Matt T

JOHN GUMMER IS STILL AN MP!

News just in. More details here.

Speechmaking

I've been away so probably a bit slow on the update but this is quite funny.

Constitutional Clubs

My neighbour has opened a brand new cinema and community venue, the Pinkham Lighthouse, here in Kensal Rise, which I urge anyone nearby to frequent.

My reason for this post, however, is to ask if anyone can explain what a 'Constitutional Club' is, as that is where the cinema is based. A google search is not very helpful, except to suggest is simply a Conservative club. But why are they named Constitutional and not Conservative?

Labels: politics

Aged politicians

In largely sensible piece (my own view of Ming Campbell was that he was always too old to be leader of a major party, as it's a job that requires a bit of street-fighting), Matthew d'Ancona said this last week about Menzies Campbell:

Ming's problem was never age - Mick Jagger and Michael Heseltine are proof enough that you can still bring down the house after 60.

This isn't really true, is it? Heseltine was 60 on the 21st March 1993, and I'd say by then he was looking a bit past it. The coal mines fiasco had damaged his reputation as a moderate, fairly or unfairly, and only a bit later, in June of the year he had a heart attack.

Labels: politics

Wider still, and wider

I quite like "Land of Hope and Glory" as a song for all its Henry 'Scoop' Jackson Societyesque lyrics, but hearing it again for the first time in a while I realised that it's been forever ruined for me by Peter Lilley's badly sung and badly conceived version, "Land of Chattering Classes". I just can't help but hear his whiny and weedy voice heading for political oblivion. I can't find it online but here's some others and here's some more.

Here's also some favourite moments from conferences. You don't see drama such as Kinnock's militant speech any more.

Labels: politics

Would an economic downturn hurt or help Labour?

Some of the more wishful thinking Conservatives have been suggesting that with global financial markets having another of their periodic bouts of nervousness, an economic downturn could be what finishes off Labour and brings the Conservatives back to office.

I think this could be 100% wrong. It certainly won't be the case, I belive, if any economic downturn can be convincingly said to have been caused by external factors (even if those external factors are particularly hard on the UK). I don't even think it will be the case if the rest of the world/OECD carries on as normal and we are hit by a bad patch.

The reason is partly that people think Gordon Brown did an OK job as chancellor, and that view is not going to change now, so any downturn could see a preference for what is tried and tested. The other reason is, of course, George Osborne. I don't see any embattled home owner, trying to pay 8% mortgage rates with unemployment creeping up, thinking "I wish that George Osborne was in charge".

Labels: George Osborne., politics

Labour 11 points ahead

Fascinating poll in today's Telegraph, which as well as putting Labour 11 points ahead, Gordon Brown a net positive satisfaction rating of 7 points, David Cameron an enormous negative 17 points as Conservative leader, Minging Campbell a negative 28 points as Lib Dem leader, has some interesting views on Brown's initiatives.

Most favoured, by 74 to 17, is more powers to detain terrorist suspects. 73 to 18 want single parents on benefits to be made to seek work when their chlid is 12 or 7. Fourth most popular, by 71 to 15, is for Britain to no longer be joined at the hip with George Bush (this question was perhaps a bit loaded). Co2 targets 66 to 18. In fact they're all populat by enormous amounts, except David Cameron's...

Increase alcohol taxes, which is opposed by 49 to 38.

What a country.

The two most positive signs for the Tories are there is still a large net disapproval of the government's record to date, and the 'forced' question on which party voters would like to see in power, Labour or the Tories, is net 8 to Labour, down from net 17 at the election, when they only won the popular vote by 3 points.

Update: This seems a good time to remind people of Stephen Pollard's sagacity, from September last year:

What a load of hypocritical tossers (pardon my language but it's what they are) those Labour members are. They've spent the past decade bitching about Blair, and now that he's off into the sunset they cheer him to the rafters. Well live with it, you idiots. You're the ones who wanted rid of him, forced him to announce his departure [obviously we have subsequently learnt from Oliver Kamm that this is not true - MJT], and rendered him impotent. Ha-bloody-ha: now you're going to have to live with the consequence:

and from October:

Given that we're not allowed to call him [Gordon Brown] autistic now, let's just leave it at his psychological flaws. And the fact that he is unelectable.

Labels: politics

Collective Responsibility

Maybe I am forgetting what this means, but I thought it was that even if a Cabinet Minister disagreed with the Cabinet's policy he had a duty to support it publicly. The idea being that a united body is much more effective than one that is publicly disunited. If so, then why do commentators keep pointing out that Gordon Brown now opposes things (such as the Manchester "super-casino") that he voted for when Chancellor - surely he was just following that principle?

