General Ramblings

MPs don’t support strikes because we represent all the people: strikers and those hit by strikes. But I think that public servants are right to strike. It’s the only way to defeat this government’s remorseless attack on the public service. Pay freeze. Pension cuts. 700,000 job losses. How else are we to stop it?

General Ramblings

A clever autumn statement. Some good ideas. A nice dollop for Humberside. Thank you.

But all the rest is too little too late. Done in 2010 when it should have been it would be producing jobs now. Done now there’ll be nothing until late 2012 if that.

The slide into recession will continue and with it the continued failure of all Osborne’s organised plan. More bargaining. More unemployment. More cuts. It’s still going to be an unhappy new year.

General Ramblings

29^th November: 8-00am – Is there an detail of this afternoon’s Autumn Financial Statement that hasn’t been leaked in advance? Millions of free nursery places, huge infrastructure investment, no extra fuel cuts, a Boris Island airport for London, Humber Bridge toll charges halved, loans for businesses guaranteed. No need to attend and look at Osborne smirking as he delivers it.

                It’s all too little too late of course. He’s wasted eighteen months. It means the deficit won’t be slashed and the spending cuts to pay for it will push the deflationary slide to recession II well before this Plan B.5 kicks in. It’s economically useless, politically smart. Like George himself.

                He’ll get away with it. The total nation will be so relieved that their pain is being relieved they’ll not realise it was pointless in the first place.

What a monster.

General Ramblings

Housing policy is now on a three class basis like the railways of old.

First Class: “Executive” houses on greenfield sites.

Second Class: Social housing on estates for the poor and needy in transit camps.

Third Class:  Poor tenants facing exploitation, rising rents, insecurity in unregulated private rented squalor.

The second class is to be cut down by sales of stock at knock down prices (not high enough to build new houses) to herd more people into Rachman Residences in the third section.

You can’t afford to be poor in Shappsville.

General Ramblings

HOUSE DIARY

AUSTIN MITCHELL MP

Welcome to the dog days.  On a pit bull scale.  Osborne economics spread gloom and misery across the land.  Government stumbles from mess to mess.  Ministerial cream curdles.  In Parliament they’ve got nothing much for us to do so MPs develop their Perry Mason skills or throw bullet points written by smart researchers at each other.  Even David Cameron’s public relations skills can`t portray this as a new dawn.  So he blames it all on Europe.

Thursday 10 November                                

Speak at the Otago University Alumni dinner organised by Paul Beresford, who’s promised to pay me with a free tooth whitening and two fillings (one for each tooth I`ve got left).  Most if the audience are doctors and dentists.  They could have afforded Tony Blair.  Instead they got me on the cheap.

Beresford is a brilliant dinner organiser.  The Moss Bros benefit is suddenly invaded by a naked troop of Maori dancers doing terrifying hakas.  How on earth did they get through security with their spears, knives and adzes?  A few aged students remember being taught by me but probably only because I acquired an enormously sexy reputation by announcing in my 1959 inaugural lecture that “the romantics saw the world as an orgasm”.  Most of the young New Zealanders didn’t know what this was.  But the medical students, who’d come to inspect the new Pom, went into convulsive sniggers.  In my speech I reminisce about the good old days as the audience falls asleep or shouts “Bring back the Maoris”.

Friday 11 November                      

Start of a very military weekend.  Leave London early to drive up but arrive late at our great signing ceremony for the Community Compact attended by lots of military top brass and everyone who`s no-one in North East Lincolnshire.  As the Army shrinks we`re doing more for redundant Defence personnel.

Then to St James’s School to present a plaque commemorating two former students who were Battle of Britain pilots. Of the few who saved the nation in 1940 six came from Grimsby.  Only 100 of them are still alive.  One is at the ceremony.   He flew Hurricanes and tells me that they were better than Spitfires (which I`d always thought the best) because the Hurricane was canvas covered so German bullets went straight through.

Evening   

To a dinner celebrating the 100th birthday of the Grimsby Fish Merchants` Association.  It`s managed, despite the Common Fisheries Policy and all the blows fishing has suffered, to keep the fish market going.  Five courses of excellent fish and Edward Leigh as guest speaker.

Saturday 12 November                                

Surgery is quiet but my grandson, Sykes, arrives from Sheffield University bringing a huge bag of dirty washing. Students are so spoiled these days.   I used to post mine home to my mother.  Says he hasn`t been able to afford to eat for days.  So I buy two fish and chip dinners for him.

