EU Referendum

Showing posts with label Labour Government. Show all posts

Malloc_Brown_Soros[i-Malloc_Brown_Soros]This blog is not alone in being interested in Lord Malloch-Brown's (as he is to be)relationship with George Soros. One of the Londoner's Diary hacks seems to have been following the saga:

Barely ten weeks after becoming vice-chairman of George Soros's hedge fund company, Mark Malloch-Brown was given a job in Gordon Brown's cabinet. Although he is no doubt pleased with this appointment, especially since he has been made Lord Malloch-Brown for the post, it must have been a blog to his bank balance to quit his new and highly lucrative job.

The question is - has he quit it? When I ring the Foreign Office, where Malloch-Brown is the minister for Arica, Asia and the UN, I am told he has yet to make a declaration of his interests. "That process has yet to be undertaken," says a spokesman, "there was a delay actually because the cabinet office were reviewing the ministerial code of conduct and Lord Malloch-Brown is out of the country until Tuesday so that process has not yet happened. But very simply he will be making his declaration on his return."

So is he on holiday? "He is on private business not official business," adds the spokesman. Let's hope whatever business he is attending to adheres to the new code of conduct.

When Malloch-Brown took up his post on Soros's hedge fund in April, he also became vice-chairman to the billionaire's Open Society Institute, a private grant-making foundation. The New York office informs me that Malorch-Brown stepped down from that as soon as GB became PM.

But will he be as quick to give up the hedge fund? Given that it is full-time, it would seem likelyt that time constraints would force him to do so. Any shares that he holds in the fund himself may have to be sold or put into a blind trust.

One's first thought on reading this piece [not on the web] is to think that one should always beware official spokesmen who manage to use the word "process" twice in two consecutive sentences. Sir Humphrey would not have approved, I suspect.

One's second thought is to wonder why it takes ministers so long to sort out matters that are remarkably simple. I seem to recall problems with Lord Sainsbury when he became Minister for something or other and his shares not being put into a blind trust for weeks. At the time I was told by a journalist friend, who had had to go through the same process, writing as he did about economic matters, that it took half a day to sort it all out.

There were hints of Gordon Brown appointing Malloch-Brown for months, so the man must have known for some time that his position in the Soros empire was temporary. After all, it is not difficult to understand that being vice-chairman of that organization would cause a clash of interests for any member of the government, and not just because it is a full-time job.

It is surely incumbent on the man to make a clear and immediate announcement (from wherever he happens to be) about his position in the Soros empire, if any. Or is that going to become one of those "don't go down there" matters, like the large pensions collected by former Commissioners?

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Kitty+Ussher[i-Kitty+Ussher]One of the most mysterious aspects of eurosceptic politics has been the assumption shared by an inexplicably large number of people that Gordon Brown, erstwhile Chancellor of the Exchequer and now Prime Minister was secretly, deep down a eurosceptic. It is true that he effectively kept us out of the euro but, by the same token, he effectively kept us away from a referendum on the euro and the reason for both of those was Brown’s implacable feud against Tony Blair.

Not at all, we were told. Just wait till Brown is Prime Minister. We shall see a turning in policies. And so we have. This is, if possible, an even more Europhile Cabinet than any of Blair’s was. Nor is Brown showing any signs of that deeply buried euroscepticism in his insistence that, no matter what comes out of the IGC, there will be no referendum, regardless of that election promise.

His appointments are not such as to inspire confidence in there being any straight talking on the part of the British ministers with the colleagues – not that there ever was in the past. This extends to the Junior Ministers as well.

The latest appointment is that of Kitty Ussher, class of 2005, to replace the highly influential Ed Balls as Treasury Secretary, commonly known as “City Minister”. To start with, as Londoner’s Diary pointed out in yesterday’s Evening Standard,

Business chiefs are … likely to be disappointed that their key link with the Government is a junior minister rather than the hugely influential Ed Balls.

A junior minister, furthermore, with next to no standing in the House. It is actually worse than that:

Ussher, who succeeds Ed Balls, only became an MP in 2005. Before that she was chief economist for Britain in Europe. There could be some concerns that she will not be as tough fighting Britain’s corner in Europe as Balls.

Whether Balls did fight Britain’s corner or whether the Times merely imagined that, Ms Ussher, she of an impressively political family and career background, is unlikely to do so. Not only has she worked for Britain in Europe and is a strong supporter of this country entering the eurozone, her other job was with the formerly perestroika europhile, now straightforwardly so, Centre for European Reform.

Alex Hawkes reports in Accountancy Age that Ms Ussher is a strong supporter of European tax harmonization and one can easily guess which way that would be up or down. She expressed these views in an article for CER where she also explained that the idea of tax harmonization was largely a eurosceptic myth, despite pronouncements by Oskar Lafontaine that might lead anyone believe it.

Mr Hawkes thinks that Ms Ussher will have to change her opinions as her boss, Gordon Brown is an opponent of tax harmonization. He may have been as Chancellor but he, as Prime Minister, he appointed Ms Ussher to a key position.

Incidentally, the Times article also quotes Richard Lambert, current Director of the CBI as being certain that Sir Digby Jones will not “let the bureaucrats roll him over” but also being “concerned about who would take responsibility for trade liberalisation”.

Ahem, Mr Lambert, that responsibility rests with the European Union. Is it not time you took note of that fact?

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I hope readers of this blog will forgive me for writing about something that may not seem to be part of its remit. Except that it is. The future of this country in Europe and the world, its future within itself, depends on education as much as on what kind of toys our servicemen and servicewomen get to play with. (No, I don't decry the importance of toys, though I do think the question of whether this country is still and can be in the future a military power is very much wider.)

