World Toilet Day

 One tiny spark of light on the otherwise gloomy scene  of UK politics is that our brand new (or should that be "soiled"?) foreign secretary , Lord (David) Cameron is reported to wish to "unlock billions of dollars of overseas aid."  Sadly no hard figures are mentioned, nor any reference to a date for restoring the UK's aid budget to 0.7% of GDP. (That is in the Liberal Democrat proposals for our next manifesto:  will it be in Labour's?)  

Be that as it may, the "wish" is a welcome move in the correct direction, though the "right" might not welcome it.

The need for assistance to the Global South is as great as ever.  In spite of the efforts of Water Aid and other charities roughly six times the population of the UK still have no facilities which enable them to urinate and defecate in private, safety and dignity, with hygienic means of washing their hands and disposing of their waste.  You can find further details on previous postings on this blog on previous 19ths of November.

The lack of provision for this basic need  is less dire but hugely inconvenient in our "civilised" United Kingdom, where  Public Lavatories in urban areas have almost disappeared.  If our Chancellor is short of good ideas on how to spend his "surplus" cash on Wednesday then he could supply sufficient means to enable Local Government in our towns and cities to replace and  maintain these vital facilities.

Two contemporary aspects of this topic  are strikingly important at the moment:

1.   How are the thousands of people taking shelter in Gaza's hospitals and  other putative "havens" coping with this?

 2.  How do the increasing numbers of homeless people forced to live on our street cope?

 If you have access to the means of relieving yourself  in privacy and dignity at your own convenience, give thanks.  And forget about tax cuts: tell the politicians to give this basic human need  the higher priority.

The Clamour for Tax cuts

 

Clamour for tax cuts

It really is incredible  that in a country where every public service (health, social care, children's services social housing, transport  -  take your pick) is clearly on its knees, the BBC's round-up of the press this morning  should be headlined with  a "Clamour for Tax Cuts."  These come from the Tory-favouring press: the Mail, Telegraph and Express leading the charge.

It is hard to believe that anyone will be taken in by this fantasy, but clearly our Conservative government thinks thy will, and this "clamour" is presumably orchestrated by their very effective PR machine.

 After a weekend in which it is hard to avoid the impression that both the Prime Minister and the then Home Secretary went out our their way to provoke discord and disruption around the Remembrance ceremonies, the ridiculous concept of "declaring" Rwanda a "Safe country" by British Parliamentary law, thus making it safe, and the   inhumane suggestions that the already inadequate social service payments may be further cut, it is hard to see the UK  remaining a member of the advanced, civilised, rational, liberally democratic countries.

  In 2002  Theresa May warned the Conservatives that they were in danger of being seen as "the nasty party."  Twenty years later, which include Mrs May's own contribution to fulfilling the prediction with her "hostile environment" for immigrants, the Conservatives are well in their way to turning us into a nasty country.

 

Conservatives like to claim that our tax take today is at its highest level since the War.  This is true.  What they do not say is that, compared with other similar countries, our tax take is modest

Figures from the impartial OBR, for the most recent year available  (2021) show the UK’s percentage of GDP taken in tax  is 33.5%.  This is 3.3% BELOW  the G7 average, and 6.4% BELOW the average for the EU14 (similarly advanced developed countries)

 There is plenty of scope to repair the neglect of the last 13 years and make this a decent society for all to live n

We must hope that the electorate will show their contempt for this creative "clamour" by  treating the Tories with deserved disdain at the coming election, and that a progressive government emerges which is   honest enough to recognise that we get what we pay for and increases the tax take to restore us to a country in which we can be proud to live.

 

 

 

Cabinet Churn

 

The political pundit Ian Dunt opens his very perceptive book “How Westminster Works . . .and Why It Doesn’t” with a case study.  In 2013 ambitious Conservative MP Chris Grayling joins the cabinet as Secretary of State for Justice.  He understands  that, since he’s likely to be be moved on in a couple of years or so,  or his party defeated at the coming election,  to make his mark he has to move quickly. So he decides to privatise the probation service, even though, apart from being under-resourced, there was nothing particularly wrong with it -  in fact it had just won a British Quality foundation  Gold Award for Excellence.

 The privatisation proved to be a disaster, and the Probation Service was taken back “in house” in 2018, but in a much weaker state because by this this time most of the more experienced staff had moved on into other areas and most valuable “collective memory” had been lost. 

No one was demoted, punished or otherwise held accountable for the debacle. Grayling had moved on to be Leader of the House and then Secretary of State for Transport.

Dunt points out that these short term stints by both Ministers and Civil Servants are typical are one of the major reasons the British Government and all it is responsible for is in such a mess.

I am indebted to a letter in today’s Guardian (15^th November) from a John Boaler of Calne, Wiltshire for the following.  Since 2010, thirteen years, there have been:

"Ten secretaries of State for Education;

Twelve Culture Secretaries;

Nine Secretaries  of State for Pensions;

Seven Transport Secretaries; etc.,

The new Home Secretary, James Cleverly, is in his seventh posting  in less than five years, averaging just eight months in each role."

