clawsfour

Where have all the social workers gone

Of course, every tragedy requires lessons to be learned. However small that tragedy is in the scale of human suffering it is huge for the individuals concerned.

But when the dust has settled, people sacked and lessons learned following the investigation into the murder (for that is surely what it was) of baby P in Harringey there will be fewer people willing to bear the responsibility of predicting when a parent will kill their child. At the moment 30,000 children are under the protection of Social Services departments. No doubt there are more children at risk who have been missed.

But when the current media hysteria moves on to the next object of public hate and fewer children are protected by fewer social workers then will The Sun, The Mail and the rest share the blame for the next, inevitable, tragedy?

And one thing continues to puzzle me. The figures seem to vary a bit, but my understanding is that somewhere in the order of six children are killed by parents each month. Yet the media have ignored these tragedies for their single fixation.

Things that make me scream

People who don't turn off the keyboard sounds on their mobiles/blackberries/iPhones. The iPhone has a particularly irritating click to let you know the person three sears down is sending a long email. 

And people who listen to laugh out loud podcasts on their iPod. And then laugh out loud. 

And trains where you can't get a signal so you can't post your irritation to your blog. 

Welcome to grumpy Monday again. This may have to become a regular feature. 

Weekly, maybe.

An arresting attitude

It is certainly true that the Metropolitan police could have handled the investigation into the theft (why do we continue to use plumbing jargon? Leak?) of documents and information from the Home Office with a great deal more sensitivity. They may have been able to investigate the issues at hand without arresting a Conservative MP, they may not.

There are probably questions to be asked about why the Mayor of London was told of the decision to arrest and not the Home Secretary.

What is not in any doubt are two things. Firstly we are not living in a police state as claimed by the increasingly swivel-eyed Tony Benn.

Secondly the stomach churning hypocrisy of the Tory Party. The outrage that the police have arrested a Tory in the conduct of their investigations does not sit well with their attitude to arrest of Labour politicians and members of staff during the cash for honours investigation. This was summed up quite neatly at the time by Conservative MP Nigel Evans who said the arrests were a "seismic" development, adding: "It is important, we have to realise that the allegations are very serious indeed.

"Nobody is above the law, not the prime minister and not Lord Levy either, and this is something I think that we all have to learn."

Pity the Tories didn't learn it, then. Or, maybe nearer the truth, they didn't learn it because they still don't care. The age old truth of the Conservative Party is that it one rule for the common man and no rule for them. And that is the absolute dividing line when it come to the next general election. Recession or no, the Tories are, and always will be, in it for themselves alone. The class war, unfortunately, is still alive and well, but it's the Tories who keep breathing life into it.

Sound economics is always sound economics

Another quote for you. Gordon Brown? Alistair Darling? Some lefty economist after the Pre-Budget report?

Now what really gets me is this, that it is very ironic that those who are most critical of the extra tax are those who were most vociferous in demanding the extra expenditure. And what gets me even more is that having demanded that extra expenditure they are not prepared to face the consequences of their own action and stand by the necessity to get some of the tax to pay for it.

Actually, Margaret Thatcher being very old Labour in 1981, defending her budget (against the even more right wing or her Conservative Party) to the Guardian Young Businessman of the Year Award Ceremony. 

Banks may force player sale

Well now Labour has solved the world recession, back to the important story of the day.

Southampton 0 v 0 Plymouth Argyle.

Not the greatest game, but another point in the bank. Which is more than can be said for cash in the bank. News that Southampton managed to lose £4.9m last year despite selling nearly £14m worth of player contracts reveals the shambles that Leon Crouch and Michael Wilde created in their short term in charge of the shop. It has taken the return of the most hated man at the club, Rupert Lowe, to get a grip of the finances and have sufficient courage to say we can't afford high wage prima donnas and we'll have to make do with players coming out of the academy.

On the pitch it is beginning to work. Jan Portvliet, the coach, is slowly getting the players to play with confidence all over the pitch. If only he could get them to shoot straight, or shoot at all (only two shots on target tonight) we would begin to be a force to be reckoned with.

Off the pitch the finances still loom worryingly and the banks will want to see a sharp reduction in their exposure come the January transfer window. We will probably have to raise £5m at a minimum, which suggests three of the high earning loan players going for what ever we can get - maybe £750,000 for John, Raziak and Sagernowski between them. Maybe a £1.5 for Lallana going to Spurs (although that seems an unlikely buy for Harry Redknap) and £2m for Schneiderlin to Arsenal would just about do it, although there may be sell on clause in the Schneiderlin deal which will reduce our income. So we may have to top it up by offloading Surman for £1m (if we are very lucky).

That will weaken the squad and we will have to hope that one or two loan players are available to come our way to bridge ta gap.

In the meantime - Charlton on Saturday and three points there would be just what the doctor ordered. And the banks.

