April 27, 2012

London has an election coming up on May 3rd, and your intrepid blogger has a vote.

As is his wont, he has decided to go through the candidates, and openly muse about why he should (or shouldn’t) vote for them. Given the number of candidates, it seems as though we’re going to do this in three parts; we will endeavour to cover all candidates prior to the election.

So, in the order presented in the pamphlet provided by London Elects, here are the candidates to be the Mayor of London:

Lawrence Webb, UKIP

I don’t know much about the UKIP, other than that “UKIP” stands for “United Kingdom Independence Party”, and that they’re a conservative party that would like the country to exit the EU. The Mayor of London has no say in such matters, of course, so — other than a feather in their cap, of course — there’s no obvious UKIP policy that fits with the power of the mayorality.

So what does their manifesto contain?

Immigration Policy

Amazingly, since it lies outside of the mayor’s power (although perhaps not surprisingly, given it’s the purpose of their party) the thrust of their point-form manifesto, is an anti-EU and anti-immigration policy. (Really. A one page, point form, manifesto. I’m embarrassed for them.)

Their anti-immigration stance has even evolved into some sort of generic anti-movement policy, separating “long term Londoners” from the rest.

This list includes things beyond the mayor’s power (changing immigration policy, altering EU policy to eliminate red tape), the illegal (giving preferential treatment to people from London on the job market), the weird (levy 25p on all overseas visitors), and the immoral (giving preference to Londoners over asylum seekers for housing).

Law and order?

Webb seems intent to undermine the police and justice system through his “Law and Order” proposals:

1. Zero tolerance on certain types of crime. Leaving aside that zero tolerance policies do not work and pervert the course of justice, the line “offend on Saturday, face court on Monday” strikes me as impossible.
2. Encourage citizens arrests.

The good idea

Every campaign needs a good idea, right? For Webb, it’s the time-limited multi-bus trip: as many bus trips as a person wants/needs within 70 minutes of the ticket’s purchase.

The caveat is that this appears to have simply been stolen from the Liberal Democrat platform (see below). So, um, the only thing I like about the UKIP platform is the bit they stole from the Lib Dems.

Why you should vote for Webb

You shouldn’t.

London is a global financial capital — immigration is its lifeblood. An anti-immigration mayor, even a powerless one, would do irreparable economic harm to the city and the country.

The immigration issue aside (if that’s possible with the UKIP), Webb’s ideas seem pretty awful. The one page manifesto is an embarrassment; any serious candidate who wants your vote should put some effort into their campaign.

Even if you find yourself agreeing with the UKIP and Mr. Webb, the poor showing on the manifesto shows that he is not serious about the role; he does not deserve a single vote.

Carlos Cortiglia, BNP

The BNP (British National Party) are a far right party of racists and bigots.

There is no reason to examine the Cortiglia’s platform.

Do not vote for this man.

Siobhan Benita, Independent

My dissatisfaction with the mainstream parties (see below) makes an independent candidate intriguing. An independent needs more vetting, however, as their unstated political views are not necessarily clear based on party alignment, and their track record may be absent.

Such is the case with Ms. Benita, who has an About Page that is worryingly absent of content.

Still, after reading the UKIP’s “manifesto”, Benita is a breath of fresh air. She has a separate manifesto for each of her policy areas, any of which put the UKIP manifesto to shame.

Ms. Benita appears to be prepared, and has some interesting ideas.

Why you should vote for Benita

Other candidates seem rather lackluster (see above and below), which is a poor reason, but a reason all the same. She also has well thought out positions that I happen to agree with:

Education appears to be her primary concern, and she wants to bring libraries under the mayorality. I am on board with these — although concerned that her primary agenda appears to deal with subjects that are outside the purview of the mayor.

Given the new rules for academies brought about at the national level, to have the mayor responsible for planning permissions for new schools, while the councils are responsible for education itself seems like a strange mismatch (of course, Conservatives probably see it as “competition”, and won’t change the rules here). Throw in the fact that the mayor is a visible force in the city, while most people do not know who represents them on the council, and it would create greater accountability for a primary concern in local elections.

Other fantastic ideas:

• Free transport for job seekers
• Having the tubes run later on weekends
• Better river transport services
• Donate government buildings to charities after working hours

Beyond this, we are also rather fond of her entire Housing Manifesto.

