de moribus liberalibus

What makes Italians smile

2011-11-23T09:59:00.004Z

Italian friends have not been so happy in a long time. Never mind that the new Prime Minister and his cabinet are unelected and there are rocky times ahead -- at least Berlusconi is gone.

Jokes are circulating like this one:

Un uomo va a Palazzo Chigi e chiede di parlare con il Presidente del Consiglio Silvio Berlusconi. Il carabiniere di guardia risponde: “No da stasera Berlusconi non è più Presidente del Consiglio!”.
L’uomo si allontana ma dopo due minuti ritorna dallo stesso carabiniere:“Vorrei parlare con il Presidente del Consiglio Silvio Berlusconi”. “No, guardi… le ho già detto che da stasera Berlusconi non è più Presidente del Consiglio!”
L’uomo se ne va ma dopo due minuti ritorna dallo stesso carabiniere: “Vorrei parlare con il Presidente del Consiglio Silvio Berlusconi”. “Senta, le ho già detto che che da stasera Berlusconi non è più Presidente del Consiglio!
Lo ha capito o no?”
“Capire l'ho capito. Ma... che ci vuole fare? Mi piace così tanto sentirmelo ripetere!”...

Here's a rough translation:

A man goes to the Prime Minister's residence and asks to speak to the PM, Silvio Berlusconi. The guard replies 'No: since this evening Berlusconi is no longer Prime Minister'.

The man walks off but a couple of minutes later comes back and ask to see Prime Minister Berlusconi. The guard replies 'Look, I've already told you -- since this evening Berlusconi is no longer Prime Minister'.

Off the man goes and back he comes two minutes later, asking to see Prime Minister Berlusconi. 'Listen, I've already told you, since this evening Berlusconi is no longer Prime Minister. Do you get it or not?'

'Yes, sure, I get it. But what can I do? I just like so much to hear it repeated'.

With thanks to Stefano for that one!

Politicians, go on holiday. Please.

2011-08-17T10:28:00.001+01:00

Enough of this macho politics which assumes party leaders need to throw off their summer shorts and put on their suits whenever the word crisis is in the air. Judging from Messrs Cameron and Miliband’s performance in the last few days, the best thing these politicians could do is stay on holiday.

The scenes of random violence that have come to be dubbed ‘riots’ were depressing but the spectacle of politicians scrambling to make capital from the human tragedies has been even more unedifying. In their attempts at creating an explanation for the recent events, all politicians have been guilty of over-interpreting. The original riot – and riot it was – had a clear cause in disgruntlement at the police handling of a specific incident. The copycat events that followed were most often acts of mimickry where there is little sense in rationalising them. The potential for small-scale disorder was apparent and the opportunity seemed to present itself. Most incidents needed little more justification, though a very few might have been aroused by malicious individuals.

And in response Mr Cameron seems intent on re-gaining the nasty label for his party. If society is broken, it needs careful mending, not smashing against the wall until it mends itself. The reaction of the justice system, egged on by Conservative ministers, has been disproportionate and often misdirected. It is an ironic display of the impotence of the state – an attempt to reassert the strong arm of the law when its ability to act at the right moment has been shown to be a myth. Yet, the Tory over-reaction, supported by the gutter press of the Daily Mail and Express (who needs Murdoch?), will only be given further specious justification by ill-advised comments by liberals. I think, in particular, of the Howard League for Penal Reform – a worthy organisation but responsible today for saying that the jailing for four years of those who incited looting on social media is ‘excessive’. Of all the sentences, these are perhaps the least over-the-top: the inciter, in this context, is like the drug-dealer. It is the drug-taker for whom we should have more concern and the equivalent are those teenagers now being criminalised by our courts. ‘They should have thought of that before rioting’, the dark Lord Howard says – missing the point that looting was most often precisely thoughtless. The concomitant thoughtlessness of Howard – and others – is the failure now to consider the consequences of the actions they demand: why this insistent desire to embed dysfunction within our social fabric?

Lord, save us from our politicians.

Master Osborne does it again

2011-08-14T20:35:00.006+01:00

Post-war Britian has not been blessed with many talented cabinet ministers. There are some, it is true, who have shown early potential that disappeared when they came to sit around the table at No. 10; there are others whose lack of ability has been no bar to later holding the keys to the front door of that house. The present Chancellor of the Exchequer is certainly not in the first category -- let us pray he is not in the second.

While the flames of summer madness subside, Master Osborne has been cooking up his latest ruse: to end the 50% rate of income tax for those whose income is over £150,000. His argument is that it is 'uncompetitive internationally' - those who 'earn' that amount can pay to avoid tax or go to live elsewhere.

If someone does prefer to pay an accountant to avoid tax rather than hand it back to the government for the upkeep of the welfare state, it might be best if they did leave the country. There will be a few who do that but there will be more who judge that the advantages of living in Britain outweigh the disadvantage of becoming very rich just a bit more slowly. Advantages like having a functioning national health service -- which, if they don't intend to use it directly, they know at least that the private hospitals they plan to visit live off its resources.

Master Osborne's pronouncement is so ill-timed -- so out of step with his Prime Minister's platitudes -- that you wonder how he can get away with it. Isn't it time he was sacked? But, then, Cameron showed his weakness at the very beginning: any in-coming premier wanting to demonstrate his control and please the City (who, remember, considered Osborne a buffoon) would have ditched his university chum straightaway. But he did not and, in the months since, it has seemed at times that Osborne has spoken for the Conservative Party -- a Tory Party so enamoured with the inanities of market libertarians that it has forgotten its own One Nation roots -- rather than his master. The tragedy is not Osborne's lack of talent; it is his grip on power.

Everybody makes mistakes

2010-11-03T21:40:00.003Z

No one said being in government would be easy -- but do we have to make it so difficult for ourselves?

The package for tuition fees outlined today is undeniably more progressive than what was in place before. It will, if enacted, ensure that many graduates are lifted out of the need to pay completely. And, let's face it, a finite payment as provided by tuition fees is less noxious than a life-long charge for having gone to university that is a graduate tax. But all those good points -- or not-so-bad points -- are as nothing beside two unavoidable realities.

First: tuition fees, like graduate taxes, are wrong in principle. They penalise those who have gone to university on the false assumption that only the individual educated gains from that experience. It is in society's interest to see a proportion of its young through a liberal education -- at times it might not feel like it, but we all gain from having doctors, lawyers and, yes, broadsheet journalists. Education is not a private good; it should not be paid for as if it were a contract between student and 'provider'.

But, even if that were not the principle, none of us could get away from the fact that our party made a pledge to fight against tuition fees that we said were unfair. We were right then and it remains right. Of course, political parties go back on their promises -- look at the number of lies that came from New Labour. But, if we want to reform politics, we have to live the reform we espouse. Even if it were wrong, we'd need to stand by our pledge.

What now? First of all, we need to recognise that the Browne Review, designed by Labour to give the result it did, is not the only answer to the conundrum. There are larger issues here: what percentage of our young should go to university? What alternative educations are there?

The most depressing aspect of this is that the coalition government has failed to reject Labour's assumptions that were: higher education is a soft target for disinvestment, and that the only education that matters is that which is vocational -- in New Labour-speak, 'strategically important'. That language has continued in Lord Browne's Review, and it's that which needs to be attacked. It's time that Liberals stood up for the value of a liberal education.

The New Machiavelli

2010-10-24T12:00:00.005+01:00

A little spot of moonlighting over at Liberal Democrat Voice where I have penned a review of Jonathan Powell's The New Machiavelli. It's creating some interesting discussion.

Spot the Difference

2010-10-20T21:45:00.002+01:00

Browne Review of Higher Education, p. 14 (12th October 2010):

Higher education matters. It helps to create the knowledge, skills and values that underpin a civilised society. ... [It] helps to produce economic growth, which in turn contributes to national prosperity.

Master Osborne's Comprehensive Spending Review, p. 51 (20th October 2010):

[There will be] major reform of the higher education sector to shift a greater proportion of funding from the taxpayer to the individuals who benefit...

And who, pray, benefits? The economy, the nation, civilised society -- the taxpayer, then, according to the Review of Higher Education welcomed by the government only last week. But then, a week is a long time...

Labour's on your side, if you're rich

2010-10-14T07:55:00.005+01:00

So, Labour have decided they are against taxing the rich -- sorry, 'middle income families'.

Miliband Junior's performance in his first Prime Minister Questions can at least reassure those who were worried that New Labour might have fallen off its perch and gone to meet its maker. Lord Mandelson can sleep soundly in his satin pjs.

Now, let's accept that there is a flaw in Master Osborne's plan to remove child benefit from higher earners. As has been pointed out ad infinitum (immo, ad nauseam), a household where two earn, say, £40k a year will continue to receive the weekly sum, while a household where one is getting an income over the higher tax threshold will not get it. This is certainly an anomaly: it would obviously be far better for the benefit to be withdrawn from both these examples. The reform does not go far enough but at least it is a start.

It used to be the Tories who insisted that state benefits should not be means tested, as that would penalise, they said, the better off. But, if we are going to protect the welfare state, which was damaged so much under Thatcher and Blair, resources do need to be targeted. And it can surely not be said that a high-earning family is at the sharp end of need, can it?

Clearly, Labour would now disagree. But the logic of their position is more insidious than a spat over child benefit. Young Mr Miliband describes those on the higher rate of income tax as 'middle income families'. If that is the case, then they should surely not be paying the higher rate -- the logic would be to raise the threshold to take those on 'middle incomes' out of the higher bracket. Is the new leader of New Labour really going to call for tax cuts for those who, on any reasonable measure, are rich?

But what is most disappointing is that the opposition has followed the media in concentrating on the minor issue. The more significant and the more worrying of Osborne's announcements was the cap on welfare benefits per 'family'. This begs so many questions, and they're the ones that need to be asked.

On that first performance, Miliband: non satis.

Better than a Graduate Tax

2010-10-09T23:18:00.005+01:00

Mr Cable has announced that he has considered and is not in favour of a 'pure' graduate tax. There's nothing pure about penalising people for having gone into higher education. Even student loans, if they could be organised well, would be better than sending out the message that someone should be charged for life for having taken the opportunity of the education society has to offer.

There is, indeed, a better solution than graduate tax. And it is obvious. The average income of graduates is higher than the national average income. So, a truly progressive income tax system would introduce a rate intermediate between our standard and higher at the point, or just above, where that graduate average is. Yes, it would catch everybody who earns that income, not just graduates and that's precisely how it should be: a civilised society can't argue that it is a virtue not be educated. It's about time Britain realised that what society needs is not a graduate tax but a graduated tax.

Labour's Electoral Collage

2010-09-25T18:58:00.005+01:00

The technicolor collage created by Labour's electoral college is so much fun, it beats democracy for entertainment value.

Let's point out the basics first: the Labour Party elects by one member one vote in the sense that each member has one vote but they don't decide the election. The college is divided into three equal parts: Parliamentarians, rank-and-file members, and 'affiliates' which opens up the election to trade union members and to associations linked to the Labour Party, like the Fabians.

It does mean that Labour is saved from the decision being who is the members' favourite: if they had, after the distributions under the AV system, Miliband D. would now be their Leader.

It also means that a Parliamentarian's vote is more valuable than any other member's by a factor of somewhere in the region of 450.

It also means that those who are members of the party and members of a trade union can vote more than once. Each member gets one vote, but some get more than one. (And some who are not members and who can't stand the party got to vote. More than once).

And all that said, here are some interesting facts:

* 'socialists' in health and education will be breaking open the asti spumante, as they strongly backed the winner

* the BME caucus had a bad day, heavily backing Miliband D.

* musicians will be playing a funeral march with their favoured candidate coming last

* Christians preferred D., Jews preferred E. (results from Christian Socialist Movement and Jewish Labour Movement)

* more Unite members spoilt their ballot papers than voted for Balls and Burnham combined

* members of one union -- Unite -- cast nearly half of the votes in the 'Section 3' affiliates, and heavily for Miliband E.

* about nine in every ten trade unionists were bored rigid by the whole process and did not return their ballot papers

What a system, what a result.

Thanks, Trade Unions

2010-09-25T18:01:00.004+01:00

I needed a bit of mirth to improve my day, so thank you, thank you so much, Trade Unions. Miliband (D.) wins the overwhelming support of the members of the party, Miliband (E.) edges ahead thanks to the robust support of the closed shop comrades.

What a delight. Not that the young leader of the Labour Party is personally to be disdained: from his pronouncements to date, he has learnt that lesson that a new incumbent can and must break with the mistakes of the past. So, belated opposition to Iraq and at last a leader who appreciates that if you want to begin to be progressive, don't think of introducing ID cards.

But the method of election, with the 'electoral college' being like something out of the old Ealing Comedy, School for Scoundrels, really does give the lie to Mr Blair's claim that he introduced democracy to his party. One trade unionist colleague of mine was eligible to four votes. So, can you take three off Diane Abbott's total, please?

And, when the election parties are over (will victorious Remus invite Romulus to his side of the wall?), tomorrow's hangover won't be a pretty sight. Working out how to present Miliband Junior to the public will be a challenge even Mr Campbell wouldn't relish, one would have thought. As he well knows, you can have a whole raft of good ideas, but if you can't present them adeptly, there's not much point in being in politics. And so the heir to Blair starts with something of a disadvantage.

Oh, and by the way: when will they elect a new Deputy Leader? Can they keep it in the family?

Laughable Leaflets Mark 1

2010-03-19T13:52:00.002Z

Election season is silly season this year. The race has started (sort of) and Labour are off -- running in clown costume, It's a Knock-Out style, with a knock-about leaflet as their baton.

Glossy card, one side assuring the people of key LibDem / Labour marginal Oxford East that only the party that invaded Iraq and began the dismantling of the NHS can 'beat the Tories' here. The pithy prose comes complete with bar-chart. That claim, you would think, would make the other side redundant: a pleasing orange colour, but with a picture of la bete bleu of British politics, snatcher Thatcher. The purpose is to purport a link between the LibDems and the Tories in their heyday. Why waste their money on that assertion when they want to claim we're irrelevant?

What makes it all the more a work of genius is the attention to detail: Thatcher wears a Labour-looking red rose, a subliminal reminder of how Messrs Blair and Brown continued so many Tory policies. And they credit the attack on Clegg with a newspaper quotation -- from the Daily Mail. I am sure the present MP for Oxford East believes everything he reads in that source.

I have a sense this is going to be the first in a series of amusing election communications.

O tempora, o mores

2010-01-05T08:53:00.003Z

The Conservative Leader of Oxfordshire County Council, Keith Mitchell, is that rare breed, a jocular curmudgeon. When a Tory major complained to him about a lack of grit for our ice-rink-like roads, he followed suit, responding by complaining about, well, a lack of grit.

'What has happened at the British spirit that defeated Hitler and yet quails at a little snow?'

Before you start accusing this generation of being no wartime heroes, let's remember, Mr Mitchell, that you are no Winston Churchill.

Change of circumstances

2010-01-04T09:24:00.004Z

The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed that the strapline at the top of this page has changed. As those who know me will realise, 2009 saw two crises hit the Rundle family. With the cumulative effect of them, it has become impossible for me to continue, for the time being, leading our LibDem group on Oxford City Council. You can imagine my frustration, in the run-up to the most important set of elections Oxford will have seen this millennium, as we face a Labour administration better at the political street fights than at running our liberal city. But there was not a scintilla of doubt in my mind about my priorities: in this situation, family must come first. There are, after all, very capable councillors who can run our group.

For the immediate future, my focus in Oxford politics will be on continuing to work hard to represent the good people of Headington. I have made no secret of the fact that helping my ward is what I enjoy most as a councillor and so it is with relish that I will pursue that through, I hope, this year and beyond.

Thanks, Nick, for the Christmas card

2009-12-18T18:53:00.003Z

My Christmas is made: I've received my copy of Nick Clegg's festive card. And it's clear that we now know how he likes to relax after the stressful rigours of day leading our great party. The picture is home-made, drawing a Santa leaning over like a weeping willow, next to the whole Clegg family. A touching image but, Nick, just a tip: keep the day job (please), you are no Van Gogh.

CPRE tilting at windmills

2009-11-19T14:53:00.002Z

Headline from the latest local Bulletin of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England, in response to the project to build wind turbines in and near Oxford:

Don't sacrifice landscape for the environment

That say's it all, really.

How long an academic in politics?

2009-11-13T21:08:00.003Z

The question came to me as I read of David Howarth's sad departure from the Commons -- a good liberal representing a city that deserves nothing less. I note that he commented that after '22 years of elected public office, the time has come for me to concentrate on my other life, as an academic'.

22 years? Is that how long I have to stay around? Next May it will be eight years, leaving another fourteen to go. And, if this career were to follow his, it would mean that Banbury would have to wait another nine years to return a Liberal MP -- but they've been waiting long enough!

And, to those Tories, rubbing their hands at the chance of finally winning a seat in Oxford and both realising their only chance in this LibDem / Labour marginal, is my ward of Headington, and planning therefore to make sure I do not have another 14 years ago: thank you, that's kind and well-meaning, I'm sure, but save yourselves the effort. You'll only be disappointed.

James Murdoch and the New Social Darwinism

2009-08-30T18:43:00.003+01:00

Oh dear. Murdoch Junior has made rather a fool of himself. Silly chump.

He must of thought he was being so clever. 'Please, sir, please, sir, there's this man called Darwin'.

'Yes, Murdoch. He's rather well-known. You should have come across him before'.

But, sir, sir, isn't support of state intervention in the media an exact parallel to creationist rejections of theories of natural evolution?'

'Oh, dear, Murdoch. You really aren't the brightest button in the box, are you?'

My interest is not in the mechanisms of improving the quality of our media, which is, it must be said, woefully low-brow, lowest-common-denominator stuff that could make an orang-utan weep with boredom. What fascinates me is James Murdoch's rhetoric and the thinking (yes, I use the term lightly) that lies behind it.

