As he points out, that is effectively a transfer of funding from ‘Labour areas’ to ‘Tory areas’. But it doesn’t get to the bottom of what exactly Lansley is up to with his argument.

Lansley is in fact correct to say that age is the principal determinant of healthcare need. As people approach being dead, their call on health services increases dramatically.

What you can’t then do is argue that the government should therefore skew the whole of the healthcare budget towards areas where there are higher concentrations of nearly dead people.

This is because most of the healthcare budget is NOT spent on those bits of care related to people being nearly dead; the biggest part of the budget is in fact spent on that percentage of the population which happens to need it at a point or points in their life before their nearly dead point.

Take a look around any hospital. It’s got people in it who are clearly not nearly dead, and who are receiving healthcare which is, on he whole, more expensive to provide than the care provided to the nearly dead.

But those not-nearly-dead people receiving the more expensive healthcare are only a smallish percentage of all of us not-nearly-deads. So lots of people rarely or never need healthcare (at least until they’re nearly dead, and sometimes not even then). The whole point of the NHS is that they contribute anyway, so that the NHS exists if they do need it at some point.

Andrew Lansley seeks to bypass the incovenient fact that healthcare is needed more in poor areas by the not-nearly-dead-but-more-near-dead-than-teir-peers-in-richer-areas.

The problem for those opposed to such chicanery is that it can be an easy sell to compliant papers, precisely because the first part of his rationale is undeniable.

The challenge for the Left therefore, in addition to opposing the specifics of Lansley’s plan, is to set out how it forms part of a wider strategy of Tory deception.

Leaving the euro, goes the argument, will be a victory for the Greek people, and a real slap in the face for the Merkelian forces of austerity.

This is total bollocks. Leaving the euro may well be exceedingly good for a few Greeks, but it will be very bad news indeed for the vast majority.

These will be among the consequences of re-establishing the Drachma:

1. Within a day of the creation and flotation of the New Drachma (probably only electronic and virtual at first as it will take three to four months to print a new currency in sufficient quantities), its value will crash against ‘hard’ currencies, and the purchasing power of Greeks for anything imported will be slashed. It’s impossible to know by how much, but a cut of 75% purchasing power is certainly not out of the question.
2. In an internationalized economy like Greece, there is no such thing as ‘out of the euro’. Most rich Greeks able to do so will already have stored their wealth elsewhere and the capital flight will continue to happen. The idea of proper capital controls is frankly fanciful. As holders of still-valid euros, or other ‘hard’ currencies, they will then be in position to purchase both the assets and labour of the mass majority of increasingly desperate Greeks at rock-bottom rates.
3. A dual economy will swiftly emerge, as in pretty well all countries without their own hard currencies. This will further deepen inequalities in daily life, potentially even with usual services and products only available to those with access to hard currency, as will the emergence of black market currency trading, where the New Drachma is even less valuable than at the official exchange rate.
4. This might be exacerbated by the government seeking (understandably) to gather its tax revenues in hard currencies, although for the long-term it is better off using taxes collected in New Drachma as a way of stabilising and promoting its use within the wider economy.

Fortunately, the signs are that the hard-left party Syrzia have decent economists, who realise what the official exit from the Eurozone would mean for their constituents. While they are firm in their commitment to ending self-defeating austerity, they have already stated that they want Greece to remain in the Eurozone.

If British and other European socialists really want to help their comrades in Greece, they would be better off stopping the reality-free anti-German rhetoric, and starting to throw up alternatives that might assist their Greek comrades, as the latter enter an inevitable period of brinkmanship with Merkel and the European Commission.

One alternative already exists, of course. This, as our very own union economist Duncan Weldon has set out, is through “artificial devaluation”:

By imposing a duty on imports and equal subsidy to exports a country can, in effect, devalue its currency without leaving the Eurozone. A, say, 15% surcharge on imports and a 15% subsidy to exports in Greece would be effectively a 15% devaluation in the currency.

The question for socialists outside Greece is whether they prefer an end to this crisis which leave Merkel with egg on her face but the Greek people destitute, or one which lets Merkel leave office without the eggy bits but keeps the Greek people somewhere above the bread line.

Call me a hoary old social democrat washout, but I know which I prefer.

On 10th & 17th June, we have a two-round electoral contest potentially as exciting, and as important for France, as the election of President Hollande.

That’s because Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the leftwing group Front de gauche (FG), has just confirmed his candidacy in the 11th circonscription of the Pas-de-Calais département, where he will go up against Front National leader Marine Le Pen in the legislative elections, at which 577 deputés are elected across France to sit in the Assemblée Nationale.

This is a somewhat risky strategy, as Le Pen led here on the first round in the Presidential election with 31.4% of the vote. The second round (Hollande vs. Sarkozy) went to Hollande with 60.5% of the vote as FN voters obeyed Le Pen and abstained.

Much will depend, therefore, on whether Parti Socialiste (PS) voters choose to back Mélenchon at the expense of their own candidate, Philippe Kemel, in the second round (unlike in the Presidential elections, in the legislative elections all candidates gaining more than 12.5% if the vote in Round 1 vote go on to Round 2).

Alternatively, Mélenchon may step back, and advise FG round 1 voters to back the PS in Round 2 and allow Kemel to retain this Assemblée Nationale seat for the PS.

I suspect this is unlikely; Mélenchon will feel he has done the right thing by Hollande for the Presidential election, and that the favour should now be returned. Certainly he feels he has unfinished business with Hollande, and will want to be seen to hold Hollande to his promises e.g. the renegotation of the Merkozy Fiscal Compact.

