Liberal Burblings

Liberal Burblings has moved to www.liberalburblings.co.uk - you will be redirected shortly

2009-11-06T13:57:00.000Z

....And I promise this is the final move. It's been a bit like Mao Tse-Tung's Long March; going from a naff blogspot address to a nice .com address but then realising I couldn't shift to WordPress on it, so then buying another domain through GoDaddy and then realising that WordPress.com is relatively pants, so then starting a test domain with a hosted WordPress.org package and then realising it would be easier to redirect to that test domain rather than trying to shift it.

Bottom line: I am now on http://www.liberalburblings.co.uk/ and using a wonderful shiny new Wordpress template from Artisteer and some lovely plug-ins. Oh, and my daughter has provided some invaluable graphic design advice to give me a spanking new header!

Thanks for your patience.

Time for a planned withdrawal from Afghanistan

2009-11-05T19:58:00.002Z

The murder of five soldiers from inside a Afghan police station has made me change my mind on the Afghanistan situation. I'm happy to join Lembit Opik and the Daily Sport in calling for a planned withdrawal of British service personnel from Afghanistan. Frankly, if the Afghans, as represented by that member of their police force who shot the five soldiers, don't want us there, then: sod them.

But that doesn't mean we should just precipitously withdraw leaving a vacuum. We need to have a re-directed strategy to neuter Al-Quaeda and other terrorist cells. That's why we went to Afghanistan in the first place; not to conquer the country and add it to our "Empire" or to beat the Taleban. Unfortunately defeat of the Taleban has become too conflated with our original aims. Aims have been confused.

Bear in mind: Al-Quaeda is mainly in Pakistan, not Afghanistan. So we need a campaign specifically targetted at them and other potential terrorist cells who will attack this country. In the meantime, we need to set a plan to withdraw our boys and girls from full-scale combat missions in Afghanistan. We're doing it wrongly. If the Afghan police force won't accept us, then it's time to bring our boys and girls home. End of. They're too precious to waste on this charade.

VIDEO: Russian warehouse Armageddon

2009-11-04T23:56:00.001Z

This really is worth watching, if only as a lesson in health and safety at work. It looks like a normal, peaceful working day in a warehouse. And then utter mayhem breaks loose. Unbelievable.

Some points:

The two warehouse guys under those boxes (which are full of cognac and whisky) seemed to have been inside their strengthened forklift cockpits when all collapsed, so one suspects they were relatively unscathed (though no notes on the clip state what happened to the poor fellows).
The forklifts are petrol or diesel-fuelled which probably adds to the power with which one of them hits the racking structure. Battery powered forklifts probably wouldn't do as much damage.
The racking structure does not appear to be fixed to the ground or attached to the roof, which may account for the "easy" way the whole thing collapses like a house of cards.

Democrats triumph in New York as Republicans fight like rats in a sack

2009-11-04T18:58:00.003Z

Last night's US election results were billed as a verdict on one year of Obama. And the verdict was? Um.....er.....a mixed bag. The Republicans picked up the Virginia governorship, which was predictable. But a more knife-edge race in New Jersey, which the Democrats should have won, also swung to the Republicans.

However, any celebrations for the Republicans were somewhat dampened by the result in the 23rd New York congressional district, which was a truly stupendous result for the Democrats. It's the first time the Democrats have won that seat since the Civil War. And the reason they did it is a damning verdict on the current state of the Republican party. There were three main candidates in the race until last weekend; the unusual third contender being a candidate, Doug Hoffman, from the Conservative party. Yes, you read right, the American Conservative party. Their slogan is "Fighting the two party system, one county at a time". In an extraordinary display of indiscipline, and firm evidence, for me, that she cannot be considered a serious Presidential candidate for 2012, Sarah Palin supported Hoffman. Then last weekend the Republican candidate withdrew. The result of all this chaos in the Republican ranks was to let the Democrats in.

That in many ways is totemic of the state of the Republican party across the USA. They are fighting amongst themselves as to whether they should go for a right-ward lurch or occupy the centre ground. And they ain't done fightin' yet.

