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By Jack Straw ( view all posts) At last, the back pages of our national newspapers have woken up.
Beginning to go is the unjustified criticism of Rovers’ fans for being unreasonable in the face of adversity; to be replaced by some understanding that this is no ordinary relegation.
What it raises are very big questions for the Football Association, the Premier League – and their paymasters, Sky, about how top flight football in this country is governed.
Every football fan knows that each season, three clubs go up, and three go down.
It wasn’t funny when we went down in 1999.
But – and it’s a very big ‘but’ – there was still confidence in the club itself.
Jack Walker was alive, John Williams his very capable chief executive. We all knew that Jack cared, that he would never hollow out his Club.
Rovers was safe, whatever league it was in.
Now, with Venkys, there is no certainty whatever about the club’s future.
Paul Hunt, the acting chief executive, and a decent man, has been sacked for telling the truth about the club.
More players will be sold; other staff face likely lay-off; the administration has been severely weakened.
The Premier League wash their hands of all this.
We’ve been relegated – so now we’re someone else’s problem.
But the Premier League bear a high responsibility for this mess.
They need to wake up to the fact that if they don’t get a grip, the worm will turn.
Take heed from what’s happening to Sky’s biggest shareholder – Mr Murdoch. He was omnipotent; now severely weakened. It’s called hubris, reckoning.
At the heart of the Premier League’s wilful negligence of its responsibilities is its so-called “fit and proper person” test.
This is the test which the foreign owners of Birmingham City (trapped in Hong Kong), Portsmouth (in administration for the second time) – and Manchester United (victim of ‘Glazer-economics’) all passed – as did Venkys.
The test is laughable, and almost everyone in the business knows this.
This ‘test’ allows no period of probation for new owners, no assessment of their managerial competence, no disclosure of the insidious role of the agents.
Unless and until there is change, the Premier League itself is an accident waiting to happen.
By Kate Hollern ( view all posts) The confirmation by the Office of National Statistics that the UK economy has been driven completely off course and into an avoidable double dip recession is a social disaster for the over one million young people out of work, and is a political catastrophe for the Coalition Government facing local elections next week.
In May 2010, the new Coalition Government inherited an economy growing at 2.1% under Labour, and with falling unemployment in mid-2010. Two years later they have achieved the exact opposite of their ambitions – presiding over a shrinking economy, and piling up more national debt. The economy has not grown at all since the Comprehensive Spending Review, and borrowing has been projected to rise by £150bn more than forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility in June 2010.
Today’s news represents the final nail in the coffin for Osborne’s guiding economic theory of expansionary fiscal contraction. Ignoring the lessons from Japan in the 1990s, in June 2010, he declared that the public sector was crowding out private endeavour, and that his new economic model would be based on increasing export-led growth, levels of business investment, and higher personal savings.
Early in the Parliament, Tory MPs including local Conservative’s Jake Berry & Andrew Stephenson queued up to advocate a sharp slashing of public investment, and how a flood of private sector jobs would be created thereby. They were nowhere to be seen when Councils like ours and others in East Lancs faced huge cuts in our funding putting local jobs and vital services at risk.
The economic chickens of such reckless policies are now coming home to roost. Stripping out £81bn from public spending over the course of the Parliament, with 88% of the cuts still to be made, has according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, severely depressed consumer and business confidence and spending power, with enormous negative effects on private sector demand. Despite this we are told by George Osborne the extent of our economic ambitions should be to focus purely on low interest rates, while demand dwindles and more and more jobs are destroyed.
As I canvass my ward for the local elections electors I talk to on the doorstep are showing a growing exasperation in the “do nothing” economic approach of the Coalition Government that is so damaging to ordinary people’s lives.
Next week polls are an opportunity for voters to pass judgement on the economic shambles that has been allowed to develop by Cameron, Clegg and Osborne. All the signs are that the Coalition’s friends in local government are going to take a drubbing as a consequence of their Governments incompetence and quite rightly too.
By Jack Straw ( view all posts) Green Lane, Whitebirk Industrial estate, Mosley Street, St Wilfrid’s playing fields, Feniscliffe, Lower Eccleshill Road.