In this case, much may depend on how much Kemel really wants to be deputé, and how willing he is to risk letting Le Pen through on a split leftist vote. Early indications from the Libération coverage suggest that Catherine Génisson, the boss of the FS Federation the Pas-de-Calais départment suggest, may indeed be open to a second round pact to allow Mélenchon through on the PS vote, but there are bound to be countervailing voices.

In any event, keep your eyes on results as they come out on 1oth June. While clearly who gets the seat in Round 2 is the most important, the symbolic value of round 1 can hardly be underestimated either (and may well lead to a significant PS to FG switch even in Round 1).

If Le Pen is beaten in Round 1 on home turf (she is already on the Regional Council here), then Mélenchon may attain national, even European leftie-hero status, and the Front National will have been dealt a significant blow. If it all goes pear-shaped, with Le Pen winning Round 1 and, heaven forbid, even sneaking through in Round 2, then it will be very bad news.

Marine Le Pen’s refusal to support her natural ally, despite the lengths he was prepared to go to in order to garner Front National votes, really only means one thing.

By consigning Sarkozy to defeat, she has kick-started the UMP infighting, and her very successful one year campaign detoxification campaign now puts her in prime position to pick up a large percentage of UMP votes in June’s parliamentary elections. That campaign started in earnest a couple of days ago.

The complacency surrounding her Round 1 vote percentage – the idea that she’s not that much of a threat – is likely to be washed away within a 50 days, as the parliamentary seats in all areas of France start to flow her way. She may not be the official opposition by the end of that 50 days, but to many French people she will look and sound like it.

Unlike her father, Marine Le Pen has – by force of circumstance – a coherent sounding argument on the economy, which touches a chord with many: ‘leave the Euro’ is a simple, effective message. This, mixed with the message that the UMP betrayed the French people on immigration and security (especially in the wake of the Toulouse killings), will have a powerful effect on a wide group of people.

After 2002, Le Pen père faded away for want of this. In 2012, Le Pen fille will not do so.

So what can British Labour and other European political parties concerned at the rise of neo-Nazism in a major European country do about it other than wring their hands?

Perhaps the only productive thing Labour can do is to support Hollande when he does his best to take on the European austerity machine, based in Brussels, with orders given in Berlin.

We know that Olli Rehn is already moving to fob off Hollande with vague reassurances, when the latter comes calling about his commitment to the French people to renegotiate the Merkozy Fiscal Treaty.

If the “grands travaux” public investment promised by Hollande does not flow, because it becomes stuck in the bureaucratic nightmare that is the ‘six pack’ Stablility and Growth Pact legislation, Le Pen will be quick to pounce: “Hollande is as bad as all the others” will be her claim. “Only I stand aside from the Eurocrat crowd”.

Labour must step in to help Hollande here, as best it can. It must argue, long and loud, that the Fiscal Treaty Hollande is seeking to renegotiate must take precedence over the legislation which was quietly – almost secretly – signed off last year.

The initial signs are good. Mandelson is no fool when it comes to Europe, and his call for a radical reconstruction on the way Europe runs its finances (this is overshadowed in the UK press by the idea of a referendum), he knows exactly what he’s doing: helping to open the way to a new agreement in Europe which sidesteps the machinations of Olli Rehn and his unelected cabale in Brussels.

It’s a good start. I just hope Miliband is watching and learning.

It is fairly clear that the author has had little recent contact with French politics, and the idea that France will be saved by withdrawal from the Euro and the defence of ‘national identity’ is little more than a sign of pitiful immaturity on the part of the author. But it causes concern when it’s passed through editorial hands at a mainstream paper.

What surprises me more is that relatively little attention has been paid by opponents of Marine Le Pen to what she really represents, and how recent acts continue to reflect this.

It is less than three months ago that Le Pen was guest of honour at a Burschenshaften [literally, 'fraternity] ball in Vienna, where she chose to dance with Austrian far right Freedom Party leader Martin Graff, who is a member of Olympia, a secret society which excludes Jews from its ranks.

Graff’s party is dedicated to the establishment of a ‘Germanic Cultural Community’ – the Nazi overtones are deliberate. The ball itself is notorious (and likely to be banned) as a gathering of far-right extremists, and Le Pen (like her father, a previous guest-of-honour) was likely making a knowing gesture of allegiance to far-right extremism.

Hollande and Sarkozy’s decision not to make a big issue of this is understandable; they risked giving the publicity Marine Le Pen craves.

What is odd though is that, to my knowledge, no British commentator on the French elections has done anything other than help to confirm the ‘detoxfication’ myth about Marine Le Pen, and how she apparently offers a radical alternative to the mainstream fare of the Hollande-Sarkozy show.

Indeed, more often than not, she is paired with leftwing candidate Jen-Luc Mélenchon, as comparable alternatives to the main parties. This is not just lazy’two for the price of one’ journalism; it’s also an enormous insult to Mélenchon and those who will vote for him in round 1.

Given this indolence, perhaps it is little wonder that someone as ignorant as the Daily Mail columnist feels empowered, alongside his editors, to promote the idea of a neo-Nazi as the leader of a major European power.

The Tories are already working hard to cast Labour’s union funding arrangements in an even worse light than its own, and a compliant media will ensure that, when the dust settles, it’s a score-draw.

Miliband and his team should now think strategically, not tactically.

Calling for a public inquiry is tactical response-by-numbers; the public is sick of public inquiries which never seem to change anything.

Instead, Miliband needs to act decisively, and announce that Labour plans to review its own funding processes. In so doing, Miliband will create clear water between Labour and the other parties on how and why it funds its politics.

There are two radical ways it can generate additional membership/union income and change its relationship to union funding.

First, the financial flows within the party need to be totally reversed.

