Labour and rail transport

Further to my complaint yesterday about the lack of information about the Labour conference, I discovered that the transport topic was merged with a discussion of other economic items. I missed any coverage of contributions from the floor. The views of transport union officers would have been interesting.

However, I did catch an evangelistic speech by Lord Adonis. He made the case for the investment in rail over road in the near term, and promised interventions which would make life easier for both passengers and industrial users of the railway. Sadly, the Labour Party website has not yet seen fit to put up a video of the speech.

But why, oh why, couldn't Labour have embarked on this programme at the start of its ministry rather than at the fag-end of it? Even a few years later, a change of heart would have reaped benefits. Work on the electrification of the South Wales main line could have been under way in 2007, helping to ease the recession and providing a modern railway ready for the upturn predicted for next year.

There is consolation in that not only Liberal Democrats are committed to the future of rail, but also now the Conservative Party has signed up to green transport policies. Assuming we can believe the latter, all the parties are now on the right track.

Government immigration snatch squad invades vicarage

Suzanne Fletcher has a chilling illustration of how hollow Labour's railing against extreme nationalist groups really is. The methods of the Border Agency would do credit to any mid-twentieth century European dictatorship. Suzanne's final sentence ( "If the officials behave like that in front of clergy in a vicarage, what is it like where there is nobody to witness ?") is sobering.

Labour conference secrecy

One would have thought that a party which claims to embrace 21st century communication would publish a timetable of its debates at Brighton. After all, the 2009 conference is being shown on BBC-Parliament and selected speeches are available as video clips on www.labour.org.uk, so it's not exactly confidential. We Liberal Democrats are so proud of our glasnost that we habitually publish the full conference documentation on www.libdems.org.uk, usually leaving it up for months after people have lost interest. ;-)

The cause of this gripe is a need to find out when Labour is to discuss transport policy. If any Labour member reading this can let me know the day and times, I would be very grateful.

Labour body language

In the spirit of fairness and objectivity which marks the typical Liberal Democrat, I tuned in today to BBC-Parliament's screening of Labour Party proceedings, as I had watched events in Bournemouth last week.

It was noticeable how much more at ease Gordon Brown is among friends, and especially with the young Labour candidates, than he is in the House of Commons these days. (Of course, he was hardly pressed with difficult questions in Brighton.)

Also noticeable was that the eyes of party leader and deputy leader hardly ever met. Brown had a handshake and a pat on the back for every parliamentary colleague's speech, Harman joined in the applause but otherwise ignored the speaker. In the question-and-answer session, Harman was never content to let Brown have the last word, but had to add her own spin.

Harriet Harman clearly has her own agenda, which John Prescott, for one, does not like.

Town Hall meetings

Both Nick Clegg and Kirsty Williams have had success with meet-the-people events up and down England and Wales respectively.

If a political party can have a meaningful conversation with the electorate in this way, then how much more important is it for the Welsh Assembly government to reach out to local communities. It was a sad day when the Labour Assembly Government decided to abandon the regional meetings which enabled ministers to explain WAG's approach to given topics and then to hear from local activists and concerned citizens on them.

A melancholy anniversary

Fifty years ago today, SWRD Bandanaranaike, the Prime Minister of Ceylon, was assassinated by a yellow-robed figure. Foreshadowing several of the troubles which continue in the region today, his enlightened attitude to the Tamils, and his perceived closeness to the Western powers, had antagonised many of his compatriots.

The event did have a momentous outcome. After ten months of a government led by Dudley Senanayake, Bandaranaike's widow Sirimavo was elected as the world's first female prime minister in July 1960.

Labour has let us down on ageism

The Labour government dragged its feet over legislating to meet the EU requirement to outlaw ageism in the workplace, and, as a High Court judgment has made clear, has done so inadequately.

There can be no objection to releasing workers on genuine grounds that they are no longer capable, but, as B&Q stores have shown, some people well over the traditional retiring age can still do a good job. A compulsory retirement age of 65 is arbitrary, unfair and an anachronism.

Troughing Tories & Labourites missed a trick

The Indian Army got away (until now) with hiding in the terrorist defence budget their acquisition of golf buggies for generals under the heading "silent reconnaissance vehicles".