Just some of the areas where so-called “travellers” have set up unauthorised camps in recent weeks – leading local residents (and employers) to complain to the Press, the council, and to me – about their anti-social behaviour.
We live in a country which is very tolerant of others’ life styles – including those of travellers.
Over the years I have received no more complaints about the permanent camp at Ewood than I have about any other area of town.
These travellers have their own life style; and that’s fine so long as it does not lead to interference with others.
The same goes for a single Romany family, complete with a classic wooden caravan, and donkey, whom I saw camping on a large area of spare land in the middle of nowhere in the West Country.
But these “travellers” – the ones who’ve been causing trouble all over the borough – are something else. They, like the notorious ones at Dale Farm in Essex, are all too ready to go to law in defence of their “rights”; but deny the right to a quiet life to the law-abiding living nearby, and cry “foul” whenever the legal processes go against them.
Handling this problem is something of a nightmare for government, central and local, irrespective of party. Since the 1980s the law has progressively been tightened.
That has led to some improvement in the speed, and effectiveness of enforcement proceedings, but there’s still a long way to go.
Earlier this year, the Government announced two linked measures. First, £60 million for funding councils to provide more authorised sites – like the one at Ewood.
Second, stronger powers for Councils to tackle the abuse of planning permissions (or the lack of it) that led to the horrendous problems at Dale Farm.
I welcome both.
Once there are enough authorised sites, then I think we are all entitled to say “Enough is enough; and the rest of us have had enough. You want respect; show some more to others.”
By Jack Straw ( view all posts) Have I missed something?
Last weekend the news bulletins were peppered by interviews with excited executives from some of the major retail chains, salivating at the prospect of an end to restrictions on Sunday trading.
It looks as though for certain these restrictions will be lifted for the Olympics.
In turn this will be used to justify the permanent end of any hours’ difference between Sunday and the rest of the week.
The case for lifting these restrictions during the Olympics doesn’t seem to me to stand up for a moment.
I was raised not far from Stratford, the site of the (amazing) Olympic Park.
As I saw for myself on Tuesday of this week, even the much-enlarged station there can barely cope. It will really struggle during the Olympics.
Having the big shops in the area closed for a few hours on Sundays will be a benefit.
As for areas beyond east London – I’m afraid I don’t follow the argument at all.
The Olympics may well affect levels of retail trade from day to day; just as the weather does.
But what affects it overall is how much money people feel they have, including any credit they think they can safely access.
So why are the big retailers peddling this tendentious stuff?
The answer is simple. They want an even bigger share of the retail cake, and, as usual, they are ruthless in its pursuit, regardless of the adverse effect on local convenience stores, some High Streets – and even more important , that Sunday is special.
Already there are claims about all the jobs these retail multiples will create. What they never do is net those figures off against the smaller (often family) shops which will shed jobs.
All stores can open for six hours on a Sunday. Is anyone seriously inconvenienced by this?
More people still attend church every week than go to football matches.
And whether people are believers or not, I think that our society is helped by having a rhythm to the week, not having every day the same.
By Jack Straw ( view all posts) “GET out of my room. I’m sick of that subject. You’re all mad” was the response of a senior member of the White House staff when asked about the ‘special relationship’ the USA had with Britain.
This story was related by the BBC’s Justin Webb, reflecting on his eight years as their North America editor.
The White House was then occupied by President Bush, who really was an Anglophile. His greatest hero is Winston Churchill.
The President today, Barak Obama, had Churchill’s bust removed from the White House. His father was black, from Kenya – where the British white colonialists were notorious even within the British Empire for their racism.
He was brought up in Hawaii – the other side of the globe. He lived in Chicago, dominated by a huge Irish-American diaspora not exactly keen on the Brits. And he looks west, to Asia, more than he does east to Europe.
So what about the UK’s ‘special relationship’ with the United States, about which we’ll hear so much this week during David Cameron’s visit to see the President?
Is the idea just bunkum, in the words of the Commons’ Foreign Affairs Committee ‘potentially misleading’, or is there something in it?
The phrase goes back to a famous speech which Churchill made in March 1946 in Fulton, Missouri, in which he called for ‘a special relationship between the British Commonwealth and Empire and the United States’.