Certain events in the middle of the twentieth century put pay to most concepts of social Darwinism. But, admirably swimming against that tide, Mr Murdoch would like to re-introduce such ideas into our parlance. And, to those who would suggest that the exportation of evolutionary theories into the workings of the market place is no more than a dodgy comparison, he's happy to trump it with yet another: those who don't agree with him are 'creationists'. Clever rhetorical move, for what liberal would want to be on their side?

Yet, this all seems to forget that liberalism has happened. Liberals both decreased the size of government and also re-directed it so that it could do the essential work of helping people to the starting-block of equality of opportunity. Liberals created the welfare state precisely because individual interventions were not enough to offset the malevolent side-effects of the market.

In reality, of course, Mr Murdoch doesn't want to get rid of the state. After all, his money wouldn't be worth much if there was nobody to honour it. His speech implicitly accepts the need for regulation in his small area of the world (is he a creationist in disguise?). As long, it seems, as if the regulation does not upsets him.

We all, then, work within the parameters of recognising the need for state intervention, but wanting to minimise it when its harm could outweigh its benefit. But Mr Murdoch's rhetoric takes us in another, more dangerous direction, making a specious parallel between the theory of the evolution of spieces and the reality of markets. There is something in this which is terribly Panglossian: in the best of all possible worlds (that is, one in which governments keep their hands off whatever Mr Murdoch wants to have his hands on), all will be for the best. But, of course, markets are incorrigibly benign, born with an instinct for good on which we can all rely. Unlike evolution, then.

Ever thought what dodo meat would have tasted like?

Plane daft

2009-08-20T08:22:00.003+01:00

So, the shack in Kidlington is re-branding as 'London Oxford Airport'. In the season of silliness, this has excited some well-deserved derision and mirth.

But, let's be honest: who can blame Londoners for wanting to associate themselves with Oxford? It provides a soupçon of élan where it usually fears to tread. Perhaps it even gives them hope that they can get away from their Bad Decision and hide from Barmy Boris.

We shouldn't begrudge London wanting to get in on the act. It's not as if they want to re-name some significant element of our city. Kidlington Airport is, after all, hardly the transport hub of choice for most Oxonians. It is the case that, whether we like it or not, an international city which is an educational centre creates the need for air travel. So, as Cambridge has Stansed, we have Heathrow.

A proposal, then: if Kidlington is to get London's name, surely Heathrow should own up and admit it's 'Oxford Heathrow Airport.'

Hands on the Green Belt!

2009-04-20T22:49:00.004+01:00

I read that some people wish to rally around the banner entitled 'Hands off Oxford's Green Belt'. I would respectfully suggest that what it needs is, in fact, a very hands-on approach.

You know my view: a Green Belt is needed but its worst friends are its soi-disant defenders. To dig the trenches to protect the Belt precisely where it is right now, without any possible incursion, is a way of securing defeat.

'Green Belt' conjures up images of sylvan countryside where only tractors should penetrate. But some land designated as 'Green Belt' is hardly that: car-parks, or disused quarry, or poor quality land scarred by pylons.

The dirigiste position would insist that if it was once called 'Green Belt' so it should remain in perpetuity. But that is both impracticable and missing an opportunity.

Cnut had more luck with the sea than the knights of the Belt will have with their campaign to stop change. Whoever is in government is not going to give up the opportunity to lessen Oxfordshire's housing crisis with some building south of Oxford around Grenoble Road. Nor is the argument for better public transport into Oxford going to be halted by protesters railing against the growth of Park & Ride.

By making the previous boundaries immutable, those who think of themselves as the Belt's defenders are actually selling it short. Some change is inevitable: what is critical is that those incidents are not taken as precedents allowing deeper and deeper encroachments.

The way to avoid that is to accept that the Belt, like the city it surrounds, is living and can change. Not, I stress, that it should necessarily decrease: the opportunity that is being ignored is for the possibility of land-swaps, negotiating to bring land into the Belt as other sections are moved out from it. But negotiation seems not be on some people's agenda at the moment.

In short, the Green Belt is too important to be left to is supposed defenders. If it stayed in their hands, the Belt would have to brace itself for buckling under the weight of expectations.

Pirates and Alexander the Great

2009-04-15T23:29:00.003+01:00

Hearing the news over the last few days, the tale narrated in Book IV of the City of God by St Augustine came to mind. You might know it:

That was an apt reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate he had captured. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he replied boldly: And what do you mean by seizing the whole earth? Because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you who does it with a great fleet are styled emperor.

CPRE versus reality

2008-11-23T19:07:00.006Z

Here is a confession: I find a perverse pleasure in reading things I shouldn't for sanity's sake. Asinine newspaper columns with illiberal and Blairite attitudes, I soak them up. Likewise, it was with a furtive delight that my clammy fingers rustled the glossy pages of the latest Oxfordshire bulletin from the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England.

They sound such a nice organisation. Don't they have that warmly bearded American with a jovial smile as their President? And don't we all love the countryside. I certainly do and I could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the CPRE on some issues, like the farce that is Labour's misnamed eco-towns, if only the CPRE weren't so damned illiberal.

I'm a liberal because I believe in social justice, for our generation and future ones. That means both taking care of our environment and working hard to overcome the real crisis that exists in affordable housing. These can be in tension, they can need balancing -- but the CPRE, it seems, won't for a minute accept that to be true.

The CPRE are storm-troopers for the Green Belt, not just as a concept but in its every inch as it presently stands. And so, they are glum at the prospect of wind turbines, they are sour-faced at Oxford's Park and Rides, and they are certainly bitterly opposed to any building projects near the city.

They claim that 'all the houses needed [for Oxford] could be built in the City itself on already identified development land.' Let's leave aside the fact that this seriously underestimates the depth of the problem we face. Elsewhere in their bulletin, CPRE celebrate the fact that a meadow in Oxford, near my ward -- Warneford Meadow -- has been saved from development by the curious legal ruse of declaring it a Town Green. Good for the Meadow which would, indeed, be an unwise place to build, but let's remember that that was one of the areas of 'identified development land'. We do need the countryside around the city but we also need green spaces in the city. Is the CPRE really ready to thrust its arm down the city's throat and pull out its green lungs? Their thinking simply does not add up on this.

But, I read, building an urban extension to relieve Oxford's housing crisis is not just unnecessary; it's apparently part of a conspiracy. The CPRE reveals the dastardly truth in their bulletin: 'the City Council's strategy is not to solve the housing problem, but to provide more houses in order to enable commercial development.' In other words, the City -- damn them -- wants to see economic growth. Quite what the CPRE's alternative to sustainable economic growth is, they don't say. I can't avoid sensing that the CPRE would like to stop the world and get off, and, in that eventuality, I'd gladly hold the door open from them.

Protect rural England, yes, we should. But we won't do that with a narrow-minded, inflexible approach which takes no account of the human beings we want to be able to enjoy the countryside. Lord, save our countryside from the CPRE.

This blog is vetoed

2008-11-04T07:39:00.003Z

Whether you call it a veto or whether you call it just a moratorium -- actually, don't call it either because what we are talking about, of course, is the interdict on Latin.

Some arbiter elegantiarum in Town Hall circles has decreed that the language of Cicero is not fit for quotidian use. Not, of course, that any councils have emulated the Finnish news station or the Holy Office of the Bishop of Rome and transmitted press releases in the pristine tongue of the ancient Romans. It is the incidental, the minutiae, about which the custodians of our lingua franca are presently concerned. And they have the support of an organisation I have formerly considered the praetorian guard of good sense: the Plain English Campaign, who have not just given it their fiat, they have positively placed their imprimatur on the announcement, citing the example of 'e.g.', which, it is claimed, could be confused with 'egg' and is, ergo, an impediment to simple comprehension.

This leaves me in a quandary. I am accustomed, when speaking in Council, to ad lib impromptu and extempore -- which I realise makes the compilation of a verbatim record difficult. From now on, on such occasions, recourse to a Latin tag will now be no more than a tantalising temptation. I will have to practise self-restraint.

If the zeitgeist is so opposed too classical culture that expressing ourselves without reference to Latin is now de rigueur, I can be sure that aficionados of Council soirees will find there are enough bons mots in a veritable smogasbord of European idioms to let us ridicule this latest idee fixe. And if someone doesn't like it, take it to the ombusdman.

How to be a bad winner: guidance brought to you by Labour

2008-09-07T18:52:00.005+01:00

Labour in Oxford are living proof there's such a thing as a bad winner.

A couple of months ago, their government effectively gave the green light to an urban extension at Grenoble Road. Let's leave aside that, as I pointed out before, it will only provide well under 2000 units of affordable housing, that it would have been better to have a strategic review of the whole Green Belt, not just one part of it -- this is not the solution to the housing crisis that Labour would like to pretend it might be, but at least there are going to be much-needed houses.

In short, the case is won. But are Labour happy? Rather than follow their government's instructions that the two local authorities who have an interest in this site -- Oxford City Council and South Oxfordshire District Council -- should sit down and work together, Labour seem intent on doing the opposite.

The City Council has put in a request to the Boundary Commission that, in 2009, it review Oxford's boundaries with the aim of bringing in the planned urban extension to the city. Never mind that building is necessarily some years off -- there's a sewage works to move, after all -- and that this is therefore hopelessly premature. This is bound to ratchet up tension with Oxford's neighbours, making it less likely rather than more that the project will move ahead quickly.

Of course, no one is suggesting that working with the Tories of South Oxfordshire will be easy. The Conservatives' first reaction to talk of a housing crisis is 'what crisis', the second 'that's not our problem.' But the situation's changed: as Grenoble Road is going to happen, even a Tory should realise it's in South Oxfordshire's interest to be at the table. That's the only way they can work to minimise the difficulties they fear from an extension. They should be there to get cast-iron guarantees for the rest of the land around the site. And it's in the City's interest to be at the table too: we're going to have to work with our neighbours if we really want to deal with the challenges the new build will necessarily create.

Instead, we have the City Council willing up a stand-off from which no one will win -- least of all the people in dire housing need who should be our first priority.

Inspired typo

2008-08-13T09:33:00.004+01:00

Sometimes, I love The Oxford Mail. No, I really do. Take today: they report the Tory Policy Exchange proposal for house-buiding in the south-east, opening with:

One million new homes should be built in Oxford to help the city become an economic power-house of the 21st century, a barmy academic report says today.

Not having managed to hide their opinion very well, the article then -- and here it comes -- closes by saying:

The Tories this morning distanced themselves from the report. Chris Grayling, the shadow minister for Liverpool, said it did not reflect arty policy.

Masterful. Genius. The paper subtly implies by an 'accident' of typography that the Tories' main concern is the impact of house-building on the lifestyles of the literati. The Shadow Cabinet, one imagines, recoiled in collective shock at the idea of Le Corbusier-inspired architecture -- 'but where is the opera house?' -- leaving no space for ballet-classes or landscape-painting opportunities. You do wonder: who's taking the 'p'?

Is your MP a climate-change denier?

2008-07-27T12:25:00.002+01:00

I'm a hopeless optimist. I can't quite believe what I've just read.

The Local Government Association's First magazine this week runs a story with a positive headline: 'Key green role for councils - MPs' based on a survey of the honourable members of Britain's lower house. But read on to the third paragraph: of the 168 MPs surveyed 11% rejected the claim that climate change is occurring. I'm not sure whether that statistic is the most depressing or whether it's that a further 8% of our esteemed legislators ticked the box which said 'I don't know.'

By my reckoning, that survey suggests about 70 MPs are climate-change deniers. And another 50 are even more stupid than that. But the question is: who can list them?

Housing for Oxford: Labour misses the opportunity

2008-07-19T08:49:00.003+01:00

So, Ms Blears announced, like the Fairy Godmother to Cinderella, that Oxford can have an urban extension. People will rush to fight over whether south of Grenoble Road is the best place to build, but in scrambling to do so, they'll miss the bigger issue.

What has been announced, from what I have seen, is that an estate of 4,000 houses, 40% of them affordable, can be built in that area. If Andrew Smith imagines that that is anywhere near large enough even to dent substantially the housing crisis this city and this county faces, he just doesn't appreciate the magnitude of the problem.

The Secretary of State's response to the Structure Plan was a real opportunity for the government to call for a strategic vision for solving the crisis -- and that must begin a review of the whole Green Belt. But, as so often, they've bungled their chance and missed an open goal.

Those of us who believe in the concept of the Green Belt and want to see it last would have supported a proper, full review. There is nothing worse than a piecemeal removal of one section from the Belt, allowing the argument to be made in the next decade that a precedent has been set and yet one more section should also be removed -- and so it will go, decade after decade. On the other side, of course, are the Tories who stand for no building anywhere: they can't even seen the housing crisis beyond the gates at the end of their manicured lawn. But their attitude that the Green Belt, in its present format, is sacrosanct in every regard is equally unsustainable. Their friends, the developers, will see to that. In the meantime, there are people in desperate need and it should be our first duty to help them. Sadly, once again, the Conservatives have shown they aren't in on it and Labour that they aren't up to it.

With friends like these

2008-07-08T09:06:00.003+01:00

I'm not sure that this one has reached the British press yet: a diplomatic incident has occurred concerning President Bush and his proclaimed 'good friend' Silvio Berlusconi, the 'colourful' PM of Italy.

Showing their typical sensitivity to those curious species, foreigners, the White House helpfully explained to journos traipsing around after Bush at the G8 who Mr Berlusconi actually is. Translating back from the Italian version, he is, apparently, 'one of the most controversial leaders in a country known for government corruption', 'a dilettante in politics' etc etc.

They could have mentioned his greater strengths: how he's very adept at dodging prison terms by changing the law, how he's a great friend (making his dentist a minister) and how, even in his advanced years, his virility is unabashed -- at least on the phone to his more attractive female ministers. That the White House does not do so is surely a mark of previously hidden leftist sympathies...

The real insult is, of course, not on Berlusconi, but on the Italian nation. Now, some may say they deserve it, as they voted for him, just as Londoners have woken up with a sore head and Boris Johnson right there in their bed. But the implication of the White House's press-pack is that Berlusconi epitomises a country given to corruption, something, of course, which would never happen in the land of Halliburton. It reminds me of the scene in Godfather II when the WASP politician, Senator Geary, rails against Corleone and his whole nation:
I don't like your kind of people. I don't like to see you come out to this clean country in oily hair and dressed up in those silk suits, and try to pass yourselves off as decent Americans. I'll do business with you but the fact is that I despise your masquerade, the dishonest way you pose yourself. Yourself and your whole fucking family...
And look what happened to him.

The Tories: the dirtiest trick of all

2008-06-27T22:49:00.003+01:00

The other main parties really don't like us. What, in particular, they don't like is the image of the LibDems as the 'nice party', a party of which there is no need to be frightened.

Both Tories and Labour in the past have attempted to dent that, but it's been half-hearted compared with the Conservative campaign which is now on show.

The Witney Wonder, delighted to have John Howell as his newest MP, made a point of saying that the LibDems had been nasty during the by-election. Our campaign had pointed out that this self-proclaimed saviour of the Green Belt could have taught lessons to Judas in taking money from the other side -- though they put it in much more temperate language. Personally, I would have liked us to go further and alert people to how this developers' friend seems to imagine there is no housing crisis in Oxfordshire. Be that as it may, apparently Tory high command felt hard-done-by that anyone should imagine Mr Howell's employment to be relevant to his bid to be in Westminster. It was, they cried, a 'dirty trick.'

In the local elections, in my own ward, the Tories similarly ran a campaign on not liking the LibDems. In our leaflets, we always put the bar-chart of the last General Election, to remind people how close it was between Labour and ourselves. In Headington, where the Conservatives are in second place, the Tories pointed to that bar-chart to claim we were lying, since they surely were in a chance. Well, they missed their best shot (with all credit to their candidate, who was far better than such a mean-spirited party deserved). The irony, of course, is that it was in our interest for people to know that the Tories were in second place and fighting hard: it can only help us, in a ward where the vast majority are liberal-minded. I remember the campaign when I got elected, in which the Conservatives stood on an anti-immigration stance ('Oxford is full') -- an attitude which does not go down well with the enlightened people of Headington.

I mention these two instances because they are not disjointed incidents, but surely a mark of a larger campaign, intended not to help our democracy but simply to add to the cynicism which is already there. It's a simple, but sadly effective, technique: lie by calling others liars. It's the most corrosive dirty trick.

Dante: shall we sign him up?

2008-06-19T22:15:00.002+01:00

According to Peter Popham in The Independent, Dante, author of the Divine Comedy and father of literary Italian, is one of us.

The occasion for the article is the revocation of the 700 year ban on Dante from his home city of Florence (a bit late now some would say). It's caused little interest in Italy. But it's stirred up a British media bored by worries over the economy or military deaths.

Popham writes:
'The White Guelphs, among whom Dante counted himself, were the Liberal Democrats of their time. They strove to sit on the fence. They were for the pope, but not very much for him. They thought he should have power, but not too much power.'

That's bad history as well as being bad politics (if you want a sitting-on-the-fence party, look at the Tories over civil liberties, half-for, half-against, epitomised by their former MP, David Davis, with his previously inscrutable smile. As another David, Prof. Starkey, is fond of saying: 'why does the Englishman sit on the fence? Because he enjoys the sensation').

But, the question for us is: would we want the author of the Commedia, the Convivio and -- most worryingly -- De Monarchia? In that last text, you'll remember, he was a Guelf who was a Ghibelline. In the first of them, he honoured Julius Caesar and damned his killers, a judgement itself condemned by Florence's later republicans in the Renaissance.

I'm not convinced he's on our side. But I wait to hear from you the counter-arguments.

What was the worst invention of the twentieth century?

2008-06-16T22:12:00.004+01:00

Amazing what you get in your councillor post: here comes a leaflet from the Department of Transport on Changing the Way We Learn to Drive.

Those who have had the privilege to be driven by me often believe it to be an unrepeatable experience. I hope the two-wheeled turn in 2002 was nothing to do with the then passenger, my future ward colleague, standing down six years later.

So, perhaps I'm not qualified to judge other people's driving. And, frankly, if I was asked the old chestnut of Civil Service interviews -- what's the worst invention of the twentieth century -- it would be a toss-up between the car and the television.