Now if Sir Peter Viggers had described his duck house as "secure reception area for foreign guests flying in", or Douglas Hogg had put his moat maintenance down to additional security measures, perhaps they might have been able to put off the day of retirement a little longer.

And Margaret Moran (Labour, Luton South) was clearly providing a large number of safe houses.

YouTube could make the coming general election the dirtiest yet

The Electoral Commission has announced that it had no plans to police internet material during the general election campaign.

According to a BBC report, a spokesman said: "There is nothing in electoral legislation that would cover that kind of stuff. Our job is to provide guidance for those people taking part in an election and to help them stay within the law."

But he "makes clear that complaints about potentially defamatory material, under electoral laws, remain a matter for the police and that cases will be investigated".

The phrase "don't hold your breath" comes to mind. A serious allegation was made against a candidate in the last Assembly elections in the form of a widely distributed anonymous leaflet. Although the police investigation has not officially been closed as far as I know, there have not yet been any arrests. If the perpetrators of a leaflet, which involves considerable effort to print and distribute, cannot be tracked down, what hope is there of nailing the producer of an online video spoof, which may not even be hosted in the UK?

Come clean over putative North Wales gaol site

The Justice Ministry should explain why a brownfield site in Caernarfon is not, after all, to be the site of a new prison for North Wales, as reported by the BBC. One can only assume that asbestos contamination is the determining factor, because in all other respects the former Ferodo factory appears ideal. Have the current owners leant on the civil servants to keep dark the condition of the site, for fear it might depress its development value?

Floella Benjamin speaks to the Liberal Democrats

Rambler extraordinaire and broadcaster, Floella Benjamin OBE, spoke to the Liberal Democrat conference in Bournemouth at the weekend.

She said: “I have spent many years campaigning for a society that is based on integrity, trust and morality. And it is clear that this belief is at the very core of everything the Liberal Democrats do."

There is more here.

Improving the railways

Liberal Democrat conference this morning passed the following resolution:

F31 Rail Franchises

Conference notes:
i) The growing number of passenger rail franchises now being agreed with substantial and
increasing amounts of premium to be paid to the Treasury.
ii) That rail franchisees also have to pay their share of the costs of Rolling Stock Operating
Companies’ and Network Rail’s charges.
iii) That Britain’s rail fares are already among the highest in Europe.
iv) That in most cases franchisees are awarded a private monopoly with no choice of provider
being offered to the rail traveller.
Conference condemns recent increases in both regulated and unregulated rail fares, which are
higher than the then rate of inflation and bore particularly hard on those who depend on the railway to commute to work.

Conference deplores:
a) The fact that the Labour Government has continued to pursue a highest premium model of
awarding monopoly franchises, with clear problems and stresses now becoming evident
across the rail industry and consequent large fare increases which are little more than a
stealth tax on one of the greenest modes of transport.
b) The way this franchise model has led to companies overbidding for franchises, creating the
situation where both GNER and now National Express have handed back the East Coast
franchise to the Government, leaving the taxpayer with a greater cost to bear.
c) The apparent inability of the Office of Rail Regulation to force transparency in how individual
fares from individual stations are set even for regulated fares, and its past acquiescence in
disproportionate increases imposed on particular classes of passenger who use off-peak
services and in differing fares being applied arbitrarily to apparently similar journeys from
similar stations.
Conference further notes belated moves by the Government to end the situation where individual regulated fares are allowed to increase by more than the RPI+1% cap in ways that further increased fare inequalities as long as the overall ‘basket’ of regulated fares increased by no more than the cap.

Conference demands that:
1. The Government retain the East Coast franchise until the end of the current franchise term
as a public interest franchise, to act as a public sector comparator to drive up standards and
drive down costs across the rest of the rail network.
2. The Government scrap the failing franchise system and replace it with one that prioritises the passenger over higher premium payments; new franchise conditions must lead on quality of service and of passenger experience, including, where possible, fare reductions, with rolling
reviews to ensure standards are being met.
3. The government guarantee that any surplus from franchise premiums should continue to be
invested in rail improvements, to include improved services, more rolling stock, and, where
economically viable, the reopening of stations and lines.
4. As soon as possible overall annual increases in rail fares should be at no more than inflation,
as part of the wider agenda of promoting green forms of travel.