All membership money and donations, barring a very small top slice for absolutely essential national administrative functions, should be distributed to CLPs (and possibly branch level in time) on a pro-rata basis according to membership numbers.

The CLPs, thus resourced, will then be open to ‘business plans’ from MPs/PPCs and from regional party structures/the NEC etc. which they can approve, ask to see amended, or reject as they see fit. Under your guidance, CLPs should have a mind to ensuring the smart, cost-effective campaigning you advocate.

Initially, the task facing CLPs may seem overwhelming, and some central support from the top slice may be necessary.

This devolution of power over the party’s resources will, in a fairly short space of time, create a major incentive for people to join the party, in the knowledge that they now have a local say over how the party’s resources are spent i.e. on what campaigns. With memberships of the various parties then having real financial clout, will create a virtuous circle of local input-increased membership of parties-increased local input.

Second, and closely related to the first radical step, the NEC should commence work with trade unions to encourage them to disaffiliate from Labour nationally and to re-affiliate to local parties [and to take to conference a motion making this a Labour party rule].

Funding should be allocated to these local parties on the basis of satisfactory ‘business plans’ (an extension on the way in which unions already fund specific campaigns with MPs).

Again, this will enhance local input into decision making and increase party/union membership in time, creating scope for additional revenue into the party. (Clearly there will be a need to agree a transition plan)

Membership and union involvement needs to increase dramatically. This is the best way towards long term financial stability and further growth. Empowering the existing membership and union supporters is the way to do this.

The press release included this statement:

An extra 250,000 Work Experience places over the next three years, taking the total to at least 100,000 a year. This will come with an offer of a Work Experience place for every 18 to 24 year-old who wants one, before they enter the Work Programme.

Further to my complaint to the BBC about its handling of this press release, I submitted a FOI request to DWP seeking details on how the supposed £1bn Youth Contract was made up.

The request was made well before the latest revelations about “workfare”.

Yesterday I received my reply. This stated:

The Get Britain Working measures includes Work Experience, sector-based work academies and Mandatory Work Activity.

Nowhere in the November press release was Mandatory Work Activity mentioned. This suggests DWP were keen to keep its part in the Youth Contract secret.

More importantly, this means that the DWP’s claim that the scheme is “for every 18 to 24 year-old who wants one“ must be a direct lie, since clients are forced into Mandatory Work Activity on the claim that they do not want to engage.

The text of the FOI reply is here.

Well, the Labour ones have all come out . . . As soon as Blair got in, if you came out as lesbian or gay you immediately got a job. It was wonderful . . . you just knew the Tory party was riddled with it like everywhere else is.

Now “riddled” does jump out from the page as an odd word to use, with its connotation of disease. But the key point is that Livingstone didn’t put it in a page – he said it in an interview.

I suspect what is happening here – though it is impossible to know absolutely in the absence of a verbatim transcript/audio recording – is that Livingstone is trying, as a rhetorical device, to ”speak with the voice” of the type of hypocritical Tory that he has only just referred to in the interview, who “denounc[es] homosexuality while they are indulging in it”.<

This type of rhetorical device is very common amongst politicians, who most often use it to try and display empathy with the voting public, (though Livingstone here is using it as a means of scorn).

Indeed I pointed out recently how David Cameron used it to show how touch he is with real people, but suggested – given that he used it with a wholly inaccurate term – that he was probably telling a lie.

Now clearly Livingstone’s team is not going to get into this kind of linguistic defence, and sticks with a straight “look at my record” statement.

So as I’ve got a book on my shelves that not many others are sad enough to have, I’ll just help out by quoting from another Livingstone interview – this from 1984 – which provides documentary evidence of the ridiculousness of the “homophobe” barbs now being chucked his way:

The removal of empire, plus great achievements in the liberalisation of censorship, divorce and gay rights, meant that the issues that dominated the 1950s tended largely to be resolved in the 1960s. (Boddy M & Fudge C, Local Socialism, 1984, Basingstoke: Macmillan, p.262-3).

For Livingstone, the matter of gay rights was clearly sorted a very long time ago.

Yeah, that’ll work out well!

Below is just one example of one of the forms a nurse will have to fill in every hour for every patient in her/his care, instead of doing the caring. Note the 152 boxes per patient per day.

And here’s one (see final page) from a pilot study at Whipps Cross Hospital. Progress.

It’s only got 144 boxes per patient per day.

Mr Balls said the summit had not addressed the crucial role of the ECB to head off the eurozone sovereign debt crisis. He also believes that European leaders – not just David Cameron – must move away from collective austerity and focus on growth.

This position is close to what I suggested yesterday:

I said at my own blog:

The main message should be that Cameron is now an irrelevance. Miliband should get on with setting out clearly how the removal of the fiscal stimulus option, under the proposed Treaty, would be an unmitigated economic disaster both for the Eurozone and for the UK as a key trader.

It would be nice to think the interview will go as far as arguing a full Keynesian alternative, developed in cooperation with other European parties of the Left.

This alternative might include not just an unambigious commitment to making the ECB as lender of last resort, and a commitment to a major ‘grands travaux’ fiscal stimulus, but also to the development of coherent long-term measures to address the major trade imbalances within the Eurozone.

Nice, but unlikely at this stage.

Even so, it’s a step in the right direction from the Labour leadership.

The idea that more than half of those responsible for riots should blame a failure of moral conscience might seem contradictory – but it accords with hundreds of interviews in which rioters expressed regret, concern or disappointment at what they saw going on around them. More interestingly, they revealed how the rioting crowd would – at times – exercise some degree of moral restraint.

Whatever the bleakness of the picture portrayed by the research, this is something to hang on to.

So, more contentiously, is the finding that those who do belong to gangs made agreements to suspend hostilities while the riots continued.

