In terms of democracy the British have often had a patronising attitude to states where the political system seems to be corrupt. Of course, with only half of our parliament elected, we have little ground to stand on when commenting on democracy anyway. However, as the suspension of three former ministers yesterday Stephen Byers, Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon because of their 'lobbying' activities shows that we have no basis on which to criticise foreign political systems when ours is so clearly corrupt. Parliament is very good at keeping its dirty secrets secret, but occasionally evidence comes out. Back in 1994-6 we had the 'cash for questions' scandal that MPs Neil Hamilton and Tim Smith, in connection with Ian Greer's lobbying company, had received payments in order to ask specific questions in the House of Commons. Other MPs were subsequently criticised by the Nolan Committee for behaving in the same way.
Starting last year we had a whole string of allegations against MPs who had been doing various dubious things with their expenses, in particular around their second homes, supposedly to allow them to attend parliament more easily. This followed rumbling complaints against certain MPs from both the Labour and Conservative parties, in 2007-8. It included ministers like Ed Balls and Jacqui Smith. In 2009 a whole raft of 'fiddles' by numerous politicians came to light. The scandal compelled Speaker of the House of Commons, Michael Martin and Jacqui Smith, Geoff Hoon, Hazel Blears, Tony McNulty and Kitty Ussher all resigning their ministerial positions. A number of Conservatives involved, Andrew McKay, Douglas Hogg, Anthony Steen, Sir Peter Viggers, Sir Nicholas Winterton and Lady Ann Winterton (how come a married couple can both be MPs anyway, is that not wrong in itself?), Christopher Frasier and Ian Taylor all said they would stand down from parliament either immediately or at the next election. Last night the BBC News Channel gave details of 20 MPs, many of them Labour ones, who have regularly received free holidays in places like Gibraltar, Cyprus, the Maldives and Sri Lanka and then have tabled motions and asked questions in parliament for the benefit of those territories/countries.
The saying is that 'power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely'. This is why during John Major's terms of office it was the Conservatives who were most prominent in having corrupt MPs and now it is Labour who is at the forefront in such illegal behaviour. It seems that numerous MPs and ministers, tens of them, have been involved in taking gifts and payments in order to exert influence on the behalf of vested interests. Stephen Byers was seen likening himself to a taxi, available to exert influence in exchange for payments. Has Byers never realised what the concept of prostitution is? Stephen Byers is a prostitute. He does not give sexual favours, but he gives himself entirely in exchange for money. How have we got to this position? I suppose part of it comes from the incomplete job that the Nolan Committee did in stemming corruption in the 1990s and that even this year's reaction to the scandal has been muted. We need to be arresting and imprisoning corrupt MPs otherwise we will not root out this behaviour from the centre of our civil society. In such a context are we surprised when we find large companies such as BAe are paying bribes to win contracts? Parliament and its members set an example to the whole of society and at present are showing us that we need to be prostitutes to get on.
I supported the Labour Party until the mid-1990s when it became the Blairite Party. I think that era when we moved from traditional political parties to the personality focused ones, that keep reminding me of the Peronist politics of Argentina and Gaullism in France. Tony Blair himself, while not being charged with corruption, has gone on to an extremely prosperous career being paid large sums to speak and share his 'wisdom'. Having a party which focused on personalities rather than policies and clearly elicited people seeking influence, the whole Bernie Ecclestone, Hindujas, Cool Britannia scams, characterised politics in the 1990s and into the 2000s. Ken Livingstone, former Mayor of London (2001-8) and a Labour MP 1987-2000 (he remained an MP until 2001 but without the Labour whip), sees the era of Tony Blair's governments with their focus on money rather than policies as being crucial in moving us into an era of very widespread 'sleaze' going beyond just a few corrupt MPs to tens of them behaving in this way.
The fact that Lord Mandelson was compelled to resign twice due to dubious dealings and yet was still able to return to official positions and then receive a peerage because he was favoured by Tony Blair sent out a signal that a blind eye would be turned to such dubious behaviour. After his first resignation in 2000 over an improper payment for his home, Mandelson should never have been allowed to come anywhere near government ever again. The fact that he was appointed a minister again and had to resign in 2001 over his connection with the Hindujas again on the basis of improper influence being wielded showed so many MPs that might have been thinking about behaving corruptly, that they would not suffer a great deal even if caught behaving that way. Even while Commissioner for Trade in the European Commission questions were asked about Mandelson connections with leading business people under investigation by the EU. Mandelson was made a baron in 2008 and entered the government for the third time. Is it surprisingly that so many have followed this role model's behaviour?