But here's an idea that's been suggested to me to change the way we learn to drive: make driving licences time-limited in a meaningful sense. That is, not to a specific age, but for a specific period, say, ten years. Get everyone to be re-tested after a set period -- and give those who choose not to keep their licence a bonus. I pass the idea on, in the spirit of free debate: what do you think?

42 days: too good for Davis

2008-06-13T13:36:00.005+01:00

Remember Monty Python's right-wing prisoner who was jealous of Brian for being spat in the eye by the gaoler? 'Gaoler's little blue-eyed boy...' He'd probably have voted against 42 days detention without trial: '42 days? Oh, what I'd give to be detained without charge for 42 days. But it's too good for them. String 'em up, string 'em up long before then.'

Somehow that thought came to mind following the news of Mr Davis' latest bid for attention, which John Humphries seems to want to depict as his Hampstead Heath experience -- the 'moment of madness' of Davis without an 'e'.

Mr Davis didn't make a bad fist of the interview. But the headlines aren't good for him. Then again, the news is not much better for the LibDem principled stand of not opposing him because we support him on 42 days.

Support him? Come off it. This is a man who declares he's going to make the taxpayer foot the bill of an ego-trip of a pointless by-election and does so, he says, in the name of civil liberties, when his own personal dream is to bring back hanging. If, during the dark night of the soul (yes, let's assume he has an inner being) following his defeat by the Witney Wonder, a flame was kindled in his breast which was marked 'civil liberty', well, he can start by repenting of his previous errors and apologise for his party's abysmal record. We don't support him or the Tories' attempt to paint themselves as liberal: it's about as convincing as the green face-paint they've taken to wearing.

He'd serve the country much better, if he resigned and stood aside for a candidate from a party which takes all civil liberties seriously, instead of treating them like the sweetie counter in Woolworth's where you can pick 'n' mix. But, instead, we have a prospect of Davis v McKenzie -- of right and righter. What a tedious by-election that would be. Pity the poor people of Haltemprice and Howden: if it's an elongated campaign, they could be suffering their own 42 days of hell.

Congratulations, Cllr Mark Mills

2008-06-13T08:17:00.003+01:00

Oxford has a new councillor, and he's a LibDem. Yesterday saw a by-election in Holywell Ward, in the city centre, were 95% of the electorate are students. The university colleges will be represented by one of their own, as student Mark Mills has been elected, to represent the ward alongside fellow LD, Nathan Pyle, who was elected in May. The by-election followed the resignation of the ward's excellent councillor, Richard Huzzey, who is moving to the States for work (and, incidentally, just ahead of the presidential election).

In recent years, Holywell has been a fight between Greens and the LibDems. This year, in May, it was the Tory party who came a poor second -- how student voting habits change. The Conservatives repeated that this time, with what they must have thought was a stronger candidate, a former councillor who lost his seat in neighbouring Carfax just over a month ago.

The result in full:
Mark Mills 188 (40%)
Tory 112 (24%)
Lab 93 (20%)
Green 72 (15%)

Turnout, on the penultimate day of university term, was low at just under 12%.

Feudal Barons Fathers of the Labour Movement

2008-06-11T21:58:00.003+01:00

The BBC report on Labour's latest assault on civil liberties -- one of the bedrocks, my friends, of social justice -- provided a notable juxtaposition of views.

A latterday outspoken rebel (they allow one amongst their ranks), the ubiquitous John McDonnell, is quoted as saying: "There will be widespread consternation among our supporters in the country seeing a Labour government prepared to use every tactic available in its determination to crush essential civil liberties, which have been won by the labour movement over generations."

In early versions of the story, it was immediately followed by a quotation from an outspoken rebel of a former era, Tony Benn, who said something along the lines that he didn't think he'd see the day that Magna Carta was repealed by a Labour government.

Taken together, they imply the Tolpuddle Martyrs were kindred spirits with the lords who loitered around King John at Runymede. It's a tasty mythology of Britain's radical tradition.

Let's face it: Labour have never been strong on civil liberties, and tonight is just another testimony to that. Their commitment to liberty is even weaker than that to social justice. And, of course, they wouldn't admit there's a link between the two.

Can they really be Labour's saviours?

2008-06-02T00:22:00.003+01:00

Congratulations go to my friends in Oxford City Council's Labour ranks, Cllrs Turner, McManners, Bance and Baxter. They all gained national recognition yesterday in an ever-so-unbiased article in The Guardian, on the subject of Can Oxford save Labour?

Obviously, Oxford is a key battleground between Labour and LibDems, and this article attempts to set the parameters of the debate. Labour is presented here as the party of social justice -- yes, that's right, of social justice.

I don't eat cornflakes, so I didn't choke (sorry to disappoint you, Antonia & Ed). But here is the fault-line: I'm sure they joined Labour because they genuinely imagined it could be a party of social justice; I joined the LibDems precisely because I see it as the only party of social justice. How could one or other get it so wrong?

I'd bring to your attention evidence from the recent elections. Labour didn't like us fighting it on wanting a lower Council Tax -- when we did that precisely because that unfair tax hits some of the worst-off hardest. Perhaps Labour's response would be that anyone who can own a house doesn't deserve support, but that would be grossly to overestimate the wealth of some who have struggled to buy and stay in their own home, especially in an over-heated market like Oxford.

The blogs recently have also highlighted another blindspot in Labour's thinking. They attacked one of our candidates by quoting his blog in favour of reform of the drug laws, implicitly presenting themselves as in favour of the present drug regime. How can they imagine this sits with any assertion of support for social justice? I worry that they wouldn't even understand that question.

Labour in Oxford has also seen environmental concerns as somehow a distraction from social justice. True enough, one sets challenges for the other - but we should be finding ways to wed our actions on the environment with helping those worst-off. It's no good saving the planet, if the society left is not worth living in, but it's equally no use planning to build a New Jerusalem if the site is in the flood plain -- in other words, without a planet, there's no society.

These are only a few examples of the ways in which my friends on the opposite benches seem misguided in the claim that they belong to a progressive party. But, frankly, if they really want future elections in Oxford fought on grounds of social justice, rather than the mean-spirited campaign Labour recently run, my response is: bring it on. We will be more than happy to fight you on our home territory.

How often does the House of Commons get it right?

2008-05-21T01:34:00.002+01:00

The vote on the limit on abortion tonight has disturbed me: I'm so used to thinking that the House of Commons will make a bad decision, even when the right one is obvious, that this has left me stunned. MPs show sense and an appreciation of fellow human beings? Surely not. But so they have by rejecting the moves to turn back the clock on this human right.

Interesting, though, that the Tory leader voted to reduce the limit by two weeks. Amazing how he calls other parties indecisive, when he himself acts in such a spineless manner: for goodness' sake, either be in favour of the human right to choose, or make it illegal. Don't dither in the middle, Dave.

Vote Tory, get Labour

2008-05-08T00:22:00.003+01:00

If, indeed, she has bated her breath as she proposed, yet another by-election would be in the offing following Cllr Bance's self-suffocation. She was eager to see my response to the local elections, which I've been intending to post for some time, but only now have the opportunity.

There were two winners in Oxford: the LibDems and Labour. Both parties made a net increase in seats. Both achievements could be said to be remarkable: Labour against the national trend; LibDems against recent local tradition, gaining while in administration -- something Labour never achieved this decade. That said, congratulations to Labour on becoming the even-larger largest party (with proviso as set out below), and good luck. Cllr Bance, in particular, will make a good portfolio holder.

The losers: the small parties. Greens, IWCA -- but, most notably, the Conservative Party (who, for a long time, have been a minority interest in Oxford). In terms of votes, the Tories are now the city's third party, but they failed to turn that into any seats whatsoever, losing the two they had by defections. I don't know who was running their campaign, but whoever it was, they're not doing them any favours.

That said, the Tories did achieve something. Coming a close second in my own ward of Headington (due to Chris Clifford, a candidate more assiduous than that party deserves) was not, for them, a success. What will please them more is that their increase in vote made sure that we could not take seats of Labour in some of the key battlegrounds. It's the Conservative Party to whom some of the new Labour councillors should be sending letters of heartfelt gratitude, for pretending they were contenders when they were only spoilers.

This is not to take away from Labour's campaigning vigour. They're street-fighters again, but it's not a pretty sight. For instance, they knew we were a threat in one ward so made an A3 leaflet about our candidate, quoting from an old blog post his reservations about this country's present drug laws. This would be acceptable if our opponents owned up to being old-style Conservatives, who thought our law-and-order system always worked. But they claim to be progressive -- an assertion already in doubt considering their attitudes on civil liberties or environmental issues, but made all the more problematic when they insinuate that prohibition is, oh yes, working so well. They might bluster that a big cause is worthy a small lie but, then, little sense of cause seems left to them. They're left with tactics and they sum them up: pygmies.

Are you Low-Carbon yet?

2008-04-24T08:23:00.004+01:00

I had the pleasure of being involved in a new initiative in my ward yesterday evening: Low-Carbon Headington. There is already one low-carbon community group up-and-running in Oxford. With its launch yesterday, Headington is the second, with another hot on its tail.

Sceptics might ask: can a groups like this do anything? It's too early to promise success from Low-Carbon Headington, but there are positive signs. There was a real buzz in the room. We had Mark Lynas, author of Six Degrees, present to frighten us all with predictions of the catastrophes which might follow if we do nothing -- and, indeed, the disasters which will happen even if we do everything we must. Much of the work has to happen at an international level -- and demands real change from politicians, not just slogans (as, to be party-political for a moment, we're getting from the Tories right now). But I came away convinced that there are ideas in the community that can work with local action.

Part of the meeting was a 'post-it' session, where people jotted down their ideas and put them on a board. I had the job of trying to summarise them in 5 minutes -- an impossible task because there were so many, but here are a few of the themes which got repeated mention:

* local campaigns with shops and businesses -- in particular, encouraging an end to free plastic bags and persuading pubs not to have patio heaters
* 'greening Headington' -- especially, more trees in public and private spaces
* low-carbon transport -- car-clubs mentioned, as well as better cycling facilities -- plus Car-Free Headington Day, for which there are already plans
* pressure on government -- a call for carbon-rationing was particularly popular

There were many more ideas on the night -- and I expect there are many more out there among you. Do you have any suggestions we might add to the list and discuss at our next meeting at the Methodist Church Hall at 7:30pm on 2nd June?

What's the difference between Boris and Blears?

2008-04-09T07:37:00.003+01:00

When the part-time MP known as Boris -- long before he became joke-candidate for London Mayor -- insulted the city of Liverpool, he made the long journey up to apologise. When Blairite Blears insults the council estates of Oxford, she stays at home and blames anyone but her tongue-tied self. Instead, laconic Mr Brown turns up for a cuppa at Andrew Smith's house.

Now, I wouldn't want it to be imagined that an unfavourable comparison of hazardous Hazel to Mr Johnson is some sort of praise for the latter. The point's that there's a way of responding when you've done wrong and Ms Blears' stubborn approach is not it. I doubt the clamours for a visit for her to give an apology in person will die down soon.

The presence of Mr Brown in Andrew Smith's living-room must be seen as endorsement of the present MP for Oxford East by the Prime Minister who was one of the architects of New Labour. I doubt that, though, impresses many people. After all, that endorsement works two ways: it means that Mr Brown can expect Mr Smith to be loyal on contentious issues. That he will, in other words, continue to represent New Labour to the people of Oxford rather than stand up for us in Parliament.

The same old story, then, as has been recently shown not just by Andrew Smith's two-faced approach to Post Office closures but also by his backing for hiking income tax for low earners up from 10%. His argument on income tax is apparently that evidence suggests this hike will only hit the young and single people. Oh, that's OK then.

Of course, there are problems with the 10% rate: LibDems have said for a long time that it would be better to bring more people out of income tax altogether, and that's patently sensible. But, if there is not going to be any really significant uplift in tax thresholds, having a lower rate was an acceptable second choice. But now even that concession to poor working people is going.

Clearly, it's not just Ms Blears who should make a personal apology. Messers Brown and Smith could have used their jamboree the other day to give a joint apology for letting down yet more people deserving of help. Another opportunity missed.

Oxford Elections: wither the Tories? Oh, yes.

2008-04-07T22:22:00.006+01:00

The Tories know what it's like to be a minor party in cities like Oxford. Here, they haven't won a seat in this millennium and recently have only picked up hand-me-downs on the Council.

The Conservatives have polled very poorly in all by-elections since 2006. Going back to that year's main elections, when half the city's seats were last contested, they came behind the Greens. But, at least at that point they focussed their resources, fighting seats they thought they could win (like -- oh, dear -- my own Headington); this time, they are attempting the strategy of stretching themselves as thin as skin undergoing cosmetic surgery.

Bad choice, guys.

The electors know it's a sham, an attempt to fool the electorate into imagining the party which once called itself nasty -- probably because it was considered a brand-leader in xenophobia and homophobia -- has some chance in a tolerant city like Oxford. They don't.

The New Tories, who desperately try to be Blairite ten years after that went out of fashion, have written to all Oxford households encouraging them to 'go green'. That's even though the Conservatives locally are not in favour of the city's recycling revolution. But, at least, if Tory voters took their leader's advice, they would be voting for the third-placed party rather than the usual Conservative doldrums of fourth and final place.

It was a Tory Prime Minister who, on achieving that office, proclaimed: 'I have climbed to the top of the greasy pole.' His latterday Oxford colleagues are still slithering at its foot.

The definition of hypocrisy

2008-03-20T17:52:00.004Z

Chutzpah is not a term usually associated with Andrew Smith, former Cabinet Minister and, for the time being, New Labour MP in Oxford East. From those who know him, the highest compliment is 'he's a nice man.' Commentators have been less kind. But, considering what Mr Smith has just managed to do, perhaps assessments should be revised.

Mr Smith was not among those yesterday who rebelled against their own government over Post Office closures. It's not really his style: he prefers to be considered a loyalist to the Blair / Brown administrations. When he was in the Cabinet, that was understandable. Quite why he continues -- unless he's the only person who thinks he has a chance to return to the long table in Downing St -- is not so clear. Let's be charitable and say it is out of conviction: he actually believes in the policies for which he votes. There would be something honourable in that.

Problem is: he started the week waving off from Oxford Rail Station a local journalist weighed down with 'Save Our Post Offices' petitions. The journo departed with Smith's endorsement ringing in his ears - and, in return, Mr Smith got the coverage in the local paper, complete with unflattering photo. So, on Monday, Mr Smith was determined to save post offices from cuts imposed by the Labour government; by Thursday, he was voting with the Labour government in favour of those same closures.

Mr Smith has not bothered to explain what made him change his mind, so we can only speculate. Perhaps he baulked at the fact that the motion postponing closures was proposed by the Conservative party -- that's understandable, especially when the Tory tradition of privatizations made the cutting of public services something of a national pastime. They are no doubt hypocrites, but they're left standing on the foothills in comparison to the heights of hypocrisy that Mr Smith has managed to scale so rapidly in one short week.

It's hard to avoid the conclusion that Mr Smith has slipped up, as he has done time and time again. And only weeks before local elections in Oxford. But, perhaps this is where Andrew Smith's Machiavellian skill truly lies. After all, Labour on the City Council, despite being the largest party, sit comfortably on the opposition benches. They're not very good at it, but it seems to suit them. Indeed, they may well realise that their best way they can assist Mr Smith in his desperate attempt to hold on to his ultra-marginal seat, only 963 ahead of the LibDems, is to stay stuck there, in opposition. They probably judge being in administration a tough challenge -- and they'd be right that it's beyond their competence. So, Mr Smith's singular act of hypocrisy might not be an act of folly by a mediocrity but a skilful move intended to do what it will surely achieve: remind people exactly why they shouldn't vote New Labour in May. Then again, he needn't have bothered. We can do that well enough, thank you very much.

Rowan Williams and the Mastery of Politics

2008-02-10T21:11:00.001Z

The Archbishop of Canterbury is not feted for his deft political touch – nor would he want to be. He has been cursed, by fellow bloggers as well as by print journalists, with the most opprobrious epithet applicable to someone in public life: he’s ‘academic’. And academics, as we know, are out of touch and, worst of all, naïve. So much might be inferred from his reported reaction to the media coverage of his speech last week: he is said to be ‘shocked’ at the backlash. Frustrated, dismayed, perhaps, but surely not ‘shocked’ – that makes him sound wounded and repentant. But he’s got no reason to be queueing in line for the confessional.

Dr Williams has been caught by the unusual weather we’re having: after all, silly season is supposed to be months away from early February. If there had been other news for the journalists to waste words on, his speech would have struggled to win column-inches. As it is, the press-gang must have been straining to squeeze a sound-bite out of a text which, it is true enough, is rather wanting in a certain rhetorical elegance. But it clearly wanted to stir a wide debate – it’s just a pity it has not done so yet.

The headlines and the comment articles to date can hardly consitute an intelligent response to his lecture. But the furore itself will have its use: a speech which otherwise would be forgotten will attract more attention over a period of time and a debate may follow. It may be then that commentators come to terms with what the Archbishop was actually saying.

It seems to me that what Dr Williams was arguing was part of his wider critique of the West’s international policy following the 11^th September bombings. It’s an interpretation that, in a softly-spoken matter, sets challenges for liberalism. There are, he emphasises, fundamental rights which no religious morality could trump – but, equally, we should not fool ourselves that those rights add up to a complete code of behaviour. Some rules of conduct are established for ourselves by the communities in which we participate; those rules should not be challenged by the state simply for the sake of having an all-encompassing universal law which would assume all individuals are alike. It is a plea for pluralism, and for a recognition of the limits of what western ‘liberal democracy’ can helpfully export to other cultures. It is argument for everyone being equal before the law, but not the same before it.

However brief a summary this is, it should be clear that, for liberals, what Dr Williams said is problematic – in the best possible sense. He is challenging us to think further about our liberalism in the new context we find ourselves. In suggesting the limits to liberal democracy, he is not denying it has benefits but rather asking us to define its identity more clearly than is usual.

