Thoughts on politics and life from a liberal perspective

Tuesday 28 May 2013

House of Comments - Episode 60 - The Woolwich Aftermath

Episode 60 of the House of Comments podcast "The Woolwich Aftermath" was recorded yesterday and is out today. This week myself and Emma Burnell were joined by parliamentary lobby correspondent and host of the "Hear Hear" political podcast Sean Dilley. We discussed various aspects of the aftermath of the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich including the political and media responses. We also covered whether David Cameron should be able to take a holiday and touched upon the recent fortunes of the Conservative Party more widely.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here (note - this is a new feed so if you used to subscribe to the old feed a couple of years ago you'll need to do so again).

Other podcasting software e.g. for Android can be pointed here to subscribe.

You can download the mp3 for the latest episode directly from here.

Or you can listen to the embedded episode below here:


If you are a political blogger and wish to be considered as a future guest please drop me an e-mail at markreckons@live.co.uk.

Any feedback welcomed in the comments below.


PS: A big thanks to Audioboo for hosting the podcast for us and especially to Audioboo's James O'Malley who has helped us out getting relaunched. James is also editor of The Pod Delusion podcast which is about "interesting things" and is well worth a listen too! We would also like to thank Kevin MacLeod from Incompetech.com for our theme music.

The 3 reasons I hate "Self-Checkout Machines"

I really hate them. Really, really hate them. And I never really thought too much about why until recently.

I am a child of the tech generation. I got my first computer (a beloved ZX Spectrum) when I was 9 years old and learned to program on it. I studied Computing at University and have made my living from it.

Better still I used to work for a company that specialised in software to print and read barcodes. So you'd think scanning my own shopping would be right up my street. So why isn't it?

I mulled this over at length yesterday and I think it boils down to three separate things:

1) Something always goes wrong. I mean this literally. I have probably used such machines about 10 times (I told you I hate them). Whether it's one of the barcodes not scanning or a "3 for 2" offer not registering properly, or some "problem" with an item not having been put in the baggage area when it has been or a vegetable or pastry that doesn't seem to have been included on the manual selection system. It's always something. Which means like some naughty schoolboy supplicant I have to put my hand up and call over someone to come and help me, every f'ing time.

2) I am doing the supermarket's job for them. A few years ago the idea that I would check my own groceries out would have been ridiculous. I have gone round the shop and picked the items out. It's the shop's job to determine what I have selected and how to charge me. Why would I do that last bit for them? It just feels wrong. Not to mention how I am helping to do people out of jobs.

3) They are coercing me into using these bloody things. When they first came along a few years back there would be one or two of them. They were a novelty. Now in many places (especially "metro" versions of supermarkets) there are about 16 of the buggers vs a couple of checkout staff on normal tills. And hence people like me who just want to hand over the goods and pay without faffing about have to queue up in longer and longer lines whilst those who are willing to CONFORM TO THE NEW DOCTRINE are through and out more quickly as I stand around. In fact in a WH Smith's once (in Waterloo Station fairly late on) there was literally no choice. I presented my item at the till and the man told me I had to do it myself. I tried to scan my packet of Werther's and as per point 1) it didn't work. After several attempts I called him over and he tried it. It didn't work for him either. In the end I just physically handed him the money and asked him to sort it out after I had left as I was about to miss my train to which he said OK.

It surely won't be long before these self-service things are the only way to checkout in lots of places. I heartily resent this "innovation" in customer service but trying to fight against it is increasingly like pissing in the wind.

Which I am still happy to do myself.

Monday 27 May 2013

The toxic legacy of the AV referendum campaign

If I am honest I am still quite bitter about the 2011 AV referendum campaign and its outcome. Let's not kids ourselves that AV would have been a panacea. It definitely wouldn't have been. But it would have been a small step in the right direction, introduced people across the country to the idea of preferential voting and helped to ensure our MPs had a moderately stronger claim to each be there with in some cases broader support than they get under first past the post. So I am disappointed about the legacy the loss of the campaign has bequeathed us.