Take into account Bloomberg's narrow scrape at the hands of the Democrat candidate in New York, and recent polling (see below) and this isn't a bad set of results for Obama:

A year after he won the presidential election, 54% of Americans approve of the job President Obama is doing, according to a new CNN/Opinion Research survey.Said pollster Keating Holland: "Obama's approval rating of 54 percent is nearly identical to the 53 percent of the vote he won a year ago. And in nearly every demographic category, the percent that approve of Obama today is within two to three points of the percent who voted for him in 2008."

A Tory government would do the same; but with a posh accent

2009-11-03T08:43:00.002Z

That appears to be the "choice" Torylab present us with, in respect of the Nutt affair.

As I astonished myself with my own readiness to listen to Smooth radio with Mark Goodier yesterday, I heard our Pontificater-in-waiting, D. Cameron, on Nutt. It was clear he would have done exactly the same as the current government concering this.

Oh, but wait: he loudly decried the "unseemly spat" over the affair. He criticised Alan Johnson for "shouting" at Nutt over the airwaves. So, obviously, the"shouting" with a Tory government would be done behind closed doors.Grayling, presuming someone has had time to brief him, will give advisers one of those 'dressings down' he's talked about. It would all be done behind closed doors, presumably, but with a reassuringly expensive accent.

And this approach would benefit the public - how? At least with Labour to get to hear these slanging matches.

Is it OK to keep on gloating over Nick Griffin on Question Time?

2009-11-01T19:25:00.001Z

Yes.

It was amusing to hear Darrell O'Brien going on about this on Wossie. He said that basically Griffin is "no good on telly". And he also said that the best bit was Griffin, afterwards, saying "Boo hoo - they ganged up on me".

Good point. The BNP, as led by Griffin, seem to have an infinite ability to twist any argument around to extract, what they think is, maximum advantage. This oftens leads them into the most perverse positions. And the "they ganged up on me" position is perhaps one of the most perverse and self-defeating of the lot.

Think about it. Nick Griffin is meant to be this fantastically strong and clever leader. He said going on Question Time was a breathrough for his party and there was countless pre-publicity including a "countdown clock" on the BNP web site.

Then, when he got there, he was shredded into small pieces, mainly by the audience.

So he complains, particularly about the audience, saying that the show shouldn't have been held in London because it is "not a British city any more".

Well, think about that one also. The BNP are often implying, and I've had comments from their supporters saying this, that some races are not as clever as others.

So we had their strong and clever leader confronted by people from supposedly "not as clever" heritages who managed to "bully" him.

It doesn't stack up. Either he is very clever and strong or he is a pathetic wimp who lacks basic televisual skills. They can't have it both ways.

The lobby of the new Newbury Cinema - custom built for exhibitionists

2009-11-01T18:34:00.007Z

A couple of photos from walking around Newbury this weekend.

It's very good to see the new cinema ready for the off. Something tells me that the wide glass front to the lobby, which looks out onto the busy Market Street/Cheap Street junction, is likely to attract....well let's just say "exhibitionists". I'll leave it at that.

It's great to see that the Monument pub has spruced itself up. Some years ago, the "Monument" title was drowned out by its owner's brand name. Now they seem rightly proud of this historic name, with its connections to the Great Fire of London.

"Beach ball referee" strikes again

2009-11-01T08:55:00.004Z

My adviser on football tells me that the referee who allowed the infamous "beach ball goal" against Liverpool has been disciplined: (this report is dated October 19th)

Mike Jones, the referee who incorrectly awarded Darren Bent's goal for Sunderland against Liverpool on Saturday, will not officiate in the Premier League this weekend.
Bent's shot struck a beach ball thrown from the visiting section at the Stadium of Light and deflected past the Liverpool goalkeeper Pepe Reina.
Fifa's laws of the game state "the referee should stop, suspend or abandon the match because of outside interference of any kind", meaning the goal should have been ruled out and the match restarted with a drop ball.
Jones will take charge of the Championship game between Peterborough and Scunthorpe at London Road.

A little bit of justice, but Liverpool could lose out on Champions League involvement and, therefore, millions of pounds of revenue, because the referee and three other officials didn't seem to be aware of a basic rule of the game, known even to referees of Sunday park games.

And now look at this. The same referee presided over Hull v Burnley yesterday and is again in the firing line for his decisions:

Phil Brown (Hull's manager) was left fuming at Turf Moor after match official Mike Jones cost his side a vital three points this afternoon.The City manager, who was under increased scrutiny with many believing he has only two games with which to save his City career, was not helped by the inept officiating of Jones, with Brown citing four costly incorrect decisions.