How do we resolve this situation? The first step is to press criminal charges. If taking money for asking questions or exerting political pressure is not yet strictly criminal behaviour it must become so immediately and people must be arrested and imprisoned when found guilty of breaking that law. The second thing is that we need to entirely flush out parliament of all of those who have been there in this corrupt phase. I would say that any MP currently in the House of Commons must stand down at the next election and we have an entirely new house that would come in on the basis of the new laws. I acknowledge that that would leave us with an inexperienced parliament and government, so the compromise would be to limit all MPs to only two terms of office. Thus, we could retain anyone who was elected in the 2005 election or by-elections since. Anyone who has been in parliament any longer must now leave. Anyone elected in 2005 would have to leave in 2015 at the latest and anyone who is elected this year would have to go in 2020 at the latest. Five years is more than enough time to build up experience. Of course, some MPs will again become corrupt, but hopefully the new laws would punish them and importantly a culture like Britain of the old days, would be established that eschewed what has become an acceptance of corrupt behaviour. It always has to be challenged. Ernest Bevin, Labour Foreign Secretary 1945-51 used to dine with business leaders and they probably exerted influence through him. However, it seems that corruption was far less rife than it has become today.
While I would not advise that we move to the Chartists' demand of a parliament every year, I certainly would reduce the life of parliaments say to 3 or 4 years to stop people becoming established in the post and so prone to exerting influence in the interests of others. Perhaps we could make it so that an MP could sit only for 3 x 3-year parliaments or if you insist 4 x 3-year parliaments. People argue that short governments lead them to make crowd pleasing policies, but that happens even now with 4 or 5-year parliaments. The UK has constantly neglected long-term planning anyway. I would have more confidence if policies were not being introduced by MPs doing it because they were being paid to behave that way and who were not corrupt in themselves. We need to flush out the corruption from parliament. It is already a gift to the extremists such as the UKIP and BNP who argue that they are untouched by such corruption, because if they gained influence then a lot of us would be finding policies and behaviour that we would find unpalatable in terms of equality, democracy and personal freedom. We are at a turning point. Voting in a Conservative government will bring no change as their MPs are as mired in this corruption as those of Labour. We need thorough reform and new ways of parliament being run to finally clear away the corruption we are seeing and to ensure as best we can that it does not return to our political life in the future.
Showing posts with label Peter Mandelson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Peter Mandelson. Show all posts
Tuesday, 23 March 2010
Tuesday, 3 March 2009
Agency Workers: Cannon Fodder of the UK Economy
One of the worst legacies of the Thatcher era (1979-90) and the Thatcherist politics we have seen since has been the casualisation of the workforce in the UK. I suppose this was a natural evolution of the anti-trade union policies that the Thatcherites felt were necessary such as the breaking down of the closed shop (i.e. it being compulsory for workers in a company to belong to a union) and the further erosion of the rights of trade unions in the early to mid-1980s. Beyond this though was the New Right attitude, that for companies to prosper they had to be able to recruit and discard workers as easily as possible without having to worry about things such as contracts and redundancy pay, effectively moving back to the kind of employment patterns prevalent before the Second World War. Along with this desire to have a 'flexible' labour force and reduce employment costs was a wish to remove the other seemingly burdensome cost of things such as sick pay, paid holiday, pensions and the costs of training staff. There was an expectation that you should be able to employ workers that were ready to work precisely for your company, the exact way you worked. This is why business has such problem with universities. It does not want educated, thinking people who may question their employers, instead they want people churned out who can fit into their particular company without any need to induction or retraining.
