Why I have little sympathy for the 'Philharmonic Four'

As an avid reader of newspaper and magazine letters pages, I have often found myself annoyed by people expressing what is clearly a personal opinion, but sending it from their employers' rather than their home address. Academics are particularly guilty of this, and unless they are writing specifically on an issue of professional expertise, there can be no justification for it. Often one suspects they are using their university address to give added gravitas to their opinion on a subject where their opinion is no more expert than anyone else's. At worst author's can give the impression that their view represents that of the institution from which they are writing.

It is in this light that I view the suspension of the so-called 'Philharmonic Four' for signing a letter to the Independent objecting to the participation of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in the Proms. The signatories of the letter in the Daily Telegraph defending their right to express an opinion are (deliberately or otherwise) missing the point. The problem is not that the four musicians expressed a view publicly, but that they signed the letter as members of their orchestra.

When expressing an opinion publicly, in whatever forum, it's always worth being clear about on whose behalf one is speaking or writing. I post on this blog, and occasionally write elsewhere, in a purely personal capacity. Sometimes I have to speak or write officially as a Lib Dem councillor or group leader, occasionally as an executive member of Watford Borough Council. On the other hand I don't have a public-facing role in my permanent job and would avoid even the appearance of speaking on their behalf - for example by signing letters to the press from work rather than home.

And that's where the Philharmonic Four have come a-cropper. Had they each signed as 'musician', it's hard to see how their bosses at the London Philharmonic could have objected. But unwisely, they chose to mention their employers. Of course, one could argue that it's wrong to punish musicians for a practice that academics get away with all the time. Which would be a fair point. But it would be better all round if people avoided using their employer's name to add gravitas to the public voicing of their personal views.

The problem with the Rugby World Cup

As a fan of the game with the oval shaped ball, I should be rather more excited about the Rugby World Cup than I am. This is because it is a rather unsatisfactory tournament for one simple reason - there are too few games where the result is in doubt and likely to make a difference to who qualifies for the next round.

In soccer there is a sense that in any given match anything can happen. Algeria can hold England to a draw; the cup-holders can be eliminated without winning a game. Even the weaker teams who are unlikely to progress to the next round might have a say in who does qualify.

In rugby this doesn't happen - nearly every time the stronger team will win out, overpowering their opponents, and as teams are allowed to substitute nearly half their players during the course of a match, rugby's powers have ensured an even stronger bias in favour of the bigger rugby playing nations.

By my reckoning , of the 40 pool games only about six that could both be won by either team  and make a difference as to who qualifies. (Those involving Wales, Fiji and Samoa in Pool D and Scotland, England and Argentina in Pool B.)

Admittedly, the last Rugby World Cup did offer some surprises - Argentina's victory over France in the opening game, and their becoming the first country outside the traditional eight to reach the semi-finals and Wales's defeat at the hands of Fiji. Yet still the majority of games at the pool stage started as a foregone conclusion.

Rugby also has been poor at broadening its competitive base - Argentina still don't take part in a major international competition, as a result have not built on their success of four years ago and last month were reduced to playing one of their warm-up games against an English club side.

The tournament will open in a few hours with a game in which the only matter in doubt is whether Tonga will be able to restrict New Zealand to a margin of victory lower than 50 points (unlikely). So I shall wish the underdogs well (other than those playing Scotland or, in deference to my dear wife, Wales) but suspect I won't be watching all that many games.

On prejudice against country music

The Independent's pop music critic Simon Price excuses his surprise at learning that the country and western artist Brad Paisley sold out the O2 arena by saying 'he operates in a genre which still dare not speak its name in sophisticated company.' He adds:

The one thing, in the great tribal Taste Wars of the Eighties, that everyone could agree on was that country-and-western was rubbish. Even its main British proponent had to sneak past the defences by giving himself the self-consciously wacky name Hank Wangford.

While it's certainly the case that people who should know better unthinkingly mock country music, the above comment is testament more to the author's ignorance than anything else. While there was plenty of cheesy and naff country music around in the 1980s that was only part of the story. Elvis Costello recorded an album of country and western standards that spawned hit singles. Bands like Jason and the Scorchers and the Long Ryders fused country and punk influences in a way that was just as reverential to the former as the latter. And Paisley Underground bands such as REM, while hardly belonging in the country section of record shops, were clearly influenced by country music traditions.

If all of the above don't qualify as country, there were plenty of respected artists around who did. Steve Earle (see youtube link) was a kind of country-and-western Bruce Springsteen. Dwight Yoakam revived and reinvented traditional, hard-core country, while Rosanne Cash, kd lang and Nanci Griffith each emerged as serious songwriters working within a country-and-western tradition.

 

Simon Price's comment is a bit like saying all rock music is naff and citing the oeuvre of Cliff Richard as proof.

Total Politics blogger awards voting thingummy

I don't really approve of such beauty contests, but in response to the various pleas (now I know how voters feel when they are knocked up) have given in, logged on and voted.

But those folk at Total Politics don't make it easy. For your vote to count you have to name five blogs, then separately name five bloggers, write 'Blank' down the rest of the list, designate the Blank by category (I thought 'Non-Aligned' was best) then name your favourite twitterer or whatever.

It took me three goes to cast my vote successfully. If I didn't have better things to do I wouldn't have bothered.

More on Richard Webster

There is an obituary at the Good Enough Caring blog by Mark Smith of the writer Richard Webster, about whom I wrote recently. It might seem a little eccentric of me to post twice about a relatively obscure writer whose work is a little removed from the normal subject matter of this blog.

But one of Webster's preoccupations was the concept of 'noble cause corruption' - how people can be less than scrupulous methods in promoting a cause that they believe to have an overriding good. It is regular, if intermittent interest of mine, and part of the reason for the name of this blog.

At St Edmundsbury Cathedral

The weekend took me to Bury St Edmunds where I was surprised and delighted to realise that the Perpendicular Gothic tower of St Edmundsbury Cathedral was completed as recently as 2005. I didn't think they still did that sort of thing, and can imagine voices saying that there were better causes to spend the money on, or that additions and alterations to the cathedral should be in a contemporary rather than traditional style. The architect Stephen Dykes Bower, was a Gothic revivalist and official 'Surveyor of the Fabric' for Westminster Abbey. When he died in 1994 he left a legacy to St Edmundsbury so that the tower could be completed.

We were told by a guide that before the tower was completed there had indeed been many local people who were sceptical of the tower project, but now it was finished there was almost universal agreement that it was worthwhile. Which I suppose goes to show that sometimes it is worth being bold and courageous even where a project is not universally supported.

The riots: are Labour no longer quite so tough on crime?

It was predictable that figures on the left of Labour such as Ken Livingstone and Diane Abbott  should be quick to link the riots to the coalition government’s spending cuts. Less so perhaps that the party’s deputy leader and New Labour establishment figure Harriet Harman should do the same. It raises the question of whether Labour’s curious journey on crime has come full circle.


Back in the 1980s one could be forgiven for thinking that much of the Labour party, while by no means condoning crime, believed that much of it was an understandable if regrettable response to Thatcher’s cuts. Labour viewed the police with suspicion, particularly after the miners’ strike. At local level they could be reluctant to support initiatives like Neighbourhood Watch, or to tackle low-level criminal and nuisance activities that later became known as anti-social behaviour.

Such attitudes were doubtless sincere enough, but they didn’t play well with the sort of voters Labour needed to win a general election. As Labour’s shadow home secretary, Tony Blair set about mending fences with the police and changing Labour’s rhetorical tone to the ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’ formula. In doing so he managed to neutralise a perceived weakness of the party. But this wasn’t enough.

When Blair took over the leadership, one of New Labour’s trademarks was establishing that they were the party that was toughest on crime. To this end, the Blair government introduced endless new pieces of legislation and hundreds of new criminal offences introduced in a bid to outflank all comers (including the Tories, the traditional law and order party) on the right on crime policy. Labour were the party that was against crime, so by definition their opponents, especially the Lib Dems, weren’t. (See Nick Cohen’s book Pretty Straight Guys for more on this.)

Any attempt by opponents to suggest that things were more complex than government propaganda implied was derided as a sign that they were ‘on the side of the criminals’. I never ceased to be surprised at how easily Labour activists (even those who were active in the 1980s) adopted this rhetoric, using their ‘tough on crime’ versus ‘soft on crime’ mantra in leaflets, attacking opponents for not issuing enough ASBOs etc.

