Curly's Corner Shop, the blog!

I still haven’t heard the “expected” announcement.

However I read this over at Politics.co.uk

David Miliband is expected to stand for the Labour leadership.

The former foreign secretary is scheduled to make a statement today and most commentators expect him to announce his bid for his party’s top job.

He has already received a boost when Alan Johnson said he wouldn’t stand and endorsed his candidacy.

Mr Johnson told BBC Radio 4′s Today: “No I’m not [going to stand]. I am going to support David Miliband.

“I think we have a bevy of great talent there. David is the greatest talent. I think he is a remarkable politician and his talent is to put very complex ideas into clear language, so I will be backing him.

Well here’s a complex idea to preserve the environment of fish, plankton, and coral, creating the world’s largest marine reserve, but NOT the people who have spent their lives living off those fish, just to survive you know, and on top of that Mr. Miliband steadfastly refuses to let them return to their rightful homes.

The South Shields MP does not impress Craig Murray, who uses some particularly strong language to describe Mr. Miliband’s particular talent for hiding behind environmentalism and all things Green (when it suits)

Miliband has now produced what is one of the most cynical acts in the history of British foreign policy. Dressed up as an environmentalist move, and with support from a number of purblind environmentalists, the waters around the Chagos Archipelago have been declared the world’s largest marine reserve – in which all fishing is banned. The islanders, of course, are fishermen.

Murray goes on to accuse Miliband of dressing up genocide as environmentalism, he may be allowing his passion to overflow a little, but the former foreign secretary has lots of form as an authoritarian illiberal legislator perfectly suited to carrying on the NuLab experiment.

It is to be hoped that they find themselves a good socialist instead, or even Ed Balls.

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Some of the “give and take” in this marriage.

For instance fixed term Parliaments, we now have the next election scheduled in for May 2015. What happens if there are recriminations within the coalition before then? How can the House of Commons assert itself if the government is seen to be acting against the will and wishes of the people? If there were a large split would the government be forced to carry on in a minority if it lost a confidence motion?

Sorry, I don’t like this. I’ve never been that keen on our governments tinkering with our constitution and I see little wrong in allowing our Prime Ministers the power to ask the Sovereign to dissolve Parliament and call for a general election at a time of their choosing, perhaps Gordon Brown regrets stretching his government out as long as possible now. The great advantage in having this ability is that Prime Ministers can put themselves to the ultimate test at times of political difficulty and national crisis, or use their judgement to determine the public mood on an important issue which has Parliament at an impasse.

I dread to think what will happen now if a future government loses the confidence of the House of Commons.

Electing the second chamber – well I guess this has been coming for some time now and it is another area fraught with difficulties. I can see some benefit if we have fixed term Parliaments and the second chamber is elected at the mid term point of the primary chamber, but please NOT both together, it would be rather pointless having a reviewing chamber of exactly the same political colour as the executive. The whole point of the second chamber is to provide additional scrutiny and give the important checks and balances that restrain the powers of government. The current and the old House of Lords had their faults and their benefits, it was  right to remove the hereditary Peers and if we are to have the equivalent of a Supreme Court it is right to remove the Judges too, there is great merit in preserving the separation of powers. However my worry now is in the quality and expertise of the members of the second house to be effective reviewers of legislation, we already have a chamber rapidly filling with the political appointees of Prime Ministers and insufficient numbers of people from other walks of life. One of the small benefits of previous constitutions of the Lords was that on any given subject one could find a smattering of acknowledged experts on the subject of debate, either because of their outside interests or because of the way in which some life peerages were appointed, this pool of talent is gradually being dissipated and I worry that it may be further weakened by an influx of politically motivated elected representatives. As a further modification of the second chamber it is probably right to propose that it’s name be changed to the House of Peers rather than the House of Lords.

A Bill to have a referendum on the Alternative Voting method – it is right to put this matter to the people, although it is not a system of proportional representation as such, it does at least offer two strong points for the future, it will give MPs greater legitimacy by ensuring that they achieve more than 50% of the votes cast in their constituencies and it further strengthens the link between a small geographic area (the constituency) and its representative. The downside is that many MPs may be regarded as “second choice” and will probably initially result in greater numbers of Liberal Democrats, this may not be a lasting effect, of course, as political parties and policies evolve, we must remember that the whole notion of proportional representation is supported by smaller parties who seem to think they have some sort of entitlement to seats and feel hard done to by our current first past the post system, yet history proves that  third parties can come through the middle to supplant those in second place – the Labour Party was a great example. A great benefit of the first past the post system is that it is direct, easy to understand, easy to administer, and generally produces quick results, it works far better when constituencies are of equal size and thus relies on bodies such as the Boundaries Commission to keep a balanced formula. It does not work so well when three parties all decide to sit in the middle of the road and fight over “the centre ground” – real choice is what we need most to make it work.

