The Great Debate UK

George Osborne and the band-aid effect

The second budget presented to Parliament by Chancellor George Osborne is likely to be less talking and more doing when it comes to bringing the UK’s public finances under control.

This won’t be to everyone’s tastes. Some argue that the UK is in less financial danger than Europe’s financially troubled states, yet Osborne is embracing deficit reduction plans with as much gusto as Ireland or Greece.

Osborne has indeed been faithful to the ‘band-aid effect’ when it comes to remedying the UK’s bloated balance sheet. There is to be no picking at the corners for him, he is getting ready to rip that plaster off with all of the short-term excruciating pain that goes with it.

The Chancellor’s fiscal targets are ambitious. He wants to virtually eliminate the budget deficit by 2014-2015 and to halve government borrowing over the same time period. Seventy-seven percent of this will be achieved through public spending cuts, with the rest of the 23 percent coming from tax increases.

In the clip above, Kathleen Brooks says this will be “a budget of no surprises.”

from Afghan Journal:

Afghan election: Industrial-scale corruption, or real hope?

What is a worse prospect for an Afghanistan election – election fraud on an industrial scale or a quiet campaign of intimidation that keeps voters away from the polls, or forces them to vote for the most powerful candidate? That seems to be the choice facing many Afghan voters ahead of the Sept. 18 parliamentary election, particularly those in the Pashtun tribal belt in the south and east where so much of the fraud that marred last year’s presidential ballot was committed.

Afghan voters can be excused for feeling ballot fatigue. The September vote will be their fourth in six years. There have been some improvements but the key questions of poor governance, corruption and security remain unanswered despite the number of ballots they have cast. To turn out again will be a real test of their commitment to democracy, a right taken for granted by many in the West and grumbled about when they are asked to exercise it. It would hardly be surprising, given the risks, if many decided not to vote.

But the Sept. 18 poll is important nonetheless. It will be a real test of Afghanistan’s stability, of the progress being made in governance and in the fight against rampant corruption of which so many in government at all levels have been accused.

These are the things that will also be factored into U.S. President Barack Obama’s promised Afghan strategy review in December.

Ultimately it is a question of whether it is all worth the effort. Most Americans seem to say no – a poll released by NBC and The Wall Street Journal this month found seven out of 10 Americans don’t believe the war will end successfully.  The November mid-term congressional elections will be a stern test of Obama’s resolve, with even his own Democrats divided.

The Disunited Kingdom

- Paul Henderson Scott has written numerous books on Scottish history, literature and affairs, including ‘A 20th Century Life’ and its sequel, ‘The New Scotland’. He has been Rector of Dundee University, President of the Saltire Society and of Scottish PEN and a Vice-President of the Scottish National Party. The opinions expressed are his own -

The recent election has revealed more clearly than before the profound divide between Scottish and English opinion. The Conservatives have 297 seats in England but only one in Scotland (plus eight in Wales). As Joyce McMillan said in The Scotsman, “Our pattern of voting increasingly marks us out as a nation apart”.

Both of the two major Scottish papers had headlines like: “The Disunited Kingdom”. Much of the English press, or at least their Scottish editions, drew the same conclusion. “The Daily Mail” said that Britain is now “a nation of two tribes”. Magnus Linklater in “The Times” said that, “England and Scotland may share a boundary, but this weekend there is little common ground between them”.

If the Conservatives form the next British Government they have no moral right to legislate for Scotland where they have only one parliamentary seat.

One might well ask how could there be such a wide divergence between two countries which have been in a Union under the same government for 300 years? Before the Union of 1707 Scotland and England had profoundly different histories. For centuries they had very little contact except across a battlefield.

Scotland was very much part of the rest of Europe, allied to France and in close contact with many other countries in trade and cultural exchange. It evolved a distinctive and rich cultural and intellectual tradition. Even after 1707 Scotland retained control over its own education system, the law, the church and local government which had much more influence on national character and opinion than the distant Parliament in London.

In the 19th century the British Empire reconciled many Scots to the Union because of its consequences for the Scottish economy and the opportunities which it gave for administrative employment in its territories. Most of the steam ships and the locomotives for the whole empire were built in Scotland.

The race for the premiership: high tension, low quality

– Laurence Copeland is a professor of finance at Cardiff University Business School and a co-author of “Verdict on the Crash” published by the Institute of Economic Affairs. The opinions expressed are his own. -

“The most exciting race in years”. “It’s going to go down to the line.” “The old order has truly been upset.”

The General Election or the climax of the premiership season? Blues or Reds? Does it matter? The breathless hype from the media, the whining about unfairness from the also-rans, the ducking and diving, the spin-doctoring and financial shenanigans and, most of all, the breathtaking dishonesty of the main protagonists – they’re all there at the top of English football as much as at the top of (British) politics.

There is one other thing they have in common too. In both cases, the excitement of the climax hides the same dismal reality. In our politics as in our club football, the country is plumbing new depths. The difference is that next year, in all probability, the Premiership will again be the best league in the world, whereas our politics is only going to get worse.