Why you should not vote for Benita

A lot of the mayor’s “powers” are not powers, but places where they wield influence. This is done – as far as I can tell – through will and personality. When I watch Benita talk (and that’s a video from her campaign website, not something random I chose in which she is uncompelling), I’m not convinced that she can convince people. When I read about her accomplishments as a senior bureaucrat, I find them to be suspiciously vague.

She has no track record, and there’s no reason to think that she’ll be able to push through anything on …

… education, which is the focus – “priority”, in her words – of her campaign, despite it being outside the remit of mayor.
… economic growth, which is one of the mayor’s responsibilities, but one in which she has no official powers.
… improve policing, where the mayor has many powers, but is not involved in operational decision making.

With her top priority being outside the scope of the job, an absent track record, and no opportunity to see her in action under pressure (as an independent, she is not invited to the debates), she seems to be a “high risk, high reward” candidate.

I like what she’s selling, but remain quite unconvinced that she can deliver any of it.

Brian Paddick, Liberal Democrat

At the moment, I am not a big fan of the Liberal Democrats. I was quite excited about them in the last General Election, and thought quite highly of the prospects of a coalition government that featured them. Unfortunately, they seem to have instead agreed to support the Conservative party – thereby losing their progressive voting base – in return for a referendum on AV that they lost, at least partially, by mismanaging the campaign.

It has not been impressive.

But local politics and national politics are quite different, and when it comes to the position of mayor the person matters even more. The mayor does not answer to the party whip. And Brian Paddick is a very interesting candidate.

His Lib Dem affiliation paints him as a progressive candidate, but he comes from a policing background which, to my mind, tends to produce more right wing types.

His number one focus, naturally, is the police. With his mix of the progressive and the practical, he makes a quite intriguing figure as the person in charge of the Met.

Why you should vote for Paddick

First and foremost, because of his position on policing. Too often those who make “improvements” to policing – who provide more money, more manpower, more tools – are hardline right wingers. A progressive with practical experience approaching such a role is a rare and wonderful thing.

There are other nice ideas in the manifesto — the one-hour bus fare supported by the UKIP also appears here, along with other ideas to make travel in London more affordable to those on a limited income. There are also some good longer-term environmental goals

Why you shouldn’t vote for Paddick

That Lib Dem association again. While the policing focus – along with the clearly well thought out practical ideas – is all Paddick, the manifesto is decidedly about the Liberal Democrats, and not Paddick himself.

How much does he care about these things? How committed to them is he? And – given my reservations about the party itself, these days, is there enough Paddick here to hold my nose and vote for his party?

Stay tuned …

There are still three candidates — including the two favourites — still to come. Keep an eye on the Big Bad Blog for more of our election preview.

June 12, 2010

	“I am not a brand.” Maureen Johnson wrote a manifesto … well, she wrote a blog post, and titled it manifesto. If Manifestos have a minimum length, I don’t think it qualifies. But it’s still pretty awesome.
When was the last time someone was sued for singing a famous song in school? The last time something more than a takedown notice was the legal consequence of the music on a YouTube video? Sure, YouTube itself is being sued, and individuals are suing in response to the takedown notices, but the answer is actually never. The penalty faced by those many people who quite publicly acted out the Thriller video? Nothing. These are just a few of the ways in which this much reblogged article regarding Glee and copyright fails to have its facts straight. Still, it is interesting stuff and the hyperbole does not entirely invalidate the article’s conclusions.
	My Roomba is broke, and I need to order a part to fix it. So sad. In the meantime I am forced to stare sadly at its beautiful algorithms.
Do not forget to password protect your Internet in Germany — you can be fined 100 Euros. In related news, German courts make it illegal for those who are not tech savvy to have wireless internet.
	Apple and Flash, part one: Take what Steve Jobs says about Flash, and do a copy & paste.
Apple and Flash, part two: To demonstrate how HTML5 (as an open standard) is better than Flash, Apple created a little demo page to show you. Of course, if you are not using an Apple’s Safari browser, Apple tells you that you need Safari. Even though Firefox, Chrome, and most other current browsers would work just fine.
	I’m sure you heard this, but the Big Bad Blog would be remiss not to repeat it: Saudi clerics have issued a fatwa … advocating that women should share their breast milk with the men in their life.
I love Clients From Hell. I’m not sure that most of it is not made up, and I particularly enjoy the rare posted exchange in which the designer is the asshole. This particular entry goes above and beyond the norm, to the root of most customer problems.

April 27, 2010

Following on the heels of our review of the Conservative Party last week, we move our view to Labour.

Below, we follow the same pattern as we did on Thursday — though without the pre-analysis rambling.

