2 Why I'm not joining the Lawsgate mob...

Firstly, let's get this straight.

No party, my own included, has the right to criticize David Laws for expenses. Between Duck Houses, Moats and Bath Plugs and Porn all 3 of the major Westminster parties have put themselves to shame on expenses. Countless times. 

Before any of the smaller parties think they can muscle in on this - European Expenses haven't been much better, frankly. I'm looking at you, Nigel Farage.

So let's get off our high horses of partisan bias for a second and have a look at what this actually is. 

David Laws, firstly, could actually have claimed a whole heap more legitimately if he'd declared his partnership. He didn't. He could also have claimed a whole heap more if he'd decided to live in a nice plush flat in central London. He didn't. To be honest, finding accommodation at the price he did is a bargain. Trust me - I live here.

The next interesting thing in this case is that people seem to find it outrageous that his landlord was also his partner. I'm sorry, but so the fuck what!? Whether I love a guy or not, he's still got a business to run, and thus I should be paying my rent regardless. There's this ridiculous assumption that because they were gay they must have moved in together and loved it all up and settled down watching Graham Norton every night on the sofa. Er, welcome to 2010 - that is not how "the gays" live. It's perfectly acceptable for somebody to be living with a partner without having joint ownership or paying joint rent. 

Laws was paying for goods and services rendered. I.e. a place to live. 

This is perfectly fine under parliamentary rules. His relationship with the Landlord, frankly, should have nothing to do with it. 

So let's put this in simple terms for those of you who're still not understanding:

David Laws rents a room and pays his landlord as he should. 

David Laws and his landlord have a warm tingly fuzzy feeling for each other, and so they make themselves an item.

David Laws and his landlord do not buy a new house together, but they decide effectively to share the rent. So David pays his share to his landlord, who also pays his own share... to himself. 

Still following? Good. It's not a difficult concept.

Laws' landlord now moves to a different place. Laws continues to pay his share, but now, seeing as he's the only one living there, he pays the whole amount (to his landlord, yes, that's right). 

Mr Laws probably realised at some point that there might be some questions raised at this perfectly legitimate arrangement and thus changed the arrangement in good faith so that he was no longer paying his landlord rent which he was perfectly entitled to do.

The hype here is not the money as such. It's the fact that his landlord was his partner. 

Perhaps it's time for some people to catch up with the world. There's nothing wrong with that. 

They didn't have a shared bank account or any such arrangement, so it's not like Laws and his partner were living it up on parliamentary expenses. Anyone who's not done their research and is instead getting fuelled up on the anti-Laws hype, frankly needs gagging.

So, as a relatively sane person, able to put aside my own party bias for the 30 seconds needed to assess the situation, I won't be calling for David Laws' head. Neither should you, frankly. 

What's more, I'd like to see somebody trying to justify the need to put a moat on expenses.

Sadly, all of this media hype has caused David to come out in a way that I'd assume isn't terribly dignified. He clearly felt he was unable to be openly gay here, and that is something we should all be ashamed of. 

Should he be resigning? I think not.

1 A number of niggling issues...

I'm sitting here as 3 fire engines and 2 police cars race past my house (both the fire and police stations are at the end of my road), telling myself that I cannot possibly revise for Physics and Maths tomorrow because of the noise of passing emergency vehicles and next door's kid drumming badly. 

Of course, you know this is a lie, and so do I. I just can't bring myself to sit down with a C2 past paper and do it. The most depressing part of it all is that I'm starting not to care about university. This time next year there will be record demand for university placements and such chronic supply that any chance I may have had even with decent grades has been diminished. I'll take the liberty of blaming the government for slashing the number of available university placements this year. Because it will have a knock on effect next year as failed applicants reapply. 

So, when I can't revise, I have to do something that feels ever so slightly productive. I kid myself that this blog is in any way productive. So, you can see the logic.

Tuesday morning saw me sitting in registration after having a fairly rough night's sleep. My friend was reading a crumpled copy of the Metro he'd picked up on the tube. I caught a glance of Cameron's pledge to cut Child Trust Funds. Now, I'd heard rumours of this the night before, but this was official.

Incredulously, I mentioned that it was the first of many mistakes this government was going to make and that it was completely unfair on children and families. Then a voice piped up with "All these people claiming benefits should just go out and get a job. It's not fair that we have to pay more tax so that they can do nothing".

