Saturday, January 20, 2007
The Beeb has just secured itself some big happy funding increases, and inevitably there’s been some debate about the future of the corporation.
Needless to say the increase is funding is completely unjustified, but it’s worth reiterating why this is so.
So, how should public services be funded? There are two ways. Either we decide this is a general, indivisible social good and then it should be free at the point of use and paid by general taxation (see defence, policing, the NHS). Alternatively we could decide that a given service is inherently monopolistic and then the state is the most efficient provider, which would then mean that its users simply buy the service directly from the provider/state as in a market place.
And talking of biases, the BBC will also have to sort its political and cultural biases as documented en masse by Biased BBC.
All in all these changes would make the BBC one the great British institutions again.
Labels: economy, media, public services
Monday, December 11, 2006
One must beware of ministers who can do nothing without money, and those who want to do everything with money.
Labels: economy, politics, public services, quote
Saturday, September 17, 2005
Now I am not going to write anything about the actual events, who is responsible and the predictable Bush-and-America-bashing by the European media, as I have nothing useful to contribute and American domestic policies is not really my area of interest (though I will urge you to read this, by the former editor of the Portadown News, which is both insightful and very funny). The problem that I do see is the question of accountability and responsibility of government levels. I have for many years been arguing that the UK needs to decentralise its state machinery. I have to admit that the situation in New Orleans has raised some doubts for me. Nobody seems to have sole responsibility and all levels of bureaucracy interacted woefully with each other. Isn't that automatically written into such a system? In fact the Katrina catastrophe exhibits all teh same problems with federalism that can be seen in Germany, where the system stifles reforms and makes politicians highly unaccountable - whenever anything goes wrong they can always blame a different level of government. (Incidentally, this is of course one of the big problems with the EU.) I guess one condition for a more decentralised governing structure in Britain would have to be sole responsibility. There should be no óverlapping of areas of administration. For example, if local councils are responsible for waste desposal, there should be no interference via regulations or framework laws or such by higher levels of government. I don't know if that could be workable at all, but it is clear that the lines of authority have to be clear if we want accountable, efficient and democratic local government. (There is of course a problem with contemporary political culture, where it has become sheer unimagineable that anybody but the person at the top carries any responsibilty, as Simon Jenkins has argued.)
Labels: politics, public services
Friday, December 17, 2004
A school banned pencil sharpeners after a 10-year-old boy took one apart and used the blade to injure a classmate.
And then there’s this:
A 14-year-old Hertfordshire student has been suspended from school for using topless pictures of the model Jordan in an English project
Good to see that schools understand where to set their priorities: it’s only twice as bad to slash up someone’s face and possibly disfigure them for life than looking at boobs?
Labels: law & order, nation, public services
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
These past days I have bumped into a number of pieces on the fortunes of the Tories that are all worth having a close read and think.
Peter Oborne gives some insightinto the Voter Vault machine the Conservatives’ are hoping will deliver the next election for them. Apparently this machine/computer (?) works by finding who the decisive swing voters are and then giving them what they want. This is supposedly how Karl Rove put Bush in the White House, so the Tories think perhaps it can do the trick for them as well. I have my doubts, remembering that in 2001 something very similar was the Tory strategy, albeit somewhat less sophisticated; and let’s be honest that weren’t necessarily the comeback of the forces of conservatism. However Oborne does provide some arguments that the fight for Downing Street is still well open.
Which of course begs the question, if they’re in, what then? What kind of policies a Michael Howard Government will eventually follow is of course open to speculation, so I want to give some though about the things the Conservatives ought to be pushing for.
First up is Simon Jenkins, who actually makes good sense on local government, in contrast to some of his writings on foreign affairs in the Times which are rather less impressive, to understate it rather. But anyway. It’s all about local government; that being real local government rather than Prescott’s weird regional assembly thingies. The money-shotted version:
Central governments will always be needed to set minimum standards and redistribute revenues from rich to poor. But nowhere has needed Gordon Brown’s stupefying structure of targets, league tables and central controls. Some local variation in services is accepted everywhere else, provided only that accountability is local. The key lies in that accountability.
Britain does not need to reinvent new local structures. They exist in the cities and counties that applied before 1974, needing only a revitalised politics and fiscal regime. . . . In rural and suburban areas below the county tier, European experience indicates that what matters is not size but loyalty to place. The present structure of mostly anonymous districts could go, with truly local government built on existing boroughs, towns and rural parishes. . . . I cannot imagine a more exciting cause for a modern Tory party than restoring power to communities. It embodies the Conservative principle of local diversity and choice. It makes services accountable at the point of delivery, to local users and voters. . . . Cutting bureaucracy means devolving power.
Such a programme cannot be gradual. From Cornwall to Kent, Hampshire to Cheshire, Bristol to Newcastle, the party should declare a nationwide festival of democracy. People must take back responsibility for their public services. They must be reawakened, with a bang.
This resuscitation of the small platoons would also have beneficial effects on the character of our society and nation, and improve our moral lives.
Just to clear one thing up from the beginning, running on a moral values agenda strategy like the Bushies isn’t an option for the Tories, not primarily because there is little in terms of votes to be gained from it, but because the Tories themselves are split evenly on most relevant issues. So this part of the current US-Republican policy is dead in the water in the UK.
However, the invigoration of moral life has another dimension to it, that would be popular and is certainly necessary, and that is the strengthening of an active citizenship. James Bartholomew writes about this, again in the current Spectator:
By ‘citizenship’, [Bush] does not mean, as people tend to here, paying lots of taxes to outsource kindness to the government. He means real citizenship — direct, personal contributions to other people’s welfare and ... He has made it possible for faith-based charities to do social work on behalf of the government (since Bush recognises that the government is not much good at it). Traditional decency used to be big in Britain. But it has been undermined, bashed about and crowded out by the welfare state.
The Times conducted a survey of middle-class people in 1895, asking them how much they gave to charity. They donated 10 per cent of their income. How much do people now generally pay? Less than 1 per cent. . . .
It is as if people feel that the need for them to be decent is satisfied by the payment of taxes. This liberates them to be wholly selfish. The concept of decency and real — rather than politicised — social solidarity has gone out of the window.
. . . Traditional, conservative decency has been extracted from the culture by the all-enveloping welfare state — a state which, without intending to, has encouraged lying, cheating and lone-parenting, while discouraging saving, generosity and self-respect.
This is all relevant because ultimately the stakes are high in politics, always. Head over to God save the Queen and see this posting on Conservatives against Fascism.
All that said, I think that ultimately the election should be decided on foreign affairs, as this is the primary responsibility of central Government. I know it won’t be decided about these issues, I’m just saying that it ought to. I’ll give that a separate posting later on in the week.
Labels: Conservatives, nation, politics, public services
