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PEOPLE'S POST: THE BLOG THE HACKERS CAN`T STOP |
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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26 August 2005 |
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Robin Cook’s death is a sad loss to a Parliamentary Labour Party which isn’t exactly overflowing with talent. It`s an even bigger loss to the quality of debating. Robin was not only a great debater but the best forensic debater around. His logic was always as powerful as Enoch Powell`s, but unlike Enoch Robin’s speeches were laced with savage humour.
Yet the press reports and obituaries were wrong to say that his death is a loss to the Left. Robin was a radical, but essentially a loner, and never a faction leader. This was particularly true after his principled resignation against the Iraq war. He wanted to keep himself free for return to office, possibly when Gordon Brown takes over. So he refused not only to take exposed positions but also to avoid building up a backing group which might produce demands to go back into office with him.
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I`m not supposed to say anything for security reasons so I won`t tell you that Tony has taken his family on holiday to Barbados, presumably to one of Cliff Richard’s other houses.
I hope they don’t have to listen to Cliff’s records as the price of being there, but I wish him a happy and a restful summer holiday.
He needs it. Tony`s batteries looked pretty run down before the summer began. He really needs to charge them up fully because it`s going to be a wearing session when we return in October (not before please, Tony. I need to charge mine up too). The wearing won`t be because of new anti-terror legislation, but more because of the huge jobs he`s taken on on the European stage (four months to go on the presidency and nothing to show so far), in Africa, and on global warming. He’s going to have to use a lot of air miles persuading Bush to do anything. Then of course there’s world poverty. Tony will be lucky if he comes below 30,000 feet much before Christmas.
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In the United States the main drive of the economy comes now not from consumer spending, which is flagging there as here, but from housing.
We should follow suit. Our housing shortage is worse than theirs. Our house price rise, which makes more and more rented housing necessary for the increasing proportion who can`t get on the escalator, has been worse than in the USA. Yet while we’re building fewer new houses either for sale or for rent than at any time since the 1920s the US is breaking records in building.
Our housing record is disastrous. Instead of building we’ve concentrated on pouring out money to privatise council houses, taken social housing out of the hands of bodies who know the needs of their areas and given it to housing associations which the Treasury is now trying to make bigger and bigger instead of small and localised. If we stopped chucking money away like this and let councils keep all their own housing revenues and raise housing bonds for new build then they could play their part in the drive and set government free to launch a massive social housing drive, raising government housing bonds for the same purpose, even embarking on PFI or PPP projects for building new towns in areas of greatest need like the Thames Gatway.
Stop forcing poor John Prescott to go on destroying council housing. Give him the finance to use his drive and vigour in a massive housing drive and we add a new drive motor to a flagging economy which is slowing as consumer spending falls and government spending reaches a plateau.
Every previous Labour government has been proud of its housing record. I can`t see why this one doesn’t begin a massive housing drive to improve a record it should be ashamed of. We now need the economic stimulus and the jobs that a big housing drive would give us and is already giving in the USA. Turning the People’s Prezza into the Housing Czar would allow John to fulfil himself at last. |
