Open Road

Thursday Mar 27th 2008

Getting Hammered with Nicky

It is 100 days today since Nick Clegg became leader of the Liberal Democrats and, like his predecessor but one, it appears that he is obsessed with being hammered, although not quite in the same sense. See if you can spot a pattern…

Thursday 27 March 2008

Nick Clegg criticises plans by the Commons authorities to appeal against an Information Tribunal ruling calling for the full breakdown of 14 MPs and ex-MPs’ expenses to be published.

“The reason why this feels like a needless, additional hammer blow to public confidence in the House of Commons and what MPs do, is, I think we all now accept, that there should be a full declaration of all MPs’ expenses”.

Friday 14 March 2008

Nick Clegg reacts to the publication of ‘the John Lewis List’, showing the maximum amount that MPs have been able to claim on expenses for common household items.

“Clearly the recent scandals about MPs’ pay and expenses have delivered a real hammer blow to public confidence in politics. It needs to change rapidly”.

Thursday 21 February 2008

Clegg is invited to the Today Programme to comment on a data blunder at the Crown Prosecution Service, connected to serious offenders from the Netherlands being left free to commit crimes in the UK.

“This is just yet another hammer blow, if you like, against public confidence, which has been so severely damaged over recent months by the various cases of data losses”.

Friday 28 December 2007

The newly appointed Liberal Democrat leader offers his condolences following the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

“Her tragic death is a hammer blow against the dream of pluralism and tolerance in modern day Pakistan”.

Friday 14 December 2007

In his very last days as Home Affairs spokesman, Clegg took issue with the ruling that found that a terrorist suspect had not breached their control order.

“This ruling is another hammer blow to the increasingly discredited control order regime”.

It is easy not to blame Clegg. After all, who ever pays such close attention to anything that the Liberal Democrats have to say? Nevertheless, the time may have come for the third party to think up some new terms of condemnation. This will be at the forefront of Clegg’s mind, no doubt, as he plots the next 100 days. 

Wednesday Mar 12th 2008

Time to wean the junkie BBC off its tax habit

Martin Le Jeune featured in The Financial Times, 11 March 2008 - Copied below.

Today Ed Richards, chief executive of the broadcasting regulator Ofcom, will deliver a speech on his planned review of public service broadcasting to the Royal Television Society.

The BBC’s first director-general, John Reith, famously defined the mission of PSB as “to inform, educate and entertain”. A lot has changed since Reith wrote those words, but not much has moved on in British television, which pretends to be edgy and forward looking while clinging to a system and a way of thinking that, in its essentials, Reith would have recognised.

What are those essentials? A belief that substantial state intervention in the television market is necessary; the maintenance of a specialised tax to fund it; a stubborn refusal to acknowledge in policymaking the contribution made by non-PSB broadcasters; producer capture; and, worst of all, a rampant and condescending paternalism.

Tuesday Mar 11th 2008

Opinion Research has its limits

Now don’t get me wrong.  Opinion research is extremely important and useful.  Hell, we do it here (rather well we like to think.)

But in order to get the best value from it and avoid the pitfalls, it has to be interpreted well, you need to be aware of its limits, what it is good at doing and what it cannot do and lastly, you need to bear in mind that occasionally it can get it wrong.

Wednesday Mar 5th 2008

Snooker Loopy

It is no secret that the new Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Andy Burnham, is football-mad. Not only is he a life-long follower of Everton FC, he is also a former Chairman of Supporters Direct, and a regular in the parliamentary football team.

Burnham has now gone and out-done himself by being the first politician to suggest that the public realm be treated as though it were a game of football.

The Evaluation of the Impact of the Licensing Act 2003, which was commissioned by Gordon Brown and published by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport on Tuesday 4 March, puts forward a number of recommendations designed to further the fight against binge drinking.

One of these is the proposal to subject retailers, particularly those accused of encouraging underage drinking, to a new ‘yellow and red card’ alert system when said retailers are in breach of their license conditions. In his Written Ministerial Statement, Burnham even promises that “when the circumstances are right, it will be a straight red”. Blimey.

What matters here is not the merits of the proposal. Burnham is clearly onto something in trying to blur the boundaries between the worlds of sport and public policy.

Here is what you could be tried next:

Random drugs testing: This is now prevalent in all sports and has brought about the demise of many a Tour de France cyclist and Olympic athlete. Surely there really is no other way of explaining Margaret Hodge’s recent pronouncements on the Proms (see here)?

The Sin Bin: Used in Ice Hockey, the House of Commons already has a similar system (most recently, George Galloway and Derek Conway). Would the deterrent not be even stronger if rogue MPs were made to purge their sentence inside the Chamber, stuck inside a plexi-glass box, watching the action unfold without them?

The Blood Bin: Ministerial scandals are often followed by the (not always inevitable) demise of a competent Cabinet member (Peter Mandelson, David Blunkett). One way to remedy this could be through the introduction of a rugby union-style ‘blood bin’ whereby a temporary replacement, usually a rising star (a junior minister?) or an experienced old hand (a former Secretary of State?) comes off the bench, literally, to take over duties while the incumbent is taken away, patched up, and returned to the fray once their confidence restored.

Video replay: Increasingly, technology is used to settle moments of contention in sport. Would the accountability of the Government to Parliament not be enhanced by capacity for video replay during Oral Questions? Did the Minister answer the Honourable Member’s question or not? Let’s see what the video says.

The video replay: coming soon to a bicameral legislature near you.

There must be more…