This attitude that this is the correct pattern of employment, with the workers giving unquestioning loyalty to a company even after they are laid off, has not really been challenged since Thatcher established as what she felt was the only 'logical' way to run workforces. The easiest way to get workforces like this is to employ them through agencies. The advantage of this is that they are not employed directly by your company, it is the agency who is responsible for the workers. They usually charge double the hourly rate that the workers are paid, but many companies and sections of the civil service and education prefer to pay these higher costs to get the flexible workforce that they feel they need. In fact this is often a fantasy as the case of a worker kept on temporary contracts for nine years at the University of Glasgow proved when he took his employers to court last year. In fact the university would have saved itself thousands of pounds if they had given the worker a contract themselves. The rights of agency workers have improved. The European Union's Social Chapter which was introduced in 1989 but which the UK finally signed up to in 1997 and The Fixed Term Employees Regulations of 2002 prompted by EU pressure have moved things on. The UK remains exempt from the Working Hours Directive of 1993. However, such rules allowed contract workers to pay into pension schemes and if their contract stopped (after a 13-week probation period) they were entitled to redundancy pay. Agencies have also introduced paid leave and sometimes sick pay, so things are getting better than in the 1990s when I was an agency employee.
My own experiences are not the worst out there but I know them well and they show up some of the difficulties that this approach to agency workers cause. I was on a contract for 2.5 years for one employer. It was a weekly contract which meant any Friday I could be laid off. My employer saw themselves as generous as they usually told me if I would be needed for the next four weeks. They reduced this to three weeks which caused difficulty for me as I had to travel for an hour on public transport to reach my workplace and buying a monthly season ticket saved me a lot of money. However, if I bought a monthly season ticket and then only needed it for three weeks my income would suffer (I was on that marginal an income). They did not understand why that was such a difficulty. They had enough work for 2.5 years, in fact for longer as it was me who resigned the job in the end, I could have stayed there longer there was more than enough for me to do and they had the money to pay me. I earned £10 per hour and worked a 36-hour week. Whilst they did not have to pay me holiday leave (I did not take one day off in 2.5 years) or sick leave, they had to pay the agency £20 per hour (half of which I received) to employ me which meant over the space of the 2.5 years (i.e. 130 weeks) x 36 hours x £10 = £46,800 for using the agency, which far exceeded any holiday pay, sick pay and redundancy pay that I would have received if I had been a member of staff.
The problems of being an agency worker did not simply extend to having no sick cover, no holiday pay or redundancy, it also prevented me improving myself. When new software was being introduced I suggested that I was sent on training to learn how to use it. I was told very directly that there was no point, when it came in, I would simply be laid off and someone who knew the software would be employed in my place. It was assumed that there would be people out there who knew this specialist software and would be willing to be employed at the same rate as me. Of course that is the 'logic' of the flexible labour market. The implication was that I should pay for training myself to make myself a suitable employee. This assumption that the burden of training should always lie outside companies whether in colleges and universities or through individuals paying for it is an enduring one. There is no comprehension that to have a new employee would lose all the expertise and experiences I had built up working for their company let alone the damage it did to my morale. No employer seems to understand that no-one wants to feel they are disposable and that if they do they are not inspired to do anything except go slow or sabotage the company. Most training courses are outside the reach of the average worker's income and as an agency worker you lose twice as you are not being paid anything while you are shelling out for the training.
The other problem I encountered when an agency worker was that no-one would take responsibility for me. This branch of the civil service employed 100 agency staff often rising to 150 over the Summer, out of a total workforce of 650 people. The Personnel Department would often refuse to communicate with me because I was not a member of staff. They did not see the problem in not signing timesheets on a Friday (a day they would pick to go on an 'away day'; I must say that the Personnel Department of that section of the civil service excelled in arrogance and self-centredness even among personnel staff) despite the fact that it meant the agency workers' wages would be delayed a week. The key problem came when the job came to an end. In Britain if you turn up at a Job Centre and have been dismissed or have resigned from your job and try to claim unemployment benefit (as opposed to income support) your benefits are frozen. You need a letter from your employer saying that they made you redundant. Now as an agency worker the Personnel Department said my work was coming to an end, but they said that because the agency was my employer it was up to the agency to write such a letter. However, the agency also refused to write me such a letter because they said it was up to the company if I kept working or not. Neither would accept responsibility for my work coming to an end despite the fact that they were condemning me to 6 months without benefits. They simply did not care what situation that left me in.
