Anders Hanson

Another corny Clegg headline

5 November 2009 · 1 Comment

Headline writers clearly love their play on words, but the latest one from the Sheffield Star in an article by the, (entirely unrelated), Rachael Clegg is another stunner:

All work, rest and clay for leader Clegg

The reason being that Nick Clegg apparently enjoys clay sculpting in his spare time.  As well as that being a complete surprise to me, (he’s obviously been keeping it for nights in with Miriam, rather than sharing with (now ex-) staff), it is a rather bizarre bit of the article to focus on.  Mind you I have also never heard anyone refer to Nick as “invisible Clegg”.

Still, it fits nicely with the previous ones I have blogged about:

‘Am I really sexy?’ asks Cleggie. ‘Of course,’ I say, wishing I’d got to him before his wife…

an article from The Mail on Sunday which includes the now immortal lines:

He laughs guilelessly, an enchanting swooping sound like a scenic railway carriage in a windless hollow. I notice how his eyes are steady and clear.

and a previous one from the Sheffield Star:

Why Lib Dems ’star’ takes the biscuit. Home affairs spokesman always has time for a choccy biccy.

and that was before the recent Biscuitgate scandal.

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The irresponsible gamble works on MPs expenses

5 November 2009 · 1 Comment

I was always very uncomfortable with Nick Clegg (and other politicians) saying that whatever Sir Christopher Kelly proposed on MPs expenses should be adopted without question.  I accept it makes good politics, but if parliament signed up to anything else without reading it first they would be considered irresponsible and would rightly be trashed by the media.  However, on MPs expenses, even if Kelly could have come up with some completely unreasonable proposals, the public would never have had any sympathy for MPs anyway.  In fact, the key bit of these proposals he has missed as far as the public is concerned is the idea that MPs should wear sackcloth and ashes, turn the cafe at Portcullis House in to one that only serves gruel, and birch MPs daily in Parliament Square.  But thankfully, Kelly’s proposals are actually quite sensible and shows a decent understanding of how MPs work.

The key areas that had already been trailed in the media were the ban on MPs employing members of their family and the obligation for MPs to rent their second home.  I’ve written before about the issue of second homes and why MPs do need them and why you can’t have a one size fits all policy on second homes.  I’ve also been really twitchy whenever anyone mentions the idea of building a big block of flats to house all the MPs, (I mean, would you want to spend all week living with your work colleagues, and doing this is hardly going to dispel the notion that MPs don’t know what life is like outside the Westminster bubble).  Although my suggestion wasn’t just to force MPs to rent, it is a perfectly reasonable solution.  Kelly is also suggestion that a commercial agency handles all the rentals and finding suitable properties.  That is fine, but as with the decision on what the maximum rent should be, there is the potential for a huge row about it.  I do actually think that MPs need somewhere decent to live in London, (I don’t mean posh, I just mean with a bit of space and a bit of room to both relax and to work and to have room for family to stay) and I just hope the new rules will allow that to happen.  On the issue of MPs employing their families, I think this is just inevitable.  I know MPs who employ their spouse, and their spouse does the job well, and there are also some good practical reasons why in this job there are more grounds for employing a spouse than in other workplaces, (writing about the whys and wherefores of that issue will make a blog post in its own), but I think the ban is essential given what has happened recently and by phasing it in, it gives MPs time to adapt and for their spouse to find alternative employment.

The rest of Kelly’s ideas are pretty sensible, and as I say does show a certain understanding of how MPs work.  Whilst I think it is only reasonable to stop MPs who are in commuting distance of London from having second homes, my concern was that this would become a problem when there were late night sittings in parliament.  I would really prefer to see these stopped and for parliament to move towards more regular working hours.  This is unlikely to happen anytime soon however, and at least Kelly understands this issue and has therefore allowed MPs to claim for hotel accommodation if parliament has sat so late they cannot get back home.