Banking: Mr Mainwaring set for comeback

2009-11-01T08:42:00.005Z

Look at the wonderful nostalgia pervading the government's expected announcement of the break-up of the government controlled banks. You can smell it.

We'll see the return of the dear old Trustees Savings Bank! How wonderful and quaint! I remember we had a little branch in Bude in Landsdown Road back in the sixties. Marvellous.

And even more wonderful and obscure - we'll see the return of the Williams & Glyn's bank! Am I dreaming this?

It's all redolant of those old leather bound blotters, pens on chains, polished wood and managers in three piece suits who wrote you stern letters when you were £1 overdrawn.

Strangely enough, I think this may be a step in the right direction. But how long it will be before this small banks are again gobbled up by big ones; is anyone's guess. Five minutes perhaps?

Another advisory professor disagreed with Professor Nutt

2009-11-01T08:28:00.003Z

There was an interesting call to Any Answers? yesterday from a former Chief Investigations Officer with the customs service, who was in that career for 40 years and has followed and attended the deliberations of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. He said that it should be borne in mind that, apart from Professor Nutt, another Professor on the Council was and is advising in the opposite direction - i.e its reclassification to its present Class B status. That was Professor Lewis Appleby, the government's Director Mental Health.

So, the situation does not seem as clear-cut as has been made out. This fellow on Any Answers? also said that he thought Professor Nutt had not been sacked (from what is an unpaid role, by the way) for expressing opinions, but for not accepting the situation whereby politicians decide and the Advisory Council advises.

I merely pass this on.

Lembit: Off the wall but not clinically insane

2009-10-31T18:20:00.004Z

James Graham has written a very stimulating post on copyright law, which has led to some extensive comments and a further post from David Weber.

The simple answer to James' titular question "Will Lembit have me arrested?" (for re-posting his Daily Sport articles on Prawn Free Lembit) is "No". Lembit might be slightly off the wall, but he is not clinically insane. But I can see the logical extension in James' mind. Lembit spoke up for Madelson's plan to switch off illegal file sharers. It's a logical next step for James to be clamped in irons for copying Lembit's Sporty bon mots.

James makes some interesting points:

The death of the music industry – which is a real possibility – will not mean the death of music. Music existed before copyright laws and it will exist long after them as well. People won’t suddenly stop making music. What it will probably mean is the death of the superstar.

Well yes. The first caveman who came up with an interesting beat with his stick on a pig's bladder didn't get paid. He may have been given a couple of drops of a base intoxicating liquor by an appreciative fellow cave dweller. And did whoever come up with "Greensleeves" get paid? It's been sung billions of times. I am surprised the PRS for Music aren't onto this one.

I would have thought that we'll see a very different music industry emerging the future. I very much doubt whether we'll see its death.

Where I feel somewhat at a tangent from James is that his remarks tend to address the rich end of the music industry spectrum. Perhaps this is not surprising, since the recent examples of copyright dilemmas I've heard of in the media have been at the "top end".

Cliff Richard brought out the violins to complain that he was losing the rights to records he made over 50 years ago. Presumably he was worried that he wouldn't be able to afford another vineyard. Ironically, one of the first of his records to "cop it" and go out of copyright was "Move it", recorded in February 1959 at Abbey Road studios. I say "ironically" because it is, IMHO, the only decent record he has ever made (although I have to give "The Day I met Marie" a bit of a passingly respectful nod). If he deserves the performing proceeds to any of his records it is "Move it", which he doesn't (have the rights to the proceeds anymore, that is).

Then we had the example of Pete Waterman. Not short of a penny, is our Pete, I would have thought (at least if he's wisely invested the spondoolicks from his 'Stock, Aitken and Waterman' years). But he set off a campaign against YouTube on the basis that he had only, allegedly, received only £11 in 2008 for producing Never Gonna Give You up by Rick Astley, which received, he claimed, 100 million plays on YouTube.

On a slightly different note, there have also been unfortunate incidents about royalty payments, which have hit the headlines. Gary Glitter reportedly may have received substantial royalties after a computer company bungled and used a Joan Jett cover version of "Do you wanna touch me" in an ad. They pulled the advert when they realised that Glitter was entitled to royalties because he wrote the song.

