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Monday 7 January
Arrive back in cold, damp, dreary Britain, suntanned, fit and re-energised after a summer visit to New Zealand to assess how much New Zealand has changed in the thirty years since my book, the Half Gallon Quarter Acre Pavlova Paradise.
Spend the week telling people I’ve been skiing, once a Tory habit but now an acceptable activity for New Labour, though going outside Europe isn’t. Jet-lagged and half asleep I’m the perfect government backbencher, shambling sleepily into every lobby Tommy MacAvoy points me to, too tired to listen to the argument, too brain dead to dissent.
But amazed at the publicity Lord Birt is getting. Time to reveal that I’ve long filled the same role for the Commons. Mine is not blue sky but grey North Sea thinking but I write regular reports for Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Like Lord Birt’s, my reports are not published. Like his they are also not read.
Friday 11 January
Chief Constable’s lunch for the Humberside MPs, most of whom don’t turn up. The Chief isn’t as ebullient as last year. Crime is up slightly. The spending settlement is bad for Humberside with the second lowest increase. Our Force will remain over-stretched.
This problem also afflicts Local Government and the Fire Service. Public spending on a per capita basis makes no allowance for the scale of problems. Or for a declining population. The best, the brightest and the able-bodied of working age leave. The old and vulnerable remaining behind. That requires more spending.
In New Zealand, Invercargill, which also has a declining population, got round the problem by creating more people. Fees at the Polytechnic were abolished, bringing in 700 more students and massive per capita subsidies. Now the buses are free to bring in more passenger subsidies. Sadly, that needs the profit from the local licensing trust to finance it. We have no spare dosh.
Saturday 12 January
At surgery I’m reduced to despair by pensioners suffering from vandalism in the decline of Grimsby’s older areas. When Labour came in we found massive under-investment in Health, Education, Transport, Housing and Local Government. The first three are being tackled. The last two are still starved.
So council estates degenerate and the huge backlog of repairs isn’t being tackled because no money is available for improvement grants or neighbourhood regeneration. Estates become dumping grounds and tenants from hell or the drug clinic move into cheap terrace houses making the life of the old people, who’ve lived there all their lives, hell. The oldies can’t escape because their houses won’t sell. The council has no money to tackle the problem. The Police are too over-stretched. So decline compounds while money is shovelled into transport in London.
Monday 14 January
Helen Clark rings from New Zealand. What on earth have I said about John Prescott? Last week I bumped into John and told him that Helen and various others who’d met him in New Zealand had sung his praises. Indeed, Helen told a Cabinet meeting we were filming that she’d told John on his visit that whatever happened in Britain, NZ operated full Cabinet government. When visiting Britain for Peter Blake’s funeral she’d been told by Tony Blair and Jack Straw that they’d just had a full day of Cabinets, a long morning session, followed by a War Cabinet, followed by a Political Cabinet from which the Cabinet Secretary had been excluded. "So it looks" she told her Cabinet "as though they’re learning from us".
Whether John’s nervy for some reason, or didn’t hear what I was saying I know not. His listening skills are not well developed. But he’d unleashed turmoil. Calls to the NZ High Commissioner demanded to know what Helen had been saying. He then called the NZ Cabinet Secretary. She called the PM, who then rang me. I’m a Prescott fan and could have told John directly if he’d bothered to ask me. So I sent him a note suggesting that if he couldn’t understand what I said it might be easier to ask me for a free translation. Or consult my Yorkshire Joke book which is Britain’s best selling book. Indeed, I’m trying to get it as a late entry for the House Magazine Political Book of the Year Award. It’ll beat Roy Jenkins into a cocked Gladstone bag. Only £4.99 from Politicos.
Tuesday 15 January
Like a dog returning to its vomit, the Government keeps coming back to its proposal to abolish the Community health Councils. Today the "case" is presented by yet another in the succession of Junior Ministers trundled out to defend the indefensible.
Hazel Blears does the job in masterly fashion. Her Northern accent heightens every time she turns to talk to the rebels, vanishes when she talks to the Tories.
She promised that the new arrangements will be even more effective and powerful. They won’t. Government doesn’t want firmly based community involvement of the type CHCs provide, just as it doesn’t trust elected councils. Rather they want the Health Service run by professionals for professionals without messy community interference frightening off private investors.
