UK News

Constitution in crisis as tyrannical journalists devour cowed politicians

A sordid tale of excess and brutality, of a world dominated by journalists with their ears to the keyhole, of tyrannical newspapers wielding remarkable power and of a political class not only cowed, but consumed, by that power.

Sound familiar? With two of Britain’s most senior policemen out of a job, the prime minister under pressure for his serenading of News Corp and one of the world’s most powerful press barons, in the form of Rupert Murdoch, summoned to testify to parliament, it would be one way of describing the current state of affairs.

In fact, it is how Irish writer and wit Oscar Wilde saw the state of Britain 120 years ago.

“In old days men had the rack. Now they have the press. That is an improvement certainly. But still it is very bad, and wrong, and demoralising,” Wilde wrote in 1891, several years before a court case in which intimate details of his own private life became the centre of a media storm.

Wilde believed that in America “the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs for ever and ever” but that its power there had been diminished in the eyes of the public having “carried its authority to the grossest and most brutal extreme”.

In England, having not been pushed to ”such excesses of brutality”, the press remained a really remarkable force: ”The tyranny that it proposes to exercise over people’s private lives seems to me to be quite extraordinary,” he wrote in his 1891 essay “The Soul of Man under Socialism”.

Then, as many are doing now, he debated whether newspapers had the power to mould peoples’ minds or whether they merely held up a mirror to the public mood.

What did you think of the 2011 budget?

George Osborne has delivered his budget speech for the 2011/12 fiscal year to parliament.

The Chancellor said corporation tax would be cut by two percentage points to 26 percent from April, rather than by just the one point originally planned. A levy on banks would be increased to help pay for it.

Osborne also announced a surprise cut in fuel duty, while slapping higher charges on oil and gas production which he said would raise 2 billion pounds. Meanwhile, the government will offer loans to help first-time buyers get on the property ladder.

Osborne called it a “Budget for growth and jobs.” Do you agree? Take part in our poll below or leave a comment on this page.

What did you think of the 2011 budget?

• Great budget!
• More good than bad
• Neither good nor bad
• More bad than good
• Awful budget!

from Blogs Dashboard:

Claws out

Russia and Britain are rowing over how to respond to Iran's nuclear programme, MPs are scurrying to push through legislation for a referendum on changing the UK voting system and inflation is twice the Bank of England's target.

But one yarn towers over them all on this miserable, wet Tuesday.

David Cameron has got a new cat.

The Westminster bubble ran through the whole range of gags when it was discovered that Cameron's Downing Street residence in central London was infested with rats.

Unsurprisingly, the recruitment of a stray cat called Larry as the hard-nosed enforcer to deal with the problem has triggered another wave of bad jokes and cast all other stories, no matter how grave, into the shadows.

After all, the hard-working British taxpayer has a right to know...

Had Larry been vetted? Was there enough money in the "kitty" for a rat-catching expert in this age of austerity? Would the tabby be employed as a political special advisor or as a neutral civil servant? Is Larry just another "fat" cat from the city?

Getting women on board

The previous UK government loved reviews and inquiries – and the new one is little different. From corporate governance, to pensions, to the structure of banks, those in Westminster relish a report, preferably one packed full of important-sounding recommendations but which compel no one to do anything. That’s because, very often, the problem being tackled is not one that can be easily or neatly solved with legislation or a slap on the wrist.

The government’s review into female representation on the boards of big business is a case in point. The panel, led by former trade minister Mervyn Davies, met on Monday to discuss final recommendations for increasing the number of female board directors, with quotas mooted as one option. Its report is due out soon. But quotas are highly unlikely – for the simple reason that business does not like them.

“…boards and shareholders should be able to form a board based on the merits of an individual and the requirements of the company,” the Institute of Directors said in its submission to the Davies review. “Far from increasing the legitimacy of boards, gender quotas would undermine the credibility of female board members. Female directors would be tainted with the suspicion that they had been appointed in order to fulfil regulatory requirements, not on the basis of merit.”

Of course, no company or organisation should employ an individual who is patently less qualified or able than another simply because of their gender, or the colour of their skin. But clearly much more does need to be done to address homogenity at the top of British business (and countless other fields, not least politics).

So, here are some thoughts about how change can be wrought, and about why the IoD submission itself shows where some of the biggest problems lie:

- Diversity of experience Those who seek to explain why there are so few women on British boards often argue that the pool of suitably qualified and experienced candidates is very small. But that depends on what you mean by experience and expertise. The boards of the banks that have fallen spectacularly from grace in the past couple of years were ostensibly packed with people who boasted years of experience. Yet few – if any – piped up to rein in reckless lending practices or overly ambitious mergers and acquisitions.

What boards need is diversity of experience, not homogeneity. A herd mentality is the least useful attitude of a strong board. Yes, expertise is necessary – but equally crucial is the ability to question management decisions and strategy – and to look at problems from different angles. A board whose directors have diverse experience and backgrounds encourages this.

Britons face rising price pain

– Fiona Shaikh is Reuters’ Economic Correspondent, based in London. –

Stubbornly high inflation has proved something of an inconvenience for the Bank of England over the last year, but the unrelenting rise in prices is turning out to be a real headache for ordinary Britons — one which is likely to get worse before it gets any better.

Consumer price inflation — the headline measure targeted by the central bank — accelerated to 4 percent last month, the  highest in more than two years and double the BoE’s target.