The commission to review party funding is important too and will be very interesting to see what it recommends. I have often wondered over the years what the average man in the street really thinks about large individual donations going to political parties, or large union or corporate donations for that matter. I do know of some who object to their union operating a political levy when the members have no choice over which party the levy goes to, and on the other hand  there will be many who object to a company such as Unilever donating to the Conservative Party, but does it stop them buying particular brands of washing powder? I’d love to get to a situation closer to that in the USA where Barack Obama and Ron Paul stood out for their ability to harness the internet and raise bucket loads of cash from millions of small donors, I’d love too to see a large rise in party memberships, which would be a great help in financing politics, but it will need our politicians and their parties at local level to get back to engaging more effectively with their local communities. What I DO NOT want to see is the public purse being used to finance political parties.

£6bn of cuts in this financial year – simply not enough, period! (£50bn of reductions would take our public spending back down to the levels of 2007-08 adjusted for inflation, I’m pretty sure we could manage at that level).

Raising tax thresholds above £1000 – I’m fully in favour of and wish the Conservatives had been bold enough to put this in their own manifesto, after all a low tax economy is supposed to be one of the pillars of Conservative economic thought. This move will help many low paid families and could easily be financed if George Osborne can convince the less than convincing Vince Cable to cut departmental budgets even further.

Nuclear deterrent – The Lib Dems have apparently agreed that we need to maintain our nuclear deterrent, but does this mean that we need to maintain Trident, or will the coalition go for a slightly cheaper air based system or just reduce the number of missiles or ageing submarines?

Freedom Bill – one of the most important legislative tasks of the new Parliament will be a Great Repeal Act to sweep away many of the authoritarian edicts of the Blair/Brown years introduced mainly after 9/11 and designed to keep us all under surveillance and control look after our safety. The National ID Card scheme will be scrapped for starters and it is to be hoped that many other Liberal reforms will appeal to the Conservative right. Let us hope that the dismantling of the database state and intrusive surveillance is a huge priority for the new Home Secretary. The state should be afraid of its people, the people should not be afraid of the state.

These are interesting times folks and the biggest interest to me right now is what happens at the end of this Parliament, if this coalition is a success will it fight on, or will the parties find too many idealogical grounds and go their own separate ways again? If it is a success or indeed if it proves to be vastly unpopular, which party, Conservative or Liberal Democrats, will reap the rewards or brick bats?

You would like to think that we are heading back to a golden age of Disraeli and Gladstone reform all in the “national interest”, but at some stage political interest will have to emerge, and I suspect that David Cameron and Nick Clegg are hoping to build a new two party system that might just put the Labour Party back in the position of third place, much of that will depend upon who wins the leadership battle, the Blairite David Miliband from South Shields, his brother Ed, or perhaps a figure from the left. Much also will depend upon the most important task of all, reducing the debt, balancing the budget, and moving the economy firmly into growth to produce wealth and jobs with the promise of an eventual lower tax base.

Update 13:49

This new government of David Cameron is full of surprises, Theresa May as Home Secretary, and Vince Cable NOT going to the Treasury as Chief Secretary, that post has been given to David Laws (Cable becomes Business Secretary instead), another surprise is Ken Clarke as Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary, the return of Iain Duncan Smith is no surprise after his achievements in the social welfare field. Think I’ll keep my predictions to myself for the rest of the day.

For those wanting to read the first analytical, but personal, full scale deconstruction of the Conservative campaign during the general election Tim Montgomerie has it here, he also had it in the Guardian and aired his thoughts on radio this morning, a sure sign that Conservative bloggers will not be able to be relied upon to be as sycophantic as their Labour rivals were.

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So long, farewell, auf wiedersehn, goodbye

Nice departing touch, brave move.

Nice to meet you

Did they give you a new front door key love?

Dave do you know which Room Nick’s sleeping in yet?

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Purely in the “national interest” of course.