Which all sounds grist for the scholarly seminar, rather than for the public arena. We might pause to wonder how depressing it is that the public arena is thought unsuitable for intellectual discussion. But we might also wonder why Dr Williams said what he did, when he did. It was a challenge not just to governments and to the chattering classes but also to his own church – in the run-up to the General Synod. His picture of pluralism is one in which, it could be argued, the curious position of the Church of England as the church of the state should be in doubt. Perhaps – just perhaps – if the Archbishop has happened to trigger a discussion which will eventually lead to consideration of disestablishment, that might not have been completely unintentional. Though, naturally, the artful politician would claim himself ‘shocked’ when matters turn out to take that course.

Neighbourhood E-Forums: how would you use them?

2007-12-16T19:18:00.000Z

I have a question for you, gentle readers. We -- or, rather, an estimable local resident with the support of (among others) her local councillors and under the auspices of the City Council -- have recently set up an e-forum for our ward and the neighbouring area. It's got c. 80 members having been on-line and public for only a day, and a whole range of issues are already being aired. Hoorah, I say, and then I ask: what next?

I've got some ideas about what I think the forum could achieve and how it could really be e-democratic. But I want your views and your advice. What do you think would be a suitable lower percentage of the local population to have involved? How would you judge its success? And with what would you compare it?

I look forward to your comments. And, by the way, if you happen to be associated with Oxford's elevated elder sister of Headington, or live nearby in Marston, Barton, Risinghurst or Wood Farm, do join us at: http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/oxford-hm/

Huhne and Cry

2007-11-18T14:29:00.000Z

It was all going so well. A leadership election which I, for one, feared could enter the Olympics in the long-distance tedium category was actually proving a credit to our party. We were seeing two true Liberals reminding us of the core beliefs which we share; they were ably showing the world how different we are from what Ming, in one of his last good acts as leader, dubbed the cosy consensus. And I was still honestly undecided about whom I would support. All that ended today.

I doubt any of us are so naïve as to imagine that either camp in this election is above a spot of off-the-record briefing and less-than-flattering commentary on their opponent. In fact, if either camp wasn’t capable of it, I wouldn’t want them on the ballot paper: sending a guileless leader into a room with the other parties would be like asking the lamb to sit down with lions who’ve forgotten the Bible’s punch line and are feeling a bit peckish around teatime. All along, it has seemed that Huhne’s campaign has been less adept at this skill than Clegg’s – since his launch, his coded comments have been the more noticeable. That, indeed, might be forgivable from the man the media sees as ‘the other candidate’, the one who has to play catch-up. But there is a line somewhere, faintly drawn but definitely present, and it’s been crossed.

So, the Huhne team produced a briefing document on Clegg’s apparent flaws and gave it a florid title. I don’t have a problem with that, if they are competent enough to keep it to themselves. But either they showed it to the press or they couldn’t stop it getting to them. Either way, if Hogwarts ran a course in the dark arts of politics, Huhne clearly would be enrolled – and would prove to be no Hermione. On The World this Weekend – where, incidentally, Steve Goddard, future MP for Oxford East, gave an excellent interview – Chris Huhne just made it worse: he apologised for the title of the document, but not for its substance. If you are going to play bare-knuckle, you don’t say ‘sorry’ as you do it. If, on the other hand, you want to be Mr Nice, you’d play contrite. Encore: nul points.

Of course, there’s another level of irony. The implication of Huhne’s own version of a dodgy dossier is that a politician can’t change his mind or develop in his views. One wonders where that would leave the contributors of The Orange Book who later wanted to distance themselves from its ‘economic liberal’ extremes. If you are going to accuse your opponent of ‘flip-flops’, you better make pretty sure you aren’t open to the same allegation.

I had suspected that this election would be more about presentation and personality than about fighting for the policy heart of the party. In debates like that on Question Time, that has been the case. On that programme, when the final question came about ‘what is your opponent’s best quality?’, I was hoping that one of them would have the humour and the chutzpah to begin their answer: ‘he’s a good loser – and, if you don’t believe me, test it.’ Sadly, that clearly can’t be said of one of the candidates. Mr Huhne is proving himself a bad loser even before the votes are cast.

Shorten the timetable!

2007-10-18T16:07:00.000+01:00

My friend, the geo-mutualist, makes a good argument for something more awe-inspiring than a two horse race for the leadership of our great party, and he calls on Cowley St to extend the timetable. Of course, what we want is an opportunity to showcase the talent and the intellectual vitality within the LibDems while the camera falls, briefly, on us. But if it does turn out that what we have on our hands is single combat between two former MEPs of, shall we say, similar pedigree, can't we just shorten the timetable for the whole thing and get it out of the way?

OK, I realise it's not possible. Constitution and all that. But there is a danger that a head-to-head for the leadership won't look as much like a titanic struggle as arm-wrestling on the Titanic. In all honesty, won't some of those who've counted themselves out think again? Let's have a debate worthy of our party.

If it goes on like this...

2007-10-17T19:56:00.000+01:00

So, all credit to the silver-haired lethargo for having an organised campaign. Chris Huhne declared this afternoon and is already sending me an e-mail. Impressive, considering he couldn't have known this eventuality would arise before Monday.

And it's not even as if it was a foregone conclusion that he'd stand: after all, as he tells me (and every other LibDem whose address is available), he talked about it with 'family and friends'. Groan. First misjudged cliche' of the e-mail.

And what's this? 'It's disgusting that we live in a country where a child born into poverty has a life sentence.' That's a new take on ASBOs. But 'disgusting'? Sounds like he's eaten something highly unsavoury. He could have tried: 'we should hang our heads in shame that we live etc etc' And 'has a life sentence'? It may come as a surprise but being poor doesn't necessarily mean you're a natural born killer. We know what you mean, Chris, just about -- but it's unlikely most people would untwine your opaque phrasing.

It sounds to me as if he needs to get some good speechwriters around him. He's quick of the mark, but has he tied his shoelaces?

How desperate are the Tories?

2007-09-28T18:13:00.000+01:00

So, prudent Gordon Brown is about to go to the polls, little more than 28 months after the last General Election. And the Tories claim that they are champing at the bit -- but enough of their boudoir activities.

The Witney Wonder is all wound up and ready to go for the autumn poll, we're assured. But, if they are so confident, why -- really, why -- do they scratch around with yesterday's local by-election results as their main press release for the day. I realise all hacks act like train-spotters when it comes to the weekly results, and that they are susceptible to intelligent analysis, as shown over at LibDem Voice. But, God, the Tories really must be worried if winning one council seat off Labour at a swing of 3.7% is the best news they can think of promoting three days before the General Election is called. The only aspect more surprising than the Tories pushing this line is that the BBC were happy to run with it. But, perhaps it's their left-wing bias showing again -- after all, it's a story which can only make the Cameroonians look like muppets.

The Dark Arts: second in an occasional series

2007-09-27T23:36:00.000+01:00

I said before that I might blog again on tricks I haven't learn. I realised I should when I recalled just the other day a story I had heard about an act of legerdemain in the Labour party, long before Mandelson or Alistair Campbell were on the scene.

The way I heard it is this: the local party was having one of its constituency meetings at which a member called to see the constitution. It wasn't available. At the next meeting, also, it still wasn't available. At first, the comrades imagined their secretary was simply forgetful - he was not regarded highly, I hear, for his intellect; after a few occasions, they imagined he was being truculent. Which meant the demands for a copy of the constitution were all the more insistent.

Eventually, victory. The red-letter day came, or rather red-constitution day: the secretary came to the executive with copies of the notorious constitution, printed on paper of the party's (then) hue. He warned members sternly that the constitution should not be circulated more widely. Which meant that more than one rushed away to photocopy the sheets -- only to find that black type on red paper doesn't show up on a photocopy. The simple secretary had outwitted them.

Not one we in our party could emulate, of course. But what I can say is that I know that 'simple secretary' has proven a longer player in politics than the people who opposed him.

Thoughts on Reinventing the State

2007-09-24T19:27:00.000+01:00

I have written for the first time on LibDem Voice. 'Commissioned', indeed, to write 500 words on the new Liberal book, Reinventing the State. I'll wait for the cheque. As the book's nearing 400 pages, that means I had to write the equivalent of no more than 1.25 words per page. And, of course, I had far too much to say. In fact, I found it stimulating to the extent that I came up with various different reviews, plus my own reflections on some of the ideas in the book. What I post here are not the 'out-takes', but my own personal view on the ideological issues the book raises. Here's what I typed:

Perhaps the most effective virtue for a liberal is inconsistency. We do not believe that the state is always the right solution, or that the market invariably has the answer. We know it depends on circumstance. And – this is the crucial point – circumstances change. There are times when the state needs to intervene, and there are periods when its power needs to be constrained. If we ask when intervention is necessary, the simple response is when our society is in crisis – when inequality is so stark that local or charitable solutions can not be sufficient. The contention of Reinventing the State is that we are at one of those moments of crisis. And, what is more, we have to battle not only with the old enemies of poverty, lack of opportunity, unequal life expectancy but also with a new foe: climate change and the destruction of our planet. To my mind, this challenge is also the impetus to a new perspective on our ideology.

Liberals have in their mind a concept of the individual, the essential, irreducible unit of society. When we think of individuals, we do not imagine each of them to be isolated. In each person clusters various communities, of which they are member by birth (gender, race, for instance), by circumstance (physical inhabitance, career) and by inclination (sexual orientation, political persuasion). So many communities that the individual naturally has to choose which of those to privilege in their own self-definition. Those choices and some of the communities themselves will change over a person’s lifetime. This is a liberalism with which we might be familiar. But it is not enough, as the challenge of the environment should remind us. That is a challenge which we have to tackle for our own generation but all the more for future ones – not just for today’s children, but for theirs in turn. In other words, the individual of whom the liberal conceives is a member of the various communities already mentioned, and of a community which includes the not-yet-living.

Does this matter? I think it does, for two reasons. First, because it has relevance beyond that of the environment, providing a longer-term perspective on some of the other issues that we face. Previous generations of liberals, including the New Liberal thinkers of the early twentieth century, had confidence in a concept of progress. In that mindset, future generations could be expected to enjoy an ever better existence which, perhaps, meant that their welfare did not have to be of concern now. Progress is the god that died; we think beyond our own graves with a sense of anxiety, not confidence. But in protecting the heritage we leave, we face another problem and that is the second reason why this matters. We have to ask ourselves how far the ‘not-yet-living’ can be used as a trump card? How do we ensure that our stewardship for future generations does not create unacceptable brakes on our freedom in our own lifetimes?

I don’t pretend I have the answers to those questions yet. But we should be asking the questions.

Housing for Oxford: Mr Smith fails again

2007-09-02T22:27:00.000+01:00

There is a scene of the ancien regime court depicted in the film Ridicule when the hero is thrown out of a dinner party on the basis that he is not witty enough to share at table with the other diners. ‘But’, he says as he retreats, ‘one can not judge a person by the company they keep. After all, Judas Iscariot had the best of companions.’

Andrew Smith is man with friends who, if not the best, are at least the highest-placed. He’s a man with the Prime Minister’s private number in his mobile; he’s someone who has sat at the table with the Cabinet. But Oxford gains precious little from his connexions.

It was Mr Smith who failed to persuade his former colleagues that our city should be considered for unitary status. And now the same Mr Smith claims the latest announcement on housing for Oxford is an unqualified success. If he genuinely believes that, he either deserves to be ridiculed or should admit he’s betrayed the people he’s supposed to represent. The latest news is nowhere near what our city needs.

The recommendations on the South East Plan now say that there should be 4,000 homes south of Grenoble Road. ‘Good news’ says Smith, rather than saying, ‘what, only 4,000?’ When you consider the planning process, it is likely that this will equate to, at best, 2,000 units of social housing in the area. Let’s be frank: that’s not going to solve Oxford’s housing crisis.

If there is to be any decisive act to improve the housing shortage in our city it is going to take much more than that sort of number. And we must remember that the social housing shortage is only one part of the problem: the lack of affordable housing affects a much wider section of our community.

So, for Andrew Smith to pop open the champagne at this announcement is not just misguided, it sells his city short. What makes it worse, is that he effectively endorses another bad decision about the South East Plan. The recommendations call for a review of the Green Belt just around Grenoble Road – what a missed opportunity.

Supporters of the Green Belt might imagine that this announcement is in their favour, but they would be wrong. If we are going to have a no-development zone which will last and, at the same time, help the county’s capital overcome its acute problems, we need to review the whole Green Belt, not just part of it. Overwhelmingly, that review would surely endorse the Belt that exists – and so make it a stronger defence against the onslaught which is bound to come in future years. At the same time, it is only through a complete review that we can take into account all the options for Oxford’s development. Beyond Blackbird Leys might be part of the solution, but it can not be – especially with Smith’s measly growth – the whole answer.

So, Mr Smith, if you want to stand up for your city, speak the truth: the compromise you’ve endorsed is no solution. Are you man enough to admit that?

I've signed the pledge: have you?

2007-08-31T23:00:00.001+01:00

It's time we called a stop to it, it's time we called time at the bar. I talk, of course, of our fossil-fuel consumption and that's why I've been quick to sign the pledge.

Good liberals all, you'll have in your diaries 22nd September: 'Streets for People Day'. Previously, it was called 'Car-free Day', but that was too catchy or too contentious (what do you mean, how can I be free without my 4x4?). So, last year, it was 'In Town without my car Day' -- nobody could have accused that of being catchy.

But now we have a name which is clear and an event which is worth supporting. It's nationwide; in Oxford, it's in Broad Street and in Headington (and I'm sure elsewhere). But one day is not enough...

That's why the City Council has launched it's Streets for People Pledge. For many of us urban-dwellers, it shouldn't be so much of a challenge: I walk or bus to work every day; I have a car which gets into first gear once a fortnight. All the same, sign up to it -- and encourage others who might indulge in their car beyond the limit to do the same. Cheers!

You must read this blog: it's official

2007-08-23T08:42:00.000+01:00

I learn today in the press that this blog is a 'must-read'. That's according to a shady character known only as The Insider, the political gossip columnist of The Oxford Mail. I'll take approbation from anywhere.

What particularly caught the eye of The Insider -- who, by the way, I imagine to be a debonair and suave femme fatale (you can tell just from prose style) -- was my poll. But more of that another time.

Considering it's been over a fortnight since I've found a moment to scribble here, I'd say the message is less a 'must-read' to everyone else, but a 'must-write' to myself.

The Dark Arts: a tutorial

2007-08-08T21:51:00.001+01:00

I'm a novice at the game of politics, I really am. Over the years, I've tried to appreciate the subtle techniques deployed by seasoned maestri (of all parties), but I still couldn't pass Grade One. I realise there are ruses and legerdemains which help your path of action, or hinder your opponent's. But I'll be damned if I can remember them...

This comes to mind because there is a local issue creating some heat at the moment. I won't give details, for the sake of the cosmopolitan audience of this blog. But let's just say that a course of action, envisaged in this year's budget and supported, at that stage, by all parties on the Council, has now become contentious. I might have been given verbal assurances of support, but they don't count when a local member eyes a chance at re-election.

And so, I and the local member (more wizened than wise) sit in a public meeting to discuss the issue. At one point, he says something like: 'I asked for this information a month ago and still haven't got it. I think it's shocking that I and local people haven't been given the information.' The officer next to me muttered that he had only asked last week; I pointed out that last week was actually last month. As it happens, checking the e-mail trail, the first I knew about his request for information was when I saw his message of 1st August (when the relevant officers were on leave), but let's assume he'd meant to send it the day before. So he uses 'a month ago' in the sense of 'last month' (which could, of course, be last week). What a neat line that is: to create a sense of ages waiting, when the request had only gone in as the wheels of the band-wagon began to roll.

I doubt I could ever be so skilled. Then again, I doubt I would ever want to be.

Pseuds' Corner on-line

2007-08-06T23:00:00.000+01:00

Saturday saw me off to Stratford for the new productions of Henry IV Parts 1 & 2. This is no place for a review (go to enjoy the second half of 2 HIV, and prepare to be disappointed by the rest, especially by a Falstaff [David Warner] overladen with ennui). But if you don't, and don't therefore see the programme, you'll miss this gem of lovieness, written by Richard Cordery, who was excellent as Humfrey in last year's Henry VI and moves sedately into the role ofanother figure of order, the Chief Justice in 2 HIV. He is not concerned to reflect on his roles but on the delight of being part of an ensemble. The last paragraph begins:

The great Alan Howard once told me that on an opening night an actor produces enough adrenalin to kill an ordinary man.

Alan Howard 'great'? He played a great Jewish gynacaeologist in Cook, Thief, Wife, I admit. But, that aside, I'm glad I don't get much excitement, being an ordinary man.

Translation: what I would have said

2007-06-26T07:53:00.000+01:00

At our Full Council meeting, I was down to make a statement as a portfolio holder on the subject of ‘translations’. Unfortunately, a previous meeting over-ran and so I did not get chance to regale the chamber with my prose. In case there is anyone feeling deprived as a result, here is what I would have said:

I stand now to make a statement which I can confidently predict will not receive unanimous support around this chamber. But, all the same, this administration feels it is necessary to mark out where we stand. On 10^th June, the present Secretary of State for Communities had a Margaret Hodge moment. Ruth Kelly declared that the number of translations available from local authorities should be cut and, instead of providing translation, those needing them should be directed to English lessons.

We, on this side of the chamber, consider that not only hypocritical but also wrong in principle. Hypocritical because it is this government which has cut funding to ESOL service of English lessons. If Ms Kelly’s policy was to be followed, ESOL funding would need massively to be increased – a point recognised by the Commission on Integration – but there seems no appetite for practical support for English lessons from the government.

It is wrong in principle because, while we should be providing English lessons wherever possible, it should be obvious that that will not do away with the need for translation as well. I was recently talking to members of the committee of our excellent Asian Cultural Association and they pointed out a key issue: speaking a language, reading it and writing it are three different skills. There are first-generation immigrants who can speak English but that does not mean they are fluent in reading it. In that situation, translation still has its place. More widely, we should be facilitating not prescribing: we should be providing as many ways as possible to learn about our services, not telling people to learn English if they want to know about them.

