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Archive for the ‘Reform and Change’ Category

The other day, Liverpool Council that most “Tory” of towns announced that they were withdrawing from anything to do with the “Tory Big Society” idea because of the ‘cuts’ to their budget – boo hoo ! Could not even the blind, see that one coming from totally Socialist Liverpool ? They only ‘joined in’ the idea because perhaps by doing so, they thought they might ‘protect existing Central Government hand outs’, the fact that the ‘game’ had long since moved on, never occurred to them.

But it is interesting as an example of whether an idea such as the “Big Society” can even get a hearing in a totally selfish and self-centred world.

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Following on from the recent events in Tunisia, The Yemen and now Egypt, it looks as though there is a degree of revolution in the air and potential changes in Leaders and Regimes that may well threaten Western interests both politically and economically. Inevitably under the current circumstances, there will be a fear of Muslim Extremists stepping into any political vacuum that opens up during this time of change.

However, the reality is that whether in these countries, Saudi Arabia or a number of others, change was always going to happen sooner or later and it may well be that now, might be more favourable to Western interests than possibly at any other time if only, because now it is not just a matter of “American or Western Interests” alone, it also involves China and India.

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There will no doubt be many recriminations flying around over the next few days and whilst the Sunday Tabloids will focus on the winner of the “X Factor”, the Sunday broadsheets will grind on relentlessly about how the Police mishandled the “Student Demonstration” and the needless exposure of the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall to a break away group of protesters, there is only one reality:

Absolutely no one walks away from these events with clean hands and the attack on the Royal Couple was one sure fire way by which those students present, totally lost the argument…

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I have at times of boredom or weakness, engaged in ‘comments wars’, they can get quite grisly because hiding behind some anonymous name, people can feel quite free to be totally silly and downright insulting so normally I ignore them but the following mild example may provide some amusement.

One of the staff writers on The Daily Telegraph is Janet Daley who I rarely read because like Simon Heffer who also writes for the DT, she is none too bright and her right wing fan club that comment on her articles are pretty unhinged at the best of times however, today it was worth a crack: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/janetdaley/8165185/Why-dont-we-love-David-Cameron.html#dsq-content

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It seems appropriate to return to the topic of Higher Education, University and so on. Higher Education is not a “Right” as secondary education is, it is an option that should be ‘earned’ through personal ability and merit rather than an “Ability to Pay” or a Government measure based upon qualifying by a “Poverty Diktat”.

In this context and in terms of the 15% or so who could benefit from a purely academic education and providing the intake was kept to about that, via a system of grants and bursaries, most students could likely be fully funded which is never going to be the case if 40-50% of secondary school children want to go to University, end of discussion…

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Quite often, some might say all too often, the reader’s responses to articles published in the Media are often far more interesting than the published original and one response because no doubt of my personal experiences, caught my attention concerning “Carers”.

We all know that cuts in Government expenditure are coming and therefore in the run up to the final decisions being made in October, one can expect just about every special interest to be putting forward the case why they should be ‘left alone’. However and as I thought about it, there is rather more to this “Benefits Reform” and in a sense, the basic decision hinges around whether people expect help from the State on the basis of a ‘right’, a contractual basis or, on as ‘needed’ basis.

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A writer in the Independent today penned a piece entitled, “University is not right for everyone and that sentiment touches upon what I have felt for quite a few years now. http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/philip-hensher/philip-hensher-university-isnrsquot-right-for-everyone-2053386.html

It is a simple fact of life that when only a few people take part in any particular activity, it tends to be ‘Fun’. Driving a car used to be fun before everyone had a car and were competing for the same bit of road space. Likewise, not only are our roads overcrowded but in these small islands subject to heavy commercial air traffic, so too are the skies. If you fancy flying privately, it is only tolerable whilst there are few other people wanting to do the same, faced with congestion and higher demand, rationing of any activity by “price or licence” is inevitable.

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Of all the former Labour Ministers, John Hutton was one of the better ones and at least as Defence Minister, looked like he cared. His very public resignation had a degree of ‘principle’ to it and the ever craven David Miliband would have done well to have followed him and set off a change of Labour Leadership before the General Election.

The Labour Party has very little ‘talent’ available as the current Leadership Election demonstrates only too clearly (a bit like a Muppet Show), they really couldn’t afford to lose people like Hutton who stood down at the last election.

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The Independent in its infinite wisdom has decided to change the way it deals with readers comments on articles, a move designed to increase boredom and decrease any valid ‘debate’. I have lived through this before; It was contributing to the Telegraph that first led me to set up this blog back in November 2007 but they too decided to change their “readers comments” set-up and turn the whole thing to boring dross and now too the ‘Indy’ follows – Oh Well…there you go.

But the reason that I mention this is simply that of only a couple of regular Independent columnists worth reading, John Rentoul is one and the starting point for this particular blog was an entry he made on the ‘old system’ so whereas I would normally just give you a web link, as this may disappear into the ether, I have had to quote the key passages which I dislike because it is other people’s copyright:-

John Rentoul: The Hung Parliament Party – http://johnrentoul.independentminds.livejournal.com/408639.html

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With a new Parliament gathering, there is the opportunity to elect a new Speaker. In my opinion, Bercow has not demonstrated the type of energetic leadership that was required after Martin stepped down and set against the background of the “Expenses Scandal” so, he needs to be replaced and likely by someone with a bit of gravitas and or intellectual wit.

At the time and although neither put themselves forward, I thought that either Frank Field or Vince Cable would be excellent candidates.

Of course one could argue that until the issue of the Separation of Powers between the Executive and the Legislature is resolved, there is currently no longer under the existing state of the Constitution, any particular reason that the Speaker is a sitting MP, their job could be done by a whole number of outside people – Speaker Paxman ?