If the current whoring of the Liberal Democratic vote plays out in Labour’s/Mandelsons/Miliband’s interest, the Conservatives would be well advised to desist from any further negotiations with “Calamity Clegg” and be prepared for a further short period in Opposition. The whole scenario being played out in front of us is unseemly and a rotten foretaste of what proportional representation would bring at just about every election.

There are only a few small areas where the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats share common ground, on civil liberties, and smaller taxes, so perhaps it would be better to allow them to form a coalition of the losers and realign Conservative policies a little further away from the centre ground. I had argued for the past three years that standing in the middle of the road was the best place to get knocked over and I’ve been proved right, three parties fighting over a centralist ideal have managed to carve out about a third of the pie each, perhaps if we’d had a better choice with sharper dividing lines we may have got a decisive result.

To a greater extent Cameron and his tight knit circle of lieutenants have been the authors of their own misfortune, they have allowed a 40%+ poll position to be frittered away by clinging on to the hope that the British people were ready for change, a change from Gordon Brown, but perhaps not too great of a change. They are wrong, we don’t need a change of management we need a change of direction, a complete change of options and choices, not more of the same with a better looking wrapper!

Perhaps if the Conservatives had taken a far tougher line over Europe instead of just hoping that the Lisbon question would resolve itself before the election (which it did, but not to our benefit) then perhaps they could have got a pre election agreement from UKIP, that alone might have got them an additional 21 seats and secured the required majority that they were looking for.

Perhaps if they had been more willing to talk with complete frankness about the huge debt crisis and not been afraid to outline in further detail the huge necessity for far greater reductions in public spending, they might have done better. Instead they allowed Gordon Brown to drag them onto his playing field to defend minuscule cuts to Labour’s £1.5 trillion of debt!

Perhaps if they hadn’t agreed to let Clegg take part in the Prime Ministerial Debates we wouldn’t be seeing the leader of the failed Liberal Democrats, who lost five of their seats, prostituting his voters in a purely self interested manner to force a form of proportional representation upon us, a subject which was hardly on our minds last Thursday when we cast our votes.

Perhaps if he’d left individual Conservative Associations alone and allowed them to choose their own candidates autonomously, as in the past, he wouldn’t be in the embarrassing situation of watching 62 of his original 100 “A listers” being defeated at the polls. Another likely source of winnable seats that would help bring a majority.

Perhaps if he’d addressed the fears over immigration a little more succinctly instead of just sneering at Clegg’s amnesty, he wouldn’t be left with so many tight Labour marginals in the north-west.

And so, we find ourselves in a situation where millions of voters thought that they were doing their best by perhaps voting Conservative for the first time, or Liberal Democrat in the hope that they would bring an end to Labour’s dreadful government, and the end result of the poor choices found in the middle of the road is – Gordon Brown staying in Downing Street for a few more months and the prospects of South Shields own MP David Miliband becoming Prime Minister later in the year. A second successive Labour Prime Minister who did not face the daunting scrutiny of the electorate before assuming office – just great! I guess we should be hugely thankful that Miliband wants to face an election by members of the Labour Party – whoopee.

This failure to offer real diverse choice at the election has produced a very bleak day for our democracy, we could indeed see a coalition of the losers as Labour (net losses 91 seats) joins the Lib-Dems (net losses 5 seats) and the six Scottish Nationalists (no gains) and  about six others who will all be wanting their pound of flesh in the form of guaranteed spending in the Celtic fringes; in other words England (with the Tory majority) will have to face the brunt of any cuts!

Quite simply Nick Clegg is not as nice as he appeared on Television, between himself, Gordon Brown, Lord Mandelson, and Ed Balls they will revert to naked party ambition and the “national interest” can go hang.

It is a measure of Gordon Brown’s loose grip on reality that he sought to depict his decision to stand down later this year as a noble act of self-sacrifice made in the national interest. The truth is that this was an act of quite staggering cynicism based on naked party advantage. With the incomprehensible connivance of Nick Clegg – whose reputation will surely never recover – Mr Brown is effectively seeking to nullify the result of last week’s general election. Blinded by his tribal loathing of the Conservatives, he is ready to risk everything – and we use that term advisedly – to keep David Cameron out of Downing Street.

This unelected leader of the Labour Party will remain Prime Minister, even though his party secured two million fewer votes and 48 fewer seats than the Tories. He will then hand over at a time of his choosing to a new Labour leader. At that point, the United Kingdom will find itself governed by a Labour prime minister the country has not elected, succeeding a Labour prime minister neither the country nor his party elected. Even by Labour’s standards, this is self-serving and unscrupulous.