Thus, agency employment is a nightmare and leaves you very vulnerable. Of course originally employment agencies were supposed to be for people between permanent jobs or looking to find work to supplement their income as their main job was being a mother or they were retired. However, since the 1980s agency work has become the full-time main form of employment for thousands of people who have to battle to get any kind of protection. An interesting article by Owen Burcott and David Hencke in 'The Guardian' of 21st February 2009 reminded me of the extent to which agency workers are being used and how vulnerable they remain despite the legislative gains. It was found that 850 agency workers had been employed by car manufacturers BMW at their Cowley works outside Oxford and around 6,600 BT employees who were being laid off this year were agency workers. The BMW agency workers had a week's notice and received no redundancy pay, they are simply tossed aside because it is so easy. There is no thought about the fate of these people. Apparently the UK had 1.3 million agency workers, 4.5% of the workforce, almost one in every twenty workers, in 2006, a far higher percentage than elsewhere in the EU. Agency workers come from all kinds of professions from secretaries to warehouse workers to civil servants to skilled car makers to call centre staff.
The UK has a flexible labour force in its agency workers and yet it seems to have brought no benefits to the UK economy. As I have noted, companies actually delude themselves in thinking agency workers are cheaper than employing people directly, the reverse is actually the case. All that they relieve the company of is having to worry about the fate of these people. In doing this they forget about the damage to the morale of this workforce. Now, not everyone who works for an agency wants a permanent job, but from my own experience a large percentage do and settle for agency work because it is all that they can get.
There have been ongoing negotiations between trades unions and employers to get more rights for agency workers, particularly in terms of redundancy pay and periods of notice of termination of employment. Again it is only because Britain is being pressed by the EU (why can we not come up with some gains for workers without having to being pushed to do it) which wants such rights in position by 2011. You would think with a 'Labour' government in power they would be pressing ahead with such improvements, well they were until the evil (and I do not use that word lightly, I would add sleazy and corrupt to it too) Lord Mandelson who is Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform and Pat McFadden Secretary of State for Work and Pensions are now trying to stop these minor improvements for fear of irritating business. In fact Mandelson, being an arch-Blairite rather than any Labour politician of course has no interest in benefiting workers simply in pandering to the wealthy who have got Britain into the appalling economic state it currently is in. We are supposed to get legislation before the summer but Mandelson is reviewing all that the EU is asking for to see what the minimum he can get away with and as union leaders have noted his decision to continue consultation is simply prevarication. In the meantime thousands of people are being thrown into poverty and dumped on the ritual pyre to the great false religion of flexible labour which simply means allowing employers to shaft their workforce and get away with it.
P.P. 19/03/2008 - It is interesting that the UK government this week is again resisting attempts to end its opt-out from the EU's Working Time Directive which would ensure that British workers would work no more than an average of 48 hours per week. The UK economy depends on workers doing long hours at low wages and they know it would mean a readjustment if people were stopped doing the 60 hours which are still common in some industries. Pathetically, they are using the case of volunteer fire-fighters, saying that they will be banned. There are 16,500 'retained' firefighters in the UK and 630 volunteer ones in Scotland, compared to 38,000 full-time firefighters. This is a tiny fraction of the working population. In addition, the UK is not unique in having volunteer firefighters, I know Germany has had them since the 19th century and yet they seem to have no problem with the Working Time Directive. The UK government should come clean and admit that the reason why they want British workers to be compelled to work such long hours is to keep employers on their side. These employers, despite their huge bonuses have set up a working economy based on long hours and low wages and to adjust it now would make them feel they had to lay off workers just as unemployment is rising. The British government, if it had any concern for the welfare of the British workforce, should have adopted the Working Time Directive at a time when they could have been less blackmailed by rapacious employers; it could have accompanied the introduction of the minimum wage. I find it incredible that the British government puts so much effort into fighting off legislation which would make the working lives of many of its citizens better.
This attitude that this is the correct pattern of employment, with the workers giving unquestioning loyalty to a company even after they are laid off, has not really been challenged since Thatcher established as what she felt was the only 'logical' way to run workforces. The easiest way to get workforces like this is to employ them through agencies. The advantage of this is that they are not employed directly by your company, it is the agency who is responsible for the workers. They usually charge double the hourly rate that the workers are paid, but many companies and sections of the civil service and education prefer to pay these higher costs to get the flexible workforce that they feel they need. In fact this is often a fantasy as the case of a worker kept on temporary contracts for nine years at the University of Glasgow proved when he took his employers to court last year. In fact the university would have saved itself thousands of pounds if they had given the worker a contract themselves. The rights of agency workers have improved. The European Union's Social Chapter which was introduced in 1989 but which the UK finally signed up to in 1997 and The Fixed Term Employees Regulations of 2002 prompted by EU pressure have moved things on. The UK remains exempt from the Working Hours Directive of 1993. However, such rules allowed contract workers to pay into pension schemes and if their contract stopped (after a 13-week probation period) they were entitled to redundancy pay. Agencies have also introduced paid leave and sometimes sick pay, so things are getting better than in the 1990s when I was an agency employee.