But what I am despondent about is the legacy that the winning No2AV campaign has bequeathed us.

Because that camp has post-hoc legitimised the misleading and outright stupid tactics that they pushed. Never mind about the truth, let's just pretend that AV is going to cost £250 million. By the time the Yes side has come up with a response the lie will have taken hold and they will be on the back foot. I've got a good wheeze: Let's publish a picture of a soldier and strongly imply that if people vote for AV they will not get the bullet-proof vests they need.  No, no hang on! I've got an even better one. Let's publish a picture of a new-born baby and even more strongly imply that if people vote for AV, sick children will not get the equipment they need. Oooh, I've got it! Let's come up with a spurious and tendentious set of reasoning that suggest the BNP will benefit from it. Oh, hang on the BNP are against AV. Who gives a shit! Let's say it anyway! Once we've released the boogeyman from the jar the Yes campaign will be playing catch-up trying to rebut it.

And so on, and so on.

I'm not saying the Yes campaign were perfect, they certainly weren't. But the No side exhibited all the characteristics of a "Whatever we need to say to win and hang the truth" campaign.

And of course they did win. Massively.

So with the Scottish independence referendum campaign coming up next year and a likely EU in/out referendum campaign in the next parliament I genuinely fear what sort of utter bollocks is going to be pushed, probably by all sides.

We've already seen huge arguments over North Sea oil where as far as I can tell misinformation is being heavily pushed by both sides and also scare stories about Sterling (Scotland could easily carry on with the pound if they wanted but why let the truth get in the way?).

And with the incipient EU campaign there are signs of where this is all heading with Nigel Farage leading the charge claiming that 75% of our laws are made in Brussels. This is simply a lie. It is 10% at the absolute most. And the pro-EU side has been at it too with Nick Clegg claiming that 3 million jobs are at risk if we withdraw which is such an extreme reading of the possibilities that it is effectively a parody.

I'm not saying the AV referendum campaign has caused all of this. But it has taught everyone involved in politics a toxic lesson. No matter how ridiculous the lie during a referendum campaign there is no effective oversight or consequences so make em big and make em scary.

All that matters is that you win.

Friday 24 May 2013

The real lessons from the 2010 coalition negotiations


I've just finished reading Andrew Adonis’s 5 Days in May: The Coalition and Beyond and it has given me food for thought both about how the 2010 coalition negotiations proceeded and what lessons we might learn for any potential future coalition discussions.

Having already read David Laws’s 22 Days in May and Rob Wilson’s 5 Days to Power and having watched various radio and TV programmes about the 2010 negotiations, I already had a reasonable idea about how they went. But it was interesting to get a Labour perspective on the talks.

The fairly settled view from Lib Dems is that Labour were unprepared for discussions and some members of their negotiating team and parliamentary party seemed to be mentally ready for opposition, rather than seriously trying to make the necessary compromises to stay in power.

One figure, however, in all the accounts that I have seen, heard and read, who clearly did want to try and make the negotiations work was Gordon Brown. There is no doubt in my mind that he really did want to see a Lab-Lib coalition. Unfortunately, because he had not properly prepared the ground for any such discussions, having been so used both as Chancellor and PM to working majorities, he was destined to fail. The passion with which Brown tried to make the discussions with the Lib Dems work comes across in Adonis’s book as almost tragic, but given how much we already know about what a tribalist was, he cuts a contradictory figure, desperately trying to convince Nick Clegg of how a radical Labour-Lib Dem coalition could deliver.

A telling vignette from 5 Days in May is how Peter Mandelson, Ed Miliband and Ed Balls all discussed with Adonis how they had never come across Andrew Stunell before and did not know who he was. He had been Lib Dem MP for Hazel Grove since 1997 and a frontbench spokesperson for almost all of that time. This demonstrates a shocking level of engagement by Labour with the party that they were supposedly attempting, in good faith, to form a government with.