For what the research appears to reveal (and I haven’t seen the full report yet) is that those involved are not the feral, mindlessly consumerist thugs the government and the Right are so keen to portray.

Instead, they are often people with the capacity to think things through and make quite sophisticated, negotiated judgments about who the (current) enemy is. While I’m not currently at liberty to provide my own quotations or even paraphrase conversations, what I can say is that even I – liberal old woolly head that I am – was impressed by the way in which people – when given the chance I was able to give them – were able not just to articulate their feelings, motivations and judgements, but also to set them in the wider economic and political context.

The challenge for the Left is, of course, to work with the people who rioted, or who may riot in the future, towards a more coherent class analysis of why they find themselves in the situation in which they find themselves.

I’m not naive enough to think that this will happen any time soon, and I know if I were to start wandering the streets where the riots took place trying to sell my class-based wares, I’d soon enough be laughed out of town, or worse.

The scale and depth of the social and economic dislocation experienced by a very large number of people in this country is likely to require massive state intervention if it to be resolved. After all, as I have previously set out, many of the problems faced by people in their 21st Century ghettos are a direct result of massive and malign state intervention in the mid-20th Century.

Only a similar scale of targeted investment in education, jobs and housing – alongside a ‘peace and reconciliation’ process which recognises the riots for the semi-declaration of war that they actually were – stands a chance.

They know that the battle lines have now been drawn; if we lose this battle, then we’re likely to lose the war.

The overall impression I took from yesterday is that we may be getting our tactics very wrong for the war of attrition to come, and that we need to pay attention now to the basics of strike organisaton.

I accept that those who marched yesterday generally had a good time, and may have come away from the post-march rallies buzzing with solidarity. But city centre demonstrations, where we all go to the pub afterwards, will not win us the battle.

Instead, we need to get seriously local, we need to get seriously organised, and we need to get grim.

1) In the war of attrition to come, attending demonstrations will be a luxury most strikers simply can’t afford, given the travel costs and the inevitable cajolings to city centre pubs. To keep on arranging them in light of decreasing numbers will not only look bad with the media, it also discriminates directly against the poorer strikers left to hold the picket line.

At the level of senior union organiser too, demonstrations will become a luxury we can’t afford. The hours and costs that go into organising, publicising and controlling city-centre demos and rallies need to be diverted towards grassroots organisation.

2) The strikes will take place at many thousands of different workplaces across the country. It is important that picket lines are seen (it doesn’t matter so much about heard) whenever people pass them. If you’re an undecided member of the public, a real life picket line – perhaps with someone you know on it – is much more effective means of attracting your support than watching a large group of jolly people waving banners on the telly.

3) The message we now need to get across is that this is for real. We need to contrast the buffoonish, petulant, childish behaviour and image of ‘senior’ Tories – now starting to get established in many people’s minds – with the grim, silent determination of ordinary people on cold, winter picket lines.

It’s about buy-in. A passerby who, on the third morning of seeing cold strikers, spontaneously chucks a quid into the strike fund bucket, or even toots her/his horn, has invested in the labour movement; she/he feels part of it, and there’s no turning back.

4) In public sector workplaces there are many middle and even senior managers who have risen from the shopfloor, and still share the values of their ex-colleagues. While they may no longer feel able to join the picket themselves, a correctly organised strike fund, for example, can help them to engage, as well as making striking more possible in the longer term.

5) Large scale demonstrations create an environment for confrontation between police and workers/supporters. The police may well be the agent of a repressive state, but we need to make clear that our enemy is the government, not the police.

All of this may start to sound like I’m denigrating the efforts and commitment of those who turned out to march yesterday. I’m not, and I have no big problem with a one-off like yesterday, but our tactics now need to change.

What the coming war of strike attrition offers is an opportunity to take some of the ‘expertise’ refers to places where the working class actually congregate. The mountain will not come to Moses.

—-
For my part, on Wednesday 14th Dec I’m doing a workshop at the Bank of Ideas on how my old-style trade unionism can and should meet new-style rebellion through engagement in dull-sounding things like Trades Union Councils (where wider community and unions are supposed to come together, but mostly don’t).

The excellent Jim Pickard of the FT points out that Australian and Canadian pension funds put 8-15% of their funds respectively into infrastructure investments, while in the UK it’s only 1%.

But I have increasing doubts whether this is anything more than a delaying tactic while the government tries to figure out how to keep capital investment ‘off balance sheet’ at all costs. If I were on the Labour frontbenches tomorrow, I’d be looking to ask the following questions.

1) How does the proposed investment, in the next parliament, of around around £25bn of the total £30bn annnounced, help us deal with the economic flatlining/recession right now?

2) How much of this year’s announcement is actually a repeat of the National Infrastructure Plan published on 25th October 2010, in which the government states:

We plan for UK infrastructure investment to be some £200 billion over the next five years. We will help make that happen through smarter use of public funding, improving private sector investment models, encouraging new sources of private capital and addressing the regulatory failures that stand in the way of greater private sector investment in our country’s infrastructure (p.3-4).

3) Exactly how will pension funds get a return on their investment?

In 2010 the National Infrastructure Plan noted that the Regulatory Asset Based (RAB) model for investment, currently used by regulated utilities companies to generate investment, for example, might be extended to other areas of capital investment. The plan stated the need to pass on costs to the consumer through this model. Has the govt clarified this?

4) The 2010 National Infrastructure Plan also said:

[T]he Government will conduct an internal review, supported by external experts, to consider extending the use of the regulatory asset base model. The review will report in spring 2011 (para 3.20)

Why was this review never carried out/published?