One area that I think is going to be difficult though is with the restriction of MPs’ staff undertaking political activities.  I am pleased that Kelly didn’t ban MPs from recruiting their own staff.  After all, every MP works in a different way, they have different priorities (whether it is their constituency, a special political interest, being a frontbencher etc) and want to employ staff to do different jobs.  At the end of the day, there is no right or wrong way for an MP to do their job and the way they work often varies between political parties, what sort of constituency their represent, where their home is, how much of the correspondence they want to do themselves, how they want to split the workload between constituency and Westminster.  It is entirely up to the MP to make that decision and for their constituents to decide at an election whether they have got that decision right, and thankfully Kelly has allowed MPs to still make that decision.  But he does say there should be appropriate restrictions on MPs’ staff undertaking political activities.  On the face of it, that sounds like a good idea, after all these are people employed using taxpayers money and so shouldn’t be subsidising the work of political parties.  But my concern is that this is never a clear cut issue, for example where do you draw the line if an MP is campaigning against Post Office closures?   That is a issue that both the MP and his/her party will want to campaign on, but when does the campaign stop being parliamentary and become party political?  Many MPs also share an office with their local party and use shared facilities, which is sensible and in some areas it actually saves the taxpayer money as the party had the office before they elected an MP.  They also sometimes share a member of staff who works partly for the MP and partly for the party, as some activities, such as press and managing the office, can overlap between parliamentary and political work.  What I also hope is that we don’t end up replicating in parliament the bizarre situation we have in local government, where staff who work as researchers and political assistants to political groups on councils are even barred from being involved in party politics in their spare time.

I am also pleased to see that Kelly hasn’t been draconian in saying that MPs shouldn’t be allowed to do any outside work.  Whilst I agree that being an MP should be a full-time job, there has to be some flexibility.  After all, to take some current examples.  I like the fact that, regardless of what you think of Diane Abbott, that This Week includes at least one sitting MP.  This is something she does for 50 minutes, (give or take the time involved in getting ready for the programme), and it’s in her spare time and so it is fair that she therefore gets paid for it.  There are also MPs who are writers, there are some who are still on the board of a family firm even if they don’t get involved in the day to day running of it, and there are I imagine many other similar examples.  Banning second jobs should be about stopping those MPs who are highly paid advisors to companies or unions or who are spending half their week earning money running a major company, rather than stopping people from doing any other activities, and it looks as though these rules will do that.

Apart from these slight quibbles, the rules are largely sensible and will improve things massively.  Although, as I have also mentioned before, one of the big issues is the reliability of the parliamentary authorities to properly manage the current system of allowances and claims.  This is the other issue that must be resolved to ensure MPs’ expenses are transparent and accurate.  If there was a proper computerised system for claims and expenses, it would allow MPs’ offices to see in real-time what claims have been made, how much of their allowances for postage, computer equipment and so on have been used, to enter new claims, and to scan in and upload relevant paperwork.  There should perhaps then be a slight time delay to allow MPs offices to correct any errors, and then after this time the public can also see online exactly what their MP is claiming without having to wait for an official publication date.

I have never bought in to this idea that we need a General Election immediately to solve the scandal of MPs expenses.  Instead what we needed was a new set of rules that could be brought in before the election, so the matter is resolved well before people have to vote.  That gives time for those MPs who have made dodgy claims to decide not to restand, it gives time for potential new MPs to understand what the new set-up will be before they stand as a candidate, and it also means that when people vote it will all be about the main issues that government should be about – the economy, the health service, environment, transport etc., rather than what, (is still a minority), of MPs have done with their expenses.

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Wild Beasts & Ellie Goulding

4 November 2009 · Leave a Comment

Ever since I heard these two singers/bands on Later…with Jools Holland, I’ve not been able to get either of their songs out of my mind.  Yet, they are also completely different styles of music.

Wild Beasts are an indie band from Kendal.  They’ve been around for a while, but I hadn’t heard any of their songs until they performed All the King’s Men on Later.  It’s an unusual sound and the constant “woooo” sound makes it appropriate that I heard it around Halloween.  But despite this making it sound like a comedy tune, it’s far from it.  Tom Fleming’s vocals have a slightly old fashioned air, (you can imagine him crooning alongside Richard Hawley), but then there is this unusual falsetto too of Hayden Thorpe.  Put all of these together it makes it a really standout track.