Without further ado, the Big Bad Briefing on the Labour Party:

Misguided Preconceptions

Unlike the Conservatives, Labour does not have a Canadian party of the same name. On first instinct — being the “other big party”, with red signs — one would think to equate them to the Liberal Party in Canada.

On the other hand, “Labour” brings to mind a labour movement borne out of socialist and trade union ideals — an origin vastly different to the history of the Liberal party, and closer to Canada’s New Democratic Party.

Overall, the “New Labour” of Tony Blair I arrived to in the UK was not so different from Chretien’s Liberals in Canada — a charismatic, once popular Prime Minister, running low on popularity, and being run out of the role by their Finance Minister/Chancellor. My base assumption was that Labour started out as an NDP-type party that evolved into today’s party.

The Truth

The truth is that Labour did not evolve — it revolutioned into New Labour with the removal of Clause IV from their constitution:

To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.

They are not a party that has slowly moved from being a socialist party to being a centre-left party. Instead, they have a long history of supporting state ownership over private ownership — an ideal that was thrown out the window in the 90s by Blair to provide an alternative to the Conservatives.

Another big difference is in the way that the recent Liberal and Labour governments have governed. The Chretien government believed in being fiscally responsible — it took advantage of a strong economic period to balance budgets, and eliminate budget deficits.

The Labour government, by contrast, seemed to believe that bad economic things could not happen. The current Prime Minister is on record as saying that there could never again be a bust, a depression. And after one successful term of New Labour, they began to spend like it — the more the British economy motored along, the more they spent.

In truth, the Labour are not like the Liberals at all — while their basic position on the political spectrum (centre-left) is similar, their approaches to governing seem wildly different.

The Leader

Leading the Labour Party is Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The Chancellor for ten years under Blair’s Labour government, Brown took power when Blair stepped down in 2007.

Similar to how Cameron reflects the way that the Tories would like to be perceived, Brown reflects how the population sees the Labour party at present. To me, he represents a government that has been in power for over a decade, and has lost touch with why it was elected in the first place.

A poor speaker who seems to stumble from one crisis to the next, Brown did not attain his position by popular mandate, or because he could speak to or for the voters of Britain. Instead, he came to power mid-term by internal political machinations within the Labour party.

Additionally, despite being the man who held the purse-strings following the New Labour revolution, Brown seems to be leading Labour back towards their old school of thought. While nationalizing some banks might have been necessary, Brown seems to be leading Labour in a direction that suggests that the party should drop the “New” from “New Labour”.

Should Brown prove to be a figure that voters can rally to in the final weeks of an election, it would not be a stretch to say that everybody would be surprised.

The Manifesto

Labour’s manifesto is titled a future fair to all. The strangest piece of their manifesto is that one of the three pillars is that “we” should “renew our politics.” There are two ways of seeing this.

First, is that it should read like the other pillars, and the “we” in question are the voters. If this is the case, it is unclear why the voters should vote Labour.

Second, the “we” is the Labour party — Labour believes that they need to renew their own politics. Should this be the case, one must wonder why they would not do so prior to the election. If Labour is going to renew itself, I would like to know what this will look like if I am to consider casting a vote for the party.

I am uncertain if it is kind or unkind to assume the second definition.

The weight of the new policies in the Labour Manifesto — if one is to look at what is new, and call it “renewal” — is for an increased role of government in society (and a corresponding decreased role for the private sector). The renewal might mean a move back towards more traditional Labour positions.

Labour’s manifesto is definitely one that assumes that the country is preparing itself to embrace the Conservatives. It seems to forget or willfully ignore their own recent record of governing on several issues, only to turn around and boast about said record where it is convenient to do so.

The Good

My favourite part of the Labour manifesto is their pledge to maintain or increase spending that supports sports, art galleries and museums. While the sport part is a little empty — the proximity of the 2012 Olympics pretty much requires spending or embarrassment on an international stage — one of the great things about living in London is the low cost and high quality of the art galleries and museums.

When times are tough, and money is short, too often these things find themselves first to the chopping block. It is nice to see a political party showing that they understand that these things are important to the community.

The Bad

In his introduction to the manifesto, Gordon Brown outlines a secret (ie, non-verifiable) Conservative plot to reduce government support for nurseries. He has a point — if the secret plot is true, it is not a policy I would be fond of — Brown uses it to dress up the fairness principle that is central to the Labour Manifesto.

The secret Tory nursery policy, he argues, is unfair.