5) The Treasury Select Committee recommended in July 2011 (para 121):

The Treasury should consult on the possibility of using other financing models, including the Regulatory Asset Base (RAB) and Local Asset Backed Vehicles (LABV), as a way of financing capital projects in competition or in preference to PFI.

Why is the government announcing with such confidence that pension funds will be used to deliver capital projects BEFORE any such consultation takes place? Is this is why the main infrastructure invesment is put back into the next parliament?

6) According to the FT, four pension funds institutions have signed a ‘memorandum of understanding’ about the proposed investment. What commitment to invest does a memorandum of understanding involve?

7) Many of the pension funds being asked to invest are associated with public sector workers (e.g. two signatures to the memorandum of understanding are the Greater Manchester Pension Fund and the London Pensions Fund).

Why are these pensions deemed to be a matter of public spending when public sector workers defend their pension rights, but become ‘private’ when the government seeks to use them?

32 years on, a 10 minute bill sponsored by Alan Beith MP goes to its second reading on Friday 25th November.

The Road Safety Act 2011, which you can help support, would:

a) require the fitting of equipment to heavy goods vehicles to eliminate driver blindspots and aid driver awareness of cyclists, pedestrians and other road users in the immediate vicinity of the vehicle;

(b) make other regulations to ensure drivers are trained in using safety equipment as fitted to their vehicles, to improve the safety of cyclists, pedestrians and other road users.

Alan’s initiative follows the death of one of his constituents, on a London road in 2009, in which the circumstances were similar to my father’s.

It also comes shortly after two deaths at the same point on Bow Interchange in London.

Of course there may be arguments against the bill, arguing that this is yet another expense for haulage firms in difficult times. (Interestingly, when the matter was the subject of an Early Day Motion earlier this year, 114 MPs signed the motion.)

Against this argument, there is the obvious. 2,500 cyclists are killed or badly injured every year. It’s always seemed odd to me that there is relatively massive investment in rail safety, for example, when a much smaller number are killed or injured on this transport (not that I begrudge this), while cycle deaths and injuries just seem to remain regarded as the collateral damage of our transport system.

This Bill won’t stop cyclists being killed, but it is an important step in the right direction.

If readers do get a chance – perhaps linking to this – I’d be grateful for a quick email to your MP, especially to those in London who will be more likely to be around on Friday, asking them to support the bill. Jeremy Corbyn supported the bill at the first reading, and Emily Thornberry seconded the EDM earlier this year, so perhaps they might be asked to tweet this post to other MP they know are around.

It appears that the government’s Regional Growth Fund has awarded more than a million pounds in funding (that’s the minimum grant level) to Listen Media Company Ltd, which is…

a) dormant, in accounts made up to June 201o (see Companies House website);

b) changed its company name just before the submission of its bid (previously called Tribute Campaigns Ltd)

c) supposedly going to create jobs in Liverpool, but which no one there has ever heard of, and whose registered address is in Cambridge back street.

d) 100% owned and directed by Stephen Callen (until this month when joined by another director), who took over the company just before the bid was submitted (deadline 01 July 2011), and who since 2009 has sat on the board of Talent TV with George Kynoch, the deputy chairman of the Scottish Conservatives and a former minister alongside Lord Heseltine in the 1990s.

Heseltine chairs the Regional Growth Fund Independent Advisory Panel the and advises the government on which organisations should be funded.

At round 1, another media company received funding and admits that it was asked to do so personally by Heseltine.

A new body could decide whether people are fit to work, according to drafts of the Government’s Independent Review into Sickness Absence. Employers would be able to ask the assessment panel, rather than GPs, to make independent decisions.
…
It is likely to say that family doctors can be too quick to sign people off on sick leave because there is no incentive for them to help people stay inwork.

“No incentive,” eh?

Perhaps the now well-developed and successful Quality & Outcomes Framework doesn’t count, even though it is specifically designed to “reward practices for the provision of ‘quality care’”.

It also includes financial rewards for care which promotes people getting into work (e.g. see p.97), as well as explicitly recognising the general link between employment and good health (e.g. p.125).

This new review has been co-chairedby Dame Carol Black, a NHS director for health and work. I’m sure this briefing from the Commercial Occupational Health Providers Association (COHPA) is entirely coincidental:

COHPA has been active politically in trying to represent the interests of commercial OH providers to Dame Carol Black, Government and key bodies in the industry.

We have met with Dame Carol and Ministers from DWP /senior HSE (etc) to put our views across about the future of OH. We hold seats on Dame Carol’s select committee for OH and the Council for Work and Health.

And we’re sure it’s entirely coincidental that COHPA was founded by ATOS Healthcare, which owns ATOS origin, which already has a £500m contract to conduct incapacity assessments, but which doesn’t necessarily do them very well.

In any event, we’re sure, should it comes to pass, that a key element of primary care provision will be safe in ATOS’s hands.

10. Kensington and Chelsea. K&C make it in at number 10 with the news that they’ve misused millions of pounds on consultancy contracts.

They then got a firm of consultants in to tell them how badly they’ve misused the money, then held the meeting about it in secret because it’s not “in the public interest” for people to know how they’ve misused all the money.

This scores good points for large amounts of money wasted, but loses out because wasting money on consultants is not very imaginative stupidity.

9. Mendip District Council. The West Country Tories have been put forward for the list by David Edwards, who feels they should be in there on account of their “general, smug Tory incompetence”. He’s not sure why they’re so smug, and how they manage to be quite so incompetent when they’ve outsourced most of their services anyway.

Normally, generic smug incompetence wouldn’t get you into this list, but we’ve made an exception here because the Mendip Tories did try to get a wizard elected to Council, presumably in the belief that a Tory Council is a bit like Hogwarts, but with less good bin collections.