And then we had the very unsavoury image of Jonathan King, fresh out of clink, crowing about getting megabucks for the use of "It's Good News week" on a Channel Four series.

So the headlines have not been good on this subject. They've concentrated on the very rich and the dodgy musicians and performers.

So let me name a few names of people I think do deserve royalties and who don't deserve to be ripped off due to internet piracy. Kevin Ayres. Neil Arthur. Sally Oldfield. Sandy Shaw. Gerry Rafferty. Sam Brown. Glenn Gregory. Dan le Sac. Martin Fry. Robert Wyatt. Some of them have been famous for a little while. But they are not stars now. They are certainly not "superstars". Far from it. They are the type of people who rely on royalties, often for songs they wrote or recorded many years ago, to keep on performing, or just live from day to day. (Many of them have posted on this site - Fair Play for Creators).

So it is these sorts of people - and thousands of working musicians like them, that I feel we ought to focus on. Not the "superstars".

So I think Lembit makes a fair point when he says:

Most musicians and and songwriters aren’t loaded, especially if they’re just starting out. If they don’t get paid they can’t make music, it’s as simple as that.

He is also pretty convincing when he says:

With over 20 LEGAL online services in theUK, like iTunes and Spotify, you can download legally without wrecking the industry.

Indeed. You can get most tunes free and legal on Spotify.

Coming back to James, he goes off on one here:

Will it be possible to make money as a musician in the future? It all depends on what your aspirations are. Any halfway successful musician will be able to make several multiples of what I’ll earn in my lifetime, but there’ll be a lot fewer multi-millionaires. You probably won’t ever get that private jet I’m afraid. The simple fact are only so many punters out there and talent is nothing like as hard to come by as Smash Hits and NME led us to believe. They lied.
But is rendering musician to the status of mere vocation such a terrible thing? Money has destroyed so many talents over the years that it is hard to shed a tear for the decline of the superstar. Is it really so wonderful that popular music has become so strongly associated with excess, mental illness, vanity, self-abasement and violence? More musicians earning less money is a scenario in which 99% of us win.

I really think James is seeing the music industry through the wrong end of a telescope. The overwhelming bulk of musicians are scraping a living, if that. This obsession with "multi-millionaires" is really misleading. And starting to bring "superstar" deaths into it is a distraction. Fine, we'll see the decline of the superstar. But that's not the issue. The issue are the thousands of unknowns scraping a living who rely on the proceeds from a few of their songs or records to get by. It's those people who are, quite rightly, motivating the PRS for Music with their campaign against internet piracy.

I should mention that I don't agree with the Mandelson "switch off" plan either. But sooner or later people who illegally share files on a grand scale should expect some form of reckoning.

Lay off poor Prince Eddy

2009-10-31T15:21:00.002Z

I'm no fan of Prince Edward. I'm a raving Republican and Eddyboy strikes me as one of the less inspiring members of a very uninspiring and, importantly, unnecessary Royal Family.

But I've heard what he said in Australia about the Duke of Edinburgh award scheme:

The sense of adventure, the sense of excitement, that it gave you that sort of risk element, young people are like that still; that sense of adventure, that sense that (death) is possible...Obviously we don't want that to happen, certainly it's not our intention ... It was just that psychology about what makes young people tick.

Well, it's true. He could have phrased it better. It's somewhat offensive to the family of a lad who died in the bush in 2006 while on an DofE award outing. But it's hardly an earth-shattering statement.

If anything, he's probably given much needed and deserved publicity to this fine award scheme of which I am a proud Bronze badge holder. Only the other night, I was recalling how our Chemistry teacher came out when we were on our expedition, some thirty five years ago, to check that we had put our tents up OK and wouldn't get cold overnight. Hardly 'living on the edge'.

Johnson's choice

2009-10-31T14:58:00.001Z

Think about it. You have a very powerful job but it will end in eight months. Nothing you can do will change that end date; so, you have eight months to do what you want.

So, do you:

1. Follow the agenda of the Daily Mail ?

2. Follow evidence-based scientific advice ?

It's a tricky one, isn't it? .....Not.

Having said that, in fairness to Alan Johnson, he was getting conflicting advice from two professors.

