Cometh the Hour: Goeth the Man: as the Wootton Basset Cortège Lengthens time is running out for Gordon Brown

I apologise for this somewhat gloomy article but as I sit here on this hillside with the mist still clinging to the fields this is the political landscape I see. These things will pass and some sunlit uplands will eventually appear. When that will happen and how it will be achieved is not for my failed generation to determine. Any ideas, especially from those involved in the political process, would be welcome.

As I predicted in a post some months ago (Sunday, 19 July 2009 Gordon, do you Remember Vietnam?) , as the number of deaths in Afghanistan mounted so too would the pressure on Gordon Brown. With the latest loss of life and further concerns about inadequate supplies of equipment we are assured by the Prime Minister that he has done his best. Unfortunately at some time or another we all have to recognise that our best is not good enough and I am afraid that, judging from his demeanour, he is beginning to realise this. His administration seems to be sleepwalking into an election without any real clue as to what it is doing and with no hope of winning. Is this a parallel with Afghanistan? Whilst we probably have some sympathy for a man that has been severely damaged by the failures of Blairite New Labour I can still find it in my heart to have some sympathy for the poor devils who will inherit the Brown portfolio of muddle and indecision. Will they do any better? I have my doubts.

It should not be forgotten that the funding and procurement strategies which have lead to the present peacetime budget for a war all started when Gordon was running a tight ship at the Treasury which was cutting back on defence budgets. The procurement of unsuitable equipment has been known of since the Iraq War and now the consequences showing in another. It is therefore no surprise that support for the Afghan War is fast evaporating and that the Sun newspaper is now starting to turn the electioneering screw.

As the public contrast all this with the support which has been given to the bonus junkies, previously known as bankers, with the increased taxation for the rest of us, they will see that the New Labour train, now in its Brown livery, is fast heading for the buffers. It is remarkable that within this decline time is still being found to emasculate Parliament and bring in changes without debate. MPs still allow a hyper-active Executive to undermine an increasing number of our civil liberties in the retreat from Democracy to Bureaucracy. Sleep walking into disaster seems to be catching with so many MPs no longer conscious of the fact that they are supposed to scrutinise legislation. So much so that their nods have now rubber stamped a vast volume of guillotined measures at the behest of the Home Office and the Association Chief Police Officers.

With a hopeless Government comes a hopeless electorate in the sense that they will have lost both the will to vote and any belief that our democratic system can be taken seriously. Our present Secretary of State for Defence for example is now putting forward the nonsense of a policy which will no longer defend vast tracks of Afghanistan but will concentrate resources to defend populated areas. This is not defence, but a managed retreat, and presumably proceeds on the assumption that the nice Taliban will not congregate in large numbers in the vacuums thus created, before encircling prior to delivering the fatal blow. It should be noted that the Taliban’s choice of transport, the small motorcycle, is already an improvement on the push bike of the Vietcong.

If our political leaders cannot properly support our armed forces, then why should the British public support the war? We have now come to the point where leading military men are doing the work of government in telling us that the war is necessary to prevent terrorism in the UK. This is not their job. Our so called elected leaders should be doing this but it would seem that even this is now beyond their limited talents.

Unfortunately we now have to watch the dying stages of this Rump Parliament and this incompetent Government with all its dreaded consequences. Our political classes have failed and there is little chance that we will get anything more than a bunch of apparatchiks to replace them who have got to Parliament by the modern route of party worker or research unit placeman. No wonder the details of the election debate cannot yet be faced by any of our political parties. They all know that whatever the outcome the result will be unpleasant. In the meantime I fear that Al Qaeda will have moved to Somalia and that British Democracy will still be waiting for a bed in Intensive Care.

Tokenism and the Bus Pass

In an earlier blog, Popular Policies are Doomed, I was making the claim that whenever something becomes popular in the UK it has to be curtailed. The Bus Pass is one of the recent victims of its own success. In the12 months I have held a senior persons bus pass I have yet to use it in Herefordshire. The reason for this is that it is a 3 mile walk to the nearest bus stop with a useful service, although I cant expect to get a bus back after 6pm.

Our other services don’t operate out of school terms and only run one in the morning and one back in the evening. The two market day buses give little time before they return from Hereford and Abergavenny respectively. I have used the pass in Birmingham a few times and once on a park and ride in Kent. I could go to Cardiff and back for nothing, but without a toilet break I don’t think the two hour trip would be much of an outing. It does of course involve a five mile drive to pick the bus up in the first place. Consequently, for me, it doesn’t add up to a hill of discarded tickets, but for others it is a liberating opportunity.

It’s these ‘others’ who are therefore causing the Association of Local Authorities to winge. Local authorities have to fork out the cost of reimbursing the bus operators. This would not be a problem but the promised reimbursement from central government has been falling short of the actual cost. The local authorities are now saying that people who have a car should not be entitled to a free bus pass especially when they could afford to pay proper fares anyway. The Government, having made the gesture are now quite happy, or so it seems, to see the idea of free bus travel for the older citizen to gradually fade away while the local authorities can be blamed. The scheme has already been withdrawn from limited stop services, park and ride and city sightseeing tours. This latter category, it could be argued, is hardly travel anyway, but these are just the start..