Now, and perhaps because they can’t resist attacking the cuts, Labour’s tone has come over all atavistic. It is true that in his House of Commons speech Ed Miliband did not blame the cuts for the riots. But one could well imagine that if the riots had happened two years ago, and Nick Clegg had made a similar to speech to the nuanced one Miliband made yesterday, Labour would have been very quick to spin the final section of it as condoning the rioters .

If this event marks a rowing back from Labour’s ‘tougher than the rest’ approach to criminal justice then that is to be welcomed. Things are indeed more complex than being either against crime or in favour of it. A sensible debate free from emotive posturing would be a good thing. Yet in the cold light of day Labour will wish to avoid any hint of appearing as apologists for the rioters, thereby compromising position on law and order. But I can well imagine that Conservative, and perhaps even Lib Dem strategists will be itching to turn Labour’s past rhetoric back on them. Indeed this may well already have started.

The Liberal party and the Spanish civil war

Sticking to a historical theme, I notice we have just passed the 75th anniversary of the outbreak of the Spanish civil war. Following the nationalist rebellion in July 1936, the main European powers pursued a policy of non-intervention that was flagrantly flouted by fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.

One of the tragedies of this conflict was how lukewarm, the major democracies were about preserving democratic government in Spain (however flawed it was) and standing up to dictatorship. Most people who have any knowledge of this period will be aware of the International Brigade who fought to defend republican Spain. But what was the position of the British Liberal party? Well-meaning enough, it would seem, in calling for the spirit of non-intervention to be maintained, but hardly heroic. In his book Liberals International Relations and Appeasement, Richard Grayson writes

The Liberal Party never came to see events in Spain as an opportunity for making a stand against the dictators, as the party's main aim was to ensure that the war remained an internatl dispute. By the time it became apparent that this would never happen, it was too late. The work of Wilfrid Roberts, the Liberal MP for North Cumberland, as a political and humanitarian campaigner for the Republic was the only significant Liberal contribution to the struggle.

Journal of Liberal History Issue 71

I see that the summer edition of the Journal of Liberal History includes my review of Ross McKibbin's Parties and people: England 1914-51.

More than that it there are articles by Martin Horwood MP on Cheltenham's Liberal history, Ross Finnie on Russell Johnston and Kevin Theakston on the afterlives of former Liberal prime ministers. It's an impressive achievement of Duncan Brack (who must also be busy with other things) and his editorial team to keep producing this quarterly journal, which is not only highly-readable, but contains original, peer-reviewed research.

Subscriptions are a bargain at £20, giving also membership of the Liberal Democrat History Group. By subscribing you will not only have an enjoyable read four times a year, but also helping to promote interest in the rich and diverse history of the Liberal Democrats and their predecessor parties.

Pickles on town centre parking: ignoring the evidence, playing to the gallery

Anyone who has been involved in local politics or community and residents' groups will recognise the following: the person who knows for certain the solution to all an area's parking, traffic and transport problems, who is completely confident that his solutions are the only possible way forward and that only idiot councillors and officials could fail to support everything he proposes. He dismisses all counter-arguments as 'rubbish' and is unable to conceive of alternative points of view, let alone how many of his neighbours see things differently.

For the most part, the job of elected representatives is to listen to all viewpoints, consider the nuances of any policy issue and try to find the best way forward. Sadly, today we have Mr 'I Know Best About Everything' as secretary of state for communities and local government, and his latest pronouncement is that 'fairer' (i.e. more) parking in urban development will help to boost high streets and town centres. Although couched partly in terms of giving councils more freedom, the logic of Mr Pickles' rhetoric is that councils ought to end 'anti-car restrictions' and encourage more parking. This is all part of 'ending Labour's war on the motorist'.

In fact, while Labour's policy was dirigiste in the extreme, they merely continued and strengthened the approach taken by John Gummer in the previous Conservative government. Whether because of genuine support for the sustainability agenda, or because Conservative voters were angry at increasing greenfield development, high streets being destroyed by out-of-town shopping centres etc., the Major government began to re-think planning policy. Whereas since the 1960s the planning system had encouraged low-density development, which militated in favour of building on greenfield, out- and edge-of-town sites, the government now tried to encourage urban renewal, particularly by ending restrictions that meant town centre development had to have suburban levels of parking, amenity space and the like, which had made regeneration more difficult.

So trying to limit parking in urban development was not simply a perverse attack on motorists, but a rational response to planning and transport issues that was broadly shared across the political spectrum (even if Labour were unnecessarily control freakish about it).

Living Streets has posted a brief but pointed critique of Pickles (hat-tip Jonathan Calder). But Pickles would probably regard Living Streets as exactly the sort of tree hugging organisation that wages war on the motorist. So let's look at the practical, straightforward problems with increasing town centre parking that someone only slightly more open-minded than Mr Pickles might sympathise with.

In the first place, many town and city centres suffer from traffic congestion, which can be very frustrating to motorists. Providing more and cheaper car parking to encourage people to drive into town, rather than use other transport methods, will only add to motorists' frustration without doing much to improve town centre economies. Unless of course the government funds a massive road-building programme to enable people to drive to the new car parks. But even those not worried about the unsustainability of such an approach might recognise that large-scale urban road building has hardly been a panacea for town and city centres.

Secondly, parking space provides less economic benefit than business floorspace or housing (it certainly attracts lower business rates) so more parking really doesn't offer good value for money or make urban development more viable. Given the space constraints that often affect urban sites, developers forced to reduce the number of homes, offices or shops in a scheme in order to provide more parking may well seek to develop out-of-town instead, where there is plenty of room for everything. Which will kind of undermine the notion of improving the economic health of the high street.

Lastly, on Pickles' criticism of 'parking fines, soaring parking charges and a lack of parking spaces'. These are things that can and do contribute towards making town centres work effectively. Without parking charges and regulation, spaces would be used by commuters that are needed by shoppers on whose custom town centres depend. Parking controls, pedestrianisation and the like can also help to create reasonably pleasant town centre environments that people want to visit: i.e. that are safe for children, aren't full of car fumes, and either traffic jams or fast-moving traffic. While Pickles claims to want to 'assist mums struggling with their family shop' his policies would make things worse for them: added congestion during their journey, supposedly free car parking spaces already taken up for the day by town centre workers and a feeling that this isn't a safe or environment to bring your children to.

I am not sure which is worse: the thought that Pickles can't and won't understand such arguments, or that he understands them perfectly well, knows his policies will make little practical difference, but is just playing to the gallery to give the impression that there are simple solutions to problems that are in fact rather complex.

(Later): I see my dear wife is advising me not to get wound up by Mr Pickles.

Jayhawks live at the HMV Forum, Kentish Town

To the HMV Forum last night to see The Jayhawks perform in their classic, mid-90s line up, for the first time in 16 years. They have a new album coming out in the autumn, and apparently the reunion is permanent rather than a one-off tour.

The last time I saw the Jayhawks in this incarnation they appeared set to make the commercial breakthrough with their single 'Blue'. They were supported by a little-known band called Wilco, who were less than memorable (in fairness their first album A.M. released that year gave little hint of the great things to come.) But it was Wilco who made it big, while the Jayhawks lost one of their two main songwriters and remained in obscurity.

This reunion would have once seemed very unlikely. But it is still very welcome. Last night they were in fine fettle, trademark sound intact and the harmony singing of their two leading lights Gary Louris and Mark Olson to the fore. The overwhelming majority of the set came from the two albums for which they are best known, Hollywood Town Hall and Tomorrow the Green Grass, released before Olson left the group in 1995.

Much to enjoy and praise therefore. The only disappointment is the virtual absence of material from the three albums released after Olson's departure. Nor was there anything from last year's Ready for the Flood album by Olson and Louris without the Jayhawks. Perhaps it's a tact and diplomacy thing within the band, so they are pretending the years between 1995 and 2010 never happened. But those of us who have followed the Jayhawks through their career might have wanted a more representative set (or at least I did).

But it's a minor quibble. It was an excellent evening, they played many of my favourite songs, the new material sounds promising. Who knows, maybe this time around they will win the wide audience that their previous work deserved but never got.

I couldn't find a decent clip of their 2011 tour, so the above from 1995 introduced by a very young-looking Jon Stewart will have to do.

Cultural historian Richard Webster dies

I was sorry to read of the recent death of the cultural historian Richard Webster, who was the subject of a belated Guardian obituary a few days ago.