Obama personally honours war dead

2009-10-29T19:24:00.002Z

In a marked departure with the George W. Bush years, Barack Obama has travelled at dawn to Dover, Delaware to witness the return of the bodies of 18 Americans killed this week in Afghanistan. With his big decision on Afghanistan due soon, this seems like a wise thing to do.

The curious case of Arnold Schwarzeneger and a 1 in 10 billion "coincidence"

2009-10-28T21:25:00.000Z

I suppose you could say that it is a bit like that infinite number of monkeys and typewriters...

But let's face it. With a Governor very much under siege against an antipathetic state assembly and his state in melt-down, how many rejections of bills would there need to be before, by sheer coincidence, the first letters of each line read "F*** YOU" ?

Not many it seems. Is Arnie cracking up under the strain, one wonders?

Ammiano Veto Message

Nick Griffin slapped 20 million times

2009-10-28T19:25:00.000Z

Oh dear, I missed it. Slap Nick Griffin has now been taken down. But you can still savour something of the experience below.

Dead fly journalism

2009-10-28T18:58:00.000Z

...An excellent opportunity to wheel out the word "apocryphal" and the phrase "A lie can make it half way around the world before the truth has time to put its boots on" (attributed to Churchill and Twain - and in today's world of the interweb thinget that should be updated to "ten times round the world..").

Gordon Brown was never asked about his favourite biscuit.

And, while we're at it, Samantha Cameron didn't nonchalantly walk into M&S and pick up a £65 dress. Quite the opposite.

Name recognition beats clever debate points-scoring any day of the week

2009-10-24T20:28:00.000+01:00

I must say I thoroughly enjoyed "Let's kick the cr*p out of Nick Griffin" night on the BBC. Wonderful fun!

I was rather concerned that Griffin would be comfortably subsumed within the normal format of Question Time with blah-blah-blah about the Mail strike and bleat-bleat-bleat about Afghanistan. I also braced myself for him to be politely applauded by the audience for his reasonableness.

But we must never under-estimate the BBC.

The audience were without doubt the stars of the show. As soon as I heard their first reaction I thought "Crikey the BBC have really stacked that audience!"

Audience selection for these sorts of things is a fine art. They don't just open the doors and let the first load of people in. They don't just ask for interested people over the internet and give tickets on a first come, first served basis. They actually use proper researchers. People with degrees who phone you and ask you a series of questions about your political views and background. I think they normally ask for a photo also. Then they get back to you if you are selected. And they scrupulously select a balanced audience. If Nick Griffin does complain about the audience profile, he'll get a dusty response. He'll be given evidence that the audience numerically reflected how the nation votes. (You will have noticed a couple of BNP supporters shouting "rubbish" at Jack Straw at the end - well two people is about what they are entitled to if you look at how the nation votes overall).

But it was wonderful to see the ire aimed at, and the full-throated condemnation of, Griffin. Truly exhilerating and, I think, vindication (in the short term at least) of the policy of "giving him enough rope and he'll hang himself".

And of course, in the morning, all us Liberals gleefully enjoyed the headline in the Indie: The BBC gave Griffin the oxygen of publicity and he choked. Oh how we gloated!

But I am afraid that what actually happened in the programme will not matter much. The surrounding publicity will give Nick Griffin and the BNP sufficient name recognition to increase their vote anyway. On Friday GMTV was inundated with people saying Griffin had been treated unfairly. The BBC online Have Your Say section was flooded with support for Griffin. OK, some of those would be "put up" jobs, but not all - there was a veritable torrent of comment in that direction. And OK, the YouGov poll saying 25% of people would consider voting for the BNP may be a bit of a blip as is, perhaps, their poll increase from 2% to 3%.

However, like or not, I fear we will have to get used to debating with the BNP. Their vote is likely to increase somewhat.

So I look forward to the debate going a bit deeper. I would have liked to hear Griffin on normal policies, like the Mail strike. I would also like to have gone a stage beyond "Racist!" with the debate on the BNP's policies. A young Asian gentleman asked Griffin where he would like him to go. Griffin said he was happy with him staying in this country. Next time, I'd like to hear discussion of the BNP policy on this matter:

...we call for...the introduction of a system of voluntary resettlement whereby those immigrants who are legally here will be afforded the opportunity to return to their lands of ethnic origin assisted by a generous financial incentives both for individuals and for the countries in question.