My own experiences are not the worst out there but I know them well and they show up some of the difficulties that this approach to agency workers cause. I was on a contract for 2.5 years for one employer. It was a weekly contract which meant any Friday I could be laid off. My employer saw themselves as generous as they usually told me if I would be needed for the next four weeks. They reduced this to three weeks which caused difficulty for me as I had to travel for an hour on public transport to reach my workplace and buying a monthly season ticket saved me a lot of money. However, if I bought a monthly season ticket and then only needed it for three weeks my income would suffer (I was on that marginal an income). They did not understand why that was such a difficulty. They had enough work for 2.5 years, in fact for longer as it was me who resigned the job in the end, I could have stayed there longer there was more than enough for me to do and they had the money to pay me. I earned £10 per hour and worked a 36-hour week. Whilst they did not have to pay me holiday leave (I did not take one day off in 2.5 years) or sick leave, they had to pay the agency £20 per hour (half of which I received) to employ me which meant over the space of the 2.5 years (i.e. 130 weeks) x 36 hours x £10 = £46,800 for using the agency, which far exceeded any holiday pay, sick pay and redundancy pay that I would have received if I had been a member of staff.
The problems of being an agency worker did not simply extend to having no sick cover, no holiday pay or redundancy, it also prevented me improving myself. When new software was being introduced I suggested that I was sent on training to learn how to use it. I was told very directly that there was no point, when it came in, I would simply be laid off and someone who knew the software would be employed in my place. It was assumed that there would be people out there who knew this specialist software and would be willing to be employed at the same rate as me. Of course that is the 'logic' of the flexible labour market. The implication was that I should pay for training myself to make myself a suitable employee. This assumption that the burden of training should always lie outside companies whether in colleges and universities or through individuals paying for it is an enduring one. There is no comprehension that to have a new employee would lose all the expertise and experiences I had built up working for their company let alone the damage it did to my morale. No employer seems to understand that no-one wants to feel they are disposable and that if they do they are not inspired to do anything except go slow or sabotage the company. Most training courses are outside the reach of the average worker's income and as an agency worker you lose twice as you are not being paid anything while you are shelling out for the training.
The other problem I encountered when an agency worker was that no-one would take responsibility for me. This branch of the civil service employed 100 agency staff often rising to 150 over the Summer, out of a total workforce of 650 people. The Personnel Department would often refuse to communicate with me because I was not a member of staff. They did not see the problem in not signing timesheets on a Friday (a day they would pick to go on an 'away day'; I must say that the Personnel Department of that section of the civil service excelled in arrogance and self-centredness even among personnel staff) despite the fact that it meant the agency workers' wages would be delayed a week. The key problem came when the job came to an end. In Britain if you turn up at a Job Centre and have been dismissed or have resigned from your job and try to claim unemployment benefit (as opposed to income support) your benefits are frozen. You need a letter from your employer saying that they made you redundant. Now as an agency worker the Personnel Department said my work was coming to an end, but they said that because the agency was my employer it was up to the agency to write such a letter. However, the agency also refused to write me such a letter because they said it was up to the company if I kept working or not. Neither would accept responsibility for my work coming to an end despite the fact that they were condemning me to 6 months without benefits. They simply did not care what situation that left me in.
Thus, agency employment is a nightmare and leaves you very vulnerable. Of course originally employment agencies were supposed to be for people between permanent jobs or looking to find work to supplement their income as their main job was being a mother or they were retired. However, since the 1980s agency work has become the full-time main form of employment for thousands of people who have to battle to get any kind of protection. An interesting article by Owen Burcott and David Hencke in 'The Guardian' of 21st February 2009 reminded me of the extent to which agency workers are being used and how vulnerable they remain despite the legislative gains. It was found that 850 agency workers had been employed by car manufacturers BMW at their Cowley works outside Oxford and around 6,600 BT employees who were being laid off this year were agency workers. The BMW agency workers had a week's notice and received no redundancy pay, they are simply tossed aside because it is so easy. There is no thought about the fate of these people. Apparently the UK had 1.3 million agency workers, 4.5% of the workforce, almost one in every twenty workers, in 2006, a far higher percentage than elsewhere in the EU. Agency workers come from all kinds of professions from secretaries to warehouse workers to civil servants to skilled car makers to call centre staff.