I doubt however that he’d use the phrase today.
The British Empire has gone. We are still very influential on the world stage for our size, but others are there too: China, India, Brazil, Japan, and the economic power-house of Europe that is Germany.
With each of these countries, at least as crucial to the US’s future as we are, the US has a distinctive relationship. The adjective ‘special’ may well be trotted out in mutual flattery by their heads of government.
As British Foreign Secretary I worked hard for a good relationship with the US (as I did with other countries). But, echoing that Commons’ committee, I think the phrase ‘special relationship’ is confusing, and patronising, and should best be avoided.
By Kate Hollern ( view all posts) I know I’m not the first and I certainly won’t be the last to ask the Coalition Government what on earth it means by fairness.
This week the Labour Opposition forced a parliamentary debate on the mess surrounding the government’s plan to cut child benefit. In the debate they highlighted irrefutable evidence from the Institute for Fiscal Studies that shows the government’s proposals are ‘fundamentally unfair’ and for some families a pay rise at work will actually result in a significant cut in household income.
I wasn’t holding my breath but typically they got no answers from Treasury ministers.
At the moment because of tax credits a couple where one parent works and the other looks after the children are £59 a week better off.
It makes sense because as a result it pays to work.From next month they will be £14 a week better off on the dole – despite the government’s claims it wants to make work pay!
Less we forget, from April this Tory led Government are penalising almost half a million children with draconian cuts to child tax credit.
Middle income families are being hit by cuts to child benefit, hardworking families are being penalised by child tax cuts and women are being shut out of the legal system.
Where is that compelling vision for Britain painted by David Cameron when he said we were all in this together?
Is it any wonder that the prime minister’s guru Steve Hilton, the man who authored the statement ‘let sunshine win the day’, has fled to California in search of it?
Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats are also in the dock. And it comes as no surprise that Chris Saunders, his chief economic adviser has also resigned to ‘go travelling the world ’
Perhaps these two guys recognise that under this Coalition the future in Britain is not bright and it’s time for the rats who helped behind the scenes to con the British electorate to get off the sinking ship and swim off into the sunset.
Follow Kate on twitter: @cllrkate
By Jack Straw ( view all posts) A central principle common to all world religions is the idea that we should behave towards others in the way in which we would expect others to behave towards us. Christ devotes much of his teaching to this theme, building on the Old Testament injunction that we should love our neighbours as we love ourselves.
“Judge not, that ye be not judged”, and “Do to others as you would have them do to you”, are two of his most powerful, and enduring, messages about how individuals, local communities, and whole societies, should live peacefully, and happily, with others.
Given the key importance of these ideas to Christianity, why are some church leaders – in the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches in particular – not practicing what Christ taught, on the issue of people’s sexuality?
I happen to be, in the modern jargon, “straight”. It doesn’t make me a better person.
I didn’t choose to be straight. It’s how I am. It would be no different if I were gay.
I would neither be a better, nor a worse, person because of it. It would simply be how I was.
Because I am straight, I have a right to marry a woman. But if I were a gay man, or a lesbian woman, in love with another gay man, or lesbian woman, I can get to a half-way house with a “civil partnership”, but the law currently says that I cannot marry.
Some Church leaders say the law should stay that way, on the spurious grounds that the sanctity and importance of heterosexual marriage will somehow be damaged. How, why?
I know of no-one who is married who feels threatened by the idea that another couple, same sex, wishes to cement their love for each other by marrying.
Why should this not be a matter of celebration, rather than of prohibition?
And how on earth do these church leaders square their present stand with those biblical injunctions about treating others as you would expect to be treated yourself?
By Jack Straw ( view all posts) Wasting police time is quite a serious criminal offence. The maximum penalty is 6 months in jail.
Last Friday I thought I came close to being charged with this
The particulars of the charge would have been these: that I had inveigled a police constable, a PCSO, along with the commander of our large police division, Chief Superintendent Bob Eastwood, to waste two hours at a public meeting for no particular purpose.
There were witnesses, too – at least eighty were present, so an alibi would have proved impossible.