This Council has a policy of translating on demand. The availability of translations is flagged up in our leaflets. We in this administration believe that is right. And as long as we are in administration it will remain the case, whatever Ms Kelly tries to dictate.

The end of the Greens?

2007-06-24T10:55:00.000+01:00

After their failure to make any impression in the elections, the Greens are debating whether they should dissolve themselves. In France.

Who's out of the Cabinet?

2007-06-24T10:13:00.000+01:00

After all the brouhaha over Mr Brown's attempts to create a government of all the talents (just some talent would be a bonus), it's surely time to turn to the key question: who is out as Gordon comes in? Which politicians are going to be clearing their pencils from their desk and bidding a final farwell to the ministry concierge? And who, it might be added, may even now be sitting by their phone, biting their fingernails away in expectation of that call which never comes?

Presumably Pope Benedict will lose his place as a photo on a ministerial desk as -- according to all sources -- his greatest fan and, indeed, Mr Blair's future co-religionist, Ms Ruth Kelly is shown the door. Few tears will be shed. Meanwhile, in the lower reaches of the government, junior ministers don't come more controversial than Lord Adonis, father of tuition fees (and, in the dim and distant past, an Oxford councillor -- for us). Some newspapers are predicting that he will stay around after Wednesday but that might come as news to him. At a function on Friday, Adonis was exuding all the insouciance of a man about to escape from the clutches of responsibility, ready to ride off into the sunset to meet his destiny -- writing a biography as weighty as its subject, Roy Jenkins.

What is equally interesting is who is not being tipped for office. From my Oxford perspective, there is one man who is notably absent from all reports -- a former Cabinet minister, a close ally of the next Prime Minister: Andrew Smith, MP for Oxford East. At the time of his appointment to the long table in No. 10, there were some cruel journalists who described him as the man who rose without trace. His only skilful act was his departure, resigning before he was pushed, to spend more time in his constituency in the run-up to the last election. And there he of course achieved the feat of becoming the MP with the amazingly shrinking majority. The limits of his influence on Downing Street were clear only a few months ago when he failed to ensure Oxford was on the list of possible unitary authorities. He was one of those who had been a contender. He was an insider who'd become an outsider -- and there, it seems, he will stay.

The definition of a local authority

2007-06-14T12:43:00.000+01:00

I am trying to finish a book but writing has taken on the life of a half-life: the further I get, the more elusive the end seems to be. Perhaps this is a fear of heights: the further I get, the deeper I want to go. In wanting to delve beneath my own text, I just dig myself into a hole.

The present distraction, the excuse I have this week for not letting go, is Michel de Certeau. I have described him in conservation as a Catholic riposte to Foucault – where the latter, who lost God and found sado-masochism, saw all in terms of repression by the order – Certeau, the Jesuit, discovered human resilience, ways of living that the order can not order or control.

But enough of that. I wished to tell you of Certeau’s definition of a local authority. Here is what he says: ‘a local authority is a crack in the system.’ And: ‘a local authority reduces places so that is impossible to breathe in them.’ He goes on: ‘it is a symptomatic tendency of functionalist totalitarianism that it seeks precisely to eliminate these local authorities.’

OK, so Certeau isn’t providing a disquisition on district councils. Nothing could be further from his mind. He’s got nothing to say on local government. It’s just an accident of phrasing (or of translation). But I still like the idea of a council as a crack in the system (he meant it positively) – and we know that it’s not just totalitarians who go down the route towards crushing local authorities as we know them.

What Certeau actually meant by ‘local authority’ was a ‘discourse’ of identity within and in some ways undermining the order of a city. In other words, a method for the little man to make space for himself within the overwhelming structure of the modern metropolis. I mention this because it has set me asking a question to which we should return another time: is ‘place-shaping’ illiberal?

What sort of Liberal are you? A simple test

2007-06-11T08:39:00.000+01:00

Committed as this blog is to encouraging the intellectual wanderlust of the discerning liberal, we present to you today a simple test. It comprises one question only and it's purpose is for you to consider how you would define yourself among the embarras de richesse which is the welter of liberal traditions.

We are what we inwardly digest; we are what read. So, imagine that on your enforced sojourn marooned on a desert island, you have been allowed the company of only one political tract. You would choose, naturally, a work which reflected your own political make-up, even though in the sweltering heat and arid landscape, there is no chance of constructing a liberal society. Which book would it be? The poll to the right lists the main possibilities -- click away.

If there are alternatives that you think should be included, do begin a write-in campaign. Or, if there are works there are worthy only to kindle fire, tell me which one was not even worthy of this desert-island jaunt. Results next week.

Things can only get worse

2007-06-10T21:42:00.000+01:00

So, the early signs are that Monsieur Sarkozy -- apologies, M. le President -- has swept the board. It's a remarkable achievement for the combative character who has turned from being a divisive, uncompromising candidate to the leader with a cross-party cabinet and with approval ratings which have left this orbit. How long can this last?

If you detect in that question a certain lust for Schadenfreude -- you'd be right. Whatever my learned colleague may say, Sarkozy is not one of us. When he talks of being liberal, the image he has in mind is Mrs T not Beveridge. He has the dubious honour of being able to claim personal responsibility for some of the unrest in Paris and elsewhere last year. And through his presidential campaign he did not budge from his rhetoric aimed at winning Le Pen votes. But for all my suspicion, I have to admit there is a buzz in the air around him.

There does seem to be among some usually left-leaning French people a sense that Sarkozy is the man for the moment and the moment spells change. They might not agree with their President on what shape the change should take, but that appears to be secondary for the moment. Give the man a chance. But could this honeymoon turn as frosty as the presidential marriage is said to be? There are danger signs for Sarko.

Having approval ratings around 70% in itself creates an obvious chance to stumble. But what is more striking is the abstention rate in the elections today: the turn-out was nearly British in its meagre percentage, at 61%. Is this because the Socialists, still smarting, stayed at home, leaving the field free for Sarkozy's UMP? That is surely part of the explanation. But it is probably not just that. Another likely element is that there are many who are still not sure about Sarkozy -- they expected his party to win, but they didn't want to give him a helping hand again. In other words, they might like Sarkozy, but they don't trust him. That should give the President pause to worry, but somehow I doubt it does.

Headington Matters -- it really does

2007-06-07T09:23:00.001+01:00

This short post is unashamedly, unabashedly, unrepentantly about my ward, the great community of Headington in north east Oxford. Actually, historically, Oxford is more of an add-on to Headington rather than vice versa, but we're not going to harp on about that.

The attentive among you will notice that there is a new list just started on the right hand side of this blog. It's for Headington issues and, in particular, for petitions and other useful information. Much of it will come (I say ashamedly, abashedly, but not really repentantly) from my ward colleague's website, where more information can be found.

The first petition up there is Save our Subway. The Headington underpass is under attack: as part of the 'improvements' to London Road, the intention is to block in the underpass to widen the road. It is supposed to help buses -- but this idea (as I said in the local press) would simply make pedestrians suffer. So, if you are local to Headington or if you have ever used the underpass with its colourful murals locals painted five years ago, go on, sign the petition, you know it makes sense.

One final thought on Headington: it stands to the city down the hill as Arezzo does to Florence. The Aretines, you will remember, were the fathers of Petrarch, Leonardo Bruni, Giorgio Vasari and other 'greats' of the Italian Renaissance -- in short, it was the genius-factory for the city which ruled it. Without Arezzo, Florence would have been much lesser -- and so would Oxford without Headington.

Great blogs I've never written

2007-06-06T07:57:00.000+01:00

I have to admit it: I’m an idle blogger. I wake up in the night with the text of a well-crafted posting half there in my mind. I have good intentions actually to sit and type it in the morning. But then there are e-mails to answer, there’s that report which has to be read before 9am or – heaven forfend – there’s actually some work to be done. And so, the posting is posted to the back of mind and becomes just one more which could have been a contender.

I can still remember some of them. There’s the one entitled ‘Is it RIP for the BBC?’ where I was going, for once, to agree with my ward colleague on a financial matter: he, you will remember, affects to imagine being an economic ‘liberal’ is compatible with being a true social liberal -- or is it that I affect to imagine the opposite? I can't quite recall. My humble submission on the larger issues of what it is to be a liberal was going to be the subject of further postings, in which I was to discourse on the nature of liberalism in the twenty-first century. And then there was the one that I actually began writing at 6:30 this morning asking ‘Where are the liberal Catholics?’ – a question to which many will think they have the answer but which was going to allow me to muse aloud on the conservative revanche to the feminist challenge to the liberal tradition of emphasising the private sphere, beyond the public gaze (got that?).

But they all remain in the capacious recycling bin that’s somewhere in my mind – and that gets emptied much less often than once a fortnight. But, somehow, I don’t imagine the blogosphere is lesser without them.

Cribbing no more

2007-06-01T17:43:00.000+01:00

Following on from my posting of yesterday, there seems to have been a crisis-summit at Tory HQ. No longer in their news section do they have the plagiarised article I mentioned. Which leaves them with nothing to say about the defections or the Witney Wonder's bold visit into enemy territory, that is, Oxford. What have they got to hide?

Two final thoughts. First, it's encouraging to know that my blog can appeal beyond the happy band of brothers and sisters who are true Liberal Democrats and is apparently monitored by the Tories. Second, I wonder whether the royalties cheque is winging its way even now from the Conservative party to the journalist they cribbed.

Cribbing is the sincerest form of flattery

2007-05-31T13:03:00.000+01:00

Whatever else you say about the Tories, you've got to give them this: they have a redoubtable ability to put a smile on our faces. I'm not thinking now about Cameron announcing he's the heir of Blair, just at the time when most of the nation are counting down the days until the PM finally shuffles off his super-mortal coil. What's amusing me is the Tories' apparent embarrassment about having drawn to their ample bosom two city councillors formerly stranded on the Independent bench.

What with the Witney Wonder himself taking the unusual step of setting foot into Oxford to find out what the two were like, you would have thought that they might have wanted to blow their trumpet. But they're obviously lost for words. And when, finally, something was posted on their website, it somehow didn't feel quite right. It was not only that the Tory party was here revealing that one of the councillors had left the Liberal Democrats because his then-colleagues had judged that he was not up to being on Oxford City Council's Executive Board. It was that all the words seemed somehow familiar -- and, indeed, they are identical to the words of the Oxford Mail originally reporting the defections.

Now, we knew the Conservatives were desperate but this takes it into a different league. What I wonder is whether Giles Sheldrick, the journalist who is been unwittingly writing the Tories' press release, is getting his royalties. Or will he demand that they remove his well-hewn prose from their website? It's hard to imagine that the Mail's Chief Reporter feels flattered by their act of piracy.

I was robbed

2007-05-24T09:10:00.001+01:00

It's rare enough that I write a blog that gains much attention. Then, even when I do, its popularity remains unacknowledged. Through a 'technical hitch', I don't make it to the Golden Dozen on LibDem Voice.

I don't know whether it makes it better or worse that the Dozen was, on this occasion, not compiled by ward colleague. Instead, it was drawn up instead by an Oxford councillor from a completely different ward. I'm not the suspicious type.

Tories in Oxford: remember, you read it here first

2007-05-18T08:29:00.000+01:00

So the story of the mass defections from Oxford's Independent Group to the Tories has broken. As attentive readers of this blog could have read about this back at the start of last month, this can hardly count as new news. Except for that fact that the predictions were for at least three Tory councillors -- but they've only mustered two.

Clearly, the silver-tongued smooching of the latest Camerooney failed to persuade those other councillors who were the objects of his attention. Amazingly, those other councillors decided that the idea of moving from a small group to an even smaller one lacked something in the enticement stakes.

It does leave the acrid scent of desperation hanging in the air. It's just a question of who is more desperate: Oxfordshire's Conservatives, who in the Witney Wonder's own backyard can't get anyone with a blue rosette near to winning an election in the county's capital. Or the formerly Independent-minded councillors, counting the days to the next election campaign and deciding that being in any party whatsoever is better than none.

It's a curious political journey for the individuals involved, one of whom has discussed joining at least two other parties before, while the other is a regular attendee at 'Save the NHS' marches. I suppose that will now be out and in will come support for charging for residents parking permits, anti-European rhetoric and backing for the Iraq war. We should wish them luck for their last few months on Oxford City Council.

Civil partnerships: why we are lucky

2007-05-14T22:37:00.000+01:00

Have I mentioned I was in Italy a couple of months ago? I might have alluded now and again to the fact that work forced me to visit a country I thoroughly enjoy. There is so much that I relish there – but, recently, there has been one issue that has made me thank the Lord that I am British.

Civil partnerships: the Labour party has a patchy record on such issues, understandably so for an organisation which does not see civil liberties as at its core. But, while they are still reprobates on matters like ID cards, we should at least give credit for the fact that, at last, civil partnerships have been legalised here.

Not so in Italy, where a bill called ‘Dico’ is the patata calda. Remember: many commentators have said that this bill legalising civil partnerships, rather than an American airbase near Verona or the number of troops in Afghanistan, is the real reason why some venerable senators brought down the first Prodi government. The second government has not yet dropped the bill but the pressure is on them. British experience would lead us to expect demonstrations in favour of such a bill – I bumped into one in Rome when I was there – but what we don’t expect are mass demonstrations against such a commonsensical, liberal measure. But that is what exactly happened this weekend, on ‘Family Day’ – not, you understand, a cross-generational celebration of Doris Day, but a mass protest, with an American title, in support of ‘family values’.

The Catholic church stayed away, but then they didn’t need to be there: the Vatican diktat had already gone out that any MP who called themselves a Catholic had to vote against the bill. Silvio Berlusconi, now the leader of the opposition, did turn up. He claimed it was because of a scurrilous cartoon (which goes something like: woman to man ‘oh no, there are going to be so many clerics on the march’, man to woman ‘what, would you prefer to leave them at home with the kids?’). The cartoonist said the Catholic church should give him 200 years plenary indulgence for encouraging Berlusconi to attend. Silvio was joined by a million others.

The intervention of religion so forcefully in public life, the inability to divide the ethical from political: in some ways, it seems, the Italians are more American than their Anglo-Saxon European partners. We can’t be complacent, we shouldn’t be proud – but how I wish my favourite nation would lighten up a little.

What I miss about not being a councillor

2007-05-13T10:22:00.000+01:00

It’s that time of year when, as the cheers subside and the hangover finally relents, hundreds of men and women across the country wake up to realise just what they have let themselves in for over the next four years. If you are a new councillor reading this, you might want to stop. You might prefer to continue to believe the claims you heard that it would not take up much of your time, hold on to the dream that it would take up, oh, only about five, at most ten, hours of your week. It can change the way you live, the way you work. I remember those carefree days when I was a mere ‘Mr’, not ‘Cllr’. And in the hitlist of things I miss from those days I would certainly include:

having evenings when you can decide to go to the cinema on a whim
not having to read the local newspapers every day (though, of course, our journalists are the most insightful, balanced and entertaining in the world)
being able to have dinner before 9:30 each evening
being able to write with a sense of irony
not being recognised by strangers as you go about your everyday life

The most bizarre occasion when I was recognised was a couple of years back during a summer walk in the Oxfordshire countryside. The two of us turned onto a path to see a woman running towards us, pursued by a herd of cows. ‘The cows are coming’, she not unreasonably noted but added, ‘they’re going to kill us.’ And then, she stopped, the panic subsided for a moment and she asked with curiosity in her voice: ‘are you David Rundle?’. Before I could answer, she noticed the cattle again and said ‘what are we going to do?’ which was patently a rhetorical question as she demonstrated her running-very-fast escape technique. I like to think that she realised from my gait that I was the author of nuanced studies on Renaissance intellectual history, but I suspect it was not my life as an academic that had brought me to her attention. None of us were killed by the marauding bovine menace, by the way.

LibDems lack ambition -- shock

2007-05-08T23:26:00.000+01:00

I love my party, I really do, but when I see a poll on an esteemed website, to which my ward colleague is a contributor, of such parochial pusillanimity, I weep...

I refer, of course, to the 'favourite federal conference venue' vote. Lugubrious settings from Blackpool to Torquay are in the running - but why should we, a European party, tie ourselves to such tired conventions and convention-centres? Why don't we storm the Parisian barricades, or roam in Rome? If we must avoid air travel, why, Paris is still on the map, or we could amuse ourselves in Bruges (no scent of Thatcher there)...

After all, I thought we were the party that can show them how to party!

Wiping Cameron's smile off his face

2007-05-08T22:59:00.000+01:00

So, we’re told the Tories are back on the map. Last Thursday was their good-news day, we hear. Well done to them – but should they really look so smug?

The Conservatives in the past have had this problem: premature concentration. They – and their voters – have focussed too early on areas where they do well, rather than working to spread support efficiently across the constituencies they want to win. Have they learnt to master their unfortunate condition? The evidence from one patch doesn’t bode so well for them.

The Tories in Oxfordshire could celebrate this past weekend because they got a whopping increase in councillors in parts of the county – except, it was concentrated in the seats where they are established kings. In the Vale of White Horse, most of which is in their LibDem-held target seat of Oxford West and Abingdon, they managed, against all expectations, not even to hold their own. They lost out hugely to the LibDems, leaving Abingdon without any Tories at district or parish level.

In other words, in Oxfordshire, the Witney Wonder is winning votes – but not where it matters. They’re piling up their votes in their heartlands, but sliding back elsewhere – and they are still without any councillor whatsoever in the county’s capital.

The strange case of Oxford and the Conservatives is one I’ve mentioned long ago. The rumours persist that at least one City Councillor wants to put a smile on a Tory face. Whether there are enough of is another matter: the Colossus of the County, Kaiser Keith, is too shrewd an operator to accept just one or two city councillors changing allegiance. After all, on his own Council, two may be company, but nothing less than three is a group. And nothing less than four would look respectable if the Tories wanted to claim they were making a real break-through. But finding four humans in Oxford – let alone that sub-species, councillors – who would stand up for Cameron’s right-wing agenda, well, if the ‘new’ Conservatives believe they can do that, frankly, they’re out of their newly-drawn tree.