At this point, you should understand that I go to a predominantly Christian school in a Conservative safe seat (Epping Forest). Even so, I was shocked that anyone could be so narrow minded as to think that every person who claims benefits in this country does so because they're lazy. Even moreso, I was shocked that she thought that people could "just go get a job" in the current economic climate. 

It'd been a bad night. I rounded on her. 

"What's not fair, Ashley, is that there are families out there who have to choose between a hot meal or heating on a daily basis. What's not fair is that there are families out there who cannot afford funerals when a loved one dies, and who must choose between school shoes and a school shirt for their children. Your family pays more taxes because they can easily afford to without being thrust into absolute poverty." Fairly satisfied with my response, I stopped and turned around to find my form tutor grinning at me. Silently pleased with myself I stuck my head in a Maths textbook, and then...

"But they should still have to pay taxes! It's their fault they're poor, not ours!". 

I wasn't exactly sure if I'd heard right. I really hoped I had, but the look of pure outrage on my friend James' face told me that I had indeed heard correctly. At this point a lot of the class had tuned into the conversation.

"What, exactly, do you expect them to pay taxes on? Do you not understand the concept of having literally nothing? And how on earth can you accuse people of bringing it on themselves? People don't decide to be poor and then scrounge on benefits. If you offered any impoverished family in this country a £40k/year job paying 20% tax they'd jump at it! A lot of the low income and unemployed people in this country are like that because of the previous government who cut their jobs and didn't think it was worth offering them training or employment! That's why there are generations of poor families in this country. Not because they're lazy as you put it"  I was practically foaming at the mouth by this point. James took over. 

"You basically believe that people who are rich deserve to be rich and people who are poor deserve to be poor. You're on about fairness. How is that fair? People who are homeless can't get jobs or benefits because they need an address and a bank account, but they can't get an address if they can't pay for a house, or pay rent, and they can't get a bank account if they don't have an address. Is that fair?" 

I high fived him. 

This debate went on for some time. James and I got a cheer from the rest of our form when registration ended and we (thankfully) had to leave the debate til another day. 

What shocked me most is not so much what she was saying, but the attitude. The "well, I'm okay so everyone else must be too, really" attitude. The idea that if people are on benefits or are homeless, it must have been their fault and even so, their lives aren't really that bad.

This is the attitude of people who've never been in a position of absolute poverty. It's the attitude of people who quite simply don't understand what it's like. These are people who don't understand who Labour has traditionally fought for. They're the people who want to cling on to money no matter what that means for the rest of society. They delude themselves with the idea that people will be able to help themselves if it really comes to it. 

It's worrying. I only wish I could somehow have shown the girl in my form exactly what it's like to be beyond all hope. I wish that I could show Michael Gove exactly what Child Trust Funds mean to thousands and thousands of low-income families. They've been a way of helping and encouraging families save for their children, and to give them less of a burden when trying to balance the 'here and now' needs of their children with the future and long term needs of their children. It's meant that every child is at least guaranteed something when they turn 18 which may well help them to start saving. 

"The wealthy have always relied on assets to smooth the path into adulthood, but now every single child will be able to do the same. The lumpy costs, the risky decision, and upfront investment involved in making ones way in life will be eased, whether that means spending money on training, starting a businesses - or simply buying the suit needed to attend an interview... CTFs recognise that assets, not just income, can bring security and opportunities"

~ Institute of Public Policy Research

The IPPS quote sums up what I'm trying to say rather well. Child Trust Funds weren't intended as a means of redistribution of wealth, but rather as a way of encouraging and enabling saving. Something that the new coalition Government is harking on about a fair bit. It's certainly worth considering that there's a positive Cost-Benefit associated with CTF's, as young people have a step-up when they're 18 and at least have a chance to fly, rather than having absolutely nothing at all and being forced to claim benefits. Worth considering is the fact that the cost of CTF's this year is less than 0.05% of the Department for Education's budget. When you consider how much is spent by local government on pointless beaurocracy, would it not at least have been better to pass CTF responsibilities to local government and ask them to recycle some of their efficiency savings into it?

Of course, what wound me up further was Michael Gove's ridiculous "free schools" programme. Encouraging parents and communities to set up their own schools and teach children some form of curriculum. Quite how the government can justify paying out for, essentially, an enormous social policy experiment while claiming that CTF's are "wasteful" is beyond me. 