Ellie Goulding is very different.  This is essentially pop music, but quality pop rather than disposable pop.  Ellie Goulding is a singer-songwriter (aren’t most female pop singers these days?), but she is also collaborating with Mark Ronson and already has a side project called Goldsmith which sounds promising too.  Her voice is distinctive and to me sounds like a mixture of Cerys Matthews and Jesca Hoop.  The track that I love is Under the Sheets and this is released on 9th November.

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Blair might be good, but we still shouldn’t want him as European President

29 October 2009 · 1 Comment

My instinctive reaction to Blair becoming the first European President is to hate the idea.  After all, we’ve only just got a rid of him as our Prime Minister and if he immediately re-appears as the President of Europe, due to some deal done with other countries, it will do far more damage to the reputation of the European Union within the UK than anything else that has happened before.  But it isn’t just that.  A large part of it is that he took us to an illegal war in Iraq, so to then be ‘rewarded’ by giving him another powerful job just doesn’t seem right.  Although whilst on this subject, we shouldn’t forget that the other front runner – former Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende – was also in favour of the war.  He also appears to have too many fingers in too many other pies at the moment, and with the government that he used to lead still in power, (albeit with a different Prime Minister), it would make him far too close to the government of one country.

But when I think about it, he might actually do the job well.  Whilst his time as Prime Minister didn’t exactly show him as someone who takes the lead on European issues, if he was freed from the need to win over the voters of the UK, he might actually be quite bold.  He has been more than happy to shake up the constitution of the UK and so may not be afraid of doing this in the European Union, and as a result actually do some things that would be welcomed by many people in the UK and the rest of Europe, whether pro-European or Eurosceptic.  Appointing Blair, as opposed to a nonentity that no one else has heard of, might actually make sure the job is one that people sit up and take notice of and as a result make sure that the president is someone who is listened to around the world.  Whilst opinion will be divided on what he has to say, that is surely a good thing.  Balkenende, for all his probable merits, won’t achieve that for some time.  Blair is also a very good communicator and he usually comes in to his own when difficult political decisions have to be taken as this is usually when he comes in to his own and performs very well.  He would also work well with people throughout the political spectrum.

Nick Clegg has proposed Chris Patten or Paddy Ashdown, both of whom would probably do the job well and Paddy will be known by some people around Europe due to his role in Bosnia Herzegovina.  One early suggestion, although she has since said she doesn’t want to be nominated, was Mary Robinson.  Although I don’t know her views on Europe, I can see some merits to her having the job.  After all, she is from a smaller European country, she was quite an outspoken yet popular politician in her own country, and she will be known in government circles for her position as a former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.  But from a UK perspective, an English speaking president would also appeal to the general public more readily.

The big problem is that the decision comes down to wheeling and dealing between the different national leaders.  If we are to have the post of European President, (and obviously that is a whole other issue that is worthy of a post of its own), then I would far rather the decision was made more openly and with people judged on their individual merits rather than a bland choice that is acceptable to the majority.  That after all is just what happens with the current choice for President of the European Commission.  Either it should be a direct election by the voters of Europe or it should be a vote by the European Parliament.  With that, the decision would be based on the ideology and beliefs of the candidate, (and their view on the future direction of Europe and the things over which the EU has responsibility), their personal qualities and capabilities, rather than the lowest common denominator, and it would be open for people to see.

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“Erased” by YouGov

5 October 2009 · 8 Comments

When YouGov first got going I was one of the first people to join their panel of people who were regularly polled.  As time went by I was polled less on politics and more on other subjects – probably my fault for admitting that I was a party member but then I bet many of the early people were, which hardly makes it a representative cross-section of the country.

Suddenly however I was rarely being polled at all and then the polls stopped completely, and now I seem to have been “erased” completely from the YouGov website.  If I try and log in to their website it tells me I must be using the wrong password. If iI try the “lost your password” facility it says I am not even registered on the site, which is even more annoying given I had nearly reached the £50 mark when they send you a cheque for having talent part in enough polls. Perhaps that is why they have conveniently forgotten my existence.

My complaints as well though seem to get me nowhere as every time I email them or fill in a contact form about it I just get ignored, despite them having replied to any contact I had with them before I was erased.

OK so it’s not as if my life is suddenly empty as a result of my non-participation in YouGov polls, but it is a very odd way for a supposedly reputable polling company to operate.

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