John Maples Retiring

Conservative Home has a post up commenting on John Maples' (the Stratford MP) retirement.

I have to say I'm not happy about the late notice of it at all. As far as I knew and it seems others within the association knew, he was running again, the issue came up in a meeting I had as recent as November with someone who really should have known if he wasn't.

Total contempt for the local association, and all becuase we are a safe seat.

More on this tomorrow

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Structural makes up 75% of national debt

Following on from an earlier post back in December on structural debt versus cyclical debt and the PBR’s approach to tackling it (Government debt £300bn and counting), it appears that the structural debt actually accounts for something like 75% of the national debt. What this means is that even without a global recession our national debt would still be something like £225 billion.

This came out today when Shadow Chief Secretary Phillip Hammond opened for the opposition during the Commons debate on the Pre-Budget Report and quoted Treasuary figures.

“According to the Treasury’s figures, the economic recession accounts for about a quarter of Britain’s deficit—that is the cyclical part of the deficit, which economic recovery will eventually eliminate—but three quarters of it is structural, and requires a structural response.”

He has also pointed out that the government's continued reasoning for our debt level as being bailing out the banks isn’t true.

“The real structural crisis that needs to be addressed is not caused by the Government’s support for the banking system, as they like to imply. In fact, none of this year’s £178 billion deficit is directly attributable to support provided for the banks.”

As I wrote previously the PBR’s response in trying to stimulate the economy alone, and failing to cut expenditure seriously suggests that the government believes that there is no structural issue at play which at the end of the day is just plain wrong.

Orriginal story from ConservativeHome

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Science funding changes: The result, no more scientists

Following on from my post just before Christmas on changes to Science funding, a survey from the University and College Union has found that 34.5% of professors would consider leaving the UK in order to escape the new funding rules.

The new rules state that the social impact of the outputs of research funding will account for a 25% weighting in funding allocations under the new Research Excellence Framework that is due to be brought in soon.

Other results in the same survey showed that 72% felt that it would change departmental policies and practices and 65% felt it would change the focus of research itself.

The results of this survey remind me of the giant signs after Heathrow immigration at Terminal 3 that says something like "World class scientists, entrepreneurs, business people, investors.... Come on in".

What with this coupled with our high tax regime (which recent reports suggest are making Goldman's highest paid employees, and hence highest tax contributors start demanding a business move abroad), those signs seem a bit of a joke now.

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The Snowstorm Plot: Bloggers 1 - Mainstream Media 0

Yesterday’s failed attempt to oust Brown as Labour Leader is almost certiainly the beginning of a turning point in how this election will be reported, with bloggers and Twitter users breaking the story well before the mainstream media picked up on it.

As early as Tuesday Night Guido Fawkes was hearing rumours that a cabinet level move to oust Brown may be made against Gordon Brown, and continued to firm up rumours reporting them to his web readers and Twitter followers.

The next day on Daily Politics BBC Political editor Nick Robinson was asked the question
“I keep hearing rumours of a leadership challenge. I know nothing all all this stuff. Should I believe any of it?” to which he replied “No you shouldn’t it’s rubbish and isn’t going to happen.”

He then went on to blame bloggers and Twitter users, showing his utter contempt and his condescending manner towards the non mainstream media that is increasingly shaping the reporting of this election rather than himself

“..yesterday was an illustration of the madness we might get into with blogging and tweeting and all the rest of it, bit of gossip, reported reasonably by one or two people turns into poor old Tessa Jowell having to deny she was resigning.... and that then runs on the internet as if it was a real story, and it’s not.”

Then saying in possibly his most condescending tone (which is very condescending indeed)

“In the era of what we’re told is the revolution in journalism, blogging, by some of our friends outside, this becomes what they call a story.”

Of course during PMQs the now infamous letters / emails / texts went from Hoon and Hewitt to all members of the Parliamentary Labour Party, kicking off a leadership challenge. The rumored cabinet level resignation never happened. However there definitely was a leadership challenge, which was what the blogosphere and Twitterverse was lit up by, and the mainstream media continued to deny.