Will Oxford get Tory Councillors by the back door?

2007-04-10T08:46:00.000+01:00

As anyone at all conversant with the politics of Oxford can tell you, this city is one of Britain’s many Tory-free zones. The Conservative party repeatedly poll fourth across Oxford. This leaves us with a County Council which is run by a party which has no representation at any level in the capital of the shire it claims to represent. But might that be about to change?

Of course, I’m not imagining that the Conservatives are going to storm to victory in the good clean fight of an election. We don’t have elections here this May. And recent by-elections haven’t shown any improvement in the Tories’ performance – quite the opposite: all the more effort they put in, the lower their vote goes. This is much to the chagrin of the Leader of the County, the councillor known as Kaiser Keith. He’s an intelligent, amiable but incorrigibly unreconstructed Tory: the sort of person who thinks that Jeremy Clarkson is a real man, and who imagines wearing a pound sign in his lapel will be some sort of talisman against progress.

Kaiser Keith is acutely aware of the perceived injustice of rural Conservatives lording it over a Tory-free city. And if he can’t change the electors, perhaps he’ll have more luck with those who’ve been elected. For there are rumours flying that there may be at least one city councillor willing to defect to Mr Cameron’s party.

Since last May, there has been one Independent councillor, a former LibDem. It is apparently an open secret that he has been in talks with Kaiser K. The rumours seem to be even more persistent than those of a few years ago which had it that the same councillor was about to defect to either Labour or the Greens. Those predictions came to nothing then and perhaps the same is the case now. After all, the Leader of the County might shrewdly have calculated that getting a lone councillor on the City is not much of a coup.

But, that one Independent is now a group: he has been joined by a councillor I genuinely like and respect. And, within weeks (and just before I left the country last month), the two Independents have been photographed giving the Leader and Deputy of the County a tour of part of the city-centre. Personally, I’m surprised that Keith needed the introduction and I wonder how long it will be before he asks to get to know the other 95% of the city. But, let’s not be churlish: it’s brave of him even to hint at such a political romance in public. The question now is: will this apparent flirtation actually be consummated? Will Oxford’s smallest political group rush to offer up the cherished cherry of their Independence? Or, considering the Tories’ poor reputation, will they not don the blue rosette until after the next elections that they have to fight?

Fears for Two Tiers -- Part II

2007-04-05T10:50:00.000+01:00

I said yesterday that Labour councillors were feeling sore. But their aches would seem to have nothing on those of Oxford East’s present MP, Andrew Smith.

This is the only way to explain his outburst in yesterday’s local rag. Under the banner ‘Unitary bid was wrong’, Mr Smith opines that Oxford should have put in a totally different bid from that which was submitted.

Hold on – this is the bid which had cross-party support in Oxford, was signed by the Leader of the Labour Group and was described as ‘excellent’ by at least one leading Labour councillor. It is also the bid which Mr Smith claimed to be promoting in the corridors of Whitehall.

There was no sign in the past months that Smith was out of step with his local Labour party, no hint that he would have advised the Council to have acted differently.

On the contrary, he was telling his comrades that his chats with his former Cabinet colleagues were winning the day and that he’d been assured Oxford would be on the shortlist. So, Mr Smith must now look at himself in the mirror and feel he’s got a face like an omlette.

The result is that he’s tying himself up in all sorts of verbal contortions. He’s now singing the praise of the ‘excellent’ County Council – I wonder if he’ll join the campaign launched in the same issue of the Oxford Mail by a long-term Labour County Councillor to get the Leader of the County a knighthood (Arise, Sir Kaiser K).

He’s also saying that the city should have gone it alone in its unitary bid, without talking to the other districts or having the vision to look beyond its own boundaries. What a recipe for constructive joint working and sound financing of improved services that would have proven! Probably best that you keep your thoughts to yourself, Andrew.

It seems to be a case of ‘blame anyone but me’. Andrew Smith isn’t doing himself any favours. It would be much better if he were man enough to shoulder responsibility and admit he’d failed. Indeed, if he had any good grace, he would apologise to the city that he’s let down, but I’m not holding my breath.

Fears for Two Tiers

2007-04-04T07:53:00.000+01:00

So, I’ve been away for a few weeks and return to find there are not many happy Labour faces round the Town Hall. They’ve been let down by their own government, again.

What was at stake? Some would say nothing other than the future of Oxford. The City Council had put in a bid for Oxford to become a unitary authority. The hope of breaking free of County Hall shimmered like a glimpse of the Promised Land. But, last week, the hope lost its gloss as Ms Kelly announced that we had not made the shortlist of contenders for unitary status.

Others have already had their say on the decision itself. I want to concentrate on its political fallout. For there are, indeed, good reasons for Labour to be glum.

The most obvious reason is one that we all can share: if the big chiefs of New Labour continue to be bent on wrecking the two tier system of local government, then further down the line might we end up with a unitary Oxfordshire County Council? Shudder at the thought: County Hall is so out of touch with the needs and desires of the county’s capital, their march on the city would be less welcome than the arrival of the Greeks at the gates of Troy.

But councillors of the New Labour persuasion aren’t worried just about that. The disappointment of the decision is more bitter for them because they were so convinced that their friends in high places would be able to win the day for our bid. They must feel let down not just by their own government but even by their own MP. Ex-cabinet minister Andrew Smith had, it is clear, offered to act the Fairy God-Mother, promised they could all go to the ball, waved his wand – and failed to work any magic. Looked at objectively, a failure of persuasive skills on Smith’s part is hardly revelation of a previously unnoticed character flaw, but Labour locally seemed to have unbending faith in him right up to the last minute.

But it wasn’t just idealism that led them to share our support for the bid. I hope they won’t mind me mentioning that they saw it as part of their political gameplan. They anticipate a general election in 2008 and hoped for all-out elections for the new unitary on the same day as the parliamentary vote. They have reached a conclusion which recent electoral history makes unavoidable: to achieve an outright majority in Oxford’s council demands all seats being up at one time. The political map of Oxford is too complex to hold out much hope of Labour being able to sweep the board when only half the seats on the council are contested. To jump from 18 to at least 25 councillors in one election of 24 seats would demand that all the other parties had a very bad day. On the other hand, if all seats were up at the same time, with the increased turn-out of a general election, then maybe, just maybe (Labour thought) they may be able to return to their unfettered majority of 2002.

So, if you pass a Labour councillor and see a tear in their eye, don’t be perplexed: Mr Smith’s failure and Ms Kelly’s decision have, on Labour’s calculations, condemned Oxford to a future of hung councils. It’s brought them down to earth with a bump as painful as the heaviest drunken slip on the stairs.

Speaking out about Speakout

2007-03-04T19:41:00.000Z

'It is time to devolve power to the local level, restoring the civic pride that once made the town and city halls of Britain the source of public loyalty and affection.'

Hear, hear. Though it might be quibbled that affective emotions were probably never in play with any level of English government. But an excellent sentiment, recognising as it does that the great untold story of twentieth-century British politics is the shift away from strong local government to overpowering central diktat.

My heart would usually leap to read that (an excitable organ, my heart). It would have especial reason to do so, considering the statement arrived among the items of post that land on my doorstep and encourage me to attend various local government conferences (at exorbitant prices) or rally to the barricades to fight some cause which is usually either already lost or fundamentally misunderstood.

But it comes from Speakout, a 'non-party political, people's movement.' The failure to punctuate as English requires is notable, if the least of this group's failings. I'm afraid that I was agin 'em from the moment I opened their envelope. The first sheet I read had pictures of the three party leaders -- at, it must be said, their least photogenic -- underneath a banner: 'a migrant a minute is entering Britain.'

They might have been better representing each party by, say, Austin Mitchell, Michael Howard and Lembit Opik. That might have made their point even better. Migrants, you see, to Speakout, are apparently a Bad Thing. They say 'our elected MPs have handed control of our borders to the European Union, allowing unlimited migration into Britain.'

So, what's their alternative? In effect, let's have a poll to send the Poles back, let's leave the Hungarians hungry. And, while we're at it, who likes ice cream and pizza anyway? Out with those olive-oiled Mediterraneans and keep Britain for the British. Whoever they are. Speakout are the sort of people who would have complained about Golders Green going to the doghouse a century ago.

Speakout wants to know what 'every elected UK politician' thinks about having a referendum on immigration, the EU and probably the Radio Four medley. I'm all in favour of referendums: as it is, we live in a democracy which is not just indirect but also incomplete. So anything to improve citizens' engagement with decision-making. (And, no that doesn't mean inviting 0.000001% of my electorate into my front parlour).

But this is not an organisation keen to improve democracy in a non-partisan way. It is as 'political' as a party (as their failed punctuation reveals), and it is funded by ex-Tory millionaires like Paul Sykes, who bemoan the leftward swing of the Conservatives, even if it is not discernible to anyone else. So, if they want to know my view, here it is: let's devolve power to our cities, where their ethnic mix and their multicultural nature is their strength not their weakness. Let's celebrate what immigration brings to our communities. Let's put up a sign: all newcomers welcome. After all, their qualities might come to outweigh the unBritish intolerance fluanted by some who are 'proud' to call themselves British.

I stand accused

2007-02-26T22:40:00.000Z

I'm under attack. Or, at least, I would be if they hadn't fluffed their lines. What my opposite number in the Labour group, Ed Turner -- a hard-working councillor, by the way, and an asset to the Town Hall -- intended to say in Council today was something like: see that man sitting there ouzing insouciance when we can make him tremble with the revelation that tergiversation would most aptly be his nom-de-guerre.

Perhaps I haven't quite caught Ed's tone, but you get what he meant. I stand accused of changing my mind. What is more, they say they have the evidence to prove it, brandishing a copy of a Focus leaflet from last spring.

Let's pause for a moment to reflect: what benighted soul was set on duty going through the back-catalogue of Stephen Tall's website to unearth this gem? Have they outsourced it to some god-forsaken corner of the country where there is nothing to do in the evenings except to surf virtually, presumably in the hope of finding soft porn and having to be satisfied with Headington residents' surveys instead? And do they really think that if we post something on-line, we don't want people ever to see it?

That aside, I should also say that, in principle, I'm in favour of changing my mind. It's good gymnastics for the intellect; it's evidence of being at least slightly more alive than brain-dead; it's something we should all, everyone of us, try now and again. The problem for Labour is that, in this case, no about- turn, no volte-face has occurred.

The detail, it will not surprise the more avid reader(s), relates to recycling. In the leaflet, I am quoted as saying:
We do not believe wheelie bins will be suitable in all parts of the city –
especially in areas like New Headington with a lot of terraced
housing opening out straight onto the street. Every household
should have a choice between a wheelie bin and sacks.
According to my accusers, those sentences can not accord with the policy the LibDem Council is now implementing. To which I respond: I stand by what I said and I stand by what we're doing. It's only someone who really hasn't been listening -- or only listens to their own voice -- who could imagine there's any conflict.

As I have written recently, the policy we have is to encourage as many people as possible to take a wheelie bin as the safest and best receptacle for waste but, at the same time, the Council is being flexible. We know that there are some houses where it might be difficult -- like the terraces facing straight onto the street that the leaflet mentions. Some residents living in those houses have actually chosen to take a bin to sit out the back; others have elected to take sacks. There is an element of choice -- something which was lacking when Labour first proposed the new scheme and when this leaflet appeared.

It must be said that local Labour's godfather across the water has insisted that they changed their mind from their early policy of imposition. If so, that's all to the good -- there's very little from what they're saying and what we're doing. The only difference is that I, for one, never envisaged the 'aesthetics' of a bin being a reasonable basis on which to want to refuse to join the recycling revolution. That's the banner under which Labour are now fighting. The defence of sensitive aesthetes is fast becoming the workers' party's clarion call, Labour's only USP on this issue.

In the end, Labour must be desperate if they dig out old Focuses and try to point up a contradiction when there is none. I suppose at least they are showing an aptitude at some sort of recycling. Let's hope this mastery of recycling proves a transferable skill and they actually start helping the real thing. Then they might actually prove that their support for the scheme is not just fine words belied by their actions -- and I could gladly change my mind about them.

Is this the way to oppose recycling?

2007-02-25T21:38:00.000Z

Oxford is a battleground. There’s a war on waste but there’s also a war about the war. While recycling sounds like a cause akin to loving Mandela and wanting world peace – a progressive’s no-brainer – it has become in this city a cause for the barricades. Yes, in Oxford, which prides itself on its intellectual and liberal credentials, even here there’s a backlash against raising the city’s appallingly low rate of recycling by the tried-and-tested method of wheelie bins and alternate weekly collections. For anybody who’s interested in how a political dog-fight can threaten to derail even the most uncontentious of causes, it’s a salutary tale.

A couple of things need to be made clear at the outset. First, there has long been a significant majority in this city for the introduction of recycling. It’s been advocated for years by both LibDems and Greens and, last municipal year, Labour came on board. But – and this is the second point – there are a few Labour councillors who have become champions for the claim that they are in favour of ‘choice’ instead of ‘forcing’ people to recycle.

Some background is necessary. It is simply not the case that Oxford’s recycling scheme forces everyone to have a wheelie bin: if a house can’t cope with a bin, then the council’s staff will arrange for the inhabitants to have waste collected in sacks; if a resident can’t cope with moving their bin, then fortnightly assistance will be arranged. It is a flexible policy, more so than in many cities. But that’s not enough for some councillors. A recent Council motion, proposed by a Labour councillor, asked the administration not to ‘force’ people to have a wheelie bin. The Greens presented a helpful amendment outlining what is present policy: that if there are ‘access, storage or safety concerns’ at a property, then alternatives to a wheelie bin are available. As the LibDems supported this phrasing, it seemed as if there might be a consensus. But the dealbreaker came from the proposer of the motion: he would only accept the amendment if it also envisaged residents rejecting a bin on ‘aesthetic’ grounds. It’s on this that the debate about ‘choice’ revolves: whether you can stand in the way of recycling if you can’t stand the colour green.

The mantra of ‘choice’, so beloved of New Labour and fresh-faced Tory policy wonks, is a smokescreen: waft it aside and what you find is a threat to recycling itself. I am not saying that’s the intention of the Labour councillors, but there’s no doubt that would be the impact. The system works, of course, on the change of habits which comes with alternate weekly collections, encouraging all of us to reconsider how we deal with different elements of our waste. In turn, alternate weekly collections only work if residual waste can be safely stored and that is possible in wheelie bins: the more sacks you have, the more you have a danger of a public health risk – and, as we already know, Oxford is like any other city in sharing its space with a population of rats. As we are running a flexible policy, the percentage of sacks is already high. If you added to that a wrecker’s charter, allowing anyone to reject on a whim a wheelie bin, then you would undermine the practability of the system. The ‘aesthetes’ would consider landfill taxes and pollution preferable to a green bin in their own garden.

As I said, I’m not convinced this is what those clamouring for fewer wheelie bins actually want, if they stopped to think about it. And this is where it gets interesting, for the politicians are not in control of the issue, instead the momentum has taken hold of them. There are two councillors who are pushing this cause. They are ward colleagues and are doing so because their patch includes streets where there do seem to have been more difficulties than elsewhere. Some of us would think the answer is not a change of policy but everyone – including local councillors – working together to alleviate problems and to reassure residents, rather than stoke their concerns. Of those two, one has been heard to say it is a pity to have introduced recycling now when it could have waited a couple of years. But, while neither is the most ardent advocate of the environment, the stance of both of them seems to me to be formed by assumptions, however mistaken, about what is best for their small patch.

What’s made this larger than a ward issue is that the Labour leadership have jumped on it as if were political gold-dust. They have their reasons to do so: it trumpets their New Labour credentials with the catchword ‘choice’, at the same time painting the LibDems against type as they would describe us as usually preaching individual freedom at the expense (they would say) of collective responsibility. It also might not be a coincidence that the tempo has quickened in the days following the budget session where Labour felt that had lost out in the negotiations. (They are wrong on that, as I’ve said before, but that’s by the bye).

And then there’s the matter of the Greens. On this I differ from my learned friend, the other councillor for Headington. I hear that elsewhere, in Reading, the Greens have decided to oppose alternate weekly collections, but I don’t sense the same inclination here in Oxford. If anything, they find themselves in a quandary, in principle in favour of the scheme, but worried about its impact in what passes for their heartland, where there are many students and terraced houses. It’s an understandable dilemma, but my money would be on principle winning out this time.

To return to Labour: what fascinates me is what a gamble their stance is. Promoted by a couple of backbenchers and adopted as a group line, it has a real disadvantage for them. Labour’s environmental credentials have never been strong but this is liable to weaken them further. Already the press are painting their position as a route to madness and lower recycling. The longer they allow the issue to run – and they show no desire to end it – the more likely it is that the public will rumble their rhetoric and write them off as anti-recycling. There are few votes in that, let alone any good sense. If that’s the battle they want to have, we’re up for it. But I’d much prefer it didn’t have to be a battle. I, for one, hope saner counsel prevails amongst their ranks.

Bringing out the best and worst in people

2007-02-21T22:57:00.000Z

Hello, silence, my old friend. It's been some time since I've dropped in on my own blog. I must say I'm glad to see that more accomplished bloggers than myself are feeling drained of inspiration at this time of year. I wonder whether that's despite or because it's been an eventful time in Oxford politics -- we have what can only loosely be called the delights of budget-setting.

Those of youwho are aficionados of council meetings will need no telling that setting the budget provides the biggest bun-fight of them all. It's long, it's febrile and, by God, it's depressing. This year's meeting was no exception in length -- it started at four, teatime, and finished at quarter to midnight, after the restaurants are closed (I am no more grumpy than when I am starved. And sober). And it had it's own form of drama, with adjournments being called, political groups rushing in and out of the chamber huddling into their cabals. But, at the same time, there were elements of this year's process which were, for once, actually positive.

The budget which was finally set was certainly a compromise -- each of the three political groups on the council got something, no-one got everything. What was impressive was that a large part of the budget was agreed by tripartite discussions in the days before the meeting and on the day itself. It was actually proof that we could all be mature and work constructively with each other.