8. Trafford Borough Council. They’re generally just run-of-the-mill shocking, but news that one of their Tories has been charged with seven counts of benefit fraud.

Now normally this kind of alleged criminality, however hypocritical, wouldn’t get you anywhere near the list, but there’s been special pleading from Matt Finnegan, who points out that Trafford should score higher for making this guy a Party Whip, charged with keeping up standards within his group.

7. Those Shropshire Tories are in at number 7, with an impressively brazen attempt to clamp down on free speech, combined with a high level of condescension to their residents. They score highly for celebrity factor also, having banned Sally Bercow from going into one of the day centres they are planning to close, despite her having been personally invited in there by a user of the centre. They met in the car park instead.

6. Plymouth Tories are in at a very respectable number 6, with their attempt to derecognise trade unions. Good points were awarded for a total lack of understanding about what trade unions do, and slavish adherence to the rightwing line.

5. Southampton Tories, intent on privatising the whole of the Council just months after forcing Council staff to take a massive pay cut.

4. Essex Tories

This all concerns Lord Hanningfield, ex-Council leader and now ex-prisoner, who has declared himself “destitute”, while knowing full well that his erstwhile colleagues are developing plans to make thousands of residents properly destitute by “localising” control of welfare benefits, then slashing both amounts paid and tightening eligibility criteria.

Impressive viciousness combined with the ideological drive to become a Tory flagship for uncaring Conservatism and economic illiteracy.

3. Storming in at number 3 are the famously Thatcherite Tory crew in Wandsworth. They’ve come up with a scheme to throw you out of your home if you can’t get a job if, just for example, there aren’t any jobs.

2. What Wandsworth Tories have done, Barnet’s Tories have done better, and this gets them close to the coveted top spot.

Barnet have come up with a massively creative plan (item 7), under which people under 25 get chucked out of their home if they don’t get a job, BUT ALSO if they do get a decent one, with the limit for eligibility for a council home to be set at a little less household median income for the area (currently at £32,580 per year).

1. Straight in at number 1 is West Lancashire Borough Council – who have managed to completely ignore the fact that around about 20% of their landmass is likely to disappear underwater by 2015.

This will happen under Environment Agency plans to turn off two pumping stations and allow once-reclaimed but now rich horticultural land to return to unfarmable marsh. This would cost thousands of jobs in the horticulture industry, and disrupt thousands of lives. Even the dozy local Tory MP, who claimed at a meeting in early November that it was the first she’d heard of it (the consultation began on 29th September), has briefly woken up.

But not those West Lancs Tories.

Despite having had an official representative on the Environment Agency steering group, they apparently haven’t noticed that a large part of their borough is due to be permanently flooded, and failed to put the matter on this week’s Cabinet agenda

Losing a fifth of your borough’s landmass without even noticing is, I think you’d agree, incompetent even by Tory standards.

Habe you heard any oher tales we may have missed out?

Ministers are finalising a radical plan to boost investment in UK infrastructure and stimulate the economy, with proposals to pool the vast assets held in British pension funds and use them to back an ambitious programme of road and house building.

Pension and insurance funds are to be encouraged to invest up to £50bn in improving infrastructure, including private and social housing, power stations, super-fast broadband and motorway toll roads.

The plan was pushed by Cable at BIS earlier in the year, but knocked back by the Treasury.

Now, with the Treasury desperate, it looks as though Cable may get his way.

Clearly, the plan will take ages to bring to fruition. Pension Funds are required under fiduciary duty to maximise the value of their investments for their pensioners, and the due diligence that will need to be undertaken by them, their advisers and their fund managers will not be quick.

Even so, it’s a huge step in the right direction towards a more sensible economic policy, and if it is delivered will be a victory for Cable the Keynesian over Osborne the Fool.

Of course you could argue that it doesn’t need to be this complicated. Government could simply just get on with the spending, and allow Pension Funds to make their own minds over time as to whether it’s worth investing in the government debt that support this new economic growth.

After all, Pension Funds (together with Insurance Funds) already own around £300bn of the £1,069bn government debt out there (DMO, June 2011), so an extra £50bn invested in programmes designed to relfate the economy would seem like a pretty good bet, and much easier to arrange.

However, the Cable-proposed way allows them to keep government debt of balance sheet, and as with Labour’s PFI programme, this is an important political consideration.

So this is good news, and Labour should react to it as good news. In the week that Ed Balls goes out on the road selling his Five point plan (sensible enough, but small beer in comparison to the Cable plan), the worst thing Labour can do is start whinging about how the Tories are u-turning, and how hyocritical the Coalition is noe being about off-balance sheet debt. That would be easy, but wrong, politics.

Instead, Balls and team should welcome Cable’s initiative.

They should welcome Cable back to the Keynesian fold, while pressing more advenurous (and more direct) long term action of the same ilk, as well as for short term action (e.g. Balls’ Plan B) while the Cable plan gets underway.

Some will say the banks are partly to blame for the sluggishness of the economic recovery, having pumped up the leverage in the boom years and now – in this era of so-called de-risking and deleveraging – starving businesses with good growth prospects of the credit they so badly need. That said, the banks are more-or-less hitting the so-called Merlin targets, agreed with the Treasury, for lending to businesses, including small businesses.

Peston clearly hasn’t looked at the data properly.

As I set out in detail here, the banks are only meeting their Merlin targets because they have conspired with the government and the Bank of England to set targets and measures which include all their rollover lending.

This allows RBS, Lloyds et al. to look like they’re lending more when in fact their proper productive lending is declining.

In reality, the banks are doing nothing at all to contribute to economic recovery because both their new and their net lending trends are negative.

There is no need for Peston to take my word for it.