What the local authorities don’t seem to realise is that they should be encouraging people to get onto public transport and they probably wouldn’t disagree with this, until they have to pay for it. The same can be said of central government if they are reneging on the undertaking to reimburse local authorities. The withdrawal of park and ride from the scheme really shows how seriously this claimed encouragement to get us out of our cars and onto public transport is taken. Not much.

Having been scarred by commuting for 13 years by the poisonous combination of Great Western and Thames Trains I am reluctant to risk my valuable leisure time by travelling by train, usually at great expense. By buying a train ticket you have decided to forgo the expense already incurred by keeping and running a car. Your tax and depreciation costs are still being incurred while your car stands idle. No recognition of this is given. Instead you have to take on the double whammy of paying a high train fare as well, and in my experience, a huge gamble as to whether you will have a pleasant journey due to poor management of the system and a total failure to understand the phrase, ‘customer care’. In any case, subsidised travel should be extended to everyone if there is a genuine determination to reduce car journeys. The other poisonous combination of John Major’s Thomas the Tank Engine privatisation and Tony Blair’s failure to think a joined up thought on the topic has meant that the public transport system outside the big cities is very patchy and practically non-existent for evening travel. If I stop using my car I give up the only reliable transport I know at the moment. This of course suits all the token environmentalists in government well, because I not only pay the full costs, the taxes I pay for the privilege leaves some cash free to spend on all kinds of other daft token schemes which are supposed to make us think that New Labour is environmentally sound. The current thinking is about as joined up as a transatlantic bus service.

Dacier

Magna Carta 1215: New Labour in Breach! Outrageous Silence

Clause 38 ‘In future no official shall bring anyone to trial on his own unsupported statement without producing trustworthy witnesses to the alleged offence.

Clause 39 'No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions ... except by the lawful judgment of his peers and according to the law of the land.'
Clause 40 'To no one will we sell, refuse or delay the operation of right or justice.'
Why is it that the myth of Magna Carta is promoted as a great document but the sad truth is that it is ignored. New Labour is not alone in ignoring the simplicity of Magna Carta, claiming to prefer the more complicated provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights. But this still allows our civil liberties to be cast aside on grounds of expediency, knowing full well that private citizens for the most part do not have the resources to challenge an abuse of power. Anyone who knows anything about our system of government will soon realise that the people get their rights by a trickle down from above and the trickle is governed by the tap the Government chooses to turn on and off at its whim.

Judging by the terms of Clause 40 the law is open to all. It is: like the Ritz Hotel, to quote the old joke. Just try to challenge a delay or denial of justice in the courts and you will soon find out that it is not free. Indeed access will be barred due to costs alone let alone trying to find a lawyer to act or a provision the legal aid scheme which will allow you to be funded. In any case, if you are moderately well off, you are on your own mate!

The present Government, like its predecessors have been squeezing the legal budget for years and now its looks as though the solicitors who are in the front line are going to be like the farmers. They must do the job for less than cost. They will cut corners of course but if they go too far they will lose their franchise. The result? More lawyers will withdraw from the scheme, more firms will not train lawyers and the big cats will move in to asset strip the lucrative assets of old firms, close down unprofitable sections and put their fees up.

Against all of this the Government assures us that it wants to make the professions less elitist. I don’t know how they are going to achieve this with students leaving university with huge debts and facing huge bills for professional examination courses, and with little prospect for the majority of finding a training position. Coming from a generation of politicians who had a lot of help to get where they are; grammar schools, public schools and university grants etc, Jack New Labour must be running out of ladders to pull up. Some hope for Magna Carta. .

Dacier.

See Spaghetti Gazetti by The Editor on 02/08/09

Oh no! It’s that man again!

To my mind a retiring characteristic is sometimes sad because the person concerned can sometimes have a lot to offer in the line of good company. Unfortunately it seems that this is a characteristic which does not seem to be possessed by politicians. It is now widely recognised that Winston Churchill took on one premiership too far and that Margaret Thatcher would have done herself more good by retiring gracefully to a more therapeutic life style. Tony Blair is no exception. I was one of the many who now have to confess that I thought he would make a big difference for the better. I now feel betrayed and embarrassed while he no doubt thinks he did a great job.

If a great job includes expanding police powers, undervaluing the right to silence, more privatisation, failing to see that the bankers were taking us to the cleaners, failing to maintain a public housing programme and going into two wars, one without the kit and the other without the truth, then the boy done well. That is no doubt why he became a peace envoy for the Middle East and the promoter of inter faith knowledge, and now, could become President of the European Union. Surely he has done enough. Having recently seen his speech to his annual conference some fourteen years ago about how the elderly would no longer have to put up with poverty in their retirement etc .and then hearing the news last week that the present government is still coming up with ideas for self-funded insurance policies for residential care. I decided I had had enough exercise in the cringe department.

With New Labour’s betrayal of their voter base and more and more grand promises that cannot be delivered, ( and with earlier promises being broken e.g. the troops in Afghanistan will get everything they want!), I am now one of the electoral homeless awaiting some credible politicians to come up with some deliverable policies which might actually do something about the accumulating problems of youth unemployment, social injustice and so many other problems on the downward spiral of incompetence that has got this nation where it is. One thing I am pretty certain of is that whether or not Mr Blair becomes President of the European Union will make not a bit of difference, apart from making EU summits a bit awkward for Gordon.