DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived Cleggeron era

There's a real lack of thinking before opening mouth going on with the government at the moment. You've got to wonder what Cameron's people were thinking when the OK'ed that line.

canvassing the prisoner vote

Hahahahaha

Cleggeron turns the Commons into an episode of Oprah where all the MPs find a sparkly iPad under their chair

0_0

we're all in this etc

"It is so environmentally friendly," said a committee source. "I would imagine it will pay for itself in three or four months because we wouldn't be printing out great wodges of paper."

...

A new information and communications technology strategy, recently agreed by officials on Parliament's Management Board, included the following imaginary scenario entitled "a possible MP's story in 2015": "As I travel down on the train all the information relating to the parliamentary day arrives on my iPad, I have a quick look through, make some notes and request, by a simple tap on the screen, a printed copy of a report.”

Cameron relaunching Big Society again! He's like a friggin' dog with a bone. Default reply for ConDem ministers when pressed on the effects of cuts on local services: "We're doing our bit we've set up the Big Society Bank it's up to local councils how they spend their money we're able to make savings purely on efficiency and so should they and by the way have you seen how much they pay their chief exectuives and what about that guy over there do they need to pay that guy and what about that money they spent on a piece of sculpture load of rubbish too doesn't even look like a real person..."

Can someone point to an article where Cameron has said that central government has cut the budget by 10% just on efficiency, so councils should be able to as well?

Slight exaggeration, shall we say "without compromising frontline services my making more efficient use of the funds available, including major efficiency savings" instead?

Another U-turn

John Lanchester brings the funny in the LRB, on Ed Balls's appointment:

Another aspect to this is that Balls, like all the other senior politicians of this generation, is a product of the inside track in his party’s apparat, with next to no knowledge of life outside politics. He is also yet another humanities graduate from Oxford in his forties. That means that out of the prime minister, the deputy prime minister, the chancellor of the exchequer, the leader of the opposition and the shadow chancellor, the only one of them who is not a white man in his forties with a humanities degree from Oxford is George Osborne. That’s not because he is secretly black, or transgender, or went to a provincial university, or studied chemistry: it’s because he doesn’t turn forty until May. Speaking for myself, I find the homogeneity grotesque – and I say that as a white man in his forties with an Oxford degree in the humanities.

(although he's wrong about Nick Clegg btw, Clegg went to Cambridge, which is virtually redbrick in Westminster terms. Still, lol.)

well, he's good enough to mention that the lrb isn't not dominated by oxbridge types...

i don't rly know much about the forest thing

but it's sort of amazing how shit the govt gets at being, not in terms of policy, i mean, though that is something too, just at the level of competence

labour were pretty stupid and undisciplined a lot of the time, but i think this is somehow even more cackhanded, if only because it's mostly tories who are upset by whatever the new forest policy was

This feels pretty OTM: http://www.economist.com/blogs/bagehot/2011/02/forestry_fiasco

what are 'forests' anyway, just those gd conifer plantations?

Quite probably a privatisation was still the right way forward

classic economist

idk, so were they trying to sell ye olde woods or just the commercial stuff?

When Mrs Spelman took office, she discovered that her sprawling department of the environment, food and rural affairs funded 92 arms-length bodies.

realy dislike the economist's nonaligned 'reasonableness' shtick, as if that information wouldn't have been available to them before taking office

92 arms-length bodies

Foot Heads Arms Body

idk, so were they trying to sell ye olde woods or just the commercial stuff?

All of it afaik

brap brap

Lease ye olde woods for 150 yr terms, sell the commercial stuff outright, afaik. Conifer plantations suck but idk, seerms like turning them into forest that doesn't suck wld be the right thing, rather than flogging them off for short short term gain.

It was a mess because it was on its way to being seen as a rushed and bungled privatisation. And even the flintiest free-marketeer knows to beware botched sell-offs of state assets: few things are as deadly to public acceptance of an economy based on competition.

ah yes, that long list of successful uk privatizations, in which the state received a reasonable market value for its assets.

on its way to being seen as

VERY LOCAL NEWS: David Cameron made a visit to The People's Supermarket on Monday, only to be met by a shitload of very angry pensioners and various other people who don't like him. His forehead would look perfect with a rotten tomato garnish...

Anyone considered what happens when the AV Referendum is lost, because it will be.