Although he wrote on a range of subjects, from Freud to the Salman Rushdie affair, he was best known in recent years for his work exposing injustices suffered by residential care workers arising from the 'trawling' methods used by the police when investigating cases of historic child abuse.

While Webster was very clear that abuse can and did happen ('some of those who are now in prison are there for no other reason than that they are guilty of the crimes alleged against them'), he argued in his compelling and thoroughly-researched book The secret of Bryn Estyn that there many innocent people had ended up accused and convicted, as a result of (in the words of the Guardian obituary) 'public hysteria, fuelled by credulous journalists and ratified through inefficient police investigative techniques'.

This was a brave stance to take, and one that was predictably often misrepresented by those he criticised. He was clear that the basis for paedophile (and other) panics was not the anger of the mob. Instead he argued that:

'Witch hunts don’t happen without an educated elite behind them. In the past, bishops and priests let panics loose. Today it is the police, social workers and broadsheet journalists.'

He used the phrase 'witch hunts' not as lazy journalese but as one who had studied the read phenomenon of medieval witch hunts.

Although an atheist himself, he believed that a modern, secular, rationalist society, confident that it had left religious superstition behind, was actually more rather than less susceptible to such collective fantasies than were those of previous eras:

The widespread belief that, belonging as we do to a rational scientific age, we are no longer vulnerable to such fantasies, is itself one of the most dangerous of all our delusions.

In many ways this was the unifying theme in his diverse body of work. His website, which collects the eclectic range of essays he wrote, remains available for the time being.

See also this review of The secret of Bryn Estyn by Edinburgh University academic Mark Smith, which is published on my father's Good Enough Caring website.

Glasman Staggers

The New Statesman has fallen over itself to come to the rescue of Maurice Glasman after his faux pas in calling for a total ban on immigration. There was a sympathetic editorial last week and an article by the great man this week.

All of which is fine - Glasman has interesting things to say and the Blue Labour concept is a sign of how all parties these days are to some extent embracing community politics.

Yet it is hard to imagine that if any Conservative or (God forbid) Lib Dem figure had made similar comments, the Staggers would have given them such an easy ride.

The message is clear: it's OK to make unacceptably right-wing comments, so long as you're Labour!

Obscure moments in Liberal history: How Lembit Opik deprived Dan Falchikov of a seat on the NUS national executive

I see that Dan Falchikov has a reservation or two about Lembit Opik's campaign to become Lib Dem candidate for Mayor of London.

What I suspect even Dan doesn't remember is that long ago Lembit effectively denied him a place on the prestigious and exalted National Executive of the National Union of Students.

As a student in the 1980s I developed the eccentric habit of standing for election for the Leicester University delegation to the NUS conference. A couple of times I even got elected, finding myself the lone Liberal among leftists of various stripes. This was also pretty much the balance of representation in the conference as a whole.

In 1987 the Liberals were hoping to retain their single seat on the national executive. Dan was our candidate. His best chance of election was for one of the 12 part-time posts, which were elected by STV in blocks of 3, 4 and 5. As STV afficionados will realise, our best hope was in the block of 5, which needed a lower quota to be elected. There should have been enough committed Liberal or SDP delegates, together with non-aligned non-socialists to scrape a seat.

Unfortunately, Lembit, standing as an independent, spoiled everything by contesting a seat in this block. He had enjoyed positive national coverage as president of Bristol University Students Union during the on-campus demonstrations over Professor John Vincent's Sun column. He then garnered an impressive number of votes in losing to Labour for NUS President. So he could have won a seat in the more difficult elections for the blocks of three or four. But by standing in the block of five he siphoned off the floating votes that we needed to get Dan elected and left the NUS national executive without Liberal representation for the first time in many years.

I am slightly ashamed of remembering all this - it marks me out as a true political anorak. But it was Lembit's first venture onto the national stage. Had things gone only slightly differently, it might have been Dan who ended up as an MP in rural Wales with semi-celebrity status, and Lembit as a "plain-speaking" blogger and party activist. But I suspect Dan wouldn't have blown a 7,000+ majority. And he's certainly right about the folly of Lembit's mayoral campaign.

Who's to blame for the lack of a core Lib Dem vote?

Via Iain Roberts on Lib Dem Voice, I spotted Simon Titley’s article in the latest issue of liberator about the failure of the Liberal Democrats to build a larger core vote. Unfortunately, Simon does his usual trick of spoiling some interesting arguments by descending into Pythonesque ranting:

If you have ever held back from proclaiming liberal values because you were afraid it might offend someone, it’s your fault. If your Focus leaflets are a politics-free zone, full of hackneyed slogans that haven’t changed for thirty years, it’s your fault. If you think “we can win everywhere” is a satisfactory strategy, it’s your fault. If you think the party can advance solely by a ‘ground war’, it’s your fault. If you think the party can advance solely by an ‘air war', it’s your fault. If you are an anti-intellectual who rejects political thought and debate because it gets in the way of leafleting, it’s your fault…[etc. etc., you get the picture.]

I don’t suppose anyone would answer to the full pantomime villain description conjured up – ‘Yes, I’m an anti-intellectual who rejects political thought’. But, as one who has spent much of the last quarter-of-a-century writing leaflets, helping to organise local and parliamentary election campaigns, while making the political and intellectual compromises that go with such territory, I can’t really avoid considering myself among the accused. The party’s present plight is in a sense all my fault!

But before I book myself into a political re-education camp to be reprogrammed in the ways of Liberalism, let me put in a plea of mitigation on behalf of myself and fellow defendants.

For most of the last century the main political discourse in Britain, the core choice for voters, has been between a small state/capitalist/middle class party and a social democratic/big state/working class party. Voters choose their government from these two options. The Liberal Democrats (and their predecessors) haven’t neatly fitted into this battle and emphasise values that are outside the main debate. We are asking people to opt out of the big decision about who governs and vote for us instead. Which isn't easy, because when it comes down to it most people are likely to have a preference for Labour or Conservative government and a temptation to vote for one to keep the other out of office.

This wouldn’t matter if we had proportional representation. Under a fairer electoral system we could market ourselves as a niche party, drawing support from voters who care about distinctively Liberal issues: civil liberties, workplace democracy, environmentalism, a humane criminal justice policy, constitutional reform and the like. By emphasising such matters in our campaigns, we could build up a small but loyal core support. Perhaps around 10% of the electorate would vote for such an agenda, much less than the Lib Dem vote share in recent elections. But it wouldn’t matter because we could be confident of regularly winning 50 or so parliamentary seats, with reasonable hope of regular participation in government as a junior coalition partner, and exercising a distinctively liberal influence when we do.

But we don’t have proportional representation. Even the largest imaginable core Liberal vote would win us few councillors or MPs. To be politically relevant we need to win council and parliamentary seats under first-past-the-post. Usually this means winning at least 40 per cent of the vote in any given electoral area, more than any core Liberal vote we could dream of. And that militates against taking very controversial positions on major issues, or going on about things that are distinctively Liberal, but which the average voter regards as cranky. To broaden our support, we have gained success through community politics, in particular as adapted by Chris Rennard for parliamentary elections, tactical voting and the idea of Lib Dem MP as local hero. This has meant talking about the issues that matter to voters in ways that make sense to them. As we now have 57 MPs, something that many of us could have barely imagined when we joined the party, our campaigning methods have had some success. They are also not so very different from what the other parties do. Thatcher, Blair and Cameron have in their own way taken their core vote for granted and aimed at winning the support of the uncommitted.

Yet there is a problem here. Perhaps because of the party’s reliance on the genius of Chris Rennard, we have ended up with an over-mighty campaigns department always focused on getting votes in the next election, not in campaigning for distinctively Liberal causes or values. It can be a cause for mockery if someone mentions constitutional reform Europe or civil liberties in a Focus leaflet. The lack of willingness to campaign in a distinctively Liberal manner does get noticed. The drug law reform charity Transform pointed out at the last election that:

Whilst the Lib Dems appear to have made the intellectual journey on drug policy reform… it remains an issue on which they have generally been defensive, (choosing to avoid - sometimes even deny) rather than one they actively campaign on.

Which is fair comment, except that Transform don’t have to fight elections while being vilified by opponents for being ‘soft on drugs’.

There is a difficult balance to be struck between winning enough votes and seats to keep us in the political game versus promoting a distinctive Liberal identity. Those of us charged with campaigning for the party, whether at local or national level have not always got the balance right. But, just perhaps, the problem is a little bit more complicated than Simon Titley suggests, and is deserving of reasoned discussion rather than abuse and blame.