But, as if the parties felt we shouldn't let anybody know that we can be constructive behind closed doors, the last part of the budget debate really did sink into the mudbath, with metaphorically brown-caked figures rising to lob insults in one direction or another at top volume. We can all do it -- perhaps none of us can resist the allure of the kindergarten -- but it struck me on this occasion more than ever that it does us little credit. Especially when the figures actually at stake were a minute part of the overall budget; when there was no audience to watch us preening ourselves, and when, in the end, there was probably little difference across the chamber on the principles supposedly at issue.

I would hope that, after ten days to reflect on this, all parties would feel that they had actually achieved something in the process and that the final budget set was better for not being the work of a single party. But, there again, the budget has proved only an interlude in the battle over recycling, on which my colleague, Stephen Tall, has written recently. Now, if you want depressing, that's the debate to follow. Come to think of it, it deserves a posting of its own here. Perhaps I have re-found the urge to blog.

Rats and Recycling

2007-01-31T08:09:00.000Z

Those of you who visit this blog from outside Oxford may well have recycling schemes including the alternate weekly collections that go with them. In our city, we have been behind the times. The recycling revolution is only now beginning. A third of the city is on the new scheme and already the recycling rate has jumped from 19% to 27%. Many people in my own ward have welcomed the new scheme but, quite understandably, some have had real worries about what feels like a leap into the unknown. And there is one fear that journalists have thought particularly newsworthy and which is worth sharing with you. It’s about a visceral phobia, about what happens in Room 101: it’s all about rats.

One lady in our city has recently had the very unpleasant experience of having rats in her house. I know how disturbing this can be because other Oxford residents I know had a similar experience a few years ago. For the lady in question, the arrival of rats coincided with the new recycling scheme. She herself has said that she doesn’t imagine that the scheme has created a rat problem in the city; her point, as I remember her saying, is that as the city is known to have rats, she argues the recycling scheme should not have been introduced.

The first thing to do is to put our hands up and admit: we in Oxford are no different from any other urban area – everywhere is living with rats. Not just rats but other vermin like foxes as well. They are here and have been here, in large numbers, for years. The situation hasn’t been helped in the past by the previous Council’s plans to save money by cutting pest control, but the main reasons for the national increase seem to lie elsewhere. The National Pest Technicians Association cites six reasons, top of the list being the privatised water companies failure to clear vermin from the sewers. As, in my experience, Thames Water sometimes doesn’t know where their drains are or what state they’re in, that sadly comes as no surprise.

The issue is not whether there are rats but whether their presence should stop us humans introducing a recycling scheme. And this is where I have a different take on matters. I want it both ways: I want us both to deal with the vermin and to get on with recycling. We know how important it is that we improve our recycling rate. It’s not just about the government fining all of us if we don’t decrease the amount we send to landfill. Much more positively, it’s about promoting more sustainable living, about all of us thinking about our habits and our lifestyles. It would be a counsel of despair to say ‘there are rats, so we can’t improve recycling.’ Not just that: it wouldn’t send the rats packing. Even if we had remained with the bad old system of waste collection, with bin-bags everywhere rather than wheelie bins where we can, there would still be people having to call out Pest Control officers to deal with vermin. Indeed, the figures suggest that there were even more incidents of vermin when the old scheme was in place. As the rats are here, we must deal with them. But that’s no reason to call a halt to other good deeds we have to do. Too often in local government, scarse resources mean we have to make impossible choices between competing good causes. In this case, I think we can be ambitious: we can – and must – deal with both issues side by side.

If any of the group of opponents of Oxford’s recycling revolution are reading this, I realise what I say will leave them with many more questions to ask. And, yes, there are many more issues about coping with recycling that deserve discussion. Bear with me and I’ll try to come to those in future postings. For those of you from outside Oxford, I wanted to share with you a tale that may well resonate with your own experience of introducing recycling.

There's only one Stephen Tall

2007-01-13T11:17:00.000Z

It must a humbling experience, really, for my ward colleague, Stephen Tall. He is well-known to all you denizens of Bloggoshire (a village community if ever there was one). He has even acheived a certain fame, with his appearances on various television channels, as well as being a guest star on a internet chat show filmed up some back-alley in London. What must have chuffed him most, though, was appearing on the back page of LibDem News last autumn, with a photo showing how terribly pleased he was to be standing next to the MP and indomitable blogger, Lynne Featherstone. And now he's done it again! He's there on the back page of the latest issue of LibDem News -- except ...

It would be nice if they'd got his name right. The editor, perhaps imagining that a forename resonant of Christianity's protomartyr was not politically correct, has rechristened him 'John Tall.' But it's him, all right, including a link to his blog. Perhaps LibDem News noted his middle initial was J and surmised he was an honest John. But, no, this blog can exclusively reveal, Stephen's middle name is Joseph. Of course, he's no ordinary Joe, even if he's apparently not as memorable to print journalists as he is in the frebrile blogosphere.

And what was the link that the News highlighted? His end-of-year poll on LibDems with a certain primeval animal attraction, an irresistible sexual charisma. Not only do they get his name wrong, but they choose out of all his intelligent disquistions on the minutiae of liberal values, that post. As I say, humbling.

The defect in defecting

2007-01-01T22:29:00.000Z

So, while I was chumping away on the mince pies, a frisson has tango'ed through Tory spines, I hear. It might not have made any Christmas headlines but, apparently, in Smith Square (or is it 18, Doughty Street?) they can hardly keep their excitement under seemly wraps. Whisper it, if you dare: not one, not two but three former LibDems have, as they imagine it, swum with the tide and been marooned with the Cameroons.

Bless them. All political hacks, let's face it, muster some semblance of delight at a defection to their ranks. Every week there's some sort of Brownian motion of little political molecules moving in all directions to create something akin to equilibrium. They even happen here in Oxford -- not to the Tories, of course, since garlic and a sharpened stake has paid put to them. We LibDems have on occasion been the benificiaries. More recently, our council group saw two defections -- one to become a lone independent (which is rather like owning up to being billy-no-mates) and one to Labour. Their departures could provide the script for an episode of Twin Pique.

If we were honest, though, we'd admit that most defections make very little difference. Few people outside the oxygen-starved blogosphere take notice and they usually say more about an individual's changing outlook on life than any real shift between the parties.

So, certain bloggers of other persuasions, as reported by a worthy wordsmith, have crowed that the act of the Christmas trio of not-so-wise men is come-uppance for the LibDems, the truly nasty party, and heralds a revival of two-party politics. Their typing fingers clearly work quicker than their gray cells: on the one hand, they want the LibDems to be recognised as just as bad as the rest of the political world and, on the other, they want to deny the LibDems are part of that world as, they insist, there is only room for two to compare the size of their polls.

Some people can only think in binary. Anything more than a two-party state confuses them inordinately. And, it's true, the road to mature democracy with multiple parties is taking decades -- look how long it took for tactical voting to be recognised as an essential tool for voters in our cock-eyed electoral system. For those who can count only from 0 to 1, they must feel that they have found kindred spirits in their new converts. And here's the defect in their rhetoric: if politics were, by nature, two-party, defections into Labour or the Tories would be nothing more than the usual run of affairs. In a bipolar world, the only remarkable event would be the decision, week on week, for members of either of those parties to make the opposite decision, to move on and find their natural home in the Liberal Democrats.

I can't stop, however, without some comment on this idea of 'two parties.' If Britain was to be served by the two centre-right cohorts of New Labour and their imitators in the Witney wonder's Tories, God pray for democracy. In the LibDems, we pride ourselves on not being either 'right' not 'left' but there now is surely an urgency in trying to keep alive some remnants of the post-war consensus around the Welfare State which the 'big two' are bent on burying. That's a large topic for another time. I realise I might not win universal support for what I say within my own party: we hear there may be a few in our midst who imagine being economic liberal can come before being social liberal, and that they might fail to recognise that social liberalism puts brakes on economic liberalism. But, by the sounds of it, that minority has just got smaller. A good start to a good year.

New Year's Resolutions are so passe'

2007-01-01T13:11:00.000Z

So I won't make any, except to say, in 2007, I'll only blog when I actually have something to say.

Which gives this posting the piquancy of suitably post-modern irony.

Happy New Year!

Brazen self-publicist in the LibDems shock

2006-12-17T22:03:00.000Z

And it's not an MP I'm talking about. No, I see that my ward colleague, Stephen Tall, has entered into the festive spirit by sticking up his own poll on his blog. I'm not sure quite when he latched on to the idea of pulchritudinous LibDems -- while reading the Executive papers for Oxford City Council, perhaps? -- but it's an intriguing send-off to a year with more than its fair share of salacious headlines proving we are the party for partying. And I'm not yet clear what psephological insight he is attempting to gain from it, unless it is counting how many times his adoring readers complain he is too modest to list himself. But it sure enough ensures that he ends 2006 on a high of blog-hits: is he trying for some sort of po-mo Christmas no. 1?

Personally, I can't bring myself to vote. After all, it's not by STV. But you've got the link just in case you haven't seen it already (and how likely is that?).

I'm cheap at half the price

2006-12-06T09:06:00.000Z

Or, this could be titled: the time the journo missed a trick. Our local roving political commentator, Giles Sheldrick, can whiff a good story a mile off and, with the national news about MPs' expenses, he must have thought it was a smart move to dig out last year's councillor allowances for the City and County. It was headline news in the local paper.

My own allowance will be higher this municipal year than last, as I'm now Deputy Leader and as the independent remuneration panel decided allowances were too low. Good value or not? I'll leave that to the people of Headington to decide.

One thing I will say is that I use my allowance to cover travel expenses -- but not so some others. And here's what Giles missed: allowance, being set independently, are not really under the control of councillors. But there are other columns listed in the official records -- 'carers' and 'travel / subsistence.' That is more in the remit of individual councillors to decide how much they claim -- and there's a huge difference between the nought pounds some have claimed and the £10,000 (yes, all those zeros should be there) at the other end of the scale. Now, there's a story.

Is Keith secretly in favour of a unitary Oxford?

2006-11-30T23:00:00.000Z

For those beyond the confines of this city and its hinterland, Keith is Oxfordshire's Tory county councillor. Cllr Mitchell is single-handedly running County Hall (with a little help from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs). But he doesn't, as I've explained before, get any help from the city, where 'Conservative' is a term rarely seen beyond the caption to an exhibit in the Natural History Museum, in the display cabinet just beyond the dodo.

Many see a logic to having a unitary council for Oxford. But up to now, Keith has shook his gory locks and suggested the gravediggers would be burying him before that happened. So, who is this appearing on the comments section of the Oxford Times website, where there are complaints about the fact that the Tory county council wants an above-inflation increase in the unfair council tax? A certain 'Keith' berates the people of Oxford for not electing Tory councillors (apparently that would help keep down our council tax -- go figure). And Keith also boldly announces his earnest hope that 'as soon as Oxford City Council becomes a unitary authority the better'. Apparently, we in the city are bloodsuckers, leeches on the wholesome countryside dwellers (forcing them to come to hospitals in the city and to gain employment in the county's capital; we're nasty like that). Might it be that Keith Mitchell has had a belated conversion to the cause of unitaries? As a fan of the Iron Mrs, one would assume that Mr Mitchell is not for turning. But, with a high-tax Tory Council, profligate with our money, perhaps we should revise all preconceptions. As they say, will the true Tory Keith stand up.

Berlusconi, once again

2006-11-30T22:45:00.000Z

He doesn't really deserve all the attention he's getting. But at least I'm not alone in giving Sig. Berlusconi's little health difficulties space on the web. My favourite Italian newspaper*, Il Corriere, has collected references to his collapse from international websites. I particularly like the last of the five that they present -- great headline.

*My favourite, except I feel I should apologise if your eyes are diverted to other parts of the screen when checking this link. They do seem to feel high-class journalism and a fascination with a certain sort of calendar are entirely compatible. And they would find our distaste yet another symptom of Anglo-Saxon puritanical hypocrisy.

And now he's back from the dead

2006-11-27T13:07:00.000Z

After the crisis (or excitement) of yesterday, we are reassured that Silvio Berlusconi is well again. He tells us so himself - and we know to believe him.

The mayor of Catania goes further and says that Berlusconi is immortal. He should hope so, as the mayor, who was the first to the stage to catch the collapsing Cavaliere, was once Berlusconi's personal doctor. Nepotism is a word which we inherit from the Latin language.

It took Jesus Christ three days to rise again. Does Berlusconi see that as a record to beat?

Is this the end of Berlusconi?

2006-11-26T14:06:00.000Z

The news has just broken in the last half hour of Berlusconi collapsing while giving a speech to his youth movement. The video could not be more dramatic, as he slumps on the rostrum and his bodyguards try to lift him away shouting 'Let go' as he clutches to the podium as if his life depended on it.

Romano Prodi has wished the man they call the cavaliere a speedy recovery, which is perhaps a graciousness beyond the call of duty in the usual mud-garden of Italian politics. Presumably, Berlusconi will recover shortly -- his spokesman promises he'll be back by 2nd December (a long convalescence if it is just, as is claimed, a case of being overcome by heat and emotion).

But the immediate thought is that this is a politician who has always had the whiff of Dorian Gray about him. There's no silver hair on Silvio but he is 70 and older than his rival, Prodi, though he looks a decade younger. He has built his reputation on being the anti-politician's politician, the man who stood outside the murky cabal of aged, male Christian Democrats who dominated Italian politics before the Nineties and whose henchmen have their role to play in the engrossing film Romanzo Criminale (go see, not least for its implicit criticism of Berlusconi replacing a one-party regime with, effectively, a no-party state). The cavaliere's permatan may stay, but his aura of youthfulness has collapsed. No doubt, he will survive -- but survive politically?

Cemeteries open all hours?

2006-11-19T17:06:00.000Z

Congratulations to my colleague, Altaf Khan, for his campaign to get Oxford City Council to recognise the needs of the city's diverse communities in the burial service it provides. It is an issue that was raised a year ago, in the bad old days -- now there'll be a change of policy to allow the possibility of weekend burials. And it doesn't matter whether the change is necessary in law: the point is that it's the right thing to do, anyway.

But, having said all that, some people's comments in reaction are, to be blunt, dead depressing.

LibDem News: grammar no object?

2006-11-14T23:44:00.000Z

That's as in: grammar no object to LibDem News? Grammar may indeed feel aggrieved as that usually estimable organ slipped up last week.

The debate over Trident may become heated and, in the passion of it, the participants may stumble over their words, but when Prof. Paul Reynolds of the University of Westminster writes that 'it is anything but unclear how a vote would go in Parliament', it is anything but clear that that is what he meant to say. Is he so convinced of the outcome?

And can we take it that LibDem News concur with whatever his view is, considering they made that sentence the pull-down quote for the article? In good liberal circles, anything goes -- but must that extend to a grasp of the English language? I would suggest establishing a wing of the party devoted to pedantry, if it were not for the fact that in these times that might be a lynchable activity. After all, it sounds dangerously like a group of pediatricians.

And, farewell, Donald Rumsfeld

2006-11-12T22:49:00.000Z

There's a pleasing headline. One that even that prescient paper, LibDem News, failed to predict.

But as we toast the demise of the fixer for Nixon and for Reagan and for Bush (the less stupid and the more stupid), let's pay respects to his most famous quote -- you know, the one everyone remembers (alongside others).

It was a moment worthy of Carbaret, presenting the Iraqi War as a vaudeville turn: you wanna know what I don't know? Everything! It echoes the headline gag of David Niven's Bring on the Empty Horses.

But -- as we continue to celebrate the departure of an architect of mayhem, a fit man to shake Saddam's hand -- let's show a little generosity: Rumsfeld may have taken onanistic obfuscation to new heights but, really, what he meant rings true. When he talked of unknown unknowns, he was simply making a plea to recognise the enormity of our own ignorance. And quite right he was: we tend, as humans, to stake out our territory of knowledge rather than to appreciate the hinterland of what we don't know. Never more so, that may be said, than in the case of the most recent misguided war. How right Mr Rumsfeld was to pay testimony to the scale of our failure to know. Just a pity he didn't let the unknowns help him calibrate his ignorance.

So farewell then, David Sainsbury

2006-11-11T18:25:00.000Z

OK, so that sounds rather too apocalyptic -- it's only a resignation, after all. You'll still be able to see him around, probably stacking the shelves at the local store (well, he has said he's not going to take the top job again).

It's some time since I've seen him -- eighteen years, to be precise. It was in his SDP days, of course, when he came to speak at a meeting I'd arranged. Taking him to dinner was slightly bizarre: we undergraduates could stand him a meal at Pizza Express, and that let him regale us with tales of the chain's owner, his friend nice Mr Boizot.

He was pleasant enough then, and so I'm sure he has remained. But that, I thought, was that: he's nowhere near being a politician to set the pulse racing and get the juices oozing. That his resignation is such high-profile news is more a reflection of the paucity of other stories rather than a tribute to his intrinsic charisma. But something he's said has made me rethink my opinion.

In assessing his own achievements, he's highlighted the part he's played in the war on 'animal rights' extremists -- getting a change in the law and a police unit set up to help deal with this problem. And, yes, sitting here in Oxford, where those extremists want to stop scientific research and the laboratory needed for it, that certainly is an achievement. There's little good I would credit the Labour government with having done, but this would be in the short list. So, thank you, Mr Sainsbury. You deserved that pizza.

So, hands up who likes democracy

2006-11-07T23:28:00.000Z

The Germans, they say, don’t like it being up to them. At least, in a survey in the papers this weekend, it was announced that a majority of Germans have given up on democracy.

Actually, what the 51% surveyed said was that they were disillusioned with German democracy as it stood – which could mean a whole range of things. But let’s not spoil a good headline with facts; that’s not part of the game.

And, anyway, don’t they have a point? Germany has a more representative electoral system than Britain enjoys most of the time, but ended up with a grand coalition after last year’s elections. That hardly smacks of the strong leadership many crave for, apparently.