This is the Chief Economist of City research firm BCVA in September:

The ‘gross lending’ figures reported in the Project Merlin data are inflated compared with the official Bank of England series, because they include rollovers of existing facilities. In fact, net lending to the non-bank corporate sector has been firmly stuck in negative territory this year. From a business perspective, this is not especially surprising – retail banking, and in particular lending to SMEs, just doesn’t generate the high margins and profits that investment banking can.

The government and banks should be ashamed of misleading Peston, and the rest of us, about what they are really up to. And he should not be fooled by them.

The government said on Monday it planned to invest £1bn in 100 companies to create new jobs.

But some bids go as far as arm-twisting the government to hand over money in return for keeping jobs in the UK.

One of the first successful funding applications to emerge FOI requests undertaken by Liberal Conspiracy concerns Bridon International Ltd, successful in its application for £2.2 million.

Key sections of the application (some extracts at the end) indicate that Bridon regarded the grant as a ‘sweetener’ for them to remain operational in the UK, rather than as an additional investment in the UK economy.

Bridon have identified and investigated two viable locations for this facility, Neptune Energy Park at Newcastle and Gelsenkirchen in Germany. The final decision regarding the location of the proposed facility has not yet been taken and will be significantly influenced by the availability of grant support from the Uk Government. If the project were to proceed in the UK, it would entail capital expenditure of £17.3 million in addition to the annual lease cost of £1.1 million, and would creat 39 jobs. It would also safeguard the 150 existing jobs at the Willington Quay site.
…
If the project proceeds in Gelsenkirchen, we will adjust our European operations accordingly, as Gelsenkirchen becomes Bridon’s main manufacturing centre…..Under this alternative the Willington Quay site will cease to be viable…. If the project proceeds in Gelsenkirchen not only would there be no private sector investment in the Uk and no job creation but the 150 existing jobs at the Willington Quay site would also be lost.

This effectively changes the fund from its stated purpose of job creation (in fact only 39 new jobs are projected to be created) to one which is focused almost exclusively on job retention.

Bridon isn’t alone in taking this approach either.

Another bid by the company Holroyd (owned by the Chinese company CQME) outlined a plan to establish a “brand new high–technology and research facility” for Holroyd and its sister businesses.

It is projected to bring in 130 to 150 new jobs, “including a substantial number of PhD and Degree leve positions,” says the application, to the Rochdale area.

The bid stated:

Without [Regional Growth Fund] support, the project will not go ahead in the UK as it leaves us with a shortfall of £2.82 million having taken account of a £17.625 million contribution from CQME and a £3.055 million comtribution from Holroyd Precision.
…
Without RGF support, it is a certainty that CQME will either move to Holland or Germany as an alternative or take the slower route in transferring the technology into China, with resultant slow loss of employment in the UK.

There is no suggestion that any of the companies have acted improperly.

Other problems with the RGF
And then there questions about the bidding process itself.

44 of the 50 round 1 applicants refused to release their applications to the RGF.

Other bids to the RGF, such as one by the Historic Buildings Trust (Prince’s Regeneration Trust spin off), are unclear about other public sources of funding (Euro money, English Heritage) rather than the private investment we were promised.

Yesterday, The Times also revealed that grants had been made to local councils in politically marginal areas and to companies who are significant backers of the Conservative Party.

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Note: Both the Times report and a piece on the Financial Times website used the above information.

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Bridon Holdings Bid to Govt

The City of London Corporation, which is the Highways Authority for the Square Mile, is set to call a special meeting of its Planning and Transportation Committee for Friday to hear legal advice and decide whether and, if so, how to take legal action to clear the highways around St Paul’s of campers.

The Planning and Transportation Committee would meet in private session to consider the legal advice (my emphasis).

The wording is clever, and may lead members of the public unfamiliar with local government legislation into thinking there’s no point in turning up to such a meeting.

In fact, the meeting is bound by law to open in public, and declarations of personal and prejudicial interests on the part of committee members must be made, in public, in respect of the WHOLE agenda. In this case, such declarations may prove of interest to the public, where they concern financial or other relations with St Paul’s.

Only after these declarations of interest have been made can a motion then be put to the meeting with the following wording:

That under Section 100(A) of the Local Government Act 1972, the public be excluded from the meeting for the following items on the grounds that they involve the likely disclosure of exempt information as defined in Part I of the Schedule 12A of the Local Government Act.

In this case, the exemption will be sought on the grounds that members will be considering ‘information in respect of which a claim to legal professional privilege could be maintained in legal proceedings’ (Schedule 12A, para 5).

Although any such move is unlikely to succeed, members of the committee are entitled to speak and vote against the motion to hear the legal advice in private, but one or two of them (e.g. The Revd Dr Martin Dudley) might at least be inclined to raise questions on why the motion has been put.

So members of the public who want to witness the start of this meeting, and the likely act of their own exclusion from that meeting, have a legal right to do so.

Here is the agenda for the meeting. The venue is the Livery Hall, and the meeting commences at 10.30am on Friday.

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h/t to @davidallengreen for spotting this meeting was taking place

She has spotted not just that the ‘status quo’ option (a) and the ‘nutter’ option (b) are unacceptable.

She has also spotted that the midway option (c) is still a Conservative ‘free trade’ option, under which the neoliberal norms embedded in the current Lisbon Treaty and the devalued but still dangerous Growth & Stability Pact would remain, while at the same time allowing for an assault on the things that Europe has done well, such as the freedom of movement within borders and (some) worker rights.