Lib Dems should not be threatening constitutional trickery to stop Scottish independence

A very good post from Dan Falchikov on Lib Dem Scottish secretary Michael Moore's comments on Scottish independence. Dan writes:

By saying that a second referendum is needed (no doubt to be followed in quick succession by Labour and Tories) Michael Moore again allows the party to be seen to be on the wrong side of the debate and trying to illiberally block the expression of the will of the Scottish people.

There is a danger that the Lib Dems north of the border have become part of the establishment - a sort of rural and suburban version of the Labour party, and arch defenders of the union. It was certainly not always so. Liberal support for Scottish home rule has long historical roots, and before the SNP won seats in the Commons, the Liberals were the only party in parliament supporting devolution.

There is surely a great deal of political territory between supporting independence and using questionable constitutional procedures to prevent it happening. The result of the recent Scottish election shows that voters are at the very least willing to support a referendum, whatever they decide when it happens. Lib Dems ought to respect that wish, welcome the fact that voters can have their say, participate enthusiastically in the debate, make the case for maximum autonomy within the United Kingdom and be willing to accept the outcome whatever people decide.

In saying this I'm letting my head rule my heart. I don't want Scotland to become independent, because I value the union. Indeed I'm a product of it - having a Scottish father and an English mother, supporting Scotland in sports internationals, living in England, but having spent formative years residing north of the border. I would like Scotland to remain part of Britain. (I agree with David Mitchell's recent Observer article on this theme.)

It's not for me to decide, though, but rather for those who live and vote in Scotland. Wistful sentiments from Anglo-Scots will doubtless be counterproductive in protecting the union, but more so will British ministers trying to think of artificial obstacles to thwart Alex Salmond. A revival north of the border, and a successful defence of the union, will require Scottish Lib Dems to show that their hearts (and heads) are in the highlands (and lowlands) of Scotland not in Whitehall and Westminster.

Why are there no Lib Dem media pundits or public intellectuals?

In her excellent New Statesman blog, Olly Grender asked last week why there are no Lib Dem columnists in the mainstream media. She wrote

Right now, I can think of five journalists, all working in print media, all of whom at some point have been part of the Liberal Democrat party, but who would run a million miles before declaring themselves long-term supporters.

For me, the problem goes wider than this and applies equally to the lack of public intellectuals - academics who write for a general audience, serious journalists and commentators - who identify with the party. I suspect that this is partly because the academic world, just like the media, tends to operate on a left-right axis and it's hard for a distinctively Lib Dem worldview to fight its way into public discourse. It is also the case that the Lib Dems themselves have not always made the best fist of articulating our philosophy and how that guides our policies. (I think this is what people mean when they talk of our 'narrative').

So when Vince Cable was being lionised in the media as the person who foresaw the economic crisis, there was no real sense of this reflecting well on the party, that his insight reflected a distinctively Liberal economic approach. Although he was Lib Dem shadow chancellor, he was presented in the media more as a Frank Field-style maverick than a representative of the Lib Dems. Although it's not hard to find people with strong academic credentials within the party, we have no equivalent of Philip Blond or Anthony Giddens publishing work for a general readership from a Liberal Democrat viewpoint.

The other side of the coin is that even on an issue that we ought to own, such as localism, the two public intellectuals most commonly associated with this cause, writer and pundit Simon Jenkins, and historian and Labour MP Tristram Hunt, are both avowed enemies of the Lib Dems. (See here and here).

I suspect also that pundits, public intellectuals and so forth, however much they would claim to be guided by intellectual rigour alone, like to be where the action is and there's no mileage in supporting a minor party in seemingly perpetual opposition. For most of the last fifty years backing the Lib Dems (or predecessor parties) would have been a cop out from the key question of whether Labour or Conservative values should prevail.

Sadly, Lib Dems themselves can't entirely overcome this left versus right discourse. For all its faults in content and timing, the Orange Book seemed to me a genuine attempt to interpret Liberal ideas and apply them to current policy questions. Yet it was interpreted by the media as an attempt to move the party to the right, and was then condemned as such by many Lib Dems who hadn't taken the trouble to read it. And perhaps part of our problem is that there is in some parts of the party a kind of intellectual cringe towards Labour that means that conforming to conventional ideas of being on the left is more important than being Liberal.

Paradoxically, being in coalition may change this and give the party more intellectual ballast. By definition we have to articulate where we disagree with Labour and to maintain our independence we have to highlight our disagreements with the Conservatives. We have a chance to show that there is a distinctive Lib Dem approach to government and gain more ideological support on the back of this.

Of course, there is an argument that none of this matters. The future of the Lib Dems as a parliamentary force dependents on winning at constituency level and for that the publications that matter are Focus leaflets and the like, not heavyweight tomes on Liberal philosophy or op. ed. pieces in serious newspapers and periodicals. But, even so, the wider philosophical and cultural environment can make a difference too, and it would not be a bad thing for the Lib Dems to have some heavyweight intellecutal support in academe and the media.

In defence of conference security arrangements

I don't like to think of myself as an uncritical supporter of the Lib Dem establishment, but over the furore about registration arrangements for party conference, I'm inclined to agree with Federal Conference Committee that the security precauations that are troubling some members are in fact reasonable and proportionate.

Partly this is because Federal Conference Committee itself contains good Liberals, who I am confident will have been sensitive to the views of party members when dealing with the police over security arrangements.

Secondly, I don't really think it unduly onerous that people attending conference should be able to show that they are who they say they are. Nor that people who are likely to be a serious security risk should be excluded.

But also, in general I agree with late Conor Cruise O'Brien's arguments down the years that liberals can fail to take the terrorist threat seriously and be a bit cavalier about security issues. At the same time I suspect that if there were to be a serious incident at conference leading to loss of life, there would be few people lining up to defend FCC and the police, and many people asking how they allowed this to happen.

After the Brighton bombing at the Conservative party conference in 1984, and Mrs Thatcher's narrow escape, the Provisional IRA said:

Today we were unlucky, but remember we only have to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always.

It doesn't seem unreasonable to think that as part of a government taking difficult and controversial decisions at home and abroad, the Liberal Democrats might find their conference being targeted and should take suitable steps to protect those attending.

It's perhaps worth adding that in the heyday of Liberalism in Victorian and Edwardian times, much effort was expended by all political parties to stop opponents disrupting their meetings.

This idea of needing expertise in the Lords is a myth

One of the most common objections made to an elected House of Lords (here and here for example) is that it will exclude those with specialist knowledge or experience (including former government ministers and the like) who may not wish to stand for election but whose insight is invaluable to the workings of parliament.

It's an argument that is not often directly challenged. Yet I have never been convinced by this myth of independent expertise. Success in one walk of life is rarely a guarantee of effectiveness in another. One doesn't need to think too hard to cite examples of people who have been brought into government from outside politics and proved a failure: Frank Cousins in Harold Wilson's first administration; Lord Young of Graffham under Margaret Thatcher, the majority of the so-called 'talents' under Gordon Brown.

One problem is that these outside experts may find the political world an alien culture that they struggle to adapt to. Another is that they are no more than apologists for whatever professional discipline they were engaged in before entering public life. Within our own party's recent history both Evan Harris and Phil Willis were much talked up because of their previous lives as a GP and headteacher respectively. But, though they are both good eggs, when the former was health spokesperson and the latter education spokesperson, I had the uncomfortable feeling that Lib Dem policy on health was being dicatated by the BMA and on education by the NUT.

Such views are reinforced by my experience in local government - both within my own authority and my observations of other councils. Sometimes it can be great to have a professional accountant leading on finance, a teacher on education etc. They know the tricks of the trade and have the insight and understanding to hold officers to account more effectively than a lay person could do. But equally they can see themselves as an extra officer, always backing the professionals rather than providing the necessary challenge and scrutiny that goes with the role of representing the public.

Of course, when we think of expert opinion in the House of Lords, it's only ever a small fraction of top scientists, brain surgeons or whatever who actually get there, presumably the ones whose gifts for self-promotion have been enough to draw themselves to the attention of the powers that be. And someone's possession of experience or expertise doesn't make their views right or even respected. So, for example, while I am a great admirer of Shirely Williams, there are those on the political right who will never forgive her role in the destruction of grammar schools. For them, presumably, her experience as secretary of state for education makes her views less rather than more valid.