Labels: politics

Labour's Deputy Leadership election

Chris asks us, his readers, who he should vote for in the forthcoming election for Deputy Leader of the Labour Party. I suspect it should be Hiliary Benn or Alan Johnson (the current Cabinet Minister and former Trade Unionist, not the lecturer involved with Engage, Unite Against Terror and the Euston Manifesto) though I can't really give any good reasons except Hiliary Benn seems to be right about the right issues. To think that some people were suggesting Alan Johnson (the Minister...) as a potential Prime Minister only recently.

An opinion poll last week for The Times asked people about whether they recognised the candidates. The results were not encouraging (for the MPs, perhaps they were for the rest of us).

The % who indentified (I believe unprompted in any way) each of the candidates.

Alan Johnson - 10%

Harriet Harman - 17%

Hazel Blears - 11%

Hilary Benn - 9%

Jon Cruddas - 2%

Peter Hain - 15%

Which would I have got correct? Certainly Alan Johnson, Harriet Harman, Peter Hain and Hiary Benn. I don't think Hazel Blears (I think I would have said Helen Liddell) and definitely not John Cruddas (who I would have gone with most people and said Derek Hatton, if I'd not been told he was a Deputy Leader candidate).

Labels: Labour, politics

Congratulations Sarkozy!

But what I haven't seen is - when does he actually get his hands on power?

Update: Ah ha, the Telegraph says its May 16th, which is a week on Wednesday.

Labels: France, politics

April 9th

It's April 9th, so that means it is 15 years since the last Conservative General Election victory, and 15 years and one day since I passed my driving test. On that subject, isn't the photocard driving licence silly? It's not valid unless you have the paper bit, which apparently isn't a 'paper licence' as if you say on the DVLA's incomprehensible D6 form that you have a photocard and paper licence they tell you that you have marked it wrongly.

Anyway, back to John Major. Not only is it 15 years since his most famous moment, but it's 37 years since he met Norma. I would say 'ah', but the Edwina Currie revelations have rather soured that one.

Labels: politics

Cash for honours

I really am a bit stumped on how serious this all is. In a way it seems almost unbelievable that the Metropolitan Police are hacking (perhaps a loaded term) computers at No.10 Downing Street and the Prime Minister remains in office. That seems so serious, the fact it doesn't seem to be at the level of political crisis yet, suggests to me it is not as bad as it sounds.

I suppose the New Labour defence is no-one has been charged, and if no-one is, then the Police might have a lot of explaining to do. It still seems remarkable, though.

Labels: politics

John Reid

How much longer do we have to put up with this useless man? Has he had any Ministerial success - I was going to say when he was Defence Secretary, but thinking about the problems now faced by all our armed forces presumably have something o do with his time there.

Update: At least we won't be seeing him in No.10 - the latest poll shows he's not very popular. "Populus suggest that with Reid as leader people would vote LAB 27%, CON 44%, LDEM 20% - a Conservative landslide victory". [Gordon Brown was 34 - 39)

Labels: politics

The Top Dog Index

Despite my predictions, the Henry 'Scoop' Jackson Society haven't come up with this yet, so I've made a stab. The idea is twofold - first, to try to justify their famous statement, that Britain was 'unquestionably the world's second most important power', and second, to provide an index for global power comparable to what the World Economic Forum's Global Competitive Index does for, er, global competitiveness. So far I've concentated on hard power, ie military spending, but I've also included economic power in that (though not trade yet, which I might include in soft power - you can't expect consistency, I'm afraid).

As I'm pretty sure the World Economic Forum knows, you can just about get any result you want in these things by choosing your inputs, and as importantly, your weightings. I've gone for seven categories - Population, GDP, PPP GDP, Military Spending, No. of troops, Aircraft Carriers, and UN SC permanent membership. Clearly there is some overlap here - GDP for instance with population, but also things like troops and military spending. But hey-ho. The weightings I began with are 18% for population, 30% for GDP, 5% for PPP GDP, 15% for troops, 25% for military spending, 5% for aircraft carriers and 2% for UNSC membership.

Of the seven categories the US scores highest for four categories, China two, and all Permanent Members in one. For each category I take each country's ratio of the highest value, and then multiply it by the weighting. So for GDP, for instance, the US has the highest at $13.26bn, and Lebanon's is $0.022bn, so Lebanon's score is 0.22/13.26 which equals 0.2% of the US level, and then for both the US and Lebanon it is multiplied by the 30% weighting for that category. These are then summed across the categories to give a total score out of 100.

Anyway, drum roll (note the category scores are before weighting...