An amendment proposed by Linda Jack and supported by Lembit Opik, which called on the party to consider renationalisation was clearly lost, but attracted considerable support.

During the debate, it was revealed that a survey by the Swiss multinational bank UBS earlier this year showed UK train fares to be not only the highest in the EU, but the highest in the world.

Adam Price

It is left to Conservative Glyn Davies to comment on Adam Price's decision to absent himself from the party fray for at least the duration of the next parliament. I thought there might have been some reaction from the LibDem bloggers I habitually follow. Perhaps I am not reading all the right blogs.

My first thought was: what is Price running away from? He has escaped serious questioning about the use of his MP's communications allowance to help Welsh Assembly nationalist candidates. That is not likely to be brought up again, so that can't be it. It is more likely that Plaid anticipates a hung parliament after the next general election, and a deal with another party. History suggests that Plaid will not be too particular as to who that deal is done with, so long as it serves their narrow self-interest. Dissociating himself from a move which is almost certain to end in tears, to return and take over from a discredited leadership in 2014 when he is still young, would seem to be astute and in character.

Good Beer Guide 2010

Roger Protz heads his introduction to CAMRA's latest Good Beer Guide, "the battle for survival". The reasons for the decline in public house numbers are various, and I had better not make my own guesses here while there is a committee of Neath Port Talbot council looking at the subject of alcohol abuse. I see that another local, the Harp, Skewen, is almost certainly finished; there is a planning application in for its conversion to flats.

Amid all the doom and gloom, the Green Dragon and the Crown & Sceptre in Cadoxton keep their doors open. Indeed, the latter continues its status in the Good Beer Guide 2010.

Other pubs in the county borough which are listed are the Butchers at Alltwen, the Pontardawe Inn ("Gwachel") and the Pink Geranium in Pontardawe, the Borough Arms and the David Protheroe in Neath, the Lord Caradoc in Port Talbot and the Wern Fawr in Ystalyfera.

Don't mention the war

Please don't go on about it. I know it's 70 years ago today that Polish resistance collapsed, but I don't recall quite this level of media coverage on the 50th anniversary of the outbreak of war - and surely the 75th anniversary, in 2014, would be more appropriate.

Adrian Hamilton, in the Independent of 3rd September, gives an objective survey. "The history channels continue to be skewed to the era, with documentaries endlessly repeating the pictures from the archives, the reminiscences of the participants and the views of the armchair strategists. To the despair of, I suspect, most women, and most of the young, the Second World War lives on with a glow that almost no other historic occasion holds. Why so? It is partly that, for all the revisionist history, the Second World War has gone down as the 'good war'"

But, he points out, only the Russians celebrate the period with the fervency of the Anglo-Saxons. "For the losers, the occupied as well as the Axis, the Nazi era is still one they would rather forget. And who can blame them? There is little to be gained, even if there is much to be learnt, by trawling over a bitter and humiliating past."

It is not as if Britain's feats of arms were unique and superior. "A whole generation of historians," Hamilton writes, "has served to reinforce the point - accepted by veterans but ignored by the popular narratives - that platoon by platoon, equipment for equipment, the Germans were much better fighters than we were."

We sneer at the Americans for claiming many of the technical advances actually made by Europeans during World War II (cracking the Enigma cipher, digital electronic computers and radar for instance), but we cannot deny that mainland Europe would not have been liberated without that massive war machine. We would not even have been in the position to do so if Hitler had not had to fight the Russians. And let us not forget the sacrifices made by Australians, Canadians, Indians, New Zealanders and other citizens of what was then still the Empire.

The current orgy of self-congratulation distracts from the shortcomings in manning (except in Whitehall!) and equipment of today's armed forces. I suggest that it is thus dangerous as well as annoying.

Did Gordon Brown hold up the TUC?

Expecting to see TUC coverage on BBC-Parliament starting at 14:15, I was entertained by music which did not rise to the heights of Alan Price's mood music for the LibDems and a barely informative caption.

Could it be that the ten minutes was spent in hectic rewriting of Gordon Brown's speech?

Since the crucial parts have been trailed, and are being delivered as I write, one wonders what the problem was.