I assure David Hinchcliffe and the CHCs that I’ll be voting for their amendment. At which point in comes Tommy MacAvoy (how does he get to know what I’m thinking?). He takes me warmly by the neck and tells me that I agreed when he let me go to New Zealand that I’d be a good boy. "Gentlemen", Tommy assures me "always keep their word. I do". Slink miserably into the Chamber. "You’re a wimp" Lynn Jones tells me. "Bastard" says David Hinchcliffe more succinctly.
Wednesday 16 January .
A plot has been launched against me by Shona McIsaac, Ian Cawsey and Elliot Morley, my three animal liberation neighbours. Shona has nicknamed me "Clubber Mitchell", not because of my nocturnal habits, but because I want something done about the ever expanding seal population and their ever expanding stomachs full of sand eels and fish.
Elliot is taking revenge for a trick I encouraged the local Vessel Owners to play on him. When he produced a picture of himself gazing adoringly at a little group of cuddly furry baby seals, Nigel Atkins inked a huge club into his hand and a murderous expression onto his face. Now Elliot has cunningly suggested to the editor of the Grimsby Telegraph that it wouldn’t be fair to run polls on Clubber Mitchell versus Cuddler McIsaac. "Oh, we’d never do a thing like that" he replied and, like a good newspaperman, went home and did it. So I’m accused of nipping down to the seal sanctuary at Donna Nook at every spare moment and clubbing cuddly creatures to death.
The fishermen, who agree with me, won’t say so. "Too hot for us" they gently explain. Every time I’m late for an engagement I’m met with jocular shouts of "Been down Donna Nook killing baby seals again?" Must arrange a photo shoot with John Prescott and some baby seals.
Thursday 17 January
Give my views on the Second chamber to the Public Administration Committee. I’ve changed my mind. Election is the only way of legitimising the Second Chamber and won’t produce another crop of thick-skilled political careerists like us if it’s done on the basis of regional STV, different timing and a minimum age requirement plus a hundred independents to widen the range of people coming in.
Friday 18 January
Meeting with the Primary Care Trust. I’d expected them to be gibbering with gratitude at the big increases in government spending on the NHS. Instead they’re gloomy. It isn’t enough to maintain the improvements made so far. It won’t allow any new initiatives in needs such as heart disease, mental health, epilepsy or any other pressing problems. Another triumph for our old friend per capita.
Saturday 19 January
Speak to 300 people at the "Churches Together" meeting on community action. Hope to gain a little credit in Tony’s eyes by associating with God. Sadly, most of the church people prove to be too far to the Left for a New Labour MP to associate with.
One Catholic Bishop even quotes Socialist thinkers and castigates the consumer society. So I point out that while we are perfectly prepared to help the deserving poor we will only do so to the extent that business and the better off will let us and without any increase in redistributive taxation.
It’s too simplistic for carping Christians to argue that the poor are poor because they haven’t got enough money. New Labour knows that giving them it will sap their will to work. Decide never to associate with such dangerous radicals again.
Monday 21 January
Driving down to London we stop at the Woodall Service Station for Linda to do an interview on the phone with Radio Leeds. No-one ever rings me for interviews now. It’s all her.
As I sit gloomily in the car feeling old and left out, an Italian gentleman parks next door, winds down his window and explains that he’s on his way back to Italy but he’s been presented with six Armani leather jackets which he can’t take back with him because they’ll be excess baggage.
Would I like to buy one? In which case he’ll give me a second entirely free of charge. Being of a trusting disposition I express sympathy, begin to try on his jackets, though oddly he doesn’t want me to get out of the car, explaining that people will be watching on security television and might steel them.
Just trying on a wonderful soft leather jacket (only £500 though he’ll reduce it further) when Linda appears. I get out of the car, he snatches the jacket back and goes. "Happens all the time" she explains. "I’m always being approached in motorway car parks by people flogging perfume, watches, make-up, clothes". It must be something to do with the European Single Market.
Wednesday 23 January
My application to join Sinn Fein to get a better room has been rejected, the days when government could walk on water are now over. We are getting splashed and the tide is turning against Labour. The economy is stalling under the cripplingly high exchange rate and the huge burden of consumer debt. Manufacturing is in deep pain. Consumer spending is falling. The balance of trade is unsustainable. Government spending is going into deficit. An increase in taxes is now necessary but won’t come. The Bank of England is still keeping our interest rates higher than everyone else’s. It’s at times like these you need a futile gesture. So Patricia Hewitt announces that industry and Japan want the Euro. Will we ever have a DTI Secretary who knows some economics? |
