September 2, 2010

Brit Celeb Radio # 10 – Flying by The Seat of Our Thong, with Actor Shaun Parkes and Comedian Pippa Hinchley

We are flying by the Seat of of Thong with Actor Shaun Parkes and Comedian Pippa Hinchley.  This show will have you giggling as we say whatever we want when we want to.  Brit chatter is in abundance as we talk about the and the English football team, Pippa’s all female british sketch comedy and Shaun’s brand new TV show.  Listen in to find out about the things we miss from London including English crisps and British pirate stations.  Emily’s entertainment report gives us news about Kate Moss, Top Shows new store and the Ricky Gervais stand up show.

With a special report on The World Cup from World Football Daily and new music from Buppy and The Uplifters.

Listen here: 

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A Pint of Bitter: UK Coalition government, and how men’s relationships matter

In one way, Britain’s new government – the coalition, as we’re beginning to call it – resembles the  administration it replaced, rather than representing a break from it. Just as Labour government since 1997 was dominated by the relationship between two men, so this government is clearly based on and revolves around the obvious chemistry between David Cameron and his deputy Nick Clegg. Their first joint press conference in the Downing Street rose garden was an almost embarrassing love-in, partly because the two men do visibly get on well, and partly I suspect because of their shared exhilaration at sealing their deal, each having demonstrated political panache and each now tasting the reward of power. Do watch it here if you want a flavour of how the Conservative–LibDem government started. The two men’s reaction to the question 18 minutes in tells you a lot.

Prime Minister's Office | CreativeCommons

And the new government is, as Alastair Campbell said on the BBC’s Question Time on Thursday, motoring. Since I last wrote, the coalition has published a detailed programme for government, fleshing out what it’s proposing to the country. Some of the agreement is unsurprising: the coalition will take urgent action to reduce Britain’s budget deficit, it will reform banking and it will legislate to reverse what it sees as Labour’s authoritarian measures, getting rid of the planned identity card scheme, for instance, and reducing the scope of the national DNA database. Some of it is clearly compromise – on European policy, on human rights and on immigration. But other parts of the agreement are much less expected.

The coalition Cabinet | Prime Minister's Office | CreativeCommons

Most controversial has been a complex but important proposal to require a super-majority of 55% of MPs to vote in favour of an early dissolution of Parliament and a general election within five years. Parliament’s term is not fixed like that of the American Congress: at the moment, the Prime Minister can ask the Queen for an election at any time, and most Prime Ministers do so before they are legally required to, usually after about four years. And if the governing party loses its majority in the House of Commons, a vote of no confidence in the government usually triggers an election. The coalition wants to change that for a number of reasons. Liberal Democrats for their part believe in “fixed-term Parliaments“: they have long wanted to remove the PM’s power to initiate elections, which they believe should happen at regular intervals even if the government changes in the meantime. But they also want to remove David Cameron’s ability to undermine the coalition by seeking an election they don’t want. For the Conservatives, abandoning that unilateral right only makes sense if, equally, the Liberal Democrats lose the ability to leave the coalition and join with other parties to force an election. Since non-Conservatives are 53% of the House, settling on 55% as the threshold suits both parties’ aims admirably. But it is precisely this transparently partisan benefit that makes the proposal highly controversial. I’ve written against it myself.

The other surprise proposal is to grant anonymity to rape suspects, a policy that was adopted a few years ago by the Liberal Democrat conference but which most political junkies, never mind the general public, were unaware of. Women who report being raped have been granted anonymity since the 1970s, when the protection was brought in to encourage them to come forward, but this is a rare exception to the principle here that justice should be in public. There is a strand of opinion that thinks defendants in rape cases should be given “equal treatment” with their alleged victims; but strong resistance to this idea comes especially from feminists who see the policy as pandering to the idea that false rape allegations are widespread. The 55% policy will be the first of these to cause real turbulence, as it’s an immediate priority for this year and was trailed in the Queen’s speech – which you can see in its entirety here. There’s no suggestion of a criminal law, sexual offences or criminal justice bill in this session, so the row about rape anonymity will be postponed for the moment.

David Laws | Liberal Democrats | Alex Folkes | fishnik.com | CreativeCommons

But nonetheless, the coalition has already run into a serious, unexpected difficulty. Its early star was David Laws, the rather dashing Liberal Democrat and new Chief Secretary to the Treasury. This is always an important post: it’s effectively deputy to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and is itself a Cabinet post often held by future Chancellors such as John Major and Alistair Darling. But because the Chief Secretary is specifically responsible for public spending levels, it’s even more important than usual at this time of budget cutting. It was Laws who announced the detail of the government’s immediate savings package at the Treasury last week, and it was he who defended them in Parliament. He’s become the pin-up of fiscal conservatives who admire his parsimony in small things as well as big. So it comes as a massive blow to both him and the new government that this Saturday morning the Daily Telegraph reported his having claimed expenses to pay rent to his partner, contrary to Parliamentary rules, since 2006.

