My pledge is to fight the Pledgers

It saddens me that Mark Seddon, an old friend and comrade, has become director of the People's Pledge, the latest organisation to be pressing for a referendum on EU membership.
Even though it is described as cross-party, there is no doubt what the vast majority of its leading figures want.  They want the UK out of the European Union.
The consequences of that would be catastrophic.  With all the growing economic pressures on the country, why on earth should we decide to remove ourselves from the biggest trading block in the world?
I don't deny that there are all sorts of things wrong with the way the EU is run. As there is with the Government and the local council and any other body you can mention, including private companies. But the doomsday scenario - "it's not working to my entire satisfaction, so let's get rid of it" - is absurd.
The huge growth in antagonisim to the EU is due to an overwhelming campaign run in the Murdoch press as well as the Mail, Telegraph and Daily Express - which is now calling openly for withdrawal, which is at least honest - and the failure of politicians to explain the benefits of membership.
There is also the nasty involvement of anti-immigration sentiment, which wants the Poles and other East Europeans banned from these shores in the same way it does migrants from the Indian sub-continent.
Who is funding the People's Pledge? It will have shedloads of money, as all the anti-European movements do, thanks to extremely wealthy benefactors.
Meanwhile, the money that is really relevant - the billions that this country gains through trade with our EU partners - is put at risk by this senseless hatred.
Even those arch anti-Europeans Cameron, Osborne and Hague have moderated their attitudes since coming to power. They were faced with the reality of the benefits that membership of the EU brings.
Yet we are heading in only one direction. Out of the European Union and on to the long road to economic disaster and international irrelevance. It is way beyond time that we made a stand against the Pledgers and their fellow travellers.

Double standards: Part 86

One of the main arguments Tories use against the education system is that Labour, egged on by liberal educationists, want to level down teaching.
Instead of accepting that some pupils should be allowed to do better than others, they say, the comprehensive system forces the brightest to be pulled down to the level of the rest.
That point of view doesn't extend to pensions, however.  In fact, the Tories now say the opposite. They insist that it isn't fair for public-sector workers to have a better arrangement than the majority of those who work in the private sector.
Why should this be? They don't complain if, say, banks or oil companies continue to provide final-salary pension schemes for their employees.
It is clearly prejudiced nonsense for the Government to insist that those who work in the public sector should have their pensions cut so they can do as badly as those in private schemes.
It is also rubbish, though still widely accepted, that "the nation can't afford" it. Like it can't afford to pay for higher education and all those essential services which are being axed.
We can afford to pay for it all  - remember how £70 billion was conjured up for the banks to sort out the crisis created by their naked greed.
The one arguable case for changing pension arrangements - and valid for private as well as public schemes - is that we live longer and remain fitter and active til far later in life. So those of us who can work on - which tends to mean people who have had a comfortable working life, not ones who have dug roads or performed other heavy manual tasks - should work on to offset the increasing demands to fund pensions.
That is what the debate should be about. Not a nasty campaign based on it being fair to drag public-sector workers down to the level of exploited private-sector employees.

The beginning of the end for Cameron

Never before has a government been in such a mess of its own making before it has got anywhere near its first anniversary.
Today's newspapers are a catalogue of misery for David Cameron. The traditionally Tory-supporting ones are the worst for him.
It seems there is little he and his ministers can do right. But what can they expect when they attack the middle classes, our frontline troops, the police, the countryside....need I go on?
When at Prime Minister's Questions Ed Miliband challenged Cameron to do another U-turn - this one on the assault on Sure Start - I thought the PM hesitated for a moment because he thought what I did: that Miliband was actually about to call on him to change tack on everything. Not just the deepest ever cuts but the wild schemes such as HS2 and the revolution in the NHS.
The latest polls show Labour would win an election held now by 78 seats. And that is before the cuts start to bite. And with Ed Miliband still an unknown. And petrol still below £1.50 a litre, which it won't be for long.
The LibDems are finished; and I say that with regret. But they have nailed themselves to a ridiculous government driving through absurd policies without thought for the consequences.
The picture of the new Communications supremo arriving (almost late) for his first day at No. 10 said all you needed to know about him and the state of the Prime Minister's operation. Craig Oliver wouldn't last a week working for Murdoch.
If Andy Coulson was still there, would we have had all those hostile headlines and columns today? I doubt it.
We may not be heading for Ed Miliband in Downing Street by Christmas, but there are long dark months ahead for David Cameron and his government.