Privatisations are often unpopular in Britain at first; they prove their worth later, when (with luck) it can be shown they have left the country better off.

from another piece on the same thing

what a lying scumbag

who thinks this about the airports, or british rail? does the gas burn hotter now? fuck em.

telling employment of passive voice

it can be shown to those....who want to be shown

Privatisations are often unpopular in Britain at first; they prove their worth later, when (with luck) it can be shown they have left the country better off. for the Cayman Islands.

Talking of which, Cameron has announced today that he wants the privitisation of all public services except for the security services and the judiciary:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/8337237/David-Cameron-promises-public-sector-revolution.html

"Instead of having to justify why it makes sense to introduce competition in individual public services – as we are now doing with schools and in the NHS – the state will have to justify why it should ever operate a monopoly."

I'm surprised he can even be so open about allowing private companies to run part of the NHS

Top rated comment:

Virtually all services can be done for two thirds of the cost in the private sector.

these fucking guys.

Because once you involve a profit motive into any kind of service, things get cheaper, obviously.

oh hang on...

The forests thing is a bit like the NHS in that they raced ahead to look bold, like they were seizing the agenda, without actually working out whether it would be unpopular, whether it would save money, whether it would be worth doing in the first place, only to have to row back.

Idea that private companies, especially huge ones, are "efficient" is nonsense. The fact that some of them are highly profitable obscures the fact that they can waste money with the best of them.

Sorry, should probably elaborate on that point - I reckon the government may be forced to backtrack on NHS reform as well, if only to scale down some of its plans. The same happened with Gove and schools. The same with child benefit. They're not thinking things through properly and the voters will start to see a pattern imagining. Most of this is probably down to inexperience.

Virtually all services can be done for two thirds of the cost in the private sector.
lol Royal Mail.
― James Mitchell, Monday, February 21, 2011 8:32 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

lol british rail

lol democratic accountability

lol

lol Metronet going bust

lol Thames Water investing one fifth of its profits in reparing its leaky infrastructure

lol selling off the Tote and giving half the proceeds to the "racing industry"

if this is real, eMili needs to move beyond 'policy review'

I reckon the government may be forced to backtrack on NHS reform as well, if only to scale down some of its plans. The same happened with Gove and schools. The same with child benefit. They're not thinking things through properly and the voters will start to see a pattern imagining. Most of this is probably down to inexperience.

― Matt DC, Monday, February 21, 2011 9:46 AM (32 minutes ago) Bookmark

well, there is the small matter of their election pledge not to fuck with the nhs so

Has there been a single major British privatisation that hasn't been a disaster? Electricity's been okay, I suppose. No one really objects to BT but they still dominate the fixed-line landscape and it's hardly led to genuine competition. Everything else = steel, coal, railways, gas, kinda lol but mostly sad.

well, there is the small matter of their election pledge not to fuck with the nhs so

Wonder if they can blame that one on being part of a coalition? Probably unlikely.

I imagine that most of this, if it goes through, will be irreversible, bar the occasional forced Network Rail moment. Labour won't have the appetite to do anything about it. In opposition they should just repeat the word "privatisation" as much as possible, it has such negative connotations in this country, which is why NuLab never used it if they could possibly avoid it.

What a bunch of fucking cunts.

"Instead of having to justify why it makes sense to introduce competition in individual public services – as we are now doing with schools and in the NHS – the state will have to justify why it should ever operate a monopoly."

They think 'social' is an invalid construct arising out of the reality of 'economic', that's all kinds of brainwrong. And these privatisations are in political terms near enough irreversible, which is utterly depressing. Not a single lesson learned.

Now what lesson is this? I'm sure all of Camewrong's friends made lashings of cash through privatisation.

Now what lesson is this? I'm sure all of Camewrong's friends made lashings of cash through privatisation.

― anna sui generis (suzy), Monday, 21 February 2011 10:43 (3 minutes ago)

Well, yeah. The general 'false economy' thing, esp in the case of rail privatisation.

http://davidcameronpretendingtobecommon.tumblr.com/

"I was in Egypt recently and a 82-year-old Muslim man, who said, 'I was appointed when I was 53, I was re-elected by referendum for 30 years, I'm incredibly proud of my country.'"

He was in a 82yr old Muslim man?

Blimey, he's in Egypt NOW.