This has been the most dishonest election in postwar British history, possibly the most dishonest ever. Anyone who had slept through the last three years would never suspect that the economy was not still cruising ahead at a 3 percent annual growth rate, with rock-solid financial institutions and a AAA credit rating for its unassailable fiscal strength.

The politicians trade insults accusing each other of having secret plans to act responsibly, while trumpeting their own determination to carry on spending as if the budget deficit were 1.7 billion pounds, the sort of number we were used to before 2008, rather than 100 times as great, as it is in reality.

Cameron in his uninspiring way showed some signs of honesty in the early stages of the campaign, until, like the rugby player he used to be, Gordon Brown tackled him and dragged him down into the mud.

from Matt Falloon:

Brown soldiers on

If a car slams into a bus stop just yards away as you launch a last-ditch election offensive, you might be forgiven for thinking that the gods are not on your side.

But even after the nightmare week British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has had, such portents of doom have little visible effect on the self-proclaimed underdog in this, one of Britain's most closely fought parliamentary elections for 25 years.

Brown and his cabinet colleagues, unveiling campaign posters in a windswept car park on Friday when the sound of screeching brakes made everyone jump, ploughed on with their attack on the centre-right Conservatives, warning that a vote for the opposition would put British economy and families at risk.

"You have got to have this inner reservoir of resilience to fight back when anything happens to you," the Labour leader told students later in an athletics hall at Loughborough university. "That's what I've got to do in the next few days anyway."

Even a man who has survived two coup attempts from within his own party since taking over from Tony Blair in 2007 could not have expected such bad luck in the days before the May 6 election.

Behind in opinion polls for much of his three-year tenure at the top, this was meant to be the week Brown fought back.

The third, and final, televised leaders' debate was on the economy -- a godsend for a man who helped spearhead the response to the global financial crisis and served as finance minister for a decade before taking over from Tony Blair in 2007.

from UK News:

Opinion poll raises spectre of hung British parliament

The latest opinion poll in Britain showing the opposition Conservatives six points ahead of the ruling Labour party has raised the possibility of a hung parliament with no one party having an overall majority and a return to the kind of political uncertainty not seen since the 1970s.

Kenneth Clarke, the Conservatives' business spokesman, said earlier this month that a hung parliament at this point in the economic cycle would be a disaster, an assertion his boss David Cameron was quick to try to play down after the latest survey.

The fact is that a landslide Conservative victory, which at one point had appeared inevitable with polls showing Cameron's party 20 points ahead, now looks far less likely after Prime Minister Gordon Brown's best opinion poll showing in almost a year.

The Ipsos MORI survey in the Observer newspaper showed Labour on 31 percent, the Conservatives on 37 percent and the Liberal Democrats on 17 percent. The last British election to deliver a hung parliament was called in February 1974 by Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath. His decision to call a snap poll in the face of labour unrest and economic turmoil disastrously backfired. A second election in October 1974 allowed Labour's Harold Wilson to turn a minority government into a small working majority.

The fresh glimmer of hope for Labour came against a backdrop of confidence in economic recovery, a Labour by-election victory and signs the Conservatives were struggling to win over floating voters. Labour, in power since 1997, has suffered from the longest recession on record, a scandal over lawmakers' expenses and military losses in Afghanistan. A general election must be held by June 3. 

"I do think that in the middle of an acute national crisis a hung parliament would be one of the biggest disasters we could suffer ... that would be a bigger danger than a Labour victory," said Clarke, one of the heavyweights of the Conservative party and a former finance minister.

"Fear of City Turmoil if Election Delivers Hung Parliament," was the Daily Telegraph headline prompted by Clarke's comments over an article that referred to the "potentially devastating effect such a result could have on the financial markets at a time when the economy is on a life-support machine."

Did Lithuania host a secret CIA prison?

-Clara Gutteridge, Renditions Investigator at legal charity Reprieve. The opinions expressed are her own.-

I welcome the Lithuanian parliament’s announcement that it will investigate allegations that a secret CIA prison operated on its territory from early 2004 to late 2005.

Unlike Poland and Romania – also alleged to have hosted secret CIA torture sites in the years following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan – the Lithuanians have responded in a way that befits a modern European democracy.

“If this is true,” Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite said, “Lithuania has to clean up, accept responsibility, apologize, and promise that it will never happen again.”

By contrast, such openness has failed to emerge elsewhere in Eastern Europe. The Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly sessions in 2006-2007, which considered Swiss Senator Dick Marty’s report detailing the allegations against Poland and Romania, were perhaps the most depressing political debates I have ever witnessed.

Representatives from all sides of the political spectrum in Poland and Romania united to “refute” the allegations. When the so-called moderates were asked in private why they were so furiously refusing to even countenance these extremely serious allegations, the response was, “you don’t understand – this is an attack against our country, and to consider it would be un-patriotic”.

