Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher died physically this morning, though as a person she had been struck down by dementia years ago. She deserves recognition as the UK's first, and the world's fifth, female prime minister.

Another Labour argument weakened

On Radio 4's Any Questions? last weekend, Michael Heseltine castigated Labour for its failure to regulate the banks when in office. In reply, Diane Abbott repeated the familiar Labour line that nothing could be done in the face of the "global" crisis.

Leaving aside the fact that the crash in confidence in financial institutions directly affected a limited number of countries, last week's report of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards, as quoted in the Independent, knocks away one of the props of that argument. Lord Heseltine clearly had not had time to read it in detail or he could have quoted one of the report's conclusions about the failure of HBOS:

The report lays the blame for the demise square at the door of its management, dismissing the arguments of former boss, Sir James Crosby, his successor, Andy Hornby, and the chairman, Lord Stevenson, that it was due to the one off unpredictable events of the credit crunch and subsequent financial crisis. They complained that no one could have predicted the closure of the wholesale money markets on which the bank relied to fund its lending.

The report excoriates that version of events saying: "The problems of liquidity were the occasion for the failure of HBOS, not the cause. If HBOS's difficulties were solely the result of funding and liquidity problems, their lasting effects would have been much more limited, including for the taxpayer.
[...]
"The explanation by senior HBOS management given to the commission for the scale of the Group's losses is entirely unconvincing. The impairments and losses incurred were substantially worse than for the peer group."

While the three have previously issued apologies they have persisted in putting the blame on "unpredictable" events such as the credit crunch. The commission says: "The apologies of those at the top of HBOS for the loss imposed upon the taxpayers and others ring hollow; an apology is due for the incompetent and reckless Board strategy; merely apologising for having failed to plan for an unforeseeable event is not much of an apology."

Congratulations to the Yakkers*

Simon Turnbull in the Independent celebrates Durham's forthcoming staging of a test match against Australia. I was glad to see a reminder of that flamboyant batsman Colin Milburn, from Burnopfield, whose international and first-class careers were truncated by a road accident which took his left eye. It is also worth mentioning that honorary Dunelmian, Frank Tyson. Though he was born in Lancashire and played first-class cricket for Northants (like Milburn), Tyson is a graduate of Durham University.

* N.B. not "Geordies" - see http://www.communigate.co.uk/ne/teesspeak/page31.phtml

British Airways' high life

Simon Calder starts his column in today's Independent:

Forty years ago this week, passengers on British European Airways (BEA) perusing the seat pocket in front of them found a novel addition. Alongside the emergency instruction card and sick bag was the first edition of High Life. 

(There is more coverage here.) The magazine's first editor was Bill Davis, who celebrated his 80th birthday a month ago. That was enough to damn it in Private Eye. Davis had been an editor of Punch who saw turning it into a life-style magazine as a way of restoring its fortunes. The young Turks of Greek Street were already dismissive of Punch as a self-satisfied shadow of its former radical and satirical self. The appointment of a German (Davis was born in Hannover as Günther [something - I can't remember his original surname, which seems to have been expunged from the Web]) was the final straw. When "Kaiser Bill", as the Eye renamed him, started High Life, funded largely by tobacco and booze advertising, the reaction of the near-Puritan editor Richard Ingrams may be imagined.

At least High Life survives. It was about the only feature of BEA that did. I remember BEA as a well-run, profit-making public enterprise. I also remember British Overseas Airways Corporation as an overblown corporation whose losses were tolerated by successive governments only because it was the national flag-carrier outwith continental Europe. BEA and Univac had constructed BEACON (described here in a 9-page pdf), an online reservation system of a type which is familiar today but was then state-of-the-art. BOAC and IBM had the troubled BOADICEA system - late, over-budget and temperamental.

When the Edwards Committee proposal to re-merge BOAC and BEA (BEA had originally been hived off by the Attlee government in 1946) was accepted by Heath's Conservatives in 1972, it was implemented as a takeover of BEA by BOAC to form British Airways. BOADICEA became the reservation system of choice and BEACON was relegated to cargo duties. Gresham's Law of systems ruled.