Evening                                               

A very successful curry evening with Angela Smith (Grimsby born and bred) as guest speaker.  Her talk is on  “Labour: white, male and over fifty”.  In Grimsby it should be “white male and over seventy”.  But Labour’s defeat has brought in a large number of enthusiastic young people.  They`re very solicitous and keep asking me if they can help me down, or up, the stairs, into the toilet, etc. The evening is a great success and actually makes more money than our fish and chip suppers. That`s internationalism for you.  Sykes eats on remorselessly.

Sunday 13 November                                   

Remembrance Sunday with service at the church then the long march (which I just about manage) to the cenotaph.  Remembrance Sunday is so important for MPs that John Stonehouse, having practiced his fake suicide in Florida, came back for his cenotaph day and then went back to Florida to disappear.   

It`s a very moving occasion.  Grimsby is a town which serves and always does its duty.  Attendance goes up and the wreaths multiply as the Defence budget falls.  This year I lay a wreath myself.  Last year I didn`t and a drunken dig bawled me out at the ceremony.

Monday 14 November                                 

The Public Accounts Committee is always the central part of the two days a week it meets.   Margaret Hodge has made it more aggressive than it used to be and we function as a pack of attack dogs with Margaret in the lead.  Today’s victims are DEFRA and the Rural Payments Agency, one of government’s longer running disasters.  DEFRA adopted the most complicated system of valuations in Europe (which must have been on the advice of the department because even Labour Ministers weren’t as brilliant as that).  As a result we`ve now lost half a billion in Euro-fines, with £82 million still to come, which is why they’re not maintaining the canals, and wasted £300 million or so on bum computer systems.  It costs four times as much to process a claim in England as it does in Scotland, but as usual no one is to blame and officials continue to get their bonuses.  Manage to get a couple of questions in.  Which is better than last week when I`d just got back from the dentist and my new false teeth fell out as I questioned Gus O`Donnell.

Tuesday 15 November                                 

Starts with a BBC breakfast.  Top staff for Yorkshire and Lincolnshire tell us about their proposed cuts.  It`s crazy.  We’re as much a nation as Scotland or Wales and should get the same treatment.  Local radio and regional telly are basic to both the BBC and MPs.  So the more general tactic is clearly to paint the picture as black as possible to fire us up to fight the cuts in the way the bureaucratic executives should be doing themselves.   

In the torrent of denunciation of artistes` fees and the Director General’s salary, no-one broaches the real issue: that these cuts are forced on the BBC because the licence fee is too mean and they’re having to finance the World Service because the Foreign Office won`t.  Yet the World Service does more to build Britain’s reputation and influence than the entire pin-striped staff of that hapless department.

Then to meet Lord Haskins who’s taking over the chairmanship of the Humber LEP to bring the two Banks together in their long standing relationship of total loathing.  Tell him that Bridge tolls must be taken off because they’re a £30 a week tax on any company which draws employees from the other Bank and his job is to get a fair deal for the South Bank.  

Then the great fishing debate.  We`ve won this from the back bench business committee, only to find that our precious three hours is squeezed at both ends, like Marilyn Monroe, by a statement at the start and the clamour to debate fuel prices at the end.  We get cut to two and a half hours and my Ciceronian disquisition has to be reduced to a five minute gabble

Then our housing rally, starting outside and moving to room 15.  A serious housing crisis is building up with great shortages, particularly in the South East, a new Rachmanism in the private sector and big rent increases and housing benefit cuts for the impoverished.

Yet instead of going in for the Big Build Britain needs to take us out of recession, Government has opted for the Big Blame.  They`re scrapping security of tenure and turning council and social housing into transit camps for the poor, rather like the old workhouses.  There folk will be put on short term tenancies and shuttled out as soon as their lot improves.  Waiting lists are to be reduced by pushing anyone who’s not in desperate need off, though even those in need can`t be housed because the Government proposes to sell off stock more cheaply then even Mrs Thatcher managed.

This is a building disaster which won`t reach the ears of our Government of millionaires setting the shattered building industry free to build millionaire mansions for chaps like them on greenfield sites rather than the public housing for rent we so desperately need.