Blair300[i-Blair300]Most of us recall Tony Blair's comment in 1997 that the most important aspect of political life he was going to concentrate on was going to be "education, education, education". Not that many might know that Lenin said it before him. Every schoolroom in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe had a poster on its back wall on which it was written in the appropriate language: "Education, education, education. V. I. Lenin"

Ten years on, education in this country has plummeted to a historically unheard of low. We have a couple of generations of semi-literate and anumerate children, the study of history, foreign languages, sciences and engineering lags so far behind most countries as to have become a joke; our universities are no longer world class and survive anywhere near that by dint of recruiting lots of foreign post-graduate students; there are fewer children from working class or poor families getting anywhere near reasonable education and, therefore, reasonable career than in most other developed countries and certainly fewer than there were under the old system of grammar schools.

The Conservatives had introduced a tiny improvement by their system of assisted places but these were abolished by the Labour government as soon as it came to power, no doubt in the spirit of "education, education, education" (well, for their own children, anyway).

The new Conservative leadership has abandoned any pretence of wanting to change the situation and allow more children to go to schools where they might receive appropriate education. First the Boy-King, in his previous reincarnation as Education spokesman, announced that the last remaining grammar schools will be abolished if (a big if) the party ever comes to power, adding arrogantly and fatuously that people did not want choice in education but wanted the government and officialdom to sort it all out. Presumably, as well as it had been sorted out all these decades.

There is no evidence that he has changed his attitude since becoming leader. This alone will prevent me from voting Conservative in the next election.

Now, we are told that there was

a decision by the Tories last month to drop plans for a full-blown voucher, in which parents would get £5,000 a year to spend at the school of their choice — state or private.

Presumably, at least one reason for that decision is a weak-kneed reluctance on the part of the Conservative leadership to fight with the educational establishment and the teachers' union. But one cannot help feeling that another reason is the overriding fear of letting people make decisions for themselves on important matters. And what could be more important than education?

I would not like to suggest that there might be a strong lack of desire to see competition from bright children from poorer families against the undoubtedly rich scions of the Tory leadership.

It is curious to see how frightened our rulers are of the very thought of vouchers. It is something like fifty years since the idea of universal vouchers as a way of countering state control of education and reversing falling standards was propounded by Milton and Rose Friedman. Yet it remains the great bogey of politics.

We have another initiative from the Government, one that has already been lambasted by the unions as being "elitist", the worst epithet they can think of.

Lord Adonis, who, we are told, himself benefited from a grant to Kingham Hill school, is trying to push through a scheme that will help "gifted" children who would not, otherwise, have access to good education. I assume that the noble peer understands that this scheme is completely inadequate but is trying to get round the problem of his colleagues who will never agree to selection or vouchers (such as Diane Abbott who sends her son to the excellent private City of London School) as well as hoping not to antagonize the teaching unions too much. He has failed in the latter but one could argue that anything the teaching unions bitterly oppose must be good for their pupils.

So what is this scheme that is getting everyone so worked up? Vouchers for education it ain't.

The brightest 800,000 pupils in England are to have vouchers to spend on extra lessons as part of a national talent search that starts next week.

Every secondary and primary school will be told to supply the names of 10 per cent of their pupils who best meet the new criteria for the gifted and talented programme when they fill in the January schools census.

Each pupil on the scheme will be given "credits" to buy a range of additional courses designed to push them further. This includes weekend or summer schools at universities, in which academics are paid to provide master-classes in particular subjects.

As was immediately noted by educational psychologists, the criterion of "gifted" can be defined only according to a few, highly professional tests and the chances are that many will be left out.

Then there is the problem that these are vouchers to be spent by pupils and their parents in the children's free time. In other words, they will get strenuous training in the week-end, only to go back to their useless, ill-disciplined, sub-educational classrooms during the week. There are a few problems with that scheme.

Should they not be in better run classrooms all the time? We the taxpayers are already ploughing billions of pounds into the educational system. Now we are told that more money has to be added in order to provide certain children with extra lessons. Why not provide as many children as possible with appropriate lessons? Ah, but that would mean handing those vouchers over to the parents and let individual children apply to individual schools with decisions to be taken at that level. Can't have that. The gentleman (and lady) in Whitehall (and town hall) knows best.

What makes this scheme completely unworkable as was its predecessor, the National Academy of Gifted and Talented Youth, is that it leaves the decision in the hands of the educational establishment. The Centre for British Teachers (CfBT) may be a non-profit education company but I can foresee layers and layers of bureaucracy and quangocracy being created in order to run the scheme.

Then there are the schools themselves. Many of them proved to be recalcitrant in the matter of that National Academy. When I recall the difficulties primary school heads used to raise whenever any parent wanted to know about assisted places, I fail to be surprised. They will not supply names of likely children, unless the parents create mayhem, getting round those instructions somehow.

The whole scheme smacks of socialist planning. Every school will have to provide names of "gifted" children that will make up ten per cent of its pupil numbers. What if there are no ten per cent? What if there are more? What if there are numerous children who are not classified as "gifted" according to those tightly drawn criteria but are bright and able, who would benefit from a rigorous education? And so on, and so on.

In the end, there is only one question: why not accept that centralized, state run (either on national or local level) education has failed in this country? Let the government take on the teaching unions and the festering educational establishment and introduce a full voucher system. Then we shall have education, education, education.

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