I am surprised at the claim that Brown is going to start building council housing again, at a time when there is no sign that New Labour is resiling from the Thatcherite drive to privatise council housing stock. Has he had a word with Rhodri Morgan? Has that word been passed down to Neath Port Talbot Council, which has postponed its tenants' ballot, possibly in anticipation of a change in policy?

Another statement, which may not be reported, is hugely debatable. Brown can hardly proclaim that UK is leading the way on green personal transport when Renault of France has made the most significant announcement of zero-emission cars so far.

Neath Port Talbot council to be filled in on canals

British Waterways have arranged a seminar for Neath Port Talbot councillors for mid-November on the subject of the Swansea, Neath and Tennant canals. One trusts that the Port Tennant Navigation Company will be represented, since British Waterways does not own their canal.

If any reader has an interest in the course of these canals through the borough, and wants information they cannot get from other sources, or has matters they wish to raise, please let me (or another member of the council) know within the next eight weeks.

Increased danger for war correspondents

Radio 4 this morning relayed the poignant blog of Sultan Munadi the New York Times translator and reporter who was killed, probably by "friendly fire", in a recent commando raid. He described how he spent two years among the unsympathetic glass, concrete and steel of Germany, and how he longed to get back to his birthplace in the Panjshir Valley. Having survived Soviet bombing and the "prison" of Taliban rule, he looked forward to a better situation. "Being a journalist is not enough," he wrote, "it will not solve the problems of Aghanistan. I want to work for the education of the country, because the majority of people are illiterate. That is the real problem facing many Afghans. I am really committed to come back and work for my country."

That raid also took the life of one of our own, Corporal John Harrison, as well as three Afghans. It succeeded in its prime objective of rescuing the Anglo-Irish journalist Stephen Farrell. It transpired that Farrell had been warned that his trip was fraught with danger. There were calls from fellow-journalists for the New York Times to withdraw him from war zones in future. There is a line between bravery and foolhardiness.

It is this thing, the World Wide Web, which has done most to jeopardise the lives of reporters in conflict zones. There was a time when journalists were as untouchable as holy men or diplomats. When the only mass media were the newspapers and radio, their correspondents were valued by all sides as the only people who could provide an outlet for the combatants' cases.

Now journalists are as disposable - or as usable as hostages - as any other citizen. Any insurgent with a computer or even a mobile phone can get his views onto the Internet within seconds. The blatant slanting of news by some US TV news channels does not help the safety of Western journalists, either.

Tories

Paul Staines (Guido Fawkes) has ticked me off for describing him as a Tory, proudly saying that he had never been a member of the Conservative Party. My defence is that I was harking back to the early, pre-C0nservative and -Liberal days, when there was no recognised party structure.

Ivor Bulmer-Thomas in "The Growth of the British Party System" (1967), wrote:  "The name Whig was properly given to adherents of the Presbyterian cause in Scotland in the latter half of the seventeenth century and was applied to the exclusioners [supporters of a Bill to prevent James, Duke of York, from succeeding Charles II] in derision. The term Tory, an anglicized form of an Irish word meaning a pursuer, was even less polite. In its original sense it was used in the seventeenth century to denote one of the dispossessed Irish who became outlaws and lived by killing and plundering the English settlers and soldiers. It was equivalent to 'bog trotter', and was applied to their opponents because they noticed that the Duke of York tended to favour Irishmen for his friends. Narcissus Luttrell in 1681 wrote of the duke's supporters and the exclusioners: 'The latter party have been called by the former whigs, fanaticks, covenanteers, bromigham protestants, &c.; and the former are called by the latter tories; tantivies, Yorkists, high-flown church men, &c.'"

High-church man? Pursuer with Irish connections? Fits Guido to a T, I would say.

Nor would he disown the company of Dean Swift, Alexander Pope, Isaac Newton or Samuel Johnson, I suspect. They were all identified as tories (though Johnson was not that political).

Perhaps I was at fault in using a capital letter, since latter-day Conservatives are happy to describe themselves as "Tories". I shall be more selective in future.

Incidentally, I was pleased to note that "Narcissus Luttrell" defeated the major search engines. I do hope that Bulmer-Thomas did not invent him or her.