Then to Reform Club for 200^th anniversary of the birth of John Bright and the launch of Bill Cash’s book on his distinguished ancestor.  The Reform Club ain`t what it used to be.  I ask at the door “I`m looking for John Bright.  Used to be a member here”.  The attendant replies “Are you feeling well, sir?  Are you sure you’re at the right place?”  The Cash and Carry party is upstairs and very distinguished, apart from me, the only Labour presence.  Bright has been appropriated by the Tories because he split from Gladstone over Home Rule but Bill Cash, another great trouble-maker, can claim some lineage.  Michael Gove “a mere placeman” praises Cash but doesn`t promise to put his book on the national curriculum.

Wednesday 16 November                          

Linda arrives back from her sister’s birthday in the USA. IPSA doesn’t recognise or reward spouses but I can`t function without mine, so she finds me run out of money, clean shirts, underpants, food in the fridge,and even the will to live.  Re-energised, I go to a Civitas discussion on exchange rates led by John Mills.  Britain’s failure is because the exchange rate has been too high for too long at the behest of the City, and Europe is in such a mess because Italy, Greece and Spain can`t devalue to lower their cost base as against Germany. So the rest now suffers because Europe is making the unworkable work.  It`s nonsense to say our interest lies in holding the euro together.  The quicker it falls apart the better for us.  And for them.

This is going to be an awful winter.  George Osborne will produce a couple of dead rabbits out of the hat in his Autumn financial statement.  Yet nothing will stop the downward slide into gloom, high unemployment and more debt.  Have a merry Christmas.  It won`t be a happy New Year.

General Ramblings

The last stand of the Euro Twerps is that we must help save the Euro. Balls as Ed would say.

It can only hold together by a prolonged Europe wide deflation but if it falls apart Italy, Spain, Greece etc can get back to growth by devaluations. Germany’s exchange rate will go up making them less competitive and our trade will pick up.

The Euro can only work if Germany is prepared to finance a massive redistribution – even bigger than that which integrated East Germany – from North to South.

They won’t. So the weaker economies must help themselves or impose Euro misery on their electors.

I have seen the future. And the Euro doesn’t work.

General Ramblings

Thursday 10^th November: Spoke at Otago Students Reunion dinner brilliantly organised by Paul Beresford. Some diners so old they even remembered me – unfortunately they remembered my jokes too. Since most were doctors and dentists they could probably have afforded Tony Blair. Linda has gone to Los Angeles for her sister’s birthday. She swears Janet is paying. I doubt it. Can’t fend for myself.

Friday 11^th November: Left at 6.30am to drive to Grimsby for what proved to be a military weekend. As the army shrinks, defence celebrations multiply. Today it’s signing the Community Compact (a good idea since they can’t put the Compact into law as the Tories promised) then presenting a plaque at St. James commemorating two former students who were Battle of Britain pilots. One is still alive, 92 and living in Westward Ho. He tells me I’m wrong to think the Spitfire was the best plane. He flew Hurricanes which were only slightly slower but canvas covered so the bullets went straight through.

Evening – Dinner in the new University Centre to celebrate the FMA’s centenary. Five fish courses, a speech from Edward Leigh on the Public Accounts Committee and not one dirty joke. Except only two things smell of fish and one is fish.

Saturday 12^th November: Surgery quiet. Sykes comes from Sheffield (no washing).

Evening – To Spice of Life by Angela Smith. A good social occasion.

Sunday 13^th November: Remembrance Sunday. Every local MP throughout the land will be at their local Cenotaph. They get us to church half an hour early. Service is followed by the march to the Cenotaph which I just about manage. More wreaths thus ever-increasing in inverse ratio as the defence forces shrink.

But it’s a moving occasion. Grimsby Serves. Always loyal. Always sure.

Sykes goes home with tooth ache. I drive back to London and arrive too weary to work. Too broke to eat. Linda phones from Los Angeles with instructions on how to get money out of holes in the wall.

General Ramblings

By trying to make the unworkable work the EU is screwing up the world economy. A nation state can aid and support regions that are in competition. The Euro states can’t do that. If a nation is uncompetitive it can lower its cost by devaluation. Euro states can’t do that.

The club med states are screwed by both. They face years of heavy deflation if they stay in but they are not allowed to come out.

The only way out is to have a Northern Euro and a Mediterranean Demi Euro. But they can’t decide on that, or anything else, so we’re all screwed!

General Ramblings

Tuesday 8^th November: 8.30 – To Guys Hospital. Guy himself has fawked off but my INR is 2.9 whatevers per gallon. Tube is like cattle transport at this time of day. Show the President of the Californian assembly round the Palace warning him it’s wonderful to look at but useless to work in. It’s a third rate gentlemen’s club with no gentlemen.