 The message is clearly that it is not just the incompetence, craven pusillanimity and self-interest of our politicians which is responsible for the shambolic state of our country, but the system itself, which encourages, almost guarantees, short-termism and “grandstanding.”

There is need for root and branch reform.  There is no sign as yet that the Labour Party, likely to form the core of the next government, has anything sufficiently radical in mind.

After Braverman?

 

 

So now we know: Prime-minister  Sunak prefers Suella Braverman’s bile to come from  outside the tent rather than inside.  There will be much speculation abut the likely consequences.  Here’s mine.

On the whole, I think the short-term consequences are likely to be good for the “progressive forces “ (if only we can manage to harness them.)  It is fairly clear that Ms Braverman is trying to position herself as the “go-to” candidate for the Conservative leadership if and when (which she expects) the party is defeated and the present leadership resigns.  In fact some commentators  suspect that she may actually have deliberately engineered her sacking.

Be that as it may, her presence on the back benches is bound to be even more disruptive than if she had remained in the cabinet.  But while burnishing her credentials as the “right” choice for the leadership. and distancing herself as far as possible from the policies of the government in what I hope is its death throes year, she will make the party appear even more disunited.

The conventional wisdom is that voters do not like disunited parties and will therefore be more than ever tempted to look elsewhere. 

If M/s Braverman is successful in her ploy and does become leader of the diminished Tories after the election, that too could be good for the “progressive forces.”   

Again the conventional wisdom is that British voters do not like extremist parties and that both the Conservatives and Labour are more successful when led, respectively, from just right or just left of centre.  That was certainly the experience of Tony Blair’s “New” Labour  and its thirteen years in power, in contrast to Jeremy Corbyn’s bid for power with a more robust left-wing programme (though it wasn’t really, just painted that way by the press.)

However, the “conventional wisdom” may be out of date and the public may be tired of wishy-washy governments with almost indistinguishable policies. 

 Certainly I am, and would like to see a more vigorous Liberal assault from the Liberal Democrats on almost everything  the government does (on housing, the judicial system, education, devolution, the climate crisis, local government, company responsibilities, ownership of the media, taxation  and how we are governed, to mention just some.)

The electorate may take the same view but make the wrong choice - a dash for deregulation and a barricaded “Singapore on Thames."  After the Truss disaster you’d think we’d know better.  But the US has had four years of the awful President Trump and there seems the incredible possibility that they might elect him again.

So Ms Braverman’s gamble could succeed.  We live in very dangerous time.

Pro-Palestine March

Pro-Palestine March

 

Last weekend (4^th and 5^th November) I caught  a snatch of an interview on BBC Radio 4 with one of  the organisers of the Pro-Palestine march in London on the coming weekend.  The organiser sounded balanced and rational (about the pros and cons of holding the march: not the pros and cons of the Arab-Israeli conflict – that wasn’t the topic).  The route had been agreed perfectly amicably with the police, who seemed happy with it, it didn’t go anywhere near the Cenotaph and in any case the Remembrance Proceedings at the Cenotaph would be over, as the march wasn‘t scheduled to start until the afternoon.

The organiser argued that there was therefore no justification for the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, to claim that the march was “provocative and disrespectful.”  (I think those were the words, but I didn’t write them down and my memory isn’t what it was.)

Since then a veritable phalanx of Troy bigwigs has joined the chorus of indignation that the UK’s annual holy moment should be disrupted by such a disreputable activity.

Happily the Metropolitan Police Commissioner agrees with the organiser and has so far refused to ban the march.  Good for him.

However, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that all this publicity about the possibility of disruption and vandalism will actually promote it. If the perpetrators of disorder hadn’t already thought of it I’m sure they will already be thinking of means by which they can daub some slogan on the Cenotaph. (It shouldn’t take too many policemen to guard against that.  But what else might imaginative minds come up with?)

I suspect that the Tories will not be disappointed if the ”disrespectful” behaviour the claim to abhor actually occurs.

 

*At the time of the broadcast I assumed that the  march was to be on Sunday12th, the same day as the National Remembrance Service, around the Cenotaph with the National  Two Minutes’ Silence at 11am.  It  appears that the march is to be on the  Saturday 11^th which the British Legion have now adopted as an additional commemoration of the Armistice.

 

In my view the British Legion have got it right, and we should have the ”Official” Act of Remembrance on the actual Armistice Day, as it is in France.  However, I think two are unnecessary.  We should choose one and stick with it.

 Correction:  the call for Armistice Day itself to by observed as well as Remembrance Sunday comes not from the British Legion, but from the Western Front Association, which seek to recognise the particular horrors of the sacrifices in the trenches in the First World War.