Gove, quite possibly the scariest looking man in government (and thus probably not suitable to be dealing with children), has casually overlooked the fact that setting up a school in your front room deprives young people of science facilities, sports facilities, decent social interaction... the list goes on! What's more, the expectation that parents have time to take out of their day to teach children is at best a fantasy - parents have jobs and need to earn money. This speaks for itself really. The sort of parents who can afford not to work will be the ones that are best known as "mother" and "father", and who enjoy a leisurely game of croquet in the garden on Sundays . 

This is another idea aimed at helping the richest prosper and then cutting funding to normal schools so that the poor can rot. Not that Michael Gove will admit this. He's claiming that he can spend spend spend on Free Schools while maintaining spending on state schools, while trying to make efficiency savings and dealing with a reduced budget. Any five year old can tell me that if I had 10 pennies, but I had to save 3 pennies, I could only use 7 of my pennies, and that therefore, I would have to spend on less. So it's clear that something's got to give. That will be the Comprehensive around the corner (although, the Grammar will probably be safe), it'll be the College in the next town (although the private school down the main road will be okay). 

A friend challenged me earlier on this by telling me that it was no different to home-schooling children. I beg to differ. The government does not invest money in home-schooling. It is entirely at the parent's discretion. Nor does the government spend millions regulating home-schooling. That's a local authority remit, if at all. Which brings me to my next big problem. How exactly does the government intend to quality control thousands of free schools all teaching different and varying levels of qualification? Gove will have to set up another QUANGO. (oh no!). 

Gove would have us know that the Conservative government is entirely on the side of the poor. So, why then, are they proposing to reverse the Academy programme in order to give the the schools in rich, affluent areas a better status than those in poor deprived areas? Labour's Academies were a way of investing in poor areas, and trying to give young people from those areas a better chance of success. Conservative Academies will do just the opposite. Invest in the rich, leave the poor to fend for themselves. 

For all the talk of "change", there is nothing different about this government. I've taken 3 policies and shown just how specifically they're engineered for the rich and against the poor. You'd have thought that this government would take a little more care in dressing up the policies, but no. It doesn't take much digging to see what they really mean for young people. For poorer people. For the people that really need the Government's help. 

I can only say, on behalf of Labour, we're sorry. We're sorry to all of you that we didn't win this election. 

We're so, so sorry.

0 Impossible, they say.

I've been off college ill for the last two days (everyone say 'Awww!') which has given me plenty of time to reflect on the political landscape we seem to have found ourselves in. A year ago the very suggestion of Nick Clegg as Deputy Prime Minister would have drawn a mirthful laugh, and the idea of having to type 'The Right Hon. Vince Cable MP' would have been equally mundane. Clearly, times have changed.

First and foremost, I should say that I am surprised. If we look back to the slightly naive sense of optimism I may have shown in my last blog post, this will be apparent. It transpired that Gordon's resignation wasn't enough to bring about any serious change of attitude from the Lib Dems towards Labour. Equally so in reverse. It was apparent on Tuesday morning that a number of senior Labour figures were doubtful of their ability to work with the Liberal Democrats. More surprising still, however, was the amount of control and policy influence the Lib Dems have managed to get out of David Cameron.

Having said that, I suspect that the Conservatives were generous because it was in their interests to be. At the end of the day, the Tories cannot afford for this coalition to break down. They need the Lib Dems to be inextricably tied to them, otherwise there remains the possibility of partisan dissent. What better way to ensure such a link than give several Liberal Democrats Cabinet positions and promote their leader to Deputy PM? This works well in Cameron's interests too. By ensuring the Lib Dems are aboard, he can reaffirm the idea that the Tories are no longer the "Nasty Party". After all, he has the backing of the Liberals! He can implement their much-admired policies and take the credit for it while the rest of his own party remain in obscurity as he promotes only the most squeaky clean of them to the Cabinet, filling up extra positions with Lib Dems. It's actually a great arrangement for Cameron.

I wish I could say the same for the Liberal Democrats. They have the Climate Change brief, they have the Business brief, they have Chief sec. to the Treasury and they have the Scottish brief. Let's look at that properly:

DECC was a new department created by Brown in an almost tokenistic fashion to pay lip service to the growing Climate Change concern. DECC wield relatively little power, and almost seem to be a de facto junior partner to DEFRA. Essentially, it's a non-department.

Scottish Secretary Danny Alexander only got the position because the Tories have only one MP in Scotland. It would be ridiculous for a party that is so clearly disliked to attempt to represent Scottish people, so they gave the Liberal Democrats that job because at least they're not hated as much. This is an appointment of convenience rather than meaning. Worth acknowledging also is that the Scottish Office doesn't have a huge amount of power. It's another lip-service department created to keep the devolution junkies happy.