Since last Friday we have lived with the fiction that Mr Brown was simply doing his constitutional duty by staying at the helm until a new government could be formed, acting in the national interest. Now we see that all the time he has been acting in his and his party’s interest, defying the verdict of the electorate by trying to create a coalition of the election losers. This is a bleak day for our democracy.

Because of this political posturing, and because the Conservatives were well ahead, but did not win the election, I’d be happier if they now allowed Labour to continue in office in the sure knowledge that the people would agree with former Labour Home Secretaries David Blunkett who said that the Liberal Democrats are behaving “like every harlot in history”, and John Reid who warned  that a Labour-Lib Dem coalition would result in “mutually assured destruction” for both parties.

Such a coalition will not have stability nor the required numbers to carry major legislation through the Commons, a new Labour leader and Prime Minister would want an early election and a chance to win a majority of his/her own. By then the Conservatives might have learned how to hold on to a poll lead and to get off the centre ground, they don’t belong there and the British people would prefer a more clear cut choice between the major parties. And of course the people will exact their bitter revenge on those who formed the losers’ coalition.

Update

Of course much of what I wrote was written in the heat of the moment this morning at a time when I was convinced that the Liberal Democrats had reneged on a good opportunity and decided to prop up a dead duck Labour government. I’m guessing that to some extent Nick Clegg might have been feeling a bit circumspect as well after the mauling he received from the press today. I have been proved wrong and now is the time to eat humble pie, David Cameron is officially installed as the Prime Minister and it seems that Nick Clegg may be elevated to Deputy PM. Of course if the deal HAD gone the other way I would still favour a short period in opposition as I am convinced that a Lib-Lab pact would prove disastrous for both parties and would have led to a landslide Tory victory within a year. I honestly would have preferred that than seeing the Conservatives struggling to survive as a minority government.

However, we now have a coalition government and it will be very interesting to see (a) who gets the plum positions, (b) it’s programme to be set out in The Queen’s Speech, and (c) how her Majesty’s Opposition react, regroup, and reform after the departure of Gordon Brown.

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Ahmedinejad and Mugabe would be proud of him

Oh and here’s a useful Tee shirt from Let Fly the Pigs of War via Grumpy Old Twat.

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Adam Boulton looks even more exasperated as Labour goes to the “Tehran option”

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Liberal Democrats should think carefully about continuing the life of the current government and their own fiscal and EU policies.

European Socialism and the entitlement culture which has ran out of money.

A little simplistic perhaps, Thatcherite clear thinking maybe? The debt needs to be paid down fast! The spending needs to be reigned back now! Taxes may need to rise, the medicine will not be sugar coated.

Our three political parties argued a whole load of nonsense during the election campaign as Gordon Brown dragged both the Tories and the Lib-Dems onto his chosen battleground the “cuts vs investment” theme. Yet with one man wanting to scare the living daylights out of the electorate about the size of threatened Tory cuts (and he succeeded to some extent), and two not wanting to frighten voters away, we ended up with very little clarity or honesty about the size of the debt problem here. All three parties were arguing over a narrow range of expenditure figures that covered the £8bn to £14bn worth of identified “cuts”.

The IFS stated just a few days before the election that not a single party was being clear or honest about the scale of expenditure reduction that would be need to reduce the budget deficit by half within the next five years, of course it is easy to make a statement like this about two parties which have no access to the real time up to date figures, we rely on the governing party to give us the data. Leading economists are agreed that cuts in UK government spending of at least £50bn are required in the next financial year to have any real impact on the markets, and with currency turmoil likely to reappear in Europe a solid financial basis here would help to protect the pound. £50bn of cuts in one year!

Do you realise that (taking into account price inflation) this would scale back public spending to the levels that we last saw in 2007-08, and wasn’t that a very austere year!

That’s right, they were scared of talking about spending cuts that would have sent us back two whole years!

If the Liberal Democrats want to get into government by forming a coalition or agreement with either of the other two parties, they have to ask themselves if Nick Clegg and “low voltage” Cable really do understand the depth of our £1.5 trillion debt crisis, and would they be capable of going along with cuts at a rate much higher than was talked about during the election, or would they prefer to stick with the spendthrift Mr. Brown who has helped to stoke the debt crisis with his increased borrowings?