CAPITAlising on paedophile fears

On top of respected authors visiting schools being compelled to pay for CRB checks and the faults in the enhanced CRB checks system on which Bury councillor Richard Baum has been campaigning (latest posting here), BBC Radio news has just reported that parents who car-share the school run will be required by the government to be checked. It would be interesting to see the evidence on which this is based. Almost certainly the immediate result will be to increase the number of car journeys (one assumes that parents who drive only their own children to school will not be affected) increasing congestion and exhaust emissions, as people will be reluctant to pay for the privilege of helping out their friends and neighbours.

It's all more income for Capita, who run the checks.

Update: the situation is not as bad as the original short report implied. According to Liberal Vision, informal arrangements will not be affected. My question about the evidence base remains, though.

The Phoenix Four

So John Towers and the rest of the Phoenix consortium (Nick Stephenson, John Edwards and Peter Beale) are to be debarred from running public companies? The BBC has the background story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8244497.stm. There is a LibDem connection: John Hemming MP was involved with the Phoenix bid before being pushed aside.

John has been reluctant to say much about the Phoenix/Alchemy contest, but reading between the lines of his communications on the subject, it seems to me that the Alchemy bid was always going to be the most realistic.

The Phoenix prospectus would not have stood up to close scrutiny. But ministers were not prepared to accept the Alchemy medicine of slimming down Rover to make it viable, preserving some jobs for the long term. They were seduced by Phoenix's promises to keep all the workers on.

How about being consistent, and banning those politicians who were taken in from ever being in government again? The guilty team at the DTI in 2000 were Stephen Byers, Richard Caborn and Patricia Hewitt.

The Libertarian wedge

The Thatcherite wing of the Liberal Democrats is sponsoring two fringe events at next week's federal conference in Bournemouth. The first is on a reasonable enough subject, "Mortgages and mayhem". There does appear to be reasonable political balance, Lord Teverson & Tessa Munt counterbalancing Paul Staines (the arch-Tory "Guido Fawkes") and Greg Dyke, though, in view of the participation of the last two, the language is likely to be blue.

I have more doubts about the second. It's not so much the title ("How should we fight the nanny state?") as the indication of the direction the event is to be steered. Co-sponsors are FOREST, the pressure group which wants to rescind the ban on smoking in public places.

Since Sara Scarlett, a leading light in "Liberal Vision" has in the past praised Anne Widdecombe, and attacked Jo Swinson for her campaign for "Real Women", I think we can see where this is going. Scarlett has also attacked federal president Ros Scott and valued campaigner Duncan Borrowman. It is no surprise that she was the object of a move to withdraw her party membership.

Politics is not a matter of black-and-white, no matter what the Glenda Slaggs of the red-tops may say. I agree with Scarlett on some things, especially the thrust of her piece on the isolation and professionalisation of MPs. It would have been nice, though, if she had divulged what she does for a living.

Update: blogger.com notifies me of a recent post on Liberal Vision. by Barry Stocker on the subject of Adam Smith. However, this post is not accessible. Was it removed because Adam Smith is seen as not libertarian enough?

Pantopragmatic: my word of the day

While looking for answers to a crossword, I came across "pantopragmatic" in the dictionary. According to Chambers, the word was coined by Thomas Love Peacock (of "Nightmare Abbey" and "Headlong Hall" fame*) . "It seems to be a real art of talking about an imaginary art of teaching every man his own business." (Gryll Grange, chapter VIII)

I can think of a few Labour ministers, on both sides of the border, that it could apply to.

*Not to mention the "War song of Dinas Vawr": "The mountain sheep are sweeter, but the valley sheep are fatter; and so we deemed it meeter to carry off the latter (etc)".

T-Morange

France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom claim there will be economies if they are allowed to merge their UK operations.

Does that mean we will see an actual reduction in the number of those ugly masts?

English education authority loses data on pupils

Silicon.com reports: the Information Commissioner's Office has said Wigan Council breached data-protection law by allowing unencrypted data on 43,000 school pupils to be downloaded to a laptop.

The laptop was then stolen. It had been stored in a locked office, but not encrypted, according to the ICO. The person who downloaded the data to the laptop was breaching council policy, but there was no block on them doing so.