So in the middle of a recession, with the NHS, schools and police crying out for money, the BNP wants to waste money on "generous financial incentives" to hand out one way tickets to people - turning the government into a sort of Thomas Cook on steroids.

It's discussion of that sort of total madness that I'd like to see next, now we have initially lanced the boil of the BNP's mystique.

Oh and by the way, this article in the The Times nicely puts paid to Griffin's utter rubbish about Britain having an "indigenous race":

A leading geneticist has accused Nick Griffin of misinterpreting his work to claim that Britain has an “indigenous” white population that dates back to the Ice Age.
The BNP leader claimed on BBC One’s Question Time last night that the white English, Welsh, Scots and Irish were “Britain’s Aborigines”, descended from the first people to inhabit the British Isles around 17,000 years ago.
His assertion appeared to be based on research by Professor Stephen Oppenheimer, a geneticist at the University of Oxford, who published his findings in 2006 in a book called The Origins of the British.
Professor Oppenheimer, however, told The Times that Mr Griffin had misinterpreted his science to support his political views.
“I assumed he was misinterpreting me,” Professor Oppenheimer said. “After the programme I went back to look at what I’d written. I wrote quite a bit about issues of racism. I feared some people like Griffin would probably hijack this — I assumed that fascists would cherry-pick different bits from my book to support their views.”

...Mr Griffin decried multiculturalism, which he said had been imposed on the British people. “We are the Aborigines here,” he told the audience. “It is racist to shut white people out of their own country. The majority of the British people are descended from people who have lived here since time immemorial who now feel shut out from their own country.”

Professor Oppenheimer questioned that assertion, saying that all British people were of immigrant descent and that it was impossible to identify an “indigenous” population of the sort claimed by Mr Griffin.

“He’s missed the point of the genetics in terms of his perspective that he can determine who is indigenous British,” he said. “All British people are immigrants.”

Professor Oppenheimer backed an assertion by another panellist, Bonnie Greer, the American-born black writer, that the original Britons were Neanderthals.

The Professor added: "As [Ms Greer] pointed out, the original Britons were Neanderthals. They were exterminated, then the Ice Age left a clean sheet. The modern population is essentially of north Iberian origin. So what’s British?" “The purpose of looking at mitochondrial DNA and the Y chromosome in this way is not to identify the race of a person. They are just markers representing a tiny fraction of our genome. They do not tell you what someone’s like and pale European skin colour is largely the result of just one mutation, which protects them from getting rickets as infants. He’s using this information to bolster his political views, but genetics can’t do that.”

Royal Mail: Granny Smith doesn't matter anymore

2009-10-24T17:58:00.001+01:00

Here's a very illuminating article in the London Review of Books. It's been written by a postman of five years standing. He demolishes the constant refrain from Mail managers and Mandelson that "figures are down":

Mail is delivered to the offices in grey boxes. These are a standard size, big enough to carry a few hundred letters. The mail is sorted from these boxes, put into pigeon-holes representing the separate walks, and from there carried over to the frames. This is what is called ‘internal sorting’ and it is the job of the full-timers, who come into work early to do it. In the past, the volume of mail was estimated by weighing the boxes. These days it is done by averages. There is an estimate for the number of letters that each box contains, decided on by national agreement between the management and the union. That number is 208. This is how the volume of mail passing through each office is worked out: 208 letters per box times the number of boxes. However, within the last year Royal Mail has arbitrarily, and without consultation, reduced the estimate for the number of letters in each box. It was 208: now they say it is 150. This arbitrary reduction more than accounts for the 10 per cent reduction that the Royal Mail claims is happening nationwide.
Doubting the accuracy of these numbers, the union ordered a random manual count to be undertaken over a two-week period in a number of offices across the region. Our office was one of them. On average, those boxes which the Royal Mail claims contain only 150 letters, actually carry 267 items of mail. This, then, explains how the Royal Mail can say that the figures are down, although every postman knows that volume is up. The figures are down all right, but only because they have been manipulated.

