Shadow of Margaret Hilda

Seeing a link on Facebook to this story reminds me of a revelation by David Owen in conversation with Peter Hennessy a few weeks back.

I wondered at the time of the Falklands invasion why Owen, who had deterred a previous Argentine attempt when he was foreign secretary under Jim Callaghan, had not swiftly gone onto the attack over the dilatoriness of a UK response. If he had done, and that therefore the Conservative government would have been seen to be acting at the prompting of the SDP when it sent the task force, the 1983 general election might have seen a much smaller Conservative majority. It turns out that he was already onside with Mrs Thatcher at the time of the Falklands debates.

Welsh LibDems boost help to young people

From yesterday's media release:

From September 1, 16, 17 and 18-year-olds will receive a discount on all their bus journeys if they register for a card, including the Traws-Cymru network of longer-distance services.

Liberal Democrats claim credit, saying they allowed the Welsh Government’s annual budget to pass in 2014 in exchange for funding some of their policies, including almost £15m for a young person’s concessionary bus fare scheme. The scheme will be available to 110,000 Welsh people in that age range.

At a time when the unfettered Conservative government in Westminster is attacking young people in ways which Liberal Democrats successfully resisted in coalition, it is good to see this move which should help young people in Wales find and retain jobs, or assist in continuing their education.

Now all it needs is for the Welsh Government to reverse its cuts in support to bus companies so that the transport is actually there.

Thoughts on the BBC

Funding

I agree with John Whittingdale and some of my liberal friends that the licence fee is in effect a regressive tax. Very few people want to see it replaced by direct funding from the Treasury, however, with the threat of future swingeing cuts and the implication of government control. The solution proposed by many Tories, that of a subscription service, also has its drawbacks. This would not have the range of the current BBC. The other model from the States, National Public Radio, is perpetually scrabbling for money as I understand it.

The method in France and Germany of levying a per-household fee to fund public broadcasting seems to offer a way out. It would spread the cost so that though more individuals paid, the cost to each would be much lower than at present. There could be a progressive element in that the charge could be related to council tax bands (so long as we have council tax rather than a local income tax) or levied as a proportion of council tax paid. There is a precedent in the levy for police services in England and Wales.

The Web pages

It seems to me that putting content on the World Wide Web is a natural extension of the BBC's original remit. The content is broad, informative, readable and rather less tendentious politically than its radio and TV coverage. It is unique in my experience, especially in its objectivity. I have not checked, but I have the impression that the URIs which I quote in my postings are dominated by bbc.co.uk and wikipedia, with the Independent, Guardian, Telegraph and Mail some way behind. It is true public service broadcasting and it would be a tragedy if it were curtailed or sold off.

 Savings

The bureaucracy of the corporation is a standing joke even within the BBC. Successive directors-general have each promised to cut staffing costs and each time the pay bill has gone up, even while broadcast provision has gone down - witness the cutting of a red button service, which one misses during big sporting events, especially Wimbledon, and the imminent taking down of BBC3. Janet Street-Porter, a former BBC producer, has hinted at corruption in the form of senior people creating non-jobs for their chums. There needs to be a statutory body which audits the organisation and has the authority to remove unnecessary posts, rather like the old Treasury Organisation and Methods branch which was feared across ministries. Obviously, it would have to be independent of both government and the BBC hierarchy.

If the broadcast side has to bear its share of cuts, I would cut the "me too" TV programmes. It is one thing to innovate entertainment programmes - it is not my cup of tea, but I would praise the success of "Strictly Come Dancing" for as long as it has a natural life - but quite another to copy a format from commercial TV simply in order to boost ratings. 

I would also axe all the political programmes and staff, apart from those which gave unfiltered coverage of Westminster and the devolved parliaments. They cause more trouble than they are worth, compromising the BBC reputation for objectivity. It seems to that they only proliferate because politicians from all parties demand the personal publicity they afford.

Fees for privatisations

Mark Leftly, associate business editor at The Independent, finds it odd "that the part-privatisation of the Green Investment Bank, which has invested £2bn of taxpayers’ money in around 50 projects, should be shrouded in any secrecy".

" the Department for Business should tell us the fees it is paying for advice on selling a majority stake in the [Bank].

"The Government is using Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Herbert Smith Freehills, from the so-called 'silver circle' second tier of elite law firms. The GIB has hired UBS bank and Slaughter & May, of the ultra-elite 'magic circle', to help navigate the sale process. Reports suggest that the Government could receive a £1bn-plus windfall while still retaining a 30 per cent slice of the bank."

Liberal Democrats will point out that the GIB was a Liberal Democrat idea. Chris Huhne and Vince Cable fought for it to operate commercially, something which George Osborne's Treasury resisted.

Leftly goes on: "This is not a bank that is too big to fail, or one that is of structural importance to the economy (indeed, since it still can’t borrow from the market and relies on the Treasury for money, it’s not even really a bank). Neither is the GIB a matter of national security – unless you are the type of environmentalist who believes low-carbon energy will safeguard the human race’s survival. And neither is this a defence privatisation, where paranoia over almost any leaked detail would at least be understandable, if not always a credible reason for extreme secrecy.

"Also, the Department for Business has revealed the fees paid to advisers on last month’s sale of shares in Royal Mail. The Exchequer earned itself a handsome £750m and handed just one hundredth of 1 per cent – £75,003 – in fees to three banks, including Bank of America Merrill Lynch, and one law firm. They appeared to be accepting token fees in the hope of currying favour with the Government and winning more lucrative work down the line."

It is clearly naïve of me, but I wonder why it still needs four City firms to advise on a privatisation when surely Treasury civil servants must have built up considerable expertise after years of sell-offs under the coalition.

Two-faced two-child policy

Further to my reference to Malthus yesterday, I note that Mark Durkan SDLP MP for Foyle, NI, picked up on a prime piece of Tory hypocrisy. In the debate on the Welfare Bill yesterday, he pointed out: "the fact is that the Conservative party was not saying there should be a two-child limit when it came to the child tax allowances that it put through in legislation in the last Parliament. There, £2,000 of childcare payments a year can be paid for every single child; there are no limits on the number of children for that, and of course we know that 80% of the beneficiaries of those childcare payments will be in the top 40% of the income bracket. No, it is two children only here, and people have to think about their choice when they are not in that income bracket. That is why this Bill is fundamentally unjust."

In fact, as Peter Black pointed out in the article which I linked to, the childcare assistance was a coalition policy and the Conservatives have postponed its implementation. But they have not restricted it to two children.

Tory Europhobia strikes again

An opportunity to achieve efficient inter-operation of trains across Europe, including the United Kingdom, seems to have been kiboshed by this unfettered Conservative government. Lord Berkeley emphasises that the decision was political, given that the British railway industry was in favour of common standards for rolling stock and a single overarching authority for infrastructure. If nothing else, the latter would have enabled us to shift the heavily-indebted Network Rail off the UK books, which should surely have endeared the proposals to George Osborne.

Toshiba

Sad to see that this one-time leader in the lap-top market has descended into the same mire of financial chicanery as another once-great Japanese company, Olympus. In the 1990s, the equivalent of a 4G smart phone or tablet computer flashed by the with-it executive or top salesman was a Toshiba T3400.

So Olympus was not a one-off. What other illustrious Japanese brands conceal shady business practices?

Police funding formula review

A written statement has been issued by a police minister in the Lords. One wonders if it is intended to eliminate the top-slicing of the South Wales budget and consequential reallocation of the levy raised here to other forces in Wales.