The fast train to political oblivion

This country is so bankrupt (at least, that is what the Government tells us ad nauseum) that we can't afford to pay for higher education, care of the elderly, libraries, a properly-funded national health service and a thousand other services we had come to take for granted.
Yet we can afford to lavish £17 billion to shave ten minutes off the train journey from London to Birmingham.
There are several unanswerable objections to proceeding with HS2, the high-speed train line that will scar some of the most beautiful countryside in England.
There is the ruin of the environment and the destruction of lives and homes. Not to mention rural Britain having all the pain and none of the gain (such as it is).
But it is the economic argument against this crazed delusion of grandeur which is the killer.  Why should we spend so much money when we are told there is so little around so that a small number of businessmen and women can travel from London to Birmingham (nowhere else) very slightly faster?
Apparently this is David Cameron's passion and Philip Hammond, the Transport Secretary, has to persuade the nation that it is a Good Idea.  He is usally quite a good advocate but even he can't sell this lunacy.
It can be stopped because all the constituencies which will be affected are held by the Tories and some are going to be lost if HS2 pushes ahead. Add to those the Tory constituencies that could be lost because the NHS "reforms" will lead to their local hospitals being closed and you have a lot of worried and disaffected backbenchers.
If you were a Conservative MP, at what point would you openly question, if not rebel against, the wild policies being forced through by the leadership of a party which already doesn't have a majority?
No one will remember that HS2 was originally a Labour idea, dreamt up by Andrew Adonis, who history will remember with incredulity. But more about him some other time. And a lot more about HS2.

Don't motivate bankers, just sack them

The chief executive of RBS, Stephen Hester, stoutly defends the payment of bonuses to his senior managers in a strange - and offensive - way.
For a start, he thinks it perfectly acceptable to hand over £1 billion when the taxpayer-owned company lost £1 billion, so it would otherwise have broken even.
But what particularly irked me was his insistence that bonuses had to be paid because bankers need to be "well motivated".
Does he think teachers need to be well motivated? Or nurses? Or social workers? None of them get bonuses but we expect them to be completely devoted to their work. If they make an error or don't achieve good results, they are vilified.
What is so special about bankers? They were attacked for almost destroying the economy a couple of years ago but normally they get away with making appalling decisions, losing massive amounts of money, and ripping off customers and the country.
Hester also said that the recent cut in bonuses (compensated for by huge salary increases, remember) had led to thousands of RSB employees leaving the company which had in turn led to profits being reduced by a billion. Pull the other one.
I take the rather old-fashioned view that people ought to be committed to the work they do. Apart from anything else, why should anyone be paid at all if they don't do their job properly, whatever it is.
Why should bankers be different? Even without their bonuses, they are the most highly-paid people in the country. Do they really not care a fig for putting in any effort unless they are rewarded with unbelievable bonuses on top of their salaries?
Anyone who had that attitude should be fired, not given a fortune. That isn't how Stephen Hester (bonus £2million this year) sees it, though.

An awful sense of deja vue

Woke up this morning, listening to the Today programme, and thought I had travelled back in time.
Huge cuts in health service staff, tens of thousands of doctors and nurses losing their jobs. The nation's roads riddled with pot-holes and little prospect of dealing with effectively because there isn't the money.
Sound familiar? Younger readers should start here but for the rest of us we are being transported back to the bad days of Thatcher.
Except that this could be worse. The cuts are more savage and it is impossible to believe, unless  you are a member of the Government or one of their acolytes, that the consequences wont't be more brutal, too.
The report a few days ago that house prices could fall by 20 per cent was largely ignored by the media. Too terrifying to contemplate. But what do they think the result will be when hundreds of thousands lose their jobs and just about everyone else, apart from the bankers, sees a real drop in living standards? How much pain and destruction of lives is needed before this lot are satisfied?
There is a chance of resistance, encouraged by the U-turns the Government has already executed, notably over the forest sell-off. There are a growing number of bodies organising rallies, demonstrations and pickets, as I wrote about for the TUC this week http://www.strongerunions.org/2011/02/22/a-growing-movement/.
The demonstration on March 26 could be a turning point, uniting people from widely different parts of society in the determination to turn the tide of wrecking launched by the Government.
And by the realisatin that, if this goes on for another four years, there won't be much left for an incoming administration to restore.

Is THIS what they mean by the Big Society?

I got a parking ticket last week. Two actually. In my own road.
The resident's permit on my car - which has been parked there for seven years and is well known to the wardens - was overcome by gravity and decided to slip down the windscreen on to the dashboard.
So I was given a ticket. And then another the next morning as the warden was clearly waiting for the restricted time to begin. Luckily a neighbour noticed what was happening and I was able to restore the permit to its proper place before getting a third, fourt and fifth.
Assuming I won't have to pay the fine, all this means is that I have been terribly cross. But there is a wider significance.
Traffic wardens are the only people who walk our streets now. There used to be a road sweeper who knew us all and would keep an eye on the house and the children. He was sacked long ago as part of the council's efficiency drives that have kept Wandsworth council tax rises low. Can't remember when I last saw anyone cleaning our road since then.
The wardens could be performing a similarly useful social neighbourhood function but all they are interested in is slapping tickets on cars. They have no sense of society - they are just in it for the money.
Just about all the places where people could meet or get help in the community have gone. The garden centre, the police station, the post office. The residents play their part in fostering a sense of community but the council and government are working against us.
The criticism of the Big Society - that it will be undermined by the spending cuts - doesn't go far enough.  Since the days of Thatcher - the woman who insisted there was no such thing as society - all that has mattered to the authorities is cash. And New Labour was no better than the Tories.
Don't tell us we must be part of a Big Society when you are doing all you can to cut the feet out from under it. It's not just a matter of seeing if your elderly neighbour is OK. The Big Society can only exist as part of thriving communities. And successive governments have destroyed them, not only in industrial heartlands but in leafy suburbs and rural areas, too.