A great deal of the rise will have been down to the 2-1/2 percentage point rise in value added tax at the start of this year — a one-off move that will drop out of the statistics next year and mechanically bring headline inflation back down again.

But that will come as little comfort to most people at a time when wages are rising at half the rate of prices and energy bills are rising.

Consumer morale is already in the doldrums and the misery is likely to get worse once the government’s public spending cuts kick-in in earnest.

BoE Governor Mervyn King noted last month that Britons have endured the sharpest drop in living standards since the 1920s depression, and the harsh reality is that most people will need to get used to having less as a consequence of a much-needed economic rebalancing.

from Matt Falloon:

It’s snow joke

Snow or no snow, these GDP figures are a nightmare for the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government and throw up the risk of a self-fulfilling spiral of gloom.

When the shock 0.5 percent drop in economic output at the end of 2010 hits television screens on Tuesday night as families sit down to dinner, already-cautious consumers will feel more than a winter chill.

These numbers are likely to knock confidence just when the government needs businesses and households to step up to the plate.

Will businesses unleash investment and take on hoards of new staff now, or will they wait for signs of improvement?

Will families, facing a hike in VAT sales tax and high inflation, flash the credit card on big purchases or tighten their belts and hope for cheaper prices in the future?

If either of those scenarios play out over the next few months, Britain's economy faces a real risk of stagnating or worse -- and that doesn't even start to take into account the spending cuts waiting in the wings this year.

Even without the snow, the economy still ground to a halt in the last three months of 2010.

from Tales from the Trail:

Special Relationship? How quickly they forget….

So much for "Hilly-Milly".

Just last year U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gushed to Vogue magazine about  former British Foreign Secretary David Miliband,  calling the young diplomat a dashing addition to the international scene.

"Well, if you saw him it would be a big crush. I mean, he is so vibrant, vital, attractive, smart. He's really a good guy. And he's so young!" Clinton said in remarks that provoked a spate of joking British tabloid headlines about the new "special relationship" between the United States and Britain.

Well, absence doesn't appear to have made the heart grow any fonder. Asked on Wednesday if she had any advice for Miliband following his decision to bow out of frontline politics after losing a Labour Party leadership contest to his younger brother, Clinton was brief.

"I have no advice for anyone in politics. I'm out of politics. I obviously wish him well and I am very intrigued by the interesting political dynamics that are occuring inside the United Kingdom," Clinton said, before launching into a positive assessment of the state of relations with Britain's current government.

Asked again if she had any farewell words for Miliband, Clinton finally managed a few: "I enjoyed working with him and wish him well."

It was left to visiting German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle to sum up Miliband's exit from the international diplomatic round robin, where new faces appear in the wake of every big election.

Best friends in the whole world, at least for now

Prime Minister David Cameron has spent the last few days playing down expectations of just how special Britain’s “special relationship” with the United States is.

He was afraid of being seen, like Tony Blair, as another American “poodle”, well aware that some aspects of the alliance have not played out in Britain’s best interest and also worried that the UK has to concentrate on forming strong ties beyond the U.S. to maintain international influence.

He needn’t have worried. President Barack Obama gave Cameron the kind of glowing review reserved only for the best pupils in class.

The start to this latest leg of the special relationship was “brilliant”, said Obama, praising the Conservative leader’s “steady leadership and pragmatic approach”.

The two, the president boasted, saw eye to eye on almost everything.

On first name terms throughout their first press conference in the White House after a 75 minute one-on-one meeting and slap-up fish lunch, David and Barack at times sounded like a comedy duo, jostling for the punch line.

from The Great Debate UK:

The NHS: Back on the operating table

-Laurence Copeland is a professor of finance at Cardiff Business School. The opinions expressed are his own.-

“The NHS – the envy of the world”. This is one of the Great British Myths to rank alongside “A-level standards haven’t fallen”.

It makes you wonder why all those rich well-organised Europeans are looking longingly at Britain – it’s not as though they can’t afford their own NHS. The truth of course is that they take one look and say “thanks, but no thanks”, and you can’t really blame them.

By most indicators, the NHS produces outcomes that are very unimpressive compared to our European neighbours and are in many cases inferior to those achieved in far poorer countries.

The fundamental problems of the NHS can be seen by simply examining the boasts of its defenders. One oft-repeated claim is that it is the second-biggest employer in Europe (or is it the world?), behind only................the Red Army! What this tells you loud and clear, apart from plenty about the speaker’s role-models, is that the NHS is simply far too big and far too complex an organisation for anyone to manage properly.

That the problems are managerial is confirmed indirectly by another frequently-heard boast.

from The Great Debate UK:

Confronting the immigration conundrum

-Laurence Copeland is a professor of finance at Cardiff Business School. The opinions expressed are his own.-

After being the third rail of British politics for a generation or more, immigration is suddenly a topic which can be spoken about in polite society.

Unfortunately, as far as policy is concerned, it is also a classic case of the politician’s syllogism familiar from Yes, Minister: something must be done; this is something; therefore this must be done. Most of the proposals on offer seem likely to make the situation worse, which is not surprising since many are based on a thoughtless acceptance of conventional wisdom.

Take for example a proposition which had the three party leaders nodding in agreement during the pre-election TV debate on this subject: that only the most highly-qualified immigrants should be allowed entry into the UK.

Really? This raises at least two issues.

First, what is the point of the foreign aid budget?