The scandal seems to be dividing opinion. David Laws clearly wanted to keep his relationship private; and neither his sexuality nor his desire for privacy are matters of scandal or controversy in Britain, where people increasingly take pride in seeing such things as irrelevant to public life. Some, and not only Liberal Democrats, defend Laws on the basis that he was simply trying to maintain his privacy and that, by claiming for the rent he paid to his partner he actually saved public money, as compared with what he could have claimed had the pair openly bought and shared a property. Certainly, Laws is attracting some sympathy on a human level and because his visible competence has made him look the right man, in the right job at the right time. But this is a very serious business. Laws seems to have plainly broken the rules, which since 2006 have prohibited payments from expenses going to MPs’ partners, and this exposure resurrects the poisonous expenses scandal of last year. Not only that: this apparent abuse of taxpayers’ money comes from the very man – a rich man, at that, who it’s said retired from the City, a millionaire, at 28 – whose duty it is to make the nation face the need for austerity in the use of public funds. This is a sad story of a talented man brought down by a collision between 1950s-style prejudice, or the fear of it, and the fierce new mood of fiscal rectitude in Britain. I’m afraid he’ll probably have to go; perhaps even has gone before you read this.

Maybe next time there’ll be a little less politics to write about, and a little more room for pubs.

Picture of the Volcanic Plume Headed for Britain – Iceland Volcano Disruptions

We reported earlier that all flights in and out of the UK are cancelled for the forseeable future.

NASA have released an amazing satellite image that shows the volcanic plume from the Iceland Volcano as it stalks towards the UK.

Check out this amazing picture from space of the Iceland Volcano ash headed for Great Britain.

iceland-volcanic-ash-plume-britain-cloud

Britain Closed Due to Volcano – No Seriously – Statement from British Airways

Britain's Empty Airspace

A massive volcano has erupted in Iceland – spewing a massive plume of ash towards Western Europe that is hitting Britain today. It’s so bad that the Met Office (Britain’s Weather Authority) advised the air authorities to shut down ALL flights into and out of the UK unless there is an emergency.

If you were flying to Britain today, you aren’t anymore. If you’re there now and were supposed to leave, you’re stuck there until the cloud passes.

Here is a statement from British Airways about how it affects their passengers:

Due to a plume of volcanic ash drifting over the UK, there is severe disruption to our operation today.

Please do not go to the airport if your flight is cancelled.

Since 11.30am UK time there have been no departures from any British Airways served UK airport. Many flights before that time have also been affected. Flights arriving into the UK are also affected check the status of your flight.

The decision to cancel has been made for safety reasons and on the direction from Air Traffic Control Service (NATS).

ALL airlines will be affected.

You are advised to check the status of your flight before leaving for the airport.

Check the status of your flight

It is not clear when flights will resume – but expect flights to be cancelled tomorrow and further into Europe as the ash cloud progresses.

All seriousness aside – this is clearly Iceland’s revenge for the whole banking crisis and the aftermath.

A Pint of Bitter: Could Darling’s dullness and Tory wobbles give Britain a hung Parliament?

Last week’s budget wasn’t much to write abroad about – very few of us here expected it would be. In truth Alistair Darling had very little room for manoeuvre, Britain’s budget deficit being so high at just under £170 billion. Some government backbenchers might have wanted to bribe the electors with a giveaway budget: one of the great Labour myths is that it lost the 1970 election because the then Chancellor, Roy Jenkins, opted for fiscal rectitude in his pre-election budget, rather than indulgence. The Jenkins path was forced upon Darling, though. There was simply no money to give away. In any event, the now unsackable and uncontrollable Chancellor clearly believes that the voters are fed up of, and unimpressed by, the apparently dishonest financial sleight of hand Gordon Brown consistently used when he was responsible for the country’s finances. So he opted for solidity by choice and necessity. Tax on cider has gone up, which won’t please the West Country – but then the Labour vote there is low anyway. The rest of the budget was small beer. Even so, conservative and business commentators lambasted him for not doing more to convince the world he plans to reduce the UK’s national debt, which is only going up. My one complaint was that he did not renew his tax on bankers’ bonuses – surely that would have been a popular move, and would have brought in a useful couple of billion.