An important theme from the Adonis book is that of how the question of 'the numbers' seemed to be eminently solvable in the view of Brown and some other senior Labour people. Despite the fact that Labour only had 258 seats and the Lib Dems 57 (so a total of 315 vs the Tories' 306, with a majority requiring 326) Brown was convinced that most of the minor parties would fall into line. I’m not sure if I would describe this as wishful thinking or self-delusion but the idea that a 'rainbow coalition' or even a minority coalition that took the votes of the SNP, Plaid Cymru, Caroline Lucas, the SDLP and the DUP all pretty much for granted would have been plain sailing, and was somehow an obvious and equal choice to the stability of a solid working majority with the Conservatives, is optimistic in the extreme.

It also suggested to me a level of arrogance, perhaps fostered by 13 years in government, within senior Labour ranks that the minor parties would come to heel. The Lib Dems were doing the responsible thing in not assuming that all these smaller parties would stay in line and instead considering that any deal with Labour would be on the basis of a minority government which would have been very difficult to control. This was not least because a number of Labour MPs spent the five days of the coalition negotiations making it clear that there were things they would not agree to or vote for. So far from Brown being sure of being able to deliver his 258 MPs, it was far more likely that the total would regularly fall short of that depending on which issue the vote was on.

A good example of this is how during the first formal discussion with the Labour team, Adonis highlighted how Labour was open to a proportional representation option being on the AV ballot paper. But I know from my own personal discussions at the time that Labour MP Tom Harris would never have voted for a bill that included a PR option in the referendum. He told me categorically. It was also clear to me that he was not alone in this respect and there were a number of Labour MPs who would also have defied party whips to defeat this. Labour was negotiating on something it would never have been able to deliver on.

So what lessons can we draw from the various accounts of the 2010 coalition negotiations? I would say the most important thing is preparation. Both the Lib Dems and the Conservatives wargamed a number of scenarios before the 2010 election. They approached coalition negotiations professionally and with the clear purpose of forming a stable government that could last for a whole parliament. Contrast this with Labour, which didn't even start seriously planning for coalition until after the result was announced. And it made a big difference. The Lib Dems did not take Labour as seriously as the Conservatives as potential partners, not for ideological reasons (as Adonis seems convinced of), but primarily because the reds had not done the basic groundwork. So the key lesson from 2010 for Labour is to be open to the possibility that there will be a hung parliament in 2015, long before it actually happens, and to plan, war-game and prepare in advance for this outcome. Even just making sure the basics, such as having enough backchannel communication between key players. Happily, there are signs that Ed Miliband gets this now and is preparing the ground for just such an eventuality.

Another important factor is to be realistic about what can be achieved. Brown's offer of PR on the AV referendum ballot simply could not have been delivered by him in the circumstances he found himself in. Indeed the numbers made any alliance at all very tricky. If the maths makes things difficult, parties should be open about this. That is the only way that good faith can be maintained.

The final lesson to draw for now is more related to how the current coalition has played out. The Lib Dems have been reasonably disciplined in keeping their troops in line and ensuring that most items from the coalition agreement have gone through, even when, as in the case of tuition fees, they have gone directly against what the party wanted. Whatever you may think of the individual policies, this has been done in the name of coalition cohesion. By contrast, the Conservative backbenches have been much more restive and have forced defeats on measures such as Lords reform in defiance of their party leadership.