In Britain, we like democracy. We wouldn’t do without it. Just along as others make the decisions and we can blame them for it. In other words, we have the name without the substance. We have an electoral procedure, without the fundamental principle behind it – citizenship.

As liberals, we fight for people’s right to choose, but we also know that if they choose not to involve themselves in their community, their society and themselves will be the poorer.

In the past, when I met a socialist (hard nowadays, outside our party, that is), I have found this is a basic distinction: for them, the economic structure is fundamental, for us, the constitutional set-up. We now may be only party which even admits to the limitations of the free market, but that sense of the political, in its widest sense, remains crucial to our outlook. It’s a stance which is not shy to declare that Britain has yet to achieve a true democracy.

But for those who are proud that we’re not like Germany, there’s this thought left: will they be the only western European nation with a grand coalition, come our next general election? After all, if our antiquated system produced a hung parliament in 2008 or 2009, whenever Gordon the Gorgon chooses, who would make natural allies? A wise man’s bet would be on the two right-wing parties: that way, Gorg would stay in power, with Mr Cameron his home secretary. What fun that would be, if only you could watch from afar and not be a citizen of that poor, lost nation. Viva la democracia!

Would you vote Democrat?

2006-11-05T23:20:00.000Z

While most people are tucking into their toffee-apples this Guy Fawkes Night, there's only a few who would care to think of the American mid-term elections. But, I suspect, you're among them.

I also suspect that you're inclined to want to see a change of control in the Senate (would the President even notice?). Quite so, but what we from the outside surely hope for is a real change of policy. And would that happen with someone like Harold Ford Jr? OK, so he has to sound rightwing
-- but is this really a standard-bearer for the downtrodden?

Democracy is too often a judgement that will be better than the other one. And in the case of Tennessee, that's so true. But it's hardly reassuring.

A solution to the problems in Iraq?

2006-11-05T19:48:00.000Z

The 'Today' programme provided a gem of juxtaposition this week. They had a report on introducing on-the-spot fines to cut assaults on staff in Accident & Emergency at a Manchester hospital. The next item was about how American soldiers in Iraq were every day dealing with the intractable threat of assaults.

I can't have been the only one to be struck by the possibilities conjured up by this incidental linking. As wars, after all, are an opportunity for the arms industry to test-drive their latest hardware (not for them the ethical alternative of animal experimentation), why don't we do the same in our bid at crime reduction. Why don't we, in the spirit of partnership, share our latest assault-busting initiative with our American colleagues? How about it: on-the-spot fines for those uncouth enough to attempt to blow up military personnel stuck in Iraq. That would show them we're not going to take no nonsense. Just pity the poor blighter who has to collect the money.

The alternative, of course, is to import justice from the war-zone to here. And in New Labour Britain -- where John Reid makes David Blunkett look a liberal, who, in turn, made Jack Straw look a liberal, who, in turn, made Michael Howard (Howard??) look a liberal -- it's probably best not to joke. ASBOs which do more than cut the goolies off? Just you wait.

Kerry in disfavour

2006-11-01T19:36:00.000Z

It's like something out of Wag the Dog. Or perhaps (a better film) Bob Roberts. A political party, on the ropes in the elections, has to come up with something awe-inspiring, not to say jaw-dropping, to effect an eleventh-hour miracle. A foreign war, perhaps, or an assassination attempt. In the States, where reality seems increasingly to shadow the silver screen, the latest rendition of this cinematic theme lacks both the hyperbole and the engaging humour of the previous renditions.

Senator John Kerry has, it is true, made one of the cardinal errors in modern politics: he told a joke. It wasn't a bad one and his meaning was absolutely clear but the danger with getting a laugh is that you too often find the last laugh is on you. The irony is that the reaction has in some ways proved his point: it would take a moron not to realise that his purpose was to mock the President -- and, sure enough, George W. Bush didn't get the joke, proved himself a moron, and may end up with more dimpled chads in the bag. There ain't never no votes in being clever.
That reminds me, by the way, of the old story from the late David Penhaligon. Constituents of his asked why there was not an intelligence test required for parliamentary candidates. He replied that the House of Commons is supposed to represent the whole country, that's why there are so many bloody fools in it.

And a fool with bloody hands the lame-duck American President may be. But his manufactured anger may be a Bob Roberts moment. What does not surprise me in this is the wilful misunderstanding the Republicans have perpetrated. On one level, you've got to admire their mastery of the dark arts. But what is more amazing -- and hugely disappointing -- is how the world's press reports the incident. The BBC this evening have repeatedly described it Kerry's 'gaffe'. Perhaps the story deserves air-time, but does it really need the British Broadcasting Corporation to be the American Republicans' mouthpiece?

Tax the Rich

2006-10-29T17:56:00.000Z

A good slogan, isn’t it? Trips of the tongue. It’s about time we made more of it. Here’s why.

This past week has seen the LibDems hit the headlines for our green tax policies. Well done, Richmond, for getting a positive press for their plans for variable residents parking permits (here in Oxford charges for parking outside your home – of the flat-rate variety – are an imposition of the Tory County Council). And over this weekend, many a kagooled activist up and down the country will have been spotted persuading an unwary public to join our green tax switch. A success it was too, by all accounts.

The decision to run the campaign now, days ahead of the publication of the aptly-named Stern report, was a master-stroke of timing. And I’m sure we’re all proud to be in a party which continues to put the environmental agenda at the heart of our identity. It’s the right thing to do – but it’s not enough.

Media coverage, like the planet itself, is hotting up, but in that feeding-frenzy, we’re not going to be the main beneficiaries. The dour and the flighty alike are rushing to paint themselves green – and we might wonder what the country’s done to deserve such a ghoulish Halloween spectacle. That aside, there’s no doubt Messrs Brown and Cameron both want to be seen to be keen to be green. The Tories have called off their mythic exploration for clear blue water, but now all three major parties seem to be ready to splash around the same, suitably stagnant, green water. And when that happens, I doubt we’re going to be written up as the pyranhas in the pond. It’s more likely that we’ll get drowned out in the stampede to watch the bigger fish.

It seems to be an ineluctable law of politics that we can’t be the electoral winners in a tripartite consensus. We might scream and shout that our policies are a deeper shade of verdant than the other lots’ – and that they are, sure enough. But that alone won’t make us distinctive: the party that’s greener than the other two while, at the same time, not disappearing into loonydom is hardly a no-brainer of a USP.

What we already have and what continues to mark us out from the other two parties is our commitment to progressive taxation. Just as we’re proud of our green identity, we should boast that we remain the only big party willing to be honest about how much good services cost. We’re the opposite to the archetypal cynic: we know the cost of everything, but we equally know their value.

This is not one more plea to return to an upper rate of 50% income tax – that debate’s done and dusted, and there’s no need to fight yesterday’s battles. After all, the detail’s there in the Tax Commission proposals – those with really high incomes will be paying their fair share. But we must make that explicable to everyone so that it’s clear that, as Ming puts it, we’re a left of centre party. Tax as a means of redistribution is a mark of our fight for social justice.

Without green tax policies, they’re wouldn’t be a world to inhabit. Without redistributive tax policies, they’re wouldn’t be a society worth inhabiting. So let’s get both messages across in the coming months and years.

Milton's paradise where there's no such thing as society

2006-10-26T20:12:00.000+01:00

Being new to this game – actually, I see that I’m not yet twenty days old in blogworld – I’m not yet clear about the rules. What counts as success? I wonder whether it’s about how many comments get posted. If so, after the initial kind words, my postings have bombed. Though, in defence, I could say look at the quality not the quantity. That’s particularly the case for the intelligent responses to my explanation.

Tristan took exception to my side-swipe at Milton Friedman, and then he had heavy-weight backing from Oxford's own liberal socialist. They really do deserve a response. What’s at issue is whether the Nobel Prize winner for Economics (1977) can be considered a liberal. He certainly would self-identity as one of us liberals, but many have taken that claim as rhetorical positioning. And after all, if we accepted what people say about themselves, we’d have accepted Vladimir Zhirinovsky as a true Liberal Democrat. But let’s give the suggestion a bit more thought.

You could construct a radical revisionist reading of Friedman which would allow us to adopt him into the liberal family. In Capitalism and Freedom, he claimed to be wanting to reduce government interference in the economy, but he did see an important role for the state. It was the government which must regulate businesses and that could be a very large job in Milton’s paradise. For, as Friedman notoriously asserted the social responsibility of a company is to maximise profits. If that's all businesses have to think about, the state is going to have a time-consuming task on its hands keeping the corporations on the straight and narrow.

But Friedman's claim is one that more enlightened business-leaders would now reject. After all, a company’s reputation affects its profits, and that reputation isn’t defined only by the hard skills of selling goods and taking over rivals. It’s also about what the experts call either social capital or goodwill. Down the road from Oxford, at Henley Management College – the oldest business school in Britain – there’s a research centre devoted to the issue.

What, in a nutshell, happens is that, in arguing for a balance between small government and free individuals, Friedman forgets about society. He doesn’t reject the concept entirely, but it’s an impoverished version of society where the only meaning of ‘value’ is the price you see on the packet.

It’s ideas like Friedman’s which are behind that most infamous political statement of the Eighties: Thatcher’s ‘there is no such thing as society.’ To be fair to her (and I’m not sure why we should considering the damage she did to Britain), the context of what she said suggests she was a victim of bad phrasing. The surviving devotees over at the Thatcher Foundation have generously allowed you to judge for yourself. What she was actually attacking was reliance on state intervention, but the force of her phrase seemed to sum up the soullessness of her brand of Conservatism: what was lacking – as in Friedman’s writings – is an understanding of the social context in which each individual exists and constructs their personality.

So, no, I can’t be persuaded to imagine Friedman is an honest liberal, no more than I would grace Margaret Thatcher with that accolade.

Finland, we salute you

2006-10-24T23:07:00.000+01:00

Finland's hitting the headlines (and you don't hear that often said). The BBC have just caught up with our European colleagues' penchant for the prisca lingua -- and aren't quite sure what to make of the Finnish rendition of Elvis. They also provide a link to the Latin newsletter of the Finnish EU presidency (very kind, thank you) but seem to have come to the conclusion that the Finns are somehow crackpots.

First of all, it must be said that their newsletter is hardly Ciceronian in its style -- it reflects instead the Vatican fashion for neologistic Latin. At the same time, their country's love affair with the language of consuls and emperors is, despite what the BBC seems to think, hardly the fad of a new millennium: they have been running a weekly news-bulletin in Latin since 1989. Good for them, if it wakes us out of our comfortable assumption that everyone else will speak English, if only they would try.

And, anyway, Britain itself isn't above a bit of dabbling in the old Latin lingo: it's from here that children's heroes, from Winnie Ille Pu to Henricus Potter, via Alicia in Terra Mirabili and Urus nomine Paddington, have been exported around the world. But, it must be admitted, we can't be held responsible for one of my bookmarked pages: the on-line encyclopaedia, Vicipaedia.

You wouldn't have expected me to let this opportunity pass to mention some hard-core Latin websites. The internet is wonderfully egalitarian in allowing even the languages of the dead to live on -- how liberal. All I need to add is: legite feliciter, eruditissimi lectores!

The Journos and that nice Mr Putin

2006-10-22T09:24:00.000+01:00

A bugbear of mine which I expect will get a frequent airing on this blog is how the British press tends to be not just insular but parochial in its coverage. Squashed between the home news and the sports section, there are usually all-too-few pages about what’s happening in other parts of Europe, and even less room for events further afield. The story with which I’m about to regale you gives one small example of the contrast between British newspapers and their continental counterparts. But it also deserves a higher profile than it seems to be received for other reasons.

It’s about what could be called Mr Putin’s ‘Yo Blair’ moment: the occasion, on Wednesday, when the Russian President continued talking to his guest, Israeli PM Ehud Olmert, at the end of the press conference without realising the mike was still live. Nice Mr Putin rounded off the diplomatic occasion by mentioning his Israeli equal, even nicer Mr Katsav, who is in a little spot of bother over accusations of sexual assault. Putin’s reported words were along the lines of: ‘Wow, what a man. He raped ten women. We’re all jealous of him here.’ His 'joke' was apparently met with raucous laughter all round.

The story became headline news in the Italian newspaper, Il Corriere della Sera, on Friday and it was on their website that I first saw it. To be honest, I found what I read incredible and wanted to find confirmation but when I did a quick search that morning, I could find no mention in English. Checking again, I find that it was reported in The International Herald Tribune on Thursday. In Britain, however, it only made The Guardian website in the middle of Friday afternoon, and the BBC then picked it up that night. Since then, there have been mentions of it in some of the print broadsheets, but I am surprised it hasn’t received more coverage.

As the news couldn't but give space to the EU summit on Friday where Mr Putin urged the leaders to import more state-owned Russian oil, you would have thought this would have provided an interesting sidelight. You would have also imagined that the resonances of the original ‘Yo Blair’ overheard conversation would have got the journos thinking. And there is a parallel: as that recording confirmed what we feared about George W’s head-bangingly simplistic take on Middle Eastern politics, so Mr Putin’s throwaway remark – and the reaction – is very revealing. That the President should show a sensitivity to political correctness that makes the late Alan Clark look like a dainty flower of a liberal is perhaps in itself not a surprise. But Putin was expressing a machismo which found a ready audience among those around him.

We already knew that the chief ot the world’s one superpower can think only with his balls. Now, it's confirmed that the world’s largest country is run by a man who thinks you judge a man by his balls. And those around them seem to want to play in the same sandpit. With all that testosterone pumping round at international summits, what chance progress?

Isn’t this something worth a discussion in the British press? Or have the journos here, noting what happens to recalcitrant journalists in Moscow, decided it’s safer to be parochial?

Where have all the Tories gone?

2006-10-21T11:47:00.000+01:00

In my favourite weekend paper, The Financial Times, the death of the Tory party is announced. Well, not a complete demise – paralysis is confined to certain limbs, in particular the North-East of England, you will be relieved / disappointed / utterly uninterested to learn. This is a media-take on a new report from those clever girls and boys at Unlock Democracy, which is Charter 88 for the Noughties.

As always, there are questions over methodology – the report may actually paint a rosier picture than is the case, as it is necessarily biased to the responses received: what about all those constituency parties that couldn’t even find someone to hold the pen? And I’m also interested to know why our own party was more active than the others in responding – a sign of our vitality or that LibDems are more naturally inclined politely to comply with requests for form-filling?

But what struck me is that, in this new political map of Britain, Oxford would seem to have ended up in the North-East. We live in a county which has Tory MPs for whom the adjectives 'high' and 'flying' could have been invented - not to forget Boris Johnson and Tony Baldry. But within that county exists a rosebud (for all you Citizen Kane fans) of a Tory-free haven. The Witney wonder (as you’ll remember, it’s wonder as in wonder what he stands for) really has a credibility problem in his own backyard. He may claim to be the Tory Blair – I think that title’s already taken, Dave – claiming to provide a Conservative party for all but here in his own county, his success is confined to the countryside.

There have been no Tory councillors representing Oxford wards or divisions for several years. The last time there was a Conservative, there was just one and she fled to Wales before her time was done. What’s more, there appears to be very little Tory party organisation in this city. Whenever there’s a by-election, they have to parachute in their activists, including the Leader of the County Council – and still they come third or fourth. Even the address of Oxford East's Conservative Party is at Watlington, some ten miles from the constituency.

The Leader of the County, known to his friends as Kaiser Keith, and incidentally my parents’ local councillor (he should be proud), would dearly like to make a break-through in the city. Quite understandably, considering the Conservative mandate to run the County has this credibility problem, being seen as the imposition of the shire on an unwilling urban centre. But, it seems, their party just can’t create the organisation here. And, in truth, they are not helping themselves by making foolish decisions that just increase Tory unpopularity in Oxford.

Now, those who pass for campaigning gurus among them may decide that they can do without the university town. After all, they’re gunning to win back control of the Vale of White Horse Council in 2007, which covers Abingdon and the surrounding area and they realise they have a fight on their hands as the LibDem administration has been successful and popular. Shrewd tactics might convince them to accept the status quo and leave Oxford a Tory-free zone where the occasional appearance of Mr Cameron is met with wry amusement. But that would be poor strategy for them: how can they convince the country that they can govern when even in Oxfordshire they’ve forgotten what it’s like to represent a city?

Unlock Democracy has provided interesting data, organised by regions of the country. But much more worrying for the Conservative party than losing their presence in any one particular geographical area is becoming aliens in one type of settlement – the cities that drive our economy and society. Personally, I would rather like to take on a serious Tory challenge here. But I’m not holding my breath.

What a way to save the planet

2006-10-21T09:34:00.000+01:00

Woke up this morning to the 8:30 thud of the post on the doormat. It's all addressed to Cllr D G Rundle (the other blokes, Mr D and Dr David, they're much less popular). But, look, the Cllr's cheating -- there are three identical envelopes here. Open them up and they all begin:
18 October 2006
Dear sir / madam
Please find enclosed copies of Thames Valley Energy Centre's poster promoting the availability of energy saving information packs...

So, an organisation where the morning's mantra will be 'think globally, act locally' very thoughtfully have used three envelopes and nine pieces of paper when one copy in one envelope would do. At least when Oxford's recycling revolution arrives at my doorstep -- under Labour, the city waited years for it, under the LibDems it's happening in a matter of months -- I will then be able to recycle all of it. But if to reuse is better than to recycle, better still not to use it in the first place. You'd have imagined the well-meaning guys at this not-for-profit organisation would have thought of that. But they are based in Mr Cameron's sleepy town of Witney -- something fitting there.

They go on to say 'it would be greatly appreciated if you could display these in prominent positions, maybe at your local surgery where members of the public can view them.' I don't own a surgery -- I'm not that sort of doctor -- and, frankly, councillors sitting in a cold hall on a Saturday morning waiting for the one habitué of these occasions is far from the most efficient way to keep in touch with local people. I will ask for the posters to be put up on the new notice boards around the ward, but the best way I can help publicise what I'm sure is good work, despite their slight accident with an over-eager mailing list, is to mention it somewhere that people might just read, or even make a link to their website. Oh look, it's already done. I hope they're grateful.