The meeting was a regular residents’ meeting – this time for the Brownhill and Roe Lee area of town, held in Holy Souls’ Church Hall on Whalley New Road.
Now in their ninth year, these meetings follow a familiar pattern. There’s a detailed printed report on the area, prepared jointly by council officers and police staff, put round before the start. Brief oral presentations are made by the Council Leader, the Chief Executive or Deputy, Mr Eastwood the police chief, the senior officer responsible for bins, litter, blocked gullies and similar delights, and by me. That’s followed by an open session with questions or comments from the residents. A full note is kept, and an action report subsequently sent to everyone who attended.
For some years after this cycle of meetings began in 2003 they were dominated by complaints about crime or anti-social behaviour. These days – as at the Holy Souls’ meeting – such complaints are a rarity. Indeed, at this lively meeting there wasn’t a single comment about crime.
There’s an easy explanation for this: the kind of crimes which really worry people, like house burglary, have fallen dramatically.
When, some years ago, Mr Eastwood was the inspector for the east side of Blackburn there might be fifty burglaries in a month. In contrast, in one month last year there were just twenty-five for the whole of his Division – Blackburn, Darwen, Hyndburn, Ribble Valley.
Joking aside, the police at the meeting were not wasting their time because they had no complaints to answer. Rather, that was a tribute to their effectiveness.
By Jack Straw ( view all posts) I’ve a bright A’level student from a Blackburn school with me this week.
For the first four days of the week she’s been based in the House of Commons.
On Monday, there was a conference about the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry which I had set up in 1997. After that she had a front row seat in the Commons’ public gallery, watching the statement by the current Home Secretary, Theresa May on another of those recurring fiascos which go with the job, whoever is doing it. That was followed by a major debate on Iran, in which I spoke.
On Tuesday, it was a conference on the European Union at which I spoke, followed by a great celebration to mark the 90th Anniversary of the National Union of Students. It’s amazing how many former activists from the NUS (me included) end up in Parliament.
Yesterday she was able to watch the bear-garden of Prime Minister’s Questions. Today, there’s evidence from me about how Select Committees could be made more effective; then an important meeting with the Office of Fair Trading about car insurance.
Tomorrow she’ll spend the day in town watching how I do that end of my job as MP, including my constituency advice service.
She seems to be enjoying it all. I certainly would have at the same age.
I don’t remotely feel that I have been “exploiting” this student; neither does she.
But what if she was not with me for a week, but a couple of months; and if the “work experience” wasn’t watching how I do the job, but days spent stuffing envelopes, photocopying, filing, and making tea? And I didn’t pay her a bean?
That’s different, in my book. And the longer such a “work experience” went on, the more it would feel like exploitation.
I applaud the aim of government and employers alike to get long-term unemployed youngsters back into the habit of working, but both have to be really careful about what’s on offer, and how long it’s morally tolerable to expect them to do it for nothing.
By Jamie Groves ( view all posts) Figures released last week show that unemployment has risen for the 8th straight month, up 48000 to 2.67 million, the highest unemployment rate since 1995. Youth unemployment is up 22000 and women continue to be amongst the hardest hit. Yet before the last election David Cameron claimed to be a “compassionate conservative!” We don’t see any “compassion” from this Tory government as Cameron’s economic policies continue to rip-through the hearts of communities, particularly here in the north. And still they continue to blame everyone and everything else except themselves.
They blame the Labour Government for “reckless” spending yet the truth is for 10 years of that government the Tories actually criticised Labour, saying they would spend MORE if in power!! Only when the world recession hit, due to reckless bankers gambling, did they change their tune, ultimate political opportunism! They blamed the euro crisis and the royal wedding and even tried to blame the snow!! The fact is when Labour left office the economy was growing and unemployment was falling. Yes the deficit needs to be addressed but the reality is the Tories are cutting too far and too fast and if they continue this path, a path that has damaged the economy with no growth and no hope and doubled youth unemployment in 1 year, then the legacy left will be a “jobless generation” that this country cannot afford.
The truth is there is no such thing as a “compassionate Conservative” and like under previous Tory governments unemployment is rising rapidly again, which is NEVER a price worth paying.
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