Choices , choices lads.

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[YouTube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gkHwU4DRA8]

Alastair Campbell probably does

I’ve refrained for a couple of days from expressing any opinion on the current round of horse trading ostensibly between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats but the stage of thinking in terms of the “national interest” has now passed. Events of the past few minutes confirm that the “interest” is purely political, and when Bad Al Campbell comes out spinning for Brown we all know it’s political.

If this is the level of sensible discussion which ensues during periods when no political party has an overall majority then I’m afraid the Liberal Democrats can go and swing, and take their arguments for proportional representation with them. I’m not sure that Nick Clegg is really big enough to be involved in the mechanics of government after the revelation earlier to day that he and his negotiators had had a secretive meeting with Gordon Brown, nothing wrong with meeting him and keeping him up to date, but one would have thought that with such heavy issues at stake that he would have had the decency to inform David Cameron and the Conservative team in advance. How does he expect to build any coalition of trust, with any party, if he manoeuvres around behind the players backs?

If Clegg and the Lib-Dems decide now to back out of any agreement with the Conservatives to join a coalition of losers, they must surely realise that there will be severe consequences from the electorate at the next general election which will not be far away. With Brown deliberately throwing a spanner in the works by announcing his intention to resign as Labour leader (in September) he is offering the Liberal Democrats a path to join Labour in government. It is quite clear that we would then be governed for a while longer with Gordon Brown remaining as Prime Minister after an election in which he led his party to the worst results in decades losing vote share down to the level of the Michael Foot years, and losing almost a hundred Labour seats. It is inconceivable that the voters will accept him remaining in office propped up by Nick Clegg only to be replaced by yet another Labour leader who didn’t face the judgement of the electorate. The situation would be obscene.

Let’s hope that Nick Clegg sees the obscenity in this scenario, and lets hope that he understands that if events move in that direction his loss of six seats last week will pale into insignificance compared to the losses his party will suffer at the next election!

The whole drawn out affair of traded deals done in the back rooms of Admiralty House or the Cabinet Office are proving to be a great advert for why we DON’T need proportional representation, the stable government that we need would not be delivered as policy after policy would have to be traded away by one side or another. Just what would be the point of writing a manifesto and presenting it to the voters at an election if half of it was to be scrapped in Monopoly style horse trading a couple of weeks later. This would NOT be the way to improve the level of trust between politicians and the public.

I understand that the Conservatives have now offered a referendum on sort of PR system to the Lib Dems, I hope they draw a line and say no more, no further – they are starting to make themselves look desperate.

I would rather The Queen invites David Cameron to form a minority government than carry on trying to find the “national interest” with players like Brown and Clegg who seem to be proving themselves to be the losers they were last week.

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“Goldie’s” artwork fails to improve chances!

Not sure whether or not this was reprehensible vandalism and criminal damage – if so, where are the calls for a prosecution? After all, somebody must have climbed all over Cllr. Khan’s property to do this, dislodging expensive pieces of mortar! The culprits of course may have been 7 foot tall, hence the reluctance to take action.

On the other hand Mr. “Goldie , who “woz here”, may be South Shields’ answer to “Banksy”, attempting to create some artistic modernism with a political point in South Tyneside -  sorry but these are hardly Picassos are they? Airbrushing was probably needed originally at the start of the campaign, but you were probably right, as more details emerged, to go for obliteration.

Just a pity that you haven’t learned how to handle the well respected 6 inch “flopper” favoured by many painters and decorators in this town, instead you stuck to the accurate but time consuming chisel tipped felt pen. I guess you were a beneficiary of Labour’s education spending, and probably used your Educational Maintainance Allowance to finance your project.

This blogger, of course, cannot condone your behaviour Mr. Goldie, and I appreciate how much work, effort, and expense went into offering the customers of Simply Workwear a more colourful exterior decoration to enhance their shopping experience. Do you realise how many passing passengers on numerous buses must have been appalled by your artistic handiwork?

I do however acknowledge that even the famed Mr. Banksy failed to polish a t***.

This is not art at all, it is nothing more than vandalism – the “family” will be looking for you!

If you know who “Goldie” is please pass the details on to Cllr. Jane Branley or Cllr. Ahmed Khan, after you have informed the police, then if you have the time drop me an email too.

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It just isn’t going to happen so forget it Iain.

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