**Top Dog Index**
Country	Pop.	GDP	PPP	Troops	Mil. Ex	A/C	UN	TOTAL
United States	23%	100%	100%	63%	100%	100%	100%	80.58
China	100%	19%	81%	100%	16%	0%	100%	48.77
India	85%	6%	30%	59%	4%	8%	0%	28.82
Russia	11%	7%	13%	46%	28%	8%	100%	21.17
Japan	10%	34%	31%	11%	9%	0%	0%	17.15
United Kingdom	5%	18%	15%	8%	9%	17%	100%	13.31
France	5%	17%	15%	11%	9%	8%	100%	12.95
Germany	6%	22%	20%	13%	7%	0%	0%	12.25
Italy	4%	14%	13%	10%	5%	8%	0%	8.93
Korea	4%	7%	8%	30%	4%	0%	0%	8.65
Brazil	14%	7%	13%	13%	2%	8%	0%	8.18
Pakistan	12%	1%	3%	27%	1%	0%	0%	6.91
Indonesia	17%	3%	8%	14%	0%	0%	0%	6.41
Turkey	6%	3%	5%	23%	2%	0%	0%	6.09
Spain	3%	9%	9%	8%	2%	8%	0%	5.76
Iran	5%	2%	5%	24%	1%	0%	0%	5.68
Mexico	8%	6%	9%	9%	1%	0%	0%	5.31

Pretty damn exciting, eh? Anyway on the current hard-power version of the "Top Dog" index, I'm afraid, at least for the H'S'JS, that the UK is not 2nd, at least not 'unquestionably'. The United States is the clear leader, with 81%, followed by China, 49%, then India, 29%, Russia, 21%, Japan 17%, then us, on a respectable 13%, slightly higher than France and Germany. Italy just pips Korea and Brazil.

Update: In response to Nick's comments, I've changed it about a bit, lowering population, adding a Nuke's column (you can see the weights at the top of the table)

**Top Dog Index**
Weight	13	30	5	10	25	5	10	2	100.00
Name	Pop	GDP	PPP	Troops	Mil.Ex	A/C	Nukes	UN	Total
United States	23%	100%	100%	63%	100%	100%	100%	100%	86.28
China	100%	19%	81%	100%	16%	0%	100%	100%	48.77
India	85%	6%	30%	59%	4%	8%	100%	0%	31.65
Russia	11%	7%	13%	46%	28%	8%	100%	100%	28.33
United Kingdom	5%	18%	15%	8%	9%	17%	100%	100%	22.66
France	5%	17%	15%	11%	9%	8%	100%	100%	22.13
Japan	10%	34%	31%	11%	9%	0%	0%	0%	16.13
Pakistan	12%	1%	3%	27%	1%	0%	100%	0%	14.95
Israel	1%	1%	1%	7%	2%	0%	100%	0%	11.64
Germany	6%	22%	20%	13%	7%	0%	0%	0%	11.31
Italy	4%	14%	13%	10%	5%	8%	0%	0%	8.20
Korea	4%	7%	8%	30%	4%	0%	0%	0%	6.94
Brazil	14%	7%	13%	13%	2%	8%	0%	0%	6.84
Spain	3%	9%	9%	8%	2%	8%	0%	0%	5.21
Indonesia	17%	3%	8%	14%	0%	0%	0%	0%	4.86
Turkey	6%	3%	5%	23%	2%	0%	0%	0%	4.67
Mexico	8%	6%	9%	9%	1%	0%	0%	0%	4.47

Labels: defence, economics, England, newspapers, Nukes, politics

The Chancellor of that nice checked tablecloth

A colleague asked me what 'Exchequer' meant. I had no idea (actually, I lamely suggested perhaps it was to do with his writing 'cheques'!). Anyway the OED tells us the rather interesting background, which is:

The name originally referred to the table covered with a cloth divided into squares, on which the accounts of the revenue were kept by means of counters.

Labels: economics, politics

Live Blogging - AaroWatch

I've got a lead here on the (briliant) boys at Aaronovitch Watch. I've just watched (in fact it might still be on - it certainly seems like it) a programme celebrating that pretty dull programme, University Challenge. Anyway, as you might imagine, it's terribly self-congratulatory, and given Ian Hislop and Steven Fry are two of the talking-heads (and I've just seen the Private Eye team, Hislop, Wheen, Booker (Brooker?) and the other one - Stars by Simply Red for someone who can come up with worse people to be stuck in a lift with), at times almost unbearable. On the other good hand it had Aaro trying to defend his unfunny stint on the programme, when I think he and his team answered every question with the name of a member of Marx Brothers (he is still going on about it being an attack on the Establishment or something like that, which is interesting from someone who today is one of Britain's most Establishment journalists). The exciting bit, and forgive the bad photographs of my TV screen, is the picture of Aaro as a young man! Here's Old (note he's not wearing some strange Invisible Man mask in real life, I'm not sure where that's come from) and Young Aaro!

ps My god, it is still going on. They're raving about a film version now.