As evidenced by the title of their Manifesto, and the general tone of their campaign (Conservatives are evil, in case you missed it), the message can be boiled down to this: Labour will be fair. Conservatives will be unfair.

What is unfair? That the Conservatives will cut back some benefits.
What is fair? Labour will top up said benefits.

With the government in dire financial straits, the argument ought to be with regards to the timing and choice of cuts to be made, not whether or not they need to exist. It is quite common, when something is taken away, to say “that’s not fair”. Fairness is not about making people happy, though.

Labour seems frightened to take anything away from anybody in this manifesto. They are fighting to delay or avoid the inevitable cuts while increasing spending.

While it is normal for a party to avoid answering the tough questions, calling out a party that is making plans for cuts — guaranteed to be unpopular — is simply a low blow. Either Labour is also planning cuts, or they intend to allow the budget to spiral completely out of control. If they wish us to believe that their cuts will treat us more fairly, they need to tell us where they intend to make cuts, and why they feel that those are better places that provide a better deal to UK residents.

On this topic, Labour’s manifesto claims that they will make “cuts to lower priority spending” — but neatly avoids what they consider to be “lower priority”. Their section on fiscal sustainability mentions the tax rises they have already passed, and pledges not to increase taxes further. The section labelled tough choices asks us to look at the 2010 budget and sets caps for pay increases for government employees. Funnily enough, according to Deloitte, in the 2010 budget “the Government has still put to flesh on the bones of it’s plans to cut Government spending. In the absence of such detail the markets have little reason to find the Government’s numbers plausible.”

In other words, Mr. Brown critiques without offering alternatives and appears afraid to cut spending on any particular group. It is difficult to view this as a plausible strategy.

The Ugly

The introduction of the Manifesto has this to say:

So this cannot, and will not, be a ‘business as usual’ election or Manifesto. In this Manifesto we set out plans to address the main future challenges we face in our economy, our society and our politics. We will rebuild the economy to secure the recovery and invest in future growth and jobs. We will renew our society to further strengthen the communities that bind our country together. And we will restore trust in politics with greater transparency and accountability in a system battered by the expenses scandal.

However, these are issues that occurred during the Labour government. The economy collapsed two years ago, and Labour has been in power the entire time. Why would Labour ask us to review plans that they are only setting out now, instead of voting based on the plans in progress?

The expense scandal which damaged trust in politicians is the same story — these events occurred on Labour’s watch.

I am willing to accept that the recession and expenses scandal are not necessarily a reason not to vote for Labour — scandals and recessions will occasionally happen. It is a government’s ability to react to them, mitigate them, and enact policies to improve the system’s stability and sustainability that count for something.

But Labour’s own manifesto seems to claim that they are not doing a good job. It asks us not to judge Labour on the job they are doing, but on the job they intend to do.

This is simply not acceptable. If they are not proud of their record, they should not wait for an election to take things in a new direction.

The Bottom Line

Gordon Brown speaks of seeing the British economy through the recession, and claims that it would be bad to change horses in midstream, so to speak.

I do not buy this argument.

Canada has weathered the global financial crisis with nary a peep, despite deeply partisan politics in a hung parliament — they even prorogued parliament (no hands on the tiller!) and found their way through. The United States changed from Bush to Obama, and are recovering ahead of the British economy.

Britain was hit hard for two reasons. One is that financial services industry and the housing market make up larger portions of the economy here than they do elsewhere. Hence, the targets of the recession targeted the UK excessively. The other is that the Labour government were increasing deficits and piling up debt when times were good. This makes handling the public finances difficult when times are bad and a extended stimulus is needed.

We should be questioning why this happened. And it leads us back to Labour and Gordon Brown. They believed that busts and recessions could no longer happen. But they were wrong, and recessions did happen.

Although his ideas for helping the economy to recover were copied the world over, Brown’s own policies are largely responsible for the difficult situation that the bailouts have caused for Britain.

Should he be voted out, Brown’s legacy will be the huge public debt that the country is now burdened with. It is astonishing that the platform on which he is campaigning does not look like one in which he repairs such a legacy, but would would instead deepen the burden by ushering in an age of government activism.

Labour wants our votes on the basis that we should be afraid of the Conservatives. They do not want us to vote based on their record in office over the last three or thirteen years (the duration of the Brown and Labour governments, respectively). They point out that the economy is in a delicate situation, and say “please be afraid of change”.

The Big Bad Blog is not afraid of change; Labour’s campaign, manifesto and policies appear flawed and hollow.