The various processes that the Lib Dems had (and have) in place to facilitate buy-in from the parliamentary and wider membership were seen by both Labour and Conservatives in 2010 as somewhat eccentric. Indeed, one of the reasons Brown found it so hard to get hold of Clegg on several occasions during the five days is because the Lib Dem leader was in one meeting or another keeping colleagues closely informed of what was happening and consulting them. But it is hard to argue that the legitimacy those processes conferred on the coalition from a Lib Dem perspective is anything other than a very good thing. I was one of the party members who voted in the special conference convened towards the end of May 2010 and it certainly gave me a feeling of ownership which has been sorely tested over the last three years. It is not a panacea and we enter a grey area when measures that were never in the coalition agreement are legislated on, sometimes to the chagrin of myself and my fellow party members. But a complete lack of any such process within the Conservative Party has led to a widespread feeling amongs its members, both in parliament and more widely, of a lack of legitimacy in the current coalition.

There was no modern precedent on which the parties could draw three years ago and they were, to an extent, flying blind. But in 2015, should such discussions become necessary, that will not be the case. All parties should learn the lessons from those five heady days in May 2010.


This piece was first published online in The New Statesman.


We discussed the Adonis book and the lessons for future negotiations on this week's House of Comments Podcast which guest starred Hopi Sen.

Tuesday 21 May 2013

Never Been Paid

I have been mulling something over recently.

I think I am a reasonably good writer. I have certainly had positive feedback from others about the way I approach covering issues. I'm by no means perfect and I do sometimes look back on old blog posts and wonder if I could have done things a bit differently.

I have written close to 1,500 posts for this site in the 4 and a half years it has been going which is close to an average of one per day. Which I think is a pretty good level of experience.

I have won awards for this blog and I think I have a solid reputation amongst my peers. I have also had my work published by various online media including The New Statesman, The Independent, The Guardian Datablog, Left Foot Forward, Liberal Conspiracy, Lib Dem Voice, Conservative Home and others.

But there is one fact I cannot escape.

I have never earned any money for my online writing. Ever.

I have written myself about how the structure of journalism and making a living from writing is rapidly changing and the past is certainly no guide to the future. So in this context maybe my lack of any sort of remuneration is not particularly surprising. But it does make me wonder just how high the bar is set.

I am just one case. Maybe loads of my online contemporaries are coining it in. But I doubt it. Those who have managed to land columns with newspapers and magazines off the back of blogging I am sure earn from it. But I know of others who regularly write for online sites where you might expect they would be paid and are not so even that is no guarantee.

I have actually made some money from my online media activities but it has been tangentially through radio and TV appearances. I never would have got the offers were it not for my writing so it has sort of been inspired by my writing but not directly for it.

One thing I have decided to do is to start to ask if a fee can be paid when I write for other outlets. Because I do realise that I very rarely bother doing that assuming the answer will be no. But if you don't ask you don't get.

I am not reliant on my writing for my living. Good job or I'd be in real trouble! For me it is just a sideline. But if I had any expectations of ever making it more than a sideline as least I am under no illusions about just how hard it is to make a living at this game.

One final note. It is currently mid way through May. So I am going to tack one more item onto my predictions for 2013 and it is this:

12) I will be paid something, anything for one of my pieces of writing during 2013.

Let's see if I can make it happen.


I would also be interested to hear other people's experiences of getting paid (or not) for their writing in the comments below.

House of Comments - Episode 59 - Five Days in May

Episode 59 of the House of Comments podcast "Five Days in May" was recorded on Sunday and was out yesterday. This week myself and Emma Burnell were joined by Labour activist and blogger Hopi Sen to discuss Andrew Adonis' "5 Days in May" about the coalition negotiations from Labour's perspective, Loongate and the Tories incipient nervous breakdown over Europe and equal marriage.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here (note - this is a new feed so if you used to subscribe to the old feed a couple of years ago you'll need to do so again).

Other podcasting software e.g. for Android can be pointed here to subscribe.

You can download the mp3 for the latest episode directly from here.

Or you can listen to the embedded episode below here:


If you are a political blogger and wish to be considered as a future guest please drop me an e-mail at markreckons@live.co.uk.

Any feedback welcomed in the comments below.


