Friday favourite 63

Here's the much underated James with 'She's a star'.  The video features a very young Keeley Hawes - star of Spooks and Ashes to Ashes (among others).

The ludicrous child poverty statistics

Good news - 300,000 fewer children are living in poverty than last year! 

The fact that this is down to the recession and a fall in average incomes shows the ludicrous nature of the concept of defining poverty as a percentage of average income.  Those 300,000 children are living in families most likely worse off than last year.

The 2010 child povery act - along with Tony Blair 13 years earlier - pledge to abolish 'child poverty' was one of those stupid stunts so beloved of new Labour.  You can't legislate poverty away - but being seen to be doing something was more important than actually doing something.  And if you define poverty as a relative to something else you cannot by definition ever abolish poverty because as incomes rise the bar you set rises with it.  Every time a multi millionaire Russian gangster oligarch moves to London we all get poorer.

Iain Duncan Smith is right to say that it is "increasingly clear that poverty is not about income alone".  And by way of a start he might want to find a more appropriate way of measuring poverty in the first place.

Tony Greaves is right...

I don't always agree with Lib Dem peer, Pendle councillor, campaigning guru and icon of northern Liberalism the noble Lord Greaves.  But in  this month's edition of Liberator,  Tony Greaves writes an excellent article - Leaders on a different planet - on the challenges facing the party in government.

The key passages echo a posting on this blog analysing the disasterous elections in May.  Greaves writes:

"Attempts to improve the dire communications within the Liberal Democrats have all been about people at the top telling worried members and activists why the top people are right and the worried ranks are wrong, There is still little explanation of the trade-offs and compromises of coalition, why and how positions have been reached.

"We are still being lumbered with stuff that is politically bad for our party. Whether we have any more core vote to piss off is a matter for debate, but we still seem to be going out of our way to upset traditionally supportive lobbies such as civil liberties and the environment.

"It seems that, in spite of changes in personnel, the people around the leadership the special advisers and other advisers have no more idea of what this party stands for and what our activists will put up with than they had a year ago. Richard Reeves may, thankfully, have gone; but his successors seem no wiser. The bubble they work in may be more stratospheric even than the House of Lords, but it's just as remote from what remains of our party and, more desperately, from the real world."

The full article can be found here and I recommend it in its entirety.

Lib Dems let Hunt off the hook

Lib Dem Voice reports that all 57 Lib Dem MPs will abstain on a Labour motion to hold an independent investigation into whether Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt broke the ministerial code.

The effect of this action is to give the Tories a majority - so its effect is no different from supporting him.  It is a ludicrous position to be in - if the party doesn't think Hunt's position is tenable it should say so and vote accordingly.  As this blog  argued back in April  - Hunt is toast anyway - and the more decisive the action against him the better it is for both parliamentary standards and the reputation of the coalition in dealing with sleaze.

Abstention reinforces the widely held view that Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems are the Tories poodles and will do nothing to promote the new kind of sleaze free cooperative politics that the coalition was supposed to represent.

It also shows that the civil service rules on collective governmental responsibilities are totally unsuitable for coaltition politics.  If the coalition is to survive then the rules of engagement between the parties have to change.  Coalition is not a marriage - it is a short term working arrangement.  And the rules need to reflect that.

Vilnius churches

Just spent a couple of days on a work trip to Vilnius.  The old town is that rare thing in central and eastern Europe - an original old city that survived pretty much unscathed two wars.  And it probably has more churches per capita than anywhere else I've been to.  Here are just a few:

 

Interestingly the most Stalinist architecture I saw were these blocks of flats:

In Luton, near the airport...

Belated Friday favourite 62

This week's Friday favourite is a day late due to a work commitment.  And having caught up with BBC4's excellent 'Punk Britannia' I thought Stiff Little Fingers would be good...

Is the leader of Kingston council moonlighting as a human statue?

Council Leader Derek Osbourne:

Human statue:

Sopwith and Kingston

One hundred years ago Tommy Sopwith opened an aircraft factory in Kingston - in a converted ice skating rink.  Later he moved to new larger premises on Canbury Park Road a few minutes from the railway station - now converted into flats. 

Tommy, of course became famous for his first world war fighter plane - the Camel.  Sopwiths later merged with Hawker and in the second world war Kingston produced the Hawker Hurricane - the aircraft that won the Battle of Britain.  Hawkers later became part of BAe, but not before their engineers had designed and built the Harrier jump jet.  Sopwith died in 1989 aged 101.  He was interviewed a few years before by Raymond Baxter for the BBC:

So it is fitting that this aeronautical history has been remembered - despite the focus of festivities being elsewhere over the weekend.  Kingston market place has a small number of exhibits - including this replica Camel.

Kingston aviation archive  has far more information and it seems to me that the council ought to be making much more of the town's crucial role in UK aviation.  Hopefully the weekend's events will prove to be the start of something bigger.

Friday favourite 61 (Jubilee)

As the bunting goes up and the sandwiches prepared for the weekend's street parties (at least round here) I thought this track 'Ready to go' seemed appropriate.  So enjoy Republica from 1996...

The one budget U-turn we won't see...

'... today George Osbourne admitted cutting the 50p top rate of tax was a mistake and agreed to continue with it until economic conditions were suitable for tax cuts.'

If he did however, he might start to restore some of his recently (deservedly) shredded reputation for economic competence.  It might also help the Conservatives deal with the issue that they are perceived as a bunch of out of touch rich boys.