Alistair Darling | HM Treasury | CreativeCommons

All of which set the scene for this week’s “Chancellors’ Debate” on Channel 4, which you can see extensive highlights of here. As expected, the Liberal Democrat Vince Cable was perceived to “win” the debate. Even a few years ago there were signs that Cable had a rare political gift – I remember the American pollster Frank Luntz spotting in BBC focus groups that he was notably more trusted than other economic spokesmen. Since the global crisis, though, his reputation has soared along with the deficit, and Liberal Democrats must wish, desperately, that he were their leader. A couple of years ago they dumped their old one (Ming Campbell, who’d got the top job off the back of his star performance as foreign spokesman, leading opposition to the Iraq war) precisely for being too old, and replaced him with the less solid, but more telegenic Nick Clegg. Clegg has been doing reasonably well recently but is still untested, while the other old stager Cable would be the obvious choice now.

Vince Cable | Alex Folkes/Fishnik/Liberal Democrats | CreativeCommons

What’s strange about the current political situation, though, is that Alistair Darling’s boringly “stolid” strategy seems to be paying off – and the Conservative challenge to have become distinctly wobbly. It’s very hard to interpret recent polling because some polls still show Conservative leads of around 10%, and the average lead is something like 6 or 7%; but the common feeling of commentators is that that lead is narrowing. Governments here usually narrow opposition leads during election campaigns, so if current trends continue, we may have the closest general election in Britain for decades. Why aren’t the Tories doing better? Surely, with the country’s finances in such a state and against a tired government with an unloved leader, they should be roaring towards power? Tony Blair’s old strategist Alastair Campbell thinks the answer is that their offering is confused; here’s the Times piece he refers to, which agrees. I think the problem for the Conservatives is that they’ve been caught out badly by the banking crisis and recession – in a way, rather like the Liberal Democrats have.

George Osborne | Ewan McIntosh | CreativeCommons

In 2005 when he became leader, David Cameron launched the Tory party in a new direction, trying to ditch the old image of being in favour of cuts in public services and tax cuts for the rich (an approach that had lost them three elections running, don’t forget) in favour of a much more upbeat message of concern for the environment, health and the quality of life. But just as the Tories had successfully case off doom, gloom came to meet them. Now, events have forced their Shadow Chancellor George Osborne back into arguing for deeper, faster spending cuts, which is comfortable, natural territory for them, but means  they can’t help appearing to have turned one way then the other in recent years, with many voters not really knowing what they stand for. So far, so understandable. But they have also made errors, like allowing themselves still to be cast as tax-cutters for the rich. I’m a Labour supporter, so I’m naturally biased, but there is a real feeling here that some voters – especially fed-up previously Labour voters – are looking hard at the Conservatives and are less sure than they were about defecting. It’s not as obvious as it once seemed that they’ll win on May 6th. But who will? Will anyone?

The civil service is certainly planning for the possibility that no one will. This level of organisation for the eventuality of a hung parliament – one in which no party has a Parliamentary majority – is new, but surely sensible. The civil service is the one institution that can provide continuity and offer practical support to politicians if they need to hammer out an agreement for government this summer. The rule is, basically, that Gordon Brown continues in power until it’s clear he can’t, and someone else can, command a majority in Parliament. That could mean even if defeated, he stays in Downing Street for days or even weeks while he tries to put together some sort of deal with the Liberal Democrats. I’m not sure that a hung parliament would be a disaster for the country: a very close election will undoubtedly be good for political engagement here, and a minority government of either colour depending on Liberal Democrat support could be more stable and effective in dealing with the economic crisis than many fear. What would be damaging, though, is a prolonged period of uncertainty – especially if the leader of the biggest appears appears to be trying to hold on to power illegitimately. Whatever else happens, I hope we don’t go there.

The Seven Stars

The Seven Stars

Booze-wise, I was in the Seven Stars last week, in Carey Street just behind the Royal Courts of Justice. If I had to name London’s best pub, this is one of the three that come instantly to mind. It’s cosy in winter, and the simple, music-free inside is a brilliant place for conversation. The beer’s terrific (it’s Adnams plus a guest beer or two) and it’s worth ordering food here, too – they serve more interesting than usual pub food, which gives the place a really old-fashioned, almost “eighteenth century tavern” feel. It’s right opposite the back entrance to the High Court, so has a very legal theme – and a nice black cat, apparently called Thomas Paine. I’ll be back in the summer when the place is at its very best, with punters crowding the street outside. I wonder which of the three men above will be in Number 11 Downing Street by then – and how much my beer will cost.