And he reports a disturbing shift in the raison d'etre of the Royal Mail:

Like many businesses, the Royal Mail has a pet name for its customers. The name is ‘Granny Smith’. It’s a deeply affectionate term. Granny Smith is everyone, but particularly every old lady who lives alone and for whom the mail service is a lifeline. When an old lady gives me a Christmas card with a fiver slipped in with it and writes, ‘Thank you for thinking of me every day,’ she means it. I might be the only person in the world who thinks about her every day, even if it’s only for long enough to read her name on an envelope and then put it through her letterbox. There is a tension between the Royal Mail as a profit-making business and the Royal Mail as a public service. For most of the Royal Mail management – who rarely, if ever, come across the public – it is the first. To the delivery officer – to me, and people like me, the postmen who bring the mail to your door – it is more than likely the second.
We had a meeting a while back at which all the proposed changes to the business were laid out. Changes in our hours and working practices. Changes to our priorities. Changes that have led to the current chaos. We were told that the emphasis these days should be on the corporate customer. It was what the corporations wanted that mattered. We were effectively being told that quality of service to the average customer was less important than satisfying the requirements of the big businesses.
Someone piped up in the middle of it. ‘What about Granny Smith?’ he said. He’s an old-fashioned sort of postman, the kind who cares about these things.
‘Granny Smith is not important,’ was the reply. ‘Granny Smith doesn’t matter any more.’
So now you know.

What exactly is the postal strike about?

2009-10-24T14:27:00.002+01:00

Most of the time with a strike, you can point to a specific "sticking point" between the employers and employees, which causes the strike and which, when resolved, leads to the end of the strike.

You know the sort of thing. Management propose a pay rise of 0.5%, the unions demand 8% and then they both sit down and agree on 3.73% tapered over 5 years backdated to last January 1st with productivity gains agreed.

Well, OK, what is the "sticking point" in the Royal Mail dispute?

Any thoughts?

I have just listened to Billy Hayes, leader of the Communication Workers Union, on Any Questions? He was asked this specific question. And answer came there none. He went on about job losses in the past and how awful the current management are. But we were left none the wiser as to what is the actual nub of the strike.

I've read an article by Billy Hayes in the Mirror and he presents a smorgasbord of vague grievances, the most specific of which is this:

Royal Mail will not agree to independent experts agreeing what constitutes a fair day's work. At the moment postal workers are being bullied to carry unmanageable workloads and being disciplined when they fail.

The sooner this gets to Acas the better. But I think Acas will find that they need to attempt to knit fog in order to try to settle the dispute. Good luck to them. It is almost seems that the strike is about a very broad topic: "Who runs the Post Office?"

The unions and management need to be careful because the answer may be, in the end, "TNT or DHL", as their business goes elsewhere. Already, Amazon have cancelled their £25million contract with the Royal Mail.

Giant seagull attacks newsreader!

2009-10-22T20:28:00.000+01:00

Let's turn on BBC1 at 10:40!

2009-10-22T19:29:00.001+01:00

It is interesting how opinion is split about having Nick Griffin on Question Time. Neil Woollcott, for example, says we should turn off BCC1 at 10:40.

I couldn't disagree more! Turn on BBC1 at 10:40!

The more people see Nick Griffin - let alone hear him - the better. He looks absolutely weird. Occasionally one of his eyes looks in a different direction than the other one. Priceless!

And the things he says? Well we only have to look at this week: Comparing distinguished generals to Nazi war criminals. Criticising the British Legion. Calling a Cabinet Minister a former bank robber. Claiming Churchill would vote BNP.

The man is a venomous clown and the more rope we give him the better he'll hang himself.

Words of wisdom on Afghanistan

2009-10-21T20:57:00.000+01:00

There's an excellent article on Afghanistan in today's Independent from Paddy Ashdown.

I have also been impressed by the wisdom of US Vice-President Joe Biden as described in Newsweek:

Joe Biden had a question. During a long Sunday meeting with President Obama and top national-security advisers on Sept. 13, the VP interjected, "Can I just clarify a factual point? How much will we spend this year on Afghanistan?" Someone provided the figure: $65 billion. "And how much will we spend on Pakistan?" Another figure was supplied: $2.25 billion. "Well, by my calculations that's a 30-to-1 ratio in favor of Afghanistan. So I have a question. Al Qaeda is almost all in Pakistan, and Pakistan has nuclear weapons. And yet for every dollar we're spending in Pakistan, we're spending $30 in Afghanistan. Does that make strategic sense?" The White House Situation Room fell silent. But the questions had their desired effect: those gathered began putting more thought into Pakistan as the key theater in the region.