PS: A big thanks to Audioboo for hosting the podcast for us and especially to Audioboo's James O'Malley who has helped us out getting relaunched. James is also editor of The Pod Delusion podcast which is about "interesting things" and is well worth a listen too! We would also like to thank Kevin MacLeod from Incompetech.com for our theme music.

Wednesday 15 May 2013

How can Lib Dems credibly claim we only wanted an EU referendum "if things change"...

...when we were putting out leaflets like this before the election?


House of Comments - Episode 58 - Post Truth Politics

Episode 58 of the House of Comments podcast "Post Truth Politics" was recorded on Sunday and was out yesterday. This week myself and Emma Burnell were joined by Lib Dem activist Jennie Rigg to discuss "Post truth politics" in the wake of Iain Duncan-Smith having been caught out misusing statistics (again), Michael Gove's comments on the Lib Dem internal struggles, fish quotas and the ongoing effects of the bedroom tax.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here (note - this is a new feed so if you used to subscribe to the old feed a couple of years ago you'll need to do so again).

Other podcasting software e.g. for Android can be pointed here to subscribe.

You can download the mp3 for the latest episode directly from here.

Or you can listen to the embedded episode below here:


If you are a political blogger and wish to be considered as a future guest please drop me an e-mail at markreckons@live.co.uk.

Any feedback welcomed in the comments below.


PS: A big thanks to Audioboo for hosting the podcast for us and especially to Audioboo's James O'Malley who has helped us out getting relaunched. James is also editor of The Pod Delusion podcast which is about "interesting things" and is well worth a listen too! We would also like to thank Kevin MacLeod from Incompetech.com for our theme music.

Tuesday 7 May 2013

First Past the Post helps elect extremists like Collin Brewer

During the AV referendum campaign a couple of years ago great play was made by the "No" campaign of how a preferential system would "allow BNP voters to dictate the result".

This was always a highly dubious claim. Indeed the BNP actually opposed AV, presumably because they realised that under a system where a candidate needs to get broad support they would likely get no seats at all. At least under FPTP they can occasionally win, usually where the barrier is often considerably lower than 50%.

One of the results from the recent local elections amply demonstrates this point.

Collin Brewer was an independent councillor in Cornwall who before the elections attracted a lot of publicity having made some highly offensive comments about disabled children and how they cost too much money so should be "put down". He resigned at the time but decided to stand again for the Wadebridge East ward and to the consternation of many was actually re-elected.

There is an online petition at the moment trying to get him to resign again which has gathered hundreds of signatures.

But it is worth bearing in mind how he managed to get re-elected. Here is the breakdown of the 2013 results for Wadebridge East taken from the Democracy Cornwall website:




Wadebridge East - results
Election Candidate Party Votes %
Collin William Brewer Independent 335 25% Elected
Steve Knightley Liberal Democrat 331 25% Not elected
Roderick Harrison UK Independence Party 208 16% Not elected
Adrian Darrell Jones Labour 161 12% Not elected
Brian Aubone Bennetts Conservative 150 11% Not elected
Sarah Hannah Maguire Independent 146 11% Not elected



As you can see Collin only got 25% of the vote. Now I don't know how many of those who voted for him were aware of his remarks but even if most of them were, 75% of voters voted for a candidate who does not have those views. And yet because of First Past the Post Collin was allowed to take the seat on only a quarter of the vote.

Far from preventing extreme candidates from being elected, FPTP actually allows it to happen by simply taking the candidate with the plurality of votes and giving them the seat no matter how low the vote share is. Elsewhere in Cornwall another candidate was elected on less than 20% of the vote.

We aren't going to get AV or any other form of electoral reform any time soon I suspect but we have to accept that keeping FPTP means as a country we reap what we sow.

Friday 3 May 2013

UKIP - The political classes are still not getting it

So UKIP have had an amazing set of council elections. The results are still being counted but they are on course for well over 100 seats (they had 8 last time these seats were contested) and roughly a quarter of the vote.