The UK has a flexible labour force in its agency workers and yet it seems to have brought no benefits to the UK economy. As I have noted, companies actually delude themselves in thinking agency workers are cheaper than employing people directly, the reverse is actually the case. All that they relieve the company of is having to worry about the fate of these people. In doing this they forget about the damage to the morale of this workforce. Now, not everyone who works for an agency wants a permanent job, but from my own experience a large percentage do and settle for agency work because it is all that they can get.
There have been ongoing negotiations between trades unions and employers to get more rights for agency workers, particularly in terms of redundancy pay and periods of notice of termination of employment. Again it is only because Britain is being pressed by the EU (why can we not come up with some gains for workers without having to being pushed to do it) which wants such rights in position by 2011. You would think with a 'Labour' government in power they would be pressing ahead with such improvements, well they were until the evil (and I do not use that word lightly, I would add sleazy and corrupt to it too) Lord Mandelson who is Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform and Pat McFadden Secretary of State for Work and Pensions are now trying to stop these minor improvements for fear of irritating business. In fact Mandelson, being an arch-Blairite rather than any Labour politician of course has no interest in benefiting workers simply in pandering to the wealthy who have got Britain into the appalling economic state it currently is in. We are supposed to get legislation before the summer but Mandelson is reviewing all that the EU is asking for to see what the minimum he can get away with and as union leaders have noted his decision to continue consultation is simply prevarication. In the meantime thousands of people are being thrown into poverty and dumped on the ritual pyre to the great false religion of flexible labour which simply means allowing employers to shaft their workforce and get away with it.
P.P. 19/03/2008 - It is interesting that the UK government this week is again resisting attempts to end its opt-out from the EU's Working Time Directive which would ensure that British workers would work no more than an average of 48 hours per week. The UK economy depends on workers doing long hours at low wages and they know it would mean a readjustment if people were stopped doing the 60 hours which are still common in some industries. Pathetically, they are using the case of volunteer fire-fighters, saying that they will be banned. There are 16,500 'retained' firefighters in the UK and 630 volunteer ones in Scotland, compared to 38,000 full-time firefighters. This is a tiny fraction of the working population. In addition, the UK is not unique in having volunteer firefighters, I know Germany has had them since the 19th century and yet they seem to have no problem with the Working Time Directive. The UK government should come clean and admit that the reason why they want British workers to be compelled to work such long hours is to keep employers on their side. These employers, despite their huge bonuses have set up a working economy based on long hours and low wages and to adjust it now would make them feel they had to lay off workers just as unemployment is rising. The British government, if it had any concern for the welfare of the British workforce, should have adopted the Working Time Directive at a time when they could have been less blackmailed by rapacious employers; it could have accompanied the introduction of the minimum wage. I find it incredible that the British government puts so much effort into fighting off legislation which would make the working lives of many of its citizens better.
Saturday, 4 October 2008
Why On Earth Mandelson?
I know the UK, like all countries in the World is facing a difficult time with the global credit crisis. I know Prime Minister Gordon Brown is not only having to tackle these issues, but seems to have been written off politically by British society despite the fact, that the Conservatives still have no policies even after their party conference this week. The Conservatives threaten to make the UK far more divided and will follow policies which will exacerbate the difficulties for average people in the UK. However, that seems to be overlooked. Another, possibly even more crucial factor that has been overlooked is that Brown lost the showdown with the energy companies. He was unable to introduce a windfall tax, despite their huge profits, because they said they would simply recoup it from consumers by raising prices so totally undermining the point of the tax. Many people will die this Winter in the UK because of the greed of the energy companies. No UK prime minister now has the ability to stop that, it was proven last month, but no-one seems to have noticed that. Now that EDF (known in its home country, France as Electricite de France has now bought British Energy Group which controls the UK's nuclear power, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has even more control over Britain's energy prices than he did last month. EDF is 85% owned by the French government. In France Sarkozy (a conservative, not a socialist) prevented Electicitie de France raising prices by more than 1.5% this year, in the UK all energy companies have raised prices by 25-34% this year. So the head ot the French government has more control over our prices, because he runs one of our leading suppliers, than Brown does.
