Four stories in one day to remind us why we need judges

We are going to need a strong judiciary in these dying years of New Labour. Four events reported today remind us how contemptuous Government has become of those who elect it.

The Government announced plans to exempt MPs from a requirement to detail their expenses. The Treasury announced that it would not be hurrying to compensate those who lost their pensions in Equitable Life. The Government said that Heathrow Airport is to be extended without Parliamentary debate. And John Mortimer, fierce fighter for individual liberty, died. I do not suppose there was in fact a connection between this last event and the other three, but it is easy to see one.

Brown the waster tells us not to waste

Hypocrisy is New Labour’s prime characteristic, and Gordon “Heathcliff” Brown’s injunction to us all not to waste anything is a fine example of Labour – and specifically Brownite – hypocrisy

We are, apparently, throwing away £1bn of food each year. That is indeed something to be corrected, with implications well beyond the £420 per family which a Whitehall study has alleged. It deprives others, it generates waste and it inflates the profits of the supermarkets. It is nothing, however, to what Gordon Brown has wasted.

Condemning the sludge in the public service pond

I do not often run ad hominem attacks on public servants. It is often hard to distinguish between their personal failings and those of the system which they work in and, for the most part, it would be like criticising the dog because his treadmill malfunctions, or beating one of those bovine creatures who push a pole round a well because the water dries up. We employ whole offices of people like that – whole departments of state in the case of DEFRA or the Home Office – and can’t really complain because dull unthinking drudges perform dull unthinking tasks in dull unthinking ways.

Politicians are different, of course. They solicit our votes by their claims to competence, honesty and personal charm, and if Ed Balls fails on all three counts, it is proper to say so. Caroline Flint cares about us all so much, but we don’t care for her and I hope she knows it (although she, of course, has more in common, intellectually speaking, with the pole than with the ox which pushes it, and may not notice the general air of mockery and contempt which attends her every pronouncement).

Tom Stoppard’s message to Gordon Brown

I went to hear Sir Tom Stoppard speak this morning at the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival. I usually come away from such a session with my notes in my head, confident that I can do a reasonable précis from memory. Stoppard taken aurally is as densely packed as Stoppard in print. Each memorable statement (as one thinks of it as he speaks) is immediately overtaken by the next, and most were lost to me by the time he finished.

A few points stuck in my mind as I wandered homeward – can one better, by the way, being in Oxford on a day when deep snow had fallen overnight, Stoppard had talked, and the sun shone on stone buildings from a brilliant blue sky? One could forget, temporarily at least, the Brown unpleasant land around one.

So what? Balls and Cooper rake it in

Husband-and-wife ministerial team Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper inspire particular loathing for several reasons, not all of them instantly obvious. Why do we hate New Labour’s “Golden Couple” so much?

It is partly that the credit they get for being “able” is inconsistent with their respective track records – Balls gave us Tax Credits and an endless stream of expensive “initiatives” aimed more at promoting him in tomorrow’s newspapers than in achieving anything useful. Cooper was responsible for Home Information Packs. These apparently unconnected innovations have in common that they were complex, expensive, botched in their implementation, and representative of New Labour’s claim to take control of our lives for our own good. Cooper’s apparently uninformed defence of the Northern Rock fiasco during the debate on the nationalisation would have condemned anyone who was not the Prime Minister’s favourite.

A Level results – Jim Knight Errant

“Tell me which candidate does not deserve the A-level they achieved today”. This was the reaction of Jim Knight, Minister of State (Schools and Learners), Department for Children, Schools and Learners when critics suggested that a combination of grade inflation and dumbing down made this year’s A level results even less meaningful than last year’s.

It is worth analysis, that reaction; “which candidate did not deserve the A level they achieved”. First, however, who is Jim Knight? That is no rhetorical device, by the way – I had never heard of him before he spouted this nonsense.

Risk adversity at the swimming pool

The point of a council swimming pool is to teach youngsters how to swim, from flapping around in arm-bands and their mothers’ arms, to jumping and and larking about as teenagers. In that safe environment, they can learn how to cope when they go to Marbella with their mates, or fall off a boat, jump into a quarry or get swept away in a fast-flowing river. The whole point is to replicate everything about the experience except the actual danger of the open water.

The worst thing they will find at a council swimming pool is a dreary-voiced functionary telling them what not to do. Three boys were thrown out of Harlow pool last week because they were wearing the long shorts which are fashionable at the moment. The drag of the material could hamper their swimming apparently. But if that is what they are going to wear in real life, then surely that is what they should swim in at the council pool. Many dangerous situations in fact arise when they are fully clothed.

More attacks on Home Information Packs

The Government today beat off a Tory attempt to scrap Home Information Packs, defeating by 306 votes to 234 a motion to withdraw the law.

Next week the House of Lords will have a go, following a select committee’s strong recommendation that the Government should take note of the criticism. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors has said that it will launch a legal action.

The basis for these attacks is not simply that HIPs are a waste of time and money, another tax on moving house, and an unwarranted interference in private contracts. HIPs are all of these things, but the real complaint is that the implementation is a complete shambles. There are not enough inspectors, the RICS says, to meet demand – unless, of course, the HIPs requirement on top of rising interest rates kills the market anyway.

Tony Blair lied here 1997 – 2007

The Peter Brookes cartoon in yesterday’s Times shows a blue plaque outside No 10 Downing Street

 

Anthony
Charles Lynton
BLAIR
Lied here
1997- 2007

 

It would have been inconceivable in 1997 that a political cartoonist would have said this so baldly about a serving prime minister. It is the role of a cartoonist to say the unsayable but they do not (or at least, good ones like Brookes in heavy-weight newspapers do not) pillory a public figure in this way without being reasonably sure that the cartoon will resonate with at least a large minority of the readership.