Vince Cable at BIS and David Laws as Chief Sec. are also posts that essentially have been placed under Treasury control. David Laws is George Osborne's junior partner, and Vince Cable is leading a department that holds no real spending power, but is more of a structural support to Treasury spending. It can't be a position in which Cable could have envisaged himself working best. Having said that, Business Secretary is a nice title.

How about Nick Clegg? The "office" of Deputy Prime Minister holds no actual power, other than Power-by-association. Deputy PM is not a constitutional role, and is as much or as little as David Cameron lets it be. That's something we'll have to wait to see, but I can't help but feeling that Clegg will have little of the grandeur that he might expect.

The Conservatives have clung onto key departments - Home Office, Foreign Office, Education, Health and Communities. They've given essentially non-jobs to Liberal Democrats, and have made a number of policy concessions that they must have known would be unpopular with the public anyway and so were no great loss.

I can't help but feel that Nick Clegg and his party have been the losers in this deal. Not only will they be forced to prop up a Conservative administration in return for relatively little power, but they'll be forced to abstain on key policy areas that they oppose - for instance, the Lib Dems will have to abstain on the vote about introducing tuition fee rises. That must be painful for them. On top of all of this, if the coalition does badly, the Liberal Democrats are set to lose more voters than the Conservatives will, because their own supporters will blame them for allowing a Conservative government in power.

This coalition has to be successful for the Liberal Democrats' sake, because otherwise they lose a lot of voters, and they also lose their argument for Proportional Representation - something they've campaigned on for a long time (and something that's been denied them by the Conservatives).

So for now, Labour are heading off to the to opposition benches. A place where some cynical members have pointed out we will do well from as we're able to criticise the inevitable ConDem spending cuts and say we wouldn't have done it like that. This coalition, I believe, will end in tears, with the Lib Dems losing a lot of voters to Labour, and the Conservatives losing that floating voter support. Whether it's in 5 years or 10 years, Labour will be back. We'll be back because Labour believes in the very values that the Tories cannot understand, and the values that the Liberal Democrats have betrayed. Fairness. Openness. Families. Education.

The late Labour government has had its problems. Questionable civil liberties records, a war that was debatable in the first place and is now unjustifiable, and a few MPs whose expenses were an affront to good spending tastes (let alone public trust). But Labour will learn from it's mistakes, unlike the Conservatives.

The fightback starts now.

0 Goodbye Gordon, Byebye Brown

Sometime between skipping Philosophy & Ethics and sitting down to eat my Chicken and Bacon pie with fried potato slices, fried onions, carrots and broccoli, Gordon Brown was deciding on how best to word his final bow to the nation. I've gotta say, it wasn't something I was expecting, but at the same time it wasn't surprising either.

So today, Gordon Brown announced that he'd be standing down as PM and leader of the Labour party before September. Why?

Let's look back to my post yesterday when I pointed out that the Brown/Clegg relationship could present a barrier to a Liberal Democrat/Labour coalition. That barrier has now fallen away, thanks to Gordon's selfless act. Brown is aware that he's not hugely liked by the electorate, and it takes a brave brave man to stand up and face that. He did what he believed was right for the Labour party, and for the country. By removing himself as an obstacle to coalition, he's given Clegg the opportunity to enter into talks with the Labour party without the prospect of the two ever having to work together. The creation of this coalition would ultimately serve the country better than any minority Conservative government could, simply due to the fact that we are a progressive, reformist and fair people. These are values that Cameron and his conservatives fail to understand, and it is these misunderstandings that will inevitably lead to their own downfall as they fight among themselves.

The problem with the Conservatives is in fact not Cameron. The party's problem is the majority of it's membership. Time and time again, Cameron has tried to present them as the party of change and liberation and of new beginnings! Time and time again, Cameron is thwarted by the divisive and repulsive force that is the Tory backbench. The party's parliamentary membership is anti-reform, anti-change, anti-new beginnings. David Cameron has made the mistake of trying to cover up his problems, rather than remove them. As it is, he's further proved that the idea of progressive conservatism is little more than an oxymoron.

What's more, he's done it again. Cameron's refusal to go further than offering a referendum on AV has been the downfall of his party in the ConDem negotiations. He couldn't bring about that real change and liberation that he's harped on so long about, because he knows that the Party would never accept it. Cameron knows that he's hit a brick wall, and the nail could not have been driven further in when the Liberal Democrats announced that they were to enter into formal negotiations with Labour.