Then meet N.Virginia Development Team to find out how they do it. No government grants. No money given to firms. But improve education, communities and quality of life. But they have the huge magnet of Washington. It’s tougher on isolated one industry towns. His advice to us is “play to your strengths” (i.e. food) and work with the Universities.

House Mag. Meeting – No news, the Government has nothing for us to except argue about Europe and wait for Plan B. House Mag. can’t afford a calendar this year.

Rest of day is one line whip. So I can work at home. Everything’s on hold until the Autumn Financial Statement in three weeks time. Will they unveil Plan B? If it doesn’t this is going to be a bitter hard winter wind down. Bring back Brown.

General Ramblings

Thursday 3^rd November: Dentist at 8.30 to lose all my lovely top teeth, they have been with me for 70 years. Reduced to talking out of the side of my mouth as if I was a Lib Dem.

12.30 – Party in Lords to celebrate Philip Norton’s quarter century as Prof. He was actually first appointed to Hull in 1977, the same year as I was elected. Now he’s Professor the Lord Norton of Louth, but I’m only a milk monitor. Then North. Which wastes another day.

Friday 4^th November: Blessed relief. A clear day’s work. Until Sykes arrives from Sheffield and a mysterious woman Linda has invited. It appears she knows everyone. Except me.

Saturday 5^th November: Freeman Street Market and Fish dock for photos. Two blokes at The Pea Bung “That’s Austin Mitchell. He used to be on Calendar”. Second bloke “What’s he been doing since?” I’ve often told that as a joke about Richard Whiteley. Now it’s true of me.

Evening – Diwali in the town hall – Not as well attended as last year but brilliant dances and food. Even if it came from Manchester.

Sunday 6^th November: Communion in the Minster and a Barbara Pym scene in which our curate, Dave explains the difference between transubstantiation (RC) and trans –something like association, (C of E) to me and a group of other old ladies. I still don’t understand. Rest of day wasted by the drive to London.

Monday 7^th November: Work on mail and housing in morning. Public Accounts Committee Inglese (HMRC lawyer – no relation to Julio) has to be put on oath to stop him prevaricating. Dave Hartnett is contrite about losing £8 million of interest from Goldman Sachs (after another bigger sum from Vodaphone). It’s a crazy system SMEs are hounded to death over unpaid tax but the big boys who’re fiddling their profits through tax havens take Dave out for dinner and he goes along to any shake downs like a marriage guidance counsellor and lets them off millions. It’s called “relationships” HMRCs top brass have to cultivate a good relationship with the really big fiddlers who can pay for tax avoidance advice and for using tax havens. On the other hand smaller fry have tough love: cough or die. That was the deal under Labour it will be worse under the Tories.

Missed three statements in the House including Theresa May’s confession “I haven’t a clue”.

6.00 – PLP. Philip Gould obituary by Mandy “He came from nowhere in 1985”. Just like Mandy. Then Andy Burnham on fighting the NHS bill. Which is still a mess. The first bill to be implemented before it’s even passed. A constitutional innovation which means they can do without Parliament. So far the government has broken most of its promises in 18 months and got away it.

9.50 –Last vote.

General Ramblings

Tuesday 1^st November: Breakfast meeting of media group. Why isn’t government providing universal broadband as it did with TV and radio?

Richard Kwatoski. He’s interviewed a sample of MPs every six months since 1997. ‘Do I still like being an MP?’ Well it’s better than just being unhappy.

6.00pm - Philip Norton Lecture (this is Lord Norton week – something every day). Evidently the 1911 clash wouldn’t have occurred if we’d had a nominated second chamber.

7.00pm – Aneurin Bevan Lecture for which Ed Balls arrives late. Bevan was a brilliant speaker – slight hesitation caused by his stutter had you in suspense. Ball’s lecture is a factual recitation non of the excitement of the man. Or the unpredictability.

General Ramblings

ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE EURO CRISIS

A spectre is haunting Europe. It`s the spectre of democracy. Holding the euro together requires Greeks, Italians, Portuguese and Spaniards to suffer years of deflation, job and spending cuts and economic misery. Electorates should be consulted about that but can`t be because it`s essential to keep a rotten system going. Our government, and the Brussels propaganda machine won`t tell you the truth. I can.