How has Brown addressed both the issue of him having no ability to control energy prices and also struggling to face down the economic crisis? Well, he has a cabinet reshuffle and introduces a 'war cabinet', though at 18 members it is only a few people short of the full Cabinet. Traditionally war cabinets in the UK have had 6 members. He has made Ed Miliband (brother of David Miliband his glamorous rival for control of the Labour Party, and probably his successor), head of the new Department of Energy and the Environment. It is sensible to combine these two, because issues such as wind power, new coal power stations, nuclear power, all impact on both of these. However, unless regulations are tightened, or in this atmosphere of the UK government nationalising things, a leading energy company is taken over by the state (I suggest British Gas, it is the largest supplier, the greediest and it used to be state-run) there is little Ed will be able to do, certainly in terms of changing energy prices to consumers.
Again, I will emphasise that people will die. Already, even before the sharp price rises this year, Help the Aged has noted that 25,000 elderly people were dying each year in the UK as a result of being unable to heat their houses. That figure will rise sharply in the next few weeks. In every street in the UK, you will see the corpses of dead old people being carried from their houses because of the greed of energy companies in the UK.
There are 11 million elderly people in the UK, 2.5 million live in one room so they can keep warm, 2.2 million turn off their heating entirely because they cannot afford to run it; 2 million wear outside clothing indoors to keep warm. These were last year's figures which will be worse now prices have risen. It is predicted all of these figures will treble this year, so we are probably looking at 75,000 dead this Winter, equivalent to every single person living in the Scottish town of Paisley or the English town of Southport simply dying.
Sorry, my anger at that fact always distracts me. Back to the issue in hand, the reappearance of Peter Mandelson. What was going through Brown's head when he decided to bring Mandelson back into the Cabinet? Mandelson is the smarmiest character in British politics of the last thirty years. The way he talks makes your skin crawl. He is smug, very self-satisfied and everyone assumes he has abilities that he has never proven he has. At best, he is good at 'spin' altering media perceptions of challenges being faced, and I accept that Labour probably needs at a time when the media have effectively given the premiership to Conservative leader David Cameron, without him having done anything to earn it. However, Mandelson has no clear ability in economic or business issues. It would do the Cabinet far better to reanimate the corpse of former Labour leader John Smith, with his friendly bank manager demeanour, than to bring Mandelson back. My opposition to Mandelson does not stem just from his unpleasant manner and the fact that he appears on television as if he considers everyone around him to be fools unable to see the truth of his brilliance.
The other thing about Mandelson, which I feel should bar him from office whether in the UK, or in the European Commission where he has been Commissioner for Trade since 2004. Basically he is the most corrupt politician in recent British politics. In December 1998 he resigned at Secretary of State for Trade & Industry after only 5 months in the role after it had been revealed that he had been given a cheap loan for £373,000 from the Paymaster-General Geoffrey Robinson, a millionaire who was under investigation for his business dealings with Mandelson's department. As Tony Blair, for some reason, thought highly of Mandelson he came back in October 1999 as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, a very challenging role which he was highly unsuited for. Fortunately he had to resign in January 2001, so after only 14 months in this post, because he has accepted a £1 million donation from the Hinduja brothers towards the Milennium Dome (this had fallen in his remit when Minister without Portfolio before he had gone to Trade & Industry) in return for being given a British passport. This time Mandelson will be made a lord so does not have to stand for election, and will be a member of the House of Lords, so part of the parliamentary system, for the rest of his life.
Is the UK so lacking in talent that the government has to bring back a man who has been proven to be corrupt and so without talent that it is stunning; who has had only 19 months in ministerial positions? Is there no-one else in the UK who could feel this role, as least as well, if not a great deal better? Mandelson is not even popular within the Labour Party, probably because of these major flaws in him and the fact that he was never nothing more than a smarmy crony to Tony Blair. Send him off to be Blair's assistant or his butler; do not bring him into British parliament for the next 10-20 years. Mandelson was born in 1953 so could still easily be in House of Lords in 2028 if not 2038! Why has Brown shackled our government to this despicable, incapable man? After it seemed he was recovering some ground on the clueless Conservatives, he has now given his government a self-inflicted injury. Drop Mandelson now before he damages this country any further.