Cue much consternation within the political classes with politicians from all the major parties coming onto the media to "explain" what is happening and what they intend to do about it. The "explanations" range from the standard "mid term blues" argument that I have heard from the likes of Simon Hughes and Grant Shapps, to people being frustrated (with X policy, usually one the politician speaking is also frustrated with coincidentally) and protesting by voting for UKIP.

There is probably something in these and the various other comments that will be forced down our necks ad nauseum in the coming days and weeks.

Backbench Tories are already responding by trying to push an EU referendum in this parliament. Doubtless there will be some who try to encourage a harder line on immigration.


But I think much of the analysis and comment is missing something very important.

People are voting for UKIP because they seem to do politics differently.

Their spokespeople appear to give a straight answer to a straight question. They have had candidates with views that are well outside the mainstream (and probably offensive to some people) such as John Sullivan in Gloucestershire who claimed homsexuality could be prevented through vigorous physical exercise.

There have also been pictures of UKIP candidates in situations that by the political classes are generally seen as "unacceptable" such as the young man who was photographed wearing a Jimmy Saville mask. There have been plenty of others as the media and activists from other parties started trawling the web to find evidence of these sort of "embarrassing" snaps.

But UKIP have not deselected these candidates as the mainstream parties would have done at the first whiff of bad publicity. Instead they have allowed their candidates to have their say and their pasts and stand or fall at the ballot box.

Now don't get me wrong. I personally disagree with pretty much all of the comments that these candidates have made and many of the things they have been pictured doing are not to my taste either. But the major point is that the party is being genuinely open and forgiving of their candidates. It is allowing them to say and do things that "ordinary" politicians would be fired for. Whether I agree or disagree with the candidates statements and actions is irrelevant. It is a very different way of doing politics and the electorate are taking notice.

It is strange to reflect that we have reached a point where the careers of politicians can be ended because of an odd ill advised comment or picture but it happens time and again. On this blog alone I have commented previously on the cases of Greg Stone, Aidan Burley and Phillip Whittington all of whom did things that were deemed to be beyond the pale for their parties and were thusly sanctioned.

It is no wonder to me that when a party comes along that is more tolerant about the human failings of its candidates that it ultimately starts to reap the electoral rewards of this. We don't want a bunch of automatons who have never lived and never said or thought anything that might be offensive to someone somewhere. Of course I would argue very strongly against the views of most UKIP candidates on all sorts of issues but that shouldn't mean they are not allowed to have their views and also their "embarrassing" photos from parties etc. They should and then they can be challenged on the hustings and at the ballot box.

After all, isn't that what democracy is supposed to be about?

So the mainstream parties can do all the "listening" and "learning" they wish. But until they grasp the fundamental tenet that people don't want "I speak your policy" robots as their elected representatives UKIP will continue to make gains.

Wednesday 1 May 2013

House of Comments - Episode 56 - A Pretty Straight Sort of Guy

Episode 56 of the House of Comments podcast "A Pretty Straight Sort of Guy" was recorded on Sunday and was out yesterday. This week myself and Emma Burnell analyse Tony Blair's latest comments about the UK political scene with respect to Labour in particular, Iain Duncan-Smith's suggestion that wealthy pensioners should hand back their universal benefits and we look ahead to the upcoming local elections.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here (note - this is a new feed so if you used to subscribe to the old feed a couple of years ago you'll need to do so again).

Other podcasting software e.g. for Android can be pointed here to subscribe.

You can download the mp3 for the latest episode directly from here.

Or you can listen to the embedded episode below here:

>
If you are a political blogger and wish to be considered as a future guest please drop me an e-mail at markreckons@live.co.uk.

Any feedback welcomed in the comments below.


PS: A big thanks to Audioboo for hosting the podcast for us and especially to Audioboo's James O'Malley who has helped us out getting relaunched. James is also editor of The Pod Delusion podcast which is about "interesting things" and is well worth a listen too! We would also like to thank Kevin MacLeod from Incompetech.com for our theme music.