General Ramblings

Wed 26^th October (continued): 2.00pm – NUT lobby on teacher’s pensions. They’ve got a strong case but as in all the pension negotiations, government is refusing to budge. Presumably to push them into a strike.

3.00 – Public Accounts. Work and Pensions don’t seem to think that lending special needs funds to local authorities without ring fencing it will reduce what’s available to the poor in hard pressed councils. It will. Don’t be poor in the North. Defence say they’re getting on with selling their estates. But slowly. Not enough incentive on services to get rid.

Treasury don’t want to produce a “sustainable” fund of pensions. Presumably because a Labour fund will be higher than a Tory one.

5.15 – Leave for “In Praise of Social Democracy Forum”. It’s alive and living in the Lords but pretty old – honestly, Kinnock, Lipsey, me and other generations. Kinnock speaks wonderfully but it all ends up with Europe and the economy. But Helen Goodman is very good on women as the new face for socialism. The recession should have shifted everything to the left as the Depression did. But we’ve lost faith in ourselves.

7.00 – To Private Eye’s 50^th anniversary party in the Guildhall of all places. I got the first issues in Dunedin in 1961, Linda must have chucked them out. The Party is even older than socialism and far more self congratulatory. Richard Ingram “oh you’re still in Parliament?” Brian Sedgman still surviving, Richard Shepherd full of good stories. Lots of good jokes and they’re still fighting on Old Etonian PM who’s ruining the country!

Thursday 27^th October: Linda’s caught my cold and can hardly speak. I’m coughing and spluttering. My cold makes me gloomy. There’s the answer to our problems. Socialists shouldn’t have colds.

Friday 28^th October: Labour Party report on conference, not me, our delegate went to a much more interesting conference than the one I attended but oddly enough both in Liverpool. His report produced a better discussion on policy than any I heard at conference where all the fringe meetings were sponsored so no one said anything.

Saturday 29^nd October: Very odd surgery. Cases either impossible or insane. Sykes and Susan arrive with another huge pile of washing. Is he doing it on commission for the rest of his halls of residence?

  Sunday 30^th October: Drive down to London dropping Sykes off in Sheffield which is en faite (or as near as they get to that in Sheffield). Journey takes six hours. Linda’s class of 1960 reunion has been a triumph.

Monday 31^st October: Doctor for more antibiotics. I’m still coughing like a 50 a day smoker.

Public Accounts. We’re about to launch a huge drive on smart meters to report gas and electricity consumption directly. By 2019 every home will have one – and pay for it. No other country – that would do this without ensuring that the meters were made in Britain. Ours will be imported.

5.00pm – Blanchflower talks to the PLP Treasury committee. V. Gloomy. No growth. No recovery from a fall as great as 1929. A million 18-24 year olds out of work, ¼ million of them for over a year. They’ll be scarred for life. His solutions – abolish NIC for them to price young people back into the market and subsidise jobs. But “living standards are going to fall”.

Balls at PLP not as gloomy. No growth but we should boost it by his 5 point plan to stimulate growth.

General Ramblings

Whoever said Labour would examine Cameron’s orange proposal to cut 25% off benefits of offenders should have a 25% pay cut. Cut 25% off all salaries, bonuses and income of offenders or cut no one.

Government is giving power to patients, citizens and ratepayers. But why not shareholders? They’re supposed to be responsible for companies but small shareholders are impotent and big funds sit on their hands. Let them elect the audit committee and the remuneration committee.

Only a massive devaluation can save Greece. Ditto Italy and Spain. That will put George’s exchange rate up otherwise the EU wastes a decade trying to save something that can’t ever work.

Tories defend bum policies brilliantly with every boneheaded backbencher briefed with debating points. We defend good policies badly because we’re embarrassed to be socialist.

Observe the new tactic of the Euro Creeps. The EU is getting it right and will move to closer union. We need to help and be in there or we’ll be left behind. Can’t afford to be left out. All wrong of course. The Euro argument is a con, nations won’t surrender economic powers, electorates will want refunds to give up anything and the struggle to make the unworkable work will kill growth. But it will frighten fools and there’s a lot of them about.

General Ramblings

Friday 28^th October: 10.00am – Chief Constable. Crime falling but danger of it getting worse as recession worsens and police numbers fall.

2pm - Seafood Village progresses by leaps and bounds. Wonderful to see it nearing completion after so many years getting it off the ground.

Evening – Labour Party discussion on where we’re going. I’m hopeful. The new class system is the elite versus the rest of them, the odds favour us.