The bill, complete with the Lucas amendment now reads:

This House calls upon the Government to introduce a Bill in the next session of Parliament to provide for the holding of a national referendum on whether the UK should: (a) remain a member of the EU on the current terms; (b) leave the EU; (c) renegotiate the terms of its membership in order to create a new relationship based on trade and co-operation; (d) [Lucas amendment] seek to build support for radical reform of the EU, increasing its transparency and accountability, refocusing its objectives on co-operation and environmental sustainability rather than competition and free trade, and enabling member states to exercise greater control over their own economies.

By adding her own amendment, focused on her Green agenda, she emphasises that she is a seriously different politician, reflecting a seriously new political agenda, and she should be congratulated on her initiative.

More importantly, however, Labour should now follow her lead, perhaps by stressing that, while the Lucas amendment is worthily intentioned, it is not appropriately worded.

This is for the simple reason that the Bill, were it to be approved, would form the basis of the Referendum that the government is then tasked with calling.

Yet no government in their right mind could accept a wording which is more manifesto expression than referendum question, as is the current Lucas amendment. This then creates the opportunity for Labour to provide its own amendment, with a simpler form of words and with a proper sense of Labour’s objectives in it.

I would advocate something along the following lines:

renegotiate the terms of its [the UK's] membership in order to create a new relationship based on peaceful co-operation, democratic accountability, citizen rights, economic and environmental sustainability.

This wording is perhaps more red than green, though still wide enough for coalition building. What, after all, is there to object to in it? It also avoids some of the wooliness of Lucas’s desire to ‘build support’. Success in ‘building support’ is necessarily dependent on the will of other states, and does not therefore fit well as an instruction from this parliament on what the UK government should do in the interests of its own citizens.

More than anything, though, it is a third option that you might actually expect to see on a referendum ballot paper, alongside the straight ’yes’ and the ‘no’, and could become the hallmark of Labour’s distinctive vision of what Europe should be about even after it is voted down.

Labour’s key message can become, now that Europe is much more ‘real’ for most people, that Britain will better off under a Labour government seriously engaged with reforming the EU than under a bunch of lunatic Tories whose key concern is the EU’s latest ‘ban’ on irregularly shaped fruit.

The Cabinet Office is running a statutory consultation until 18th November on the future policy direction of the Big Lottery Fund (BLF).

Proposed new policy direction B is…

The need to ensure that the Fund achieves the distribution of funds to a reasonably wide spread of projects, primarily those delivered by the voluntary and community sector and social enterprises, including small organisations, those organisations operating at a purely local level, newly constituted organisations, organisations operating as social enterprises and organisations with a base in the United Kingdom and working overseas (my emphasis).

The small but significant change here is that, under this new direction, not all money will go to the VCS (in its broadest terms).

This is quite different from what was promised in the Conservative manifesto in 2010:

We will restore the national Lottery to its original purpose and, by cutting down on administration costs, make sure more money goes to good causes. the big Lottery fund will focus purely on supporting social action through the voluntary and community sector, instead of ministers’ pet projects as at present. Sports, heritage and the arts will each see their original allocations of 20 per cent of good cause money restored (p.39, my emphasis).

It is also quite different from what we were told, nearly exactly a year ago, by a Tory Minister:

The National Lottery has a fine record of supporting VCS projects, and we are absolutely clear that this work should continue. We will be directing the Big Lottery Fund to make sure that its future funding is focused very clearly on the VCS (my emphasis);

Fortunately, those good people down at the National Association for Voluntary and Community Action (NAVCA) have spotted the subtle change of language, and their Chief Executive has come out fighting:

A year ago the Government reduced the share of good cause money going to the Big Lottery Fund from 50% to 40% and increased the shares going to support heritage, sport and art. At that time Ministers promised that 100% of Big Lottery Fund spend would be in the voluntary sector. Now they are just saying that primarily the money will go to our sector.

Public spending cuts especially in local government grants mean that there is more pressure than ever on lottery funding. I am worried that this is a quiet signal that more Big Lottery Fund spending will go to the statutory sector. And I would feel that the whole voluntary sector has been let down if the government reneges upon the reassurances it gave us just 12 months ago.

NAVCA estimates that if this new policy direction is followed through as they fear, up to £300 million a year could be lost to local charities and community groups.

Last week’s childcare support announcement started to fall apart under scrutiny, and today TCF and False Economy exposed how Cameron’s very personal ”Community right-to-buy” promise didn’t make it as far as reality. Here again the Tory devil is hidden in the civil service detail.

It really is starting to look like cuts by subterfuge may be a deliberate government strategy.

As now families will be able to recover childcare costs at 70 per cent – up to £175 for one child or £300 for two or more children per week. The money will be paid through Universal Credit from 2013 and will mean that around 80,000 more families with children will be able to work the hours they choose.

Let’s set aside quickly two more obvious matters already widely commented upon: first, this support doesn’t start for another 18 months; second, it does nothing for those working/wanting to work 16 hours or more per week, who suffered big cuts in April 2011.

What commenters don’t appear to have noticed is that for the most women who work or want to work for less than 16 hours per week, all of that childcare is already free, and has been for some time now.

Yes, that’s right. The government is offering to pay up to 70% of childcare costs on hours of childcare which, for most parents, are 100% free anyway.

This 100% free care comes under the longstanding Nursery Education Grant programme, under which all children 3 years and over get 15 hours per week free provision.

The programme is also already being extended, plans, to provide the same free care for children 2 years and over.

So in fact the only group who will benefit properly under the new scheme are parents of 0-2 year old children.

While there will be some benefit around the margins, it’s difficult to see this move by the government as anything other than a short-term panic measure, whether or not backed by some cunning plan to ‘unspend’ some of the £300 million once everything settles down.

No wonder Labour called it nothing more than a ‘smoke and mirrors’ announcement.

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A longer version is at Though Cowards Flinch