How has Brown addressed both the issue of him having no ability to control energy prices and also struggling to face down the economic crisis? Well, he has a cabinet reshuffle and introduces a 'war cabinet', though at 18 members it is only a few people short of the full Cabinet. Traditionally war cabinets in the UK have had 6 members. He has made Ed Miliband (brother of David Miliband his glamorous rival for control of the Labour Party, and probably his successor), head of the new Department of Energy and the Environment. It is sensible to combine these two, because issues such as wind power, new coal power stations, nuclear power, all impact on both of these. However, unless regulations are tightened, or in this atmosphere of the UK government nationalising things, a leading energy company is taken over by the state (I suggest British Gas, it is the largest supplier, the greediest and it used to be state-run) there is little Ed will be able to do, certainly in terms of changing energy prices to consumers.
Again, I will emphasise that people will die. Already, even before the sharp price rises this year, Help the Aged has noted that 25,000 elderly people were dying each year in the UK as a result of being unable to heat their houses. That figure will rise sharply in the next few weeks. In every street in the UK, you will see the corpses of dead old people being carried from their houses because of the greed of energy companies in the UK.
There are 11 million elderly people in the UK, 2.5 million live in one room so they can keep warm, 2.2 million turn off their heating entirely because they cannot afford to run it; 2 million wear outside clothing indoors to keep warm. These were last year's figures which will be worse now prices have risen. It is predicted all of these figures will treble this year, so we are probably looking at 75,000 dead this Winter, equivalent to every single person living in the Scottish town of Paisley or the English town of Southport simply dying.
Sorry, my anger at that fact always distracts me. Back to the issue in hand, the reappearance of Peter Mandelson. What was going through Brown's head when he decided to bring Mandelson back into the Cabinet? Mandelson is the smarmiest character in British politics of the last thirty years. The way he talks makes your skin crawl. He is smug, very self-satisfied and everyone assumes he has abilities that he has never proven he has. At best, he is good at 'spin' altering media perceptions of challenges being faced, and I accept that Labour probably needs at a time when the media have effectively given the premiership to Conservative leader David Cameron, without him having done anything to earn it. However, Mandelson has no clear ability in economic or business issues. It would do the Cabinet far better to reanimate the corpse of former Labour leader John Smith, with his friendly bank manager demeanour, than to bring Mandelson back. My opposition to Mandelson does not stem just from his unpleasant manner and the fact that he appears on television as if he considers everyone around him to be fools unable to see the truth of his brilliance.
The other thing about Mandelson, which I feel should bar him from office whether in the UK, or in the European Commission where he has been Commissioner for Trade since 2004. Basically he is the most corrupt politician in recent British politics. In December 1998 he resigned at Secretary of State for Trade & Industry after only 5 months in the role after it had been revealed that he had been given a cheap loan for £373,000 from the Paymaster-General Geoffrey Robinson, a millionaire who was under investigation for his business dealings with Mandelson's department. As Tony Blair, for some reason, thought highly of Mandelson he came back in October 1999 as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, a very challenging role which he was highly unsuited for. Fortunately he had to resign in January 2001, so after only 14 months in this post, because he has accepted a £1 million donation from the Hinduja brothers towards the Milennium Dome (this had fallen in his remit when Minister without Portfolio before he had gone to Trade & Industry) in return for being given a British passport. This time Mandelson will be made a lord so does not have to stand for election, and will be a member of the House of Lords, so part of the parliamentary system, for the rest of his life.
Is the UK so lacking in talent that the government has to bring back a man who has been proven to be corrupt and so without talent that it is stunning; who has had only 19 months in ministerial positions? Is there no-one else in the UK who could feel this role, as least as well, if not a great deal better? Mandelson is not even popular within the Labour Party, probably because of these major flaws in him and the fact that he was never nothing more than a smarmy crony to Tony Blair. Send him off to be Blair's assistant or his butler; do not bring him into British parliament for the next 10-20 years. Mandelson was born in 1953 so could still easily be in House of Lords in 2028 if not 2038! Why has Brown shackled our government to this despicable, incapable man? After it seemed he was recovering some ground on the clueless Conservatives, he has now given his government a self-inflicted injury. Drop Mandelson now before he damages this country any further.
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