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This year’s Mandelson Medal for most Promising Ministerial apprenticeship goes to his successor at Hartlepool, Iain Wright, for his brilliant success in getting the bum bill for housing and regeneration (which will do little for either) through the Commons.
Aspiring ministers have to show aptitude at defending the indefensible, conning the Commons into thinking their bill will achieve what its not intended to do, and will be beneficial for the poor children and small animals while, in fact, taking millions away from all of them. All a necessary rite of passage to greater Blairite things like forcing single parents to work in coal mines, invading small counties and closing post offices.
Ian did all this brilliantly by friendly smiles and a skilful technique of agreeing with everything his critics said while asking them to trust him because his intentions were theirs.
It worked brilliantly. So well in fact that I began to fear he might actually believe in the bill as he enthused on about what it would do to build millions of houses, liberate councils, help the homeless and turn the 2.8 million council homes that remain into People’s Palaces.
That’s worrying because I’m not sure that’s what the department intends. So he probably wont be around to implement it.
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The Housing bill is a con: a rag bag of half baked proposals which have long festered in the murky basement of the department. Most of them so half baked they had to be altered by hundreds of government amendments which crowded out sensible changes.
It was announced as launching a big new housing drive. It won’t because builders are going bust, new starts are falling with house prices, the governments proposals for helping people to buy are too complicated and won’t work (just like the last ones), the housing associations would rather build up reserves than build houses and the councils are being kept out.
It was announced as fulfilling the promise last year to allow councils to build again. They will be. But only 2,500 houses. To build any more they’ll need social housing grant and they’re specifically excluded from that unless they create a special purpose vehicle or an ALMO. RSLs are allowed to apply for this whether they’re good, bad or indifferent but, unfortunately, most of them aren’t bothering to do so. Applications are far lower than the sums made available by the Housing Corporation.
Just how disastrous its going to be became clear when the government refused to accept my two brilliant amendments. It refused to accept the plan to make Large Scale Voluntary transfer ballots (a slur on democracy which Mugabe has learned from) fair and democratic. It refused to accept the proposal supported by the Labour Party conference three years running to ensure a level playing field for councils by stopping government pilfering money from Housing Revenue accounts, and forcing it to ensure that the grants for Management maintenance and Major repairs actually covered council costs instead of being a third lower than they should be. In response to this proposal Ian first denied that the government is under funding, then promised that the money will be forthcoming once the government’s review of Housing Revenue Accounts is completed. That will be May next year with no chance of implementation before the 2010 election.
So council estates will be left to fester, councils will be left to struggle and most will b forced to opt for transfers to the private sector. Which is the real purpose of the bill: helping councils by forcing them to get rid.
Shooting at the Commonwealth, old friends and anyone who used to be able to come here. To create more room for Poles he proposes to exclude people fro Australia, new Zealand, South Africa and Canada, who had ancestors here (Katherine Mansfield wouldn’t be able to come) cooks in Chinese, Indian and other ethnic restaurants (who’d have to train poles in Balti and Cantonese cooking), trainee doctors from Parkistan, India, and nurses from Africa, the Phillipines or the West Indies (who’ve kept the health service going).
As he turns himself in to the General Percival of immigration Liam is cutting emotional ties and training links which have benefited us and the countries people came from. He’s insulting the memories of the hundreds of thousand s of Kiwis, Aussies, and Canadians who died fighting for Britain in two world wars. But then they cant protest. They’re dead. Just like the Commonwealth in Liam’s view.
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I’m reading Arthur Schlesinger’s Journals. He was adviser to J F Kennedy and reports that JFK was contemptuous of union leaders who he regarded as stupid, corrupt and unreliable, though collectively labour leaders were noble and principled. Businessmen on the other hand Kennedy regarded as brighter, smarter and much easier to get along with but, collectively, as greedy, short sighted, prejudiced and stupid..
How like the Home Life of our own dear Gordon. Except that he’s not tough enough to tilt the balance to labour as Kennedy did..
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I’ve never seen anything more vomit inducing than the way the media are going for Gordon as irresolute, inept, clumsy, and indecisive. Its as if they’re trying to overcompensate for giving Tony such an easy ride by clobbering his successor.
It’s not true of course. Prime Ministers are, until we elect the Archangel Gabriel, human. They have faults, some of one kind some of another, but all the media should do is give all sides of the picture and let us make our minds up
At least David Cameron is kinder, for he’s obviously setting out to help the Peoples Gord to present a better public face. His technique of throwing a long string of insults at him every PMSQT may look crude but is in fact an outward bound course in presentation to toughen Gordon up and show him how to deal with flibbertigibbet insults and abuse. We should be grateful. Its working.
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Exhausted by my efforts to help the government I grabbed the break to come to Los Angeles to meet Linda returning from an Old Bat’s reunion at her old school in Wellington.
Wonderful flight on Air New Zealand but my fellow passengers in the front cabin were an odd lot. Three dolly birds, two kids, and two minders who slept most of the way when they weren’t jamming the toilets. One of the girls looked after the kids in a desultory way. Another spent the entire flight colouring faces on her lap top with experimental make up. The third, whose face looked oddly familiar in its jolie-laide way, stared at me as if trying to place me in the hall of fame, did her hair and walked up and down so thin that her pants kept falling below her thong because she had no hips to hold them up. I should have realised when one of the lads kept saying My Daddy has a helicopter and her top carried the name VICTORIA, but I merely thought she worked at the station. At the airport exit a huge crowd of photographers, paparazzi (with more expensive cameras) TV crews, video recorders and battery’s of digital cameras and mobile phones, greeted me and I hadn’t even prepared a statement. I stopped smiled and thought what to say but they all pushed past me. “Were you on the same plane as the Beckhams?” “Well yes. Do you want me to tell you about it?” No. Here they are.
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Facing the coming recession our government is the making the Hoover do nothing and keep your legs crossed approach. The Americans have gone back to FDR and are now boosting the economy by tax cuts and very low interest rates, while Congress is debating a measure to save the two million householders facing foreclosure. In Britain we just leave them to suffer so their houses are taken back and dumped on the market to depress house prices and make things worse. In the US they’re preparing for a compulsory thirty day freeze, compulsory arbitration, debt reduction and advice to help people keep their houses and reduce their debt.
This in the land of capitalism. Why can’t New Labour do better. We should keep people in their houses and instead of dumping them on the market, let councils take them over instead of acting like the reincarnation of Herbert Hoover and allowing the Governor to bang on about retribution and moral hazard as cures for irresponsibility as if Keynes had never lived..
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