Which brings me to another criticism made of an elected Lords - that those who have done their bit fighting elections and have achieved eminent government posts won't take to the hustings again to get elected to a chamber with less power. Yet, I am sure that if Shirley Williams let her name go forward in an internal Lib Dem selection in the East of England region she would be chosen as a candidate by party members. And in a regional STV election where a known name will carry weight she would have a pretty good chance of being elected even if she didn't personally deliver many Focus leaflets.

All in all the dangers of a loss of expertise arising from an elected second chamber are greatly exaggerated.

Tories' hatred of the public sector

There is a good article by Rowan Moore in today's Observer, about Michael Gove's recent attacks on the use of 'award-winning architects' to design schools. As Moore argues:

if environment were irrelevant to learning, then Eton College, the alma mater of many of the present government, would sell its agreeable slab of Berkshire real estate and move to low-cost units in a business park in Slough

Gove's attitude reminds us that even as Cameron et al. try to change the Conservative party's image, many modern Tories just can't help their visceral dislike of the public sector. So local government ministers appear to believe that councils should only employ the least able members of any given profession. And an education minister appears to believe that state-funded schools should be identikit boxes with no attempt to design for site contraints or local context and character.

I can't imagine any Lib Dem minister rubbishing the role of architects in designing schools, as Gove has done. While we recognise that the public sector is far from perfect, has a tendency towards waste and bureaucracy and that such things need to be challenged, we believe that the public sector has an important job to do. So, while there is much we can temporarily agree on with the Tories in reducing the defict, we and they have fundamentally different ways of thinking.

So Marchlands is over, but who drowned the cat?

I have just watched the last episode of Marchlands, which unusually I managed to see the whole series of without forgetting to record it or letting so much time elapse that it was no longer available ITV's equivalent of iPlayer.

If one makes allowances for it being a ghost story, it avoided annoyingly implausible endings.

Yet I hate loose ends in plots. So who drowned the cat in the garden pond in episode 2 (or was it episode 1)? Amy, the daughter of the household was suspected, but she blamed it on her imaginary friend Alice.

As a result, Amy was thought to have a personality disorder and was referred to child psychiatrists etc. However, Alice was not imaginary, but a ghost and at the end of the final episode shown to be a benign not an evil one. And Amy's family accepted that Alice was real so their daughter was not a budding psychopath, and all was well.

But in that case who drowned the cat? My experience of moggies is that they don't just fall into ponds, but the cat killer was never exposed. Perhaps this is just paving the way for a second series.

Could Barnsley Central have had a Conservative MP?

I hope it's not too disloyal of me to say that I don't expect a Lib Dem triumph in tomorrow's Barnsley Central by-election. Despite the circumstances that triggered the election, I suspect the Labour candidate will win comfortably, indeed well.

But what would have happened if the Lib Dems had followed the advice of bien pensant Guardianistas and so forth, by opting for coalition with Labour?

The government would still have been planning cuts 'deeper and tougher' than under Margaret Thatcher [copyright A. Darling]. It would also have been planning or have already implemented significant tax rises, perhaps including the VAT increase that Labour has so strongly opposed. Led by the party that had been in power for 13 years it could hardly have evaded responsibility for the economic situation. It would have either been led by Gordon Brown whose mandate the electorate had declined to renew or by a new Labour leader who had not even been a candidate for prime minister at the general election. It would also have been widely regarded as illegitimate, a coalition of the losers to keep out the largest and most popular party. All in all there is every reason to suppose the government would be deeply unpopular and that the Conservatives would enjoy a significant opinion poll lead by now.

The coalition would lack an overall majority and have started with only a nine-seat advantage over the Conservatives. Which brings us to the by-elections. Perhaps Elwyn Watkins would have been strong-armed into dropping his legal case in Oldham East and Saddleworth, leading to much bad blood between the coalition partners. But had he persisted, there is every reason to suppose the constituency would now have a Conservative MP. The Tory candidate was in a respectable third place at the general election and would have been the only credible recipient of anti-government votes, including those of Lib Dems who felt betrayed by Clegg keeping Labour in power.

And so to Barnsley Central. It might seem far-fetched to imagine the constituency electing a Conservative MP. But a swing on the scale of previous Tory by-election successes at Crewe and Nantwich or Norwich North would have been enough. If the idea of Barnsley having a Tory MP had seemed just too implausible the Conservatives could have 'done a Tatton' on Labour in the light of Eric Illsley's conviction for expenses fraud and run a Martin Bell-style anti-sleaze candidate.

With the whip withdrawn from Dennis McShane, the coalition's advantage over the Conservatives alone would have been down to four or five seats, putting it further in hoc to SNP, Plaid and Northern Irish MPs. After less than a year in power, the government would have the smell of death about it. Dissident Labour MPs might already have blocked or sabotaged an AV referendum. The Lib Dems would have had to compromise on tuition fees and be incurring opprobrium for unpopular cuts and tax rises. The Conservatives would be optimistic about sooner or later defeating the government on a confidence vote and of a big majority at the ensuing general election, gaining large numbers of Lib Dem seats in the process. The coalition would leave power with few if any achievements to its name.

Given the result of the general election a Lib-Lab coalition was never a serious prospect even had there been much greater goodwill between the parties. It is simply a useful chimera for those on the left who want to damn the Lib Dems' supposed betrayal. But it is salutary to ponder how things would have panned out in practice.

Fleshing out the Big Society

I see that on Liberal Democrat Voice Chris White, leader of the Lib Dem opposition on Herts County Council has taken a swipe at the ‘Big Society’ dismissing it for having ‘meatless bones’ and amounting to ‘not very much at all’.

Now don’t want to pick a quarrel with Chris, who I generally regard as a kindred spirit. But I do get frustrated at the tone of begrudgery that many Lib Dems adopt when discussing the Big Society. More generally it is symptomatic of a Lib Dem intellectual cringe towards the other parties – as soon as they adopt our language and ideas we decide that those ideas can’t have been very good after all. So I will just outline why I take a more benign view the Big Society and the debate surrounding it.

In a modern liberal democracy any new idea is likely to be limited in scope. If Francis Fukayama’s proclamation of the End of History after the Cold War was mostly wrong-headed, there was a kernel of truth fighting to get out – that utopian ambitions for organising society were discredited and the best that the western democracies can hope for is to manage our existing system better. So any guiding principle of any democratic government is going to be about what it chooses to emphasise and prioritise not about turning the world upside down. Viewed in that light, the Big Society can be a useful way of thinking about the coalition’s agenda.
As Chris acknowledges, there is much that is Liberal in the language of the Big Society. Indeed in my view it belongs more to modern Liberalism than anything else. Back in the 1980s when I was cutting my political teeth, the divisions between the parties seemed to be as follows. Labour wanted to see a compassionate society with a high level of public services, and saw the state as the only possible vehicle for providing them. But their approach was patrician, they tended to be suspicious of the third sector, community organisations and anything get gave citizens more direct power. They seemed inclined to believe that the state and its experts knew best in all things. On the other side, the Conservatives seemed ideologically at war with the public sector, believing that services, if provided at all, should be delivered by private companies.

By contrast Liberals shared many of Labour’s aspirations, but were sceptical of their 'one size fits all’ attitude towards public services. Community politics meant that public bodies should be accountable to the citizens they served, and needed to engage with voluntary and community groups and the like. The mantra was about giving power back to people rather than concentrating it in the hands of benevolent but paternalistic politicians and experts. Of course things have moved on since the 1980s. New Labour’s advocacy of a ‘stakeholder society’ was symptomatic of a move away from paternalism, and whether through pragmatism or conviction the Conservatives under Cameron have abandoned much of their anti-public sector rhetoric. So both parties have moved towards our worldview.

Therefore, whether or not one likes the specific term ‘Big Society’, we should be attempting to lead the debate and put Liberal flesh on the bones. ‘Volunteering, mutualism, localism and letting people get on with it’ are not a bad starting points for thinking about a healthy society –though they must go hand-in-hand with, not replace business prosperity and strong public services. Chris argues that ‘comfortable conventions of self-confident middle class households cannot be seen as a template for what may be needed in run down estates’. But surely deprived communities would benefit particularly from a spirit of self-help, where people can make their voices heard and where there are active community organisations to speak up on their behalf. Perhaps making sure that poorer and excluded groups have as sharp elbows as the affluent middle classes is a vital part of building a Big Society.

Wiki-wanderings - was the Millionaire quiz fraud Major innocent?