Anti-science and the local press

I don't often quote Jaxxlanders, but it seems to me that the Swansea exile has it right about the lack of contrition on the part of the Evening Post over that journal's part in the current measles outbreak.

The media are often quite keen on the idea of political leaders apologising for the historical misdeeds of their predecessors. It sets a good moral tone and offers punters the semblance of a new start even if the actual gesture is basically meaningless.

In regional newspapers however it would appear to be a practice that is only preached. Too bad.

It comes to mind that the editor responsible for hyping up the MMR scare also sacked his science contributor and gave undue coverage to the BNP.

What connects the "bedroom tax", "tax cuts for millionaires" and student loans?

The link between the last two will be known to most students of UK politics: they are Thatcher/Major ideas which were accepted by Labour in government for twelve years, then used as a stick to beat the coalition with.

But the bedroom tax/spare room subsidy abolition? Surely that is a ConDem idea? Well, only in relation to social housing (council and housing association tenancies). It's actually been in force nationally for private lessees since April 2008 and in pilot areas for several years before that. Labour introduced the concept of the Local Housing Allowance with the aim of pushing people who received housing benefit into the cheapest available accommodation. Hector the government inspector would decide how many rooms a private tenant needed.

It looks as if Labour was intending to extend LHA to social tenancies eventually. Consider the following interchange in the House of Commons in 2004 (LHA had been tried out for a couple of years in "Pathfinder" authorities):

Mr. Clifton-Brown: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions for what reasons the local housing allowance applies only to the de-regulated private sector. [R] [146691]

Malcolm Wicks: We hope to implement a flat rate housing benefit system in the social sector, similar to that anticipated in the private rented sector to enable people in that sector to benefit from the choice and flexibility that the reforms can provide. We aim to extend our reforms to the social rented sector as soon as rent restructuring and increased choice have created an improved market.

Mr. Clifton-Brown: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (1) how the rent of those tenants whose rent is higher than the local housing allowance will be paid; [R] [146692]

(2) whether there will be a hardship payment to prevent the eviction of those tenants whose rent is higher than the new local housing allowance. [R] [146693]

Malcolm Wicks: Tenants whose rent is higher than their local housing allowance will be expected to make good the difference with their landlord. This is no different to what happens under existing rules. During the Pathfinder stage, no claimant will be worse off financially at the point of change as they will be covered by a form of transitional protection.

There will not be a hardship payment to tenants whose rent is higher than their local housing allowance. Tenants will have the choice to shop around and look for a cheaper property in such circumstances.

So the coalition is levelling the playing-field, as it were. Labour were as prepared to price private tenants out of too-large accommodation as they accuse the government of being in respect of council tenants.

Would Labour repeal the new arrangements? Some back-benchers seem keen, but the official spokespeople have been equivocal. Both should address the situation of private tenants.

Beveridge and IDS

William Beveridge, who died fifty years ago last month, would have approved of the stated aims of Iain Duncan Smith, of making it more worthwhile for people to go to work than to subsist on state handouts. However, he would not condone the running down of the government's employment services, successors to the national system of labour exchanges which he first proposed in 1905, and which he would be instrumental in setting up for Winston Churchill (then a Liberal) at the Board of Trade four years later. He would also deprecate the lack of regular training to tackle long-term unemployment which was part of his ideas.

I knew that Bismarck's Prussia had been the inspiration for Lloyd George's introduction of an old age pension, but I hadn't realised until I read Beveridge's entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography that the latter had done much of the research necessary for its implementation in the UK. (There is confirmation here.) I'm sure Beveridge would have approved of Steve Webb's pension guarantees. I trust that he would have condemned the unrealistic limit of 1% for other benefits.

April 1st

Normally, I post something frivolous at this time of year - taking care to remove it at noon, of course. However, the coincidence of Easter Monday, which I know is still important to many people, and the unbelievable voltes-face of people I took to be liberal making any fool joke all too credible, have inhibited me. I hope to renew normal service in 2014.