And clear blue water

If you ever need to know how out of touch with the real world and real people the Tories are, look no further than Shadow Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley MP, who said yesterday,

On many counts, recession can be good for us. People tend to smoke less, drink less alcohol, eat less rich food and spend more time at home with their families...

Today that quote has been withdrawn from its original posting on the Conservative Party's Blue Blog web-site. Now there's a surprise. Unfortunately for the Tories one of the delights of the web is the imprint you leave by posting something lasts a long time, so Lansley is now spread far and wide. Something Cameron would like to do to him no doubt.

James Purnell MP, Labour's Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, responding to Andrew Lansley's comments that the recession can be 'good for us', said:

Now more than ever it's important to help people who are sick to stay in work so that they can support themselves and their families. During the Tory recession people's health suffered as they were abandoned to long term unemployment or thrown onto incapacity benefit. Yet today the Tories think a recession will be good for people's health.

The Conservative Deputy Chairman may already regret letting the cat out of the bag when he said 'the recession has to take its course' but it remains Conservative policy. Now we know that not only would the Conservatives do nothing but sit back and watch the recession ‘take its course' - they actually believe it would be ‘good for us'.

There is a clear choice for the British people: Labour's approach will give real help now for families and businesses to help Britain come through these difficult times stronger and sooner; the Conservatives would sit back and watch as the recession became longer and deeper.

Clear red water

Well if anyone thought the Pre-Budget report was going to be the usual, slightly pointless, Pre-Christmas report about the state of the economy then a quick glance along the newspaper shelves this morning will disabuse you.

The right wing media are mourning the death of new Labour (didn't care much for new Labour previously, I seem to remember) and pointing to a Britain on the edge of bankruptcy. The centre ground cautiously suggest a brave move (although most reserve their positon to change this to a foolhardy move if it all goes wrong). And the left media........ oh, I forgot.

What is certain is that there is now the sharpest political divide since Cameron tried to rest the centre ground from Labour by claiming the inheritance to Tony Blair. Rather than being swept into insignificance by accepting the need to support the government when the country is facing economic difficulties, Cameron has gone for the high risk separation. The Tories have set their stall out against  the economic package announced yesterday in a very stark way. The clash between a government which believes intervention is necessary to help stimulate the economy and an opposition which will leave everything to the markets (just remember the last time they did that) could not be more clear.

And the game is now on for the General Election. if the measure announced by the Chancellor gain some traction in the next 12 months, then labour will be home and hosed. If they fail, then Gordon Brown will have gift-wrapped an electoral advantage to the Tories.

High earners to pay 45%

Today, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling will not be giving the details of a pre-budget report. Today will be a full blown budget designed to help stimulate an economy that the bankers, mainly, have pulled into recession.

In some ways the 2.5% off VAT and a new tax rate of 45% for high earners is fairly small beer. Certainly I am not convinced that 50p off the price of a 20 quid jumper is going to get the engines turning again. The other measures, including additional tax relief for low income families, are more likely to pump cash rather than credit back into the economy.

But in one major respect, today's budget will be the most important since Labour first switched priorities from private tax cuts to public service investment in 1997.

Suddenly an ocean of clear blue water has opened between Labour and David Cameron's neo-cons. Unusually, Alistair Darling has summed this up rather neatly. He said, "I despair of people who say in a moment of difficulty facing the country there's nothing we can do. It's back to [Thatcher's] idea that unemployment is a price worth paying."

None of this, however, will bring forward the date of the General Election which will be in May 2010. The Prime Minister should break another out of date, useless tradition and announce 4 May 2010 as the date immediately after today's budget.

Time to eat humble pie

I'm sat at home tinkering with design rather than content of my blog, listening to Saints v Reading on the radio.

Bradley Wright-Phillips has just scored his second and we are two nil up with 5 minutes gone in the second half. I am not BWPs greatest fan, but today he's the man.

C'mon you reds.

How many judges does it take to...

Lord Bingham has retired. Never retiring he has taken the opportunity to say the advice given that the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was lawful was, in fact, wrong.

So, that's Lord Goldsmith 1 v 1 Lord Bingham.

The Guardian, like the child who is losing at conkers, now wants it to be best out of three with a public inquiry. Or best of five, no seven, until they get their nose in front.

There is never any suggestion that an inquiry should be held to identify how decisions to go to war could be taken in such a way that they would command universal support - facile and pointless though that would be. No, the Guardianistas merely want to be able to say that their coffee cup conclusions about the right and wrongs of this war (why not the Balkans, Kosovo, Rwanda) were so, so correct.

There probably should be an inquiry in to all conflicts (although we won't have any spare judges to try criminal cases which would be a bit of a blow) and no doubt there will be here. But let the terms of reference be of benefit to all the people of the UK and to those who will have to take dreadful (in the true sense) decisions on our behalf in future.