Evidently, news of the importance of encouraging healthy dissent in a parliamentary democracy has yet to reach some parts of the New Europe, and Lithuania should be applauded for bucking this trend. As a newer recruit to NATO and the EU, Lithuania has far more to be insecure about when it comes to maintaining U.S. relations than relative old-hands Poland and Romania, yet its president has bravely chosen to stand for political accountability rather than trying to suppress the truth.

from UK News:

MPs’ expenses: rubbing it in?

Fury, resentment and a general feeling of being hard done-by is reported to be the prevailing mood amongst MPs as they reconvene after the Summer break to find brown envelopes of an unwelcome sort waiting for them.

These are the already infamous "Legg letters," the latest symbol along with duck houses, moats and mole-catchers of the expenses scandal which did so much damage to all parties earlier this year.

Written as a result of the inquiry headed by former civil servant Sir Thomas Legg, they assess the expenses claimed by each MP between 2004 and 2008 and, where anomalies have been found, they either demand repayment or clarification.

Gordon Brown is to pay back 12,415 pounds, Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg 910 pounds and SNP leader Alex Salmond 700 pounds. David Cameron has been asked to provide more details about his mortgage repayments.

But three things have particularly annoyed backbenchers.

The first is that Legg has imposed  retrospective limits on various categories of expenses that the MPs themselves obviously cannot have known about at the time. He has said the maximum allowable for cleaning for example is 2,000 pounds and that for gardening 1,000 pounds, according to newspaper reports.

The second is the perception at Westminster that those MPs who made the really big claims, the ones on mortgage payments, are getting away with it. Saying "sorry" seems to be enough, as in the case of former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith.

from Matt Falloon:

Labour lays down policy gauntlet

The Conservatives might be wishing they could have held their party conference before Labour. Prime Minister Gordon Brown's address to his party conference in Brighton on Tuesday has thrown down a flood of new ideas, policies and initiatives from faster cancer diagnosis to choosing how Britain votes in what read more like an mini-election manifesto than a speech. Brown played to his strengths (policy) and avoided trying to overcome his well-known weaknesses (not much of a political entertainer) in public. Trying to be someone else could have been a disaster for a man way behind in the polls to the Conservatives. Whether it will be enough to make any difference to the polls remains to be seen -- Labour needs a miracle there after all. But, for now, going for the policy jugular seems to have done the trick -- giving his browbeaten party something to get excited about and hitting the Conservatives where it hurts. David Cameron's Conservatives have been accused of not giving enough detail on how they would govern the country if the polls are correct and they are to win power next year. They will have to start showing their hand soon if they are going to convince voters that they have the ideas to run the country and aren't just a vote for change for the sake of it.

from Global News Journal:

Germany’s ‘Pirate Party’ hopes for election surprise

Founded by computer geeks in Sweden in 2006 and now active in 33 countries, the Pirate Party is hoping to win over young, disaffected voters in Germany's federal election on Sept. 27 with demands to reform copyright and patent laws along with their policies that oppose internet censorship and surveillance. But do the single-issue activists, with no stance on foreign policy or the economy, even have the faintest hope of overcoming the five percent hurdle needed to enter parliament?

This looks unlikely given the 0.9 percent of the vote they won at the European parliamentary elections in June.  Nonethless, the Piratenpartei with more than 8,000 members is the fastest growing party in Germany, a development partly sparked by the German parliament's ratification of controversial legislation on blocking certain websites in a bid to fight child pornography.

Gero Neugebauer, political scientist at Berlin's Free University, said the traditional parties' failure to properly understand the internet may have put wind in the Pirates' sails. "The large parties have treated the issue as if the only people using the internet are old men with lewd ideas who want to look at pornographic images or practice paedophilia," Neugebauer said in a recent TV interview.  "If the Pirate Party manages to make clear in society the conflict which they presently represent ... then they definitely have the potential to get above the five percent hurdle," he added.

Among the ranks of the Pirate Party is a former Social Democrat member of parliament -- Joerg Tauss. He resigned under pressure in September amid an investigation into possession of child pornography by state prosectors. He denies any wrongdoing.  "The internet has been increasingly tightened in recent years and made into a civil rights-free zone," Tauss said in parliament when the legislation was passed. 

Alongside traditional campaigning methods, the Pirate Party has taken to the streets setting up model living rooms inside transparent containers in public squares to protest against what they see as an increasingly Orwellian police state.  Support could come from younger voters, who have grown up with the internet, and who feel that established political parties are out of touch with their concerns.

"I want to be able to exchange music on the internet with my friends for free," Florain Bischof, Pirate Party candidate for Berlin says on student networking site studiVZ. One of the party's main policies is an easing of copyright laws.

Germany's mainstream polling institutes do not include the Pirates as a separate party in their survey and it is not clear how popular the party would be among the population at large. So the question remains: how successful has the party been in shedding its image as a bunch of male software engineers getting stroppy about their surfing rights? And in Germany's greying population, with voters 60 and over making up 30 percent of the rapidly ageing electorate, is a campaign targeted at gamers and those who download music doomed to fall flat?