So what about Gordon? He's been in the job for 3 years, presided over on of the unluckiest political periods of our time and simply could not match up to the charisma and charm of his predecessor. Did Brown do anything wrong? Not particularly - apart from abolishing the 10p tax rate, which was a move he later admitted was wrong. Gordon didn't cause the expenses scandal, Gordon didn't cause Global economic melt down, Gordon didn't cause a volcanic eruption, but these periods of public contempt for authority summed up and were unceremoniously dumped on the shoulders of a man who had such high hopes and ambitions, a man whose vast multitude of good deeds have been forgotten, who waited for his opportunity for 10 long years, but ultimately a man who was able to swallow his pride and take the full force of public anger into his stride like the statesman he is. Gordon Brown didn't deserve any of this, but he has remained loyal and patriotic to the country from the beginning of his saga. He has bowed out of the show with such dignity and courage that I find it hard not to feel a welling up of sadness for him. He has truly been the right person to lead us through the last 3 years. Now he's stepped aside because he knows that the Lib Dems will not work with Labour with him in place.

That's courage.

That's loyalty.

That's a true British Prime Minister.

0 May 6th

So, this is my second/third attempt at a blog. In a couple of months we'll see if my dedication to the contribution of shit to the already shit-saturated expanse of the world wide web has faltered or not. My prediction is that it probably will have, although I don't think the bookies will be offering odds on this one.

Thursday was election day (Yes, stop groaning, this is another election blog, deal with it or piss off), and after a month of campaigning for political activists it was pretty much a slap in the face, if I'm honest. Of course, my own time would have been much better spent revising for impending exams, but where's the fun in that?

The Conservatives, by all reckoning should have got a majority. But they didn't. The Liberal Democrats should have gained vastly more seats, but instead they lost 7. Labour was clinging on for dear life, and we actually didn't fail as miserably as we thought we would. Thursday night was a terrible night for everyone, and the look of defeat in the eyes of all the political activists at any ballot count you care to consider (including my own constituency in Chingford and Woodford Green) would tell you as much.

Cameron's 'Big Society' idea did him no favours. Look at how Conservative controlled Hammersmith council has treated the poor, vulnerable and mentally ill and you'll have an idea of what Cameron and his cronies want to do nationally. That's not the sort of country we need or want.

His "change" agenda was equally unconvincing. It's easy to say "change", especially when we don't qualify what we actually mean by change. The fact is, there was certainly no progressive change in any of the Tory plans. Marriage tax breaks, inheritance tax breaks for the rich, repeal of fox hunting ban, cutting support for families and businesses just when they most need it? How about cutting funding from schools in order to fund shabby "community-run" schools that have no access to science and sports facilities? Not forgetting the fact that the parents who Cameron ultimately proposes should run these schools have jobs and lives to lead.

The Conservative party hasn't changed. Philippa Stroud was curing gay people, Chris Grayling reckons gays shouldn't be allowed in B&Bs (just in case they play with each other's willies!), and Lord Ashcroft thinks he's above paying taxes.

In fact, even the party's members are happy to admit they haven't really changed; Tebbit has slaughtered Cameron for his Cuddly Conservativism (numerous times, in fact). What now? The conservatives ideally need to make it past the 326 mark to form a credible government and now we're facing a possible sell out from the one hit wonder, Nick Clegg. I mean, if there's one way to piss your party off, it's to agree to a coalition with the Tories.

But considering that Cameron has ruled out PR, will Clegg still agree to work with him? After all, Nick has already called Brown a failure - it's hardly the best of working relationships to start off on. In some respects, Brown and Clegg have both shot themselves in the foot by keeping up the slagging match. There's a good chance that Clegg will be brushed aside by the Tories and refuse to form a coalition with Brown leaving Cameron will attempt to lead a minority Government.

How long it would be able to govern for is anybody's guess, but the idea that there won't be another General Election for 4/5 years is unlikely. The problem is that whoever calls it will need to time it carefully so as to avoid pissing off the public who are unlikely to vote much differently unless one party really makes a royal fuck up of itself.

I've raised more questions than I've even attempted to answer, and that's the very problem with what's become known as #GE2010 - it's been one of the most confusing elections this country has ever had. Nobody knows what to expect and most of the talk is just pure speculation, probably fuelled by a bit of relevant party political propaganda.

And that's just it. This election hasn't changed since April 6th.

It's still way too close to call.