New Labour and BSI tree inspections

My post yesterday on the proposal by the British Standards Institute that there be compulsory examination of trees at three-yearly and five-yearly intervals (BSI urges new trough for tree inspectors) brings me a comment this morning:

BSI are running short of business at the moment, with many manufacturing companies going out of business. This is a bit of marketing for them. Like the article says, just to Labour’s taste

I thought it worth following up both strands raised here – the suggestion that this sort of nonsense benefits BSI directly and NuLabour’s view, if any, on it.

BSI urges new trough for tree inspectors

One of the most despised features of the Blair-Brown years is the number of busybodies who get their noses into the trough by inciting new inspection regimes in areas which pose no significant risk. The latest is trees which, the British Standards Institution urge, should be subject to checking by a “trained person” every three years and to a full “expert inspection” by an arboriculturalist every five years. There will, of course, be hefty fees payable for this.

Labour lies about rats in rubbish

One of the least appealing aspects of the Blair-Brown administrations – in a very long list of unappealing things – is the institutional dishonesty which these two men and their advisers have brought to government. The dishonesty comes with added hypocrisy since both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, in their different ways, have expressly laid claim to a religious and moral basis to their lives.

This dishonesty is not just morally wrong. One is left gaping sometimes at the political stupidity of lying about subjects on which you are bound to be found out sooner or later, particularly things which, however important, are not matters on which governments fall. Governments are entitled to make some mistakes, to experiment, to assess the consequences, and to accept they got it wrong. What loses the votes is the persistent feeling that we are being lied to daily on every subject.

All announcements and no information at FGW

It would be useful (for the passengers at least) if the people who run First Great Western stations were to spend some time standing around on platforms, like the rest of us have to, totting up the ratio between the endless announcements thrown at us and the information actually conveyed by them.

They would find that, like the notices erected by the dumb animals who work in local authorities, and the stream of nannying advice poured over us by government and its many agencies, the value of the messages is in inverse proportion to their quantity.

Blears smears Oxford estate

A few days ago, Hazel Blears’ spokesman said that she supported “whatever the Prime Minister said”. Who would say that now?

Not everything which pours from Hazel Blears’ mouth is nonsense, and her observation in a recent speech that “brutal, ugly buildings and estates contribute to crime, antisocial behaviour and social exclusion” is quite correct. She made two mistakes.

One is that New Labour has been responsible for plenty of brutal, ugly building, much of it on grass, including former school playing fields. The opposition which it faces to its house-building programme derives largely from the certainty that most of the result will be hideous, as well as badly planned and divorced from the infrastructure which would make the houses work.

Got nothing to say? Send for Harman

There was not much Labour could say as the extent of the overnight debacle in the local elections became clear. If there is not much to say, Harriet Harman is just the person you need to say it, and the mere fact that it was Harman who was sent out to speak on the Today programme this morning was evidence enough that Labour was lost for words.

She was eloquent and fluent as streams of nothing poured from her mouth. John Humprys was gentle with her in a way he would not have been with, say, Geoff Hoon or Hazel Blears or any of the others from the substitutes bench who might have been sent out on New Labour’s behalf. It would be like kicking a dandelion.

Decency all round as Boris wins London

Both Boris Johnson and, unlikely as it seems, Ken Livingstone, grew somewhat in stature in what was said after Johnson’s win tonight. The sheer unpleasantness of Gordon Brown, which has infected British politics for longer than he has been Prime Minister, makes magnaminity in victory and graciousness in defeat seem rather precious and rare.

Looking forward to the Summer of discontent

The Summer of 2008 is set to be a pleasing re-run of the final months of Callaghan’s government in the Winter of Discontent of 1978-79. We will all suffer, but none more so than Gordon Brown, and it will be worth putting up with our hardships to see the growing misery of our unpleasant leader. It will last longer than Callaghan’s, but then Callaghan was guilty only of mistakes and of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Gordon Brown deserves all he gets, and there is a real pleasure in watching him having to chew the ashes of his ambitions under the glare of the media spotlight.

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).

The silly cow of Milton Keynes

Housing Minister Caroline Flint, seeking to justify the so-called eco-towns which the government proposes to dump on rural Conservative areas, tells the Times that Milton Keynes has more bio-diversity than the fields which preceded it.

I remember the fields which used to be there, the lanes which wound around them and the villages which interspersed them. A very attractive place it was too, with more than enough bio-diversity, and real cows, not the concrete ones which gave Milton Keynes its only claim to fame.

Now we have another real cow keen to build more Milton Keyneses, this one with concrete between her ears. Caroline Flint is obviously keen to give a green veneer to Gordon Brown’s vast new housing estates.