Joyce Redfearn, chief executive of Wigan Council, has signed an undertaking stating that the council will encrypt data on portable devices in future.

One trusts that the Welsh Assembly Government already has advice to local education authorities in place.

Bravo, Engelhardt

In a recent statement, the boss of Admiral and confused.com has criticised the huge earnings of most of his fellow-directors running other FTSE100-listed companies. His companies are run on a profit-sharing basis. “I am a founder-owner of the company, so it’s not just my salary which keeps me going," he said, “there’s food on the table, every night, it’s true. But I do think it’s amazing when you see some of the pay packages put together.

“What can a [chief executive] do to warrant the kind of packages put together compared to the other people working in the organisation? I do think things should be spread about a bit more.”

He is following in the footsteps of John Spedan Lewis, who wrote: "Capitalism has done enormous good and suits human nature far too well to be given up as long as human nature remains the same. But the perversion has given us too unstable a society. Differences of reward must be large enough to induce people to do their best but the present differences are far too great.

"If we do not find some way of correcting that perversion of capitalism, our society will break down. We shall find ourselves back in some form of government without the consent of the governed, some form of police state."

His solution (not original, but apparently reached independently of other workforce-involvement schemes) was that residual profits should be distributed annually to the employees - thenceforward known as "partners" - in proportion to their pay in the form of non-voting shares carrying a fixed dividend which they would be free to sell without affecting the control of the business.

It is noteworthy that the John Lewis group (which includes Waitrose) is one of the few British corporations to thrive during the recent economic crunch. Ironically, eight years ago there were some senior John Lewis partners who felt that the organisation was behind the times, that it should demutualise in search of expansion and higher profits - much as permanent building societies were doing. Fortunately, they were advised that it would take an Act of Parliament to do this and JLP survived.

Keith Waterhouse

I second the appreciation of Keith Waterhouse by Bernard Salmon.

I, too, remember him as a columnist in the Daily Mirror, and a rather better writer than the much-lauded Cassandra, in my opinion - though he was generally not as vitriolic as his predecessor. But he was also the author of a novel, "Office Life", which was turned into an enjoyable television play starring Jenny Agutter.

This was a shrewd, if sidelong, commentary on the deceptive nature of the Thatcherite economic revolution, continued unquestioningly by Blair and Brown. It would stand repeating.

Bottled ales

I've just taken delivery of Jeff Evans's "Good Bottled Beer Guide" from CAMRA.

Its terms of reference are restricted to bottle-conditioned ales (that is, those in which fermentation continues in the bottle). Therefore, local specialities like Hurns Brewing Company's Tomos Watkin range are not included, but Welsh craft beers are well represented.

In South Wales, we have Vale of Glamorgan, Rhymney (which produces a bottled dark for CAMRA), Otley (based in Pontypridd, not Yorkshire!), Kingstone, Ffos y ffin, Dare and Breconshire breweries. There is the Neuadd Arms Brewing Co, which suggests a good way of breaking the journey on the Heart of Wales railway. North Wales boasts Conwy, Jolly Brewer (Wrexham), McGivern (Wrexham, no web site known) and North Wales (Moelfre). West Wales has Penlon.

Over the border, there is Whittingtons Brewery, based in Newent, birthplace of the famous Lord Mayor of London. I don't know if Peter Black is a beer man, but if he is, the products should appeal to him: A Winter's Tail (a winter ale) and Cat's Whiskers (a bitter).

I'd still like to know what happened to Jigsaw (or was it Puzzle?), a cinnamon-flavoured wheat beer (produced in Shrewsbury, if I recall aright), which was very refreshing in the times when we had hot summers.

Inland waterways boom in recession

The move against the exchange rate of the pound of late has encouraged holistays (I much prefer this term to the American "staycation") and leisure boating has boomed as a result. The experience of Norfolk is typical. Unfortunately, I cannot find WWW evidence for this, but a recent BBC-News item showed that the Grand Union and other canals in Britain are sharing in this boom. A spokesman went so far as to say that there are currently more boats active on the network than there were at the peak of the Industrial Revolution.

If only the engineering and financial obstacles to connection of our two canals could be overcome, Neath Port Talbot is well placed to share in this success in future.