Relief for Chris Rennard, but the system still stinks and the Fedex needs to pull its finger out

2009-10-21T20:27:00.004+01:00

I am personally very happy for Chris Rennard on the news that the Clerk of the Palriaments (presumably someone who wears stockings to work) has cleared him of any wrong-doing over his expenses/allowances. Chris didn’t deserve this cloud hanging over him.

Looking at the Lords situation generally, however, it appears that the expenses/allowances rules are/were even vaguer than those in the Commons. That really is saying something….

As regards the Liberal Democrat party, I think Stephen Tall is right in his LDV piece: "Rennard’s expenses clearance: Party needs to learn some lessons in transparency". The silence of the Fedex was deafening. The party seemed to be just keeping schtum and hoping the problem would go away.

I thought the Fedex commissioned some sort of independent audit of the LibDem Lords’ expenses, didn’t they? In which case what happened to that?

All this has convinced me that no expenses or allowances should be paid to any parliamentarians apart from the normal travel expenses and hotel expenses that would be paid to most employees in business.

We need to completely wipe clean the House of Lords, in terms of membership, and start with an entirely fresh set of senators. A Senate! Crikey! That’s revolutionary isn’t it?!!!! How on earth will the country survive the shock!!!!!!!! Noone’s ever done that before have they????!!! No wigs! How awful! It's just not British! [Stamps little foot]

Those Senators should be elected under the understanding that they will only receive travel and hotel expenses on the production of receipts and that they will not receive allowances. If they don’t like it then they shouldn’t stand for election.

Ditto the Commons. Any accomodation for MPs in London should either be hotel stays reimbursed with the production of a receipt or state-owned accomodation with state-owned furniture. If MPs don’t like it then they can sod off and get another job.

It really is the time to stop faffing around and get on with properly reforming our system pdq.

Daily Mail - getting things into perspective

2009-10-20T20:27:00.000+01:00

I've complained twice to the PCC about the Jan Moir article, and complained to the Daily Mail editor. I also strongly believe that now is the time for the PCC to become much more independent. Imagine my shock when I discovered that the person I was complaining to at the Daily Mail - the editor in chief, Paul Dacre - is also chairman of the PCC's Code of Conduct committee! That can't be right. Surely it is not rocket science to have some independent press experts on PCC panels, is it? They don't have to be currently engaged with vested interests in particular newspapers. It's ridiculous.

Having said all that, I do think a couple of things ought to be said to put the Jan Moir article in context; vile and disgusting though it was.

Firstly, I really think that articles in newspapers should be seen in the context of the regular readership of those newspapers. I have no idea how many regular Daily Mail or Mail Online readers complained to the PCC about the article. However, I suspect it was a relatively small proportion of the 25,000 complainants. Why does that matter? Well, regular readers do actually read other articles in the paper over time. The output of a newspaper should not be judged by one article alone (and, yes, I realise that the whole output of the Daily Mail is regularly offensive, but also bear in mind that the vast majority of the Daily Mail's output is actually benign tosh about celebrities and sport. Fred Basset, anyone?)

Which brings me to my second point. They were perhaps closing the stable door after the horse had bolted, but at least the Mail did feature an article yesterday from another of its regular columnists, Janet Street-Porter, who at least provides a small progressive voice within the paper's output. Her article on the Jan Moir article, the Stephen Gately death and "gay bashing" incidents in general is well worth reading. It's called "Being gay killed a man last week - and he wasn't Stephen Gately":

I was astonished to read in Jan Moir's column last Friday that his death 'strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships', and 'under the carapace of glittering hedonistic celebrity, the ooze of a very different and more dangerous lifestyle has seeped out for all to see'.

What exactly was bothering Jan? The fact Stephen was gay, the fact he was in a civil partnership, or the fact that he or his partner might have enjoyed sex with someone they had just met?

I don't think that gay men all behave in the same way - there are as many varieties of relationships within the gay community as there are in the straight one.

Civil Partnerships are just that - they are not marriages. And let's not forget, whether Jan likes it or not, they have been enshrined in law by our democratically elected parliament.

If Stephen and his partner went to a nightclub and returned to their flat with another man, is it really any of our business?

Fact - Stephen Gately died of natural causes, not from guilt. It's not as if extra-marital sex is unusual in our society.