I can't remember now what I was looking for, but wanderings in Wikipedia took me to the entry for one James Plaskett, who has written an extended essay arguing that Major Charles Ingram who, along with alleged accomplices, was convicted a few years back for cheating on the television quiz programme 'Who wants to be a millionaire?' is innocent.

I found Plaskett's arguments rather convincing, although he is preaching to the converted in my case. I always thought the prosecution petty, vindictive and self-serving by the production company, and the evidence flimsy and unconvincing.

James Plaskett is clearly an interesting character, being a chess grandmaster, £250,000 winner himself on Who wants to be a millionaire, married to the poet Fiona Pitt-Kethley and brother of the person who invented the snickometer at cricket. At least that's what it says on his Wikipedia entry.

Pop stars ask the big questions

Oh dear, this blog seems to have become a bit earnest and angry, focused on defending local authorities against the nonsenses of certain ministers in our otherwise excellent government.

So, it's time to change the mood, calm down and reflect. Here are some important questions to ponder, posed by musical artistes, popular beat combos and the like who appear in my iTunes list.

(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding? – Nick Lowe

Wasn't Tomorrow Wonderful? – The Waitresses

Who Knows Where The Time Goes? – Fairport Convention

What Time Is Love? – The KLF

Is This All There Is? – Nanci Griffith

What Good Am I? – Bob Dylan

Has The Whole World Lost Its Head? – The Go-Go’s

What Is The Light? – The Flaming Lips

Why Should The Fire Die? – Nickel Creek

Why Are People Grudgeful? – The Fall

Why Would You Wanna Live? – Wilco

Where Is My Mind? - Pixies

What Is Life? - George Harrison

Conservative minister calls for an end to PE teaching in schools

Well, perhaps not quite, but if you follow the logic of DCLG minister Bob Neill's latest comments that's where you end up.

What he has done is attack 'Crazy non-jobs like cheerleading development officers' in local authorities. Now my council does not employ any cheerleading development officers, but ever supportive of the coalition government I'm keen to engage with how Mr Neill's comments might more generally be applied.

Let's reason through why a local authority in its misguided, non-job friendly kind of way, might create such a post. I imagine it has something to do with promoting physical exercise, health and fitness, particularly in the light of much-discussed concerns about obesity levels. Cheerleading is the sort of activity that might just tempt people who wouldn't normally take much exercise to do so. Foolish local councillors might even think that such activities are in line with the government's professed approach to public health, namely that:

society, government and individuals share collective responsibility for public health and the new public health system will encourage all to play their part in improving and protecting the nation’s health and well-being.

But apparently not, and this is simply a non-job. So one must infer that Mr Neill believes councils and public bodies have no business spending taxpayers' money on promoting fitness and physical exercise and should cease such activities forthwith. What does this then imply for public policy?

• Schools to save money by ceasing to teach physical education and sacking their PE teachers.
• No taxpayers' money to be wasted on competitive sport in schools.
• Local councils to stop providing sports pitches for hire, reducing the cost to the public purse of their maintenance.
• Councils also to stop providing swimming pools, swimming lessons and leisure centres.
• The government save money by scrapping all Department of Health initiatives to promote physical to exercise.
• A small fortune to be saved by ending all public spending on the Olympics.

Presumably this is not what Bob Neill is advocating. Indeed if councils actually stopped providing sporting and similar facilities right-wing ministers and media would denounce them for political correctness gone mad etc. So the minister is not actually putting forward an argument that he actually believes: it is merely a cheap shot and the latest instance of ministerial gunboat diplomacy.

For avoidance of doubt let's just pause to say that I quite accept that local authorities like any bureaucracy can and sometimes do have posts that don't achieve much in practice. This may or may not apply to cheerleading coordinators. But to know for sure one would have to look into the specific circumstances - what is the postholder doing, how many people are benefitting, is their work making a different? etc. I doubt very much whether Bob Neill has done this.

A final point: another non-job he cites is 'press officers tasked with spinning propaganda on bin collections'. So one might reasonably expect that there are no press officers in DCLG then. Of course one would be wrong. It has a rather impressive website complete with its own 'newsroom' presumbaby written by paid press officers. And what useful information are they telling us? Well at taxpayers' expense they have published a press release from one of Mr Neill's ministerial colleagues to remind people they can stand for election as a councillor in May. You couldn't make it up etc. etc.!

If ministers want to stop wasting taxpayers' money on non-jobs perhaps they should start with their own department.

Are the Taxpayers' Alliance demanding higher taxes?

I've never had much time for the Taxpayers' Alliance feeling that their purpose is not to protect taxpayers but simply to bash the public sector even if they contradict themselves in the process.

Here they are criticising a council for having too many recycling bins, even though the council argues that by getting residents to sort recyclables in this way, it saves the public purse £500,000

The logical implication is that the TPA would rather Newcastle-under-Lyme council ran a more expensive refuse service and put up council tax.

Why not let MPs vote on individual civil servants' salaries?

I doubt if any of us who signed last week's letter to The Times imagined that it would leave its target, Eric Pickles, chastened. But his announcement today that the government will require councils to hold a public debate on any appointments of officers on a salary of £100,000 or more removes any lingering doubt.

There are a few points that arise here. I have a gut feeling (though sadly not enough time to research) that in my working lifetime salaries of high earners and senior managers have gone up proportionately more than those at lower end of the salary scale. I have enough lingering leftist sentiment to feel that this is not a good thing and ideally ought to be reversed.

However, local government can hardly be expected on its own to counter what is doubtless a national or international trend across public and private sectors. It ought to go without saying that local authorities can be large and complex organisations, often the largest employers in their areas, and deliver a range of vital services.

Senior local government managers are not part of an unofficial institute of pen pushers and petty bureaucrats. Many of them will be qualified in professional disciplines, at least some of which (law, town planning, chartered surveying, accountancy etc.) have a mature market in the private sector where they could earn more. Whether one attributes their decision to work in local government to an altruistic commitment to public service or to an inability to cope with the alleged extra pressure of the private sector, local authorities surely have to offer reasonably competitive salaries. Unless they really are supposed to recruit only from the least bright and able members of any given profession.

I doubt if many of us who serve as councillors want to pay senior managers more than is necessary to secure appointees who are capable of doing the job effectively, and there isn't an intrinsic problem with councillors having to justify their decisions in public.

But why is this restricted only to local government? If Mr Pickles' concern is to ensure transparency and accountability for high earners in the public sector, then why not apply this to all levels of government and state employment? Last year the government published a list of civil servants on high salaries. Why shouldn't each of these, when appointed, have their appointment and pay voted on by an open parliamentary debate?

The same might apply to those working for arms of the state outside central or local government. Last year there was a local controversy over the salary of the chief executive of the West Herts Hospital Trust, Dr Jan Filochowski, who apparently earned £246,000 in 2008/09. Now I have nothing against Dr Filochowski, under whose leadership the hospital trust's performance has undoubtedly improved. But he appears to earn far more than anyone working for Watford Borough Council and more, even, than the chief executive of Hertfordshire County Council. Why should his salary not be voted on by democratically-elected representatives who are responsible for the service (again this would mean parliament)? [Note here: I realise that the provision is not to be retrospective so I mean his successor if he were to leave his post].

I suspect local government already has more democratic scrutiny of top salary earners than other parts of the public sector - senior appointments have to be confirmed by full council meetings, albeit not currently in public session. If Mr Pickles is seriously concerned to have accountability for salaries of high earners in the public sector, he should get the government to practice what it preaches and give MPs a vote on the individual salaries of senior civil servants. Otherwise this is just a piece of humbug and yet another attack on local democracy.

Is Sally Bercow the new Lembit Öpik?

Both seem to have the problem of not appreciating how certain types of publicity undermine such serious political purposes as they may have.

Delayed gratification

This blog has been silent for a couple of weeks or so. Such all too common gaps in postings are mainly the result of busy meeting schedules leaving little time and that issues I might have wanted to post about no longer being news by the time I do have an opportunity to post.

Another problem is that often my instant reaction to an issue will differ from what I think after further reflection. But again by the time I have made up my mind the rest of the world has moved on.

So perhaps I should draw inspiration fromt the new magazine being launched called Delayed Gratification, which promises to be 'last to breaking news' and commits itself to 'returning to stories after the dust has settled'.

Whether this will be a success remains to be seen, given that it seems to go against the spirit of the age, that the title is rather middlebrow for such a highbrow venture and that the cover price of £12 is rather steep. But I wish it well!