I don’t think that this will be the last story in this election campaign to be broken online first, and ignored as irrelevant by the mainstream media, but I suspect it has been somewhat of a wake up call to those in the media who have looked down on their blogging cousins previously.

However I wasn’t surprised to see a tweet from a sky journalist, although admittedly from Sky News online, poking fun at the way Guido and Tory Bear were joking about picking up Iain Dale's TV punditing for the day.

Of course Guido’s caustic reply said it all for where this election is going

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Even we can't go on like this

Courtesy of ConservativeHome, genius and quick response to this afternoon's political maneuvering. All of which was broken first online, by bloggers and tweeters, more on that later.

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Crowd Sourcing Government Policy

Last week Jeremy Hunt announced a Conservative plan for a £1 million competition to develop an online application that would allow members of the public to collaborate together to create solutions and solve a social problem.

The response of the mainstream media and the opposition was to ridicule the idea, suggest that competitions to create innovation are silly and that there’s plenty of ways to collaborate and consult online already like facebook and Twitter.

What Jeremy Hunt was actually saying was that a Conservative government would introduce a new Public Reading stage of the bill, which will allow members of the public to consult on green papers, make comments and perhaps eventually even come up with better ways of doing things.

There’s a competition because as great at what they do as Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites and apps are, they aren’t designed to do this. Nothing is available that can work on the scale they’re looking for, and with the features that will be needed, and setting up a competition will drive people to develop what’s needed. All kinds of organisations have used competitions to drive innovation in fact Virgin’s Space Ship Two that will provide the first private space tourism is an evolution of the Ansari X-prize winning Space Ship One from Scaled Composites. The precedent is definitely there.

So the competition idea isn’t as silly as it sounds, but what about the basic idea of asking the public to contribute, to effectively make policy and maybe even amend legislation? At the moment legislation does go to consultation but if you ever read a consultation document they’re dull, non interactive and are generally put to you as we want to do this or this, which do you prefer? The responses they get back and certainly the responses that are given the most airing are those from associations, and groups that are seen to represent the public or special interests, not from individuals.

Allowing any member of the public to have input and shape legislation is a natural progression from what we have now and where we started from. I am currently reading William Hague’s excellent biography of William Pitt. Pitt enacted the gagging laws stopping congregations of 15 people or more, because he believed in the primacy of parliament. If you had an issue then you should go to your MP and make a representation and they would then make a representation in the House. To congregate and complain, inciting rebellion etc was against the primacy of parliament and the system, that was more his issue than anything else.

What Jeremy Hunt suggested is a continued evolution of how parliament makes laws at the moment and I think very much reflects the time we live in, where it is about the individual and their views, and the wisdom of the individual in the many, rather than the pure wisdom of their representatives. The issues of tomorrow won’t be solved by the hierarchical solutions of today.

We can’t limit our decision making in such complex systems as we now operate in to the individual complexity of one minister, or a small groups of individuals, we do have to try to harness the wisdom and expertise of the masses and I therefore believe that this suggestion is a great stepping stone towards that.

For a great example of a very simple experiment in this area check out what's happening with the draft manifesto on health the Web Cameron Direct and Google Moderator. Really CCHQ should have been pushing this as a basic example alongside the original announcement.

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Shaking up DFID

Andrew Mitchell the Shadow International Development Secretary has said that an incoming Tory government would radically shake up DFID (The Department for International Development), which I have to say is a fantastic thing.

One of the judicial reform projects I've been working on in Nigeria was originally DFID funded, DFID have sunk a huge amount of money into a project that from its inception has never worked and rewarded contracts to companies who have failed to deliver time and time again. They've also totally failed to spot that the real issue in the project has been local capacity of staff not technology. The situation has in fact got so bad with the project that the Lagos State government have decided to effectively forgo ongoing DFID funding and selected their own suppliers and will be self funding the project moving forward.

Some of the key areas that Andrew Mitchell has said he will be looking at is inviting in outsiders to review projects and funding, transforming the kind of work it does and how it operates (more business focused or even civil service focused over it's current NGO style) and carrying out proper reviews not just of spending but out outputs.

If any of this had been happening then I'm sure that the project I'm working on would not be in the state it's in, so a review and radical shake-up  of DFID's work can only be a good thing

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