Labels: Bloggy, Decent Left, England, politics, TV

IDS and Blair's Breakdown Britain

I thought there were a lot of worrying statistics and facts in this IDS piece on current British society (via Chris Dillow) based on a report he is releasing today:

Our report shows that 750,000 more people have incomes below 40% of median income than a decade ago [MT update: Note, I calculate this to be (in 2004/05) £122 per week for a two adult household, £66 per week for a single adult, £180 per week for two adults living with two children, and £124 per week for a single adult living with two children - It'll be interesting to see the Report as you would have thought any access to government benefits would have raised income above these levels - maybe he means pre-benefits? Or students?]

Almost 11m people in Britain today suffer from relationship problems as a result of debt

Last month the prison population reached 80,000 for the first time. In 1993 the number incarcerated was just 45,000.

On the other hand I am less convinced by its view that it is all the current government's fault - most parents after all were born and went to school under Tory governments, and most of the worse trends have been getting worse for quite some time. Furthermore:

Even those who win promotion or salary increases can face marginal tax rates of up to 90%, leaving a large section of society with little incentive to better itself.

This is an oft-repeated statistic and usually you know it is going to lead to the right-wing quackery solution of a 'flat tax' (though IDS is nowhere near that simple, at least in this piece), but I really question how important it is. Chris Dillow again noted that there are two incentives going on - the first to get a job, and the second to get a better paid job. Labour have worried most about the first, and least about the second. This is not necessarily the wrong priority - how many people on below 40% of median income have jobs?

Finally IDS says:

A child from a family in poverty today is less likely to rise to the top of the income scale than a child in 1970.

I've heard this before, and it obviously is not outlandish if - as we know - inequality has risen and social mobility has fallen. But how do they know about children born today?

Nevertheless this report certainly sounds a more useful occupation for IDS than flying to Washington and agreeing with Republicans that Britain needs to increase its defence budget (and in any case that role is now over filled by excitable Blairites). He concludes:

The increasing gap between those in severe long-term poverty and the rest of us has depressing implications for the future health and cohesion of our society.

Update: Here's the report - which a quick glance suggests could be quite informative.

And here's the chart on the issue of poverty. IDS's claim is that the 60% of median income target has been abused, so there's now a larger proportion of people on 62% (say) than on 58%, which helps meet the targets set on poverty reduction. However this has been bought at the expense of more people on 40% (125,000 families with children, apparently). I wonder if the data is accurate enough to arrive at that conclusion, but its certainly thought-provoking. Here's the chart - click for larger version.

Labels: economics, England, politics, Taxation

Replacing Trident

On Comment Is Free a commenter suggested today that we only pretend to replace Trident, hence getting the deterrrent capability without spending the tens of billions of pounds. This is an interesting idea, but fails as to make the pretence believed we would have to spend the money on it anyway, unless we can get the US to take part in the subterfuge too, and pretend to give us them for free.

Incidentally I am on my way back from Edinburgh (which is a delightful place, although isn't the new Scottish Parliament building unattractive?) and the press there is full of comment on where the nuclear submarines will be based if Scotland goes its separate ways. It seems to me an obvious solution would be to ask the US if they could be based at King's Bay, which (I think) is where the US's near identical ships are.

Labels: defence, England, politics

New lows

I can't quite believe that the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer took 14 handwritten words from the Chancellor of the Exchequer and gave them to a handwriting 'expert' to come up with a character profile. What was the point? Are all the Shadow Cabinet going to submit to the same 'analysis'? The sooner David Cameron appoints 'Save the Pound' to the job the better.

Labels: economics, politics, Taxation

Matt T

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

JOHN GUMMER IS STILL AN MP!

Monday, October 12, 2009

Speechmaking

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Constitutional Clubs

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Aged politicians

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Wider still, and wider

Thursday, August 09, 2007

Would an economic downturn hurt or help Labour?

Friday, July 27, 2007

Labour 11 points ahead

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Collective Responsibility

Monday, June 11, 2007

Labour's Deputy Leadership election

Monday, May 07, 2007

Congratulations Sarkozy!

Monday, April 09, 2007

April 9th

Sunday, January 21, 2007

Cash for honours

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

John Reid

Friday, January 05, 2007

The Top Dog Index

The Chancellor of that nice checked tablecloth

Friday, December 29, 2006

Live Blogging - AaroWatch

Monday, December 11, 2006

IDS and Blair's Breakdown Britain

Sunday, December 03, 2006

Replacing Trident

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

New lows

Previous Posts

Fellow Bloggers

Archives