Musical artists and their imperceptibly radical changes of direction

I'm starting to worry whether there is something wrong with my ears. Not that I am going deaf but merely that other people hear things I don't.

This is really to do with listening to music. I keep having this odd experience of critics announcing that the latest album by a band or artist I like is a radical new departure, but where I don't really spot much of a difference.

I have just bought the new offering from The Decemberists, of which the reviewer on AllMusic comments

Raised on a steady diet of Morrissey, Robyn Hitchcock, Shirley Collins, and Fairport Convention, The King Is Dead represents [Decemberists] frontman Colin Meloy's first foray into the musical traditions of his homeland, or more specifically, it proves that he really, really likes R.E.M

To me, however, the latest Decemberists album reminds me uncannily of other Decemberists albums. The singer has a distinctive voice, there still seems to be a lot of fiddle and accordian in there, and the influence of English folk music is apparent. Unlike on their last two efforts, there is no hint of Prog-style concept album or multi-part songs here, but the sound is much the same.

I found this last year when the album The courage of others by Midlake was hailed as a radical departure, sounding like Fairport Convention whereas their previous release The trials of Van Occupanther sounded like Fleetwood Mac. Again, the two sounded very similar to me.

But then I grew up liking Neil Young who in the first four years after I started listening to him realised successive records that switched from heavy rock to electronica to rockabilly to country and western. Spoonfed by such unmissable changes in style, perhaps I just don't appreciate other artists' more nuanced sonic evolutions.

Interested readers can compare this from the Decemberists 2009 album 'The Hazards of Love' with the embedded youtube link in this post to the opening track from their new one. See what you think!

Lib Dem case for a flat tax?

I had always assumed that a flat taxw was right-wing nonsense, but Dan Falchikov outlines how it can be progressive. Apparently 'The key is to have a sufficiently high tax rate and a sufficiently large tax free allowance'.

Is the Daily Mail demanding higher public spending?

Just occasionally I wonder whether right-wing tabloids might not be entirely ideologically consistent. This week the Daily Mail took to task two councils for limiting households to 80 rubbish sacks per year, or as the headline put it:

Despite ministers' vows, bin police are at it again: Families are rationed to 80 bags of rubbish a year

But hang on a second: Conservative-run Wokingham Council says it will save over £900,000 by this proposal(presumably by reducing landfill costs). Now if there's one thing I thought I understood about right-wing tabloids' attitudes towards local councils, it's that they opposed unnecessary spending of taxpayers' money and the increased council tax levels that inevitably follow. So to be consistent the Mail should be applauding the thrift of Wokingham in saving public money by avoiding unnecessary costs.

A variant on this sort of confusion was shown a few weeks ago in the Sunday Times (tabloid in tone if not format and certainly right-of-centre) attacking councils for introducing 'stealth taxes'. On closer inspection it turned out that in many cases councils were actually increasing the fees charges for loss-making services that are to a greater or lesser extent subsidised by taxpayers (allotments, burial plots, bus passes etc.). While a Lib Dem like me might defend the social benefits such subsidies and accept increased charges at best with great reluctance, the Sunday Times surely ought to approve of what is effectively a public spending cut.

But it would be too much to expect ideological consistency from newspapers when government ministers are so confused. Conservative housing and local government minister Grant Shapps is quoted in the Daily Mail as saying on the refuse sacks issue:

If councils think they can hammer residents with stealth taxes through this sneaky route, the Government is prepared to take whatever steps necessary to protect taxpayers’ interests.’

Now there are two points here. In the first place what Wokingham is doing isn't a tax it's if anything a way of keeping tax down. And secondly, I thought the government wants to devolve decisions to local level, which is why it has just published a Localism Bill, which purports to 'shift power from central government back into the hands of individuals, communities and councils'. Now Mr Shapps wants to micromanage how individual councils organise their refuse service, and indeed any other decisions they may make that, however inaccurately, he categorises as 'stealth taxes'.

I suspect that all this reflects the ideological confusion of our age with its wish for Scandinavian-levels of public services at American levels of taxation. Shapps, Daily Mail, Sunday Times want spending cuts, but object to the measures that public bodies actually have to take to deliver such cuts, and the reality that this does have an impact on services to the public.

PS: I should say that Watford Borough Council has weekly waste collections, and uses wheelie bins not black sacks, so we are not planning to follow in Wokingham's footsteps.

Theology of guesthouse management reprised

It's always nice to find someone else saying the same things as oneself. I note that Independent columnist Christina Patterson wrote in yesterday's paper on the case of Cornwall guest house owners Peter and Hazelmary Bull:

if you have very strong feelings about other people's sexual behaviour, then you should probably choose a business that doesn't focus quite so heavily on beds.

This is pleasingly in line with my conclusion that

If Mr and Mrs Bull regard their guest house as an articulation of their theological outlook, rather than a service for which people pay money, then perhaps they are in the wrong trade.

Unfortunately, I very rarely read the Independent and only did so yesterday because friends I was visiting had a copy. So I know very little about Christina Patterson and whether or not it's a good thing to find oneself in agreement with her.

Gable Endies go down at East End Park

Despite an impressive three goals in the away replay at Dunfermline, Montrose went down 5-3 earlier in the week.

Worse than that, another of my teams, Dundee, have had their 25-point deduction confirmed, sending them in an instant from contending for promotion to fighting against relegation.

And Coventry City are off the boil just now.

But this is where supporting four teams comes in handy. Watford are doing rather well at the moment - as one might expect given that they are managed by a Scot.

Penny dreadful

Jonathan Calder has reaped a whirlwind of hostile comment by remarking on the case of left-wing writer Laurie Penny's attempts to recruit an researcher at below the minimum wage.

I don't have a problem with Penny's privileged background. Well and good if someone's views are not conditioned by their upbringing.

But her prose style, consisting largely of student union style rants, is certainly tiresome. So it would take a heart of stone not to feel a sense of schadenfreude at a member of the sanctimonious left being caught using a variation on the intern system, which is at once exploitative and likely to give the already privileged a further advantage.

Christian morality shouldn't mean refusing to allow gay couples to share a double bed

Peter and Hazelmary Bull, the guesthouse owners who have been found guilty of discrimination by turning away a gay couple, are the latest on the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph roll call of Christian martyrs. At the same time they present Christianity in an intolerant and petty-minded light.

Despite being a Christian (albeit with irregular church attendance and various heterodox beliefs), I think the judge made the right decision and have little sympathy for Mr and Mrs Bull. But then, mine is a liberal Christianity, and in common with a good proportion of my Roman Catholic co-religionists, I politely disagree with many of the Pope’s strictures on sexual morality. However, even if Mr and Mrs Bull belong to a stricter Christian tradition and accept the traditional teaching of the church (not necessarily that of Jesus Christ) on such matters, I don’t see that this requires them to refuse to let gay couples stay in a double bed at their guest house.

Their policy is described in news reports as allowing only married couples to stay in double-bedded rooms. To enforce this effectively they would have to check the marriage certificates of guests, together with other identification to confirm that the names tally with the certificate. Then there are awkward theological issues of second marriages following divorces, where guests may be legally married but in the eyes of some churches living in a state of adultery. Also, presumably it’s all right for guests of the same gender to share a twin-bedded room. But twin beds hardly preclude sexual activity (and for that matter a double bed isn’t necessarily confirmation of it). Unless Mr and Mrs Bull run their establishment more like a prison than a guest house, then all manner of sinfulness may be going on under their roof and they can’t really hope to prevent it. In which case banning same-sex couples is a selective display of mean spiritedness (at best) rather than a principled upholding of sincere beliefs.

Actually, anyone running a business providing a service to the public is not well advised to select their customers on the basis of approval or otherwise of their lifestyle and personal morality. It’s bound to lead to trouble.

If Mr and Mrs Bull regard their guest house as an articulation of their theological outlook, rather than a service for which people pay money, then perhaps they are in the wrong trade.

Progressivism yet once more

It's never to late to restart a quarrel, or rather engage in constructive debate.

I have only just noticed that back in November the Contrasting Sounds blog took me to task for defending the use of the term 'Progressive' (“Progressive”: Orwell himself thinks it’s Orwellian.)

