the popularity polls you need your head examining. If you’re going to “take a hit” from anything it will be the volley of heart monitors flung by angry doctors and nurses.

The problem is of course that Cameron – and by extension Andrew Lansley – are breaking the Golden Rule of British politics. Each party has their own of course. For the Tories it is, “thou shall not speak ill of the blessed Maggie”. For Labour it’s “thou shall not annoy the Trade Unions” and for the Lib Dems it’s “thou shall always seek to represent the people.” 

Ooops. Oh well. No one’s perfect.

But the central rule, to which every party subscribes, is “Thou shall not mess about with the NHS.” I’m not kidding when I say that how a party treats the NHS can be a clincher when it comes to elections.

Now I know the Tories have never been particularly fond of the concept of the NHS, but even Mrs Thatcher never went as far as Cameron and Lansley are going. It’s almost as if Cameron is tired of being at the top already and so is committing electoral suicide as quickly as he can.

He keeps saying that it’s too late to drop things now, but come on. Nobody wants these reforms to go through. If he wants his place in history to be a favourable one, I would simply scrap it now and have done.

Secondly we have this amusing pair of headlines out of Russia

Putin Declared President

Opponents Claim Fraud

These headlines refer, of course, to the Russian presidential election, where Vladimir Putin was elected for a third term as President of the Russian Federation. Naturally his opponents claimed it was a set up.

No. Really? You don’t say?

Honestly I expected the next set of headlines to read

Nobody That Surprised

Or maybe “Pope is revealed to be Catholic.” I mean come on! It’s a Russian Presidential Election. If it had passed without even a whiff of impropriety then I would have been surprised. The Russians tried democracy for about five minutes and didn’t enjoy it very much.

I mean did anyone really expect Putin – the man who has built a fairly strong cult of personality around himself – to leave something as important as the election results up to chance? Good grief man, he might have lost. And then what would have happened?

Of course his confirmation will go by without a hitch – Putin is still beloved by a large amount of Russians – but still I find the surprise to be well... surprising.

Of course it might be that I’m the only one who finds these headlines at all amusing. But you never know. If you spot any other amusing ones, feel free to forward them to me. Best one gets a blog mention.

Fairtrade Fortnight

This week I thought I’d take a bit of a break from criticising politics and putting myself on Homeland Security’s watch list to talk about Fairtrade Fortnight. Although, depending on how things go in the Russian presidential elections tomorrow, I may have to write an extra post this week that will catch the Kremlin’s attention.

As its name suggests, Fairtrade Fortnight is a two week event being put on by the charity Fairtrade under the heading of ‘Take a Step for Fairtrade.’ Fairtrade is attempting to convince more people to take just one step towards buying fairly traded products, even if that step is as simple as buying a different brand of tea.

Fairtrade, for those who don’t know it, is a charity that seeks to encourage fair trade in numerous products from tea leaves to cocoa beans. People don’t tend to think about where this stuff comes from, or at least when they do they don’t think about it in any meaningful sense. Provided it is there when we need it we don’t really think about where it comes from do we? I know I’m as guilty of that as anyone.

But the truth is there are people behind it all. Hard working people whose entire livelihoods are centred around our desire and need for tea, coffee, or chocolate. But nine times out of ten these people are not getting a fair price for their goods. They either do not have the education and skills to be able to stop themselves from getting conned, or they are working for some massive conglomerate. They find themselves working themselves to the bone in exchange for the bare minimum. Quite often they have to go without such basics as healthcare or education.

Now I know some people are of the opinion that income equality is a bad thing. “Oh no,” they cry, “If we all earn the same how will we reward achievement?” – to which I always think, surely achievement is its own reward. And some particularly small minded and ignorant idiots always bring up the USSR for some reason. Now maybe income equality is unachievable, but I think you have to agree that if someone is getting paid sixteen pence an hour to harvest tea leaves and can’t afford to educate their children then something stinks.

This is where Fairtrade steps in, liaising either with the companies or with the farmers themselves in an effort to secure them a fair price for their goods thus securing them a better quality of life. While this does translate to slightly more expensive goods at our end, I’m sure you’ll agree it’s probably worth it.

I’m not asking you to go and replace everything in your cupboards with fairly traded goods. But maybe in the spirit of Fairtrade Fortnight, you could change one thing, such as your brand of teabags. Or replace that chocolate bar with a fairly traded one. It won’t cost you much more, but will help out other people a whole, whole lot.

If you know that by making this small change, those who are helping to make your food are earning a decent wage, won’t that make it taste just a little sweeter?