Orwell is supposed to have said that some things are true even if they do appear in the Daily Telegraph, and equally some views be wrong even if they were held by George Orwell. The author of Contrasting Sounds objects to my definition of 'Progressive' as meaning 'those who, regardless of party, see their political outlook as being about championing the poor, the excluded and the disempowered against the established order'. He says that this can be paraphrased as “I care more than other people do”' and implies that non-Progressives are 'Nasty people, presumably, like the Conservative Party'.

But actually, that's not what I meant. The word 'Progressive' contrasts quite neatly with 'Conservative', and although I might say differently when sounding off in the heat of the moment, I accept that it's possible to hold Conservative views without being nasty or uncaring. An anti-Progressive argument might run something like this: 'Attempts to favour the poor have unintended consequences that hurt those they are meant to help, by stifling enterprise and initiative. They can lead to a culture of envy that is damaging to society as a whole. They can be socially and economically destabilising and most people will be happier and more prosperous through the preservation of the existing order.' A perfectly respectable outlook, one with which I sometimes have some sympathy, but with which in the end I don't agree.

So using the word 'Progressive' as a political description is not just a way of saying 'nice not nasty' but of reflecting a politican outlook.

"Labour scourged you with inspection, I will scourge you with Pickles"

Lib Dem local government leaders have called for regime change at the Department of Communities and Local government (DCLG). It is hardly a secret that relations between the department and local government are at an all-time low.

This might be dismissed as simply councillors defending producer interests, but none of the Lib Dems quoted, Chris White, Gerald Vernon-Jackson and Richard Kemp are ones to romanticise local councils or deny their shortcomings. They just have a basic belief, which the government is supposed to share, that democratic local government has a part to play in representing and delivering services to people.

It is quite an achievement that when much of the government's localism agenda is welcomed by local government, relations between DCLG and councils are so bad. Even the Conservative chair of the Local Government Association admits that local government has a more civilised relationship with the health and education departments than with DCLG.

The problem is that in Eric Pickles the DCLG has a secretary of state who is not a serious person. He gives the impression of being more suited to sitting in a pub sounding off about how awful the council is than to running a government department. Despite the hands-off, localism agenda professed by the coalition, from the first he has been unable to stop himself trying to micromanage local government by soundbite (further example here). It is not the job of DCLG to be the uncritical champion of local government, but nor should the secretary of state hold it in unconcealed contempt. (Such attitudes may arise from his own period as leader of a council being abruptly terminated at the first opportunity by an ungrateful electorate.)

Richard Kemp may have a point when he suggests:

If [local government is] to be central to public sector delivery wouldn’t it be better to be part of the Cabinet Office which is central to public sector delivery?

Far better that than DCLG, a Mickey Mouse department, currently led by a cartoon character. There would be a delightful irony if Eric Pickles, the denouncer of 'non-jobs' in local government, found the biggest non-job of all was his own.

Progressive problems

Alert readers may have noticed my use of the word 'progressive' in inverted commas in the last post.

The usefulness of this term for Liberal Democrats seems to be the source of some debate, most recently in Lib Dem Voice, and which I have previously addressed here.

One can make a case for the use of the term 'Progressive'. It does have some historical validity, it is a suitable description for graduated taxation, and is a useful catch-all term for all those, of differing political traditions, whose goals are to improve the position of the less well off and less powerful in society.

But why say 'Progressive' when what we mean is 'Liberal'? Here, the problem lies in internal debates among Lib Dems, and particularly the tendency on the 'left' of the party to caricature 'economic liberalism' as crypto-Thatcherism.

I am more than happy to be considered Liberal in political, social and economic views alike. As Asquith said, I am a Liberal "without prefix or suffix" (except 'Democrat' in the party title but that's a different matter.) I don't see why the concept of 'economic liberalism' should be defined by those who aren't Liberals but right-wing Conservatives. And for Lib Dems to disavow liberal economics is to preclude any possibility of differentiating our approach to economics from that favoured by socialists.

Unfortunately the term 'economic liberal' is tainted even among many Lib Dems. If I say I support the government's economic policy because it is 'liberal', what I mean is that with some reservations and caveats I believe it to be aimed at protecting the poor and less powerful. But in this context support for 'liberal' policy can easily be misrepresented as meaning that the government is engaged on an ideological Thatcherite project to slash public spending that I endorse. Hence one resorts to describing policy as 'Progressive'.

The answer is for Liberals to champion a consistent Liberal ethic not hedge their Liberalism with qualifying adjectives.

Keynes would back the coalition says Cable

Vince Cable has an essay in this week's New Statesman arguing that modern Keynesian economists are wrong to cite Keynes to justify opposition to the government's public spending reductions. The whole article doesn't appear to be available to non-subscribers but there is a summary here.

The essay is a riposte to an article by Keynes's biographer Robert Skidelsky in October. Vince Cable comments:

... we should be sceptical about Keynsian economists, however distinguished, who conspicuously failed to anticipate the financial critis and now blithely ignore its consequences. Skidelsky's essay does not even make passing reference to the banking crisis, like someone dispensing advice on earthquake relief without any refernce to past or future earthquakes.

The article is to be welcomed for a number of reasons. First it is a good thing that Vince is making the 'progressive' argument for the government's measures - this is necessary if the debate is not simply to be polarised as Tory measures facing Labour opposition. Second it is a sign of identying a clear Lib Dem identity within the government - many Tories would not be pleased at the thought of Keynes being on their side. Third it is a hint of some degree of pluralism remaining at the New Statesman.

Incidentally, I can't help puzzling over the political trajectory of Lord Skidelsky, Vince Cable's intellectual sparring partner in this debate. A Labour supporter who joined the SDP, he was among the Owenites who stood out against merger (presumably finding the Lib Dems too lefty and irresponsible). For a time he took the Conservative whip in the House of Lords. During this period I remember him addressing a Liberal Democrat History Group meeting on Keynes and telling us all 'Keynes was right, but he can't be used'. Now it seems Keynes can be used and Skidelsky is criticising the Lib Dems ostensibly from the left.

On the frustrations of deluxe, expanded, legacy editions of favourite albums

Next week two CDs by one of my favourite bands, alt-country pioneers The Jayhawks, are re-released in 'legacy' or 'expanded' editions. This gives me mixed feelings. I already own both CDs and in order to obtain the additional material included in the deluxe model have to buy them both all over again. Looking at the new material, a significant amount appears to be alternative versions of songs already released in some shape or form. So to obtain about 10 songs that I don't already have in my collection, I have to buy two separate CDs at a cost even via Amazon of over £20. I suppose I could see if I can download individual tracks, but that won't quite be the same as owning the CD, complete with packaging, liner notes etc.

No doubt I shall give in - The Jayhawks never enjoyed the commercial success they deserve and I should be glad to give them my patronage. But the whole idea of deluxe expanded legacy editions still rankles.

(On the other hand for those who like music in the Neil Young, Gram Parsons, Wilco vein, but who don't own either Hollywood Town Hall or Tomorrow The Green Grass by The Jayhawks then the new editions released next week look like a good buy.)

Are the Lib Dems jinxed in Oldham East and Saddleworth?

The latest chapter in this seat's electoral history makes me wonder if there isn't something in the stars that stops it falling into Liberal Democrat hands.

In 1992 a strong performance by Chris Davies in the former Littleborough and Saddleworth constituency made this look made this a prime candidate for a gain from the Tories at the next general election. The Lib Dems were in a close second place with a considerable Labour vote to squeeze.

Then came the by-election following the death of Conservative MP Geoffrey Dickens. Although Chris Davies's victory was an important boost to the party when it was struggling to appear relevant at the height or Blair's popularity, it also showed that Labour could win the seat, which they duly did on revised boundaries in 1997.

But the longer-term prospects still looked good - it would surely fall into Lib Dem hands as soon as Labour's national success waned, with now a big Tory vote to squeeze. It was even one of just three seats where the Lib Dems topped the poll in the 1999 European elections (helped of course by Davies heading the Lib Dem list in that election).

Unfortunately the 2001 Oldham riots seemed to work against the Lib Dems, possibly pushing moderate voters towards Labour as the surest way of fighting off the BNP. One might have expected a seat with a high Muslim population to swing to the Lib Dems in 2005 in the wake of the Iraq war. Yet amid controversy about where the Lib Dem candidate lived and other such things, the national swing from Labour to the Lib Dems failed to materialise in the seat.

And last year Elwyn Watkins missed out by just 103 with a frustrating increase in the third-placed Conservative vote. Now the seat has been the scene of the first by-election to take place after the party entered coalition government with all its attendant difficult decisions. So the seat has eluded us once again.